TBAY: Shadow of the author's hand

[Tabouli]

No: HPFGUIDX 47991

Night is falling over St Mungo's.  The walls of the building, so polar white by day, are fading into the pearly grey of dusk, except for a single lighted window, staring from the ivy like a square eye.  Behind the window, three people are gathered in a luxurious consulting room.  One is tall and dark, with a seductive smile and warm, smooth hands.  One is draped in bloodstained feathers, through which her eyes glitter and her hands twitch and flex.  The third is lying on a red velvet couch, a beatific smile on her face.  None of them see the ragged figure slipping into the grounds.  None of them hear the rustling of leaves as someone climbs the ivy.  The first they know of the spy in their midst is when the full moon conveniently bursts out of the clouds to fill the room with the shadow of a large, menacing hand...

The one on the couch shrieks in horror, and clutches at her golden brown hair.  The tall dark one shrinks smoothly behind the bookshelves. The one in the feathers immediately suspects an ambush, seizes the nearest heavy object that comes to hand, and hurls it at the window, which shatters, letting in a strong, icy wind.  Shards of glass spear the carpet and torn pages flutter over them.  The feathered one tiptoes gingerly among them to the window, and looks out.  There is no-one in sight.  A stray half page flutters on the windowsill, and the feathered one, glancing at it, suddenly realises that her makeshift weapon was none other than Elkins' 9 part manifesto on Crouch...

Elkins:
>So we have all of 
>these idealized distant martyr mothers, and they seem to stand in a 
>kind of contrast to *real* mothers. You know, the people who 
>actually do 'women's work.' The ones who get down in the trenches of 
>the actual day-to-day dirty work of mothering, whose sacrifices 
>entail *living* for their children, rather than just dying for them.

Before her very eyes, the words on Elkins' page melt away as she reads.  Quivering, she watches as they swirl and reform into new and terrifying words, which she somehow *knows* are the product of the hand at the window...

"When musing on martyr mothers, don't forget that there's another mirror tucked away in the corner: the one held up to the life of the author herself.  I don't know if authorial issues ever featured in Fallacies through the Ages, and I'm a bit rusty on the minutiae of JKR's life these days, but IIRC JKR's own mother died of MS in 1990, six months after she started writing PS/SS.  Which drove her overseas where she had her disastrous first marriage, returned with her daughter, and then slid into depression.  As well as the ol' Hermione parallel, she's actually spelled out that the Dementors were a personification of how she felt when depressed, and that the poignancy of the Mirror of Erised scene owed much to her own feelings after her mother died.  Moreover, she said in an interview (Guardian Unlimited 18th April 2001) that she would see her mother in the Mirror of Erised and be able to tell her about Jessica and the success of HP.

"Could all those idealised martyr mothers be a subconscious reflection of JKR's own instinct that it was her own mother's death that indirectly 'gave life' to her two 'children', that is, Jessica and Harry Potter?  Or link in to her own experiences of being mothered or as a mother?  As a poor single parent, she would most certainly have had to do the dirty work of mothering, and experience plenty of self-sacrifice.  It's not as if she could have a truly rosy-tinted, sanitised image of motherhood.

"As for the Crouch/Winky ship, ahaa!  I myself long ago suggested that Flitwick might be the product of a liaison between a wizard and a house elf, and even noted that slavery often involves such... extra duties.  And Elkins does have a point here.  For a man who presents so rigidly law-abiding an image and relishes control, a creature of such dedicated obedience  ("House elves does what they is told") must have been very, er, attractive.  And perhaps there was more to her longing to be back in master's tent than fear of heights, eh?  Well well.  Not to mention the interesting contrast between the way Dobby behaved in the face of shame (shutting his ears in the oven, etc.) and the way Winky did (grieving in a more human way, crying, drinking, beating the floor, etc.).  The contrast between a whipping boy and a rejected lover, even?  Hmmmm.  Wasn't sure what the other answer to the Sphinx's riddle was, but the one provided does leave open a door for allusions to W.E.B.C.R.A.W.L.E.R.S. (When Empty, Bereaved Crouch Required Affection, Winky Lavished Eager Romantic Services).

"And Ships, I noticed that while Elkins has kindly taken the LANDLUBBERS out for an airing, no-one has ever acronymised SHIPPERS!  As a devotee of Ships myself (albeit of the more twisted and obscure variety), I felt this gaping hole had to be filled with Sentimental Hearts Into Potential Passion, Enchantment and Romantic Speculations."

The page suddenly bursts into flame in the feathered hand, which drops it abruptly to the floor.  As the feathered person backs away in alarm, a breeze catches the remaining charred sliver, which traces the following strange word on the carpet:

Tabouli (dipping a supportive toe in the Bay in a rare fit of lurking)



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