deathtocapslock | GOF Chapter 22: The Unexpected Task

Today's Transfiguration lesson is about turning an animal from one species to an animal from a different one. What's the point? Does the animal retain the neurology of its original species or acquire that of the new one? Even in the latter case, surely its memories are those of the original species? How do the poor creatures know how to do things?

Ron and Harry are having a sword-fight with fake wands. At least Minerva criticizes them. She announces the Yule Ball, where 4th years and up (as well as any younger guests some of them might invite) have a chance to socialize with the 24 guests. Because the guests are living on their respective vehicles and hardly have a chance to socialize with anyone. Unless you count Viktor ducking his fans in the library.

The champions and their dance partners traditionally open the ball. Now Harry has a task to distract him from preparing for the second task (something he hasn't thought about yet, despite his experience with the danger of the first one). Well, now he thinks of the dragon as a fun diversion, so maybe there is no contradiction.

Molly was right - at least among the 4th years and higher everybody is staying for Christmas, regardless of how they rank their prospects of getting a date to the ball. (Did Ginny think of going home before she got an invitation or was she counting on someone inviting her?) Harry suddenly notices the girls at Hogwarts, now that he needs one as a date. Until now he only noticed boys like Ron, Cedric, Viktor and Draco. Maybe he really is gay.

Well, at least Harry knows whom he'd like to ask, if given a chance. Now that he needs a date, he refuses 4 girls who ask him. Yes, they only care about him because he's famous, but so does almost everyone else, so what's the difference? Even Ron (and Draco!) originally got interested in him because he was TBWL.

The Hufflepuffs are letting Harry be. Which does not mean any of them believe he wasn't a cheat. Aw, Draco's audience has shrunk!

Rita's interview with Hagrid was mostly about Hagrid's opinion of Harry, of course. At least Hagrid acknowledges Severus' criticism about Harry's constant line-crossing wasn't entirely off. Oh, Hagrid will attend the ball. Guess with whom?

Why would Dumbles need to buy 800 barrels of mead for the ball? Buy one bottle and multiply however many times. Unless he wasn't that great at Transfiguration? But he did book the Weird Sisters, the only wizarding band in Britain (as far as we know). Wizarding cultural life is so exciting.

Filius let the students play games in class so he could chat with Harry and praise him. Is he the new Hagrid? Binns still insists on making goblin rebellions boring. That's because goblins are no longer rebellious. Now 'Moody' has them working seriously, he doesn't just impress them with Dark Arts demos. And he's teaching the entire class now, not just Harry. Severus would no sooner let them play games in class than adopt Harry. Little does Harry know. Right, how evil of a teacher to give students until the end of term to prepare for a test. (Which happens to be on a topic that is supposed to be crucial for Ron and Harry's preferred career path, BTW.)

Wizarding cards are cooler than Muggle ones because they explode occasionally, but skrewts are beasts from hell. I follow the logic, almost.

There are only 2 kinds of books Harry ever enjoys reading - Quidditch books and Dark Arts books. Now he is with the former. Despite having a potentially dangerous task to face in some 2.5 months. Hermione is such a spoil-sport to remind him of that.

The twins want Ron's owl to send a letter, but they won't tell him to whom. Fred knows he'll attend the ball with Angelina before he even asked her. Of course for all we know they have been dating since 1st year - Harry wouldn't be able to tell.

Ron wants to attend the ball with the best-looking girl he can manage, and that does *not* mean Hermione. This is his second major personal insult to her (in addition to many minor ones), which is why she made it a life mission to force him to acknowledge his mistake and marry her. Soulmates indeed.

Neither Harry nor Ron have a date, but Harry's fate is worse, because he is a champion. Harry can't get Cho alone. After all these years he finally discovered girls' preference to have company on the way to the bathroom.

A bezoar is a key ingredient of an antidote. Harry will remember this better coming from a younger version of Severus.

Harry manages finally to ask Cho, but he is too late. Oh, Cho would so have agreed if only he had asked before Cedric did! Even when he loses Harry gets affirmation that he really is the best. See, Cedric is pretty and brainless. As opposed to Harry who is not (yet) pretty and, er, well... (let's not discuss his brains here).

