PS Chapter Nine: "The Midnight Duel"
May. 11th, 2016 03:44 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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deathtocapslock* Sorry for the recent posting hiatus, I was travelling abroad and unable to get to a computer.
* “Harry had never believed he would meet a boy he hated more than Dudley,” who had mercilessly bullied and abused him for an entire decade, “but that was before he met Draco Malfoy,” who’d talked about quidditch once and been a bit snobbish to one of Harry’s friends.
* Interesting that the Malfoys know what helicopters are. Maybe they’re not as anti-muggle as Harry thinks. Or else Malfoy’s flying stories are actually true.
* “Ron couldn’t see what was exciting about a game [football] with only one ball where no one was allowed to fly.” I, meanwhile, can’t see what’s exciting about a game where only one player really matters, and success or failure is often as not determined by who has the better broomstick.
* I love the way Malfoy’s been opening his care packages in such a way as to try and make Harry jealous. It’s horrible, but it’s also such a kid thing to do.
* Also, the fact that Malfoy receives regular care packages from home is pretty good evidence against the abusive!Lucius found in certain sections of fandom.
* Hogwarts really ought to get better brooms for its pupils to learn on. An institution where people eat off of golden plates has no excuse to skimp on buying important educational equipment.
* Riding a broomstick must be pretty uncomfortable. I think I preferred the film idea of giving them little seats and stirrups.
* Neville’s accident is a perfect illustration of how Hogwarts completely neglects the safety of its pupils. It would have been quite easy to set up a net or spell to catch pupils when they fall, or else they could have used special training brooms that don’t go too far above the ground.
* I’m surprised Neville didn’t just bounce when he hit the ground.
* I doubt anybody would actually be able to fly perfectly on their first try. Even if you had a natural aptitude for it, you’d still need to know, e.g., how hard to pull up your broom when you want to stop, how far to lean forwards to accelerate at the speed you want, and so on.
* Coming up next: Harry gets into a car for the very first time and “knows, somehow” how to win a race against somebody who’s been driving for years.
* If McGonagall saw Harry flying, she’d surely have seen Malfoy too, so why doesn’t he get into trouble? Oh, right, quidditch > discipline and student safety.
* “I shall speak to Professor Dumbledore and see if we can’t bend the first-year rule.” Oh, Minerva, don’t be so coy. We all know that there’s no rule on earth which can’t be bent for the Boy Who Lived.
* Gryffindor hasn’t won the Quidditch Cup since Charlie left, which when you work out the timeline turns out to be... last year. Oh dear,maths worldbuilding maths and worldbuilding.
* I’m half-surprised Malfoy doesn’t slap Harry over the face with a glove when he challenges him to a duel.
* Hee, I love Hermione sitting there in her pink dressing-gown, ready to tell the boys off.
* “Harry couldn’t believe anyone could be so interfering.” Just you wait, Harry – by the end of the series you (or at least the readers) will be longing to have the old Hermione back.
* Bloody stupid of Gryffindor to have an entry system that makes it literally impossible to get in when the portrait decides to go walkabout.
* Is that “Curse of the Bogies” Ron mentions the same as the Bat-Bogey Hex for which Ginny will later be famous?
* Malfoy’s tricking Harry like this, whilst dishonourable, is nevertheless a suitably Slytherin-ish thing to do.
* It’s rather reckless of Dumbledore to make the forbidden corridor enterable with a simple Alohomora spell. It seems like pretty much anyone could just wander in.
* “Harry had never believed he would meet a boy he hated more than Dudley,” who had mercilessly bullied and abused him for an entire decade, “but that was before he met Draco Malfoy,” who’d talked about quidditch once and been a bit snobbish to one of Harry’s friends.
* Interesting that the Malfoys know what helicopters are. Maybe they’re not as anti-muggle as Harry thinks. Or else Malfoy’s flying stories are actually true.
* “Ron couldn’t see what was exciting about a game [football] with only one ball where no one was allowed to fly.” I, meanwhile, can’t see what’s exciting about a game where only one player really matters, and success or failure is often as not determined by who has the better broomstick.
* I love the way Malfoy’s been opening his care packages in such a way as to try and make Harry jealous. It’s horrible, but it’s also such a kid thing to do.
* Also, the fact that Malfoy receives regular care packages from home is pretty good evidence against the abusive!Lucius found in certain sections of fandom.
* Hogwarts really ought to get better brooms for its pupils to learn on. An institution where people eat off of golden plates has no excuse to skimp on buying important educational equipment.
