![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
oneandthetruth.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
deathtocapslockThis is another of Rowling’s “let’s trash Snape and his fans” phrases. To sack somebody means to fire them, but Snape isn’t fired; he quits. Besides, the only one with the power to fire him is Voldemort, and he doesn’t fire Snape. Take that, Rowling!
Luna Stuns Alecto, and Alecto falls so hard she rattles the glass in the bookcases. (Funny; I don’t remember reading anything about bookcases in the Gryffindor common room. And if the floors are stone, why would a falling body cause them to vibrate enough to make glass rattle?) Ravenclaws sleeping in the dorms stampede down to see what happened. They’re delighted, until the very inappropriately named Amycus (Latin for “friend” when spelled with an I) shows up looking for his sister. Of course, he’s too dumb to answer the door knocker’s question, which means he’s literally dumber than a piece of metal. (Neither could Harry, which makes them nonintellectual equals.) Fortunately for him, McGonagall comes along and answers it correctly, and they go inside. When they find the unconscious Alecto, Amycus has a fit, convinced Voldy’s going to kill them for falsely alerting him to Harry’s presence. He decides to blame it on the kids so the Dull Lord can kill them instead, saying, “Couple of kids more or less, what’s the difference?”
McGonagall says something interesting in reply: “Only the difference between truth and lies, courage and cowardice.” That’s a lovely sentiment, but how true is it? That is, how well does Minerva herself live by those noble words? The truth is, Harry was too young to be on the quidditch team first year, but an exception was made for him, which is a kind of lie because it’s a pretense he’s a second year. The truth is, Albus Dumbledore was an evil asshole, but McGonagall lies and pretends he was a paragon. She also never had the courage to stand up to him, no matter how outrageous his behavior. The truth is it was cowardly for MWPP to gang up on Snape (and others) and bully him, but Minerva still lies by blowing off their criminality as “troublemaking,” and she doesn’t touch the issue of their cowardice at all.
So shut the hell up, old lady. You’re just making yourself look bad. Since we’re in Ravenclaw Tower, let me paraphrase a classic Ravenclawish sentiment and say, “It’s better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a hypocrite and phony than to open it and remove all doubt.”
McGonagall says she won’t allow Amycus to blame the students for his own failures. He replies by telling her she’ll go along, or else, and spits in her face.
And thus we reach the most controversial scene in the entire book: Harry throws off his security blanket and Crucios Amycus, who is thrown into the air, spun around, and smashed into a bookcase.
I don’t know whether it’s overcompensation for the extreme boredom of most of DBP, or if Rowling is writing to make the movie more exciting, but suddenly all the spells “bang,” and they make people slam onto the ground, or fly up into the air, spin around, and then crash into something. It’s quite annoying because (1) it gives the book a cartoonish, 1960s Batman TV show feel. I keep imagining these scenes with a “POW!”, “BLAM!”, “BANG!”, or something similar superimposed over them. (2) These spell-related histrionics don’t change the fact the vast majority of this book is dull enough to put readers into a permanent coma. Here’s a clue, Ms. Rowling: With an interesting plot and characters, you don’t need cartoonish histrionics to hold people’s attention. Without them, every literary frippery in the book won’t distract readers from the cliched boredom of your overall product.
Harry embraces the Bellatrix principle as he understands her statement about “really meaning it” when casting an Unforgivable. In chapter 28, I wrote, “Harry must wonder in the depths of his mind what it says about him, that he is willing to surrender his mind and his will to carrying out the desires of such a person [Dumbledore]. Is he really any better than the Death Eaters who mindlessly follow Voldemort, like crazy Bella?” We now have our answer to that question: No, Harry is not any better than the DEs who blindly follow Voldemort, including crazy Bella herself. He has no problem with dishing out gratuitous abuse and pain whenever he feels like it, then justifying his behavior by saying the victim “deserved” it. He torments people he regards as inferior “because they exist,” as his father did to Snape, and Bella does to mudbloods. He just does it less frequently. Like James and Bella, his preferred victims are those weaker than he, such as Filch. And using a torture curse on someone for a minor assault defines overkill. Keep this scene in mind when we get to chapter 31, in which Harry goes in the opposite direction in the Room of Requirement and uses a Stunner against the homicidal Vincent Crabbe.
