HBP Chapter Fourteen: "Felix Felicis"

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

* First up, I’m not sure what the name “felix felicis” is about. It’s Latin for “happy of happy”, but that makes no sense whatsoever. If I were in a particularly cynical mood, I might suggest she looked up happy in a Latin dictionary, found felix felicis, and didn’t realise that the second word was just the genitive singular of the first.

* Ron correctly points out that Harry’s lessons with Dumbledore aren’t actually teaching him anything useful, although once again we’re probably expected to judge him for his lack of blind faith in whatever his superiors say ought to be done.

* Hermione’s defence, that the lessons help to find out Voldemort’s weaknesses, might be more convincing if Harry ever actually uses something from Voldemort’s childhood against him.

* I’m not sure why Harry’s so averse to attending Slug Club meetings. Yeah, Slughorn’s a bit obsequious, but not so bad as to justify Potter’s constant attempts to avoid him.

* This scene perfectly captures Ron and Hermione’s dynamic: Ron sneers at Hermione for being better than him, and Hermione puts Ron down and makes him feel jealous. If this is JKR’s idea of romance, I’d hate to be her husband.

* Still, at least Harry’s got his priorities right: how will he be affected if they start going out?

* “Under the influence of Butterbeer” makes it sound like an alcoholic drink, but I’m pretty sure we’ve seen no-one (or at least no-one human) get drunk off it before, and there’s never been any indication of an age limit for drinking it. Oh dear, continuity.

* Seamus slams his books and looks sour when Dean gets a place on the team instead of him. For all that fandom has Slytherins down as the Hogwarts drama queens, I think that Gryffindors are definitely the most stroppy.

* I can’t imagine where the rest of Gryffindor house gets the idea that Harry plays favourites from. Except perhaps from the fact that he chose his best friend Ron two years in a row, despite the fact that Ron always goes to pieces whenever there’s a game on. Perhaps that has something to do with it.

* Still, it’s a pity JKR had to resurrect nervouskeeper!Ron. Not only was it tedious enough in the last book, its inclusion here just makes the Quidditch scenes in Phoenix seem even more pointless, and Ron even more needlessly pathetic.

* Ginny, of course, looks even better than usual in this scene: not only does she score most of the goals against Ron (which is probably meant to increase his emasculation – even his little sister is better than him), but she also makes Harry laugh with her sassy put-downs. When she and Harry get married they can both bond over their mutual enjoyment of other people’s discomfort.

* And… here comes the chest monster! Honestly, Harry and his chest monster must be the second-worst romance I’ve ever read (the first, of course, is Ron and Hermione).

* We know Ginny’s going to be awesome in this scene when she begins by “tossing her long red hair and glaring at Ron”. Somebody kill me now.

* What’s with all this “let’s get this straight once and for all” business? Ginny’s choice of words seems to imply that Ron keeps prying into her love life, but we’ve never been given any indication that this is the case.

* I presume the thing Ron doesn’t want people calling Ginny is “slut”? I wish they would. Not because I think it’s true, but because Ginny’s just so irritating that anything which would annoy her is OK by me.

* Ginny has a go at Ron for not having enough experience. Because obviously, modern society isn’t nearly sexualised enough, we need a series of popular books telling children that anybody who hasn’t had enough sexual experience is pathetic.

* Man, Ginny’s just a total bitch in this scene. Yes, Ron was rude to her, but her response is really disproportionate and uncalled-for.

* It’s odd, but Ginny seems to get most worked up about the way Ron tries to get Fleur’s attention. She sounds rather like a spurned lover here. Hmm, maybe all that Weasleycest fic isn’t quite so out there as I’d assumed.

* No, Harry, don’t stop Ron from cursing her! Let Ginny get zapped for once!

* So Ginny flounces off, leaving Ron behind. I suppose he should count himself lucky she didn’t whip out her wand and perform a super-sassy Bat-Bogey Hex on him.

* “She’s Ron’s sister, Harry told himself firmly. Ron’s sister. She’s out of bounds.” Even though Ron practically threw her at him at the end of the last book. Plot-induced amnesia strikes again.

* Harry feels “dazed and confused” the next morning. So do I, after trying to make sense of this book.

* Hermione’s feeling “hurt and bewildered” by Ron’s “icy, sneering indifference”. If this was a semi-believable book, I’d say that Ron had finally had enough of Hermione’s constant passive aggressiveness and undermining, but as it is I think we’re supposed to assume he’s just upset at finding out Hermione had snogged Krum two years ago.