* Riding a broomstick must be pretty uncomfortable. I think I preferred the film idea of giving them little seats and stirrups.
* Neville’s accident is a perfect illustration of how Hogwarts completely neglects the safety of its pupils. It would have been quite easy to set up a net or spell to catch pupils when they fall, or else they could have used special training brooms that don’t go too far above the ground.
* I’m surprised Neville didn’t just bounce when he hit the ground.
* I doubt anybody would actually be able to fly perfectly on their first try. Even if you had a natural aptitude for it, you’d still need to know, e.g., how hard to pull up your broom when you want to stop, how far to lean forwards to accelerate at the speed you want, and so on.
* Coming up next: Harry gets into a car for the very first time and “knows, somehow” how to win a race against somebody who’s been driving for years.
* If McGonagall saw Harry flying, she’d surely have seen Malfoy too, so why doesn’t he get into trouble? Oh, right, quidditch > discipline and student safety.
* “I shall speak to Professor Dumbledore and see if we can’t bend the first-year rule.” Oh, Minerva, don’t be so coy. We all know that there’s no rule on earth which can’t be bent for the Boy Who Lived.
* Gryffindor hasn’t won the Quidditch Cup since Charlie left, which when you work out the timeline turns out to be... last year. Oh dear,
* I’m half-surprised Malfoy doesn’t slap Harry over the face with a glove when he challenges him to a duel.
* Hee, I love Hermione sitting there in her pink dressing-gown, ready to tell the boys off.
* “Harry couldn’t believe anyone could be so interfering.” Just you wait, Harry – by the end of the series you (or at least the readers) will be longing to have the old Hermione back.
* Bloody stupid of Gryffindor to have an entry system that makes it literally impossible to get in when the portrait decides to go walkabout.
* Is that “Curse of the Bogies” Ron mentions the same as the Bat-Bogey Hex for which Ginny will later be famous?
* Malfoy’s tricking Harry like this, whilst dishonourable, is nevertheless a suitably Slytherin-ish thing to do.
* It’s rather reckless of Dumbledore to make the forbidden corridor enterable with a simple Alohomora spell. It seems like pretty much anyone could just wander in.
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no subject
Date: 2016-05-11 07:10 pm (UTC)To get the timeline to fit I like to assume that Charlie left school early. The other Weasley kids left home pretty quickly so it's easy for me to believe that Charlie left at the first sign of that dragon job.
The theory that Dumbledore planned for Harry to protect the stone in some way and have his own adventure has a worryingly large amount of evidence, and paints a rather dark image of the Headmaster.
While J.K seems to want us to accept Harry's limited POV as fact there's a lot that's open to interpretation, Harry thinks that Malfoy is showing off while opening his gift baskets and even implies that Draco has them sent to him to spite him but there's no evidence that it's true except for the fact that it annoys Harry.
Then he assumes that Malfoy tricked him and went back on his deal, but it's just as likely that Filch had seen the Slytherin boys and was looking for them as he didn't mention anything to specify the children, or he could have been looking for who they'd be meeting (I can see it being a likely place for things like student duals), or they could have even just been late but like the Gryffindors taken off when they realized that Filch was there. Harry mentions that Draco seemed surprised to see them cheerful and there at breakfast the next morning but even if he was surprised that Filch didn't catch them it wouldn't mean he'd set them up.
Either way I don't see it as something slimy to do, they aren't suppose to break curfew and a duel was a stupid idea. It would be a rather Slytherin thing to do to play of Gryffindor values to set them up and watch them fall.
no subject
Date: 2016-05-11 07:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-20 12:23 am (UTC)But, of course, Harry would think Draco did it intentionally, because of his own intention that Draco should notice when he received his broom. He's projecting his own intention onto Draco. Of course, it really would have been difficult to miss that broom package, due to its shape and multiple owls carrying it.
But, as always, 'it's okay if a Gryffindor does it'
no subject
Date: 2016-05-20 10:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-11 08:52 pm (UTC)I still don't know why this is. Maybe one answer is that now that Harry knows that he's a wizard, Dudley doesn't seem as bad anymore but Draco does, because he's a wizard also and thus has more power to hurt Harry, due to his magic? Maybe it's because the Dursleys are Dahl-esque villains and we weren't supposed to take them that seriously at this point, so now that Harry's at Hogwarts, Draco's moved to take Dudley's place (like one second-tier videogame villain succeeding another after the hero gets through the first round)? But objectively speaking, there's really nothing that Draco has done to make him worse than Dudley.