The blood thunders through Harry’s brain, which makes me wonder whether he’s about to have a stroke. The only time I remember feeling like that is when I’ve mowed the lawn with a 100 pound/45.8 kg push mower on a very hot day, say 100 degrees F/38 degrees C or hotter, including the heat index, and didn’t stop often enough to rest, rehydrate, and cool off. Even then, the blood was actually pounding in my scalp, not my brain.
Minerva is astounded to see Harry and tells him his action was foolish. When he replies, “He spat at you,” she says, “Potter, I--that was very--very gallant of you--but don’t you realize--” (Emphasis in original)
Since this is such a controversial scene, I’ll examine it in some detail.
Certain Rowling dittoheads have defended Minerva, pointing out she sounds disconcerted rather than enthusiastic. I think they’re right. (Now, now, that doesn’t mean the apocalypse is at hand. Even a blind person hits the bulls-eye occasionally.) Look at the way the sentences are arranged.
“Potter!” whispered Professor McGonagall, clutching her heart. “Potter--you’re here! What--? How--?” She struggled to pull herself together. “Potter, that was foolish!”
“He spat at you,” said Harry.
“Potter, I--that was very--very gallant of you--but don’t you realize--”
“Yeah, I do,” Harry assured her. Somehow her panic steadied him. “Professor McGonagall, Voldemort’s on the way.”
The fact she’s panicking indicates McGonagall is not in full control of her faculties. That means her words and behavior are atypical, so I don’t take her “gallant” remark literally. I think she was both astounded to see Harry, and to see him Crucio somebody, so when he fished for a compliment by justifying his behavior, she tried to come up with a suitably Gryffindorish accolade as a way of getting him off that subject and back to the more important topic of the danger he was in.
What I want to know is, why is she panicking? She acted her usual calm, in-control, condescending self when talking to Amycus. It wasn’t until Harry revealed himself, cast Crucio, and endorsed Ultimate DE Bella’s viewpoint that she panicked. That means one or more of those three things is causing Minerva’s panic. She is clearly concerned about Harry’s safety because right after the quoted passage, she tries to convince him to leave the castle. She may also be distressed at the sight of him “going DE on Amycus’ ass,” so to speak, even to the extent of quoting one of the most hated and feared DEs, but there is not enough evidence to be sure of that.
As for Harry, sane people will agree that his is an extreme overreaction. McGonagall is his teacher and House Head, but they’ve never been particularly close, so there’s no reason for his avenging fury. If somebody spat in my mother’s face, I’d want to slug them--and probably would--but I wouldn’t want to torture them. What Harry did is like stoning somebody for adultery, or burning them at the stake for belonging to a different religion than your own.
Since he’s so enraged, and behaving in such a (supposedly) out of character way, I think we’re probably supposed to regard this as another example of sweet, innocent Harry being taken over by the Voldie-soul fragment. His agreement with Bella, Voldy’s most rabid lieutenant, is an affirmation of this idea. There’s also the fact that Harry is still fighting off the Voldie-vision from the previous chapter during this scene, which implies he is being influenced by the Dull Lord. Harry’s vision continues during his conversation with McGonagall. However, I haven’t let Harry off the hook for his bad behavior before, and I’m not going to now.
