Harry Potter Abridged! GOF Chapter 3

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

[Life at the Dursleys goes on as usual.]


Petunia: Alright, come and get your tasty, nutritious grapefruit for breakfast!

Dudley: But Muuuuuuuuum, this is destroying my propensity to act like a nasty, slobbish, lazy Fatty McFatfat!

Petunia: Orders from your school nurse so quit your complaining!

Harry: Cheer up, Dudley- if you can get thinner you just might turn out to be an alright guy!

[Just then, Vernon gets a letter from the Weasleys.]

Vernon: Not this shit again.... Harry, we need to talk!

[Vernon drags Harry to the living room.]

Vernon: So... yeah. Those wizard friends of yours sent me a letter: “Dear Mr. Muggle. We want to take Harry to the Quidditch World Cup. We will take Harry there NO MATTER WHAT! Signed, Mrs. Weasley. PS: If we used too many of your bliddy stamps you can pay the cost.”

Harry: Well that’s saying something considering the envelope is covered in stamps!

Vernon: Do your friends have any idea that they look positively functionally retarded?

Harry: Well, they say the same thing about you.

Vernon: So who is this Mrs. Weasley, anyway?

Harry: She’s my best friend’s mother, of course!

Vernon: Yeah, yeah. Whatever. And... what is Quidditch?

Harry: It’s a game played on broomsticks that every one of us loves even though it makes no sense.

Vernon: Honestly, the stories you bring under our roof. You’re mighty ungrateful, considering everything we’ve done with you over the years.

Harry: Yeah, well... you guys are abusive! Oh, by the way, I’ve been telling my mass-murderer godfather that.

Vernon: ...Are you serious?

Harry: Yeah, he’s not happy. So let me go to my friends the Weasleys’ or I’ll tell him about the time you beat me with all sorts of-

Vernon: We did no such thing!

Harry: He doesn’t know it!

Vernon: Aye, aye, aye... alright, go hang out with your wizard friends, then! See if we care!

Harry: Alright, then I will!

[Harry then returns to his room to gorge himself on the sweets that his friends sent him.]

Harry: [Excessively twee] Ooh, goodie! I gets my sweeties today! I shall rise above the oppression- starting with my delicious birthday cakes that my friendses have sented me! *Gurgles* By the way, these cakes really should be getting rotten or moldy by now, but whatever.

[Just then, a tiny gray owl enters the room with a letter.]

Harry: You’re Ron’s owl, aren’t you? This is interesting. It says here, that they’ll be picking me up at five on sunday. Hermione is going to stay with them as well- convenient! Oh, and Percy is boringer and stupider than ever. Why do I get the feeling every single one of these events is orchestrated to get my trio together?

[Harry writes his eager reply and sends it back with the little owl, Pig, before sending Sirius a note with Hedwig explaining everything that’s been going on.]

Comments

[dungeonwriter.livejournal.com]

That's a huge problem which horrified me, the rampent unchecked bullying in the school that's almost tacitly endrosed. I'd have been dead in Hogwarts, I seriously would have been targeted as much as you. I sucked at sports, I wasn't especially popular and I liked to read. Maybe I'd have been a happy little Ravenclaw with no semblance of plot, but In Gryffindor, I'd be eaten alive.

It will come up in two chapters, but no authority figures ARE strict but fair. Molly's twins run roughshod on her and her attempts to disciplne are more for a joke. McGonagall may call for order, but her students are the most disordered ones in the school. Yes, we see her try to discipline in year one when the students are caught out of bounds, but the punishment seems just plot service.

The problem is, JKR can't write parody and reality together and expect us to distinguish.

Dursleys? Straight out of Roald Dahl to the point where I was looking for a magical chocolate factory.
The school is meant to be a parody of the school we all had, that teacher who was ancient and old and droned on and on and called you by your dad's name.

Problem is, then you can't take her seriously when she says Dumbledore's a great guy.

[wolf-willow31.livejournal.com]

The problem is, JKR can't write parody and reality together and expect us to distinguish.

Excellent observation. That really sums up most of the problems.

