03 HP Chamber of Secrets

[chantaldormand]

I was going to post this yesterday, but sadly day has only 24 hours. *shrugs*

Ch3 The Burrow

>I suppose Rowling wanted to make Weasley’s home more charming by calling it ‘Burrow’, but for me it works in completely opposite manner.

>I bet that in Potterverse UFO sightings are moronic wizards who use such things as flying cars. +1 to Uncovered

>Ok, Story Time! For certain amount of time I worked in various governmental institutions. While to normal person Arthur knowing about Harry’s warning might seem strange, I can confirm that this kind of event could took place. For some strange reason, no matter how many secrecy clauses employees sign, juicy information about repeated offenders always makes rounds around office. Celebrity getting warning? Before lunch everybody and their grandma knows about it!

>So using object that was enchanted by someone else doesn’t count as breaking no-underage-magic law?

>I refuse to believe that man who cannot comprehend how plugs work was able to enchant a car,without breaking his primary function, so it would fly. As far as I’m concerned Ford Anglia is brainwashed Transformer.

>Fred revved up car’s engine. I’ll push aside question of whys and hows of engine being needed for floating, but I have to ask: Does this mean that until this moment engine was silent? +1 to Uncovered +1 to Crime Count for damaging building

>Apparently Durslays sleep like dead, since neither the car nor pulling out bars awoke them.

>Just how old is lock on Harry’s door, if it can be picked with hairpin?

>Where twins learned how to pick locks?

>So all this revving, shuffling and Harry’s panicky collecting his stuff from his room didn’t wake up Vernon, but Hedwig’s screech did??

>Once again I have to ask just what Dumbledore put in that letter. Vernon is surprisingly against Harry going to Hogwarts AND Harry running away from Privet Drive, yet he obviously hates the kid and wants to keep him away from his family.

>Saving Harry from his relatives is noble and all, but it still sounds like kidnapping. Especially since the rescue team includes only teenagers. +1 to Crime Count

>That must be fun night to explain to neighbours and police.

>Another +1 to Uncovered for Harry’s yelling.

>So weakened and hungry owl is let out to fly alongside magical car. I’m honestly surprised that she didn’t pull runner. Or fell to ground from her exhaustion.

>Now even Ron can pick locks... 

>I want to point out that after spending the last three days locked up in his room and having his stuff locked up for even longer, Harry does not decide to learn picking locks. Or find any other way to prevent this from happening again… +1 to Leap of Logic

>Apparently Harry managed to forget that until the final chapter of PS whole school hated him for one thing or another. After the final chapter the Slytherin House was probably plotting payback.

>It would be much more amusing if both Dobby and the nefarious plan didn’t belong to Lucius. That quiet fifth year Slytherin planning his career at the Ministry? Watch out Potter, he will find a way to tax and fine you into poverty.

>How Harry, who has huge problems with remembering his year mates’ names, can conclude that “Malfoy” is not very common name?

>How Arthur, who during Voldie War I was not part of the Order, knows that Lucius was in the Inner Circle?

>We know that Draco is way worse than Dudley, because he chose to go to Slytherin and as we know Slytherin is Hell. It’s like with those nasty atheists who chose to not believe in God, so they can keep sinning! Or so I am told.

>Weasleys have old owl who has tendency to ‘collapse on delivery’. It’s true that animal abuse is rampant in this series, but I would think security of their mail would force Weasleys to get a new owl. +1 to Leap of Logic

>New head canon: Weasleys are poor, because their owl keep loosing their correspondence, resulting in interest on payments brutalising their bank account.

>Do all wizards develop sexually later than normal boys? I cannot believe that twins wouldn’t suspect Percy of... polishing his prefect badge… Unless they were implying it, but it flew right over Harry’s head. +1 to FWBP

>Ugh, it just occurred to me that as far as I can remember Hogwarts do not have anything resembling Sex Ed classes. I also cannot imagine Vernon sitting down with Harry and explaining birds and bees to him. 

>The question for today is: how Arthur manages to cover all incidents with only two-man team?

>What is a point in enchanting your tea set to be aggressive?

>Once again good guys show double standards: Arthur enchanting muggle stuff=ok, somebody else doing so=bad.

>Burrow’s description sounds horrible. If you want to build obviously magical building you have so many options, yet Rowling settles on huge Jenga tower.

>”‘Now, we’ll go upstairs really quietly,’ said Fred, ‘and wait for Mum to call us for breakfast. Then Ron, you come bounding downstairs going, ‘Mum, look who turned up in the night!’ and she’ll be all pleased to see Harry and no one need ever know we flew the car.” I see Fred still has very low opinion of his mother. There is no parent in the world that wouldn’t start to suspect something horrible upon witnessing the imagined scene. +1 to Crime Count since kids stole the car.

