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deathtocapslock* The Order HQ is called Grimmauld Place, ’cause it’s a grim, old place, geddit? JK Rowling, you comic genius, you!
* Mrs. Weasley is “rather thinner” than she was last time, which given the series’ attitudes to fat people is probably a sign of her improving morally.
* Harry “needs feeding up”, so obviously he’s OK from a moral standpoint. Unlike Dudley, who’s heavy enough to almost break Harry’s back.
* Would it really take Mrs. Weasley that long to explain that she doesn’t want Harry to wake up the portraits?
* So the house-elves’ noses all look similar. Is this a sign that families of house-elves serve the same human family, then?
* Hermione’s clearly been missing Harry, and is very pleased to see him. Remember this when he starts yelling at her a couple of pages later.
* Given what she knows about Sirius, it’s touching (in a pathetically naïve sort of way) that Hermione imagines Harry will get off just because he didn’t do anything wrong.
* So why does Ron still have the cut from Hedwig? Couldn’t he have magicked it away/got Hermione to magic it away for him? Is it because Hedwig is a magical owl, rather than a normal Muggle one?
* Harry “found that he was not at all sorry” to see cuts on Hermione’s hands. Even though she and Ron had a perfectly good reason for not telling Harry anything in their letters. It’s clearly a sign of Harry’s Power Of Love. Or something.
* Of course DD should be angry at Mundungus, but he should also ponder whether his security arrangements were actually adequate. Being a good guy, though, he doesn’t really need to do this. It’s only villains like the Malfoys who have to actually learn from their mistakes.
* Hey, Harry, here’s an idea: maybe Dumbledore was too busy stopping the most evil wizard in a century from taking power to spend time coming up with novel and inventive ways of giving you information. Believe it or not, the entire wizarding world isn’t your personal newspaper service.
* Harry reminds me a bit of Umbridge from A Very Potter Sequel here. “Does Dumbledore like me? Well he didn’t send me any letters. Why didn’t he give me information some other way?”
* And HERE COMES THE CAPSLOCK!
* I like the way Harry’s belittling his friends’ achievements, especially since the reason they couldn’t help him was so often that they’d got injured helping him out earlier. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.
* “CAN’T’VE WANTED TO THAT MUCH, CAN YOU, OR YOU’D HAVE SENT ME AN OWL” – God, Harry is being almost unbelievably dense here. Can’t he tell that there are good security reasons for not telling him anything? What a moron.
* What I wouldn’t give to have Hermione tell Harry to shut the hell up and stop whingeing, rather than grovel at him like this.
* I like how Harry is getting angry at Ron and Hermione for not telling him about Voldemort, even though he hasn’t asked anything about him. And how Ron and Hermione are clearly terrified by him. You can tell that this is a relationship of equals, alright.
* So, having invented Extendable Ears, why don’t Fred and George offer to make some for the Order? It sounds to me like they could come in useful. And if inventing magical objects is so easy that a pair of schoolchildren can do it, why don’t more people try? Are wizards just that lacking in creativity? (Actually, given that their cultural pinnacle seems to be The Adventures of Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle, they probably are.)
* I’m sorry, but Harry’s just really pissing me off in this scene. He’s meeting his best friends after several weeks at the Dursleys’ – he should be happy to see them. Instead, he’s shouting at them, belittling their achievements (and ignoring the number of times they risked their lives/got injured helping him, and the times Hermione figured out what the baddies were doing), and generally treating them like they’re utterly beneath him. Someone really needs to give him a slap.
* And Ginny Mk. 2 enters our lives. Courage, friends, and try not to be too disheartened by the prospect.
* Hey, look at how Ginny’s ignoring Harry! That, like, totally shows she’s his equal, or something.
* Really, though, would it kill her to add a polite “How are you?” or something? But then, I suppose politeness is for losers. Real men yell at and belittle their best friends.
* And why flick Dungbombs? Wouldn’t they just make a nasty smell and inconvenience everyone? Wouldn’t rolled-up balls of paper do just as well?
* “Percy had committed the fairly large oversight of failing to notice that his boss was being controlled by Lord Voldemort” – not that large, when you consider that (a) he was relatively new to the job, so probably wouldn’t have had much time to get to know his boss; (b) due to the difference in status, he probably wouldn’t have known Crouch that well anyway; and (c) everybody else (including other Ministry wizards who’d presumably known Crouch much longer than Percy had) had similarly failed to notice.
