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

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And DH hardly counts- that's the terrorists winning and taking over the ministry, it's hardly the attitude of society at large. With the racism against blacks or jews, that was something a LOT of people supported and approved of, and the laws persecuting them were upheld in a society that HADN'T been at war and taken over by the extremists.

I was inclined to think the opposite, actually. The Death Eaters' takeover of the Ministry was so swiftly done and swiftly accepted that it seemed to me that either a) wizarding government is the oligarchic kind and everyone just has to accept what's handed down from above or b) they have a democratic model. Everyone was OK with rounding up the Muggle-borns - no-one from "the opposition" spoke against the idea, there were no rallies in the street - it must have passed through all levels of government without a hitch.

I thought the second option was the right one, because I figured the wizarding world was meant to be organised like ours. I figured that if the regime change could happen so easily, it wasn't much of a change at all. That would make an interesting challenge for Harry, I thought, because it would mean the evil he was fighting against was not just a guy called Voldemort and his minions, but an idea that had poisoned the minds of wizarding society as a whole. That would mean his task wasn't just to kill the bad guy, but to reach out to people, argue with them, educate them, show them new possibilities of healing and hope like great leaders do.

Come the last page of the book, and it turned out that nope, wizarding society is just a troupe of puppets waiting for the right Minister to jerk their strings. While Fudge the naive sceptic was in charge, the wizarding world was naive and sceptical. Under Thicknesse, slave to Voldemort's will, everyone else was also a slave to Voldemort's will. Then Kingsley the nice guy became the Minister, therefore the instant he got the job everything became nice again.
So basically, it isn't that the leader is chosen by the people (from all we've seen, he/she isn't), it's that he/she imposes him/herself on the people. You'd think that Hermione at least might have brought up that this model of government has some major flaws and will very likely lead to disaster again - but then again, I'm sure she rather believes that everything must be fine with her and her cronies in charge.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

I was inclined to think the opposite, actually. The Death Eaters' takeover of the Ministry was so swiftly done and swiftly accepted that it seemed to me that either a) wizarding government is the oligarchic kind and everyone just has to accept what's handed down from above or b) they have a democratic model. Everyone was OK with rounding up the Muggle-borns - no-one from "the opposition" spoke against the idea, there were no rallies in the street - it must have passed through all levels of government without a hitch.

A third possibility is that, when everyone discovered that The Unnameable was in charge, they stopped being democratic and started living like they were under a totalitarian regime that would come in and kill them if they spoke against it - which probably would have happened to any dissidents.

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

I think is likely part of it. Also, the WW does not seem to hold elections for any position. The Minister is appointed, we know, not elected; and we have no clue how one gets a seat on the Wizengamot but we never have any mention of elections for the position. So I doubt that it's much of a democratic model anyway. There wouldn't be any organized opposition in the sense of political parties (another element of democracy we never see in the WW). So probably those that were not in favor of rounding up Muggleborns and the like knew they had no real power and just kept their heads down, hoping for rescue by their anointed savior.

However, I also doubt that the pro-Muggleborn faction was so very great a percentage of the population. Most of the pro-Muggleborn activity we see happens within the rather limited circle of Dumbledore supporters. Known pureblood supremacists like the Blacks and Malfoys wield clear social power, and we know of just one confirmed Muggleborn (Cresswell) with a real career in the WW. That hardly adds up to a society in which Muggleborns are widely viewed as the equals of other wizards/witches. And when Dumbledore falls, he falls quickly and the Prophet makes no bones about ridiculing him as deluded and less-than-all-there, making no exception for his political views. The wizarding public seems to eat this up - another indication that Dumbledore's views are not necessarily those of the majority.

That doesn't mean that most people were salivating at the prospect of killing all those 'outsiders,' but if much of the public already held a more or less unspoken belief that Muggleborns were somehow inferior to them, they weren't likely to be lining up to face death on their behalf when the government began taking harsher measures.

But JKR didn't do much of a job consciously portraying this sort of wide-spread bias as the problem in the books; she made it all about a select group of 'evil people' who just had to be eliminated to bring everything to rights again, and left the whole other issue of bias against *Muggles* alone (I agree with borg-princess here, in that we see a much clearer, though unspoken, depiction of real wide-spread bias against Muggles than against Muggleborns).

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

But JKR didn't do much of a job consciously portraying this sort of wide-spread bias as the problem in the books; she made it all about a select group of 'evil people' who just had to be eliminated to bring everything to rights again

Which was worse: Hitler, his inner circle, the SS, and the organized Nazi party? Or the majority of the German people who openly or implicitly supported them? ("Hey, the Nazis are thugs and Hitler looks like Charlie Chaplin, but they got rid of the Communists and they made the trains run on time!")

I'd argue the bigger evil is the latter, the vast majority of the public that allows evil to come/remain in power because it is convenient, and/or the regime has no direct effect on them. ("Hey, I'm not a Jew/Communist (Mudblood/Muggle), *I* don't have to worry as long as I don't make any waves!")

A Hitler or a Voldemort is a simple evil; remove the leader and their inner circle, and the obvious problem is removed. But the greater evil of the majority, or at least a goodly number, of the public at large who secretly harbor the same prejudices remains.

[https://me.yahoo.com/a/gNLVidA.xeLuPiOU_2B_USM.HYNFjA--#b0b6b (from livejournal.com)]

A third possibility is that, when everyone discovered that The Unnameable was in charge, they stopped being democratic and started living like they were under a totalitarian regime that would come in and kill them if they spoke against it - which probably would have happened to any dissidents.

It seems like this is what JK intended to show us. I find it hard to see that for certain, though, since we're not given much indication of the public mood. I think that would have been clearer if Harry & co. noted the lack of opposition and found it frightening (like I did!). A coup by a Hitler-equivalent, no matter how secret, is not something you'd expect to see happen in an enlightened society without making some major waves.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Part of it is that Rowling really shouldn't have made it an overnight take-over and policy change. There should have been a gradual process with implementing ever worsening measures, each just slightly more severe than the previous one. Which means Voldemort should have been the man behind the man at the ministry long before DH.