Rats! (Or: A Treatise on Ron and Evil)

[heiditandy <heidit@netbox.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 48151


seaducer9 wrote:
> All this talk of the Weasley's money trouble and how Ron handles it
got me to thinking about which friend of Harry's might be turned.
> 
> The first choice is Ron, since he *might* be lured into something
> for money, albeit against his knowledge. I don't think so, Ron is a
> pretty smart guy, just doesn't show in Harry's shadow as much. 

And gaby stevenson wrote a contrasting take on Ron, saying:

> Ron is going to become evil. The path that he has seemed to choose 
> makes this clear.  It isn't only his bitterness that makes him 
> more suspectible to this, but also the fact that he seems so
>  inclined to be "famous" and better than not only his brothers,
>  but Harry as well.  
<snip>
>  JK seems to be building this confrontation through the novels,
>  because each year Ron seems to loose some goodness within him and
>  he is growing darker as a being.

I agree wholeheartedly that JKR is sketching a path for Ron that 
descends into places where nice boys should not go - I know I'm not 
the only one who liked Ron in books 1 - 3, but found his behaviour 
towards Harry and Hermione in book 4 troubling and frustrating. Even 
Ron's most ardent defenders must agree that he has a mean streak - 
it showed when he refused to accept Harry's explanations about the 
Cup, his treatment of Padma at the Ball, and both his fight with 
Hermione after the Ball, and his dismissal of her explanations about 
Harry earlier in the book. But besides all the canon examples of 
Ron's hostility, there's one canon issue which makes a potentially 
major impact on the likelihood of Ron choosing to embrace evil.

His former pet.

Yes, we all know that Ron let a Death Eater sleep in his bed for all 
of first and second years, and part of third year, but what did 
Scabbers do while he wasn't sleeping?

Well, from PoA, there is a subtle implication that he didn't spend 
all his time as a rat - JKR pays particular attention to noting that 
Sirius' voice sounds unused, as if he'd spent more time as a dog 
than a person in recent years. But Sirius also says that he wasn't a 
dog all the time in Azkaban - he was certainly in human form when 
Fudge made his inspections.

Pettigrew, however, was squeaky-voiced but otherwise, his voice 
didn't sound unused or neglected. 

Furthermore, isn't it possible that in the 4-6 years that he spent 
in the Weasley household, he changed back into a human on occasion? 
There were wands in the house - but almost more important than that, 
there were impressionable children. 

Consider the following scenario:

Pettigrew joined the Weasley household in, say, early 1982 (give him 
8 weeks or so to decide which family to crash into). Percy would've 
been somewhere between 6 and 7 at the time, and Ron would've been 
about 20 months. "Scabbers" became Percy's pet, we're led to believe 
from the Shack scene, at that point. This would've allowed Pettigrew 
to be in the Weasley household for about five years, until 
September, 1987, when Percy started Hogwarts (at which point he was 
home only over vacations).

And in those five years, didn't he have many opportunities (and 
access to wands to assist) to put Ron under Imperio? Or engage in 
some other form of hypnosis, or a memory charm where Pettigrew wiped 
out the memory of himself as a human, but left the memories of the 
lessons he taught Ron about evil? Or even just transform back into 
his human self and play with the ickle kidling while his older 
brothers are out and about and his mum is preoccupied with the 
younger baby? 

And talk with him about power and money and all the wonderful things 
that one can do with such things. And explain to him that when he 
was old enough to go to Hogwarts, he should befriend Harry Potter, 
who would be in his year. Canon point - he *did* track Harry down on 
the train, and he *did*pretty much chase both Draco and Hermione out 
of the cabin to prevent them from getting between Harry and himself. 
In third year, he also drove a wedge between Harry and Hermione over 
the Crookshanks issues - it's not until Pettigrew's influence over 
Ron ends with the rat fleeing at the end of Book 3 that Ron has a 
real fight with Harry. 

Even in the trio's first year, while in Ron's pocket, he'd've heard 
from the trio about the Philosopher's Stone, and could've told Ron 
to help Harry get to the stone if the need arose - not under the 
precognitive presumption that Voldemort would need Harry's help, but 
more of a way of feeding Harry to the Dark Lord so the first thing 
he'd get to do when he was re-embodied would be to destroy the brat 
who de-corporeated him in the first place. 

It's clear from that Pettigrew had access to Ron during his 
formative years (with or without the assistence of a wand to help 
with memory charms and the like), and also just as clear that 
Pettigrew's voice didn't sound like it should have had he never 
transformed back into a human for 12+ years, at the end of PoA.

Does this mean that he definitely influenced Ron's moral, ethical 
and emotional growth? No, but it's certainly a possibility, and it's 
certainly supported by canon. 

Heidi