The real danger of Harry’s allowing Voldemort free access to his mind was never that Voldy would learn about Harry’s plans and actions. Harry is far too incompetent for that to be a problem. No, the danger that has now been made manifest is that, by looking into the abyss of Voldemort’s mind, the abyss is now looking into Harry. In fighting monsters, he has become one. (To slightly paraphrase Friedrich Nietszche)
He used Imperio on the goblins during the bank heist without blinking. Now he’s using Crucio. All that’s left is Avada Kedavra, and he’ll have the full set of Unforgivables to hang on his belt. Of course, Rowling doesn’t allow him to go there, and I’m sure she thinks that’s a big deal. It’s not. Syndicated columnist James J. Kilpatrick once wrote that rape is a worse crime than murder because, in a murder, the victim is at peace and no longer suffering, while a rape victim suffers forever. Using that logic, it’s far better to kill someone, cleanly and painlessly, than to torture them. I could even argue it’s better to kill them than to Imperio them, particularly if the victim does something horrible while under Imperius, i.e., something they would never have done had they been in control of themselves. Both of the non-fatal Unforgivables can leave lasting psychic scars on their victims that may never be overcome. By contrast, a quick death leaves the victim in peace and out of pain. Harry’s blithe-spirited, self-righteous descent into darkness proves those people who thought Harry might become a Dark Lord were closer to the truth than they’ve ever been given credit for being.
As for McGonagall’s reaction, she’s been criticized almost as much as Harry for calling his cursing “gallant.” (Emphasis hers) However, she first calls it “foolish,” which means she didn’t initially approve of it. I don’t know why it should be foolish; they’re already fighting the DEs, so attacking one shouldn’t make things any worse. And if Harry can take one out of commission, so much the better.
McGonagall also tries to get Harry to leave, which I find very strange. Weren’t she and Aberforth in Gryffindor? What happened to the house that was always spoiling for a fight? What’s this “running away from battle” business? Minerva’s the Head of House, too! She should be setting a better example than this. Maybe she was also “sorted too soon,” and should have been a cowardly, self-serving Slytherin.
Harry explains he’s looking for the diadem, and the Carrows start to wake up. McGonagall proves she has also fallen into the moral abyss by using Imperio to make Amycus pick up his and Alecto’s wands and give them to her. This is another example of how undeserving of respect the “heroes” of this series are. Minerva’s not only using an “Unforgivable”; she’s using it for a completely gratuitous reason. It would have been faster and easier for her to Accio the wands. Yet she and Harry have the unmitigated gall to condemn Snape for using the third, most humane Unforgivable on Dumbledore when the old man was already dying and faced a far slower and more painful death than an AK, even if he had died safely in his bed at Hogwarts. (They didn’t know at this point that Dumbledore had insisted Snape kill him, so I don’t fault Harry and Minerva for condemning the “murder” itself.)
After demonstrating she is on the same [im]moral level as her ex-student (who is unfortunately not “an ex-student” in the Monty Python parrot sense), she conjures a rope and ties the Carrow siblings together. Later in the chapter, she conjures a net and hangs them from the ceiling. Two of these steps are just wasted effort. If McGonagall wants the wands, she can just Summon them, or God forbid, ask Harry to pick them up and hand them to her. Equally dumb is putting the Carrows into a net and hanging them from the ceiling. It’s not that hard to step around them if they’re against the wall, which is probably where the bookcases are. As long as she’s netting and levitating the Carrows, she ought to clean up all that broken glass, which is far more dangerous to the students than bound DEs. The only thing she does that makes sense is to tie the Carrows up, since the immobility curses wear off over time.
Once Harry assures Minerva he’s on a mission from Dumbledore, she instantly drops all resistance and gets to work securing the castle against Voldy, but says they’ll have to get around Snape. Spoiling for a fight, Harry says about confronting Snape, “Let me--” OH, YES, HARRY, PLEASE DO! I SO WANT TO SEE THAT, YOU GRANDIOSE LITTLE SHIT!
McGonagall wants to evacuate the students, and Harry suggests the Hog’s Head tunnel. Poor Aberforth! After this is over, he ought to apply to the Ministry of Magic for war damages so he can repair his home and business. This is what he gets for being a nice guy. If he were a selfish prick like his brother, he’d have been long gone, like he advised Harry. Nice guys really do finish last in the Potterverse.
McGonagall says there are “hundreds of students” to evacuate. How is that possible? Only purebloods are at school, and even when it’s full, Hogwarts only has a few hundred students. Oh dear, math, again.
