J. K. Rowling presents Umbrigde's backstory

[t0ra-chan.livejournal.com]

In time for Halloween JKR gave us another short story (more background info to be honest, it's not like it has a plot). You can read it at Pottermore (if you have an account and can actually remember your user name and password) or you can read it here: J.K. Rowling writes Harry Potter Halloween tale profiling 'malicious' Dolores Umbridge

My personal take on this little story is that it's wholly pointless. It just repeats that Umbridge was always a nasty person with no depth to her and she's worse than blood purists. Nothing really new or insightful is revealed, nor do I believe did anybody care to know this sort of stuff about Umbridge. I also found it very unbelievable that anybody would buy her claims of being a pureblood, considering how small the wizarding community is. And of course she was a Slytherin, because where else could an evil person in HP have come from.

Comments

[arcanetrivia]

Scrimgeour was later punished for this oversight, because the fact that the Ministry had never punished Dolores for her many abuses of power seemed to Harry Potter to reveal both its complacency and its carelessness.

I can believe this is Harry's opinion, but I find the idea that he would pursue getting the Ministry to punish Scrimgeour personally to be rather weird and out of character. I'm sure there are many in the Ministry who would allow Harry a lot of influence over them, but it doesn't seem like the kind of thing Harry normally wants, is it? Since when is Harry in a position of judge and jury over Ministry personnel, even if he does become an Auror?

[t0ra-chan.livejournal.com]

How would Scrimgeour even get punished, the guy dies in the last book. That's why we even had the puppet-minister Thicknesse.
Did JKR just forget what she wrote again or is she implying that dying was his punishment for not dealing with Umbridge?

Not to mention in book six when Harry actually had his little conversation with Scrimgeour, he (and we, the readers) had no idea what had become of Umbridge. So his refusal to work with Scrimgeour had nothing to do with her.

[vermouth1991.livejournal.com]

We are all of us masochists for caring about such things. :P

[merrymelody.livejournal.com]

I think it's that dying was his ~*Ultimate Punishment*~, although iirc, she mentioned he died not telling the Death Eaters where Harry was, so thankfully his death could revolve around Harry, like his every decision in life should have.

[vermouth1991.livejournal.com]

Harry being such a self-centered character wouldn't have been so bad . . . if the books weren't centered on his PoV and his thoughts. That's what really drives me crazy.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

I think it's that dying was his ~*Ultimate Punishment*~, although iirc, she mentioned he died not telling the Death Eaters where Harry was, so thankfully his death could revolve around Harry, like his every decision in life should have.

Oh, thank you for that! I laughed so hard at that.

In fairness to JKR, I think that was her odd way of showing that, in spite of his and Harry's mutual hostility, Scrimgeour was a good guy after all. Y'know, like Snape's proof of being a good guy was that he was hung up on Harry's mother his whole life. Because it's Harry's world; everybody else just lives in it.

[arcanetrivia]

Duh, you're right. I must be slipping. That makes remarks like this from JKR even odder.

i can't even...

[vermouth1991.livejournal.com]

Deserves to die =/= his death is his karma

Also: his death wasn't directly linked to keeping D.U. In the minestry, i.e. it wasn't like Dolly told the DEs to go kill him, it's just that she gladly went with the flow after he was killed and a Petain-puppet was installed.

Harry's opinion

[nx74defiant.livejournal.com]

So Harry wasn't just blindly following Dumbles lead of not working with the ministry?

Sorry, not buying it.

Re: Harry's opinion

[vermouth1991.livejournal.com]

We never do get an opinion of Harry's re: Ministry. Was it "Ooo, the Ministry runs the magical world so nicely, I'm gonna trust them to do their job" or "Power corrupts! We can't trust such an unchecked body of rulers" or anything? Harry's head is really empty when it comes to Weltanschauung formation. If one doesn't start to do that in their teens, he's in big trouble for the rest of their life.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, but Harry wasn't supposed to survive, so if all had gone according to plan--i.e., no life-saving, deus ex machina, authorial intervention--that wouldn't have mattered. He would have been remembered as "that sweet, heroic boy who was too good for this world." In fact, if Harry had started to mature in that way, it would have worked against his mission because he wouldn't have been willing to mindlessly go along with Scummywhore's plans. We see inklings of that in DH, but unfortunately they never pan out.

That's a good point, though. It explains why, in the crapilogue, Harry seems to have matured not at all in almost two decades. One would think the experience of war alone would have profoundly changed him, as it does real people, but apparently, despite his "death," he was immune to that as well. It reminds me of an old commercial that ran every winter. I think it was for Cream of Wheat. It showed a kid eating the cereal for breakfast, then floating through hir day in a bubble, immune to colds, flu, frostbite, etc, because of the protective properties of hir breakfast. Harry seems to have floated through the war in the same kind of bubble. It also accords with my contention that he stalled in stages 2 and 3 of spiritual development.