COS Chapter Eleven: "The Duelling Club"

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

 

* Percy’s looking “in far better spirits than last time they’d met”. Wonder if he’s been seeing Penelope in one of the less-used sections of the library?

* Although if we asked JKR, she’d probably say that he’s in a state of sadistic glee after docking points from a first-year, or something like that.

* Percy and Ron both seem quite hung up on the fact that it’s a girls’ toilet. Perhaps Gryffindor wizards are just insecure about their sexuality (cf. Harry), and so compensate by rejecting anything even remotely connected with the feminine sex.

* Harry can’t see why Ron and Hermione would be in the bathroom, but goes in there anyway, proving (as if any more proof were needed) that logic isn’t one of his strongest points.

* Trying to kill someone because you’ve just lost a Quidditch game would be totally IC for a Gryffindor, IMHO. Less so for a Slytherin, though: you’d have thought that a member of a House noted for cunning would be able to put such things into better perspective.

* Or at least they would, if JKR could convincingly write a cunning person.

* Ron immediately assumes it was Lucius Malfoy who opened the Chamber last time round, even though he has absolutely no idea whether Lucius was actually at school when that happened.

* Ron belittles Hermione’s reading, except when he needs her to do his homework for him, in which case he’s glad she knows so much.

* The Twins are giving Ginny nightmares until Percy stops them. This does not stop Percy from being the tactless one with no people skills, obviously.

* Is Neville “almost a Squib”? He’s always having magical accidents, to be sure, but his problem mostly seems to be one of control, rather than actual power. (Cf. Snape’s “we’ll be sending Finch-Fletchley home in a matchbox” comment.)

* Is there any explanation for Draco staying at school? He always goes home during the other years, AFAIK, so why break the pattern now, if not for authorial convenience?

* Or perhaps he’s just started going out with Pansy, and is spending a romantic Christmas Holidays with her…

* On a side note, I’ve never really got all the Pansy-hate that goes around. I can sort of understand it in the books, from a Doylist perspective if not a Watsonian one (Pansy being based on some girls who used to bully JKR at school), but why does fandom seem to hate her, too? Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever read one fic where she’s portrayed in a positive (or even a neutral) light, which is surprising given that (a) she doesn’t do anything that bad in canon, and (b) fandom (or at least parts of it) seems determined to like pretty much every other Slytherin in the books.

* Anyway, let us leave such characterisation conundrums, and return to the actual book…

* Harry has got to think of a way to steal something from Snape’s stores without being seen. *sigh* If only he had some sort of magical garment – a cloak, maybe, or something like that – which could make him invisible…

* As Harry, unfortunately, does not have any such garment until Rowling remembers about his invisibility cloak, he’s instead stuck with disfiguring the Slytherins to create a diversion.

* BTW, Hermione’s “I’d better do the actual stealing, as you’ll get expelled if you get caught” line doesn’t make much sense, given that Harry would surely be in even more trouble if he were found lobbing fireworks into cauldrons full of dangerous potions than if he were found stealing something from Snape’s stores.

* Snape turns a blind eye to Draco flicking puffer-fish eyes at Harry, which obviously counterbalances Harry’s getting the rules bent to help him, receiving free top-of-the-range broomsticks free of charge, being given extra tuition by Dumbledore, having the House Cup rigged so his House always wins…

* Oh, Harry, the things you have to do to save the school. I bet you hated disfiguring Malfoy like that, didn’t you?

* For all that we’re expected to see Snape’s dislike of Harry as an irrational result of his dislike for James, Harry doesn’t really do much to prove him wrong. He is lazy, arrogant, rude and mediocre, and here he’s endangering other pupils’ safety. It’s no wonder Snape doesn’t like him.

* For “he knows a tiny little bit about duelling”, read “he knows enough about duelling to completely wipe the floor with me”. And Harry, too, but unfortunately we’ll have to wait until HBP to enjoy that.

* “‘Wouldn’t it be good if they finished each other off?’ Ron muttered in Harry’s ear.” Note that this is completely different to Draco wishing that Slytherin’s monster would finish Hermione off.

* I’d love to be a Slytherin in this scene. It’s so rare they’re given a chance to shine, watching their Head of House publicly kick arse must be a very enjoyable occasion for them.

* I don’t see why they don’t teach Expelliarmus in the normal curriculum. It seems to me that spells like this are the first thing you’d teach them in DADA (maybe Stupefy and Protego as well).

