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]

it's a 'creatures with eyes' killing machine

Lol, point. But it did seem to be targeting muggleborns in particular. On that, though, did the basilisk even get told who to target? Or was it actually random?

For all we know, Salazar was the Hagrid of his times, experimenting with breeding weird creatures.

OMG, YES, BRILLIANT OBSERVATION. Hagrid allows giant deadly spiders to live in the castle and then breed out of control in the Forest (I wonder if it was always Forbidden, or if that was only after he polluted its ecosystem) and let's not even get into all the other dangerous creatures he keeps around students, but he's the man of the people, the loveable good-natured oaf we're supposed to admire for his simple affection for Harry (this trumps all his flaws!).

Salazar has one giant snake and he's forever condemned. >:[

And you're right, we don't have any evidence to say that he was intent on killing off muggle-borns. Just as likely that history warped his reputation and turned him into a caricature of pure evil just for the drama of it all.

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

On that, though, did the basilisk even get told who to target? Or was it actually random?

There's a theory that Tom was directing the basilisk based on Ginny's subconscious urges - Harry had had a run-in with Filch, Colin was annoying him, Justin believed him to be the Heir, and Hermione may have been seen as a romantic rival (and Penelope just happened to be next to her). It's fairly ridiculous to imagine that a giant snake is capable of performing a genealogy test on everyone it meets.

[karentheunicorn.livejournal.com]

I think it had to be directed who to kill, I don't think there would be a way for it to know/identify who was a muggleborn unless it was told.

So I don't think the snake is officially 'evil' it was just doing what it was ordered to do by what it assumed was it's master. It also could have been magically ordered to obey a heir of Slytherin, so there could have been some magic going on that tied it to someone who was related to Salazar.

So maybe if Harry had of been related, I'm wondering that Harry could have told the snake to pack it's bags and move out and never kill a human again, etc.

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

Harry was related via the Peverells, and possibly had a better claim than Voldemort (who may have been illegitimate - it's unclear). (Probably everyone with enough pureblood ancestry was descended from Salazar, of course). And book!Harry doesn't even try to command the basilisk - the writers of the screenplay noticed this problem but JKR didn't. Plus, given that Harry's Parseltongue came from Voldemort's soul, if it obeyed Voldemort even when speaking through Ginny it should have obeyed Harry.

[karentheunicorn.livejournal.com]

Harry was related via the Peverells, and possibly had a better claim than Voldemort (who may have been illegitimate - it's unclear). (Probably everyone with enough pureblood ancestry was descended from Salazar, of course). And book!Harry doesn't even try to command the basilisk - the writers of the screenplay noticed this problem but JKR didn't. Plus, given that Harry's Parseltongue came from Voldemort's soul, if it obeyed Voldemort even when speaking through Ginny it should have obeyed Harry.


This is what I'm assuming, Harry and Tom Riddle are distantly related, decendants of the Peverell Brothers.

Tom is a decendant of the brother named Cadmus Peverell, because Cadmus was the one who had the stone, and we know the Gaunt's ended up with the ring with the stone in it.

Harry is a decendant of the other brother Ignotus.

This would mean that Salazar Slytherin would have had to be born sometime after Cadmus, thus making Harry not a direct decendant to Salazar Slytherin.

That is the only way I can figure Harry doesn't have just as much of a claim as Tom (Voldemort) does.

But you make a really good point about the soul bit in Harry. The Diary "Tom" had just as much of Voldie soul in him as Harry. In terms of how much Voldie, they both seem to have an equal share if you ask me.

The only way I can figure is Cadmus' came before Salazar Slytherin and thats how Tom/Voldie has a more direct connection with the chamber.

However, If Salazar Slytherin came before Cadmus Peverell then JKR's got some serious explaining to do - because if the Peverell's are decendants of Salazar, that would mean Harry and Voldie have the same about of claim to being the heir of Slytherin.

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

Cadmus was older than Ignotus, thus if Salazar predated him, his descendants would take priority, assuming heir in this case means "first descendant under rules of primogeniture". (What happened to the first brother's descendants?) How this would interact with an hypothetical heir of Slytherin denoting a non-blood-relative as their heir in unclear, unfortunately (if the Heir isn't a Parselmouth, s/he can't even open the Chamber let alone command the snake).

