OOTP Chapter Twenty-Seven: "The Centaur and the Sneak"

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

* First of all, sorry this is so late, I'm afraid I've been a bit busy preparing to go back to university.

* This is the chapter in which Hermione officially crosses the line from “occasionally strident and self-righteous but on the whole likeable and sympathetic character” to “dangerous sociopath”.

* “‘A gorgeous centaur...’ sighed Parvati.” I must say that, given the, erm, associations of centaurs in classical mythology, this sort of thing rather creeps me out. Is JKR aware of the implications of what she’s writing? Or did she just throw it in without bothering to think it through?

* Hermione’s dropping dark hints about what Umbridge is going to do, revealing the plot like any good author avatar would.

* So Harry can remember the names of centaurs he met once four years ago, but in DH he won’t be able to remember a face from a picture from one chapter to the next. *coughplotconveniencecough*

* Wow, centaurs sure are arrogant and condescending people. No wonder Dumbledore felt enough of an affinity with Firenze to hire him as a teacher. He recognises a kindred spirit when he sees one.

* If I were JKR, I’d be hesitant to dignify the wizarding conflicts with the term “war”. They’re more like gang wars than what most people would think of as warfare. Which is why epic fantasy doesn’t really mix with a “secret magical people in this world” plot. Epic fantasy generally centres around mighty empires, big wars and bloody battles, but these things are generally quite noticeable, and any wizards fighting in large-scale conflicts would be found out pretty quickly. So the wizarding war pretty much has to be low-key to make it plausible that Muggles wouldn’t know about it, and the end result is that we get a lot of build-up and very little payoff.

* Firenze spends the whole lesson teaching them something which he doesn’t expect them to do anyway, and which is anyway a bit uncertain and useless. So he’s about as good as the average Hogwarts teacher, then.

* “Indeed, Harry sometimes wondered how Umbridge was going to react when all the members of the DA received ‘Outstanding’ in their Defence Against the Dark Arts OWLs.” Only kidding, Harry will be the only one to get an “Outstanding” mark, because he’s a Mary Sue just the most awesome DADA student ever.

* Although everybody always goes on about how smart Hermione is, and from what we see of her she doesn’t seem noticeably worse in DADA than she does in other subjects, so if she only got an “E” in her Defence OWL, that’s probably because Harry’s not a very good teacher... :p

* Seamus’ Patronus “was definitely something hairy”. *mind goes into the gutter*

* Hermione’s Patronus is an otter, even though she’s one of the least otter-like people in the series. On a Doylist level, this is probably because JKR’s favourite animal is the otter, so her author avatar will have one as her Patronus, obviously. On a Watsonian level, perhaps Patronuses don’t represent what your personality is like, but what you need to guard you and keep you out of trouble. So Hermione’s is an otter because she needs fun-loving people around her to stop her getting too serious about everything, Ron’s is a weasel because he needs smart people to compensate for his mental inadequacy, and Harry’s is a stag because he needs a proper father-figure to help him, not an abusive one like Uncle Vernon or a scheming and manipulative one like Dumbledore. Patronuses which change when somebody falls in love show that their caster needs to be loved by their intended in order to feel happy and secure again.

* Dobby appears, wearing “his usual eight woollen hats”. I quite like the suggestion that it was this sight that made Hermione drop her SPEW activities, as she saw that her hats were all going to this one elf, and that they were therefore pretty useless from a freeing people standpoint. (Can anybody remember if SPEW is brought up again in this book?)

* Umbridge is here! I bet it’s times like this that the DA wish they had a second, secret entrance from the ROR. That way they could slip away while Umbridge and her cronies sat uselessly in front of the main entrance.

* Draco’s concealed “beneath an ugly dragon-shaped vase”, to match his ugly and monstrous soul.

* Umbridge has “an indecent excitement in her voice”. I wonder if this is how Hermione would sound to those on the receiving end of her little schemes.

* When I first read this scene, I didn’t really mind the “Sneak” curse, because I just sort of assumed that Madam Pomfrey managed to find a way of removing them after a couple of weeks. Then we found out that she still had the scars years later and... yikes.

