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

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

Most people that thing Salem Mass that have a general history knowledge will instantly think witch/witch trials. So it's not hard to see why she would choose that as the place for magical people in the USA.

Hey, my hometome hung a witch back in the 1680s or 1690s, but the town didn't become known as a hotbed of witches...

Melonhead hauntings, yes. Witches, no. ;-)


Personally, I think the magical people would choose a tiny bit south, but thats just me.

Actually, I agree...altho my definition of "a tiny bit south" is probably more north than yours! LOL

Remember, most of New England was colonized by religious fundamentalists, and well into the 19th century it was still against the law to celebrate Christmas as it was considered "pagan" and "papish" to do so.

"Banned in Boston" came to be considered a joke by the 1960s, but the phrase did mean something before then, it was common for books, magazines, and later movies, to be banned in Boston but be perfectly acceptable elsewhere in America.

For instance, the Disney film Snow White was "banned in Boston", because of the song the dwarves sing when they first meet Snow White, and one of the dwarves sings about his beard being so long that he used it for a "dydee-dee" (diaper)...so in the 1930s a good portion of New England was still adhering to puritanical values.

But very northern New England was not so strict, you had more of an influence from the French along the Canadian border. And the Dutch in New Amsterdam, which later became New York, always were much less strict. So I could see magikal folk settling in Maine, and northern Vermont and New Hampshire, and definitely in New York and Philadelphia.

Especially New York, which has a history of folk tales of "strange people", "wee folk", and hauntings in the areas north and east of NY City...that is where we find Rip Van Winkle and Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman after all...


My history memory isn't allt hat great but I seem to remember something about Mass was fully of puritans back in the day.

American Colonial History was my major at college...and yes, what we call "The Puritans" landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620 and started Plymouth Colony, which later branched out into other colonies in Massachusetts, and then dissenting groups requested separate charters from King George and when they were granted, they formed colonies in Rhode Island and Connecticut.

But they were all still fanatically fundamentalist Christians. I think I mentioned before that here in Connecticut we still had a law prohibiting witchcraft on the books until 20 years ago, a law that dated back to the late 1600s (with amendments over the centuries).


I still say Virginia area is the better choice if they wanted to live near mugglefolk.

Anywhere from along the Canadian border, or from NYC south along the eastern seaboard: Trenton, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond, Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans, if they wanted to be close to Muggles. Else anywhere on the western frontier if they preferred to segregate themselves.

But Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut would be the last colonies for a wizard and witch to willingly immigrate to from the 1600s until the mid-1800s...

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

This is a fascinating conversation (and I'm from Connecticut!) But I have to add: what about the First Nations? There were hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people in the area when the Pilgrims and other settlers arrived, and they were living in many different ways. Assuming that there could be magical English people, why couldn't there be magical Pequots or Mohawks or Leni Lenape, etc.?

[karentheunicorn.livejournal.com]

More than likely there were. I was thinking the discussion was more in reference to what happened when English/Europe and others came over.

I'm pretty sure that there would have already been magical people here in the native population but it would probably reflect their culture more than it would be similar to the English and European culture.

That is unless you're saying there was already some establishment of English/European or other country populations of magicals besides native american folk.

There could have easily been conflict between the two different magical cultures when other magical people started arriving on boats with their own culture.

My thinking is that the magical people in the native american culture was way more accepted than how the magic folk seperated themselves in England and other parts. There seems to be a tradition in the native population to more readily accept 'magic' or at least how that sort of thing is viewed. I don't know if there would be the world 'muggle' used, if that makes any sense.

It's more when you get into the religous aspect is when conflict with what we deem magic is made negative. But I don't know if the native american culture had that kind of thing; the Christans burning withces etc..

I don't know enough about history to speak on it but I don't know if native american population would go around burning their magical people. I thought those kind of people would be highly respected in the cuture, etc....but then again I could totally be wrong on that.

I just feel like the magic people in the indian population there were already here before would be people that were honored so maybe whatever magical poeple were here among the indians would have still been part of the population and it wouldn't totally be a seperate cuture.

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

This is a fascinating conversation (and I'm from Connecticut!)

We're neighbors!

You didn't happen to catch "Tappy Potter" at Yale this past weekend, did you? I'm bummed that I only found out about it yesterday, it was only held this past weekend, and it was free...I definitely would have loved to see a tap-dancing Snape! :-(


But I have to add: what about the First Nations? There were hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people in the area when the Pilgrims and other settlers arrived, and they were living in many different ways. Assuming that there could be magical English people, why couldn't there be magical Pequots or Mohawks or Leni Lenape, etc.?

That's why I've been saying that I think that European wizards and witches would have generally had a better relationship with the native peoples than their nonmagikal counterparts.

And yes, I definitely think that if we accept the premise of some people being able to have magikal abilities, then there is no reason to believe that it is restricted only to people of European background.

The problem is, the Europeans brought diseases to these shores that the native peoples didn't have immunity to. So something like measles and mumps, fairly innocuous to Europeans whose ancestors had developed a fair amount of immunity, were deadly diseases for American Indians.

So while there were millions of Indians when the first Europeans started settling these shores in the 16th and 17th century, by the mid-18th century they'd been mostly wiped out by European diseases. The Christian fundamentalists in New England saw this as a sign of "God's will", "proof" that God condemned the pagan heathen and approved of his "pure" adherents plans to establish a New Jerusalem in their place.

It also opened up lands for settlement, since the tribes that had historically used those lands no longer existed. So you see a change in attitude from the first settlers, who needed the Indians' assistance and so tended to make treaties with them and work with them in peaceful coexistence, to an attitude by the early-to-mid 18th century that the surviving Indian tribes were standing in the way of "Manifest Destiny". By 1750 the colonists' attitude was that they had a right, and deserved, to settle wherever they wished...so I'd imagine that for the most part wizards and witches of European extraction at that time would probably have reflected the same attitude as their nonmagikal brethen.

Basically they'd want to recreate the type of life they were accustomed to in Europe -- and while there may have been the rare wizard or witch who decided to live with/near European tribal peoples in the wilderness, the majority of them seem to have opted for civilization, even if only on the fringes of civilization.

BTW, fellow Nutmegger...if there are magikal Pequots and Mohawks (and presumably Mohegans), what conclusions can we jump to regarding Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun? LOL