* Lockhart bounces back from his humiliation as usual.

* Snape’s “splitting up the dream team”, as he put it, makes me wonder why pupils aren’t made to work with their peers from other Houses more often on assignments and suchlike. Having the Gryffindors work with the Slytherins might teach them that their counterparts in other Houses are human being too, not caricatures of evil like most people seem to think.

* So did Malfoy use Expelliarmus on Harry, then? Harry still seems to have his wand, but that could be attributed to Malfoy just learning the spell and, therefore, not being very good at it. If so, then Harry’s the one who actually starts using non-Expelliarmus spells.

* “Whoops – my wand is a little over-excited” must surely win the award for most Freudian sentence in COS.

* So is Snape the one who gave Draco the idea of using the snake spell? If so, why? Using random dark magic (presumably) just for the hell of it doesn’t really seem his style. Is it perhaps because he knows that Harry doesn’t know how to block proper spells, and just wants Draco to cast one which Harry will be able to avoid more easily?

* Also, is Draco’s already knowing the Serpensortia spell a sign that Slytherin has its own duelling club? It wouldn’t actually surprise me to find that Slytherin has the best clubs; given what we’ve seen of inter-House relations, I doubt that Slytherin students would be made to feel very welcome in any school-wide clubs they did join, so they’d probably set up their own.

* I have to admit, that “What, drop my wand?” line is rather funny.

* Better not tell Harry that, in a society as small as the WW, and given that Salazar lived a thousand years ago, everybody’s probably related to him several times over.

* Anyway, the idea of there being one heir of Slytherin doesn’t really seem very likely. Even if there’s only one legitimate heir, all it would take would be for one descendant over the past thousand years to have one illegitimate child, and there could be any number of unknown heirs. It could be anyone. It could even be Dudley Dursley… (Now there’s a fanfic idea if ever I saw one!)

* I like the way everyone assumes that (a) being Slytherin’s heir automatically makes one evil, and (b) all Slytherin’s heirs would get sorted into Slytherin. And people say that blood’s not important in Harry Potter?

* BTW, I wonder what the Slytherins all think of this constant vilification of their House’s founder?

* That’s right, chaps, Salazar spoke Parseltongue, so anyone who speaks Parseltongue must also be evil. Just like Slazar wore clothes, and ate, and got married, so anyone who does any of those things must also be—no, wait…

* Come to think of it, the evidence for Harry being the Heir is much stronger than the evidence against Draco. Not that this’ll give Harry pause for thought when he knocks out two of Draco’s friends to spy on him.

* “‘He always seems so nice, though,’ said Hannah uncertainly.” Don’t worry, Hannah, we’ll stamp that out of him soon enough.

* Harry’s voice is “shaking with anger” now, both foreshadowing CAPSLOCK!Harry and making him look like the dangerous menace the Hufflepuffs all think he is.

* Harry’s really unlucky in that he has a motive for attacking everybody who’s been attacked so far. Maybe Tom’s trying to discredit him, like Lucius is trying to discredit Dumbledore?

* I like the way going to Dumbledore’s office is seen as such a big deal. You can tell he’s got such a close relationship with the student body, can’t you?

 

Comments

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

Question- do we know that Dobby tucked the Diary anywhere? Because when I was discussing this with some other people, they were convinced Lucius himself directly put the book into Ginny's cauldron.

IDK, I just get so confused by JKR's 'plots' and all the holes in them, and the assumptions she has other characters make which they have no way of knowing are true but we're supposed to take as the gospel truth. Ugh. *confuzzled*

What was Lucius even trying to achieve anyway? Getting rid of the Diary, 'coz Arthur was conducting raids to pin something, anything on him, and then he thought he'd dump it with one of the kids- actually, wouldn't it make sense to give it to Ginny, to discredit Arthur?

[cured4life.livejournal.com]

I always thought that was the intent...to discredit Arthur since he was raiding Malfoy manner.

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

I know, but then why was Dobby flailing over some threat to HARRY? Sense, it makes none!

There are character motivations that make sense if the plot's against the Weasleys...but then Dobby's actions are inexplicable. O.o

ETA. LMAO, I'm d/l something and the code I had to put in to verify I am indeed human? WHY9. Why, indeed!

[cured4life.livejournal.com]

Well to be honest...I never understood what Dobby was for except to advance a plot that didn't need advancing. Just tell the story. In the end a basilisk was still loose at Hogwarts and Harry was outed as a parselmouth.