* Not only is that extremely vindictive, but it doesn’t actually help the DA in any way. It didn’t stop them being betrayed in the first place, and it didn’t alert them to the fact that Umbridge was coming to get them. If this had been a one-off incident and the curse hadn’t been permanent, I’d be inclined to put it down to youthful lack of thought, but when you compare it to some of Hermione’s other actions (her treatment of Rita Skeeter, or sending those canaries after Ron), it seems like a rather worrying pattern is starting to emerge...

* Minerva gets all self-righteous about Willy Widdershins being let off. I wonder whether she feels the same about Mundungus Fletcher, or whether petty crooks are OK just as long as they’re on her side.

* Also, she’s not above a bit of petty corruption herself, since she lets Gryffindor Quidditch players off homework when a match is coming up.

* So Kingsley memory-wipes Marietta to stop her telling. You know, this is exactly the sort of mentality that leads DEs to Imperius people and get them to do their bidding: not caring about your victims’ autonomy, just violating their minds when it’s convenient to do so.

* Also, if they are going to mind-wipe Marietta, why not do it to Percy, Fudge and Umbridge too? That would get them out of trouble entirely.

* And really guys, Umbridge has a list of DA members and access to Veritaserum. Obliviating one witness shouldn’t be enough.

* I’m surprised Umbridge thought she could get away with manhandling students like that in front of Dumbledore. I mean, that man’s just so concerned about his students’ welfare.

* Hermione left the membership list pinned to the ROR wall. Well done, Hermione. Not that any DA members will point out this idiocy to her. Nor will they point out the fact that her defensive jinx was (a) vindictive and useless, and (b) not told about to them when they joined up. Maybe they’re all worried she’ll brand the word “COMPLAINER” across their forehead if they speak up.

* Dumbledore taking the rap is all very noble and everything, but I don’t see how it’s meant to help. Fudge can still charge the pupils with attending, even if they didn’t organise it, and now Dumbledore’s ensured that he’s going to be on the run and unable to give them any help.

* Face-scarring aside, I actually quite liked this chapter. It was quite well-paced, and I never really felt like I was wading through pages of filler. It will be interesting to see if the other chapters will be more like this now the book’s reaching its climax, or whether the quality will slip back down again.

Comments

[lynn-waterfall.livejournal.com]

It's a bit silly. Are we to believe that all highly skilled and experienced adults in the castle were unable to take the "jinx" off?
Madam Pomfrey who can regrow bones? Flitwick who is Marietta's head of house? Snape?

My thought was that the jinx was particularly difficult to take off because Hermione used Marietta's signature -- that the magic was convinced that it had Marietta's consent to do this if she talked about the DA. Perhaps the jinx used Marietta's own magic to prevent itself from being removed, as well as Hermione's.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Or on his forehead under that curtain of hair.

[dracasadiablo.livejournal.com]

My thought was that the jinx was particularly difficult to take off because Hermione used Marietta's signature -- that the magic was convinced that it had Marietta's consent to do this if she talked about the DA. Perhaps the jinx used Marietta's own magic to prevent itself from being removed, as well as Hermione's.
O.k. I agree that in many fantasy settings your signature is something that can be used against you just as efficiently as blood or hair.
But if that's the case in HP world too?
JR needed to tell us so in any of the books. There were ample opportunities: Harry being forced into the Triwizard Tournament because somebody put, not just his name but, his signature into the Goblet of Fire.
Some half-blood or pure blood students being afraid to sign Hermione's list and asking is it safe, ... anything like that.

I think that it's more likely Marietta's permanently scarred because JR wanted her to be.
Or if we want a in world explanation, because Dumbledore forbid the rest of the staff from taking the jinx off.
Both to make Harry feel vindicated and because Dumbledore's a childish, pretty tyrant that could would fell "it's all her fault" and that "she got what she deserved".

I'm just amazed that the school isn't rife with children with pockmarked insults all over their bodies. This is a world where kids habitually jinx, hex and curse eachother for fun and stuff and where deathly animosity is encouraged between Houses to the point of near-murder.

I'm amazed that the Marauders never stooped to any permanent disfiguring hexes.

They probably did. And I don't even want to think what kind of damage Fred and George did.
Especially later after they have seen the "awesome" thing Hermione did and started making their magical quills.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

You know, it seems to me that what these kids really need is some sort of Ethics and Responsibilities of Magic class. Or to have their wands taken away if they are a nuisance. Otherwise, giving superpowers to a bunch of obnoxious brats is a terrible idea.

