Harry Potter Abridged! GOF Chapter 5

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

[Harry arrives with Fred and George at the Burrow.]

Harry: So, what was that super-special-awesome tormenting candy you gave my cousin?

Fred: Oh, it’s called Ton-Tongue Toffee. George and I invented them. Aren’t we just ingenious and not at all dangerous or scary?!

[Turns out, all the elder Weasley brothers are there as well.]

Charlie: Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Charlie, and you met me in Book 1. I am here to do something important—ssssssh, I can’t say what lest any premature revelations spoil the plot—in this book, and then to vanish and never appear again. Oh, yeah, I was good at Quidditch. But not quite as good as you, Harry!

Bill: And I’m the other older Weasley brother. I’m a totally awesome tomb robber, dude! Oh, and I’ll marry a hot chick you meet later on for no reason. But other than that I have no real purpose either. Peace, man!

[Just then, Mr. Weasley appears, looking very angry.]

Mr. Weasley: It was very wrong indeed of you to mistreat that poor Muggle boy. Note, however, that I am not going to punish you, but merely give you a slap on the wrist. In fact, I am not even going to tell your mother.

Mrs. Weasley: Somebody call me?

Fred and George: AAAAAAAAH!

Mr. Weasley: Oh, it’s nothing—they were just tormenting a Muggle who was a bully to Harry to begin with!

[Just then, Hermione and Ginny enter.]

Ron: By the way, Fred and George are opening a joke shop. Do not ask me how they can turn a profit from doing that, but they can. Now let’s go to our room.

[Percy is the last one on the scene.]

Percy: Oh, hello, everyone. I’m just working on a report about cauldron thickness, and how we, surprise surprise, need some sort of standard or else people will sell dangerously-thin cauldrons just to save money, which will lead to a great many injuries that could have easily been avoided—

Ron: Yeah, whatevs. We’re wizards—pointless danger is our game. If everyone were Gryffindors we wouldn’t worry about this crap.

[Ron, Harry, Hermione, and Ginny all go to Ron’s room.]

Ron: So, you like my new baby owl? His name’s Pigwidgeon, which Ginny called him.

Ginny: He won’t answer to anything else. How he even learned his name in the first place, with how stupid owls are, is another matter….

Ron: Oh, by the way, Percy is very enamored of his employer, Mr. Crouch. Gee, I wonder if that could possibly be important in any way.

Harry: Oh, goodie! We have a genuine…bi character in this story!

Ron: I was joking! Alright, he’s desperately trying to shadow this man because he’s his slave in his quest for power. Or something!

[After a time, the Trio and Ginny go down to help out with dinner. Mrs. Weasley causes creamy sauce to flow from her wand.]

Mrs. Weasley: Any Freudian implications of this image are purely coincidental.

Ginny: You’re secretly a man?!

Mrs. Weasley: Purely coincidental! Now get ye gone!

[The family ends up eating an idyllic dinner outside while Crookshanks chases Gnomes and everyone makes spirited and plot-heavy conversation.]

**LET’S PLAY: SPOT THE PLOT POINT! WITH OUR HOST, PERCY WEASLEY!**

Percy: Alright, I’m going to say a number of words here, and I want you to tell me which ones you think will be plot-relevant! Cauldron bottoms! World Cup! Ludo Bagman! Bertha Jorkins! Missing! Secret Mystery Event for After the World Cup!

Mr. Weasley: Ahem, you will never be the star of anything. Let me just say that Ludo Bagman is awesome because I was able to get my tickets to him through bribery and cutting deals and generally breaking my own laws!

Percy: Alright, at least let me discuss the Secret Mystery Even for After the World Cup?

Ron: No, you can’t do that—we can’t have any Premature Revelations spoil the book’s plot.

Fred: Mind if I cut in? I’ve got a plot-important keyword of my own: Viktor Krum!

Harry: Who?

Charlie: He’s a famous Quidditch player from Eastern Europe. His team will be competing against Ireland in the Quidditch World Cup.

**PREVIOUSLY ON HARRY POTTER**

[Harry Potter is the best Quidditch player in his school.]

Wood: Harry, you’re the best!

Angelina: Oh, Harry, I love you so much. Will you let me kiss you?

Harry: Ah… no….

Ron: Wow, I wish I was as good as Harry.

[The only character in the series so far to be comparable to Harry is Charlie.]

Charlie: But now I’m graduated so Harry has no competition in Hogwarts whatsoever!

[Harry owes most of his success to his spectacular broom, the Firebolt!]

