GOF Chapter 8: The Quidditch World Cup

[oryx_leucoryx]

If 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 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.

Comments

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

/We see Fudge, and the Bulgarian Minister. But no Irish Minister in sight. Has the Wizarding World not caught up with the 1920s?/

You're right, that is weird. Unless JKR meant Northern Ireland...but that still wouldn't make sense, since it would have to be explicitly mentioned by the announcers and everyone else that Bulgaria was playing against Northern Ireland, not Ireland. Well, Ireland apparently doesn't have its own wizarding school, since Seamus Finnigan goes to Hogwarts, so I guess that it doesn't have its own Minister either. :(

/Fudge receives the Cup on behalf of Ireland. Looks like wizards have their own borders./

And the text doesn't even say that maybe the Irish Minister was ill or something and Fudge had to stand in for him/her. I give up. *sighs*

I sincerely apologize if I sound totally insensitive or idiotic here, but I wouldn't necessarily expect the wizarding world to have the same political boundaries as the modern muggle world. When Hogwarts was founded, the islands of Ireland and Scotland both consisted of several small kingdoms, so perhaps at this point in history there wasn't even yet a cultural identity of being "Irish" or "Scottish." Plus, there may have only been enough wizards and witches in the British Isles to support one school. When the Statute of Secrecy went into effect in 1692, Ireland was under the control of the English monarchy, and had been so on and off for several centuries, so it makes sense that wizarding Ireland and England were part of the same political entity at that time. After 1692, wizards had less and less to do with the political concerns of the muggle world.

I realize that England and Ireland have a very bloody history, but it seems like the issues over which they were fighting--land ownership, fidelity to the crown vs. the pope, political and economic power, etc.--are not necessarily issues that would have been relevant in the wizarding world. After all, the wizards were hiding from both the Catholics and the Protestants.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Who knows, maybe much of the English vs Irish fighting were the result of Ministry cover-ups for actions of wizards against Muggles.

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

LOL now that's an interesting thought. I wonder if it's significant that the statute of secrecy came right on the heels of the Glorious Revolution and the Williamite War.