GOF Chapter 8: The Quidditch World Cup
Feb. 19th, 2011 09:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oryx_leucoryx posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
deathtocapslockIf Arthur's numbers are correct then the QWC stadium is of the order of Wembley stadium (though not as big as the original Wembley). Since Harry's experience of sporting events so far came from TV and Hogwarts I can see why he is awestruck with the size of he place, though I doubt anything else about it was particularly amazing.
Am I to believe Wizarding Britain can afford to have 500 members of its workforce engaged in preparing the stadium for an entire year? Does this work with a population of 3000? Or even 10,000? Is that why there wasn't enough manpower available to catch Sirius Black? Or perhaps many of these were retirees looking for extra income?
Oh how fun it is to mess with the minds of Muggles (people like, say, Hermione's parents) to keep this event secret. Bless them, indeed. Meanwhile Hermione is taking notes on what magic is acceptable to use on Muggles.
Now that we see the size of the top box we realize that Arthur's party takes up about half of it. No little favor Ludo did him.
Wizarding commercial advertisements are just as lame as Muggle ones.
Is that Dobby? No? Shucks. But it's a house-elf at any rate, so Harry was only half-wrong. Doesn't it sound like Winky knew Dobby from before he was freed and started seeking a paying job? What would that mean? Were the Malfoys frequent dinner guests at the Crouch household way back before Mrs Crouch's death? Did Dobby and Winky grow up together? Did Dobby sneak away from Malfoy Manor to the Crouch residence to complain about his evil masters? Do house-elves have some kind of social gatherings? We'll never know now. Hmm, but if Winky knows of Dobby's search for a paying job and had the chance to hear Dobby speak of Harry 'all the time', doesn't this mean he came to the Crouch home (more than once) after being freed? And never noticed the invisible Barty Jr (in contrast with Bertha Jorkins)? Or perhaps he too was zapped with some memory charm (or several)? Might explain some things.
So ill-behaved elves and goblins are to face the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Is this the same department that dealt with Buckbeak? I doubt it is the same department that deals with ill-behaved wizards. I think the latter are dealt with by the Department for Magical Law Enforcement. I can see elves getting a different treatment - once one realizes they are a slave-class (though Winky expects the same to apply to a free elf), but goblins are free members of magical society, or so I thought. In any case, elves and goblins are classified as beings which is a category that includes those creatures that have the capacity to understand the laws and take part in forming them. Of course, this does not mean they are actually treated equally by those laws, nor does it mean they actually get to participate in law-making.
Winky is sitting in one of the seats and ostensibly reserving the seat next to hers for Barty Crouch, when in fact the other Barty Crouch is sitting in it, invisible. Which means Crouch Sr got a Top Box seat for his house-elf. I'm wondering how that came across to mainstream wizards. Oh, this is Harry's first meeting with the coming year's DADA teacher (though he doesn't even know anyone is there). And Barty's 1st opportunity to see Harry up close (and steal his wand). Now I'm wondering if Bagman was working for Tom after all.
Harry is indignant on Winky's behalf for her having to reserve her master's seat when she doesn't like heights. 2+ years from now Harry will force his own house-elf to go on spying missions for him against said house-elf's preference. IOIAGDI?
Percy can repair his shattered glasses. Meanwhile Muggles invented plastic lenses that are shatter-proof.
We see Fudge, and the Bulgarian Minister. But no Irish Minister in sight. Has the Wizarding World not caught up with the 1920s? Fudge is alone, BTW. In chapter 28 at some point Crouch will ramble about taking his wife and son to a concert with Mr and Mrs Fudge. I wonder what became of her.
The Malfoys make their entrance. All three of them this time around. There have been many men by the name of Lucius in history and in literature, as the wikipedia disambiguation page shows (at the bottom there are links to additional lists of Luciuses), but I tend to think Lucius Malfoy was named after Lucius Tiberius from Arthurian legend, because it seems one of the main reasons for Lucius' existence in HP canon is to serve as Arthur's antagonist, to be compared to Arthur and be found wanting. (This looks even more true in light of
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
aasaylva 's 'Arthur cuckolded Lucius' theory.) In PS neither man is present, but we hear their opinions of each other quoted by their respective sons. In COS we get to meet each of them individually - Arthur being excited that the twins took the car without permission, Lucius expressing disappointment with Draco's grades - and then they meet and clash at the book store. In this book they are both in the Top Box and in OOTP they are both waiting outside the courtroom for the outcome of Harry's hearing (no, Lucius' ties did not go far enough to grant him entry to the Wizengamot). Their trajectories cross at the end of OOTP - Lucius goes to Azkaban, Arthur gets promoted - and leads searches of Lucius' home. DH shows one thing they have in common - love for their respective families.(Heh -Arthur and Lucius are like Albus and Gellert, though probably without the love affair - red-haired 'good' guy and a slightly younger blond 'bad' guy.)
