TBAY: All In A Day's Work

[Cindy C. <cindysphynx@comcast.net>]

No: HPFGUIDX 51704

It was almost quitting time at the Canon Museum, and the dim humming 
of vacuum cleaners could be heard in the lobby as the cleaning crew 
began their work.  Cindy wasn't ready to leave just yet, though.  
Not yet.

She had been aimlessly wandering the "Speculative Theories" wing for 
some time actually, reminiscing about the halcyon days that now were 
but a distant memory, facing the sad fact that even a complete canon 
overhaul in June wouldn't be enough to salvage the less popular 
speculative theories housed in the Museum.  She winced at the thick 
layers of dust on the moth-eaten "ToadKeeper" display.  The small 
blue Jobberknoll lying inert and forgotten in the "Reverse Memory 
Charm" cage.  The pitiable, long-abandoned Florence theories.  
Finally, Cindy passed by what had once been the oversized "Cruciatus 
Makes You Stronger" exhibit, now isolated in a forlorn, poorly-lit 
corner.  The exhibit was completely bare now, its contents cruelly 
dismantled and dragged off to the landfill months ago.  A stark 
yellow label was pasted to the glass:  "Available For Lease!"  Cindy 
shuddered imperceptibly.

"What are you doing here?" demanded a shrill voice.

Cindy startled and whipped around, flustered.  It was Faith, tarted 
up in her schoolgirl uniform, the skirt a little too short and *way* 
too tight, her hands planted defiantly on her hips.

"What am I doing here?  What are *you* doing here?" Cindy retorted.  

Faith snorted contemptuously.  "What am *I* doing here?  I *run* 
this museum, for heaven's sake!  I'm the Canon Museum Curator."

"You?  . . .  Curator?" Cindy stammered.

"Of course!" Faith spat.  "I'm Faith.  I'm a supporter of the status 
quo, an upholder of authorial hegemony, and thus an enemy of reader 
subversion in all its forms.  It is my job to preserve the integrity 
of canon until the author decides to weigh in."  She tossed her head 
haughtily.  "I have a lifetime appointment, straight from JKR 
herself.  Besides, who *else* would you get to run the place?  
Someone like George would run it right into the ground for sure.  
Now me, I've done a pretty nice job, if I do say so myself.  The 
author's vision is just as she intended when she left it in my care.

"In fact," Faith lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper and 
inched closer to Cindy, "I've been following that discussion about 
whether Draco is Evil.  With great amusement, I might add.  
You . . . uh . . . how can I put this?"  She hesitated for just a 
moment, then plunged ahead.  

"You really don't have any idea what you're talking about, do you 
Cindy?"

"Hey now!"

"No really.  You're making it all up as you go along, aren't you?"  
Faith leaned against the gleaming MAGICDISHWASHER display case, her 
sharp eyes glinting maliciously.  "Ever studied philosophy?"

Cindy hesitated.  "No."

"Religious studies?"

"Er, no, not really."

"Ethics?  Psychology?  Sociology?"

"Someone tried to help me understand 'meta-thinking' once." 

"Well, that explains quite a lot, doesn't it?" Faith sniffed.  "You 
know, what makes you think you're so right about Draco?  How can 
anyone possibly know if he is evil?  Other than JKR, of course."

"Well, concepts like evil and virtue are subjective, you know," 
Cindy said defensively.  "So my, uh, lay opinion is as valid as 
anyone else's."

"You think evil is subjective, do you?"  Faith rolled her eyes 
scornfully and shook her head, her blonde ringlets bouncing 
playfully.  "I'll let you in on a little secret, Cindy.  We have a 
piece of new technology that I think is going to come in dead useful 
for theorizing about good and evil."

Faith led the way through the hall, beckoning Cindy to follow her to 
a door marked, "DANGER!!!  Turn Back!  Save Yourselves Before It's 
Too Late!!"  Without hesitation, Faith pushed the door open, 
undeterred by its ominous creak.  Cindy followed, stepping gingerly 
inside a vast room with black tile floors, high ceilings and no 
windows.  

As Cindy took in her surroundings, she saw it for the first time.  
The room was completely empty except for a great, hulking steel 
contraption in the shadows, some sort of machine with a gaping maw 
and an assortment of lights, dials, switches and buzzers crowding 
its brushed steel exterior.  A thick amber solution bubbled lazily 
in a vial near the top, and a frayed electrical cord snaked from the 
back of the thing into a wall outlet.  

Cindy crept closer for a better look at the peeling black letters on 
the machine.  "Virtue Meter?" she said blankly.

"Yup.  That's right.  The museum's first Virtue Meter.  The only 
sure-fire way to know whether a canon character is Good or Evil.  
It's my very own creation, and it has come in dead useful, let me 
tell you.  Oh, it took me *years* to get the bugs out of the thing.  
I kept feeding it various inputs with known Virtue or lack thereof – 
you know, Mother Teresa, Geraldo Rivera, Jim and Tammy Fay Bakker -- 
and eventually I got it calibrated *perfectly.*  Now all I have to 
do is feed it information on any canon character and it will tell me 
the character's relative virtue with 99.9% degree of certainty."

