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deathtocapslockMuch of the tendency of the “Marietta’s True Crime” debate was to put Marietta and Hermione on a moral see-saw. The unspoken premise was, the more justified (or sympathetic) Marietta was in approaching Umbridge and telling her about a certain illegal student organization, the less so was Hermione for “punishing” Marietta by mutilating her, perhaps for life.
(Only “perhaps,” fine. Just as it’s only “perhaps” that Dolores scarred Harry permanently with that Blood Quill. We know from Mad-Eye, Albus, Arthur, Bill, Draco, and Harry himself that magical injuries can leave lifelong scars. But still, it’s not explicitly stated in canon that Harry, fantastically old, died with that scar still on his hand. For anything we know, it vanished one page after its last mention in DH. So no one can accuse Umbridge of scarring Harry for life, right? But in canon, the last we saw, Harry bore “I must not tell lies” engraved into his flesh. In canon, the last we saw of Marietta, she was trying desperately to hide the word “Sneak” blazoned across her face.)
Now, in schoolkid morality, tattling on someone to the teacher is a crime. Tattling on a friend, after explicitly promising not to tell, is the worst crime possibly imaginable!
We, however, are adults, and have larger imaginations.
And Hermione’s betrayal of her schoolfellows (and Hermione’s other crimes) may be judged without reference to Marietta’s transgression.
First, though, I’d like to make a point about Marietta. As others have pointed out, it’s quite easy to come up with scenarios in which honoring a promise to keep a friend’s secret is not the morally correct course of action. To take an extreme case, I very much doubt that anyone would counsel me to keep silent about a friend’s secret, should that secret prove to be that the friend is sodomizing a six-year-old. Breaking my promise and “selling out” the friend to authorities would be not merely permissible, but imperative.
Even within the Potterverse, turning one’s friends or allies over to their enemies is presented differently depending on circumstances. Peter was a rat for betraying James and Lily to Voldemort. Luna’s father was a man facing a heartbreaking dilemma when he turned the Trio over to the Death Eaters. And Severus Snape was doing the right thing when he betrayed his Death Eater friends to Albus.
(At least I’ve never come across anyone in fandom seriously arguing [to paraphrase Jane Austen] that the rashness of Snape’s original intention in joining the Death Eaters, would have been atoned for by his obstinacy in adhering to that allegiance. No one argues that Severus ought to have kept his solemn vow of eternal loyalty to Tom. So breaking promises and betraying friends is sometimes the right thing to do. Or at least, less wrong than honoring a promise one ought not to have made and sticking by friends who are clearly behaving criminally.)
In Marietta’s case, we know her action, but not her story. So we simply don’t know whether she was being weak, or heroic-but-misguided, or self-serving, or facing unbearable pressures, when she went to Umbridge. ANYTHING we say about her motives is speculation.
All, the only thing that Jo saw fit to tell us, was that Harry thought that Marietta (whom he’d be hard put to pick out in a lineup were she unscarred) “sold us out,” while Cho argued (to the point of breaking up with Harry) that Marietta simply “made a mistake.”
The most a reader can point out with canon justification, is that one of those two characters was in a far better position than the other to have any realistic knowledge of Marietta’s motives.
Given that lack of canon, each reader has made up some provisional internal story about Why Marietta Did It. Our individual interpretations must affect our sympathy or lack thereof for the character Marietta. (She’s a traitor! No, she was trying to protect her mum! No, she had decided she needed to put her foot down at the rampant illegality and sedition…. )
However, that is irrelevant to judging Hermione’s actions.
We can judge Hermione without bringing Marietta’s justifications, or lack thereof, into the matter at all.
*
Because, contrary to for_diddled’s tongue-in-cheek words, Hermione did not become a sociopath in this chapter. She was just revealed as one. She BECAME one in the Hog’s Head.
A sociopath, and stupid. When she betrayed the entire DA-to-be—her only friends, and her would-be allies. When Hermione conned her fellow students into signing a binding (mutilating!) contract, which they all believed at the time to be nothing but a blank parchment.
And then didn’t even TELL them afterwards, so the knowledge of HER betrayal of THEM could forestall any impulse they might subsequently entertain of betraying the group.
The smart AND honorable thing for Hermione to have done at the Hog’s Head would have been to give any doubters a fair and open chance to back out with no peer pressure and no consequences. No consequences, that is, except that they would forever be excluded from the forming group—no weaseling along the lines of , “Er, my friend here can just tell me about a meeting and I’ll attend if I feel like it.” No, one had to choose to be in or out.
But Hermione should have been honest about the consequences—that choosing to join, and to sign, would commit them to serious magical consequences should they subsequently default.
The way our girl Hermione instead went about matters was criminal, dishonorable, AND stupid. She offered no deterrence to potential traitors (or, more gently, to people who might “alter when they alteration found” in the group and its purposes) since the doubters didn’t know of the potential danger to themselves of defaulting. She sealed INTO the group several people who were obviously not fully convinced or committed (when the smart thing to have done would have been to have booted them out at once, if necessary with a promise—if binding, openly so—not to tell about the first meeting). And she bound a group of students, most of them minor children, at least one as young as twelve, to a magical contract they had not knowingly consented to Which would maim them if they defaulted.
This is a staple situation, of course, of classic mystery novels (which JKR is said to admire): a criminal induces victim(s) to sign unknowingly a will in the criminal’s favor, or a contract, or whatever, without the victims realizing what they’re putting their signatures to.
Usually the nefarious deed is done by slipping the legal paper in amongst legitimate and tedious documents, and hoping the addition will be signed unnoticed. But occasionally, as with Hermione, it’s done by producing a document with invisible ink and inducing the victim to sign what they think to be a blank page. Conning someone into signing something the victim has no way of even recognizing as a binding contract, and holding hir (or hir estate) afterwards to a commitment the victim would not knowingly have made.
In classic mysteries, the person who would do such a thing to others is always portrayed as utterly despicable—a cad, a cheat and defrauder who abuses the trust and good will of the signatory victim(s). Once the readers know that a character is depraved enough to stoop to THAT, nothing else that character might do could surprise us.
Whatever the circumstances under which the cheat is finally uncovered. And whatever we may think of any of the victims. The true villain is the one who deceived others into signing binding legal documents unknowingly. If we might subsequently disapprove of the actions of one of the injured parties, that cannot hinder our abhorrence of the scoundrel who systematically tricked victims into signing binding legal documents without their full knowledge and consent.
To dupe children into entering into binding contracts that could injure them? The mind boggles. The only real life example I can think of is the Children’s Crusade. Or some pimps.
Of course, in the real world a minor couldn’t be bound by any contract not endorsed by guardians, whether duped or legitimate. But in the WW, with magical contracts, six-year-old Ronnie could enter into an Unbreakable Vow and be killed by it. Fourteen-year-old Harry could be forced to face dragons because of a binding contract he hadn’t even put his own name to!
*
There are circumstances in which it can be more honorable to break a promise than to keep it. There are circumstances in which turning a law-breaking friend in to the authorities can be considered commendable.
Or, wherel wrong, at least still forgivable and understandable. (We don’t have to think Luna’s father’s decision was RIGHT to sympathize with his dilemma.)
There are no circumstances in which it can be honorable to betray people who trust you by tricking them into signing a binding contract without their knowledge or consent.
None.
Only an utter blackguard could do that.
*
I just reread Dorothy Sayers’ The Dawson Pedigree/ (American: Unnatural Death) for the Golden Age mystery take on that crime. Interestingly, in Sayers’ book the will the villain tries to trick the victim into signing only enforced the disposition of property that the victim intended anyhow. (Thus underlining the principle that there are NO circumstances under which this behavior is permissible.) The underlying problem the criminal faces is, a change to the laws of inheritance has been enacted and is soon to take effect. The criminal was the automatic heiress under the old law, but might be disinherited under the new, should her relative die intestate. The victim is terrified of dying and superstitiously refuses to make a will. So the criminal tries to trick her into signing one. When that effort fails, the villain coolly kills the old lady before the new law could take effect.
Lord Peter plaintively asks the village vicar, why is this wrong in theory? The old lady was dying anyhow of incurable cancer, and could at most have lived a few months more, in constant pain and drugged confusion. And the criminal is only making sure that what happened in the end was what the old lady wanted, after all—the old lady wanted her great-niece to inherit! So what’s the problem?
“I think,” said Mr. Tredgold, “that the sin—I won’t use that word—the damage to Society, the wrongness of the thing, lies much more in the harm it does the killer than in anything it can do to the person who is killed…. It is bad for a human being to get to feel that he has any right whatever to dispose of another person’s life to his own advantage. it leads him on to think himself above all laws…. That is why—or one reason why—God forbids private vengeance.” (UD, end of chapter XIX, p 190 in my edition)
And here are two descriptions of Sayers’ criminal, Mary: first, nerving herself to commit a fresh murder:
“the odd, defiant look…. an unattractive mingling of recklessness and calculation”. (UD, end of chapter XXII, p. 224)
And the final judgment on Sayers’ villainess:
“She probably really thought anyone who inconvenienced her had no right to exist.” (UD, end of chapter XXIII, p. 237)
Hermione, of course, is no killer. At least, not that we know. But she shows the same “unattractive mingling of recklessness and calculation” when she betrays her friends and fellow students by getting them to sign a cursed parchment, doesn’t she?
She rummaged in her bag and produced parchment and a quill, then hesitated, as though she were steeling herself to say something.
“I-I think everyone should write their name down, just so we know who was here.” (OotP 16)
And the vicar’s point is, once a person starts to feel s/he has a right to dispose of other peoples’ lives (or disregard their right to make their own choices), that attitude will only harden into thinking oneself above all laws.
Say it with me: IOIAGDI!
The major difference between Sayers’ Mary and Rowling’s Hermione, of course, is that Mary tries to trick her relative into unknowingly signing a binding legal agreement out of selfish greed. Hermione tricks her friends into doing so, out of loyalty to Harry and conviction of the rightness of her cause.
Just as Umbridge commits HER crimes in OotP out of loyalty to Fudge and conviction of the rightness the cause of suppressing Dumbledore’s and Harry’s seditious and damaging rumor-mongering.
*
Next, consider exactly what Hermione tricked her fellow students into binding themselves TO, what vengeance she considered appropriate if one of them did change hir mind about the group. (And remember that the vicar spoke of God forbidding “private vengeance” in particular because of its moral ill effects.)