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

Dobby's flailing makes sense if the plan was to frame and possibly kill (depending on how much Lucius knew about the diary's vampiric properties) Harry, and Ginny got hold of it by mistake. Lucius of course never admits anything, Harry's the one who (thanks to Dobby's prompting) figures out how Ginny got hold of it and assumes Lucius did it deliberately, and Dumbledore just predicts the likely results, but neither adult claims those were the intended results. Which also helps explain Lucius' paleness as discussed above in the comments - part of it would be simple shock that it wasn't Harry who had got the diary.

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

See, this is what annoys me. Everything's just conjecture and people take it for granted that Lucius put the book in Ginny's things to make sure she got it when that totally contradicts other things like Dobby's flailing and injuring Harry and intercepting his mail. Bad writing, JKR, bad writing.

Although I think later on Lucius apparently admits to that being the plan? Bwah? IDEK.

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

Lucius admits to nothing. The closest he comes (IIRC) is saying something like "Even if I wanted to harm the Weasley girl, how could I have given her the diary?" which isn't a denial but is possibly an attempt to diverting suspicion away from the possibility that he aimed for Harry, knowing that being suspected of attacking the daughter of his political enemy will be by far the lesser evil than being suspected of attacking the Boy Who Lived.

Dobby claims his flailing was motivated by the prospect of bad things happening at Hogwarts and not wanting Harry to get caught up in them.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Dobby implies that he knew the diary was Riddle's/Voldemort's but apparently couldn't/wouldn't say so directly. It's hard to say if this is true or whether he was making stuff up as he went along. But if true, he may ahve decided that regardless of whom the diary was given to, anything connected to Voldemort would eventually seek Harry out.

[oryx_leucoryx]

If Lucius knew what was going on and he wasn't being framed by Dobby, then the intent wasn't to discredit Arthur but to get rid of Albus. Arthur was just lucky collateral damage. Lucius waits for the 4th attack (and 3rd attack of a human) to go after Albus, when was he going to get Ginny or Arthur? It was April by the time he got Albus. To get the Weasleys involved he would have had to wait for at least one more attack after Hagrid's arrest to show that the culprit was still at school and then have the students' belongings searched in order to catch the diary in Ginny's possession. But he got Albus out, and his main complaint at the end was that Albus returned. I think that was his main goal (in addition to not being caught with the diary himself).

[karentheunicorn.livejournal.com]

To me it almost seems like the only reason Lucius is involved in COS was to get the diary into the hands of the kids and to introduce us to Draco's father.

To me it would have been just as simple if JKR would have had Draco steal the diary from his father and then the plot could have moved the diary into Ginny and then Harry's hands or just into Harry's hands.

Because the business with the Governors and Lucius all seems kinda wonky looking at it now. Why are the governors so wishy-washy? One min they're bowing down to Lucius, next minute they're bowing down to Dumbledore and then kicking Lucius out.

No wonder the school is so screwed up - the governors are dumbasses.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

The theory that Dobby was involved in deploying the Diary is just that, a theory. The "Lucius gave the Diary to Ginny to discredit Arthur" explanation is what *Albus* gave us during the "Albus explains it all" session.

The problem with it is that if Lucius put the Diary into Ginny's book, why didn't anyone see him do it? He was right there in full sight of everyone, positively begging for attention. So how did we miss it? Furthermore, if Lucius *intended* to give the Diary to Ginny in the first place, why was Dobby hanging around Privet Drive? There was no excuse for him to be there unless he was there to spy on Harry -- which was not required to plant the Diary on *Ginny*, who Harry didn't even know yet.

Basically, it's an explanation after the fact, without any consideration for how it fits into the action we've seen over the course of the book. It's perfectly in keeping as an explanation pieced together by Albus--who wasn't a witness to any of it -- and like most of Albus's explanations it comes across as highly plausible, until you start asking questions, and then it all falls apart. It ism however, highly convenient for the author. Who has no intention of giving us anything else.

Consequently, if we want something that takes account of the rest of what we saw going on, we have to piece it together ourselves. And keep in mind that Albus wasn't there.

[lynn-waterfall.livejournal.com]

Actually, that theory is Harry's. Prompted by Dobby's "pointing at the diary, then at Mr. Malfoy, and then hitting himself hard on the head with his fist," and seconded by Dumbledore's statement that no one can *prove* anything.