>Just how short is Molly, if Ron and the twins are taller than her? And how tall Harry is for that matter?

>Harry is clearly a bad influence on Ron. After hearing Molly ranting about how disappointed she is and what could happen to the boys, a few weeks later Ron will still steal his father’s car and go for joy ride.

>So instead of outright killing gnomes or using magic to discourage gnomes from settling in Weasley’s backyard, our heroes indulge in something that we would call ‘animal abuse’. Wonderful. +1 to Crime Count.

>”Of course, it’s very hard to convict anyone because no Muggle would admit their key keeps shrinking – they’ll insist they just keep losing it. Bless them, they’ll go to any lengths to ignore magic, even if it’s staring them in the face … but the things our lot have taken to enchanting, you wouldn’t believe –” Yes, bless muggles who depend on science, because it works. Yes, bless muggles who are constantly brainwashed by your gov into ignoring magic. I swear I almost prefer Hagrid’s style of interacting with muggles. Almost.

>Either I don’t understand how WW’s gov works or Jo does not understand how politics work. Probably both, because usually executive branch does not write laws.

>”‘Good Lord, is it Harry Potter? Very pleased to meet you, Ron’s told us so much about –’” Arthur’s reaction is nice call-back to Tom-the-barkeeper’s from PS. 

>I can see why twins are so horrible- one of their parents is more bark than bite and the other has absolutely no spine.

>Another sign that Harry not only is not interested in Quidditch, but also doesn’t know much about his ‘friend’. Talking about favourite sport teams is usually the first thing you do after learning that somebody else likes the same sport.

>Why Ron’s room has two beds?

>Ron being nervous over showing his friend his room is cute :)

Crime Count: 4

Death Count: 0

Freud Would Be Proud: 1

Leap of Logic: 2

Uncovered: 3 

Spell Count: 0

Comments

[chantaldormand]

/Yikes, that is a good point about the lack of sex ed. Does this mean most of what Harry knows comes from Ron? Who probably learned most of what he "knows" from the twins? *shudders* Poor kids./

Honestly it's no wonder that Harry compares Ginny's jaw to twins' in his head if most of what he knows about sexuality comes from his dorm-mates. Or his Draco-stalking period in HBP. The kid has to be horribly confused.

/I wonder whether the wizarding government's branches aren't as separate as in the Muggle world? Or maybe someone on the Wizengamot technically introduced the bill but Arthur is known to have been the guy who suggested it and helped his friend draft it, so he gets the credit whenever people talk about it?/

The way it's worded here and in about... 10 or so chapters, it sounds like Arthur was major contributor in writing this law. In most of democratic countries there is something called "Citizen Initiative". It's a way for citizens to introduce new law to legislature branch for consideration. Only there is a catch: citizens must collect certain amount of signatures from country's citizens to present their proposition to the legislature. It may be 10 thousand signatures or more. Now while Arthur manages to get a bribe in form of tickets for a major sport event I sincerely doubt he would be able to drum up enough support for this law. Especially considering how dismissive wizards are towards muggles.
This could mean that WW's gov works very differently from their muggle counterpart.

/ It might have been more convincing if he at least had a vague memory that Ron liked a team called the Cannons and was just surprised by how much orange filled the room./

Yup, it's like in PS where in train Ron seems to explain Quidditch to Harry, yet when few chapters later Woods explains it to him again, he acts like he hears about it for the first time.

[sunnyskywalker]

Yeah, and there is a ballot initiative process in California which allows the public to directly vote on new laws too, though I think the signature requirements are a lot higher. It would seem odd to me if a director of even a minor government department authored one, though. Like, a firefighters' association or a former politician, sure, but not actively serving executive government officials. I'd have to check whether that's due to tradition or whether there's an actual legal barrier, though.

Gilderoy Lockhart says something about wishing for "harmony" between Muggles and wizards on his quiz, I think, which suggests that paying lip service to the idea of Muggles as people has enough support for him to want to take advantage of it, but you're right that getting enough people to actually sign a petition seems unlikely unless there's some other factor we don't know about.

Also, come to think of it, we do have some evidence that their government works differently: we never see a separate court system. The Death Eater trials Harry sees in the Pensieve are overseen by Crouch, who was the head of law enforcement, and Harry's trial is held before the Wizengamot, which seems to also be a legislative body. Now, maybe those are all special cases somehow, like how in the US, the Senate acts as the court for impeachments of high officials (which has some centuries-old British precedent iirc). And I think it was condwiramurs who made a good case for the Death Eaters being considered guilty of treason, because they were apparently trying to overturn/destroy the Statute of Secrecy (the foundation of their entire society). Harry was also charged with violating the Statute of Secrecy. So, it could just be that those are all extremely atypical cases.

