GOF Chapter 5: Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes

[oryx_leucoryx]

Fred is excited at the thought of Dudley eating deadly candy. Oh, *untested* deadly candy, that's even better!
Harry takes an instinctive liking to Charlie because everything in his appearance says 'physical, uncomplicated'. Bill is more of a surprise - you can be a Head Boy *and* 'cool'. (Just like your dad, Harry. Now you don't have to worry he was anything like Percy, in case you ever were.) How does Harry know what people who attend rock concerts look like? Probably from TV.

Yes Arthur, pranking Muggles in life-endangering ways without doing the responsible thing and mind-wiping them in the aftermath undermines wizard-Muggles relations. Unlike, say, taking their magical kids and turning them against their parents.

The Dursleys excuse away Dudley's misdeeds. Arthur is a much superior parent - he doesn't let his wife know about the twins' (or at least tries to avoid letting her know). It does seem as though Hermione caught on quickly and tried to do her bit of protecting the twins from Molly.

This is Hermione's first stay at the Burrow - and she is here even before Harry, who has been here before and who might need 'rescuing' from his home. I wonder how long Hermione was there before Harry's arrival. Nevertheless, this was the last summer she will spend any significant time with her parents. And she will only spend Christmas of 6th year with them because of the Ron/Lavender relationship. To remind you, Hermione will turn 15 next month - an emancipated minor for all intent  and purpose.

For the first time in canon, Ginny isn't at all awkward around Harry. Despite not having started dating any other boys yet. (Or has she and we weren't told? We don't know when she and Hermione had their little talk.)

I'm supposed to think Percy is a pompous, ambitious idiot for taking work home and caring about it. Being an adult I see Percy as acting normally and Ron being an immature idiot. BTW after seeing Neville's molten cauldrons can't Ron appreciate looking into safety standards? (No, because danger everywhere is what makes life worth living for most Gryffindors.)

Why are Bill and Charlie staying in the twins' room? In later books (HBP and DH) Bill will suddenly have his own room, which he will also share with Charlie. See www.hplex.info/wizworld/places/w_pl_burrow.html. Did Molly and Arthur decide to add rooms (on the lower floors!) after their sons started leaving home?

Ron is annoyed by his owl. This is typical of Ron - he laments not having things, and when he does he laments them again, even when they aren't obviously unsuitable or in bad shape or taste.

Ron makes a homophobic wisecrack at Percy and his boss. BTW according to the Black Family Tree, it appears Bartemius Crouch Sr is Arthur's first cousin. This together with his outward personality and his position all make him an ideal surrogate father to Percy. (Which starts the theme of disappointed sons in this book.)

Ginny is still an outsider to the trio's adventures - as far as Harry knows. Neither of them had openly shared their involvement with Sirius' escape. (BTW Harry still hasn't questioned if perhaps Albus was a tad responsible for there not being more people aware of what Sirius was or wasn't guilty of.)

Crookshanks was one of the heroes of last year's adventure - sniffing Peter out in his rat disguise, communicating with Sirius, sending messages by post. This year he's just a cat who chases gnomes.

Molly rants about the twins. She blames them of lacking ambition. No Molly, they are more ambitious than anyone in the family. It's just that their ambition is to make a lot of money fast, while causing as much property destruction and humiliation to those around their customers as possible, instead of doing well at school and getting a government job. Oh, Molly did receive the occasional owl from the school about the twins. Though I do wonder if Albus or Minerva framed their actions as bullying the way Dudley's teachers apparently described his stunts. Also, Molly mistakes a twin-made fake wand for her own, thus starting the emphasis on wands in this book. (There will also be emphasis on wands in DH, but everything will work completely differently, despite Rowling's claims about planning and plotting. You have been warned.)

There was a time I found Bill and Charlie's table-duel endearing. By now I have had enough of Gryffindor boisterous behavior.

Even Bill joins those who dis Percy. Because while he works for a bank, his job description is robbing graves, which is much better than working in an office regulating international commercial transactions.