Harry: My broom is the best! Even pros don’t always have it! And this does not give me an unfair advantage or anything!

**END OF FLASHBACK INFO DUMP**

Harry: Wow, this is wonderful! I could just stay here for the rest of my life!

Mrs. Weasley: Oh, look at the time! We need to get to bed—we’ll be getting up early to go to Diagon Alley and the Quidditch World Cup!

Harry: Why are we getting school supplies before the big game?

Mrs. Weasley: Because professional games sometimes last for many days.

Percy: Oh, I hope that doesn’t happen! I still have to turn in my report before Fred and George put dragon dung or something in it!

Fred: Sorry Percy—your research just isn’t as important as our amusement. And we are totally likeable pranksters!

Comments

[sunnyskywalker]

Seriously, they need the equivalent of Club Fed for non-violent crimes and people who are awaiting trial. And what about a temporary loss of your "license" to carry a wand, or a curfew, or a magical ankle bracelet? Okay, these are relatively recent developments in the justice system iirc, and the wizarding world would have split off at the point where you're either hanged, left to rot in Newgate and charged for room and board, or possibly mutilated... but surely if they can adopt the Muggle school calendar and invent any number of magical doodads, they can adopt some Muggle punishments or invent their own magical tracking devices.

[dungeonwriter.livejournal.com]

Considering Hogwarts uses collective punishment and reward, inhumane punishment, gives students bullying power and has little to no discipline, we've got a long way to go.

After I saw the Wizengamot...I really feared for any person who was unpopular. They had no hope of justice.

[sunnyskywalker]

Yeah. I mean, in real life that effectively often happens, but at least we sometimes try to be fair. They don't even seem to try, or value the concept.

[dungeonwriter.livejournal.com]

http://www.hp-lexicon.org/hogwarts/classes/detentions.html

The offenses are wildly disproportional. You get the same punishment (doing chores) for criticizing the way Snape taught when substituting for Lupin as you do for coming to Hogwarts in a flying Ford Anglia as you do for melting the sixth cauldron in Potions.

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

Seriously, they need the equivalent of Club Fed for non-violent crimes and people who are awaiting trial.

For some reason this statement made me think of the old Patrick McGoohan TV series, The Prisoner...

Perhaps what Rowling's wizarding world needs is a resort-type island for prisoners guilty of lesser, "victimless" crimes...with an inexplicable magikal bubble to chase them down if they try to escape... :-)

[the-bitter-word.livejournal.com]

As you probably remember from the series, the Village was no paradise. Mind control and social and physical coercion were the order of the day. In this way, Hogwarts was a sort-of prison for at least one person. He couldn't escape, and the magical bubble that got him contained a snake.

Maybe it's just Wizarding Britain that has Dementors. Grindelwald was chained in a tower at Nurmengard, if I recall correctly. It was probably solitary confinement, which is a kind of torture, but without soul-sucking demons as guards.

Also, I'd think having a binary type of justice, where it's either Dementors or "nudge nudge wink wink," would lead to a great deal of disrespect for the legal system. It might in fact be a non-deterrent to potential wrongdoers, who would focus more on knowing the right people, telling the best tales, and using the most force over actually staying honest and working hard -- both of which seem to be shameful things in the Wizarding world, anyway.

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

As you probably remember from the series, the Village was no paradise. Mind control and social and physical coercion were the order of the day.

Yep. Sounds just like Rowling's wizarding world...

Which is why it's a perfect concept for a Potterverse Club Fed-like prison...

;-)

[sunnyskywalker]

Yeah, it might encourage more extreme measures to avoid prison - more mind-wiping of witnesses and victims by any old incompetent wizard who stole something or played a "joke," for instance. As if they didn't have enough of that already.

That would be interesting if Britain was the only wizarding nation to make a deal with the demons. Nurmengard is presumably in Durmstrang's catchment area, so they're supposedly a more Dark Arts-friendly place... yet their worst punishment is solitary confinement? (If they executed anyone, surely Grindlewald would have been first on the block.) On the other hand, we only saw Nurmengard for a moment through Voldievision, and that was after the Dementors had all run off, so it's possible they had them a few years previously. Grindlewald's longevity and apparent sanity suggest otherwise, though. We don't know of anyone who survived anywhere near 50 years of Azkaban. They looked pretty bad after 13.

[wolf-willow31.livejournal.com]

One of Number 6's crimes in The Prisoner was refusing to be sorted, wasn't it? I'd bet that wouldn't go over well at Hogwarts!