COS Chapter Twelve: "The Polyjuice Potion"

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

* Sincere apologies for the lack of postage over the past few weeks; suffice to say that, whilst I’d be happy to log on regularly, RL seems to have other ideas.

 

* Slytherin are so evil that even the thought of being there is enough to make Harry feel sick. These books are such a good argument for tolerance, don’t you think?

* “Harry was just thinking that all he needed was for Dumbledore’s pet bird to die while he was alone in the office with it” just makes him sound so self-centred. Never mind about the dead bird, or Dumbledore losing his beloved pet, I might get in trouble for it! Even though I’d have no motive in killing it and it was pretty obviously sick before I came in.

* Fawkes is usually very pretty, just in case we were worrying that Harry might end up having his life saved by something ugly.

* Given what we now know about Dumbledore’s views on personal loyalty, the emphasis on the word “faithful” looks rather sinister.

* Any guesses on why exactly Hagrid needs to carry the rooster around with him in the castle?

* That’s right, Harry, don’t tell DD about that mysterious voice you heard! Heaven forbid that you might actually help him solve the mystery before anybody is seriously hurt.

* I think it’s rather sweet that Crabbe and Goyle are staying behind with Malfoy. They really do seem to care about each other. (Well, until the abomination that is DH, that is.)

* Harry’s glad that most people are leaving, despite the fact that this’ll narrow down the potential list of suspects and make it more likely that they’ll be caught.

* “[Harry] was tired of people skirting around him in the corridors, as though he were about to sprout fangs or spit poison; tired of all the muttering, pointing and hissing as he passed.” I wonder if that’s what the Slytherins feel like all the time?

* I have to admit, F&G’s heir of Slytherin routine is pretty amusing. But since it’s so different to their usual brand of “humour”, I think I can like it without feeling too guilty.

* I wonder why Fred, George and Ginny have decided to stay? Is it because the fine Mr. Weasley had to pay means they can’t afford to take them, and they’re too proud to admit the real reason?

* I’m sure that the teachers of Hogwarts appreciate Percy staying behind to help them, even if Harry doesn’t.

*How rude of the Dursleys to send him a toothpick like that, especially when Harry gave them an expensive luxury hamper bursting to the brim with Honeyduke’s finest chocolate. Or nothing. I forget which.

* BTW, it seems odd to go to all the trouble of sending Harry such a silly little present. Unless DD sent Hedwig to keep bothering them until they sent something…

* Ron gives Harry a book about Ron’s favourite Quidditch team, rather than something Harry would be expected to be interested in.

* I hope Mrs. Weasley gave her real children presents which were at least as good as the ones she gave Harry.

* F&G have bewitched Percy’s Prefect Badge to make it say “Pinhead”. Oh, the hilarity!

* Crabbe and Goyle eat four helpings of pudding. Harry and Ron, who aren’t greedy pigs, limit themselves to three.

* Hermione’s telling the Slytherins that Millicent Bulstrode came back would backfire spectacularly once they realised that Millicent had not in fact returned, and that they had, therefore, been tricked.

* It’s a shame that nobody’s written a HP/Hercule Poirot crossover fic, in which Poirot investigates the Polyjuice incident. He’d probably solve the mystery within half an hour, and then work out who’s petrifying all those students for good measure.

* Ron and Hermione are prepared to knock out two of Draco’s friends based on extremely flimsy evidence. Remember this is HBP, when they refuse to believe that Draco’s up to something, despite having much better evidence than they do here.

* At least Harry and Ron didn’t strip Crabbe and Goyle. Be grateful for small mercies, I suppose.

* Millicent Bulstrode is “no pixie”, apparently, which seems like a polite way of saying “fat”. Outside of fandom, are there any pretty Slytherin girls, or are they all fat and ugly?

* You’d have thought it wouldn’t have been beyond the Trio to change into their new clothes before taking the Polyjuice Potion.

* Ever since reading Draco Dormiens, I’ve always imagined Harry surreptitiously checking to see whether Goyle is bigger than he is.

* And now they’ve got to find the Slytherin common room. Gee, guys, would it have been impossible to find that out before you took the Potion? Even if you don’t arouse suspicion by not knowing where it is, you’ll waste valuable time trying to find it.

* All this makes Ron’s quip about Goyle being dumb look rather silly.

* I don’t know why, but I’ve always thought that this Ravenclaw girl was Penelope Clearwater. Perhaps she’s just been meeting Percy in one of the disused dungeons.

* Whoever she is, her reply to Harry and Ron is rather rude. Is that what the Slytherins are treated like all the time? It’s a shame Harry and Ron never consider this, and maybe get a bit of sympathy for the Slytherins.

* The Slytherin password is “Pureblood”, just to remind us that they’re all racists, and, therefore, evil. Never mind that Slytherin’s most famous alumni, Tom Riddle and Severus Snape, were both halfbloods, and in Tom’s case, there was no way to know whether he was a muggleborn, pureblood or half-blood.

* The Slytherin common-room doesn’t look particularly luxurious, which seems odd for a supposed bastion of aristocratic privilege. Perhaps it’s like that to try and inculcate some humility into the children, like the fag system in old British public schools.

* I think it’s rather sweet of Mr. Malfoy to send his son newspaper clippings like that. “Here, Draco, let’s both laugh together at these guys!” I still think it odd that such an evil bully as Draco apparently is wouldn’t make greater use of it to humiliate Ron. Maybe he’s not so bad after all.

* Mrs. Weasley has threatened to set the family ghoul on reporters, apparently not realising that that sort of action is extremely bad publicity.

* Draco’s theory about DD hushing up the attacks is probably correct; at any rate, nobody seems to refer to them much in later books.