I love Percy's earnestness and enthusiastic attitude. His criticism of Bagman is on relevant points - organizing the Quidditch World Cup sounds like something that should have fallen mostly on a department dedicated to Magical Games and Sports (an entire department for that? not a subdivision of a Department for Cultural Affairs or similar? Tells you everything about wizards and their priorities), and an employee going missing for 'over a month' in a place known to be the location of Voldemort in whatever form he was isn't something to ignore. But to Arthur what matters is that by covering up illegal activities of Ludo's brother he got tickets to the Top Box, so he won't be hearing criticism of his friend. Who had bribed him. However having grown up in the Weasley household I think this goes over even Percy's head. Understandably but tragically Percy interprets Bartemius' concern for Bertha's whereabouts as that of a caring boss for a former underling. Of course he is actually concerned because she had subconscious information that might be of use to Voldemort (as well as cause much trouble to Crouch himself if revealed to the public). It has been several years since Bertha became brain damaged. Since Harry forgot all about his dream the mention of her name rings no bells.

Ginny defends Bill's hairstyle to Molly. Showing us that despite lack of awkwardness around Harry this is still her first personality, whose favorite brother was Bill. Next year we'll see Ginny v 2.0 whose role models are the twins.

The Quidditch chatter reveals that like in football (soccer for USians), Britain has separate 'national' teams for England, Scotland and Wales. But all three lost at some point.

Harry confirms - the letter about his scar hurting was the first he sent to Sirius, after receiving 2 from him in addition to the letter he got at the end of POA. Sirius 3, Harry 1. Even with people who are close to him he is more of a taker than a giver.

The twins sent Percy dragon dung in the mail, how hilarious! How kind, how mature.

Comments

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

And yes, if that was Toby Snape's house, there ought to have been at least some degree of modernization laid on (Indoor plumbing for one thing. That usually wasn't original). But we do not know for sure that it was, if it had been the house that Eileen Prince had grown up in there might have been very little.

What sort of evidence is there that it was the house Eileen grew up in?

Since she was a pureblood witch, I find it hard to believe that her witch mother and wizard father would have owned or even rented a millworker's residence in a Muggle neighborhood.

Yes, the Ford Anglia ought certainly to have had a battery and an electrical system. But then, wouldn't that have been the part of the thing that became sentient? If that's the case, clearly by this time the wiring is conducting magic.

Pehaps, but I view it as equivalent to the nervous system and circulatory system of a human body; while the nervous system is related to, and controlled by the brain, it very pointedly is not the brain itself. Something has to "tell" the auto's electrical system what to do.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Since she was a pureblood witch

We don't know her blood-status. She could have been the daughter of a pureblood and Muggle-born, pureblood and half-blood, two half-bloods ...

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

We don't know her blood-status. She could have been the daughter of a pureblood and Muggle-born, pureblood and half-blood, two half-bloods ...

For her son to be a half-blood, she would have had to have been pureblood.

According to http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Eileen_Prince:

Eileen Prince was born into the Pure-blood Prince family.[2]

The footnote references Chapter 30 of HBP (but no page number), which I don't have at hand at the moment.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Sorry June, the wiki is not canon. Canon says nothing of Eileen's blood status nor about the Princes, and Rowling's website states that having a non-wizard grandparent is enough to make one a half-blood. There are only 3 blood-statuses in canon. So even ignoring any source outside canon, if one of Eileen's parents was a Muggle then she'd be a half-blood. And her son can be neither pureblood nor Muggle-born, so he has to be a half-blood.

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

Sorry June, the wiki is not canon. Canon says nothing of Eileen's blood status nor about the Princes

Okay, I took a break from shoveling and actually dug out my books (no pun intended), and after accidentally reading Chapter 30 of OotP -- the Grawp chapter (gag!), I found the following in HBP, Chapter 30, page 637 of the American edition:

"Well...yes," said Hermione. "So...I was sort of right. Snape must have been proud of being 'half a Prince,' you see? Tobias Snape was a Muggle from what it said in the Prophet."

