[HPforGrownups] Re: House points and Dumbledore

[Eileen]

No: HPFGUIDX 51126

 --- "pippin_999 <foxmoth at qnet.com>"
<foxmoth at qnet.com> wrote: 
>Harry's team is
> not in last 
> place  because of the points  lost in saving
> Norbert. It is in last 
> place because he "missed the last Quidditch
> match--we were 
> steamrollered by Ravenclaw without you." 
> 
> This is *important.* Playing against Seeker-less
> Gryffindor, 
> Ravenclaw could have amassed enough points to clinch
> the 
> House Championship for themselves.

Do you really think Gryffindor played without a
seeker? Why would they do this? Surely, someone played
seeker. Just not someone who was properly trained. 

Should I ask why Wood didn't see fit to train a proper
reserve seeker?  

Or does this suggest some nasty things about the
Gryffindor team?

(As does the fact that all these chasers come from one
year and that Lee Jordan referred to Alicia Spinnet as
a good friend of Wood's when introducing her in
PS/SS.) 

> They don't,
> because it 
> wouldn't be sporting to use Harry's absence to take
> advantage, 
> even of Slytherin. Slytherin itself, alas, has no
> such compunction.

So, the Slytherins are at fault because Oliver Wood's
cliquish behaviour met with an unforeseen obstacle? I
wasn't at all upset when I heard Ravenclaw
steamrollered Gryffindor. I was laughing at Wood
getting his come-uppance. 
 
>  If Harry had played against Ravenclaw, he could
> have easily 
> won the 160 points needed to beat Slytherin, and
> Slytherin 
> knows this. Still, they not only cling to their
> false victory
> (instead of offering to cede the Cup, as Cedric
> offered to cede 
> the Tri-wizard Cup to Harry), they glory in it.

Really, this is a game. Why should anyone be at fault
for Harry not being about to win, any more than the
team who wins the Stanley Cup  should feel bad about
the losing team's star player being injured and out of
the line-up? 

Where does morality come into this story?

>  That's why they are made to  lose in such a
> humiliating way. If 
> the seventh-year Slytherins did not see this, it can
> only be 
> because they are already focused on "their powers
> and their 
> pleasures" rather than "their rights and their
> freedom" -- They 
> have already chosen their side, and it isn't
> Dumbledore's.

An interesting assertion, but textual evidence? What
exactly had these seventh-year Slytherins done that
was so deserving of humiliation? Not ceded the cup on
the basis that had the Gryffindor seeker not been
injured, Gryffindor would have won it?

And here, I thought the Cup was about teaching the
warrior ethos, and how to accept it when life doesn't
work out as you'd like it.  

> 
> I suspect it's only us grown-ups who need to assure
> ourselves 
> that  Slytherin *really* deserved defeat. Children
> know a moral 
> illustration when they see one, and are quite happy
> to see the 
> good triumph and the bad punished. 

"Children are innocent and prefer justice, while we
are guilty and prefer mercy." - G.K. Chesterton

But I'm not that impressed with children's moral
vision, to tell the truth. I'm quite sure that most
children see nothing wrong with dissin' the Slyths.
That's why growing up is a good thing. Learning that
life is not so black and white is a not a bad thing,
as long as they don't entirely lose their moral
compass. 

Despite a child's emotional reaction to the scene, an
adult can judge quite correctly that what Dumbledore
did was not appropriate.

Eileen

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