GOF Chapter 7: Bagman and Crouch

[oryx_leucoryx]

This chapter brings wizards' mental block against Muggle clothing to ridiculous levels. If they know enough about the clothes to recognize the names of the items wouldn't they have seen enough Muggles to know what to wear with what?

I can understand wizards not *trusting* paper money, but how hard is it to figure out the value? Yes, there are numbers right there, on the bills. Of course wizards don't learn math at school (except for the few who take Arithmancy) so perhaps they are mostly innumerate.

Over a year ago Harry saw Lockhart wiping his own memory clean. This enables him to recognize that Mr Roberts just had his memory modified. And it doesn't creep him out because Mr Roberts maintains enough functionality to hand out maps. Even after 10 zaps a day. For 2 weeks. Anyway, it keeps him 'happy'. Yikes!

In between the lines of Arthur's assessment of his friend Ludo I get that Bagman spends his work time boasting about his Quidditch days and letting others do his work. And Arthur is enchanted with his enthusiasm. I can see Auror!Ron in the same pattern - talking a lot about his wartime adventures and not doing his job. Percy who actually does his work is the one who eventually gets ostracized.

There's a tent with live peacocks! Is that the Malfoy tent?

Harry had never been camping in his life. Don't you worry, Harry! In three years you'll catch up!

Perkins' tent looks like Mrs Fig's apartment and smells of cats! The source of theories about the Perkins-Figg connection that went nowhere.

Wizards can get water and fire by magic, but Arthur insists on doing it the Muggle way, ostensibly for security (as if Mr Roberts would notice), but of course really for fun. He's like a medieval re-enactor. Which does not explain why the trio in DH gathered firewood. I'm wondering under what circumstances Arthur had the chance to see Muggles camping (and what was left of their brains when he left).

Harry realizes there really were witches and wizards in other countries. He thought Charlie and Bill worked abroad with other British folk, right? All those History of Magic lessons and international laws should have been a hint. Let alone yesterday's conversation about Quidditch teams from several countries.

African wizards roast a rabbit, looking appropriately at home in the wilds, but their fire is purple, so it's probably magical. What's the story about the Salem witch hunts in the Potterverse? There really were witches in Salem and they let innocent Muggle women get killed as part of their cover-up?

Seamus is there with his mother and his best friend Dean. Mr Finnigan isn't there because he is a Muggle, and as we will be told next chapter there are Muggle-repeling charms around. We don't know what happened to Mr Finnigan after recovering from the shock of discovering he was married to a witch. Is he still around? Did he leave in terror? Did his wife kill him? Did she wipe or rewrite his memory? Does she keep him under some form of mind-control? Another interesting tidbit - Mrs Finnigan takes no notice of Harry whatsoever. Not fussing over The-Boy-Who-Lived is the mark of evil, I tell you!

Archie likes a breeze around his privates. Real wizards don't need underwear, graying or otherwise!

Harry sees unfamiliar teenagers. In 2 years time he won't even recognize his own House members by sight, but here he realizes they just might not be from Hogwarts at all! The wonders never end! Hermione knows about foreign wizards and schools because she must have read about them. Yes, and paid attention, and applied some basic logic. Ron knows about foreign schools through his experience of growing up in a wizarding family, which is expected. But soon enough we will discover the holes in his education. Has anyone ever compiled a list of things Ron knows from home vs things one would expect him to know but he doesn't? That could be an interesting insight into the home life of the Weasleys. Do you think Bill's brothers appreciated the prank his former pen-friend  played on him? Personally I think it was rather jerkish, but also something the twins or Ginny v2.0 might pull.

Arthur introduces some of his colleagues, including Bode, next year's red-shirt. But the other Unspeakable, Croaker, is of no significance. Despite readers' expectations (especially after we got told that James and Lily's occupation was 'significant') the Department of Mysteries exists only in order to house next year's McGuffin and the draperies of doom. Maybe when Albus was reinstated as Chief Warlock he ordered that the department close down as it had served its purpose. Hmm, the Head of the Goblins Liaison Office is one Cuthbert Mockridge. Horace Slughorn has yet to pull whatever strings he pulled to get Dirk Cresswell that job. However Horace will go underground the coming June. The timeline just barely works.

A very warm welcome to Ludo - kids, be nice to people who bribe your dad! Percy is well-mannered to a person he does not appreciate professionally. Harry of course sees this negatively. No Harry, that's how normal people are supposed to behave.

Ludo's jingling gold in his pocket shows how enthusiastic he is, completely different from the gold in Lucius' pocket clinking as he moves (next year)!

Not being a gambler I might be getting this wrong, but if Agatha Timms bet half of the shares in her eel farm on it being a week-long match, and the game ended that night, doesn't that mean Ludo came to own half an eel farm after the game? Wasn't that enough to settle at least his debt to the goblins?

Fred and George aren't of age yet, but their father can't stop them from gambling their entire savings. And Ludo interferes with Arthur's parenting for the sake of landing another bet. A really swell guy!

Crouch is working hard. Bagman is having the time of his life not working - despite the event in question being a sport event and therefore squarely within the jurisdiction of his department.