But still, no one ever seems to go to court for anything that I recall. They get fined for things, but they don't go to Broom Traffic Court as part of the process. Buckbeak is tried before the Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures, which sounds more executive than judicial. And there don't seem to be any lawyers, which is just bizarre. Surely we should have heard about the Malfoys' slimy lawyer who made sure Lucius and his pals never went to Azkaban? Shoudn't someone have sued Hogwarts (or particular professors) for negligence or reckless endangerment over the years?

[oryx_leucoryx]

The closest thing to representation by a lawyer that we see is when Dumbledore shows up in Harry's trial and brings a supportive witness. But I don't think he was there in official capacity. Perhaps a wizard's best hope is to have a Wizengamot member who is sympathetic to their case show up and present evidence in their favor.

[chantaldormand]

I agree with the person who claimed that Death Eaters were considered guilty of treason. I will go even further and say this: WW most probably doesn't have courts.
The only thing that WW's government cares about is staying hidden from muggles. Each time a law is mentioned in the series it's somehow connected to Statue of Secrecy. Registration of Animagi? Extension of Statue of Secrecy. Not enchanting muggle objects? Extension of Statue of Secrecy. Putting down magical creatures who are out of control? Extension of Statue of Secrecy.
This leaves us with question: what about things not covered by Statue of Secrecy? What if drunken wizards start brawl? What if newspaper writes slanderous article? What about inherence laws?
And answers to those are terrifying. According to what we see in books and on Pottermore, wizards are supposed to deal with the brawl on their own, the offended citizen is supposed to hunt down the reporter to torture them and inherence is ruled by race vindictive creatures who are bidding their time to pay wizards back.

[sunnyskywalker]

That really is terrifying. It must be like Verona in Romeo and Juliet, with everyone brawling in the streets and killing one of theirs every time they kill one of yours. (Two Houses, both alike in dignity...) The Order vs. the Death Eaters must have been like an extreme form of the usual state of things.

England had a legal system before the wizarding world split off, so they must have actively ditched it. I mean, maybe there were so few of them in 1689/91 that they figured it was easier to handle things on their own, and then just.... never redeveloped the system, but even that seems unlikely. (Not least because we still can't be sure of the current magical population, never mind historical.) They developed a police force, after all. They adopted the Muggle school calendar. Why not inheritance lawyers? There's something really screwy here.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

It's possible that the only laws we see in the HP universe are related to the Statute of Secrecy because those are the only laws our protagonist could break. He's supposedly too scrawny to be fist-fighting (and breaking up a fist-fight would be easy for wizards with wands) and he's still in school so not supposed to be magically brawling in the streets so he'd be gotten on a SoS violation anyway; he's his parents' only child so the laws of inheritance wouldn't apply - no other sibling to challenge his inheritance - and his godfather Sirius has no heirs or relations that aren't stripped of rights due to criminal status, so Grimmauld Place might reasonably go to Harry, and we also don't see that part of the transfer of property. Just being the age he is, our protagonist and gateway to the WW wouldn't see most types of law in the WW.

[chantaldormand]

Yeah, but until Hagrid comes and stops the brawl between Arthur and Lucius in CoS ch4 nobody tries to call Aurors or stop them.
According to one of entries (pre-wipe up of Pottermore) during Quidditch championship Rita made a few ugly comments about Harry and his friends. In the same entry we learned that Ginny hexed her. There is no talk about either side wanting to drag the case before the court.
Sirius is formally an escapee from Azcaban. Yeah he didn't have a trial, but under law of most countries he would be guilty of escaping from prison. Sirius should have access to any inherence from his family and even goblins letting him access his personal account looks bad, thus I say that most financial matters must be in hands of goblins otherwise we wouldn't have this situation.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

If their laws were from the time the WW split with the Muggle world, it's possible that they didn't update as the Muggle world did and fist-fights and even duels aren't reasons for legal intervention. Same with nasty comments and hexes - these are private matters and law enforcement doesn't get involved. Sirius - he was afraid of being recaptured and hid out for most of that book, so there is some law enforcement that would have taken him in if he'd been captured. What the goblins do - it's possible they have the WW by the throat and so can do as they please. They might even get a kick out of people getting one over on the WW government. I took Griphook's attitude to be fairly common among the goblins.

But, I do agree that the world we're shown is messed up. That our protagonist doesn't really pay attention to things doesn't help our understanding of the world, either.

[nx74defiant.livejournal.com]

I remember someone writing that the wizarding world is a Feudal society with the trappings of a modern Republic.

It more important to link up to a powerful patron, than following any legal system.