Slave owners, of course, have never had a problem with the idea of branding their property. And branding used to be considered appropriate punishment for the worst of criminals (particularly military deserters) in many countries. Used to be. Centuries ago. Now, it’s considered barbaric in all civilized nations.
So, fine, the WW is old-fashioned; we know that. Flogging bad enough to leave permanent scars was acceptable punishment for breaking curfew back when not-that-old-Arthur was a Hogwarts student. That might, indeed, partly excuse Dolores’s willingness to use a Blood Quill on Harry: it’s a fine old Wizarding tradition that has only very recently gone out of style! But we can be fairly certain that Hermione’s parents, like most modern middle-class Westerners, would have found the idea of punishing a criminal (a minor at that!) by maiming hir utterly abhorrent, however heinous the crime committed by the child.
The fact that Hermione should so eagerly adopt Dolores’s ideas of appropriate punishment and abandon her parents’ mores, says rather interesting things about Hermione’s mentality.
Indeed, Hermione took Dolores’s idea one worse—branding the face was considered, amongst those who accepted branding at all, as much worse than branding the hand.
But, as Sunnyskywalker pointed out very deeply into the convolutions of the earlier discussion on Marietta, there’s another consideration here. At the very time Hermione was tricking the DA members into signing that cursed parchment, she was simultaneously assuring them that the proposed study group was perfectly legal and within Hogwarts regulations, so that they needn’t worry about getting in serious trouble if they joined.
Either Hermione was telling the truth as she saw it, or she was lying. If she was lying, of course, that compounded her betrayal of the other students—she then deliberately misrepresented to them the danger of joining. But if she was telling the truth (and there’s evidence she was)….
If she was telling the truth, then what she expected to be the consequence of someone’s defaulting on the agreement not to tell, the specific crime that she prepared and brought that pre-cursed parchment to punish, was not the crime of putting fellow students in danger of torture or expulsion. Because Hermione didn’t believe she and her fellows faced that danger.
What she expected to happen, and all that she expected to happen, was in fact what DID happen when Umbridge first found out about the group from Willy Widdershins. Umbridge did not punish the original group members in ANY way. She couldn’t; they’d broken no official rules. But Umbridge could and did try to find a way to stop (or attempt to stop) the group from continuing to meet—in the event, by outlawing all unauthorized (by her) groups.
So THAT was the outcome Hermione was punishing with that cursed parchment.
Not putting friends and allies in danger of torture or death, as was suggested.
Not even putting fellow students in danger of expulsion, which was the explicitly-stated punishment that Marietta expected to be visited upon the other members when she went to Umbridge.
At the time Hermione tricked the DA into signing her cursed parchment, she expected the outcome of someone’s blabbing to Umbridge to be, that Umbridge would attempt to stop the group from meeting.
So Hermione felt it was entirely acceptable to maim another child, not for endangering fellow students, but for getting in the way of Hermione et alia continuing to hold their meetings.
For inconveniencing her.
Even if a reader is barbaric enough to maintain that branding is an acceptable punishment for putting Cho, Harry, et al., at risk of expulsion from Hogwarts, does anyone actually argue it’s an appropriate one for simply interfering with Little Miss Perfect’s lovely idea of holding anti-Ministry military training meetings?
*
But let’s back up a moment in our assessment of that remorseless criminal Hermione’s psychological status. Okay, fine, Madderbrad, Miss Granger was never technically a sociopath, since she did retain some semblance of a conscience, and she did sometimes emit girlish cries of sympathy when she dealt with other people’s victims, especially her enemies’.
Not, note, when she confronted her own. Give a canon instance when Hermione looks at someone she has just hurt and feels remorse and compunction about their pain!
No, she’s sorry on those rare occasions when she makes what she recognizes to be a mistake (like breaking Harry’s wand, or ticking off the entire Centaur herd by admitting she had deliberately led Umbridge to them in hopes she, a human, could use the herd as her personal tool to disable the toad). When is Hermione ever sorry that her (entirely justified, just ask her?) premeditated actions dealt pain or humiliation to another sentient being?
So, fine, Madderbrad, Hermione was NOT a sociopath. Come up with another word than sociopath to describe the kind of monster that Dolores Jane Umbridge and Hermione Jane Granger both are, in canon. The kind who thinks any retribution at all is justified when what SHE thinks right is threatened, the kind who can carve words on a misbehaving child’s flesh without a single qualm. But only ever in the service of the Greater Good—not for personal gratification! One’s vicious enjoyment of the defeated enemy’s pain is merely agreeable lagniappe!
(This is probably also what Bellatrix was like before a decade’s exposure to Dementors turned her into a giggling sadist—the proud and noble woman who would suffer—and DO—anything at all for Her Leader and Her Cause.)
What’s the difference between Bella, Dolores, and Hermione, except in what cause each exalts as worth any pain to herself and as justifying any crime she commits against others?
Note that Umbridge, however much she may have gotten off on causing pain, only ever allowed herself that pleasure when she was persuaded it served her Cause. So Umbridge wasn’t actually a sociopath, either, see? She only allowed herself to indulge in sadistic punishments when someone had clearly earned it. In her view. Had Harry refrained from outrageous outbursts in her class, we would never have known how much she enjoyed inflicting punishments. Just like Hermione. Who “happily” waved the imprisoned Rita around, who laughed when she saw Dolores almost catatonic, but who never, ever, punished anyone who hadn’t deserved it, really. Just ask her!
In reading Hermione’s character, Hermione’s betrayal of the entire DA and her mutilation of Marietta do not stand alone. Not a book goes by without some example of criminal misbehavior on Hermione’s part. So this example is not an aberration, it’s part of a pattern of Hermione feeling herself entitled to ignore laws & rules, to attack people, and to try to trick or coerce others into doing what SHE thinks right when she fails (or fears she might fail) to persuade them.
Only ever in a good cause, of course.
In books one and three, she assaulted a teacher, setting him on fire and then knocking him out.
In books two, six, and seven, she physically attacked other students who had not touched her (Draco & Ron), in one case sending the student to the Hospital wing. In book four, she indulged in kidnapping and blackmail. In book five, she led a teacher into an ambush. In book six, she mind-raped a fellow student to get her boyfriend a place on the Quidditch team. In book seven, she mind-raped her own parents.
In book two, she also stole valuable and restricted ingredients from a teacher, induced Harry to cover her theft by causing a dangerous Potions explosion, drugged fellow students, and stole their very forms in order to spy on their best friend.
Let’s look a little more closely at Hermione’s Polyjuice plan in CoS. Like her cursing a parchment to mutilate potential traitors and tricking her fellow students into signing it unknowingly, her plan to spy on the Slytherins was criminal, dishonorable, and ultimately also stupid. Dishonorable: her plan was to drug fellow students and steal their identities to spy on their friend where the friend thought himself safest. (Put it this way: Had Draco done the exact same, Polyjuiced himself as Ron to spy on Harry and Hermione for the Dark Lord, would not everyone revile him as the slimiest of sneaky Slytherins?)
Criminal? Besides assaulting and drugging fellow students, her plan also involved stealing from a teacher. Moreover, the distraction she asked Harry to create in Potions to enable her theft, that firecracker in a Slytherin’s cauldron, caused injury to ten or so children (apparently all Slytherins).
Whitehound pointed out, the accidents Harry produced could have easily killed someone (that is, some Slytherin child)—by asphyxiation if a swollen tongue blocked their breathing, by snapping a neck if the head grew too massive too quickly. That Snape had the remedy instantly at hand and was able to cure all the children immediately, spoke to HIS preparedness for a potentially life-threatening emergency in his class, not to the Trio’s forethought. (Indeed, we know that Harry and Ron found the Slytherins’ disfigurement and danger—which they had caused—hilarious.)
Though in fairness to Hermione, she seemed not to have known in advance exactly how Harry planned to create the “mayhem” she requested. Still, any “mayhem” in a class as dangerous as Potions could always be expected to produce injuries. (We saw that in the first class, when Neville sent himself to the Hospital Wing.) Which she blithely disregarded.
Stupid? Even Ron was bright enough to groan, “Have you ever heard of a plan where so many things could go wrong?”
The Trio did no preliminary reconnoitering to determine the location of the Slytherin common room or its password (though they had that cloak and could easily have done so). Hermione’s decision to use Millicent’s identity would have gotten the Trio caught upon entry had Hermione not ingested cat DNA instead. and bailed. (Hermione seriously imagined the Slytherins wouldn’t have noticed that Millicent hadn’t been around all holiday until a single hour Christmas evening!? How was Millie supposed to have gotten to the castle, and why? How stupid IS Hermione, or how stupid does she imagine her enemies to be?).
Finally, the Slytherins certainly figured out what had been going on after the fact. Anyone second year and up who, unlike Harry and Ron, didn’t make it a point of honor to refuse to listen to the Potions Master in class, knew what Polyjuice Potion was. The second year Slytherins also all knew that Hermione knew about it too. So everyone in that common room would have suspected Polyjuice after the fact, between Ron & Harry starting their reversion right in front of multiple witnesses and Vince and Greg’s testimony that they’d been unconscious in a closet while Draco et al. witnessed “their” out-of-character reactions in the Common Room.
In fact, Draco might have caught on when “Vince” and “Greg” first started acting out of character.
Whatever came of Ron’s letter to his dad about Draco’s admission about the Malfoy’s cache of “very valuable Dark Arts stuff [in] our own secret chamber under the drawing-room floor,” after all?
In DH we finally get to see the locked room directly under the drawing room floor. The room was being used (openly) as a prison/torture chamber; people screaming in the one room are clearly audible through the floor/ceiling of the other, and access to this room was completely open and visible, part of regular access to the cellars.
Maybe the room had been magically hidden beforehand, so well that when the Ministry searched the cellars, surely looking for hidden doors and unaccounted-for space, they couldn’t find it. Couldn’t find the cellar room directly under the drawing room, and couldn’t spot that it was missing. And then that Christmas night, when Draco realized who he’d REALLY confided the top-secret location of his family’s secret cache to, he sent an owl to his father to move the good stuff before Ron’s dad could tell the Ministry where to look more closely. So that on a subsequent raid, the Ministry broke into the previously-hidden room and found it empty.
But back up a moment further—why would twelve-year-old Draco ever have been told where the Malfoys’ illegal Dark Arts stuff was kept, or that his family still possessed any? Lucius sold off to Mr. Borgin those poisons which “might make it appear” that Lucius’s intentions were not wholly benign should Malfoy Manor happen to be raided. If Lucius did still possess any valuable and illegal Dark Arts “stuff” hidden away, why should he, at that point in time, let his son know of it? Much less EXACTLY where to find it?