[dungeonwriter.livejournal.com]

I felt like the first book was a cheerful little parody of an English boarding school. When people get pushed out of windows and bounce, it's hard to take a Dark Lord seriously.

I will say, she's amazing in that she stirs up so much debate, so much love and hate.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Re: Minerva.

To be fair, this is what she said of the Marauders: "Black and Potter. Ringleaders of their little gang. Both very bright of course--exceptionally bright, in fact--but I don't think we've ever had such a pair of troublemakers--"

It's Hagrid who compares them favorably to the Twins.

And Minerva doesn't actually seem to like the Twins that much either, however well they play Quidditch and however much that excuses things in her eyes.

Remember her reaction the one time a twin was brutal right under her nose. (Beating up Malfoy after the Quidditch game, OotP)


She was wearing a Gryffindor scarf, but tore it from her throat with shaking hands as she strode toward them, looking livid.

"In!" she said furiously... quivering with rage as she threw the Gryffindor scarf aside onto the floor.

"Well?" she said."I have never seen such a disgraceful exhibition. Two onto one! Explain yourselves!"

"Malfoy provoked us," said Harry stiffly.

"Provoked you?" shouted Professor McGonagall, slamming a fist onto her desk so that her tartan biscuit tin slid sideways off it and burst open, littering the floor with Ginger Newts. "He'd just lost, hadn't he, of course he wanted to provoke you!"

They explain to her the nature of the provocation, and she "bellows" at them in return.

I don't know what the usual punishment for assault would be, but Draco wasn't hurt, and given how light most Hogwarts punishments seem to be, a week's worth of detentions as a start seems consistent. (Harry got 6 Saturday morning detentions from Snape for almost killing Draco the next year.)

So, yes, Minerva's guilty of favoritism towards her house and of giving preferential treatment to Quidditch stars, but she DOESN'T like bullies or bullying, and I think if she'd been given any administrativae support she'd have tried to eliminate it.

And she does show off Hermione's good work in the first Transfigurations class and award her "a rare smile." And Minerva's the one who interceded with the Ministry of Magic to get Hermione the Time-Turner 3rd year, calling her a model student. (Which she may have done for Percy as well--how many OWLs and NEWTs did he pass?) And Minerva indirectly praised Hermione to Harry in that interview when she warned him to keep his head down around Umbridge.

And, who did choose Percy as prefect? Surely not Dumbles.

So, we have some evidence that she likes bright and studious pupils--she's just terrible at producing them, or at least at making her house behave when not under her direct gaze. But the only time we ever saw her actually root for chaos over order was under Umbridge.

But I repeat--with administrative support, which would include pointing out where she's not as impartial as she likes to think she is, she might have been a decent teacher.

[dungeonwriter.livejournal.com]

You make excellent points, and it does show that Minerva can be effective when she wants to be, but the amount of bullying that's done is harrowing. We truly can't expect her to be everywhere, but it seems like unless you do it under her nose, she's not going to proactively stop it.

That's what annoys me. I know she can't stop what she can't see but she doesn't seem to investigate much.

[oryx_leucoryx]

My personal theory is that Minerva was the one who gave James and Sirius those multiple detentions. And then they got much better at covering their misdeeds up once they had the Marauders' Map (and the 2 way mirrors, and a friend who could play lookout in rat form, on top of the invisibility cloak which they had probably from the beginning). So they were no longer getting caught. And Albus suddenly became so pleased with James over something he wasn't sharing. So she concluded that her disciplinary methods paid off, and that was the way to go.

Years later the twins show up and she uses the same methods on them and is perplexed why she doesn't seem to be getting across to them at all.

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

Well there is Terri-Testing's (excellent) essay on Snapedom which posits that Dumbledore forbids Hogwarts teachers from intervening in any bullying unless they catch the students in the act.

[dungeonwriter.livejournal.com]

Trying to hunt it down, could you spare a link?

Thank you

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

Here it is:

http://asylums.insanejournal.com/snapedom/276142.html#cutid1

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

If the comment gets flagged, here's what you do: type "Snapedom" into the search engine, click on the first link you see (it should direct you to an InsaneJournal community), find the link at the right-hand side of the page under "Navigation" that says "Previous 20" (you'll have to scroll down a ways to find it) and go back twice. Then scroll down until you find the essay that says "Mr. Filch Has Asked: Discipline at Hogwarts."

