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

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Yes. Word. Way to go, DD, telling the man who has just spent nearly two decades risking his life, suffering torture and tarnishing his reputation for YOUR oh-so-noble cause that he's too spiritually dirty to matter, he ought not to mind having to do one more piece of dirty work. I don't think he ever saw Snape as anything other than a lost cause, in fact - as a morally-lost but very manipulable and thus useful young man. Not only did he never have a moment of empathy for him, he never actually thought he was redeemable. For all that fanficcers and interpreters of the book see Snape as viewing his work for the Order as his path to redemption (which I too think he did see it as), DUMBLEDORE never actually says anything along those lines in canon to encourage him. He just tells him his "path is clear." Tells him to "prove it" RE caring for Lily. Not that his work would actually gain him anything, spiritually, at least in DD's eyes.

Plus, if DD REALLY cared for Draco's soul, why on earth didn't he call the kid into his office with Snape at the beginning of the year and tell him he didn't have to do this, the Order could hide him and his mother? Instead he lets Draco try to kill him twice, and nearly kill both Ron and Katie with his schemes, and then pulls out a last-minute 'we can hide you' thing on the tower when it is clear to everyone involved that it's way too late for that and DD can't do a d*mned thing now. He could have prevented the whole invasion that night too, which put everyone in the castle at risk.

But, of course, that would have meant Dumbles dying, not at the hand of an apparent betrayer in full heroic style, but either killing himself or dying in the end of the clear results of his own foolishness. Which he doubtless did not want to put on display for everyone in quite that way. Instead he manipulates Draco and Severus, puts everyone at risk, and ultimately sets Severus up to be killed without giving him a word of warning.

Epitome of good? WTF, JKR; morality, ur doin it wrong.

[karentheunicorn.livejournal.com]

He just tells him his "path is clear." Tells him to "prove it" RE caring for Lily.


Remember when Dumbledore makes the snarky comment about Severus caring for Harry and Severus yells 'for Him' and shoots off that doe patronus?

In some way that has always come across to me as Severus giving proof, because even Dumbledore says, after all this time. It almost seems like Dumbledore thinks Severus has gotten over it.

Dumbledore you asshole, when does Severus just get over things that mean a lot to him. "See grudge against James Potter as a clue"

So I have always looked at the Patronus thing as magical proof; not only for Dumbledore but for Snape himself. There has got to be a lot said about someone who is able to make a patronus that Lily's son would recognize and feel a 'kindship' to.

I have complained about how Harry would feel a connection in DH to the doe patronus from Snape but If there was that much of a powerful connection then it must have been as much of a reality check to Severus as to anyone else who would have seen it.

It was sort of like Severus saying, 'Look Dumbledore, you may not believe my words but maybe you'll believe this magical doe patronus. Here is your proof, asshole.'

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

He may be trying to 'prove it,' yes. But I also read that incident as Severus' attempt to defend himself in a moment where he felt very vulnerable by changing the subject and putting up a 'it's only for HER!' mask. Because he has a lot invested in not admitting to himself that he does or even could care for Harry at this point - he's just learned that he's supposed to ensure the kid *dies* after all! - and Dumbledore's snark has just hit a sore point for Severus there: he does, actually, care for the boy.

But if he admits that to DD and to himself, it not only would mean (in his view) admitting that DD was 'right' about the boy all along, it would also mean abandoning the worldview that's motivated him for the last two decades (that he's a miserable fuckup atoning for his sins to memory of the perfect goddess who is his only real moral guide, and she's all that matters) at the moment where he most needs something stable to hang on to now that DD has betrayed him. Then there is the James issue. And it would mean accepting that he cares for yet another person who he *knows* is about to be taken away from him - naturally he would want to avoid that future hurt by denying the connection altogether.

But it's real, it's already there, so he's upset, and he channels that feeling into a giant defensive display that's intended to convince, not only or not so much Dumbledore, as *himself.* He *wishes* he didn't care for the boy, because then his life would be so much less complicated emotionally right then.

That's how I read it, anyway.

He *wishes* he didn't care for the boy

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

because then his life would be so much less complicated emotionally right then....

Yeah, that's exactly the way I read that scene.

Thanks for validating that reading!

Re: He *wishes* he didn't care for the boy

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

*g*

Oh, I'm just glad to find I'm not alone in my crazy corner with it, hehe.

Really, it just seems so clear to me that the subtext there is *all about* Severus' defensiveness over actually caring for the boy. A vulnerability Dumbles senses and exploits in order to turn the subject away from his own failings, and to needle Severus, who reacts in an all-too-predictable manner that merely reinforces the cycle of disempowerment Dumbledore has had him trapped in all this time.