GOF Chapter 3: The Invitation

[oryx_leucoryx]

This is the obligatory Dursley chapter, in which we are treated to the home life of this family and learn how inferior they are to wizard families.

Dudley takes up a whole side of the square kitchen table. Ahem, I doubt a square kitchen table (as opposed to a dining room table) was designed to seat 8 people, 2 on a side. His parents excuse away his teachers' accusations of bullying. As opposed to the Weasleys who never receive reports making such heinous accusations against the twins (we'll see the school does occasionally owl their parents, but I don't see any awareness that some of what the twins do is bullying behavior). (This starts the theme of parents dealing with wayward sons in this book.) Dudley is forced into a diet of fruit and vegetables rather than his favorites. From the descriptions we get of the food Harry eats at Hogwarts I get the feeling Harry's favorites are closer to Dudley's than to the health foods, nor does he limit his intake. But somehow Harry remains thin, regardless of whether he gets starved by Petunia or stuffed by Molly or the House-elves.

Changing the food choices of the entire family is a good thing! However adjusting Harry's serving size to Dudley's (perceived?) emotional needs isn't. I don't begrudge Harry for working around a diet he doesn't need, but then I also sympathize with Dudley who does. Changing eating habits of years is hard.
This is also the place to say Dudley must have grown up as an emotional wreck. Knowing that his parents were capable of such physical and emotional deprivation of someone in their care - what if he ever failed to please them? I think a big part of his misbehavior is both making sure his parents know he *isn't* Harry as well as wanting the reassurance that they still love him, no matter what anyone else thinks.

Of Harry's 4 sources of help only one sends food he appreciates. Odd that even Hagrid managed to send an edible birthday cake. But how edible is it (or any of the others) 3 weeks later?

Harry is surprised that the Weasleys wrote directly to the Dursleys. Vernon is embarrassed that they didn't know how many stamps to use. But really, how hard is it to find out? Didn't they go to the post office to buy the stamps? What does it say about the exchange rate between Galleons and pounds that a family so poor finds it reasonable to spend on so many stamps for one letter? Molly's letter sounds as if she is trying too hard to make the Quidditch World Cup sound special and to make Arthur sound important. And of course she doesn't have enough imagination to realize that sending a letter by owl isn't normal for the Dursleys.

Harry is offended on Molly's behalf when Vernon calls her 'dumpy'. Since Molly likes Harry nobody is allowed to notice she is overweight.

I must say that the scene where Harry threatens Vernon with Sirius looks a lot less humorous now that I have seen Harry enjoy torturing a man for punishment, and Sirius engaging in Muggle-baiting.

If I am correct in my understanding that Ron is claiming that he and Molly wrote their respective letters at about the same time, then I am impressed with the UK post. Molly's letter arrived on Saturday morning. Pig arrived the same morning. Considering the speed of owls elsewhere, it looks as though Ron's letter was sent earlier that morning. So a letter got delivered the morning it was sent?

I am less impressed with the Weasleys. They plan on taking Harry regardless of the Dursleys' consent. One could argue that eventually Molly and Arthur realized their sons were not exaggerating when they said Harry had been imprisoned and starved, but seeing how Arthur views the treatment of Muggles, both in this book and in COS, I doubt this made a difference.

Harry is happy specifically because Dudley is suffering and he isn't. The seeds of the bully of HBP and war criminal of DH.

Comments

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

I see Potions as something like the woodwork subject I took at High School. I did very badly at that. :-(

Hee! :-)

My own analogy would be my 7th grade Home Ec class...

Because my mother had a job that was basically 24/7, I'd actually taken over cooking when I was 9, and by the time I was in 7th grade I'd been making full meals, and done extensive baking, for at least 3 years.

I was really excited when we were given a "real" recipe as the final class assignment: popovers. I'd never made popovers before, but I'd done plenty of other baked goods at home, so I figured it'd be a breeze.

It was an in-class assignment, and it ended up a disaster. I KNEW we'd followed the recipe exactly. But the things not only did not pop, they ended up as pieces of charcoal.