So, maybe the door to that particular locked room under the drawing-room floor was as visible during the Ministry’s raids as it was in DH, the Ministry searched the room thoroughly, and Arthur Weasley looked like a prize idiot—a malicious, trouble-making idiot—when he went to his superiors with the hottest of hot tips from his son.
And how much would that have influenced Fudge’s subsequent conviction that blameless Lucius Malfoy, that public benefactor, was always being baselessly accused by Dumbledore’s supporters?
Draco might have first wondered about “his friends” when he showed them that clipping and heard “Greg’s” forced laugh and saw “Vince’s” face “contorted in fury” instead of glee over Arthur Weasley’s just punishment for his disgraceful crime of enchanting that Ford Anglia.
His next essay at humor might in fact have been a test—that “cruelly accurate” impersonation of Creevey’s arse-licking. Or, Harry and Ron’s reaction to that might have been what tipped him off:
He dropped his hands and looked at Harry and Ron
“What’s the matter with you two?”
Far too late, Harry and Ron forced themselves to laugh, but Malfoy seemed satisfied; perhaps Crabbe and Goyle were always slow on the uptake.
“Saint Potter, the Mudbloods’ friend,” said Malfoy slowly….
Malfoy seemed satisfied. Which is the reaction Draco should display if he’d figured out who was really there with him. In which case everything Draco said after that (slowly at first!—thinking it through), was calculated for effect: his supposed ignorance of who was opening the Chamber, his wish to help Slytherin’s heir, his rubbing it in that he knew more than Ron and Harry about what was going on, his pious hope for Granger’s death, his revelation of the exact location of the Malfoys’ secret Dark Arts cache….
In which case his insult to “Goyle”—“Honestly, if you were any slower, you’d be going backward,” was really directed at Potter.
I don’t insist upon that reading. But there’s textual support for it—reread and see.
At any rate, the end result of the Polyjuice stunt was, Hermione gave Draco a wonderful opportunity to insult and wind up Harry and Ron (and possibly to pass them misinformation), she hospitalized herself, and the Trio learned NOTHING. Not even that Draco was innocent of being or knowing the Heir. Since once one allows that Draco might have already seen through Ron and Harry’s impersonations, his petulant “I wish I knew who it was” was valueless as information.
Compare this now to Hermione’s kidnapping and blackmailing of Rita in books four and five—again, criminal, dishonorable, AND stupid. Sure, Hermione eventually decided to use her hold on Rita to get out Harry’s story, which was ultimately helpful. But note that Hermione’s primary instinct, as with the cursed parchment, was punitive rather than protective or preventative. She didn’t order Rita to keep her quill off THEM for a year; she demanded that Rita write NOTHING. (And Jo told us with gloating satisfaction that unemployment didn’t suit Rita.) Punishment for Rita, not protection for Harry, was Hermione’s first priority when she had Rita at her mercy.
Furthermore, kidnapping and blackmail are just as much crimes as being an unregistered Animagus, so Hermione stupidly gave Rita an opportunity to blackmail Hermione and the boys in return. At the very least, had Rita subsequently been caught by anyone else, she could have cut a deal with the Ministry, a la Willy Widdershins, to give cast-iron proof that Hermione was a kidnapper and blackmailer, that Ron and Harry were her willing accomplices, and that all three of them also conspired to cover up Rita’s Animagus status and her habit of using her form to spy illegally on others.
Indeed, probably the only reason the Malfoys didn’t turn the Trio in to the Ministry after that train ride at the end of GoF was that they could be charged with the same last offense: Draco, too, could be proved to have concealed Rita’s Animagus status. And the Malfoys, at that particular time, had a VERY strong interest in not being implicated in anything criminal, not even by piously repenting of former misdeeds and turning themselves in while fingering others.
(Might be that last little bit too reminiscent , eh, Lucius?)
Had Draco not been provably guilty of the same offense, all three of the Trio would probably have been hauled before the Wizengamot on entirely legitimate criminal charges that summer.
Finally, Hermione captured Rita-as-beetle in Harry’s hospital room, after Dumbledore’s “parting of the ways” with Fudge and after Dumbledore reconvened the Order of the Phoenix. We don’t know how long the beetle had been there observing. More to the point, nor did Hermione. She hadn’t been zealously guarding the window all night, to be certain Rita had only just arrived to spy when Hermione caught her. (I checked; there was at least one point where Hermione in particular was by the bed with her attention on Harry, and another where “everyone” was watching Fudge.)
So Rita saw, or might have seen, the confrontation between Fudge and Dumbledore. She might have heard Harry’s accusations. She might have seen that the black dog was Sirius, that Sirius was accepted as one of Dumbledore’s followers, and that Snape was either a Death Eater triple agent or a former DE quadruple one (and that Dumbledore apparently believed the latter). She might have heard the names of some of the Order, including the newest ones, the Weasleys, and the location where escaped-DE Sirius would be staying next.
Fine, Hermione’s blackmail kept Rita from publishing any of that—but how much harm could Skeeter have done, had she gone secretly to either Malfoy or Fudge and told them everything she knew of Dumbledore’s plans?
Either Hermione was incredibly lucky, and Rita had been flying around for hours looking for the right window and had only just alit when Hermione spotted her, or….
Well, if Rita thought that the story that Lucius was truly a DE might be plausible (whether or not she also believed in Voldie’s resurrection), she might not want to get further mixed up with him.
As for Fudge, how much could she tell without betraying herself? However, Rita’s style was more to drop coy hints while saving the real information for when she could use it to her advantage. We may at least be certain that Fudge didn’t know details, because he neither fired Arthur nor sent Dementors to visit a certain werewolf.
On the other hand, a little information sneaked to Fudge when Hermione eventually released the beetle might prove useful as insurance, mightn’t it? Something along the lines of, “Dear Minister: As a concerned citizen, I feel it my duty to let you know that I witnessed certain conversations in the Hogwarts hospital wing after the end of the Triwizard Tournament. I saw one of Dumbledore’s employees unmasked as a Death Eater, and heard the headmaster urge you to seek an alliance with the giants. After you, very properly, had left in disgust, I witnessed a little more. Dumbledore intends to form a private army, loyal only to him, ostensibly to combat You-Know-Who’s supposed return. But this private army contains not one, but two, Death Eaters: Sirius Black was present as one of Dumbledore’s acknowledged followers. I could not reconcile it with my conscience not to pass this information to the Ministry, though I dare not reveal to you my means of obtaining this information. Sincerely, A Friend.”.
Then, were Rita subsequently arrested for being an unregistered Animagus, she might ask that the Minister be reminded of a concerned citizen’s letter dated June the Xth…. and bargain from the position of Fudge already owing her a favor for what she’d told him then, and what she can add to those bare bones now.
(Fudge, on the other hand, might at the time to have believed such a writer to have been one of Harry’s entourage in the hospital wing that night, and kept hoping that the concerned citizen in Dumbledore’s circle would finally find the courage to come forward…. And believing that, would be encouraged in the belief that even some of Dumbledore’s/Potter’s supposed supporters acknowledged Fudge’s position to be the right one and supported Fudge covertly.)
For Fudge did seem awfully certain that Dumbledore intended to raise a private army, didn’t he? And, of course, he was entirely correct in that supposition. (Really, when you think of it, what absolute brass of the members of Dumbledore’s private army to ridicule Fudge for “paranoia” in thinking Dumbledore would raise one!)
So, Educational Decree 23, and Umbridge’s reign of terror, may be partly due to Miss Granger’s stupidity (oh, let’s be gentle here: inexperience, naivete, and overconfidence in her own brightness) in mishandling Miss Skeeter.
*
We see that our bright and moral Miss Granger has a history of ill-thought-out schemes that are criminal, dishonorable, and STUPID.
Indeed, cast our minds back to Miss Granger’s very first foray into felony (that we know of): arson. In a crowded stadium. Had it not been for a complete accident, her brilliant plan to save Harry might have killed him.
And, excuse me, are two months of magical education truly enough to make one absolutely certain that bluebell flames can’t ever flare out of control? And even if one were certain, what assurance has one that nearby people wouldn’t panic and stampede at a fire in the stands (even if the arsonist herself feels assured that the flames are under [her] control)?
(I mean, if I used a blowtorch from behind to set someone’s clothes on fire when they were sitting in a high school football stadium, I would expect folk nearby to panic and stampede, even if the old wooden bleachers didn’t go on to erupt in flames and fully justify that response….)
I next point out that Hermione’s stated goal, breaking Snape’s eye contact with Harry so she could break Snape’s presumed hex, could equally, and legally, have been achieved by tugging insistently on Snape’s sleeve. (Though the results still would have been unfortunate---lethal—to Harry, as her deductions were incorrect. Had Hermione succeeded in breaking Snape’s, but not Quirrell’s, eye-contact with Harry that day, Quirrell might have succeeded in killing Harry.)
But no, Hermione’s mind, freed by her Gryffindor sorting from her familial shackles of respecting the law and rules, leapt immediately to violent assault.
For which she was never punished.
*
Next, let’s consider SPEW, and the house elves’ assessment that Miss’s ideas are mad and bad
Let’s put it this way: I accept, I really do, that Hermione founded SPEW with the best of intentions.
I equally accept that religious zealots who corner me and try to convert me have good intentions. They sincerely believe (I infer) that I will spend eternity in hell if I don’t convert to their particular little cult. So when they harass me to join them, it is for my own true good. Indeed, how unselfish, how good of them it is, to waste so much time trying to save such an ingrate as myself!
From their point of view.
From mine? I abhor them (though I try hard to cut off their rants with what politeness is possible). I resent the condescension of their attitude that they can know far better than I do what is best for me (and everyone), the implicit contempt of their assumption that I just haven’t given enough attention to the matter (since obviously anyone who’s given adequate thought to religion must agree with them). I resent especially their firm belief that their righteousness gives them the right to lay claim to MY further time and attention.
And I imagine how I feel about proselytizers is how house elves feel about Miss Granger. If not somewhat worse.
Note now the parallel between Hermione’s treatment of the DA and her treatment of the house elves: Hermione does not meet with the house elves, ask what they want, engage in an open discussion of the joys of freedom versus house-elf traditions, their pride in providing service, their bonds to their house of service. No, she tells them how [she thinks] it should be. She has the fucking effrontery to lecture the disowned and despairing Winky about what Winky ought to be thinking and feeling!