"You're kidding?!  It works on *any* canon character?"

Faith's eyes flashed with pride and excitement.  "Here.  Let me show 
you."  She reached into her jacket pocket and produced a new copy of 
GoF.  "All I have to do is pull out the relevant pages, feed them in 
and wait.  The machine spits out a reading, and by studying it 
closely, we can get a feeling for the character's virtue.

"I'll do an easy one – Voldemort -- just so you can see."  There was 
a ripping sound, and Faith flung several pages into the maw of the 
great machine.  "OK.  I've fed in all of Voldemort's scenes in GoF.  
So we wait."

Cindy covered her ears as the machine instantly began to hum, 
pulsate, squeal and belch, its lights flickering randomly.  A thin 
coil of smoke spiraled out of the electrical outlet, and a burning 
smell filled her nostrils.  Cindy, suspecting a malfunction, made to 
yank the power cord from the wall, but Faith caught her by the arm.  
Just as suddenly, the machine went eerily quiet, and after a long, 
tense moment, burped a small figure from a chute high into the air.  
Faith caught it deftly, and studied it intently.  It was a small 
porcelain devil figurine, complete with two sharp horns, a tiny 
tail, and a miniature pitchfork.

"Well, I guess that's clear enough," Faith said 
eventually.  "Voldemort is pure evil, through and through."

"Wow!"  Cindy exclaimed.  "Totally lacking in Virtue.  That is truly 
amazing!  Can I have a go?"

"Sure."  Faith handed Cindy the copy of GoF and stepped back, 
gesturing Cindy toward the Virtue Meter. 

"You know, I've been wondering about Rita Skeeter, actually.  I 
mean, she's is usually despised by people on this list, and most 
people think of her as one of the villains.  She has hardly any 
defenders.  But I think Rita is all right, really. "

"Really?" Faith asked incredulously, her delicate eyebrows 
arched.  "You think Rita stands falsely accused?"

"Maybe, maybe," Cindy said, her forehead wrinkled in concentration 
as she studied GoF.  "Let's look at the things about Rita that 
people just Do Not Like.  First, she's an illegal animagus."

"Yes, but really, who *isn't* an illegal animagus?" Faith said 
sympathetically.  "Indeed, there are more virtuous illegal animagi 
than evil animagi.  Pettigrew is evil, to be sure.  But Sirius and 
James are illegal animagi, and they are undoubtedly good."

"That's right," Cindy agreed.  "What's more, Sirius and James and 
Peter -– before he turned evil, anyway —- used their animagus status 
to do risky and dangerous things.  They helped Lupin endanger 
everyone he encountered during his werewolf adventures.  Rita, on 
the other hand, uses her animagus status to listen in on 
conversations.  Yes, that's a breach of privacy, but she never uses 
the information in a truly evil way, does she?  She doesn't pass it 
along to DEs or anything.  She reports it accurately as part of 
stories of public interest.  No one was really injured by anything 
she learned while in beetle form.  And some of what she learned in 
beetle form was told to her willingly by Draco, so there's nothing 
wrong with that, I guess."  Cindy ripped those pages from GoF and 
tossed them into the Virtue Meter.

"Well, to be fair," Faith began, "Rita did misquote Harry pretty 
seriously during that broom closet interview at the 'Weighing of the 
Wands,' didn't she?"

"Oh, I don't know about that," Cindy replied.  "Look.  Here are the 
pages from 'Weighing of the Wands:'"

******************

"Even though he wasn't speaking, [the Quick Quotes Quill] was 
dashing across the parchment, and in its wake he could make out a 
fresh sentence:

_An ugly scar, souvenir of a tragic past, disfigures the otherwise 
charming face of Harry Potter, whose eyes -- _

<snip>

"How do you feel about the tasks ahead?" said Rita 
Skeeter.  "Excited?  Nervous?"

"I haven't really thought . . . yeah, nervous, I suppose," said 
Harry.  His insides squirmed uncomfortably as he spoke. 

"Champions have died in the past, haven't they?" said Rita Skeeter 
briskly.  "Have you thought about that at all?"

"Well . . . they say it's going to be a lot safer this year," said 
Harry.

<snip>

"Can you remember your parents at all?" said Rita Skeeter, talking 
over him.

"No," said Harry.

***************

"Then," Cindy said quietly, "we have the exchange where the quill 
says Harry has tears in his 'startlingly green eyes' and Harry 
protests that he doesn't have tears in his eyes."  She ripped the 
pages from the book with a flourish.

"What's the deal with the tears, do you think?" Faith asked, 
interested.