* Hey, here’s an idea: perhaps Percy just ran the department really well when Crouch was “ill”, especially considering that he was only one year out of high school, and got his promotion as a reward for that.
* Also, out-and-out saying that Percy only got the promotion because he was supposed to spy on his dad is probably the most tactless thing Arthur could have done. No wonder Percy got angry.
* Anyway, Percy’s been the unfairly maligned member of the family since the books started, and now he’s finally achieved something, and his father just throws it back in his face. Can you blame him for finally snapping?
* I think it’s quite likely that Arthur’s lack of ambition is the cause of his family’s poverty. Didn’t Ron say something to that effect when Draco taunted him in GOF (“Dad could get a promotion anytime, he’s just happy where he is”)?
* I suppose slamming the door in Mrs. Weasley’s face is better than pelting her with parsnips.
* Gosh, how silly of Percy to take the Daily Prophet seriously. Quite unlike all those characters for whom “Dumbledore is always right” seems to be an article of faith.
* Feeling satisfied about your blackmail, Hermione? Good. We’ll rid you of that pesky conscience soon enough.
* Gosh, I can’t possibly imagine how the Prophet could succeed in making Harry look like a “deluded, attention-seeking person who thinks he’s a great tragic hero”. That sort of behaviour would just be so out-of-character for him.
* “You really shouldn’t be [expelled], not if they abide by their own laws.” Because as the previous books have shown, the wizarding justice system if a beacon of fairness and rule of law.
* Hey, Ginny’s lying to her parents! And she’s not even blushing! ZOMG that is so cool. Like, no other teenager in the whole world would be spunky enough to lie to their own parents.
* Seriously kids, it’s cool to lie to people. You’ll never get married until you learn to mess up your house and blame it on the pet cat.
* Ginny grimaces at the idea of going with her mother. She’s just that much of a rebel that she doesn’t even bother to hide her disgust at other people.
* Ron and Hermione are terrified of Harry flaring up again. Yup, you can tell he’s a nice boy, alright.
* Still, at least he notices and starts to apologise, so all is not lost.
* How sad is it that I feel grateful and relieved whenever the hero of these books shows any kind of normal human remorse?
* Snape’s still Harry’s least-favourite teacher, because heaven forbid that a little thing like risking his life to save Harry should cause Our Hero to re-evaluate his opinions in any way.
* I like the way the Black portraits all seem criminally insane. Obviously, a family whose members were all in Slytherin needs to be humiliated by giving them all madness.
* In my own personal canon, all these portraits are perfectly sane, but just pretend to be mad in order to annoy the Order. Let’s face it, who wouldn’t want to annoy this society of self-righteous hypocrites?
* Now Mrs. Weasley is Stunning the portraits with her wand. Remember chaps, knocking someone out is justified if they’re annoying you in some way!
* How nice to see Sirius shouting abuse at his mother like that.
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no subject
Date: 2011-02-12 02:20 am (UTC)And, if Elves *could* be sold, don't you think the Malfoys would have purchased another elf which would be *grateful* to be owned by them and gotten rid of Dobby? They were as stuck with him as he was with them.
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Date: 2011-02-12 12:27 pm (UTC)And, if Elves *could* be sold, don't you think the Malfoys would have purchased another elf which would be *grateful* to be owned by them and gotten rid of Dobby? They were as stuck with him as he was with them. Well, they didn't liberate him either, and they certainly could have, if life with him became so intolerable they couldn't have stand it. You can hardly say something isn't canon just because it isn't logical. Quite the contrary, actually. :)
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Date: 2011-02-14 05:59 am (UTC)So, yeah. Not identical to American plantation chattel slavery, but not exactly what we'd call being free these days either.
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Date: 2011-02-12 03:27 pm (UTC)This sounds more like Roman family dynamics to me - I don't think it was quite that bad in 17th-century (?) England. Admittedly it was considered petty treason for a wife to kill her husband, the unofficial custom of wife-selling started around then, and wives couldn't own property, sign contracts, or keep a salary, but I can't find anything about uxoricide being widely accepted (though I suspect that if it was, it would be harder to get away with for the upper classes and we all know who history would have concentrated on). Do you have any citations?
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Date: 2011-02-12 06:49 pm (UTC)The right of life and death over children (and any other dependents) is indeed more Roman. However, what we are really talking about *in fact* is appalling abuse that stops short of death. And that was both absolutely legal and continued right up to the 20th century, if not today. Abuse of *all* dependents, actually. It was a "family matter" and pretty much left up to the family. The humane societies of Great Britan and the US got off the ground a lot quicker than any advocacy for human dependents.