[oryx_leucoryx]

How would Cadmus even have descendants if he committed suicide to join his one and only true love? OK, maybe she died in childbirth or something, that's allowed in the Potterverse.

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

How would Ignotus have descendants if he wasted his life cowering under the Cloak? If we go by the theory that they made the Hallows, they were probably old enough that they would have already started families.

[oryx_leucoryx]

The story says he lived alone, and the one he called from the dead was the girl he had once hoped to marry. Which means he never married that one girl and if he committed the sin against the Potterverse of marrying someone else and had children with her they were out of home when he got the stone. Maybe the kids decided their father sucked for not really loving their mother and never spoke to him.

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

and if he committed the sin against the Potterverse of marrying someone else and had children with her

If he committed such a heinous sin it would explain why he was unworthy of the Hallows. Simple!

[karentheunicorn.livejournal.com]

The story says he lived alone, and the one he called from the dead was the girl he had once hoped to marry. Which means he never married that one girl and if he committed the sin against the Potterverse of marrying someone else and had children with her they were out of home when he got the stone. Maybe the kids decided their father sucked for not really loving their mother and never spoke to him.

hummm. Either that or it might be that JKR forgot to remember he needed decendants. Maybe he had children out of marriage. He could have got some girl knocked up but then if he didn't know about the kid how would that kid become a decendant.

I'm kind of inclined to favor the, JKR didn't think about that part theory.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

It's allowed but it's cowardly. If Salazar is a descendant of Cadmus, though, that would make sense - his descendant Merope died of the same thing. All those cowardly sins run in the Slytherin line, back and forward.

Or, maybe Cadmus married according to his parents' wishes but still pined for another woman - the whole Chivalry thing gone wrong. Or, maybe he married someone else because his one true love died - obviously fickle, unlike Dumbledore and Snape, who never touched another love for the sake of the lost love.

[karentheunicorn.livejournal.com]

Yea, I guess we're not meant to question about children and such but for him to have descendants he had to have either married or got some girl pregnant.

I have never read the beetlebard book and don't rememeber enough from DH to know if it's ever described as them being married. I just thought it was described as one true love or something like that. You would think if it was his wife it would have said wife. But like you said, maybe she died in childbirth possibly.

It makes you wonder if JKR ever sat down and figured out how these damn people are related.

I honstly don't think she has, becuase in the past I think she answered a question in an interview stating that Harry and Tom are not related.

But by way of the last book we find out they are distantly related - it makes you sort of question the plot and if she really did have everything as it should be.

I think some stuff in the books she had as great idea and just threw them in, not thinking of what it meant to other parts of the story already written or things she'd already planned. I just don't believe what she wrote is as ironclad as she claims, especially in later books.

She might have had the idea for the Deathly Hallows even after she published some of the books. And becasue the concept was invisioned after, she didn't go back and fact check how it might conflict.

I think she had the general concept of what she wanted to happen but maybe didn't have the key ideas on how to get there and the Hallows are a idea that came later. Maybe she had the idea of the 'elder wand' or she wanted to give the invisibility cloak a story so she needed a way to create that part of the story, for the last book maybe.

I just think the reason we have so many questions/confusion/un-answered questions is because she was probably still developing the plot and stuff over time, even after publishing the first book.

And that is why originally we get the answer that Harry and Tom are not related, only to find out that they're family lines to converge in the past. So the only way I can figure it is, even JKR didn't know they were related! LOL!

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

>This is what I'm assuming, Harry and Tom Riddle are distantly related, decendants of the Peverell Brothers.<

Possible but no conclusive evidence exists. We are not told that Cadmus left descendants. And for that matter, his pining after a deceased old flame years later, suggests otherwise.

So, either Cadmus actually made sure that the stone (which may not have been in a ring yet) went to his brother -- which doesn't seem likely-- or someone found the body, and cleared up his effects, including the stone.

We really have no reason to suppose that the stone remained in the family any more than the wand did.

[oryx_leucoryx]

No need to involve subconscious urges, he decided based on things Ginny wrote in the diary. She was obsessed with Harry and probably wrote how Colin was annoying him and Justin fearing him (or at least how the school was talking about how Harry set a snake on Justin in the dueling club). According to diary!Tom Hermione was chosen specifically in order to keep Harry involved. Penelope may have been collateral damage - she just happened to be in the same corridor where Hermione was.