/Interesting that the Malfoys know what helicopters are./
As opposed to Arthur "Muggle-Lover" Weasley.
/I’m half-surprised Malfoy doesn’t slap Harry over the face with a glove when he challenges him to a duel./
*snorts*
/“Harry couldn’t believe anyone could be so interfering.” Just you wait, Harry – by the end of the series you (or at least the readers) will be longing to have the old Hermione back./
And he won't mind it when Dumbledore is interfering to the point of micromanaging everything for the final showdown between Harry and Voldemort.
no subject
Date: 2016-05-11 09:05 pm (UTC)I suspect it's this. The Dursleys are really just a cheap way to gin up sympathy for Harry, and are more or less forgotten as soon as Harry gets to Hogwarts.
And he won't mind it when Dumbledore is interfering to the point of micromanaging everything for the final showdown between Harry and Voldemort.
From beyond the grave, no less.
no subject
Date: 2016-05-12 06:02 pm (UTC)And yet this same Harry in a few years complains about writing out punishment cards during detention for almost killing another kid. A very lenient detention from one of the strictest teachers. Makes you wonder what Sirius got as punishment after the 'Werewolf Incident'.
BTW - there's a wonderful little one-shot fic regarding Harry's threat to 'Knock Malfoy off his broom' on FanFiction (.net) - by Rumour of an Alchemist - titled "Official Inquiry". I won't say anymore, but it really hit me in the gut.
no subject
Date: 2016-05-12 08:27 pm (UTC)I tend to think that Filch never had authorization to hurt the children but thinks about it to make himself feel better. I can't remember if when Umbridge gave him permission if he actually used corporeal punishment against anyone.
no subject
Date: 2016-05-13 03:34 pm (UTC)Paddling
Date: 2016-05-13 04:06 pm (UTC)I will say that I remember looking up the laws of the time and it would only have been very recently (a very few years before canon takes place) that such punishments were outlawed in Scotland for government sponsored schools. I doubt it was a common procedure at that point, but it may have still been legal for a school not run by the UK's government. I was quite surprised at how late it was still legal in the USA, long after I thought.
Re: Paddling
Date: 2016-05-20 05:23 pm (UTC)Little add
Date: 2017-01-23 12:51 pm (UTC)Which is wrong assumption. Abusive parents can (and for some type of parents they will do it on purpose because they knew how these sort of acts like in mind of the child and the "outside world" it will make the adults thinks exactly like the OP did, that it's proof that there isn't abuses at all, and it will also confuse the child to make them believe that whatever abuses they suffer, it's not really abuses because they got nice things and are "spoiled". And plus, their parents must love them if they act like that, and they love their parents too.)
Also it could be a package from his mother only, and not his father (more likely omo), the only confirmed gift from his father is the whole set of brooms for Slytherin quidditch team.
I think that Lucius did abuses his child in a psychological way (he didn't seems to see his son as an individual but more an extention of himself and used him as a tool to bully through him peoples he hated/despised and to improve his image and position in WW, with all the expectations like shows in CoS B&B shop dialogue) but I don't think Lucius did it on purpose to harm his son and degrade his self-esteem, and that he truly cared for him in his one way, but with toxic way to raise him (a conditional love, very conditional one is abusive)because it's the only way he have been raised himself I guess and learned to interact with people(that don't erase the abuses btw, intergenerational traumas are well-documented and could apply in this case, though it's only speculation on my part here). A non abusive parent would never have acted the way Lucius did (using his son to improve the Malfoy image, stirring dangerous situations at his son school without thinking how it could get out of hand and hurt his son, and never planning something to make sure that if his business as DE felt, his spouse and son would be safe from Tom, pushing his son into the DE business again in DH despite clearly seen his disconfort and fear, etc) and frankly, judging by all the parents variety of abuses in HP and lack of healthy, non abusive relations, I think it's more because the author herself don't understand what non abusive relationships are supposed to look like.
In other words, I don't know which depiction of abuses the OP wanted to deny by using the care package (I know some fanfic goes over the top with physical abuses which imo are not supported by canon text portrayal of Draco and Narcissa themselve), but it's not an argument at all against abuses of all other sorts (it can be used in fact to dissmiss abuses) and I saw it used a bit lot to feel confortable with it....
PS : English isn't native tongue !