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

[karentheunicorn.livejournal.com]

Besides, I can imagine a lot of these clueless wizards going to the New World completely unprepared for what it's like to live in the wilderness and possibly having to ask the natives for help so that they don't starve to death.

I'm sure there had to be some adventurer's in the magical community. Men/Women who wanted to exlore, expand, or just F'in get away from whatever ruling government they were associated with.

But hell you gotta also take into consideration that at one point a large part of American was owned by other countries besides England.

the 13 colonies of Britain became independence in 1776. In the late 16th century, England, Scotland, France, Sweden, Spain and the Netherlands began to colonize eastern North America.

It wasn't just England or the English moving in.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

That's true, though I was actually thinking mainly of Jamestown and that era of settlement---

Ooh, that could put an interesting spin on the whole Roanoke thing though!

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that could put an interesting spin on the whole Roanoke thing though!

They were all wizards and witches and just apparated away one day...

;-)

[sunnyskywalker]

Or maybe it's like how Hogwarts looks like a ruin to Muggles. Just an empty clearing and some cabins here, nothing to see!

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

Or maybe it's like how Hogwarts looks like a ruin to Muggles. Just an empty clearing and some cabins here, nothing to see!

Except that in real life over the past decade they've actually found the archeological remains of the settlement, which for almost 200 years was thought to have been submerged under water due to changing tidal currents.

And what they've found is rather interesting...a rather well-fortified village, and a fair amount of distance outside of the fortification signs that they had pretty good smelting and pottery productions going on.

And they've found human remains of what seems to have been the guy who was left in charge, who displays forensic evidence of having been murdered via musket.

The theory now is that some sort of mutiny erupted, the mutineers prevailed after murdering a fair number of the other villagers plus the leader, the mutineers successfully concealed the bodies and the evidence of their crime, and then went upriver to join a friendly Indian tribe.

Of course, there's nothing to say that the mutineers weren't evil wizards... ;-)

[sunnyskywalker]

Can they prove the village was abandoned exactly when they think, or could it have actually been abandoned, say, ten or fifteen years later (assuming Muggle-repelling charms and such)? Although given the wizards we know, it probably wouldn't take that long for a mutiny ;-)

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

Can they prove the village was abandoned exactly when they think, or could it have actually been abandoned, say, ten or fifteen years later (assuming Muggle-repelling charms and such)? Although given the wizards we know, it probably wouldn't take that long for a mutiny ;-)

The last the Roanoke colony was seen was in 1587; relief ships couldn't make it back until 1590, when they found the colony abandoned.

So something happened in the intervening 2.5 years, unless you're suggesting that the remaining wizards and witches put charms on the place to only make it SEEM abandoned....

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

You guys keep going down this direction, maybe you're possessed by the mind of M Night Shamalan. ;)

Given the premise of Roanoke being a WW community and, given the propensity of WW communities for hiding themselves from Muggles, it's possible that Roanoke could have been charmed to look like a deserted clearing or, that the code word on the tree wasn't really a code word at all but a portal like the bricks behind the Leaky Cauldron where, if you know the correct pattern to trace, you will be admitted to a thriving WW community much like Diagon Alley.

All this talk does take you back to Hudson's men in the Catskills and other weird goings-on. :D

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

All this talk does take you back to Hudson's men in the Catskills and other weird goings-on. :D

Considering the vast quantity and richness of American folklore/myth, especially considering what could be deemed magikal beings/folk, I think the U.S. just might have a thriving magikal world of its own! LOL

[sunnyskywalker]

That's about what I was thinking. Hogwarts Castle looks like a ruin, so why couldn't an active settlement look like a few abandoned cabins? Although I like the idea of the "croatan" carving being like the Diagon Alley bricks.

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

But hell you gotta also take into consideration that at one point a large part of American was owned by other countries besides England.

Yes, which is why I stated before that magikal colonists in New England close to the Canadian border would have had a different experience than any counterparts elsewhere in New England, because Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire weren't colonized by religious fanatics, and they had many French immigrants along with English.

And we musn't forget that Russia owned Alaska, so there'd be a totally different colonial experience in the Pacific northwest.

And while The Inquisition was still active in name, in practice most Spanish colonies allowed "pagan" practices as long as the natives went to mass every Sunday.

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

And while The Inquisition was still active in name, in practice most Spanish colonies allowed "pagan" practices as long as the natives went to mass every Sunday.

Pick the right place and get a decent patron, and you could pretty much do whatever magic you wanted as long as you invoked angels and various names of God often enough. Even if you were summoning demons, you could cover yourself by charging them to do stuff in God's name, so just waving a wand and mangling Latin really wouldn't have been much of a problem as long as it wasn't too overt.