Back to chapter 8:
Lucius donated to St Mungo's. He is so evil for (possibly) receiving 3 tickets as a perk in return! He should have done something more wholesome, like, say, help Fudge cover up illegal and harmful acts. Since I am in the biotech field I like to imagine that Lucius founded The Abraxas Malfoy Memorial Fund for Dragon Pox Research, though of course it could have been just a general donation to the hospital.
No Harry, the Malfoys don't consider anyone from Muggle descent second class (Bellatrix does, but she is still away in Azkaban). Narcissa's visit to Severus' home in HBP seems not to have been the first one. But they do consider Muggle-borns like Hermione to be second class. The way the Weasleys consider Muggles, such as Hermione's parents.
Arthur feels the need to polish his glasses upon spotting the Veela. To see them better? Or to avoid looking at them? This used to be evidence in support for Imperiurized!Arthur theories - or alternately theories about Weasleys being more susceptible than average to mind-control.
Harry notices the Veela - and his mind goes blank. Blanker than usual, that is. This is his first direct experience with mind-control, which will be very important in this book. (And to a lesser extent in later ones.) Meanwhile Ginny thinks, 'when I grow up, I want to be a Veela too!'
Leprechauns give the crowd a golden shower :^ I notice that many among the crowd were rummaging for gold - were they as ignorant as Ron, or were they hoping to find others just as ignorant? (BTW leprechaun gold is explained in Fantastic Beasts, a book Harry and his friends had to buy for 1st year. I wonder if the boys ever read it?)
Veela can be part of human society, can interbreed with humans and are considered 'beings' (don't appear in 'Fantastical Beasts and Where to Find Them'). Leprechauns are capable of speech in human language but are classified as beasts and have never requested reclassification as beings (I suppose because they don't want to be bound by human laws? Not that being a beast helped Buckbeak in any way). Anyone find their use as mascots just a bit icky?
Are all Veela female? Are all leprechauns male? Are they like Pratchett's dwarfs - the sexes are indistinguishable to humans? How do human heterosexual females respond to male Veela? Was Lockhart a male Veela?
Krum is thin, dark, sallow-skinned, crooked-nosed and is likened to a bird of prey. He looks like teen-Snape! And Hermione ends up liking him! Surely she'd find Severus attractive too, once she is a bit older? Alternately - remember those theories about Viktor and Severus being related? Perhaps they are - it doesn't really matter who Viktor is related to. How does a professional player of an outdoors sport get to be sallow-skinned at the end of summer, anyway?
The Irish team rides Firebolts, which automatically makes them worthy of victory. You can skip to the end of the game, we know who has the better brooms.
As an example of the lengths us fans went in attempt to decipher Rowling's supposed 'master plan' I offer you Quidditch World Cup, Shadows of the Future - An essay by a fan who disliked the Quidditch in the series so much he thought there had to be some meaning to them for Rowling to go into such detail about the games. It's still fun to do these things in retrospect: Is Harry's watching the game in slow-motion until he misses events symbolic of how he has no idea what is happening in the war because he is hiding in the tent reading about Dumbles' youth? Is Viktor's skill at flying a foreshadowing of Superman!Voldie? Is Harry watching Lynch's fall in slow motion a foreshadowing of him seeing the extremely long fall of Albus' body from the tower? Is Viktor's broken nose a foreshadowing of noseless!Voldie? And obviously, catching the Snitch while losing the game is what Voldie did with the Elder Wand. But also what Rowling did with Harry's story - she managed to get him to outlive Voldemort while completely denying him convincing growth. (This was not intended to mock SCollins. Most of us were doing this sort of stuff for a long while.)
Ginny hears Arthur telling Harry not to go for looks alone and promptly decides to adopt Veela personality once she can manage it. (BTW, this is the girl who has been flying secretly since she was 6. Notice we hear nothing about her reaction to the game. What does Ginny know about Quidditch?) Of course in Rowling's world all adult women are Veela. The pretty ones do it naturally, the less pretty ones can be Veela by choice, with the aid of a Love Potion.
Viktor throws the game for personal glory. Yet his team doesn't seem to mind - he is still an active player 3 years later. Hermione thinks he was brave. Since Durmstrang becomes a stand-in for Slytherin in this book we can speculate that he too was 'Sorted too soon', just like the grown wizard he resembles.
Fudge receives the Cup on behalf of Ireland. Looks like wizards have their own borders.
Bagman finds himself in debt to the twins, goblins and others. His manner of paying them marks the beginning of his real troubles. How did he hope to get away with it? Maybe he didn't read Fantastic Beasts in his student days either.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-02-20 09:01 pm (UTC)Wizengamot - the self-appointed oligarchy.
Date: 2011-02-20 09:24 pm (UTC)Re: Wizengamot - the self-appointed oligarchy.