"Well, most people think that Rita was being willfully inaccurate to 
write a more compelling story.  But really, how can we know?  Harry 
certainly is one to repress his emotions, that's for sure, but maybe 
he did tear up just a bit there.  He'd never admit it if he did.  
And you have to remember that they are sitting in a dark broom 
closet lit by candles –- it could have been an honest mistake on 
Rita's part."

"But we probably ought to compare the text of the actual article 
Rita wrote to see how far off she is, don't you think?"  Cindy 
licked her thumb and flipped to the next chapter, "The Hungarian 
Horntail."  "Ah, here it is:"

***************

"I suppose I get my strength from my parents.  I know they'd be very 
proud of me if they could see me now. . . . Yes, sometimes at night 
I still cry about them, I'm not ashamed to admit it . . . . I know 
nothing will hurt me during the tournament, because they're watching 
over me . . . "

****************

"Well," Faith said slowly, "Harry never said any of that, so that 
makes Rita Skeeter a stone cold liar."

"Yeah, I have to say that she's hardly upholding the highest 
standards of journalistic integrity with her work here," Cindy 
allowed.  "But really, she's not very far off, is she?  Surely 
Harry's parents *would* be proud of him.  He did say that he felt 
participating in the Tournament would be safe.  And as we saw in the 
graveyard, Harry's parents *are* watching over him, in a manner of 
speaking.  

"By Harry's own admission, Rita had transformed his 'er's' into 
long, sickly sentences.  That's not all that bad.  And if you look 
at the events of the interview, it is clear that some of the 
inaccuracies might have been the result of different interpretations 
of the events.  Did Harry have tears in his eyes?  Harry says no, 
Rita says yes."  Cindy shrugged.  "Who can say for sure?  Sure, 
Harry would have preferred to come off differently, but really, the 
errors here are small potatoes."  Cindy yanked the pages from the 
binding and flung them into the Virtue Meter.

"Well, I'm not convinced.  Her treatment of Hagrid was 
unforgivable," said Faith.

"Hardly," Cindy countered.  "Most of Rita's article about Hagrid was 
correct, right down to the headline:  'Dumbledore's Giant Mistake.'  

"Let's look at what she actually wrote," Cindy urged, flipping 
to "Rita Skeeter's Scoop."  

"Hagrid was expelled from Hogwarts – that's true.  Hagrid used to be 
the gamekeeper – also true.  Hagrid became CoMC teacher over the 
heads of more qualified candidates – probably true, as Hagrid isn't 
even a fully qualified wizard.  Hagrid is large and ferocious 
looking – yup.  Hagrid has terrified the students with a succession 
of horrid creatures and a student was maimed – can't deny that.  
Hagrid was breeding blast-ended screwts – guilty as charged.  
Hagrid's mother is a giant – no doubt about it."

"Yeah, I see what you mean," Faith said.  "The biggest lie in that 
story is the bit about Crabbe getting a bite off a flobberworm.  And 
that is very likely *Draco's* lie, not Rita's.  How would she know 
if her source is lying like that?"

"And we have to remember that Hagrid agreed to meet with Rita, and 
in the end he suffered no tangible harm  from any of this – he kept 
his job, Dumbledore and the trio stood behind him, and he remained 
free to continue being a middling teacher," Cindy said.  "Not only 
that, you have to remember that Rita is really just doing what a 
reporter should do –- get the facts.  Most of the time, Rita does 
exactly that, so . . . "  Cindy tore a great hunk of pages from GoF 
and tossed them savagely into the opening.

"Whoa!  Whoa!" Faith broke in.  "That's probably enough.  You don't 
want to *overload* the thing, you know.  Somebody really might get 
*hurt* if you do that.  That's plenty.  Let's just go ahead and take 
a reading based on that."

Faith approached the Virtue Meter, her finger pausing briefly over 
the button marked "Evaluate."  She stabbed it quickly and hurriedly 
retreated, shielding herself behind Cindy.  The machine roared, 
gurgled and hissed ominously, heaving and wobbling dangerously 
before abruptly going quiet.  Cindy leaned forward to peer into the 
chute, her hands protecting her face in case the machine fired 
another projectile.  Instead, she saw a small slip of paper wedged 
in the chute.

She took it back to Faith, and they both studied it carefully in the 
light.

"I've never seen this before," Faith asked at last.  "What is this 
supposed to mean?" 

Cindy looked up slowly, an expression of dawning comprehension on 
her face.  "Well, it appears to be a –- it's a *paycheck!*"

"A paycheck?" Faith echoed.

"Exactly," Cindy exclaimed.  "A paycheck!  That makes perfect sense!

"Because after all, Rita was only doing her job."

**********************

Cindy

**********************

For further explanation of the acronyms and theories in this post, 
visit Hypothetic Alley at

http://www.hpfgu.org.uk/faq/hypotheticalley.html

and Inish Alley at

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/database?
method=reportRows&tbl=13