death to capslock

Sorry, the post was too long and I had to split it.
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`“… but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” Atticus Finch

“Crime… befouling the castle… suggested sentence… ”
“I want to see some punishment!”  Argus Filch

“… it is a monstrous thing, to slay a unicorn,”  Firenze

Let’s take a look at Harry’s first detention and the lessons that it taught him, shall we?

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“Any woman can weep without tears, and most can heal with their hands.  It depends on the wound.” Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

If there is anything certain about the Potterverse, it is that there is an absolute gulf between Us and Them.  There are Muggles and their opposites:  Witches and Wizards.

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I just re-read what Rita wrote after reproducing Albus’s charming letter to his lover.  And it’s instructive, as Rita always is.  Here she is, in all her audience-wooing. muckraking glory:

“Astonished and appalled though his many admirers will be, this letter constitutes proof that Albus Dumbledore once dreamed of overthrowing the Statute of Secrecy and establishing Wizard rule over Muggles. What a blow for those who have always portrayed Dumbledore as the Muggle-borns’ greatest champion!  How hollow those speeches promoting Muggle rights in the light of this damning new evidence!  How despicable does Albus Dumbledore appear, busy plotting his rise to power when he should have been mourning his mother and caring for his sister!”

Rita Skeeter, The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore, quoted in DH 18.

And there we have it.  What strikes US (or, at least me; I shouldn’t jump in and speak for other Muggles) as unthinkably shocking and horrifying about Albus and Gellert’s youthful fancies is that they quite seriously plotted to set themselves up as total dictators, whatever violence—to body or mind—was required for them to “seize control” and maintain it afterwards.

What Rita expected to astonish and appall her magical readers, conversely, was that Albus “once dreamed of overthrowing the Statute of Secrecy.”


Um.  So. Plot mass murder and absolute, inescapable repression?  Dream of enslaving, both body and mind, all the survivors of your original coup?  MILLIONS of victims?  (Most of them Muggle, by definition.)

And then force your slaves to recite, in unison, that it had all been for their own greater good.  Really.

(In real life, some Western slave-owners actually DID make this argument.  Had they not mercifully caused African natives to be kidnapped and worked [or tortured] to death, said natives might well have gone through their whole lives without ever, perhaps, having received the benefit of learning about Christianity!)

The response of Rita’s Daily Prophet readers to such a program? 

Neh.  Boys will be boys, and it’s good to have ambitions.

But.  Plot to overturn the Statute of Secrecy? 

How despicable does Albus seem!

Another spark struck from Condwiramurs’  “Indestructable” series.  I started this, then got distracted by fresh posts and had to address them first.  This was sparked by Part II, in which she meditated on Galadriel’s gift to Frodo:  a light in dark places. And on the fact that only Gollum’s inner struggle, his better self against his worst, had him placed to step in when Frodo’s will finally failed.

Merciful goddess, Condwiramurs, you are right.  We all thought that Jo had modeled Albus on Gandalf, but he’s really a second Gollum.  (With a dollop of that silver-tongued wizard who had the hubris to call himself “The White” and to set himself up as an advisor to temporal rulers.)

Gollum.  At once the protagonists’ guide and their betrayer.
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Condwiramurs, you asked last week (before embarking on your series):
“Why not tell Severus the reason for giving him both of these otherwise insanely-conflicting and emotionally devastating orders?”

Here, finally are a couple of possible answers.

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It seems clear that Neville's cauldron- and shoe- melting reverse-effect potion was the result of a strong surge of magic as well as merely adding porcupine quills a little soon.  But what emotion could have prompted such a surge?  Fear, presumably, that's what normally seems to inspire Neville's outbreaks to date.  But what could have prompted a surge of fear--strong fear, maybe panic--right at that point in the class?


It obviously wasn't anything the professor was doing, he wasn't even near the boy, He wasn't hovering over Neville making him nervous, or insulting Neville's technique.  Canon tells us that Snape was across the room, "telling everyone to look at the perfect way Malfoy had stewed his horned slugs, when..."

Unless, of course, that was the trigger.

Neville had spent years being terrorized, nearly killed, by his family to "force some magic out of me."  But they were satisfied by ANY display of magical power.  Snape?  First Snape makes the dunderhead comment, then he demonstrates that he expects his students to remember what they've read, and now he makes it absolutely clear that only "perfection" counts as a satisfactory performance.  Algie, Augusta, Enid, can be pacified by a random magical outburst; the professor demands absolute competence as well as power.

Of course Neville freaks, and proceeds to demonstrate instantly that yes indeed, a panicked random magical outlash will get him in trouble in Professor Snape's class (and maybe in school in general), rather than getting him off the hook as it did at home.  To an abused kid who expects to be killed for nonperformance, all of a sudden school (or at least this class) is more dangerous than home--the bar is higher, insurmountably high.

Insight courtesy of potionpen/nightfall rising.

I just realized something about the teacher I’m most disappointed to be disillusioned by.

Remember that detention Minerva gave in the first book to the firsties she caught out after curfew?
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“Tell me honestly . . . do you think me most a knave or a fool ?’” asked John Willoughby of Miss Dashwood, and I think it’s time we addressed that question directly with regards to our friend and mentor Albus. 

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