Just as the DA was not about meeting the varied needs of the other students (whose motives for attending that first meeting ranged from wanting to hear what really happened to Cedric to supporting a friend to wanting to revise for the OWLS to showing support for Harry), but about learning “proper Defense” because “Lord Voldemort is back.”
Hermione knew best, not merely what her fellow students should be doing, but why they should be doing it. (If they themselves imagined otherwise, they were misguided.) That’s a whole other order of arrogance and contempt.
And then when Hermione finally admitted that most of the elves wanted nothing to do with her or her ideas, that they thought her “mad and bad,” she didn’t accept the elves’ decision, their right to decide for themselves. She tried, repeatedly, to do to them exactly what she shortly afterwards did to the DA: she tried to trick them into entering a binding magical contract without their knowledge or consent. Or rather, in the elves’ case, into an unbinding magical contract.
Hermione happily hid hats in the belief that if an elf happened to pick one up whilst cleaning, that elf would be freed—utterly against the elf’s will.
Again, even Ron—not the series’ greatest moral philosopher—sees what’s wrong with this.
“You’re leaving out hats for the house-elves?” said Ron slowly. “And you’re covering them up with rubbish first?”
“Yes,” said Hermione defiantly, swinging her bag onto her back. [Again, the “odd, defiant look” of one who knows her actions are morally indefensible….]
“That’s not on,” said Ron angrily. “You’re trying to trick them into picking up the hats. You’re setting them free when they might not want to be free.”
“Of course they want to be free!” said Hermione at once, though her face was turning pink. “Don’t you dare touch those hats, Ron!”
She left. Ron waited until she had disappeared through the door to the girls’ dormitories, then cleared the rubbish off the woolly hats.
“They should at least see what they’re picking up,” he said firmly.
My hero, Ron! True Gryffindor finally, defender of the defenseless! Chivalry at last, utterly unlooked-for.
And unseconded by Harry or Hermione.
*
Note that this plan of Hermione’s (to free house-elves against all interested parties’ will) is, once again, morally reprehensible, probably criminal in Wizarding law if it could work, and STUPID. Morally reprehensible, because it ignores the elves’ rights to determine their own fates. It tries to coerce them into a contract (or contract-breaking) they would not consent to of their own wills. And Hermione has even seen, in Winky, exactly how badly a house-elf freed against her will suffers!
Probably criminal, because if the house-elves are indeed considered in any way property in the WW, Hermione is attempting the crime of theft. She is not the mistress of the Hogwarts’ elves, to have any right to free them. Conversely, if the elves are not property, Hermione is trying to use magical trickery to break a contract to which she is not a party, against the will of ALL of the legitimate parties to the contract. If that’s not formally illegal, it should be.
And it was stupid on two counts. First, not being their mistress, Hermione had no authority to free any Hogwarts elves even if had she pressed those hats directly into their hands. Harry didn’t give Dobby his sock himself; he tricked “master Lucius” into throwing it at Dobby. Stupid secondly, because, if picking up a random garment that an elf’s master had left about could free an elf, Dobby could have freed himself in 1977 by picking up one of Lucius’s gloves. And Kreacher could have plucked up a pair of Sirius’s pants during Black’s first week at 12 Grimmauld and whisked himself off to Miss Narcissa: “I”s free from the filthy blood traitor now, how can I serve the noble house of Black-Malfoy?” Droops—“You wants me to go back? And serve the filthy traitor who broke my Mistress’s heart? OH! You wants me to SPY on him and his filthy friends! Yes, Mistress, see how good Kreacher is at spying on them!”
Crack!
What, you think Sirius and Lucius are the sorts who naturally pick up after themselves? Or that elves never touch clothes in the course of their normal duties? Elves are not washing, drying, and ironing the laundry with the other washing-up they’re doing? They clear up discarded dishes but not discarded clothes? They’re not acting as witches-maids and valets? We actually know to the contrary—we saw Dobby shining Lucius’s shoes, for Pete’s sake.
No, masters’ clothes are not Portkeys, to activate automatically when touched by house-elf hands! Something else was required.
Like a deliberate intention to invoke a particular effect. On at least one side. And as with any contract, if one party wants out with sufficient force, this can often be achieved. In canon we witnessed two one-sided transactions, in which one party wanted the house-elf contract ended and the other did not. In Winky/Barty’s case, Barty ended the contract unilaterally the moment he realized Winky had failed him. Which she had, overwhelmingly, if not quite for the reasons Barty Sr. was willing to specify in public, so she had no grounds to contest her firing.
In Dobby/Lucius’s case, Dobby’s best efforts couldn’t persuade Lucius to end the contract voluntarily, though Dobby had obviously been trying for years to achieve just that. (One wonders: is there a stigma attached, among Purebloods’, to a freed-elf’s former owners as there was, among elves, to freed-elves? Or did Lucius, deservedly, fear what Dobby could disclose about the household were he ever free?). But notice that Dobby eventually maneuvered his beleaguered owner into a situation where Dobby could claim Lucius had given him clothes….
So, yet another plan which when examined fully is stupid, criminal, dishonorable, and demonstrates Miss Granger’s absolute contempt of the right of others to make their own decisions when SHE knows better.
Finally, compare Hermione’s treatment of the house elves, and of her friends, to her treatment of her parents. See, this discussion actually clears Miss Granger of an earlier charge.
In the context of her other crimes, we may finally absolve Hermione of that nasty charge that she was willing to mind-rape her own parents because she’d internalized the WW’s poisonous contempt of the Muggles from which she’d sprung.
No, Miss Granger didn’t mind-rape her own parents because she was contemptuous of them as Muggles! Not at all! She mind-raped them because, by then. Hermione was indifferent to any will but her own. Muggle, wizard, non-human-magical race—those were irrelevant distinctions! Either a sentient being agreed with the great mind and noble aims of Little Miss Perfect, or that being was wrong-headed or evil. In which case it was right, justified, indeed imperative, for Miss Granger to trick or coerce that other into complying with her will, or to punish hir for not doing so.
Let’s look more closely at Hermione’s Obliviaton of her parents. It wasn’t necessary to protect her parents from physical harm; their new identities in Australia sufficed for that. Or more precisely, had that defense failed, induced amnesia would have made her parents’ fates worse, not better.
Think! Suppose Death Eaters had found the “Wilkins” in Australia. Had Voldemort decided to torture them to smoke out (or just to punish) Hermione, he’d hardly have been deterred by the reflection that the Wilkins couldn’t understand that their torture was really directed against another. Hermione would, after all, and that’s all that mattered for hurting her. Whereas if Riddle had imagined instead that the dentists harbored any useful knowledge about their daughter, her habits, or her best friend…well, Voldemort can recover Obliviated memories.
We know that from Bertha, and also that the process leaves the victim damaged, mind and body, beyond repair or even use.
So, Obliviation neither protected the Grangers from Voldemort’s revenge, nor Harry and Hermione from inadvertent betrayal by Voldie’s rifling through the Grangers’ memories.
(The one counterargument that could be made here, is what if Harry never told Hermione about Bertha? However, Voldemort’s accessing Bertha’s Obliterated knowledge of Barty Junior’s imprisonment by his father is so central to the story of Voldemort’s return, it would seem that Harry must have explained it in the Quibbler scoop if not earlier directly to Hermione.)
As to protecting the Grangers from emotional hurt—well, imagine strolling into a teen’s funeral and suggesting to the sobbing family that they’d be better off just forgetting their lost child. Offer them a medicine that will obliterate all their memories. Smile as you offer it; tell them how kind you are to give them the chance to just erase their dead child from history.
Would you be mobbed by grateful takers, or would you just be mobbed?
Maybe it’s just me, but I cannot imagine any parent consenting to erase their memories of a beloved child, even if promised that the pain would be lost with the memories. (And I argued in my fanfic “Wendell Wilkins” that the pain would NOT necessarily be gone—only the ability to understand why one was reacting as though bereaved. An inexplicable, overwhelming grief might well be harder to deal with than the same emotion which was incontrovertibly founded on solid experience.)
So, even if Hermione WAS sincere in her claim that she was doing it for the Grangers’ sake, she was (at best) again deciding how others ought to be feeling, and trying to coerce them to feel what she thought they should. Not honoring their true feelings and choices.
However, whether or not her Obliviate ever insulated her parents from emotional pain, the charm did have one very certain effect.
It insulated Hermione.
It kept her from having to deal with worried, irate, distraught parents who might have had their own ideas about possible solutions to the problems facing the family of a Muggleborn witch when someone like Tom was taking power in the Ministry of Magic. Who might not have been willing to be shuffled off, insensate, unconscious, to Australia while their (minor, in the Muggle world) daughter went off to war with Harry. Who might have ARGUED. Either with Hermione’s proposed role, or with their own, or with both.
And it kept her from having to deal with the problem that, even if she persuaded them initially to adopt her plan and hide in the Antipodes, they might later change their minds.
This way, Hermione coerced her parents into emigrating, and she made sure they had no reason ever to come back. Hermione can be quite, quite sure that Monica and Wendell Wilkins will never show up back in Britain to search for a lost daughter.
The Doctors Granger, in contrast, might have. Unless Hermione had sat down with them and explained at length her reasoning. At such length that she eventually obtained their full informed acknowledgment that Hermione was right, that their little girl HAD to participate in Harry’s campaign against Voldemort, that it would endanger her to have her parents available as Riddle’s hostages, and that it was safest for HER, as well as for them, if they never returned until they got the all-clear from Hermione or (given her death) a designated alternate..
But that discussion would have required Hermione to treat her parents as thinking beings with the inalienable right to make their own decisions---even (horrors!) the right to make, finally, a decision contrary to Hermione’s earnest and well-informed beliefs of what was best for them (and everyone everywhere) to do.
As asking the DA if they wanted to sign a parchment that would magically enforce secrecy upon the whole group, would have.
As informing the Hogwarts house-elves that Miss Granger had spent her summer laboriously knitting hats to gift the elves with their freedom, who wanted one…? And accepting the elves’ rejection of HER views of whether they should want “freedom,” would have.
Saying yes, freely and knowingly, can only happen if one can equally freely say no.
But Hermione never risked that. Risked engaging others as free agents, who might, if unconstrained, make decisions contrary to Little Miss Perfect’s ideas of what was best.
Not with elves, not with fellow students, not with her parents.