Harry's one consolation is that Ron failed even worse than he did, by asking someone who more obviously outclassed him. Ron's consolation is that Neville was refused by Hermione - ie Neville ranks even lower than Ron because the girl who turned Neville down ranks much lower than the one who completely ignored Ron. Of course Ron can't imagine anyone (but Neville) asking Hermione of his own will. Not happening, right? (Notice how Neville is better socialized and braver than both trio boys - he dares to ask a girl before they do, and his choice is based on the girl's behavior rather than purely her looks. Also, he didn't give up when he was turned down. Also, Ginny is so popular that the only one who asked her to the ball was Neville, and only because Hermione refused him.)

Suddenly Ron has the realization of the century - Hermione has 2 X chromosomes! (Do wizards know about chromosomes? Never mind.) But despite her repeated insistence, he can't get that she already had a date. Ron even tries setting Ginny up with Harry - again, too late. Not that Ginny likes Neville, in any way. Not that he was her preference. He was just her ticket to the ball. As she leaves for dinner we part for ever with Ginny V1.0, the one who, among other things, keeps Hermione's confidence.

Finally Harry asks Parvati, who for plot-contrived reasons is still available. Lavender was already asked by Seamus, but Padma might go with Ron. We can all sigh with relief that this messy business was completed in a single chapter.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

madderbrad.livejournal.com

We know he wanted to get rid of a dark artifact when the ministry was raiding homes. We don't know if he knew what the diary would do.

Okay, Malfoy might not have known that a person with the diary would be possessed and start scribbling messages on walls.

But he did know that it was a 'dark artifact', as you say. Dark artifacts do dark things. And Malfoy didn't do the right thing as an upstanding citizen and hand it in to the government for safe disposal. Because he knew that his having it would show that he wasn't an upstanding citizen.

So he gives the dark artificact that does dark things to the daughter of his political enemy. To do dark things. To that sweet innocent little girl!!!

SHAME, Lucius! SHAME!

I'm pretty sure much of humanity is in that boat.

The non-heroic majority? Fair enough.

From:

oryx_leucoryx

Because he knew that his having it would show that he wasn't an upstanding citizen.

Even that isn't at all clear. Because Borgin and Burkes sell Dark artifacts all the time, in the open. So it isn't illegal to be in possession of Dark Artifacts, nor is it a sign of bad citizenry. Plenty would say the Ministry raids were politically motivated. Or an example of nanny-statism.

The non-heroic majority? Fair enough.

No, even people who see themselves as heroic. Very few people, mostly those with degrees in philosophy, don't prefer the lives, welfare and comfort of those close to them over lives, welfare and comfort of people less close to them.

From:

madderbrad.livejournal.com

So it isn't illegal to be in possession of Dark Artifacts, nor is it a sign of bad citizenry.

Yet Malfoy chose to surreptitiously discard his dark artifact by deceitfully slipping it to the poor innocent child.

If it wasn't an evil dark artifact he either (a) wouldn't have had to get rid of it at all, or (b) could have discard it via conventional 'upstanding citizen' ways. He did not. Therefore, he was an evil man performing an evil deed to do what he did.

No, even people who see themselves as heroic.

I confess I wouldn't want a 'hero' to amble past and decide to sacrifice my life for a stranger's on the other side of the planet. :-)

I wish I had a good grasp of history so I could dig up if there were examples, say, of people being charged with war crimes for protecting their loved ones over mass murder (which is equivalent to your defence of Draco). Yours is a stronger case of "just obeying orders" I guess.

From:

oryx_leucoryx

If it wasn't an evil dark artifact he either (a) wouldn't have had to get rid of it at all, or (b) could have discard it via conventional 'upstanding citizen' ways.

No, because he was an upstanding citizen with a dodgy past who was being unfairly targeted by political rivals who were increasing their power. Under the current climate it was OK for some people to have Dark artifacts but not others. The Dumbledore faction was using confiscation of Dark artifacts as an excuse to attack people they didn't like.

I confess I wouldn't want a 'hero' to amble past and decide to sacrifice my life for a stranger's on the other side of the planet. :-)

Avoid getting into a war zone. Because that's what is happening now in the current ones.

I wish I had a good grasp of history so I could dig up if there were examples, say, of people being charged with war crimes for protecting their loved ones over mass murder (which is equivalent to your defence of Draco). Yours is a stronger case of "just obeying orders" I guess.

Draco wasn't committing mass murder. Just attempting to murder one person to save the life of another he cared about more.