* Incidentally, why is this supposed to be such a big and shocking revelation? Surely when two teenagers go out, the natural assumption is that they’ll end up snogging?

* Luckily for Ron, he’s got no need to worry: Hermione’s just getting her necessary practice in to hone her technique for her true man.

* FOR GOD’S SAKE ROWLING SHUT UP ABOUT THAT SODDING BAT-BOGEY HEX GINNY IS COOL AND SASSY WE GET IT ALREADY STOP RAMMING IT DOWN OUR THROATS AAARGH… *takes deep breaths*

* Lavender’s trying to make Ron feel better. Keep away from him, you hussy! Ron doesn’t need a nice, friendly girlfriend, he needs a scornful and contemptuous one to keep him down in his rightful place.

* Well, at least the Slytherins are sensible enough to have substitute players.

* Harry gets his hand crushed by the Slytherin captain, and I seem to recall Flint used to do the same thing to Oliver Wood. Is hand-crushing a typical Slytherin trait then? Maybe all their parents told them about the importance of a good firm handshake, and they just take it a bit too far.

* Harry dislikes Zacharias heartily… presumably because he can just sense the latent evil in the boy, even though he hasn’t done anything yet which would merit such dislike. If anything, surely Harry ought to feel friendly towards a fellow DA member?

* Ginny scores four of Gryffindor’s six goals. Colour me shocked.

* The game goes pretty much unremarkably: Gryffindor score a few goals, and then Harry’s broom wins the game, rendering everything which came before totally pointless.

* “Oi, Harper! How much did Malfoy pay you to make you come on instead of him?” I’d say that distracting an opposing seeker like this was a very Slytherin thing to do, were it not for the fact that we hardly ever see Slytherins actually doing cunning and sneaky things like this.

* Not that playing on superior brooms and deliberately psyching out opponents makes the Gryffindors any less chivalrous, you understand.

* Ginny flies into Zach for his insufficiently fawning commentary, placing the crowning turd on the mountain of raw sewage that is this Quidditch game.

* “I never said you couldn’t [save goals]!” No, Hermione, you just implied it really, really strongly, such that nobody could miss that that was what you were thinking.

* Ron “looks like he’s eating [Lavender’s face],” unlike Ginny, who daintily glues herself to her boyfriend’s mouth.

* Unfortunately Ginny’s probably right: most first romances in these books seem to be for people to “refine their technique” before moving on to their true love.

* Hermione seems rather surprised that Ron got tired of her hectoring and decided to hook up with somebody who actually respects him instead. Maybe she’s been getting all her dating advice from The Game or whatever the wizarding equivalent is.

Comments

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Yes, she abandons Neville at that ball -

Wow, really? I'd remembered various things about that but I've never picked up on the canon prose that supported it. Okay, I'll take that as written. Wow. Yet another boyfriend for the Girl Who Dates.

The 'immediacy' of Ginny's switch from Michael to Dean was my impression from the book - we learn about her dumping Michael in the same announcement in which Ginny proclaims she's moving onto Dean. But I'll happily accept what you've said. Because, yes, two-three weeks is pretty much immediate compared with a dating span of 1.5 years.

And then the Oh-my-God-I've-got-to-DATE 'immediacy' again with the next switch:

That's two weeks right there, and that isn't *all* of the time between the two relationships. Is that a "very brief interval," in your book?

Yes. That's why I said "very brief interval"; in this latest switch for the Girl Who Dates I knew there were a few weeks interval between dumping Dean and throwing herself at Harry.

while the character might be defined by her boyfriends in these books -

Right. Which is why I'm calling her a serial dater, the Girl Who Dates.

It isn't necessary to make everything she does something to be held against her.

I think a girl who's defined largely/only by her boyfriends - as you've admitted yourself - is a pretty sad state of affairs.

Hermione Granger - a girl who saved Harry Potter on numerous occasions, strived to save Buckbeak, launched a campaign to rescue house elves from despicable conditions, set up the D.A., top of her class, prefect.

Ginny Weasley - oh, she dated Neville, abandoned/rebuffed him for Michael, dumped him and hooked up with Dean Thomas, dumped him and threw herself at HARRY POTTER, a lot of Hogwarts boys like her don't you know - yeah, nothing greatly admirable there.

We wouldn't be "holding it against her" if it wasn't for the fact that Rowling clearly - from canon and interviews - expects us to laud Ginny. And that the character ends up with her prize, Harry Potter himself.

[lynn-waterfall.livejournal.com]

It's a pretty sad state of affairs... for the *book*. The *book* defines her by her boyfriends. Does she define herself that way? (Most of us here primarily look at things in-universe, remember.)