And the ww is further distorted by the fact that not all of its "people" are human. No one seems to be arguing that House Elves are not people. Which is about the only slavery analog which *does* seem to apply.
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Date: 2011-02-14 06:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 06:30 am (UTC)For example; do we have any witnessed account of *any* Malfoy *ever* raising a hand to Dobby? It's all over fanon, of course. But fanon is not canon. Did we ever see *any* wizard ever raise a hand--or a wand-- to an elf? Raised voices, certainly. In fact quite rudely, too. But did we ever *see* actual violence to an elf, anywhere?
It varies by family, of course. From all we can tell, every member of the Black family, apart from Sirius, absolutely cherished their elves, to the point that even when the elves were old and feeble and no longer able to serve their function (which would have been utter torment to the elves) they could not bear to let them go and mounted their heads on the wall in a sentimental display.
The Malfoys ordered their elf to punish himself when they were displeased with him. What was to keep him from just going off and putting sticking-pasters on his hands and claiming that he'd ironed them? The Malfoys were hardly going to check and see whether there were actual injuries under the bandages. I am very much of the opinion that every time we saw Dobby he was putting on a show for Harry, trying to get Harry to adopt him. And he'd twigged to the fact that the ewasiest way to get Harry's attention was to make the boy *sorry* for him.
In fact some of the Malfoy fans would probably happily incorporate the idea that "go iron your hands" was mere shorthand for "I am annoyed at you, get out of my sight" into their fics. And however thoroughly unlikely that is to have been Rowling's *intention* there is probably nothing in canon to *prove* it's wrong.
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Date: 2011-02-14 08:16 am (UTC)I think Dobby also says something along the lines of "Mostly, they just lets Dobby get on with punishing himself," which implies that they don't really pay much attention to Dobby as long as all the chores are done satisfactorally.
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Date: 2011-02-14 08:47 am (UTC)Not a hand, but a foot:
[Lucius] wrenched open the door and as the elf came hurrying up to him, he kicked him right through it. They could hear Dobby squealing with pain all the way along the corridor.
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Date: 2011-02-14 10:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 08:54 pm (UTC)House-elves are bound to obey their masters, and the "punish yourself for failing your master" compulsion seems to extend beyond their time under that master (Dobby punishes himself in GoF for insulting Lucius, Kreacher punishes himself in DH for failing Regulus), so I don't think Lucius can reasonably be exonerated of abuse here. After all, Dobby was hardly a tractable slave and Lucius wouldn't have responded at all well to that.
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Date: 2011-02-14 09:22 pm (UTC)And wizards themselves tacitly admit (or at any rate *demonstrate*) that they don't really know how much control they have over elves in the first place. There was obvious confusion at #12 after Sirius ordered Kreachur to "Get out" and then no one saw him for several days afterwards, since most of the Order were under the impression that House Elves were literally bound to the house, and unable to go outside. Harry believes that he put them straight on that, by telling them about Dobby coming to him at #4. Which to me just suggests that Dobby probably *had* been ordered to find Harry Potter and keep an eye on him, and to let Lucius know when the boy was going to be in Diagon Alley, so he could intercept him.
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Date: 2011-02-14 09:33 pm (UTC)True, but it's hard to come up with a work-around for something like "go iron your hands" or "if you ever do x, punish yourself in this way".
And wizards themselves tacitly admit (or at any rate *demonstrate*) that they don't really know how much control they have over elves in the first place. There was obvious confusion at #12 after Sirius ordered Kreachur to "Get out" and then no one saw him for several days afterwards, since most of the Order were under the impression that House Elves were literally bound to the house, and unable to go outside.
How many of them had owned an elf? Sirius is the only one confirmed to have done so, and can you really imagine him paying much attention to the family slave? It's possible that they assumed elves have to be specifically ordered along the lines of "go buy some food" or "send this secret letter to my fellow-conspirator" in order to leave, and "Get out" is hardly a specific order. Sirius didn't intend him to leave the house, and it's probable that he assumed that elves' obedience to direct orders (such as "punish yourself in this manner") extended to indirect ones as well.
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Date: 2011-02-14 09:53 pm (UTC)Did they say it had to be a *hot* iron? I can't see that running a cold iron over your hands would be anything more than a nuisance and a waste of time that might be spent getting on with one's proper work. It certainly wouldn't do any damage. It probably wouldn't even hurt.
And I seriously doubt that any "ifs" ever came into it.