According to Joshua Greene humanity is empirically split roughly in half over the choice between killing their own baby in order to save their village or not doing so and letting the village be killed with the baby and themselves. How would the odds shift if not killing the baby actually got the baby a reasonable chance to survive?

From:

madderbrad.livejournal.com

Under the current climate it was OK for some people to have Dark artifacts but not others. The Dumbledore faction was using confiscation of Dark artifacts as an excuse to attack people they didn't like.

Can you tell me how you derive this? I'm sorry if you've already gone over it, I can't see it.

The fact remains - Malfoy chose to give a known evil artifact that does evil things to an innocent girl. Are you telling me there was absolutely NOTHING else he could do with it? I'm sure a wizard like Malfoy could have found some other way to get rid of it (given as how he wasn't prepared to take his lumps for having acquiring the evil artifact in his dodgy past).

From:

oryx_leucoryx

Can you tell me how you derive this? I'm sorry if you've already gone over it, I can't see it.

Arthur and his friends were raiding homes to confiscate Dark artifacts, while Borgin and Burkes were openly advertising a cursed necklace that already claimed the lives of 19 Muggle owners. If it was legal for B&B to sell the necklace logically it was OK for some people to own it. But can you imagine Arthur raiding Lucius' home, recognizing the necklace and just letting it stay there?

Yes, as majorjune says, Lucius could have tossed the diary in a dumpster. Heck, he could have tossed it into a Muggle dumpster. Who could trace it to him from there?

Though we don't know if his plan was to plant it on Ginny. Dobby's odd warning suggested to some the original plan was to plant it on Harry and either he changed his mind the last moment or Dobby intervened. And we don't know what he expected to happen - we see he doesn't organize a search of the school (with the intent of finding the diary and blaming the owner) - he goes after Albus. Perhaps he was going to suggest the search after the next attack, or perhaps he really didn't know the attacks had anything to do with the diary. Perhaps he expected whoever received the diary to take it to an adult who would eventually bring it to Albus and the latter would know how to destroy the thing. Perhaps it was important that the diary be in the hands of an innocent who would never be suspected of knowingly handling the thing with ill-intent, so s/he can pass it on to an authority figure without blame. (Can you imagine the repercussions if say, Draco were caught with an item like that?)

From:

madderbrad.livejournal.com

If it was legal for B&B to sell the necklace logically it was OK for some people to own it.

Nice. Well, maybe the Ministry hadn't gotten around to raiding Knockturn alley yet.

Even if Borgin got away with selling cursed items - maybe he'd bribed the Ministry - that still doesn't let Malfoy off the hook.

Dobby's odd warning suggested to some the original plan was to plant it on Harry --

I'd forgotten the whole thing about Dobby warning Harry! Shucks, that cements it for me - Malfoy knew what he was doing, he planned terrible evil things, which Dobby overheard.

Perhaps he expected whoever received the diary to take it to an adult who would eventually bring it to Albus and the latter would know how to destroy the thing.

Come now. There's no way Malfoy could have arranged for Dumbledore to receive the diary? Without putting innocent children in danger, that is?

There's a lot of 'perhaps' there Oryx. You seem to be conjuring excuses out of thin air to try and save Malfoy. But the simplest (by far!) explanation is the most likely one - Lucius Malfoy was an evil man up to no good in year 2.

From:

oryx_leucoryx

Yes, Dobby warned harry. But his warning didn't match the plot as it appeared to have unfolded. If we believe what we are told, Harry only became a target after Diary!Tom changed his plan, probably based on what Ginny wrote in the diary about Harry and the version she knew of the events of Godric's Hollow. So either Dobby was lying and had his own agenda or he misunderstood. Nor do Lucius' actions match what Albus attributes to him. So we are stuck not knowing what Lucius intended as the consequences of planting the diary on anyone, and who that person was supposed to be. Or even if he was acting deliberately at all.

The problem with Rowling's writing (which I only figured out after the incomprehensible mess that was DH) was that while she knows what Harry needs to know or not know in order to arrive first at mistaken conclusions and later at those she intends him to end up with, she completely fails at thinking from the mindset of any other character whose actions matter, on either side. So I ignore her intentions, I don't assume Harry's final conclusion is right (he has a tendency to jump to conclusions based on intuition rather than evidence) and I do my best to use the facts that I know assuming characters are not completely crazy.