"Yeah, that fits," said Harry. "He'd play up the pure-blood side so he could get in with Lucius Malfoy and the rest of them...He's just like Voldemort. Pure-blood mother, Muggle father..."

[oryx_leucoryx]

The Prophet didn't say she was a pureblood, Hermione didn't say she was a pureblood, Harry decided she was a pureblood because he wanted Severus to be like Tom. But he was just jumping to conclusions as his wont.

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

The Prophet didn't say she was a pureblood, Hermione didn't say she was a pureblood, Harry decided she was a pureblood because he wanted Severus to be like Tom.

And just like Harry himself.

But he was just jumping to conclusions as his wont.

Well Wikipedia and Snitchseeker also both have Eileen Prince as being pureblood.

Harry is as much Rowling's avatar as Hermione is; if you can show me a quote by Rowling stating that Eileen was not pureblood, I'm sure we'd all like to see it.

Until then, I'm going with what has been printed in the book, and seemingly not disavowed or qualified in any manner by the author since it was published, and accepted by most of the fandom.

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

Unless there's something in that announcement that JKR didn't tell us, Harry's leaping to conclusions here (as usual).

[oryx_leucoryx]

June, my previous post was not intended as a snap at you, but I can't follow the authors of that wiki.

If Severus had married Lily, what would have been the blood-status of their children? I really don't see why it would have been anything but half-blood? Or do the authors of that wiki think such a child would have been Muggle-born?

I can see the more blood purist arguing that the child of 2 Muggle-borns or the child of a Muggle-born and a Muggle would be technically Muggle-born (because they don't consider Muggle-borns as legitimate wizards in the first place), but the child of one parent with at least some definite wizarding ancestry would be legitimate in their eyes.

I can see wizards differing on how many generations that wizarding ancestry has to go back for people to be considered pureblood, but anyone with intermediate status would be considered half-blood by someone, not Muggle-born.

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

June, my previous post was not intended as a snap at you, but I can't follow the authors of that wiki.

So look up the reference in Chapter 30 of HBP yourself.

[cured4life.livejournal.com]

I think Severus was intended to be the same mix as both Tom and Harry. One pure blood, one muggle. Harry does clarify that the Prince family was pure blood and as such can be called canon.

I've never understood why it isn't accepted that the Snape family wasn't living in poverty and misery because they were living as muggles....which follows with JKR and her treatment/opinion of the muggles.

[oryx_leucoryx]

I've never understood why it isn't accepted that the Snape family wasn't living in poverty and misery because they were living as muggles....which follows with JKR and her treatment/opinion of the muggles.

I'm afraid you lost me there. Too many negations for me to follow. Do you mean the Snapes were pretending to be Muggles and therefore had to pretend to be more poor than they actually were? Or do you mean they were living in misery because all Muggles live that way? The latter is contradicted by the Dursleys, the Grangers with their trips to France, the Finch-Fletchleys and their Eton-bound son. As well as the Riddles. I'm not sure what you mean.

Certainly little Severus' behavior shows he did not dress the way he did of his own preference - he tries to hide his clothes, only opening his coat when it gets dark.

[cured4life.livejournal.com]

No I mean the fact that they lived as muggles was why they were so miserable.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Lily clearly wasn't miserable. Nor was Hermione. Or Dudley.

The Snapes were poor. But there's more to just poverty to their misery - poverty does not have to imply neglect. Now, if Eileen was not used to the workings of the Muggle world and was either incapable or refused to use magic to improve her family's living conditions then that put one kind of limit to their means. Another factor seems to be that Tobias gave up on his son once he realized the son belonged in a different world - because an involved father would make sure his son wore socially-appropriate clothes, at the very least, even if they came from a church rummage sale or the like. So living as Muggles was an indirect factor in the state of the Snapes because Eileen wasn't equipped to live that way, or at least not effectively when her means were limited.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

Poverty in the Potterverse seems to imply an inability to do simple household charms, though. Molly can't be bothered to fix up those dress robes for Ron. Looked and smelled like his aging aunt's might. So, poor witches can't do household spells or care enough about how badly their children dress. Muggle Tobias probably couldn't fight such a weight of destiny to get his son dressed properly.

