FLINT-y justice, Animal Forms, Fourth Man, Good & Evil, Dissing Slyths

[elfundeb at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 38397

David, responding to Cindy's comment that the Pensieve trials are FLINT-y:

Cindy, I thought you were just joking, but it seems to have become a
serious subject of discussion. I can well believe that the Pensieve
trials are directly based on material JKR saw when she worked for
Amnesty International. Does the apparent lack of due process really
make these scenes unconvincing?

Me, responding as the person who treated it as a serious comment:

IMO it's not the lack of due process that make the Pensieve scenes seem 
unconvincing (well, inconsistent, really).  It's the fact that each defendant 
gets a different process, so that it's impossible to tell, for example, 
whether JKR didn't give Crouch and his companions a chance to testify for 
themselves because they had nothing plotworthy to say or whether she was 
trying to illustrate how Crouch Sr. was so hell-bent to prove that he was 
tough enough to send his own son to Azkaban that he forgot to give them what 
little process they were due; instead, he just jumped right ahead to the 
sentencing in order to be done with it.  As a lawyer, I see sloppy writing, 
but maybe I'm reading too much into it.

Eloise on animagus forms:

Any guesses what Harry's animagus form will be? (He *will* be an animagus, 
won't he? Surely we can't have learnt all this about
animagi for him *not* to be one?).

Me:
I thought it was at least implied in an interview somewhere that Harry would 
not become an animagus.  But surely our knowledge will not be wasted.  
Hermione has shown an enormous amount of interest in this subject since the 
day she arrived at Hogwarts, and I'm placing my bets on her.

Eloise again, on the weasel:

Moreover - and this one I especially like, since I'm apparently the only one 
on this list who believes that the Weasleys are named after weasels - when I
did some further rooting on the Net, I found this (from a review of a book by
Kerry A. Shirts, _The Bestiary of Christ_ which unfortunately seems to be out
of print):

'The weasel? Yes the weasel was also used for an interesting reason. Since it 
could pack a punch and win combats with much bigger animals than itself, it 
was perfect for the Christians who, no matter how weak in themselves, can
still triumph over Satan, the most terrifying monster of hell.'
So the Weasleys are to have their part in the triumph over Voldemort.

Me:
Actually, I've already been converted to this view, after stumbling across 
the following in a discussion of basilisks in Bullfinch's Mythology, from 
which the Christian symbolism may be derived:  "But who was to attack this 
terrible and unapproachable monster? . . . [The basilisk] quailed before the 
weasel.  The basilisk might look daggers, the weasel cared not, but advanced 
boldly to the conflict.  When bitten, the weasel retired for a moment to eat 
some rue, . . . returned with renewed strength and soundness to the charge, 
and never left the enemy till he was stretched dead on the plain."

Everything else in the description of the basilisk exactly matches what we 
are told in CoS, including that the basilisk's stare could be deflected back 
onto the basilisk with a mirror (which Hermione perhaps did not get a chance 
to use), making me believe this is JKR's source.  So, I, too, believe that 
the Weasleys will have their day.

And there's one final bit that's quite interesting:  After death, the carcass 
would be suspended from the ceiling in private homes as a remedy against 
spiders.

Yet I still like the fact that JKR converted the "weasel" into "Weasley" 
which has a very English commoner ring to it.

Eloise again, concerned about holes in the Fourth Man hovercraft and not 
convinced by my suggestion that Sirius may have reported incorrect 
information on Avery, or that the legal proceedings were so procedurally 
flawed that Avery won a second trial:

Sirius doesn't *have* to have been right, does he? And given the imprecise
manner in which we've just seen legal procedings described, this *could* be a 
similar sort of thing. Although I'm not convinced. Even though Cornelius
Fudge *Is* Ever so Evil.

Which, if I'm not much mistaken, is in danger of taking us back to the Fourth 
Man as the third DE dead in Voldemort's service. Which seems a bit of a waste 
of a character, really. Can someone rescucitate him again, please? I like my
berth on that hovercraft (and particularly the range of single malts lined up
behind the bar!)

Me: 
I'm not going back to FMAT.  It's too dull, and IMO Voldemort was protecting 
Crouch's cover as a spy.  In any event, there's an easy way to save the 
Fourth Man hovercraft.  Just dump Avery overboard!  After all, Elkins' 
original premise behind Fourth Man is still fundamentally sound:

>I also find the Fourth Man's utter anonymity in the text highly 
>suspicious. Why *does* he go unnamed throughout Book Four? The 
>reader is certainly encouraged to be interested in the Longbottom 
>Affair. We are given (or at least believe ourselves to have been 
>given) the names of the other three defendents. So why should the 
>identity of that Fourth Man remain so strangely hidden from view?