Instead, repeatedly, Hermione looked for a magical binding to enforce her will by coercion or trickery.
By betrayal.
That’s our girl!
(Only “perhaps,” fine. Just as it’s only “perhaps” that Dolores scarred Harry permanently with that Blood Quill. We know from Mad-Eye, Albus, Arthur, Bill, Draco, and Harry himself that magical injuries can leave lifelong scars. But still, it’s not explicitly stated in canon that Harry, fantastically old, died with that scar still on his hand. For anything we know, it vanished one page after its last mention in DH. So no one can accuse Umbridge of scarring Harry for life, right? But in canon, the last we saw, Harry bore “I must not tell lies” engraved into his flesh. In canon, the last we saw of Marietta, she was trying desperately to hide the word “Sneak” blazoned across her face.)
Now, in schoolkid morality, tattling on someone to the teacher is a crime. Tattling on a friend, after explicitly promising not to tell, is the worst crime possibly imaginable!
We, however, are adults, and have larger imaginations.
And Hermione’s betrayal of her schoolfellows (and Hermione’s other crimes) may be judged without reference to Marietta’s transgression.
First, though, I’d like to make a point about Marietta. As others have pointed out, it’s quite easy to come up with scenarios in which honoring a promise to keep a friend’s secret is not the morally correct course of action. To take an extreme case, I very much doubt that anyone would counsel me to keep silent about a friend’s secret, should that secret prove to be that the friend is sodomizing a six-year-old. Breaking my promise and “selling out” the friend to authorities would be not merely permissible, but imperative.
Even within the Potterverse, turning one’s friends or allies over to their enemies is presented differently depending on circumstances. Peter was a rat for betraying James and Lily to Voldemort. Luna’s father was a man facing a heartbreaking dilemma when he turned the Trio over to the Death Eaters. And Severus Snape was doing the right thing when he betrayed his Death Eater friends to Albus.
(At least I’ve never come across anyone in fandom seriously arguing [to paraphrase Jane Austen] that the rashness of Snape’s original intention in joining the Death Eaters, would have been atoned for by his obstinacy in adhering to that allegiance. No one argues that Severus ought to have kept his solemn vow of eternal loyalty to Tom. So breaking promises and betraying friends is sometimes the right thing to do. Or at least, less wrong than honoring a promise one ought not to have made and sticking by friends who are clearly behaving criminally.)
In Marietta’s case, we know her action, but not her story. So we simply don’t know whether she was being weak, or heroic-but-misguided, or self-serving, or facing unbearable pressures, when she went to Umbridge. ANYTHING we say about her motives is speculation.
All, the only thing that Jo saw fit to tell us, was that Harry thought that Marietta (whom he’d be hard put to pick out in a lineup were she unscarred) “sold us out,” while Cho argued (to the point of breaking up with Harry) that Marietta simply “made a mistake.”
The most a reader can point out with canon justification, is that one of those two characters was in a far better position than the other to have any realistic knowledge of Marietta’s motives.
Given that lack of canon, each reader has made up some provisional internal story about Why Marietta Did It. Our individual interpretations must affect our sympathy or lack thereof for the character Marietta. (She’s a traitor! No, she was trying to protect her mum! No, she had decided she needed to put her foot down at the rampant illegality and sedition…. )
However, that is irrelevant to judging Hermione’s actions.
We can judge Hermione without bringing Marietta’s justifications, or lack thereof, into the matter at all.
*
Because, contrary to for_diddled’s tongue-in-cheek words, Hermione did not become a sociopath in this chapter. She was just revealed as one. She BECAME one in the Hog’s Head.
A sociopath, and stupid. When she betrayed the entire DA-to-be—her only friends, and her would-be allies. When Hermione conned her fellow students into signing a binding (mutilating!) contract, which they all believed at the time to be nothing but a blank parchment.
And then didn’t even TELL them afterwards, so the knowledge of HER betrayal of THEM could forestall any impulse they might subsequently entertain of betraying the group.
The smart AND honorable thing for Hermione to have done at the Hog’s Head would have been to give any doubters a fair and open chance to back out with no peer pressure and no consequences. No consequences, that is, except that they would forever be excluded from the forming group—no weaseling along the lines of , “Er, my friend here can just tell me about a meeting and I’ll attend if I feel like it.” No, one had to choose to be in or out.
But Hermione should have been honest about the consequences—that choosing to join, and to sign, would commit them to serious magical consequences should they subsequently default.
The way our girl Hermione instead went about matters was criminal, dishonorable, AND stupid. She offered no deterrence to potential traitors (or, more gently, to people who might “alter when they alteration found” in the group and its purposes) since the doubters didn’t know of the potential danger to themselves of defaulting. She sealed INTO the group several people who were obviously not fully convinced or committed (when the smart thing to have done would have been to have booted them out at once, if necessary with a promise—if binding, openly so—not to tell about the first meeting). And she bound a group of students, most of them minor children, at least one as young as twelve, to a magical contract they had not knowingly consented to Which would maim them if they defaulted.
This is a staple situation, of course, of classic mystery novels (which JKR is said to admire): a criminal induces victim(s) to sign unknowingly a will in the criminal’s favor, or a contract, or whatever, without the victims realizing what they’re putting their signatures to.
Usually the nefarious deed is done by slipping the legal paper in amongst legitimate and tedious documents, and hoping the addition will be signed unnoticed. But occasionally, as with Hermione, it’s done by producing a document with invisible ink and inducing the victim to sign what they think to be a blank page. Conning someone into signing something the victim has no way of even recognizing as a binding contract, and holding hir (or hir estate) afterwards to a commitment the victim would not knowingly have made.
In classic mysteries, the person who would do such a thing to others is always portrayed as utterly despicable—a cad, a cheat and defrauder who abuses the trust and good will of the signatory victim(s). Once the readers know that a character is depraved enough to stoop to THAT, nothing else that character might do could surprise us.
Whatever the circumstances under which the cheat is finally uncovered. And whatever we may think of any of the victims. The true villain is the one who deceived others into signing binding legal documents unknowingly. If we might subsequently disapprove of the actions of one of the injured parties, that cannot hinder our abhorrence of the scoundrel who systematically tricked victims into signing binding legal documents without their full knowledge and consent.
To dupe children into entering into binding contracts that could injure them? The mind boggles. The only real life example I can think of is the Children’s Crusade. Or some pimps.
Of course, in the real world a minor couldn’t be bound by any contract not endorsed by guardians, whether duped or legitimate. But in the WW, with magical contracts, six-year-old Ronnie could enter into an Unbreakable Vow and be killed by it. Fourteen-year-old Harry could be forced to face dragons because of a binding contract he hadn’t even put his own name to!
*
There are circumstances in which it can be more honorable to break a promise than to keep it. There are circumstances in which turning a law-breaking friend in to the authorities can be considered commendable.
Or, wherel wrong, at least still forgivable and understandable. (We don’t have to think Luna’s father’s decision was RIGHT to sympathize with his dilemma.)
There are no circumstances in which it can be honorable to betray people who trust you by tricking them into signing a binding contract without their knowledge or consent.
None.
Only an utter blackguard could do that.
*
I just reread Dorothy Sayers’ The Dawson Pedigree/ (American: Unnatural Death) for the Golden Age mystery take on that crime. Interestingly, in Sayers’ book the will the villain tries to trick the victim into signing only enforced the disposition of property that the victim intended anyhow. (Thus underlining the principle that there are NO circumstances under which this behavior is permissible.) The underlying problem the criminal faces is, a change to the laws of inheritance has been enacted and is soon to take effect. The criminal was the automatic heiress under the old law, but might be disinherited under the new, should her relative die intestate. The victim is terrified of dying and superstitiously refuses to make a will. So the criminal tries to trick her into signing one. When that effort fails, the villain coolly kills the old lady before the new law could take effect.
Lord Peter plaintively asks the village vicar, why is this wrong in theory? The old lady was dying anyhow of incurable cancer, and could at most have lived a few months more, in constant pain and drugged confusion. And the criminal is only making sure that what happened in the end was what the old lady wanted, after all—the old lady wanted her great-niece to inherit! So what’s the problem?
“I think,” said Mr. Tredgold, “that the sin—I won’t use that word—the damage to Society, the wrongness of the thing, lies much more in the harm it does the killer than in anything it can do to the person who is killed…. It is bad for a human being to get to feel that he has any right whatever to dispose of another person’s life to his own advantage. it leads him on to think himself above all laws…. That is why—or one reason why—God forbids private vengeance.” (UD, end of chapter XIX, p 190 in my edition)
And here are two descriptions of Sayers’ criminal, Mary: first, nerving herself to commit a fresh murder:
“the odd, defiant look…. an unattractive mingling of recklessness and calculation”. (UD, end of chapter XXII, p. 224)
And the final judgment on Sayers’ villainess:
“She probably really thought anyone who inconvenienced her had no right to exist.” (UD, end of chapter XXIII, p. 237)
Hermione, of course, is no killer. At least, not that we know. But she shows the same “unattractive mingling of recklessness and calculation” when she betrays her friends and fellow students by getting them to sign a cursed parchment, doesn’t she?
She rummaged in her bag and produced parchment and a quill, then hesitated, as though she were steeling herself to say something.
“I-I think everyone should write their name down, just so we know who was here.” (OotP 16)
And the vicar’s point is, once a person starts to feel s/he has a right to dispose of other peoples’ lives (or disregard their right to make their own choices), that attitude will only harden into thinking oneself above all laws.
Say it with me: IOIAGDI!
The major difference between Sayers’ Mary and Rowling’s Hermione, of course, is that Mary tries to trick her relative into unknowingly signing a binding legal agreement out of selfish greed. Hermione tricks her friends into doing so, out of loyalty to Harry and conviction of the rightness of her cause.
Just as Umbridge commits HER crimes in OotP out of loyalty to Fudge and conviction of the rightness the cause of suppressing Dumbledore’s and Harry’s seditious and damaging rumor-mongering.
*
Next, consider exactly what Hermione tricked her fellow students into binding themselves TO, what vengeance she considered appropriate if one of them did change hir mind about the group. (And remember that the vicar spoke of God forbidding “private vengeance” in particular because of its moral ill effects.)
Slave owners, of course, have never had a problem with the idea of branding their property. And branding used to be considered appropriate punishment for the worst of criminals (particularly military deserters) in many countries. Used to be. Centuries ago. Now, it’s considered barbaric in all civilized nations.