* Do racists normally go on about how much they hate [insert ethnicity here] as much as Draco’s doing in this scene? It just comes across as really false and over-the-top, at least to me. Perhaps he’s twigged that there’s something wrong with “Crabbe” and “Goyle”, and is deliberately acting oddly in order to see if they notice.

* Draco wishes that Hermione would get killed by the monster. Knowing what she’s going to become in later books, I can’t help but wonder whether that might not be for the best after all.

* For all Harry and Ron’s jokes about C&G being thick, they seem to be arousing Draco’s suspicions by being slower on the uptake.

* Harry and Ron are “hoping against hope that Malfoy hadn’t noticed anything.” I wouldn’t count on it, guys; he seems like a good Potions student, so he probably remembers what Snape said about the Polyjuice Potion; Harry and Ron were the least convincing Crabbe and Goyle imaginable; a boy who can notice Harry’s foot slipping out of the invisibility cloak for a split second would almost certainly notice his best friends changing into somebody else before his eyes; and the real Crabbe and Goyle would tell him that they weren’t there. He probably knows what happened, and feels really annoyed that DD doesn’t do anything about it.

* What’s the point of Cat!Hermione? It doesn’t advance the plot, it doesn’t contribute to characterisation, and it doesn’t add to the atmosphere of the story. Perhaps it’s to stop people questioning her plan by making them feel sorry for her.

* “Madam Pomfrey never asks too many questions…” Given what goes on in Hogwarts, maybe it’s time she started.

 

Comments

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

you kind of go WTF is your problem Dumbledore - a little understanding could go a long way here with your relationship with this troubled emotionally damanged person (Severus) yet DD seems more interested in egging Severus on and poking him with a sharp stick of duty than trying to help the guy

He never had any interest in helping Snape- that was evident from when he hushed up the werewolf debacle and forbade a traumatized kid to speak of it to anyone and let the wrongdoers off scot-free. (I've been told not to make such blatant assumptions, lol, because it's not in the text, I don't know for sure, maybe they got detention! Riiiiight. Who sees Dumbles putting the Golden Boy and his buddies in detention or banning them from Hogsmeade?) And his whole 'you disgust me' moment, UGH, WHAT A BASTARD. He was more into breaking him down and rebuilding him as his puppet than anything else, the only value Snape had was as a tool and nothing more, I honestly believe that. Look at the passive-aggressive way he treats him, encouranges the animosity between him and Harry, enjoys his confusion and disappointment over Sirius' escape and everything else that douchecanoe does to him. ('Screw your soul, Snape, you're damned anyway, do as I say!')

Dumbles seriously lacks in empathy- I think he's the series psychopath, really.

[merrymelody.livejournal.com]

the only value Snape had was as a tool and nothing more

TBH, I've never seen any evidence Dumbledore ever viewed anyone as more than tools for him to use, whether it's for his own benefit or just to judge and use as illustrations of his own 'ethics'.
(That Merope comment, especially when voiced by a male character, is probably one of the top ten most disgusting implications in the Potterverse, and that's saying a lot. You might as well say mothers in the third world who die of birthing complications are just showing their inferiority to western mothers. If they loved their kids enough, they'd just choose to live! Um, somehow.)

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

True that. It's hard to buy his 'apologies' to Harry at any stage, it all seems like crocodile tears calculated to make Harry comfort him and assure him that he's awesome and did no wrong.

(IKR? So appalling)

[oryx_leucoryx]

Whatever punishment Sirius or anyone else got was light enough that he realized attacking Severus had enough approval from the highers-up - hence the fun of SWM.

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

It's interesting that there are so many fans harping on about the bullying in this series- Dudley bullying Harry, Snape bullying Harry, Draco 'bullying' Harry (*snorts*), etc. etc. and yet almost nobody (outside of Snape fans, obv) acknowledges that what the Marauders did was bullying. Like...I may not like characters, but if they do something admirable, I'll concede that. Likewise if someone I like does something wrong. But it bothers me that people hate Snape so much that they don't see name-calling and physical attacks as bullying. ('Oh, he deserved it for being annoying', 'oh, he probably attacked them first and they were getting back at him', etc. etc.)

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

It's "bullying" if Harry or someone Harry likes is the victim, and/or if the supposed bully is someone Harry *doesn't* like. In these situations, also, actions that are not necessarily bullying viewed objectively are cast as being bullying by virtue of the identity of the people involved.

If it's someone Harry *likes* who is doing the bullying, then it's just jokes or deserved punishment, regardless of the actual actions taken - for instance, the twins never get called out for being bullies by Harry or the narrative voice, regardless of the victim, and the only fans I have ever seen call out the twins as being bullies tend to be the ones who don't really line up with Harry's view of the world uncritically. Nevermind that Harry himself, although he doesn't quite name it bullying explicitly and seems to forget his moment of clarity quickly, is rather shocked at the Marauders' behavior towards Snape. For about five minutes, but those five minutes get buried pretty quickly by some fans.

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

Dumbles seriously lacks in empathy- I think he's the series psychopath, really.

This thread prompted me earlier today to look up the difference between "psychopath" and "sociopath".

Most definitions have them as basically the same condition, but one site differentiated between the two by stating that sociopaths usually cannot fit into general society because they are unable or unwilling to even PRETEND to care about others, while psychopaths are QUITE adept at pretending to care and to fake having empathy, and therefore actually not only fit into society, but often gain positions of authority.

Based on those definitions, Tom Riddle/Voldemort sounds more of a sociopath, while Dumbledore fits the definition of a psychopath to a tee! :-/

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

WIN. I admit, I winged that one, but it's cool that I guessed right! All those Criminal Minds eps are paying off, lol.