[dungeonwriter.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much, that was so helpful!!!

I so appreciate it.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Of course, JKR apparently hates history, so it's no wonder that she has it being taught by a dull, out of touch teacher who is also undead for some reason. What's weird is that most real life history teachers I have met are quite passionate about their subject and really go out of their way to try to show students that it isn't just a mindless jumble of names and dates.

But then, the approach that is taken to history at Hogwarts is pretty much the same as the approach for most of the other classes- memorize some stuff and parrot it back, possibly with the use of a wand. I guess I can't blame Binns for being dull- the only difference between his class and say, Transfiguration is that there isn't any animal cruelty to entertain the kids with.

I'm a historian and know that the first thing any oppressive regime does is to destroy and rewrite history books and install teachers who will only teach what is 'politically approved'

Well said. This is part of why I am so strongly opposed to censorship- it takes away the right of the people to know what actually happened. Though I suppose the fact that I want to go into Library and Information Science probably has a lot to do with it too. ;-)

[sunnyskywalker]

That reminds me that I haven't ranted about how JKR portrays Pince and the library enough... Can you imagine if she'd actually taught the kids some research skills? The series would have been a lot shorter, for starters! Or even if she'd just been shown to be reasonable in expecting the kids not to damage school property or disturb others who were trying to study. (Why they can't have magically-separate "loud" and "quiet" sections is beyond me. It can't be that hard.)

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

You know, it might just be because I am a library science student, but it amazes me how much of the major problems in the series could be solved with the help of any good reference librarian. Who is Nicholas Flamel? Let me check the biographies. What kind of creature can petrify people just by looking at them? Let's see what we can find in the zoology section. If not there, we can try health and medicine. What are the Deathly Hallows? Have you tried looking in ''Beedle the Bard''?

There is also the fact that Madame Pince is seriously one of the worst librarian stereotypes I have seen in modern fiction. I really wonder why so many of my friends in the department are fans.

[sunnyskywalker]

Sadly, it doesn't seem likely Hogwarts would have anything as logical or modern as a card catalog... but I would still bet on Pince knowing how to find which wizarding biography they needed! Seriously, couldn't Hermione just say she was trying to learn more about wizarding history and wanted to know about this name she'd heard that sounded important?

[oryx_leucoryx]

No, because that wasn't much of a lie, nor was it making her appear reckless.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

I seem to recall reading in several of my LIS textbooks that even in the early modern era (which is where the WW seems to be perpetually frozen) that lists were kept of the books in libraries. Finding this stuff shouldn't have been that hard. And if Pince were actually worth her salt as a librarian, it would have been easier.

But I guess "Harry Potter and the Easily Solved Reference Question" just doesn't have the same ring to it. ;-)

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Y'know, on this one I can give them a miss.

First off, they're ELEVEN. They learned the name Nicolas Flamel under hush-hush, life-and-death-secrets-escaping accidentally circumstances, and then a casual search for the name turns up nothing. Of COURSE they'd imagine that the name itself is part of the big secret.

(A well-educated Pureblood--or even Half-blood, raised with WW references--kid would have exclaimed, the moment that Hagrid said what the dog was guarding was a secret between Dumbledore and Nicolas Flamel, "You mean it has something to do with alchemy?" And such a child WOULD not have jumped to thinking of the Stone, because that was the Flamels' solely, created by Nicolas and Perenelle five centuries before Dumbledore made himself noticed. Our well-educated child would have been sidetracked instead looking at Albus's JOINT research with Nicolas.)

But also... if Albus were more competent than he seems, he might have asked Irma to tell him if anyone that year showed any special interest in 600-year-old old news, Flamel.

In fact, given his experiences with Tom, Albus might have Irma for years red-flagging any studies remotely referencing any of the known approaches to immortality....

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

True, but even an 11 year old could have thought to ask a librarian-- at least one who was less scary than Pince was. I guess I can sort of give them a pass for that reason. Once they get older, though...