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Heh, a month ago when I popped in and saw a profusion of 'Watsonian' and 'Doylist' descriptors I had to go to Wikipedia to work out what was being said.

While I think I understand those terms I don't know what you're on about here.

Ginny seems happy to 'be herself', 'never give up' on her crush target, while being very busy making sure she's dating boys.

None of the textual references (from the 'book'???) are contested by Ginny. None of them are in dispute.

???

[lynn-waterfall.livejournal.com]

As has been pointed out elsewhere on this thread: we rarely see Ginny when she's doing anything other than something related to romance or Quidditch. That doesn't mean that she did nothng else with her time, never went to a single class, etc.

Ginny seems happy to never give up on her crush on Harry, true. So? Hermione doesn't give up on her attraction to Ron, but there's tons more going on in her life than that. Harry's attracted to Ginny throughout this book, but that isn't the only thing going on in his life. But the difference is that the book *tells* us about Hermione and Harry, and it doesn't tell us about Ginny.

Maybe Ginny literally does have nothing in her head but boys and Quidditch, but we see so little of her that we can't know that.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

I'm not too impressed by that line of thought. Going as far as you can with canon facts is good stuff and there are people here who are amazing at doing that.

But conjuring your own head-canon into the blanks between sentences and paragraphs doesn't do much for me at all. One could surely fabricate almost *anything* if the only constraint is "as long as there's nothing actually stated that contravenes it". The Hufflepuffs have a distillery in their common room. The Ravenclaws built a rocket ship. Voldemort conquered the USA in Harry's fifth year, explaining why he didn't turn up until the end. Hermione murdered her parents. :-)

Silly examples maybe, but displaying the extremes to which one could go with this train of logic.

I think there are enough 'hooks' in the canon to invalidate this approach in Ginny's case. Pansy has the opportunity to tell us that Ginny Weasley was elected head of the school council and had been acclaimed for theorising the thirteenth use of dragon blood. But no. All Pansy says is that Ginny Weasley, huh, so good looking a lot of boys like her. Full stop.

Luna comments about Ginny at the quidditch match, and simply says "she's very nice", not "she went to the Middle East and facilitated world peace". Later on she tells Harry that Ginny's being nice to her, not that Ginny is brilliant at gobstones or spends half the day playing six musical instruments at once.

No. Enough places in the text for a reasonable person to state with confidence "if Ginny Weasley was more than the Girl Who Dates - if she did anything else as well or often as she does dating and quidditch - we would have seen it".

There must be something in 'literary science' which goes into this sort of thing?

[lynn-waterfall.livejournal.com]

All of those examples are extreme, and out of the ordinary. Do you believe that Ginny ate no meals that we aren't told of? Do you believe that she never slept or went to the bathroom? Spending time not thinking about relationships is similarly normal, and it isn't a stretch to imagine that Ginny did it.

Put it another way: do you believe that Cho Chang is equally obsessed with boys? After all, we don't hear all that much about *her* when it isn't something to do with relationships, either.

If you don't agree, fine, but I'm done.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

All of those examples are extreme, and out of the ordinary.

Yes, of course. Deliberately so for (a) the humour and (b) to exaggerate how unlikely I deem your theory.

Do you believe that Ginny ate no meals that we aren't told of? Do you believe that she never slept or went to the bathroom?

Of course not. But I don't think she did anything *important*, that was out of the ordinary.

Other than date and play quidditch.

We all eat meals. That's nothing to write home about. We all go to the toilet. Ditto. We don't all date 'heavily'. That's worthy, therefore, of being mentioned.

Ginny's mentioned.

Spending time not thinking about relationships is similarly normal, and it isn't a stretch to imagine that Ginny did it.

We *all* 'spend time not thinking about relationships'. But we don't all date almost continuously, or from our actions and words assume a posture that dating is a necessity, a must-be condition of our lives. Not like Ginny.

If you don't agree, fine, but I'm done.

I don't agree, and I guess that now makes the two of us that are done. :-)

[sunnyskywalker]

Wasn't Pansy speaking in the context of a couple of the Slytherin boys noting that hey, isn't Ginny Weasley kind of hot? That is, Pansy is hardly likely to say anything complementary, like "and she's smart and civic-minded, too!" But you'll note that even Pansy can't find anything like, "Oh, well you know how quickly she goes through boyfriends" to say. She doesn't. No, all she can say is that boys like Ginny. Possibly exactly the way the Slytherin boys like her - from afar, mentioning that they've noticed her.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Wasn't Pansy speaking in the context of a couple of the Slytherin boys noting that hey, isn't Ginny Weasley kind of hot?

