Evil Fudge, Complex Snape, Loads o' Weasleys, "halfblood," early magic

[Amy Z]

No: HPFGUIDX 36046

Paranoid!Cindy wrote:

 > I see Supreme Evil DE Fudge
 > because some of his actions (his behavior at the entrance to the
 > maze) can't be squared with that of bumbling bureaucrat.

His behavior at the entrance to the maze fits with his being a Supremely 
Evil DE, but it fits just fine with his being a bumbling bureaucrat as well. 
  Isn't that what's so good about it?  He tries to get Harry into the castle 
and he tells Dumbledore to talk to the Diggorys; both are equally compatible 
with an Evil Plotting Fudge and with an innocent Fudge.

Cindy adds this point:

>If someone suddenly appeared holding the arm of a dead person, the *last* 
>thing I'd try to do is pry that person's fingers off of the corpse.

Fudge was in Magical Law Enforcement during Voldemort's heyday; I doubt he 
is queasy about corpses.  I wouldn't avoid touching the corpse either, for 
that matter.  I *am* a bit queasy, but yeesh, I've touched dead people 
before.  Plenty of people do it all the time:  anyone in medicine or 
emergency work, undertakers, ministers.  And in most cultures still, and 
ours until very recently, people routinely tend to their own dead.

Nyarth's reviewer wrote:

>Snape's a multi-faceted mystery now, because we don't understand what 
>motivates him, but once this is explained, why should he remain anymore 
>complex than any other character in the book?"

Other characters are complex, but I'll leave that bit aside.

Snape's complexity doesn't come only from the current mysteries about him.  
We knew he was complex from book 1, when he went to considerable trouble to 
save a student he obviously despises.  This tension has become more and more 
polarized as with each book Snape hates Harry more and takes ever-increasing 
risks on his behalf (I'd have to stretch things to make CS fit into this 
pattern, but PA and GF definitely do).

As for his being less complex once his motivations are explained, this I 
just don't get.  He has varying and contradictory motivations, and our 
knowing what they are makes him more complex to us, not less.  As things 
stand, he seems to have a mix of motivations, e.g.:

-dislike of Harry, dislike of Harry's father and his friends, a desire to 
protect Harry

-loyalty to Dumbledore (evident in GF as well as elsewhere), exasperation at 
Dumbledore/mistrust of his judgment (very evident in Shrieking Shack scene, 
where he longs to prove Dumbledore wrong about Lupin)

This makes for a realistically complex person no matter whether we know the 
reasons behind the actions or not.

Ama wrote:

>I had trouble understanding how the twins' teasing,
>especially of their siblings, could be construed as
>malicious.

It's not bad on the overall scale of sibling relations, though I could do 
without the "dungbrains" and all that.  I grew up thinking that was 
perfectly normal sibling behavior until I met children who actually liked 
their siblings and whose parents expected the siblings to treat each other 
with respect.  It can be very damaging to grow up being insulted all the 
time even if the person doing the insulting is an older brother or sister, 
not a parent.  And then there are the beetles in Bill's soup *shudder*.  
Still, F&G are generally pretty easy on their siblings, it 
seems--mischievous but not malicious, to use Elkins's distinction.

However, I am never going to forgive Fred for killing Ron's puffskein, or 
JKR for thinking that that is funny (FB).  I'm praying there turns out to be 
another explanation.  Killing someone's pet is a particularly advanced form 
of abuse.

Elkins wrote:

>Percy's good opinion is something that Ron values highly
>enough for it to be presented as a major part of his *triumph* at the
>end of the novel

I don't follow this.  The fact that it's emphasized by JKR means Ron values 
it?  So Percy's delight about winning his bet with Penny is important to 
Harry and that's why it's mentioned at the Ravenclaw match?  JKR puts these 
things in, IMO, because they tell us about Percy, not about the other 
characters.  We know Percy is proud of Ron, but not that Ron gives a hoot 
whether he is or not.

Elkins again:

>The pomposity and the puffing and the self-aggrandizement all seem to be 
>how Percy responds
>to feeling insecure and unhappy.

I agree, and hereby declare this Be Nice to Percy Week (slogan:  A Happy 
Percy is a Less Pompous Percy).

Jo Serenadust wrote:

>IMO she's just a loving, caring, overworked, underpaid mother
>who loves all her kids equally, (even
>if differently) and she gets the important stuff right.

Hear, hear!  I don't think Molly is perfect, and I would especially like to 
see a few more warm moments between her and Ron, but some of the indictments 
of her have read like He-Whose-Book-Must-Not-Be-Named's descriptions of 
Arthur as a criminal, hypocrite, and terrible father and husband.  Thanks 
for the voice of moderation.

I definitely do not think Molly's attention to Harry has one iota to do with 
his being Famous Harry Potter.  She is very maternal and he is an orphaned 
and abused child as well as a polite kid whom any mother would love her son 
to befriend--'nuff said.  The whole Weasley family really embraces him as a 
regular kid, which is good medicine for poor Harry; even Ginny's crush, once 
she has met him, can be seen as being of the usual kind and not the 
oh-my-god-he's-so-famous, and after Ron and the twins' initial amazement 
they treat him like everyone else.

The Diagon Alley Barkeep wrote:

>I also wonder if other magic-capable children do little strange tricks 
>(like Harry with the glass at the zoo) before getting the letter, hence the 
>parents might realize "Wow, this explains an awful lot about little Billy".

Colin did:  "I never knew all the odd stuff I could do was magic till I got 
the letter from Hogwarts" (CS 6).  It makes me think it's pretty common.

I can just see us all raising our kids with HP in mind and watching them 
eagerly for any signs of weird activity.

Boggles wrote:

>I can't make the simple status-of-parents version fit either with Riddle's 
>comment, Ron's, or Ernie's, above.

I agree that people in the wizarding world have various standards, and use 
"half-blood" loosely; also, which standards they call upon depend on the 
circumstances (e.g. Ernie's insistence upon his pure ancestry is born of 
terror).  Good catch on Ron's use of the term.  In his case I think it's 
just a loose usage; in Riddle's, I suspect he is deliberately trying to 
equate himself with Harry--drag Harry down to his level, as it were.  If 
Harry were as racist as Riddle he could shoot back "YOU'RE a half-blood; MY 
parents were both wizards."  But it's characteristic of Harry that he 
instead defends "my Muggle-born mother"--to pick nits with Riddle over 
definitions would be rather to buy into his worldview.

Tex wrote:

>Wondering if the map has a "drag and drop" feature, so the Marauders can 
>move people around if they are in an inconvenient place.

LOL!  A must-include for the Marauder's Map Mark II!

Amy Z

-------------------------------------
"We don't send people to Azkaban
just for blowing up their aunts!"
     -HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban
-------------------------------------

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