Of course, as mentioned before, it depended upon the family. But ifs presuppose an *intent* to disobey, and I really doubt that any head of a family that included an elf *would* be inclined to suppose that. Not even the Malfoys seem to have ever done so.
Sirius, of course *was* perfectly well aware that Kreachur was going to try to weasel out of any order which came from him, and that Kreachur wasn't going to accept orders from anyone else who wasn't listed on the tapestry, either. And Kreachur was secure enough in his own position in the family to stand there on his hind legs and make it absolutely clear *exactly* what he thought of Sirius and his associates.
I rather think what we've got with Sirius is a case in which, by some means or other, he was somehow *legally* the heir, but that having been blasted off the tapestry, on some level he was still regarded as no member of the family at all. It would be an interesting exploration of wizarding law as opposed to wizarding tradition, and whatever magic is involved in binding a family into a *family*. But of course Rowling can't be bothered to deal with it, or even notice that she's presented us with an anomoly.
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Date: 2011-02-15 12:08 am (UTC)Is it really ironing if the iron isn't heated, though? I'm pushing it a bit here, but I can't really see any reason for an aristocrat with terrorist sympathies, when dealing with a slave that doesn't understand its rightful place in the natural order of things, not to take increasingly brutal measures to get the desired quality of service.
And I seriously doubt that any "ifs" ever came into it.
Of course, as mentioned before, it depended upon the family. But ifs presuppose an *intent* to disobey, and I really doubt that any head of a family that included an elf *would* be inclined to suppose that. Not even the Malfoys seem to have ever done so.
I was thinking along the lines of standing orders - for example, "if you ruin our anniversary dinner, whip yourself until you bleed". If it's something that the owner is very anxious goes to plan, it's quite likely s/he'd use one of these, and in Lucius' case, with such a recalcitrant elf, I can easily see him doing it. Something like "If you ever do that again, you are to..."
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Date: 2011-02-15 12:31 am (UTC)And if the dinner *was* ruined they would want to know what took place in the elf's sphere of influence that they were unable to control in order for it to happen. The last thing any of them would assume is that the elf did it on purpose.
Which is something that we only see the tip of the iceberg of with Dobby and the Malfoys. It literally *never occured* to the Malfoys that their elf wanted to be *freed*. No elf wants to be free! They probably thought that the creature was merely incompetent, and it drove them batty. This had been going on for *years*. Dobby wanted to be freed, so he deliberately *did things wrong*. They would tell him to punish himself, and he'd do it *again*. By the time we had caught up to them, it had turned into; "Punish yourself five times a day, because you can't do anything right!"
My own take on this is that something happened during the first war that convinced Dobby that having no family was better than being a part of *this* family. Given how quick Tom was to move into Malfoy Manor the 2nd time, I don't think he was unfamiliar with the place.
Which right there would indicate that he'd spent the past decade trying to goad the Malfoys into throwing him a sock and telling him get out and good riddance. And the situation had been escalating the whole time.
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Date: 2011-02-15 03:26 am (UTC)Incompetent elves could. They're obedient, they're not Jeeves.
And if the dinner *was* ruined they would want to know what took place in the elf's sphere of influence that they were unable to control in order for it to happen. The last thing any of them would assume is that the elf did it on purpose.
Depends on the master in question, and on their relationship with the elf. Kreacher, for example, I can see sabotaging small things for Sirius.
Which is something that we only see the tip of the iceberg of with Dobby and the Malfoys. It literally *never occured* to the Malfoys that their elf wanted to be *freed*. No elf wants to be free! They probably thought that the creature was merely incompetent, and it drove them batty. This had been going on for *years*. Dobby wanted to be freed, so he deliberately *did things wrong*. They would tell him to punish himself, and he'd do it *again*. By the time we had caught up to them, it had turned into; "Punish yourself five times a day, because you can't do anything right!"
I'm not sure we're disagreeing on this any more. I think we agree that the Malfoys would be punishing Dobby out of sheer frustration, and it's only the extent to which elf-abuse happens in the average household that we seem to clash on.
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Date: 2011-02-14 06:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 08:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-15 12:13 am (UTC)But yes, that's why I said it wasn't much worse, not that it wasn't worse at all. They're definitely lowest in the hierarchy. Rowling does seem to have built in a weird "you must love your family" rule into her universe, so even if you try to leave, like Percy or Sirius, it won't work. But that's not supposed to be an actual magical rule, so we can pretend it doesn't exist.
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Date: 2011-02-15 03:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-16 05:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-15 04:50 am (UTC)