No; Pansy is wondering why Slughorn invited her to his compartment. In fact this is an even better example than I thought of a 'hook' in the book to give us all the sterling qualities of Ginny Weasley:

"Potter, precious Potter, obviously he wanted a look at "the Chosen One,"' sneered Malfoy, "but that Weasley girl! What's so special about her?"

"A lot of boys like her," said Pansy, watching Malfoy out of the corner of her eyes for his reaction. "Even you think she's good-looking, don't you, Blaise, and we all know how hard you are to please!"

If Ginny *did* have any attributes more superior than her datable qualities - being good looking, a lot of boys liking her - then Pansy would have mentioned it. "Oh, she was elected head of the school, that's why". Or Draco wouldn't have needed to ask the question in the first place.

Instead the whole compartment is wondering just why Ginny Weasley was invited into the Slug Club. Just like all of we readers. :-)

And all Pansy could come up with were traits directly related to, and supplementing, Ginny's stature as the Girl Who Dates. In fact this scene was where Rowling firmly re-inserts her in that slot, right at the start of the story. And that's where she stayed.

[oryx_leucoryx]

No, Pansy wouldn't have. Pansy would want to cheapen any achievement of anyone on her enemies' side, and Ginny being a Weasley and a Gryffindor is her enemy.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

The question wouldn't have been raised if there'd been an obvious answer.

If Ginny is a natural enemy of Slytherin then Harry is ten times so, and yet they skipped right past him, no questions asked.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Well, they are used to Harry getting undue special treatment. Ginny getting such treatment is news.

[sunnyskywalker]

Okay, so Blaise had mentioned on a previous occasion, which Pansy is now referencing, that Ginny is kind of hot.

And I think it's even more than what Oryx says, that Pansy would want to cheapen Ginny's accomplishments (ie "oh, she's just there as eye candy"). Draco asks what's so special about Ginny, and Pansy replies that lots of boys think she's hot - it's the absolutely classic set-up for an insecure girl who thinks a lot of her value is in her looks wanting her boyfriend to say, "No way, she's fugly! You're so much better looking!"

Pansy was fishing for reassurance that Draco thinks she's hot. All this tells us is Pansy's values, or what she thinks the Slytherin boys value, at least, not whether she's noticed anything else Ginny may or may not have done.

[sunnyskywalker]

ETA: Oh, and by undercutting Ginny with "well it's just some people think she's hot," she's also backing Draco up, possibly against Blaise (if Blaise has in fact noticed more than her looks, but he's not exactly giving us or his irritated fellow Slytherins a dissertation). Again a classic insecure girlfriend move. Pansy manages to combine two of those into one nasty remark.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

This tells us that:

- Draco can't understand why Ginny would be present (because being a good dater would never occur to him as a sufficient reason :-));

- Pansy's only reason is 'because she is hot'; a dateable attribute;

- Blaise's first and only thought about Ginny Weasley is "I wouldn't touch/date her".

All this tells us is Pansy's values -

And it certainly tells us nothing about Ginny's skills ... other than that she's hot and dates/dateable. Which falls right in with the rest of the post GoF series.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Yes, but in any case, the Slytherins aren't the people to listen to for praises of Gryffindors in general and those from families close to Dumbledore in particular. They don't mention Ginny's Quidditch success either, and that is something we know about. She caught 2 snitches the previous year, and it isn't clear she had anything better than a school-broom to fly on (which makes her a better Seeker than Harry).

[sunnyskywalker]

We know Draco's sulky and always thinks he ought to be getting treated better than Other Person X. Here's how I read this dialogue:

DRACO: Why did Slughorn invite some Weasley girl instead of me? I'm so much better! Now I will pout and declare that she's just a poopyhead anyway who must not be good at anything and Slughorn is wrong, because I refuse to admit that there's any reason Slughorn might not recognize my awesome.
PANSY: Yes, of course, dear! Of course you're awesome and she's no good and Slughorn's wrong! In fact, he's shallow! It's just because some people think she's hot. Yes, that's it. You're very superior, don't worry.
PANSY: Except wait, even hot is too much of a positive. I sure hope you don't think she's hot. You're supposed to think I'm hottest. Blaise! Did you think she was hot?
BLAISE: Pfffft.
PANSY: Exactly. She's a Gryffindor bloodtraitor who is not as awesome as you or as hot as me, and Slughorn is too ignorant to recognize it. We would never admit otherwise, because that way lies social chaos.