>Could it be because his identity is intended to come as a surprise 
>when it *is* finally revealed to us?

More to the point, though, this theory (which I hereby dub "The 
Fourth Man Theory") serves to explain why that mysterious fourth co-
defendent goes so suspiciously unnamed throughout all of GoF. [snip]
And it also explains Voldemort's 
utter lack of mention of the Fourth Man during the graveyard scene. 
He's overflowing with praise for Crouch, and for the Lestranges, and 
yet he never even mentions the fourth guy? Even if the fourth man 
had died in Azkaban, wouldn't you think that V would have mentioned 
him by name? 

Me:
You see, just by snipping all references to Avery, Fourth Man can move 
forward at full speed.  And Avery's still afloat, too.  He can still be had 
with Innocence, Remorse, Toughness, etc. or even Slashy SHIP.  In fact, he 
can trail behind in the old kayak just in case Sirius was wrong, and Avery 
made a deal with Fudge.  We just need to find an alternative Fourth Man.  But 
where?  We can't use the Weasley accountant.  David has accounted for him 
already.  And I don't think it was anybody in the graveyard.  Perhaps this 
person has not appeared yet in canon.  Maybe Fourth Man is even now just 
escaping from Azkaban.  And even if he is dead, maybe he figures prominently 
in some backstory.  Who was kissing Florence behind the greenhouse, anyway?

But, alas, Cindy filed the following sad report on the vessel itself:

The Fourth Man Hovercraft has been drifting aimlessly for weeks, the 
mini-bar long depleted and the S'mores quaffed by a certain 
allegedly Redeemable Minor Character with a voracious appetite.  

Just like me to approach a vessel only after the refreshments have run out.  

Finally, Judy wrote:

> Yep, I can't accept that Avery was the Fourth Man in the Pensieve 
> scene, either.  In fact, I've been dying for ages to ask whether 
> people *really* believe that the Fourth Man was Avery, or if the 
>whole "Fourth Man is Avery" thing is just a joke.  

That's twice in one day I've been accused of taking a joke seriously 
[slinking under my chair in embarrassment].  

And now it's after midnight and too late to visit the garden of Good and 
Evil.  I'll just add a couple of quick questions to the following from Marina:

It seems to me that evil, in the HP universe, is represented by rejection of 
moral conflict. "No good or evil, only power and those
too weak to wield it." For people like Voldemort, Lucius, and Draco
(who may not be evil yet, but is rapidly heading in that direction),
the only relevant questions about a prospective course of action are
"what's in it for me?" and "can I get away with it?" The question "is
this the right thing to do?" is irrelevant to them. 

This explanation of evil in the Potterverse, which I think is dead on, sounds 
chillingly like the Sorting Hat's description of Slytherin House, "Those 
cunning folks use any means to achieve their ends."  Based on this, being 
sorted into Slytherin seems to be a virtual death sentence to development of 
the "good" side of a student.  How can this be justified, if the message of 
these books is about choices?  Doesn't the existence of Slytherin House and 
the basis of the sorting undermine that message?  Dumbledore implies that 
Harry chose not to be in Slytherin.  But Draco chose it because his family 
was there.  How does one break the family cycle of bad choices if that's what 
the Sorting Hat does in close cases?  In fact, why should any eleven-year-old 
child -- even if he thinks he wants to be evil -- be shoved into an 
environment where the predominant message is in essence the definition of 
"evil" even if he thinks he wants to be there?  Isn't Hogwarts abandoning its 
moral responsibility? Even though we know that not all Slytherins became DEs, 
this looks like they've written off one-fourth of the student population as 
sociopaths the moment they walk through the front door of Hogwarts.  Choosing 
"good" after that kind of indoctrination seems well-nigh impossible.  

In any event, the way this is set up makes me think that JKR intended 
Dumbledore's actions at the PS/SS Leaving Feast to rub the Slytherin's noses 
with the fact that the Good Guys beat the Evil Guys even though everyone 
knows the Evil Guys play dirty, because he knows the Slytherins are all Evil! 
anyway so there's no point treating them with respect.  I'm not convinced she 
intended to show Dumbledore making a mistake, though I think he did no less 
than stoop to the Slytherins' own game.  

Come to think of it, Snape is starting to look truly heroic for rejecting 
"evil" and going back to Dumbledore, if he had to put up with this kind of 
disrespect at Hogwarts. 

Debbie, who might not recognize a joke if it danced naked in front of her 
wearing Dobby's tea cozy



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