She sends her cat Patronuses--which are of course nice, ordinary alley cats, not those nasty purebred Persians like Umbridge uses--to call the other House Heads to her. As she proceeds down the hall, with Harry and Luna behind her under the cloak, the last of the three interesting and decent characters in this book (the others being Aberforth and Neville) makes an appearance.
From behind a suit of armor stepped Severus Snape.
Ah. At last. Finally we have somebody worth reading about.
Of course Harry, the Boy Made of Love, feels boiling hatred at the sight of the man who dared to expect Harry to obey the rules his enemy. There’s a gratuitously condemnatory reference to Snape’s greasy hair, which comes rather ill from Maggot-Hair Harry, whose male allies only got a bathroom when girls joined their group.
As Snape slowly approaches McGonagall, he questions her about the Carrows and looks near her, trying to suss out where Harry is hiding under his cloak. She attacks with a slash, but Snape shields himself so quickly she is thrown back. Then she sends a torch at him, which he turns into a giant snake, which she turns to smoke and then flying daggers that pursue him and force him to hide behind a suit of armor. Just then the cavalry other House heads arrive, gang up on the man their Dark Lord has put in authority over them, and drive him from the castle. Of course Minerva, who just used an Unforgivable to fetch wands, calls him a coward for running rather than fighting--oh, yeah, four against one again (six, if you count the kids). Well, she is a Gryffindor. They consider those odds fair.
Flitwick begins “muttering incantations of great complexity.” Pity we never saw these before now, JKR. They would have made the series so much more interesting, unlike that lame pseudo-Latin claptrap you annoyed us with. Harry asks Flitwick about the diadem, but of course he gets the same “lost for centuries” answer everybody else gave him. An occasional competent adult would just show up how incompetent everybody else is. That’s why we’re prevented from seeing Snape until right before his death, and then he behaves just as incompetently as every other character.
Minerva tells the other House heads they’re defending the castle and evacuating the students. Harry and Luna go back to the Room of Requirement to find it even more crowded with reinforcements, including the rest of the Weasley clan.
Molly tries to order Ginny to Hogsmeade because she’s underage. Ginny’s hair flies (of course) as she argues with her mother about joining the fight. When her father gangs up on her, she’s forced to compromise and stay safely in the Room, although she leaves later, as we shall see. I have to wonder whether she would be forced to sit out the battle if she were a 16-year-old boy. I doubt it. Families often screw over youngest daughters in this way--and in Ron’s case, sons in other ways. (Why, yes, I am the youngest in my family. How did you know?)
Percy shows up and is forced to abase himself before his family will take him back. Rereading this scene, I almost expected the twins to demand he fall down and lick their boots as a condition of allowing him to re-enter the family. I was also disgusted at how Arthur and Molly abdicated their responsibilities as family heads to their children in this way, rather than telling the twins to fuck off and leave Percy alone. Obviously Harry’s “Power of Love” has spread to his adopted family, since they were all so eager to forgive Percy’s “treachery”--but only after sufficient groveling on the free thinker’s “traitor’s” part. That’s what families like the Weasleys (and mine) call independent thought and action.
This is definitely on my list of “Most Disgusting DH Scenes.” There’s a thought: Maybe after this sporking is finished, we should have a discussion about which scenes in this book are the worst and why.
Harry has just been told Ron and Hermione have gone looking for a bathroom when he gets another Voldie-vision and realizes the Dull Lord is at the gates.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2014-04-06 01:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-06 05:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-07 05:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-09 05:23 pm (UTC)Her first reaction is disapprobation, yes, but FOR THE WRONG REASON. She calls it "foolish."
That's an assessment of it having been strategically wrong to have cast, not MORALLY wrong.
So when she turns around and calls it "gallant," she's really not reversing herself. A gallant action might well be foolish; a foolish one might well be gallant. Indeed, since "gallant" means showy as well as heroic, it's the appropriate term to use of a showy and ill-judged, but brave, display of chivalry.