Date: 2011-02-20 09:48 pm (UTC)Re: Wizengamot - the self-appointed oligarchy.
Date: 2011-02-20 09:51 pm (UTC)Mainly, all Voldemort did was practice doing nothing.
Re: Wizengamot - the self-appointed oligarchy.
Date: 2011-02-20 10:20 pm (UTC)(Sorry about the repost)
Re: Wizengamot - the self-appointed oligarchy.
Date: 2011-02-20 11:18 pm (UTC)It's kind of even more suspitions with Dumbledore.
I mean, as you guys have so competently pointed out. Dumbledore has all these powers and titles already.
What the hell does he need the Order of the Phoenix for if he sounds just as powerful IF not more powerful than the Minister of Magic.
Dumbledore clearly already has a lot of power and influence at his disposal already.
It's like JKR is making him some underground leader of a war effort, yet he's already GOT tons of power. It's like she's trying to make DD the underdog, yet he's not really the underdog.
hum...kinda like Harry =p
Re: Wizengamot - the self-appointed oligarchy.
Date: 2011-02-20 11:20 pm (UTC)Re: Wizengamot - the self-appointed oligarchy.
Date: 2011-02-22 09:54 am (UTC)Re: Wizengamot - the self-appointed oligarchy.
Date: 2011-02-23 03:06 am (UTC)In OOTP there was no point in guarding the Department of Mysteries, so the Order could mostly go home once Harry was safely in 12GP. Just leave some friends coming in and out to keep him and Sirius company, and have individuals gathering information or going on diplomatic missions to sectors they have unique access to and a gathering every 2 weeks or so to exchange info. (If they are reporting only directly to Albus then there is no need for gatherings either.)
In HBP I suppose there may have been a rota of Order members helping guard Hogwarts when Albus was off Horcrux-hunting.
Re: Wizengamot - the self-appointed oligarchy.
Date: 2011-02-23 03:22 am (UTC)Well, I guess there is that; I shouldn't be too cavalier in dismissing them.
The battle at the end of OotP was critical, otherwise Harry would have been toast. (Of course, Dumbledore tells us that he was intended to be toast all along, and that the Order were putting themselves in harm's way, risking their lives, to protect Harry because it was 'essential that he test his strength', even if he was to be sacrificed an arbitrary time later. Pfah.)
The Order were pretty useless with the battle at the end of HBP; did all the death eaters escape? One got killed by friendly fire, I think?
The Order members might have participated in the final Hogwarts battle but only as individuals, there was no official Order presence there.
And I've forgotten the fourth battle you mention. :-(
Re: Wizengamot - the self-appointed oligarchy.
Date: 2011-02-23 06:57 am (UTC)Re: Wizengamot - the self-appointed oligarchy.
Date: 2011-02-23 02:14 pm (UTC)Apparently it was Voldemorts plan for his DE to meet some more purebred women at the wedding.
Honestly, maybe I'm an unusual female, but weddings are probably the second most boring thing a person can go to. Top of the list of most boring things ever in mankind to go to...graduation, highschool and otherwise.
Re: Wizengamot - the self-appointed oligarchy.
Date: 2011-02-23 07:27 am (UTC)Yaxley was immobilized by Harry and later taken in by Scrimgeour. Travers was apparently captured. Probably Fenrir too, and possibly another unnamed attacker.
And I've forgotten the fourth battle you mention.
I meant the 7P battle. It wasn't planned as such, but it was an event where the Order participated in a designed fashion.
Re: Wizengamot - the self-appointed oligarchy.
Date: 2011-02-23 08:01 am (UTC)Even if the whole thing was such a contrived and clumsy plot setup I tend to forget it like most of DH. :-)
Nonetheless, you're right, that was an official Order outing, thanks.
Re: Wizengamot - the self-appointed oligarchy.
Date: 2011-02-23 08:04 am (UTC)The 7P thing, though, was probably meant to impress us; Moody and Co had planned it all out in advance.
Re: Wizengamot - the self-appointed oligarchy.
Date: 2011-02-23 05:40 pm (UTC)One of the major strengths of Robert Jordan, the author of the Wheel of Time Series, was that he fought in the Vietnam War and studied at The Citadel, plus he loved to study history, so he really knew how to write battle scenes.
Re: Wizengamot - the self-appointed oligarchy.
Date: 2011-02-25 10:00 am (UTC)You bet. So many of DH's and the series' problems are undoubtedly due to her simply not seeing them at all. Such things - logic, alternative paths to the way she herself wants the plot to go, 'strategy', what the wizards could/would do - just don't occur to her 'oh, maths!' mentality.
... he's supposedly this awesome chess player, yet this ability to think strategically doesn't seem to translate into how he deals with the problems the trio encounter.