At the mention of his boss' name Percy stokes the fire to make tea. It comes across to me as Percy's sincere expression of admiration, not deliberate sucking up. Of course without knowing Crouch's dark secret he does come across as very professional, very competent and even caring for a former underling who must have run into trouble. However it is painful to see Crouch constantly ignoring Percy beyond the bare minimum. 

What is the deal about 'Weatherby'? Is it a slip of Crouch's? Is that the name Percy chose for himself? Did Percy ask Crouch not to judge him by his father and Crouch is playing along? Looking at Crouch's personality and story-arc as a whole I tend to think the first is the case. Because Crouch has trouble respecting the individuality of his son as well as his various underlings, past and present - Bertha Jorkins and Winky. So not paying attention to Percy's name follows the same pattern.

The Bulgarians wanted to add 12 seats to the top box at the last minute. Did one of them just make an emergency bribe or is this a matter of keeping parity with the hosts (ie they didn't want to be outnumbered by people of the host country, so Arthur's 10 tickets had to be matched)?

Arthur won't let Muggle artifacts such as carpets be charmed to fly. Only cars.

Bagman enjoys hinting and nudging about an event at Hogwarts that would require much organizing. Whatever could that be about?

So 'they' have signed already, but the details haven't been worked out yet. In HBP we will learn that Fudge updated the Muggle prime minister about the intent to import 3 foreign dragons and one sphinx the same time he reported the disturbance at the Quidditch World Cup. Unless this report was much belated, it looks like the details were in fact already quite worked out by the time of the game. Or perhaps Rowling forgot to reread GOF when she wrote that bit.

Ron follows the Weasley school of financial management by spending his entire fortune on souvenirs just before noticing he could have used the money on something more useful.

Comments

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

I see revolt and revolution in the HP magical world. To me at some point, something's gotta give and I don't see it as something honorable to mind wipe non-magical people when they see magic. I just find it offensive, and there have got to be quite a few magical people somewhere that agrees -

THIS.

Makes me wonder if there's a wizarding equivalent of William Wilberforce, because I am pretty sure someone must think the subjugation/degradation of most of earth's population is wrong. Somebody who is more heroic than JKR's so-called heroes.

[karentheunicorn.livejournal.com]

Somebody who is more heroic than JKR's so-called heroes.

Give me liberty or give me death!

I say, ask the Minister of Magic over in England if those colonials were just talking about muggles =p

It would be so cool if the American Magical Authority couldn't stand the English one. NOW THAT would make for an interesting read if you ask me.

Lets all see what was going out outside of Harry's head and his country.

I say Hogwarts brainwashes it's kids to believe the MOM and Hogwarts are totally AWWSOME and in control.

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

Makes me wonder if there's a wizarding equivalent of William Wilberforce, because I am pretty sure someone must think the subjugation/degradation of most of earth's population is wrong. Somebody who is more heroic than JKR's so-called heroes.

Karen and I have actually had many email conversations over the years on this topic...

In my mind!canon, it seems to me that the majority of wizards or witches who'd have immigrated to America would be those who would be on the lower levels of society -- much like their Muggle counterparts. Granted, at the very beginning you did have non-firstborn sons of minor Muggle aristocracy trying to make their fortune by gambling on ventures in the New World (plantations, mining, fur-trapping), and conceivably a younger son of a well-off wizarding family might also be adventurous enough to make the sea voyage west.

But the bottom line is that most immigrants were not from the upperclasses, and if someone -- magikal or not -- had a comfortable life, they were unlikely to take the physical and financial risks of leaving everything behind to head into an unknown.

So you are left with people who would have thought immigrating would afford them financial opportunities that were not available back in Europe; people who were on not the best of terms with the legal authorities, and figured escaping to the colonies would be their best bet; and in the case of the magikal community, perhaps people who did not agree with the political repression of MoM/Wizanmagot, and thought traveling somewhere beyond the reach of the European wizarding world's network of owls/floos/broom travel would afford them the freedom they lacked at home.

BTW, does anyone know if there's a distance limitation on apparating? Could someone apparate from London to Boston?

Anyway, I feel that any wizards or witches who were in the American Colonies in the 1760s and early 1770s would probably have been strong supporters of those radicals in Boston who started calling for revolution.

And hey, is it just coincidence that those Boston radicals held their meetings in a tavern called The Green Dragon? ;-)

Outside of the American colonies, as I stated in my other post, I think that magikal folk outside of Europe would have resented being told after openly associating with, and in some cases actually working for, non-magikal neighbors and/or rulers, that they were now expected to ghetto-ize themselves and make Muggles believe that they don't exist.

Like I said before, if your people have happily traveled by flying carpet for centuries, and perhaps even made a living by it with Muggles, you're not going to be happy suddenly being told by European overlords that you can't do it any more.

I think in some cases, adherence would be sullen at best, and totally ignored at worst. I think this would be even more likely in countries in the East that had millennia-long traditions of Muggle rulers being assisted by magikal folk and magikal beings...they may have given lip service to complying with the Statute and other rules, but then covertly maintained relationships between magikal and non-magikal folk.

And when non-magikal folk of European colonies started revolting for freedom after World War 2, you can't tell me magikal folk of those same countries wouldn't have taken interest and wondered why they should still be under the rule of European wizards, too.