It's an inappropriate term to use of a moral abomination, as is "foolish." What's wrong about torturing people is not that, in a specific instance, it may have proved to be ill-judged! Oops, shouldn't have done that. That was silly of me, causing you excruciating agony!
Just as it is inappropriate to listen to someone planning to send children to be tortured and killed and object on the grounds that such an act would be cowardly and involve untruths. Huh? So if Amycus truthfully accused one of Minerva's students of something that would make Riddle torture the kid to death, that would be just dandy with her? Or if Amycus were sending some kids off to be murdered solely to save his sister (rather than, the coward!,also to save himself), that would be okay?
At least Minerva is objecting to Amycus's behavior on moral grounds, but they are the WRONG moral grounds. What's wrong about torturing and murdering students is NOT that in some cases it may be cowardly, and it is NOT that in this specific case it involves an untruth.
It's just like Lily in SWM, criticizing James's behavior on the wrong grounds. Lily apparently doesn't mind that James and three of his friends should gang up to waterboard and sexually assault a student; no what she minded about James was that he was arrogant and expected her to be a part of his fan club. She's just watched James ASSAULT someone, and what does she find to criticize: "Messing up your hair because you think it looks cool... showing off with that stupid Snitch, walking down corridors and hexing anyone who annoys you just because you can--I'm surprised your broomstick can get off the ground with that fat head on it."
no subject
Date: 2014-05-10 12:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-10 03:02 am (UTC)But did she realize it, that's the question.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-10 06:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-10 03:25 am (UTC)She catches someone who she thinks to be one of the Good Guys, Albus's friend and faithful follower Moody, brutally assaulting a fourteen-year-old boy. "Moody" has transfigured the boy to a small animal and is dashing the child repeatedly against a stone floor.
Her reaction?
"What--what are you doing?" said Professor McGonagll, her eyes following the bouncing ferret's progress through the air.
"Teaching," said Moody.
"Teach--Moody, is that a student?" shireked McGonagall, the books spilling out of her arms.
"Yep," said Moody.
"No!" cired Professor McGonagall, running down the stairs and pulling out her wand; a moment later , with a loud snapping noise, Draco Malfoy had reappeared, lying in a heap on the floor with his sleek blond hair all over his now brilliantly pink face. He got to his feet, wincing.
"Moody, we never use transfiguration as a punishment!" said Professor McGonagall weakly. "Surely Professor Dumbledore told you that?"
Note how her outrage evaporates when she realizes Moody is only torturing a Slytherin. And how she questions his use of animal transfiguration to punish a child (remember, that apparently-taboo action was precisely what Hagrid tired incompetently to do to Dudley in book one), but has not a word of objection to his dashing said child repeatedly against stone. So, if "Moody" hadn't transfigured Draco, he was welcome to bash him about as much as he pleased?
Apparently so. At least so long as the thug doing it was Dumbledore's ally, and the child being brutalized a Slytherin and/or the son of a presumed Death Eater.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-06 02:30 am (UTC)Or did she decide that rather than sitting around the cottage for a month (making very little plans for the Gringott's break-in like the trio) that she would be more useful breaking back into Hogwarts and hiding in the RoR - presumably with forays out into the castle to disrupt the authority of the Carrows. Want to talk bravery? Or foolishness? Luna belongs right up there with any Gryffindor.
Does anyone recall a mention of her actually leaving the safety of Shell Cottage, and why wasn't it mentioned that the Trio were worried about her and what might happen if she was recaptured? As she has said before - it was ALMOST like having friends.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-06 05:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-07 12:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-08 02:34 pm (UTC)-- David W. from thehpn
no subject
Date: 2014-04-08 07:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-06 04:26 am (UTC)I find that line to be an utterly cringeworthy moment of let's-inject-grand-moral-principles-here. The Death Eater is proposing to let a couple of kids die for his mistake, and the first thing that comes to McGonagall's mind is... you're so dishonest, you liar! Seriously?
(I mean, I don't even remember Gryffindors claiming to have honesty as one of their virtues, or pretending that it is. Feel free to correct me if you can find a single example, but this isn't even a virtue that Gryffindors have a mental block about, like bravery.)