So, fine, the WW is old-fashioned; we know that. Flogging bad enough to leave permanent scars was acceptable punishment for breaking curfew back when not-that-old-Arthur was a Hogwarts student. That might, indeed, partly excuse Dolores’s willingness to use a Blood Quill on Harry: it’s a fine old Wizarding tradition that has only very recently gone out of style! But we can be fairly certain that Hermione’s parents, like most modern middle-class Westerners, would have found the idea of punishing a criminal (a minor at that!) by maiming hir utterly abhorrent, however heinous the crime committed by the child.
The fact that Hermione should so eagerly adopt Dolores’s ideas of appropriate punishment and abandon her parents’ mores, says rather interesting things about Hermione’s mentality.
Indeed, Hermione took Dolores’s idea one worse—branding the face was considered, amongst those who accepted branding at all, as much worse than branding the hand.
But, as Sunnyskywalker pointed out very deeply into the convolutions of the earlier discussion on Marietta, there’s another consideration here. At the very time Hermione was tricking the DA members into signing that cursed parchment, she was simultaneously assuring them that the proposed study group was perfectly legal and within Hogwarts regulations, so that they needn’t worry about getting in serious trouble if they joined.
Either Hermione was telling the truth as she saw it, or she was lying. If she was lying, of course, that compounded her betrayal of the other students—she then deliberately misrepresented to them the danger of joining. But if she was telling the truth (and there’s evidence she was)….
If she was telling the truth, then what she expected to be the consequence of someone’s defaulting on the agreement not to tell, the specific crime that she prepared and brought that pre-cursed parchment to punish, was not the crime of putting fellow students in danger of torture or expulsion. Because Hermione didn’t believe she and her fellows faced that danger.
What she expected to happen, and all that she expected to happen, was in fact what DID happen when Umbridge first found out about the group from Willy Widdershins. Umbridge did not punish the original group members in ANY way. She couldn’t; they’d broken no official rules. But Umbridge could and did try to find a way to stop (or attempt to stop) the group from continuing to meet—in the event, by outlawing all unauthorized (by her) groups.
So THAT was the outcome Hermione was punishing with that cursed parchment.
Not putting friends and allies in danger of torture or death, as was suggested.
Not even putting fellow students in danger of expulsion, which was the explicitly-stated punishment that Marietta expected to be visited upon the other members when she went to Umbridge.
At the time Hermione tricked the DA into signing her cursed parchment, she expected the outcome of someone’s blabbing to Umbridge to be, that Umbridge would attempt to stop the group from meeting.
So Hermione felt it was entirely acceptable to maim another child, not for endangering fellow students, but for getting in the way of Hermione et alia continuing to hold their meetings.
For inconveniencing her.
Even if a reader is barbaric enough to maintain that branding is an acceptable punishment for putting Cho, Harry, et al., at risk of expulsion from Hogwarts, does anyone actually argue it’s an appropriate one for simply interfering with Little Miss Perfect’s lovely idea of holding anti-Ministry military training meetings?
*
But let’s back up a moment in our assessment of that remorseless criminal Hermione’s psychological status. Okay, fine, Madderbrad, Miss Granger was never technically a sociopath, since she did retain some semblance of a conscience, and she did sometimes emit girlish cries of sympathy when she dealt with other people’s victims, especially her enemies’.
Not, note, when she confronted her own. Give a canon instance when Hermione looks at someone she has just hurt and feels remorse and compunction about their pain!
No, she’s sorry on those rare occasions when she makes what she recognizes to be a mistake (like breaking Harry’s wand, or ticking off the entire Centaur herd by admitting she had deliberately led Umbridge to them in hopes she, a human, could use the herd as her personal tool to disable the toad). When is Hermione ever sorry that her (entirely justified, just ask her?) premeditated actions dealt pain or humiliation to another sentient being?
So, fine, Madderbrad, Hermione was NOT a sociopath. Come up with another word than sociopath to describe the kind of monster that Dolores Jane Umbridge and Hermione Jane Granger both are, in canon. The kind who thinks any retribution at all is justified when what SHE thinks right is threatened, the kind who can carve words on a misbehaving child’s flesh without a single qualm. But only ever in the service of the Greater Good—not for personal gratification! One’s vicious enjoyment of the defeated enemy’s pain is merely agreeable lagniappe!
(This is probably also what Bellatrix was like before a decade’s exposure to Dementors turned her into a giggling sadist—the proud and noble woman who would suffer—and DO—anything at all for Her Leader and Her Cause.)
What’s the difference between Bella, Dolores, and Hermione, except in what cause each exalts as worth any pain to herself and as justifying any crime she commits against others?
Note that Umbridge, however much she may have gotten off on causing pain, only ever allowed herself that pleasure when she was persuaded it served her Cause. So Umbridge wasn’t actually a sociopath, either, see? She only allowed herself to indulge in sadistic punishments when someone had clearly earned it. In her view. Had Harry refrained from outrageous outbursts in her class, we would never have known how much she enjoyed inflicting punishments. Just like Hermione. Who “happily” waved the imprisoned Rita around, who laughed when she saw Dolores almost catatonic, but who never, ever, punished anyone who hadn’t deserved it, really. Just ask her!
In reading Hermione’s character, Hermione’s betrayal of the entire DA and her mutilation of Marietta do not stand alone. Not a book goes by without some example of criminal misbehavior on Hermione’s part. So this example is not an aberration, it’s part of a pattern of Hermione feeling herself entitled to ignore laws & rules, to attack people, and to try to trick or coerce others into doing what SHE thinks right when she fails (or fears she might fail) to persuade them.
Only ever in a good cause, of course.
In books one and three, she assaulted a teacher, setting him on fire and then knocking him out.
In books two, six, and seven, she physically attacked other students who had not touched her (Draco & Ron), in one case sending the student to the Hospital wing. In book four, she indulged in kidnapping and blackmail. In book five, she led a teacher into an ambush. In book six, she mind-raped a fellow student to get her boyfriend a place on the Quidditch team. In book seven, she mind-raped her own parents.
In book two, she also stole valuable and restricted ingredients from a teacher, induced Harry to cover her theft by causing a dangerous Potions explosion, drugged fellow students, and stole their very forms in order to spy on their best friend.
Let’s look a little more closely at Hermione’s Polyjuice plan in CoS. Like her cursing a parchment to mutilate potential traitors and tricking her fellow students into signing it unknowingly, her plan to spy on the Slytherins was criminal, dishonorable, and ultimately also stupid. Dishonorable: her plan was to drug fellow students and steal their identities to spy on their friend where the friend thought himself safest. (Put it this way: Had Draco done the exact same, Polyjuiced himself as Ron to spy on Harry and Hermione for the Dark Lord, would not everyone revile him as the slimiest of sneaky Slytherins?)
Criminal? Besides assaulting and drugging fellow students, her plan also involved stealing from a teacher. Moreover, the distraction she asked Harry to create in Potions to enable her theft, that firecracker in a Slytherin’s cauldron, caused injury to ten or so children (apparently all Slytherins).
Whitehound pointed out, the accidents Harry produced could have easily killed someone (that is, some Slytherin child)—by asphyxiation if a swollen tongue blocked their breathing, by snapping a neck if the head grew too massive too quickly. That Snape had the remedy instantly at hand and was able to cure all the children immediately, spoke to HIS preparedness for a potentially life-threatening emergency in his class, not to the Trio’s forethought. (Indeed, we know that Harry and Ron found the Slytherins’ disfigurement and danger—which they had caused—hilarious.)
Though in fairness to Hermione, she seemed not to have known in advance exactly how Harry planned to create the “mayhem” she requested. Still, any “mayhem” in a class as dangerous as Potions could always be expected to produce injuries. (We saw that in the first class, when Neville sent himself to the Hospital Wing.) Which she blithely disregarded.
Stupid? Even Ron was bright enough to groan, “Have you ever heard of a plan where so many things could go wrong?”
The Trio did no preliminary reconnoitering to determine the location of the Slytherin common room or its password (though they had that cloak and could easily have done so). Hermione’s decision to use Millicent’s identity would have gotten the Trio caught upon entry had Hermione not ingested cat DNA instead. and bailed. (Hermione seriously imagined the Slytherins wouldn’t have noticed that Millicent hadn’t been around all holiday until a single hour Christmas evening!? How was Millie supposed to have gotten to the castle, and why? How stupid IS Hermione, or how stupid does she imagine her enemies to be?).
Finally, the Slytherins certainly figured out what had been going on after the fact. Anyone second year and up who, unlike Harry and Ron, didn’t make it a point of honor to refuse to listen to the Potions Master in class, knew what Polyjuice Potion was. The second year Slytherins also all knew that Hermione knew about it too. So everyone in that common room would have suspected Polyjuice after the fact, between Ron & Harry starting their reversion right in front of multiple witnesses and Vince and Greg’s testimony that they’d been unconscious in a closet while Draco et al. witnessed “their” out-of-character reactions in the Common Room.
In fact, Draco might have caught on when “Vince” and “Greg” first started acting out of character.
Whatever came of Ron’s letter to his dad about Draco’s admission about the Malfoy’s cache of “very valuable Dark Arts stuff [in] our own secret chamber under the drawing-room floor,” after all?
In DH we finally get to see the locked room directly under the drawing room floor. The room was being used (openly) as a prison/torture chamber; people screaming in the one room are clearly audible through the floor/ceiling of the other, and access to this room was completely open and visible, part of regular access to the cellars.
Maybe the room had been magically hidden beforehand, so well that when the Ministry searched the cellars, surely looking for hidden doors and unaccounted-for space, they couldn’t find it. Couldn’t find the cellar room directly under the drawing room, and couldn’t spot that it was missing. And then that Christmas night, when Draco realized who he’d REALLY confided the top-secret location of his family’s secret cache to, he sent an owl to his father to move the good stuff before Ron’s dad could tell the Ministry where to look more closely. So that on a subsequent raid, the Ministry broke into the previously-hidden room and found it empty.
But back up a moment further—why would twelve-year-old Draco ever have been told where the Malfoys’ illegal Dark Arts stuff was kept, or that his family still possessed any? Lucius sold off to Mr. Borgin those poisons which “might make it appear” that Lucius’s intentions were not wholly benign should Malfoy Manor happen to be raided. If Lucius did still possess any valuable and illegal Dark Arts “stuff” hidden away, why should he, at that point in time, let his son know of it? Much less EXACTLY where to find it?