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

You mean that's not what the Sorting Hat does?

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Nice. Maybe it would be a good idea to do something for all of those supposedly evil Slytherins, other than put them all together and hope they don't start up evil wizarding clubs like the DE's.

Actually, it kind of amazes me just how little Hogwarts teaches. I mean it's magic, plus history (which is written off as boring and useless) and some magical forms of math, animal husbandry and botany that don't really translate over to "the real world". No sciences, other than learning herbal lore. No arts. No literature. No music. No physical education. (considering that it's spent riding around on a broomstick rather than physically moving, I don't count Quidditch) No ethics. No wonder these people can't understand the muggle world! Their practical knowledge stopped at about age 11, if they got it at all.

As a side note, this would probably explain why there is no real literary or artistic culture in the WW. The fact that the supposedly superior wizards can't come up with something that pretty much every muggle culture has is kind of sad, actually. (said as a former liberal arts major)

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

And isn't it interview-canon that there's no higher education?

[oryx_leucoryx]

No universities. Some jobs require further training - it takes 3 years to become an Auror. I suppose healers also do some training in their early years at St Mungo's but we aren't given specifics.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Yikes! Somehow this just makes it worse.

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

"As a side note, this would probably explain why there is no real literary or artistic culture in the WW."

Well maybe, but then lots of great art and literature has been made in societies where people don't generally study such things at school -- poetry written in oral cultures, for example -- so I'm not sure the WW can use that excuse. Maybe they're just naturally uncreative. Or maybe JK Rowling just didn't think of it. People have mentioned before how stuff happening off-page just doesn't seem to be "real" to her, which I suppose would explain the lack of clear world-building in these books.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Good point. I had forgotten about oral traditions somehow.

Apparently I was just trying to give JKR an excuse for her lack of worldbuilding. (though it amazes me that someone would skip out on that- I mean, that's one of the best things about writing a fantasy!)

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

"I mean, that's one of the best things about writing a fantasy!)"

Apparently JK Rowling didn't realise she was writing fantasy until she included unicorns, or something silly like that, so...

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

I would thing that the magic gave it away. ;-)

Maybe she didn't think she needed to do worldbuilding because it was sort of set in an environment she knew? I am very curious about her writing process now.

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

"I would thing that the magic gave it away. ;-)"

Yeah, I remember thinking it was odd... Maybe she was getting confused between high fantasy and fantasy in general, or something? Like, fantasy only counts as fantasy if it includes a large number of fantastic elements, just adding magic into a normal setting doesn't count?

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

It would be interesting to give her a copy of something like Perdido Street Station and see how long it takes her to realise it's fantasy. (Or to ask her what genre Star Wars counts as.)

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

Well maybe, but then lots of great art and literature has been made in societies where people don't generally study such things at school -- poetry written in oral cultures, for example

But Rowling doesn't present anything like an oral/bardic culture in her WW.

What she DOES give us is a society that ostensibly was living pretty openly with nonmagikal society until 1692...well beyond the date of the invention of the printing press, a date where nonmagikal society had been creating and printing great literature, poems, and plays, not to mention printing what had previously been only oral tradition, or written by hand in expensive, illuminated tomes unavailable to the general public.

Nonmagikal Europe had a long-standing tradition of traveling minstrels, people who were mostly illiterate but learned songs and plays by hearing them and memorizing. There's no excuse for magikal Europe not to have had a similar tradition.

Maybe they're just naturally uncreative.

Well what Rowling gives us is a society where any modicum of creativity is either discouraged outright, or only considered acceptable if applied to certain areas...creativity in what could be deemed "vo-tech" subjects is fine, but creativity in the area of fine arts is not.


Or maybe JK Rowling just didn't think of it.

Because she herself is singularly noncreative overall, and obviously does not value true artists in any field. She's someone who would buy a painting because it matched her living room decor and would look good over the sofa.

Artistic Culture

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

They have culture! They have pop music (Celestina and the Weird Sisters), they have magical art (portraits and landscapes), and they have literature (Beedle).

What more would you expect of a community of about 10,000 total? (Jodel's estimate.)