The courage/cowardice part is, at least, relevant. Although, of course, considering that the whole issue here is that Amycus has been unsuccessful in turning another kid over to the Dark Lord to be killed, McGonagall is clearly wasting her breath. I wish she'd stop being a grandstanding Gryffindor and do something that might actually protect her students.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-06 05:28 pm (UTC)But even if he did quit, that should not cause the castle to not give him a portrait upon his death. I'm sure some of the school heads in the past managed to retire in peace and still got portraits. So - no body, no portrait - Severus lives.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-06 06:20 pm (UTC)Snape is arguably both the smartest and most magically adept character in these books. More important, he's not so full of himself, like Tom and Albus, that he isn't willing to consider the possibility of failure and take precautions to avert it. As the Bible says, "Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." Rowling seems not to realize she wrote that into her books, either.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-06 08:36 pm (UTC)(I don't know why I'm trying to justify this; I think being a Doctor Who fan has made this sort of thing reflexive.)
no subject
Date: 2014-04-06 09:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-07 02:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-08 02:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-06 09:59 pm (UTC)Maybe JKR chose that word for the sake of alliteration.
/The truth is it was cowardly for MWPP to gang up on Snape (and others) and bully him, but Minerva still lies by blowing off their criminality as “troublemaking,” and she doesn’t touch the issue of their cowardice at all./
Well, when we do hear Minerva talk about the Marauders, it’s in the third book and Snape’s name isn’t mentioned at all. So, I wonder if JKR had planned for James to have been a bully then or if she only thought of it when writing the fifth book.
/And using a torture curse on someone for a minor assault defines overkill./
Except that it’s not a torture curse anymore. Amycus doesn’t scream, he doesn’t writhe in agony. He, as you’ve said, simply crashes into a bookcase. So, basically, JKR has turned the Cruciatus Curse into another version of Expelliarmus. So, why didn’t she have Harry use that spell instead?
/Keep this scene in mind when we get to chapter 31, in which Harry goes in the opposite direction in the Room of Requirement and uses a Stunner against the homicidal Vincent Crabbe./
And when Harry never tries to use the Cruciatus Curse or Sectumsempra on Voldemort. Ever. He’ll use those spells against Death Eaters, his Potions professor, and his schoolyard rival, but not the epitome of evil himself.
/However, she first calls it “foolish,” which means she didn’t initially approve of it./
Yes, but, as Oryx said, she immediately follows that statement by randomly using the Imperius Curse instead of Accio. It only took a few sentences for her to shoot herself in the foot. Again, did JKR just forget about the moral implications of using the Unforgivables? Did she forget that Harry and Minerva had easy alternatives (Expelliarmus, Accio)? She cared enough to not make Harry kill Voldemort, but for some reason, the Cruciatus Curse and Imperius Curse aren’t so bad anymore…
…unless you’re Draco Malfoy, in which case, you’re bad for trying to use it against Harry (in HBP) and you’re worth sympathizing with if you can’t bring yourself to cast it (in DH).
no subject
Date: 2014-04-08 02:44 pm (UTC)Actually, the wording is that
As Amycus spun around, Harry shouted, “Crucio!”
The Death Eater was lifted off his feet. He writhed through the air like a drowning man, thrashing and howling in pain, and then,
with a crunch and a shattering of glass, he smashed into the front of a bookcase and crumpled, insensible, to the floor.
There's an example from an episode of Buffy which I never saw but was burned into my brain: when the demon was proved unable to be exorcised from Ben's body, Giles suffocated him to death. He knew that somebody must do it, and Buffy and Xander would never do that themselves.
So yeah, Harry hates Dudley the worst--no, he hates Draco the worst--no he hates Snape the worst, but never tries to fling anything halfway harmful towards Voldemort, who is supposedly Hitler and Satan rolled into one.
The power of love, ladies and gentlemen.