I was SOOOOO pissed! I was obsessed -- it was the first time anything I'd made had failed.

I brought the recipe home, and I started pouring thru all of our cookbooks, comparing all the other popover recipes with the one from school. Most of the other recipes differed little from the one from school. But finally I found a recipe in a little pamphlet cookbook my mother had, printed back in the 1930s or 40s, I think it was put out by a baking powder company...

And there were substantial differences in that recipe compared to the others, including the one from school. More eggs, different manner of mixing ingredients, different way of handling the baking pan, different setting of oven temperature (specifically starting it at a higher temperature than the other recipes, but then turning down the temp after 10 minutes so the popovers wouldn't burn).

I made that recipe, and ended up with DIVINE popovers! They became a favorite of my family, even my rather picky father and sister! I was happy to realize the problem was not with me, but with the recipe.

But let's say that my Home Ec teacher had instead handed us the textbook recipe on Friday, and told us to practice over the weekend, and that on Monday we'd have to make that recipe in class. That I'd gone home, followed the textbook recipe, and found out that it sucked. I then went thru my own "resources" (other cookbooks), and found the better recipe.

If I then came back into class on Monday and made divine popovers with the recipe I'd discovered in my Mom's baking powder recipe booklet, and then presented them to the teacher as IF I HAD FOLLOWED THE TEXTBOOK RECIPE, that would have been dishonest and it would have been cheating.

That would have been especially so if everyone else in class ended up with the terrible end product that indeed occurred. It would seem as if somehow I was magikally (no pun intended) better at baking than my fellow students, when in fact I was only following a better recipe.

It wouldn't have mattered that the purpose of the class was to have us learn cooking, and that the new recipe showed I was a good cook.

Instead, I could have come to class on Monday with my own recipe and HONESTLY reported that I'd had a problem with the textbook recipe, but had found a superior recipe that resulted in a superior product. The teacher could have then said "Go ahead, use your own recipe," if she was decent, and perhaps she'd have suggested that the other students follow my recipe instead. Or she could have been a bitch and insisted that I stick to the textbook with no changes...

I'd still have brought a previously-baked batch into class to prove I could do it with the other recipe! LOL

But at the end of the day, I'd learned something about baking popovers by using another ("corrected") recipe...Harry never learned anything about potions by using the HBP's work.

The bottom line is, by presenting a correct potion as if he'd followed the uncorrected text, Harry was dishonest, and by presenting someone else's work as his own, he was cheating.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Why is it that I'm feeling rather peckish at the moment? ... :-)

But let's say that my Home Ec teacher had instead handed us the textbook recipe on Friday, and told us to practice over the weekend, and that on Monday we'd have to make that recipe in class.

But that's not what happened in Harry's 6th year Potions classes. Show me where Slughorn says "brew this potion USING ONLY THE STANDARD RECIPE".

And anyway it was probably often the case that Harry *did* use the same recipe ... only with a different procedure. Like the first time, when he crushed beans with the flat of his knife and stirred a different way ... but sticking to exactly the same recipe (as in 'list of ingredients').

The bottom line is, by presenting a correct potion as if he'd followed the uncorrected text, Harry was dishonest --

When Slughorn started praising him for his 'innate ability', yes. 'Dishonest by omission', at least, if such a thing exists (similar to a 'lie of omission').

-- and by presenting someone else's work as his own, he was cheating.

No. Not when it wasn't against the rules to do so. Not when any other student could have used alternative instructions. Not when the results were measured on the grade of one's Potion rather than the instructions that produced it.

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

It's not that he used *alternative* instructions that is the problem at issue. It is that he *took credit* for them and that the information was nowhere *available* to the other students. Information in the library was available to all beforehand, the research contained in the Prince's notes (which was what made the better potion *possible*) was not; they never had the chance of equalling Harry's results because the information they needed about how the ingredients and stirs and so on interacted was never available to them to begin with.

Harry wasn't being graded on how well he could stir and chop and do the mechanics of brewing, the pure practicality of it, but on *the completed potion,* which was the *direct result* of the research contained in the notes and its *physical embodiment.* But I'll shut up now.