Heck, maybe it's all the stupid witch's fault for not knowing those handy-dandy house-holdy spells. No wonder Tonks died!

And, look at the Gaunts. Poor, living in a hovel, strange eyes, strange manners, creepy possible breeding practices, Merope's inability to save herself, which is portrayed as a lack of courage instead of a lack of good nutrition and medical attention...

Poverty is obviously a fault in the Potterverse, even for the otherwise Gryffindor-pure Weasleys.

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

The Snapes were poor. But there's more to just poverty to their misery - poverty does not have to imply neglect.

Exactly. Which actually raises the question as to just how impoverished the Snapes supposedly were.

I'm not saying they were rich, and they weren't in the economic class of the Evans or Dursleys...but do we know for a fact that they were "poor" in the strict sense of the term?

Rowling really gives us almost nothing about the Snapes, and really it boils down to fans making assumptions based on a few glimpses Harry has of Snape's childhood memories.

Young Severus is said to have an "air of neglect", or outright look neglected...but as you state, neglect doesn't necessarily imply poverty. Parents who are well-off financially can still neglect their children, and many parents who don't have two pennies to rub together still take the time to make sure their children are clean and neat even if they have to wear hand-me-downs.

For all we know, the mill may still have been active when Severus was a child, with Tobias working full-time and maybe even overtime. Perhaps Tobias was a skinflint and didn't like to spend money if he felt he didn't have to. We just don't know.

because an involved father would make sure his son wore socially-appropriate clothes

Okay, now you've touched on my own personal soapbox issue (which resulted in the challenge which in turn resulted in the fan fiction I'm writing)...

The memory of Severus first meeting Lily occurred in 1969 -- Snape we are told was born January 9, 1960, therefore since Rowling tells us that both Sev and Lily are 9 y.o. in that memory, the year has to be 1969.

I turned 16 that year. I can tell you that a smock shirt and an overlarge coat would NOT have been considered all that unusual for a young male to be wearing. High-water jeans yes...THEY would have elicited snarky comments, but not the smock and coat.

ESPECIALLY the smock; smock shirts/"poet" shirts/"gypsy blouses" were de rigeur attire in that very Hippie Era, even (some may say especially) for young men. Severus wearing a smock, even if it was a woman's smock, would not have been considered all that strange.

Granted, Rowling is talking about an industrial mill town which, I presume, would have been generally as conservative as the mill towns were in the area where I grew up in New England. So Petunia, reflecting a conservative attitude/mindset, would probably have something snarky to say about anything she considered an odd attire.

But if poor Sev had lived in London, he would have fit right in with the Carnaby Street fashions of the era (except for the high-water jeans). Too bad the kid couldn't have figured out a way to get to the Woodstock Festival in America that year, he would have fit right in:

http://majorjune.livejournal.com/tag/smocks

Anyway, my point is that all we can say with a modicum of certainty is that young Severus seemed to be neglected to some extent, but we can't make a definitive determination as to his family's degree of poverty based on that. They may well have been lower blue-collar, but that doesn't mean that they were abjectly poor.

[oryx_leucoryx]

BTW Harry and Tom do not have the same background. Tom and Severus are sons of witches and Muggles, Harry and probably Albus are sons of wizards from magical families and witches from Muggle families.

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Interesting that you phrase it like that; it sort of brings out a weird contrast (I read raisingal's stuff, so that's probably influencing my take here too).