Dumbledore clearly believed that Lucius was behind it before Harry said anything, but Harry's the one who provided the details, and he was present.

Could Lucius have done it? Well...

He reached into Ginny’s cauldron and extracted, from amid the glossy Lockhart books, a very old, very battered copy of A Beginner’s Guide to Transfiguration.

“Obviously not,” Mr. Malfoy said. “Dear me, what’s the use of being a disgrace to the name of wizard if they don’t even pay you well for it?”

[...]

There was a thud of metal as Ginny’s cauldron went flying; Mr. Weasley had thrown himself at Mr. Malfoy, knocking him backward into a bookshelf. Dozens of heavy spellbooks came thundering down on all their heads; there was a yell of, “Get him, Dad!” from Fred or George; Mrs. Weasley was shrieking, “No, Arthur, no!”; the crowd stampeded backward, knocking more shelves over; “Gentlemen, please — please!” cried the assistant, and then, louder than all —

“Break it up, there, gents, break it up —”

Hagrid was wading toward them through the sea of books. In an instant he had pulled Mr. Weasley and Mr. Malfoy apart. Mr. Weasley had a cut lip and Mr. Malfoy had been hit in the eye by an Encyclopedia of Toadstools. He was still holding Ginny’s old Transfiguration book. He thrust it at her, his eyes glittering with malice.

“Here, girl — take your book — it’s the best your father can give you —” Pulling himself out of Hagrid’s grip he beckoned to Draco and swept from the shop.

(chuckle) Okay, now I'm wondering if the Diary just happened to be on that bookshelf, and happened to fall into (or magicked itself into) Ginny's cauldron. Dobby could also have done it in the confusion.

What Ginny says at the end of the book is, “I found it inside one of the books Mum got me. I th-thought someone had just left it in there and forgotten about it —”

It's theoretically possible that *that's* entirely true. It's also possible that it isn't at all true, and the Diary wasn't inside any of the books. Ginny might have said that because she was terrified of getting into trouble; after all, one of the first things she says after she wakes up is "I’m going to be expelled!" She might have thought she would sound less guilty for keeping the Diary if one book had been hidden inside another.

Back to the bookstore: with books everywhere after the fight, Lucius *might* have slipped one book inside another in front of everyone. The question is whether Lucius could have predicted bookshelves being knocked over. Lucius could easily have arranged the meeting them in a bookstore part, and he certainly went out of his way to provoke Arthur. Gryffindors tend to escalate verbal fights to physical/magical fights very quickly, so... I think that that part of the plan would be manageable. Lucius might not have expected to be thrown into a bookshelf from the start, but as long as Arthur started the physical fight, Lucius could have planned to fight back with a spell or two likely to knock things over.

What do you think?

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

It's certainly possible. Of course, with the quote, it sounds like Lucius had hold of Ginny's spellbook all through the fistfight, dropped it into the cauldron at the end of it, and swept out. Not a particularly good way of tucking another book inside it while you're pounding an opponent with your other hand. (Did he hit Arthur with Ginny"s book? It sounds like it.)

But with a writer who explains everything the way she *wants* you to remember it, at the end, regardless of how she wrote it at in the middle, all theories are like cheap suits. They only fit where they touch.

I am still inclined to believe that the theory that Harry was the target is a better fit for what we are given than Albus's explanation that Lucius was targeting Arthur's daughter. (Which may have come as a tremendous surprise to Lucius.)

And yes, Albus was certainly quite right that Lucius was behind the whole thing. But then, the plot was used as a lever to pry *him* out of office, and that result had to be sincerely wanted by *someone* on the board of governors. And Lucius really made no bones about that much.

We never will know for sure what *Tom* intended to acomplish by turning loose the Diary, but I think it's likely that his plot would have been a lot more Byzantine, and that he would have expected Albus to go down in the course of it by some means other than being merely fired by the board. For that matter, we don't know whether he had been in communication with the Diary revenantwith instructions, before he passed the Diary on. That Lucius deployed the Diary, and then rather than wait for it to wreck havoc to the end, using the uproar to advance his own agenda in retrospect comes across a bit like buying a dog, and barking yourself.

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

(Did he hit Arthur with Ginny"s book? It sounds like it.)

Lucius got hit in the eye with an encyclopaedia of toadstools (one of the more memorable phrases), but Arthur's cut lip looks more like the result of a punch to me.