Awwww, you're reminding me of all those fanfics where it was just assumed that Ron had awesome tactical/strategic skillz because of his known prowess as a chess player. Sadly, that was just one of the many one-book wonders that Rowling dismissed once the relevant book (book #1, in this case) was done.
Re: Wizengamot - the self-appointed oligarchy.
Date: 2011-02-25 03:04 pm (UTC)I suppose compaired to Harry then okay,, Ron is a great chess player. I doubt if he'd set the world on fire if say...He played against Dumbledore or Snape. But then, who is to say either of them are actually good - since they could only be as good as their creator.
I agree with what someone was saying about the characters were as OOC as JKR needed them to be because she wasn't writing a character driven story like she claimed to be. She was actually writing a plot driven story and it didn't matter how OOC the characters became, they had to fulfill the plot at all cost.
It's sort of like Snape randomly leaving his school textbook that was full of dark magic in a cabinet where students can borrow textbooks.
Anyone looking at that from the outside of fandom might say; Isn't he supposed to be the super spy of the series, and everything we see written about him seems to suggest he is overprotective of anything about himself. How is it that a character who is portrayed as being so careful, does something so amature and unthinking.
I've seen many theory that someone left it there on purpose for Harry to get, be it Snape, Slughorn or Dumbledore. But there is nothing in canon or JKR's interviews that have ever made that point or cleared up the lazyness of Snape leaving his school book full of dark magic.
And yea, I know I'm using another Snape situation as a example, but it's the only thing I could think of, I'm sure everyone else can come up with lots of OOC moments for characters other than Snape.
So, basicly, if we know the plot is flawed, then all of JKR's character development probably are at some point messed up.
Re: Wizengamot - the self-appointed oligarchy.
Date: 2011-02-25 04:21 pm (UTC)Compared to Minerva, I think. It was supposed to be her chess set in the dungeon, so it must have been playing with her skills.
And my theory (because I refuse to believe that Quirrellmort found out how to get past Fluffy in Easter but waited all the way to late June to apply this knowledge) is that Quirrellmort had lost several games to that chess set and that was why: 1) Voldemort needed the unicorn blood (he was getting hit on the face a lot) 2) Quirrell was begging and whimpering when Harry overheard him - he didn't want to face that chess set again.
If this is true, Ron may be better at chess than Quirrell and Voldemort put together (literally).
Re: Wizengamot - the self-appointed oligarchy.
Date: 2011-02-25 06:51 pm (UTC)Re: Wizengamot - the self-appointed oligarchy.
Date: 2011-02-25 10:59 pm (UTC)Or I like the idea of Dumbledore having it and somehow he managed to get it into Harry's hands anonymously. But then you have the dark spells that I can't see Dumbledore just handing that over to Harry, even anonymously.
Snape having it there doesn't make sense and leaving it behind doesn't make sense either; due to the fact he would have graduated I can't see him leaving his book with dark spells in it when he left after 7th year - spells I might add that he acted offended over that others would use against him. So, I have a hard time seeing him leaving that book behind for future generations to claim and use the spells.
You can only come to the conclusion in JKR's version, that Snape either after graduating just left it there for random students to borrow from Slughorn. Or you have to believe that when Snape returned as a professor, he brought the book back with him and decided to take it out of his belongings and put it in the cabinet.
Neither of those seem logical to me and I wish we'd have been given a explaination in HBP as to why Snape would have his old potion book there.
The only other thing I can come up with is, maybe he would let Slytherin students borrow it, if he had a favorite student. But somehow I just don't see that happening either. I can't see Snape wanting a bunch of students at Hogwarts to find out and know how to use septem sempra.
Re: Wizengamot - the self-appointed oligarchy.
Date: 2011-02-26 12:41 am (UTC)What makes you think Dumbles would care what Dark magic Harry performed? He was already using spells from that book on students (Slytherins, of course) and a staff member (Filch) when Dumbles praised Harry for being protected from temptation by the Dark Arts by his ability to love.
Re: Wizengamot - the self-appointed oligarchy.
Date: 2011-02-26 12:59 am (UTC)Like I said, I like the idea of Dumbledore finding a way to manipulate it into Harry's hands than I do Snape OOC leaving it there. So its more that I don't know if JKR would have thought that, that Dumbledore planted it. JKR doesn't seem to explain it and her version seems to leave it as Snape left it there.
So I don't have a problem with Dumbledore planting it for Harry to find sp, I actually am thinking it because it's my favorite of the ideas I've had about how the book got there.
He was already using spells from that book on students (Slytherins, of course) and a staff member (Filch) when Dumbles praised Harry for being protected from temptation by the Dark Arts by his ability to love.
Ironic isn't it. Dumbledore was fluffing him up there wasn't he. Hell, that could almost be a confirmation that Dumbledore did plant it, That was Dumbledore's subtle manipulative way to try and tell Harry to avoid the dark spells in the book.