The two main characters most firmly aligned by the narrative voice and JKR with the 'side of light' are born to 'pure' wizarding males and technically-wizarding but less 'pure'/lower status females of clear Muggle background. Meanwhile the two main characters more clearly aligned with the 'side of darkness' (according again to JKR and the dominant voice of the text) are born to Muggle males (the lowest status, most 'impure' and least powerful males, absent at least from a world ordered by magic) and wizarding females who both, we are meant to suppose, were 'pure.'

Given that, in the Potterverse's dominant mindset, status and power are directly tied to one's magical strength, it rather looks as if the books set up a pattern in which having a dominant female parent is directly correlated with inclination to evil. Which is just...ick.

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

Meanwhile the two main characters more clearly aligned with the 'side of darkness' (according again to JKR and the dominant voice of the text) are born to Muggle males (the lowest status, most 'impure' and least powerful males, absent at least from a world ordered by magic) and wizarding females who both, we are meant to suppose, were 'pure.'


Also, while both women were pure-bloods, both are presented in the narrative as having "given up" their magikal powers for the sake of love, or at the very least for the sake of fitting in with their Muggle partner's world -- and Rowling seems to suggest that doing so somehow means not only a weakening of their magikal powers, but a moral weakness as well.

While there is no such implication regarding Harry's or DD's parents; their pure-blood fathers aren't shown to have "given up" anything when they "married down", nor is any magikal/moral weakness shown or implied...

Given that, in the Potterverse's dominant mindset, status and power are directly tied to one's magical strength, it rather looks as if the books set up a pattern in which having a dominant female parent is directly correlated with inclination to evil. Which is just...ick.

Makes one wonder just what Rowling's real opinion of women is; something tells me she doesn't have many, if any, really close female friends whom she trusts. ;-)

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

>What sort of evidence is there that it was the house Eileen grew up in?<

Nothing particularly direct, but you have to consider the possibilities. Not all purebloods are rich. Besides, where would Eileen have managed to even *meet* someone like Toby Snape if she grew up inside the (secluded) ww?

For that matter, we have no direct evidence that she was even a pureblood. We are led to leap to that conclusion because her son dubbed himself the *halfblood* Prince. But since we get no suggestion that degrees of magic (a la degrees of color in the antebellum US south) are tracked and categorized in any whatsoever, and that Harry, a child with two magical parents is nevertheless regarded as a halfblood, I suspect it doesn't make a bean's worth of difference whether Snape had two muggle grandparents or four to be able to call himself that. I admit that it is unlikely that it was as many as four, but not outside the realm of possibility.

The possibility (such as it is) of the house having been the Prince house, to me is suggested by the size of the book collection. Books are not really all *that* cheap. And that is a lot of books. And they are described as being *old* books, leatherbound. Now, I do not know what kind of prices 2nd hand books ran in Britain in the '70s and '80s, nor do I know what kind of prices books fetch in the ww, but that is still a rather large, and potentially valuable collection for one man to have built from scratch, by himself, before even reaching the age of 40, without having an independant fortune or at least some kind of a financial nest egg to do it with. And we have been given to understand that Snape started with nothing. To have inherited at least some of them would make a degree of sense.

Of course the Doylian view is that Rowling was simply painting with too broad a brush and overstated the case. But it is obvious that the house we saw has been lived in *by wizards* for a long time. The modifications that have been made are not ones that muggles would be able to establish and maintain without throwing a lot more money and engineering skill at it than seems to have been available (covering a door with bookshelves, having it continue to function, and being invisible when closed is simply not on under muggle technology).

Of course we have no way of knowing that the house we saw was the one Snape grew up in either. The real estate market in that area is probably pretty flat, and does Snape really strike you as someone who would want to go on living with his parents in his 30s? Toby and Eileen could both be alive and well and living in a similar house two streets over. Or in a similar town halfway across the country.

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

Harry, a child with two magical parents is nevertheless regarded as a halfblood

James Potter was pureblood, Lily Evans was from a Muggle family, therefore their son is literally a half-blood.

The possibility (such as it is) of the house having been the Prince house, to me is suggested by the size of the book collection. Books are not really all *that* cheap. And that is a lot of books. And they are described as being *old* books, leatherbound.