-- David W. from thehpn
no subject
Date: 2014-04-09 12:15 am (UTC)/never tries to fling anything halfway harmful towards Voldemort, who is supposedly Hitler and Satan rolled into one./
Which is really weird.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-09 12:40 am (UTC)And who killed his parents, thus making Harry an orphan who had to be raised by his abusive relatives. This is really messed up.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-09 01:06 am (UTC)Jo made a genuinely good point about her books never being too bright and shiny when she pointed out that "Duh, the premise of book one chapter one is a double homicide." But the series didn't really live up to that, in many ways.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-07 10:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-08 02:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-08 02:10 pm (UTC)Actually Rowling/Minerva are right here: Only Muggle-borns were not allowed to attend this year, purebloods and half-bloods (and anyone in-between) were required to attend, even if previously they were homeschooled or attended school abroad. Dean said previously that if he had proof that his bio-dad had been a wizard he could have been at school. Seamus was at school.
Now I'm dying to see the POV of a student who had spent a few years at some other school, wondering how much of the Hogwarts craziness was due to the current regime and how much was routine crazy. Or a student who had been at Durmstrang complaining that the Carrows are teaching the Dark Arts wrong.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-08 02:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-08 04:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-10 01:43 am (UTC)And Severus did not “abandon” the school. He made a tactical retreat in order to avoid harming anyone, just like Dumbledore did in Book Five when he was about to be arrested for forming his own private army (which is something he actually did, though it was called the Order of the Phoenix, not Dumbledore’s Army. Dumbledore’s Army was the youth auxiliary, sort of like the Hitler Jugend.) Snape is still Headmaster until he resigns or is officially terminated by the Board of Governors. Or until they find a body, which hasn’t happened yet.
I read one fanfic in which Dumbledore fired Minerva in absentia and appointed Severus Deputy Head shortly before he went on the Horcrux-hunt with Harry. So when Dumbles died, Snape automatically became Headmaster. He then appointed Minerva his deputy, so she could legitimately run the school until he returned in the fall.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-10 03:42 am (UTC)Imagine if he did not glide away out of the school bounderies, and Voldemort arrives and demands him to open the gates.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-10 04:14 am (UTC)There may be one other thing going on here. Griffindor House has a proud tradition of lying to authorities to try to get away with its various feats of bullying, theft, torture, attempted murder, and other such light-hearted pranks.
But it's possible (barely) that Minerva herself does not. That she regards lying (particularly, lying to try to evade consequences) cowardly, and therefore utterly verboten for her house.
Think back to PS, when she caught Draco out trying to apprehend Harry and Hermione in their dragon-smuggling. She was furious with Draco for trying to wriggle out of his detention for being caught out after curfew by telling "utter rubbish" about his high-minded intent to save the school from Potter's smuggled dragon.
Then Filch in turn caught Harry & Hermione, and Minerva caught Neville trying to come after the two to warn them, and before Harry could get Neville to shut up he'd spilled the beans that he and Draco had both gotten the idea Harry had a dragon from Harry himself. Which led Minerva to infer (damn, I wish she would have damned well interrogated the kids instead of jumping to conclusions) that Harry and Hermione had lied to Draco to lead him into trouble, which infuriated her so much she docked 150 points from her own house.
(Part of the severity of which, of course, was due to her unwilling remorse over having so misjudged Draco. She didn't back off at all from her punishment of him when she discovered he'd been sincere--if not, she thought, correct--in accusing Potter of dragon-smuggling, but she did at least punish the true liars far worse.)
Because if it's cowardly to lie to try to get out of trouble you've earned, it's even more cowardly to lie to get someone else INTO trouble. And Minerva perhaps legitimately dislikes both those lies.
"a kind of a lie--a pretense that he was second year"--well, no, not necessarily. At least not on Minerva's part. She might have been perfectly straightforward about it, "Yes, we are breaking the rules, and the Potter boy deserves to have them broken for him, and he's good enough to be on the team if we do break those rules. Any objections? Or do you think YOUR child deserves the dispensaitons that Potter does?"