I grew up in an isolated mill town of about that size, and in terms of creativity it was about that--an occasional person who painted watercolors abd a whole lot of rosemarling, wood-carving, and textile crafts, a number of garage bands, poems or little stories published in church newsletters and the like. No composers, artists, or writers of distinction.

There were people who "consumed" higher culture-- who played music composed outside the community, who read books published outside the community, who enjoyed art from outside the community. In fact everyone did.

In the WW, this would be skewed by the fact that some people would refuse to accept any art from outside their community. But we don't know which artists or writers were really wizards or Squibs publishing originally in the larger Muggle community, but still acceptable to Purebloods now. (Or which might be falsely claimed to have been--if the Black library contained a folio of Shakespeare, surely Walburga was convinced his genius belonged to wizardkind. For anything we know, Pureblood supremacists might be completely convinced that all the best minds of pre-Seclusion Europe were wizards, unbeknownst to their contemporary Muggles.)

ADMITTING to interest in overtly Muggle culture is probably a political declaration.

You know, like,

"Professor Dumbledore enjoys chamber music and tenpin bowling."

Re: Artistic Culture

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

I had forgotten about the size and relative isolation of the community. I wonder then if any of them ever have been secretly jealous of muggle creativity though. ;-)

Re: Artistic Culture

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Grins wickedly--

Only the brightest could have been....

It was another mill-town-flotsam-artist who explained to me the concommitant rule:

90% of anything is always garbage.

Only the top 10% can register further distinctions, in any field in which you bother to register such distinctions....

In a community of 10,000, that's at most 100 persons total. Who can truly appreciate how clever the Weasley twins' latest prank was, how clever Profesor Snape's word-play trap was, how clever Hermione was to have sprung that trap....

And those artists (all both of them) waiting in vain for meaningful feedback on those portraits--oh, the heart bleeds, it does!

Re: Artistic Culture

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

I think that you may have just described liberal arts hell. *shudders*

Re: Artistic Culture

[lynn-waterfall.livejournal.com]

I think that's fair, but in a way, we're giving JKR more credit than she deserves, anyway. (No, really.)

I mean, coming up with the name of a comic strip, for example (Marvin Miggs), is not that different from not having bothered to come up with the name of a comic strip. We still don't know anything about the contents, beyond the fact that wizards find Muggles funny (which is amply demonstrated elsewhere). We never see anyone reading it or talking about it. JKR didn't need to produce any actual culture, beyond the title, or have it affect anything that we saw. Same goes for the Weird Sisters. That's a significant chunk of the "culture" we hear about.

Re: Artistic Culture

[oryx_leucoryx]

Well, we do get the lyrics to Celestina's song. And some of the fairy tales (one in DH, a few others that Rowling forced herself to write using titles she threw randomly into the story). But you are right - it would have added more to the world-building to see Ron and Seamus arguing which cartoon character was better or anticipating the next installment of the series. Again, we get that with Celestina - Arthur and Molly danced to her songs when they were 18, but the younger people don't get excited about her - so we see an example of musical styles changing from one generation to the next.

Re: Artistic Culture

[oryx_leucoryx]

if the Black library contained a folio of Shakespeare, surely Walburga was convinced his genius belonged to wizardkind

Clever of him to disguise his magical heritage by including characters based on Muggle perceptions of magic - for example the witches in Macbeth.

Pre-seclusion artistic wizards could learn from Muggles. I wonder whether seclusion stifled creativity or caused more wizards to commit to filling the gap. Or perhaps there were more attempts to create wizardng art, but lower quality over all.

Re: Artistic Culture

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

They have pop music

But seemingly no "ancient" music, nor "folk music", nor any operas, symphonies, suites, sonatas, ballets, etc. There is no tradition of magikal dance.

they have magical art (portraits and landscapes)

They have magikal paintings whose descriptions in no way even come close to true art; they are the WW equivalent of something that looks good over the couch.

and they have literature (Beedle).

Whose writings, despite his name, no way approach true bardic literature. And they have no plays, no classical novels.

Neither do we find any extraordinary architecture coming out of the modern (post-12th century) WW.

What more would you expect of a community of about 10,000 total?

At least as much culture as Bronze Age European nonmagikal people -- who couldn't have numbered more than 10,000 -- managed to create.