And there is nothing to say that Eileen ever owned them; those books could have been acquired by her son once he started working at Hogwarts, it could have been what he spent his salary on.

but that is still a rather large, and potentially valuable collection for one man to have built from scratch, by himself, before even reaching the age of 40, without having an independant fortune or at least some kind of a financial nest egg to do it with.

But what else did Snape have to spend his salary on?

Perhaps his parents were not rich, but that is not to say that they may not have saved some money which he inherited when they died (which everyone presumes they did, since there is nothing in canon saying what happened to Eileen and Tobias).

Presumably the house at Spinner's End is paid for, so Snape wouldn't have had to make mortgage payments. From what we see in HBP, he seems to utilize candles and oil lamps when there, so no electricity bill to pay. There is presumably running water, so perhaps he has a water bill, but even then he may only have it turned on for July and August and turned off the rest of the year.

He probably relies on the fireplace for any heating that is necessary in the summer months that he is there. If he keeps the water on thru out the year, then he'd need to heat the place in the winter, but only enough to keep the pipes from freezing. But if he has the water turned off at the end of August, and he drains the pipes, then he wouldn't need to heat the house in the cold months.

IOW, whatever expenses he has are minimal, and he is free to spend his salary on what he wishes. I don't see him as the type to just build up a big savings account at the bank, especially since as a spy he knows his chances of surviving are low. So I really think he would indulge himself in a simple pleasure of buying good books, new or used.

To have inherited at least some of them would make a degree of sense.

Oh, I agree. I just don't accept that all those bookcases filled with books were there in Snape's childhood, I always had the feeling that the way the room looked in HBP was purely Severus' modification.

But it is obvious that the house we saw has been lived in *by wizards* for a long time. The modifications that have been made are not ones that muggles would be able to establish and maintain without throwing a lot more money and engineering skill at it than seems to have been available (covering a door with bookshelves, having it continue to function, and being invisible when closed is simply not on under muggle technology).

I don't see why it couldn't have been Severus' doing when he inherited the place from his parents.

does Snape really strike you as someone who would want to go on living with his parents in his 30s? Toby and Eileen could both be alive and well and living in a
similar house two streets over. Or in a similar town halfway across the country.

I'll leave that premise for some writer of fan fiction to tackle! LOL

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Well, if I had a storyteller's imagination I'd have spun a tale that this was the old Prince house which Snape inherited from his grandparents, and was the place Eileen grew up. They'd bought it when the mill closed back in the '30s and she'd grown up there.

They were very grumpy over the fact that Eileen chose to marry a local boy rather than making a more advantageous connection at Hogwarts.

But then, I don't have a storyteller's imagination.

[oryx_leucoryx]

And there is nothing to say that Eileen ever owned them; those books could have been acquired by her son once he started working at Hogwarts, it could have been what he spent his salary on.


I wonder about that. If he only acquired the books once he started teaching, why not keep the books at Hogwarts, only taking the ones he was planning to read in the summer to Spinner's End? I think he keeps them there because that was their place since before he moved out. Of course he might move the entire collection back and forth in a container like Hermione's bag.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Of course we have no way of knowing that the house we saw was the one Snape grew up in either.

Petunia refers to him as the Snape boy from Spinner's End. As an adult he lives on Spinner's End. It might be a street by the same name in a different town, but I doubt it. I'm pretty sure it is at least the same street, if not actually the same house. We don't know if his parents are both dead, in a nursing home, psychiatric ward, on the run from him, living with distant relatives or any combination of the above.

We don't even know if the books are all from the wizarding world or if some of them are Muggle books. Let alone how long they have been there.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Mind you, we are led to leap to exactly the conclusion that Harry does leap to, in that *of course* it's the same house. Who ever heard of a wizard moving to anywhere that they weren't *born*?

But there really isn't any proof of it, and there is a lot of wiggle room if someone wants to write a fic or spin a theory.