As to Minerva and Dumbledore, I don't know if she's lying so much as lying-to-herself when she accepts Albus as a paragon. Which is a different dynamic, and a different problem. Accusations of hypocrisy don't really cover it..
(Myself, I like the idea of the Confidere--that a woman who would indeed, left to herself, have been "strict but fair" [so long as the Quidditch Cup wasn't at stake] had her normal reactions perverted by magical interference.)
As to Minerva and the Marauders, it's notable that she speaks of none of them with enthusiasm, except in regard to talent. She castigates herself for having misjudged Peter in PoA (for all the wrong reasons--but there, she was upset because she had, she thought, let her contempt for his lack of talent blind her to his moral worth. And, perhaps, the converse with his compatriots? As she thought?) But we never see Minerva speaking OF any of the Marauders with enthusiasm, or TO any of them with tolerance.
Yet in canon, within Harry's view, she was an academic colleague to Lupin for a school year, and colleagues-in-the-Order with Sirius for a full year, and with Lupin for three.
Now tally up the times we (Harry) saw MInerva speak to, or of, either of those distinguished colleagues with respect.
Er....
Add that to her firm "nil nisi" attitude towards James (the only positive thing she EVER said of him, if I recall correctly, is that he'd be proud of Harry's Quidditch prowess and had been a great player himself).
And I don't think it adds up to Minerva ever having been a Sirius or James fan-boy. Or, well--ever? Maybe she had been blinded for a time by James's Quidditch prowess and by both of their performances in her class. But if so, she'd regretted having cut them slack....
no subject
Date: 2014-05-14 01:53 am (UTC)She may also have felt bad allowing their violence because of what happened to their other victims. We've all heard of kids killing themselves over bullying. Maybe that happened to one or more of MWPP's victims. Some victims may also have lived miserable, tormented lives because they never got over the bullying, and she feels at least somewhat bad for that.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-17 05:31 am (UTC)But. Minerva. We know she was a teacher in the Marauder's' era; we don't know that she was then Head of House, with the specific responsibiliy to curb them.
And we don't know, at all, what she really knew of their exploits either way. That they (some of them) hexed other students in the hallway, "just because you can"? Almost certainly.
That Snape had come within a hair of being killed or infected with an incurable, lethal, sociallly-destructive disease by their malice? Quite possibly not.
That they'd ganged up to strip Snape to his underwear in front of his peers? Well... in Sayer's Gaudy Night, an Oxford undergraduate takes the high road and swears off his fomer pastime of "debagging" peers, at Harriet Vane's remonstrance, on the grounds of the pastime's being not aethetically pleasing. We didn't actually see James and Sirius do worse, though James clearly threatened it.
If James did stop before utterly stripping his rival, or if it was reported to Minerva as having stopped there, then dismissing the marauders as worrisome troublemakers was not, perhaps, whitewashing them. To the best of her knowledge, and in light of what (mis-)behavior was accepted at that time.
Actually I'd love to see a full consideration here on DTCL of our dear "fair but strict" Minerva, her failings, follies, hypocrisies, and actual (as opposed to perceived-by-Harry) strengths.
Care to introduce the topic?
no subject
Date: 2014-05-17 06:29 pm (UTC)As for Minerva specifically not knowing everything the James gang was up to, if she didn't it could only have been because she didn't bother to find out. There were umpteen cards describing their disciplinary infractions. She could have read them if she'd wanted to. We have no evidence access to them was restricted from the teachers.
As for a detailed discussion of Minerva, sorry, I won't be introducing the topic. I can think of too many other subjects I find more interesting and important. Not to mention that this site just got a whole lot harder to read since some moron decided to change the type to light gray on white rather than black on white. Who thought that was a good idea?
no subject
Date: 2014-05-30 05:09 pm (UTC)Alas, I think I'm mostly just trying to reclaim the "strict but fair" Minerva of fanon. I'd like to see an older woman presented as a decent and interesting character. Too bad Jo had to trash her, but really, marionros has it right--if we'd been attentive, our first view of Minerva licking Albus's boots would have alerted us....