OOP: Re: DADA

[derannimer]

No: HPFGUIDX 55137

Steve wrote: 

>So on one hand we have this sweet old lady, but on the other hand she
>could be a grueling taskmaster. 

> >snip<

>It could make the students view even the nicest teacher in a negative
>light, if she pushed them that hard.

Yes, but see, it says: "a *personality* like poisoned honey." Not 
that her relationship with the students is like poisoned honey. 

And for someone to have a personality like "poisoned honey," they 
would really, I think, have to be more than sweet-yet-tough. They 
have to have a fairly weird personality. 

Here's a few random thoughts on possible reasons why that quote 
sounds so *sinister* to me. 

First of all, what would poisoned honey *do* to you, if you ate it? 
Well, it would seem to be very innocuous and it would taste nice and 
you would eat it and then you would keel over dead. To me, that 
phrase is just loaded with the ideas of danger--as poison is 
dangerous--and deception--as honey would at first seem innocent. 

And also, it is so *very* feminine a description, somehow, that it 
suggests to me not simply a *female* character--which we already knew 
anyway--but a *sexualized* female character. Which I think rules out 
sweet old Mrs. Figg. And which I would say definitely rules out Mrs. 
Weasley. 

The other problem I would have with Molly Weasley, though, is 
that. . . er. . . 

. . . well. 

I don't think of her as being all that bright, or all that powerful 
of a witch.  

<hastily>

I mean, not bright or powerful enough to successfully teach DADA 
during Voldemort's second rise. 



Derannimer (who *so* wants this character to have some sort of a 
thing with Snape. Or, failing that, to seduce Sirius. And who would 
like to ask: anybody here seen _The Maltese Falcon_? Or _Double 
Indemnity_? Or *any* of those great noirs with those great, deadly 
dames? Yeah? *That's* what I mean. (You know, roughly, I mean. Not 
literally. I somehow doubt that the new DADA teacher is going to wind 
up pushing her husband's lifeless body off a train.))