So, maybe the door to that particular locked room under the drawing-room floor was as visible during the Ministry’s raids as it was in DH, the Ministry searched the room thoroughly, and Arthur Weasley looked like a prize idiot—a malicious, trouble-making idiot—when he went to his superiors with the hottest of hot tips from his son.
And how much would that have influenced Fudge’s subsequent conviction that blameless Lucius Malfoy, that public benefactor, was always being baselessly accused by Dumbledore’s supporters?
Draco might have first wondered about “his friends” when he showed them that clipping and heard “Greg’s” forced laugh and saw “Vince’s” face “contorted in fury” instead of glee over Arthur Weasley’s just punishment for his disgraceful crime of enchanting that Ford Anglia.
His next essay at humor might in fact have been a test—that “cruelly accurate” impersonation of Creevey’s arse-licking. Or, Harry and Ron’s reaction to that might have been what tipped him off:
He dropped his hands and looked at Harry and Ron
“What’s the matter with you two?”
Far too late, Harry and Ron forced themselves to laugh, but Malfoy seemed satisfied; perhaps Crabbe and Goyle were always slow on the uptake.
“Saint Potter, the Mudbloods’ friend,” said Malfoy slowly….
Malfoy seemed satisfied. Which is the reaction Draco should display if he’d figured out who was really there with him. In which case everything Draco said after that (slowly at first!—thinking it through), was calculated for effect: his supposed ignorance of who was opening the Chamber, his wish to help Slytherin’s heir, his rubbing it in that he knew more than Ron and Harry about what was going on, his pious hope for Granger’s death, his revelation of the exact location of the Malfoys’ secret Dark Arts cache….
In which case his insult to “Goyle”—“Honestly, if you were any slower, you’d be going backward,” was really directed at Potter.
I don’t insist upon that reading. But there’s textual support for it—reread and see.
At any rate, the end result of the Polyjuice stunt was, Hermione gave Draco a wonderful opportunity to insult and wind up Harry and Ron (and possibly to pass them misinformation), she hospitalized herself, and the Trio learned NOTHING. Not even that Draco was innocent of being or knowing the Heir. Since once one allows that Draco might have already seen through Ron and Harry’s impersonations, his petulant “I wish I knew who it was” was valueless as information.
Compare this now to Hermione’s kidnapping and blackmailing of Rita in books four and five—again, criminal, dishonorable, AND stupid. Sure, Hermione eventually decided to use her hold on Rita to get out Harry’s story, which was ultimately helpful. But note that Hermione’s primary instinct, as with the cursed parchment, was punitive rather than protective or preventative. She didn’t order Rita to keep her quill off THEM for a year; she demanded that Rita write NOTHING. (And Jo told us with gloating satisfaction that unemployment didn’t suit Rita.) Punishment for Rita, not protection for Harry, was Hermione’s first priority when she had Rita at her mercy.
Furthermore, kidnapping and blackmail are just as much crimes as being an unregistered Animagus, so Hermione stupidly gave Rita an opportunity to blackmail Hermione and the boys in return. At the very least, had Rita subsequently been caught by anyone else, she could have cut a deal with the Ministry, a la Willy Widdershins, to give cast-iron proof that Hermione was a kidnapper and blackmailer, that Ron and Harry were her willing accomplices, and that all three of them also conspired to cover up Rita’s Animagus status and her habit of using her form to spy illegally on others.
Indeed, probably the only reason the Malfoys didn’t turn the Trio in to the Ministry after that train ride at the end of GoF was that they could be charged with the same last offense: Draco, too, could be proved to have concealed Rita’s Animagus status. And the Malfoys, at that particular time, had a VERY strong interest in not being implicated in anything criminal, not even by piously repenting of former misdeeds and turning themselves in while fingering others.
(Might be that last little bit too reminiscent , eh, Lucius?)
Had Draco not been provably guilty of the same offense, all three of the Trio would probably have been hauled before the Wizengamot on entirely legitimate criminal charges that summer.
Finally, Hermione captured Rita-as-beetle in Harry’s hospital room, after Dumbledore’s “parting of the ways” with Fudge and after Dumbledore reconvened the Order of the Phoenix. We don’t know how long the beetle had been there observing. More to the point, nor did Hermione. She hadn’t been zealously guarding the window all night, to be certain Rita had only just arrived to spy when Hermione caught her. (I checked; there was at least one point where Hermione in particular was by the bed with her attention on Harry, and another where “everyone” was watching Fudge.)
So Rita saw, or might have seen, the confrontation between Fudge and Dumbledore. She might have heard Harry’s accusations. She might have seen that the black dog was Sirius, that Sirius was accepted as one of Dumbledore’s followers, and that Snape was either a Death Eater triple agent or a former DE quadruple one (and that Dumbledore apparently believed the latter). She might have heard the names of some of the Order, including the newest ones, the Weasleys, and the location where escaped-DE Sirius would be staying next.
Fine, Hermione’s blackmail kept Rita from publishing any of that—but how much harm could Skeeter have done, had she gone secretly to either Malfoy or Fudge and told them everything she knew of Dumbledore’s plans?
Either Hermione was incredibly lucky, and Rita had been flying around for hours looking for the right window and had only just alit when Hermione spotted her, or….
Well, if Rita thought that the story that Lucius was truly a DE might be plausible (whether or not she also believed in Voldie’s resurrection), she might not want to get further mixed up with him.
As for Fudge, how much could she tell without betraying herself? However, Rita’s style was more to drop coy hints while saving the real information for when she could use it to her advantage. We may at least be certain that Fudge didn’t know details, because he neither fired Arthur nor sent Dementors to visit a certain werewolf.
On the other hand, a little information sneaked to Fudge when Hermione eventually released the beetle might prove useful as insurance, mightn’t it? Something along the lines of, “Dear Minister: As a concerned citizen, I feel it my duty to let you know that I witnessed certain conversations in the Hogwarts hospital wing after the end of the Triwizard Tournament. I saw one of Dumbledore’s employees unmasked as a Death Eater, and heard the headmaster urge you to seek an alliance with the giants. After you, very properly, had left in disgust, I witnessed a little more. Dumbledore intends to form a private army, loyal only to him, ostensibly to combat You-Know-Who’s supposed return. But this private army contains not one, but two, Death Eaters: Sirius Black was present as one of Dumbledore’s acknowledged followers. I could not reconcile it with my conscience not to pass this information to the Ministry, though I dare not reveal to you my means of obtaining this information. Sincerely, A Friend.”.
Then, were Rita subsequently arrested for being an unregistered Animagus, she might ask that the Minister be reminded of a concerned citizen’s letter dated June the Xth…. and bargain from the position of Fudge already owing her a favor for what she’d told him then, and what she can add to those bare bones now.
(Fudge, on the other hand, might at the time to have believed such a writer to have been one of Harry’s entourage in the hospital wing that night, and kept hoping that the concerned citizen in Dumbledore’s circle would finally find the courage to come forward…. And believing that, would be encouraged in the belief that even some of Dumbledore’s/Potter’s supposed supporters acknowledged Fudge’s position to be the right one and supported Fudge covertly.)
For Fudge did seem awfully certain that Dumbledore intended to raise a private army, didn’t he? And, of course, he was entirely correct in that supposition. (Really, when you think of it, what absolute brass of the members of Dumbledore’s private army to ridicule Fudge for “paranoia” in thinking Dumbledore would raise one!)
So, Educational Decree 23, and Umbridge’s reign of terror, may be partly due to Miss Granger’s stupidity (oh, let’s be gentle here: inexperience, naivete, and overconfidence in her own brightness) in mishandling Miss Skeeter.
*
We see that our bright and moral Miss Granger has a history of ill-thought-out schemes that are criminal, dishonorable, and STUPID.
Indeed, cast our minds back to Miss Granger’s very first foray into felony (that we know of): arson. In a crowded stadium. Had it not been for a complete accident, her brilliant plan to save Harry might have killed him.
And, excuse me, are two months of magical education truly enough to make one absolutely certain that bluebell flames can’t ever flare out of control? And even if one were certain, what assurance has one that nearby people wouldn’t panic and stampede at a fire in the stands (even if the arsonist herself feels assured that the flames are under [her] control)?
(I mean, if I used a blowtorch from behind to set someone’s clothes on fire when they were sitting in a high school football stadium, I would expect folk nearby to panic and stampede, even if the old wooden bleachers didn’t go on to erupt in flames and fully justify that response….)
I next point out that Hermione’s stated goal, breaking Snape’s eye contact with Harry so she could break Snape’s presumed hex, could equally, and legally, have been achieved by tugging insistently on Snape’s sleeve. (Though the results still would have been unfortunate---lethal—to Harry, as her deductions were incorrect. Had Hermione succeeded in breaking Snape’s, but not Quirrell’s, eye-contact with Harry that day, Quirrell might have succeeded in killing Harry.)
But no, Hermione’s mind, freed by her Gryffindor sorting from her familial shackles of respecting the law and rules, leapt immediately to violent assault.
For which she was never punished.
*
Next, let’s consider SPEW, and the house elves’ assessment that Miss’s ideas are mad and bad
Let’s put it this way: I accept, I really do, that Hermione founded SPEW with the best of intentions.
I equally accept that religious zealots who corner me and try to convert me have good intentions. They sincerely believe (I infer) that I will spend eternity in hell if I don’t convert to their particular little cult. So when they harass me to join them, it is for my own true good. Indeed, how unselfish, how good of them it is, to waste so much time trying to save such an ingrate as myself!
From their point of view.
From mine? I abhor them (though I try hard to cut off their rants with what politeness is possible). I resent the condescension of their attitude that they can know far better than I do what is best for me (and everyone), the implicit contempt of their assumption that I just haven’t given enough attention to the matter (since obviously anyone who’s given adequate thought to religion must agree with them). I resent especially their firm belief that their righteousness gives them the right to lay claim to MY further time and attention.
And I imagine how I feel about proselytizers is how house elves feel about Miss Granger. If not somewhat worse.
Note now the parallel between Hermione’s treatment of the DA and her treatment of the house elves: Hermione does not meet with the house elves, ask what they want, engage in an open discussion of the joys of freedom versus house-elf traditions, their pride in providing service, their bonds to their house of service. No, she tells them how [she thinks] it should be. She has the fucking effrontery to lecture the disowned and despairing Winky about what Winky ought to be thinking and feeling!