Now after all the goalpost shifting here are my claims about Lucius and his family:

Lucius and Narcissa are the most mutually supportive couple we are shown, with the most balanced relationship.
Their parenting style as shown is about expecting their son to do well and holding him to these expectations consistently (COS), which I don't think we see the other parents do.
As for Lucius' politics - he was no longer supportive of Voldemort. Whatever he did from the summer between PS and COS and the reappearance of the Dark Mark was to promote a personal political agenda (which probably was supposed to lead to placing Lucius eventually either as Minister, or more likely, as the person the Minister turns to - instead of the old fool from Hogwarts). He plays dirty, but the evidence for murderous intent or even intending to cause lasting harm is thin on the ground. (The character in the books. Jogn Isaacs' character is of very different caliber.)

From:

oryx_leucoryx

Well, maybe the Ministry hadn't gotten around to raiding Knockturn alley yet.

Same necklace was there 4 years later. Even when Arthur had 10 underlings, and went to search Malfoy Manor a couple of times.

From:

madderbrad.livejournal.com

That's an interesting abstract of Greene's, thanks.

In reading that page I found myself moving off the fence and more to the side of damning Draco. It was the 'pushing the man off the bridge' example which made me feel this way.

You see, many people have an emotional response against pushing the man off the bridge because he's an innocent. He's not in danger as it stands; to save the five one has to deliberately place him in mortal peril. Versus the first example where the people on both sides of the track are at risk, so there's much less emotional stakes involved.

Draco acted to kill hundreds of people (that's the 'mass murderer' part of a previous comment of mine) or even more (should Voldemort win society, the muggles, the world would be doomed) to save his mother and father. But the Malfoy parents *aren't* like that bloke on the bridge. They're already in danger. Furthermore it's danger brought about by their own misdeeds.

So I now feel less sympathy for the Malfoys. Sure, Draco's emotional ties to his parents would be easy reason for him to proceed the way he did. But I'm sure society would have a much less lenient view of his actions. In the end he was an enemy soldier; he shouldn't have gotten off.

From:

oryx_leucoryx

Draco acted to kill hundreds of people (that's the 'mass murderer' part of a previous comment of mine) or even more (should Voldemort win society, the muggles, the world would be doomed) to save his mother and father. But the Malfoy parents *aren't* like that bloke on the bridge. They're already in danger. Furthermore it's danger brought about by their own misdeeds.

We don't know that Draco expected the deaths of hundreds of innocents if Voldie won. In the first war the DEs mostly killed those who actively fought against them, also killing family members as collateral damage. (And Rowling's interview hints indicate the same for the second war - she said something about Mrs Abbott and promised Florean Fortescue's story for the Encyclopedia of Doom. By the time she is done embelishing everyone's story there will hardly be any innocent targets left.) But for Draco's specific mission - he attempted to kill a political rival of his family, the worst thing that ever happened to Hogwarts, to save his parents. Yes, in 2 cases third parties got hurt. In the first case it was rather unpredictable - Katie was hurt only because of a hole in her glove. The second scheme was more prone to harming unintended parties - and note that we hear of no further attempts by Draco until his grander plan of repairing the cabinet came to fruition despite the fact that it wasn't going well. So either Severus caught all the others or there weren't any - because Draco realized how close he got to killing someone he did not intend to. He planned his invasion for past curfew, when kids would be out of harm's way.

The bridge dilemma asks one to kill an innocent stranger to save 4 other innocent *strangers*. Draco was trying to actively kill a non-innocent to save his own parents. I really hope I never have to find out how many innocents I'd be willing to kill or leave to die to save my daughter or my husband. While few people are willing to kill the guy on the bridge to save the railroad workers, many will let innocents die with their baby rather than kill the baby to save the innocents. How many innocents would they kill or let die to save the baby? While Narcissa isn't a baby she is probably Draco's closest and most loved person. (And what did she do to 'deserve' the fate of being Vodie's hostage?)

From:

madderbrad.livejournal.com

Sorry, I meant "yours is a stronger case THAN 'just obeying orders'". I can't think of real-world examples of people damning hundreds of strangers to save a single loved one, and whether such were prosecuted for 'war crimes' or such.

From:

oryx_leucoryx

I'm sure they would be prosecuted, because it isn't in any government's interest that people put their loved ones above the rest of society. But Greene's work suggests such priorities are common.