Just as the DA was not about meeting the varied needs of the other students (whose motives for attending that first meeting ranged from wanting to hear what really happened to Cedric to supporting a friend to wanting to revise for the OWLS to showing support for Harry), but about learning “proper Defense” because “Lord Voldemort is back.”
Hermione knew best, not merely what her fellow students should be doing, but why they should be doing it. (If they themselves imagined otherwise, they were misguided.) That’s a whole other order of arrogance and contempt.
And then when Hermione finally admitted that most of the elves wanted nothing to do with her or her ideas, that they thought her “mad and bad,” she didn’t accept the elves’ decision, their right to decide for themselves. She tried, repeatedly, to do to them exactly what she shortly afterwards did to the DA: she tried to trick them into entering a binding magical contract without their knowledge or consent. Or rather, in the elves’ case, into an unbinding magical contract.
Hermione happily hid hats in the belief that if an elf happened to pick one up whilst cleaning, that elf would be freed—utterly against the elf’s will.
Again, even Ron—not the series’ greatest moral philosopher—sees what’s wrong with this.
“You’re leaving out hats for the house-elves?” said Ron slowly. “And you’re covering them up with rubbish first?”
“Yes,” said Hermione defiantly, swinging her bag onto her back. [Again, the “odd, defiant look” of one who knows her actions are morally indefensible….]
“That’s not on,” said Ron angrily. “You’re trying to trick them into picking up the hats. You’re setting them free when they might not want to be free.”
“Of course they want to be free!” said Hermione at once, though her face was turning pink. “Don’t you dare touch those hats, Ron!”
She left. Ron waited until she had disappeared through the door to the girls’ dormitories, then cleared the rubbish off the woolly hats.
“They should at least see what they’re picking up,” he said firmly.
My hero, Ron! True Gryffindor finally, defender of the defenseless! Chivalry at last, utterly unlooked-for.
And unseconded by Harry or Hermione.
*
Note that this plan of Hermione’s (to free house-elves against all interested parties’ will) is, once again, morally reprehensible, probably criminal in Wizarding law if it could work, and STUPID. Morally reprehensible, because it ignores the elves’ rights to determine their own fates. It tries to coerce them into a contract (or contract-breaking) they would not consent to of their own wills. And Hermione has even seen, in Winky, exactly how badly a house-elf freed against her will suffers!
Probably criminal, because if the house-elves are indeed considered in any way property in the WW, Hermione is attempting the crime of theft. She is not the mistress of the Hogwarts’ elves, to have any right to free them. Conversely, if the elves are not property, Hermione is trying to use magical trickery to break a contract to which she is not a party, against the will of ALL of the legitimate parties to the contract. If that’s not formally illegal, it should be.
And it was stupid on two counts. First, not being their mistress, Hermione had no authority to free any Hogwarts elves even if had she pressed those hats directly into their hands. Harry didn’t give Dobby his sock himself; he tricked “master Lucius” into throwing it at Dobby. Stupid secondly, because, if picking up a random garment that an elf’s master had left about could free an elf, Dobby could have freed himself in 1977 by picking up one of Lucius’s gloves. And Kreacher could have plucked up a pair of Sirius’s pants during Black’s first week at 12 Grimmauld and whisked himself off to Miss Narcissa: “I”s free from the filthy blood traitor now, how can I serve the noble house of Black-Malfoy?” Droops—“You wants me to go back? And serve the filthy traitor who broke my Mistress’s heart? OH! You wants me to SPY on him and his filthy friends! Yes, Mistress, see how good Kreacher is at spying on them!”
Crack!
What, you think Sirius and Lucius are the sorts who naturally pick up after themselves? Or that elves never touch clothes in the course of their normal duties? Elves are not washing, drying, and ironing the laundry with the other washing-up they’re doing? They clear up discarded dishes but not discarded clothes? They’re not acting as witches-maids and valets? We actually know to the contrary—we saw Dobby shining Lucius’s shoes, for Pete’s sake.
No, masters’ clothes are not Portkeys, to activate automatically when touched by house-elf hands! Something else was required.
Like a deliberate intention to invoke a particular effect. On at least one side. And as with any contract, if one party wants out with sufficient force, this can often be achieved. In canon we witnessed two one-sided transactions, in which one party wanted the house-elf contract ended and the other did not. In Winky/Barty’s case, Barty ended the contract unilaterally the moment he realized Winky had failed him. Which she had, overwhelmingly, if not quite for the reasons Barty Sr. was willing to specify in public, so she had no grounds to contest her firing.
In Dobby/Lucius’s case, Dobby’s best efforts couldn’t persuade Lucius to end the contract voluntarily, though Dobby had obviously been trying for years to achieve just that. (One wonders: is there a stigma attached, among Purebloods’, to a freed-elf’s former owners as there was, among elves, to freed-elves? Or did Lucius, deservedly, fear what Dobby could disclose about the household were he ever free?). But notice that Dobby eventually maneuvered his beleaguered owner into a situation where Dobby could claim Lucius had given him clothes….
So, yet another plan which when examined fully is stupid, criminal, dishonorable, and demonstrates Miss Granger’s absolute contempt of the right of others to make their own decisions when SHE knows better.
Finally, compare Hermione’s treatment of the house elves, and of her friends, to her treatment of her parents. See, this discussion actually clears Miss Granger of an earlier charge.
In the context of her other crimes, we may finally absolve Hermione of that nasty charge that she was willing to mind-rape her own parents because she’d internalized the WW’s poisonous contempt of the Muggles from which she’d sprung.
No, Miss Granger didn’t mind-rape her own parents because she was contemptuous of them as Muggles! Not at all! She mind-raped them because, by then. Hermione was indifferent to any will but her own. Muggle, wizard, non-human-magical race—those were irrelevant distinctions! Either a sentient being agreed with the great mind and noble aims of Little Miss Perfect, or that being was wrong-headed or evil. In which case it was right, justified, indeed imperative, for Miss Granger to trick or coerce that other into complying with her will, or to punish hir for not doing so.
Let’s look more closely at Hermione’s Obliviaton of her parents. It wasn’t necessary to protect her parents from physical harm; their new identities in Australia sufficed for that. Or more precisely, had that defense failed, induced amnesia would have made her parents’ fates worse, not better.
Think! Suppose Death Eaters had found the “Wilkins” in Australia. Had Voldemort decided to torture them to smoke out (or just to punish) Hermione, he’d hardly have been deterred by the reflection that the Wilkins couldn’t understand that their torture was really directed against another. Hermione would, after all, and that’s all that mattered for hurting her. Whereas if Riddle had imagined instead that the dentists harbored any useful knowledge about their daughter, her habits, or her best friend…well, Voldemort can recover Obliviated memories.
We know that from Bertha, and also that the process leaves the victim damaged, mind and body, beyond repair or even use.
So, Obliviation neither protected the Grangers from Voldemort’s revenge, nor Harry and Hermione from inadvertent betrayal by Voldie’s rifling through the Grangers’ memories.
(The one counterargument that could be made here, is what if Harry never told Hermione about Bertha? However, Voldemort’s accessing Bertha’s Obliterated knowledge of Barty Junior’s imprisonment by his father is so central to the story of Voldemort’s return, it would seem that Harry must have explained it in the Quibbler scoop if not earlier directly to Hermione.)
As to protecting the Grangers from emotional hurt—well, imagine strolling into a teen’s funeral and suggesting to the sobbing family that they’d be better off just forgetting their lost child. Offer them a medicine that will obliterate all their memories. Smile as you offer it; tell them how kind you are to give them the chance to just erase their dead child from history.
Would you be mobbed by grateful takers, or would you just be mobbed?
Maybe it’s just me, but I cannot imagine any parent consenting to erase their memories of a beloved child, even if promised that the pain would be lost with the memories. (And I argued in my fanfic “Wendell Wilkins” that the pain would NOT necessarily be gone—only the ability to understand why one was reacting as though bereaved. An inexplicable, overwhelming grief might well be harder to deal with than the same emotion which was incontrovertibly founded on solid experience.)
So, even if Hermione WAS sincere in her claim that she was doing it for the Grangers’ sake, she was (at best) again deciding how others ought to be feeling, and trying to coerce them to feel what she thought they should. Not honoring their true feelings and choices.
However, whether or not her Obliviate ever insulated her parents from emotional pain, the charm did have one very certain effect.
It insulated Hermione.
It kept her from having to deal with worried, irate, distraught parents who might have had their own ideas about possible solutions to the problems facing the family of a Muggleborn witch when someone like Tom was taking power in the Ministry of Magic. Who might not have been willing to be shuffled off, insensate, unconscious, to Australia while their (minor, in the Muggle world) daughter went off to war with Harry. Who might have ARGUED. Either with Hermione’s proposed role, or with their own, or with both.
And it kept her from having to deal with the problem that, even if she persuaded them initially to adopt her plan and hide in the Antipodes, they might later change their minds.
This way, Hermione coerced her parents into emigrating, and she made sure they had no reason ever to come back. Hermione can be quite, quite sure that Monica and Wendell Wilkins will never show up back in Britain to search for a lost daughter.
The Doctors Granger, in contrast, might have. Unless Hermione had sat down with them and explained at length her reasoning. At such length that she eventually obtained their full informed acknowledgment that Hermione was right, that their little girl HAD to participate in Harry’s campaign against Voldemort, that it would endanger her to have her parents available as Riddle’s hostages, and that it was safest for HER, as well as for them, if they never returned until they got the all-clear from Hermione or (given her death) a designated alternate..
But that discussion would have required Hermione to treat her parents as thinking beings with the inalienable right to make their own decisions---even (horrors!) the right to make, finally, a decision contrary to Hermione’s earnest and well-informed beliefs of what was best for them (and everyone everywhere) to do.
As asking the DA if they wanted to sign a parchment that would magically enforce secrecy upon the whole group, would have.
As informing the Hogwarts house-elves that Miss Granger had spent her summer laboriously knitting hats to gift the elves with their freedom, who wanted one…? And accepting the elves’ rejection of HER views of whether they should want “freedom,” would have.
Saying yes, freely and knowingly, can only happen if one can equally freely say no.
But Hermione never risked that. Risked engaging others as free agents, who might, if unconstrained, make decisions contrary to Little Miss Perfect’s ideas of what was best.
Not with elves, not with fellow students, not with her parents.
Instead, repeatedly, Hermione looked for a magical binding to enforce her will by coercion or trickery.
By betrayal.
That’s our girl!
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Re: Designated heroes and heroines
Date: 2011-10-30 04:26 pm (UTC)