Why to Like and Not Like OoP (replies to many, question to Anne)

[Dan Feeney]

No: HPFGUIDX 71072

>I guess JKR just wanted to show he was tough, and
>reinforce the 
>evil intent of the odious Umbridge, since nothing really came of it 
in the end.

Perhaps she wanted to show that HP is feeling defeated, and that he 
feels like he deserves to be punished. The tensions at that age have 
to do with having the incipient passions of an adult and not having 
the priviledges or recognition - in this case, OOP membership, for 
example. See later post regarding masochism.

>JoAnn:
>(Why on earth does 
>no one ever give that boy enough information to make a reasonable 
>decision?...)

I have posted numerous times on the problematic role knowledge plays 
in the books, and someone else mentioned that knowledge "must" cede 
to "the heart"  - only I think it's not exactly "love", but something 
not quite conscious, something pre-conscious, as it were, that 
motivates us, that makes us choose to intervene (or not) - a kind of 
pre-conscious ethic, a secular Calvinism, what causes HP to stay in 
the lake and get Fleur's sister - he only THINKS about it afterwards, 
and then sees it as thick.

>In some ways, OotP is a lot 
>deeper than the first four. It's not as plot driven, perhaps? We're 
>getting more into issues of politics and power, of life and death. 
>It's darker, more complex, which, I suppose, is as it should be, 
>since it's a bildungsroman.

>Jazmyn:
>Harry pulls out a gun, pointing it at Voldemort, "I'm glad you 
changed 
>your name you Son of a B.." *BLAM!* *BLAM!*
>Voldemort grabs his chest, a look of shock on his face as he falls 
dead.

Somehow, these two ideals seem to encapsulate the entire debate - the 
books reflect contemporary culture in that way - the answer to 
something that's not entirely plot-driven is to Dirty Harry the 
antagonist. Or, if there's no bomb, it can't be real evil. Or such-
like...

>I think they 
>> are great characters and to delve into what's really going on with 
>> each of them would be too complicated for the kids whose parents 
>are 
>> reading this to them at bedtime (an insane practice if you ask 
me.) 

Why is it an insane practise. (I know someone else has asked you 
this, but did you explain?)

>At HoneyDukes in chapter ten:
>"along yet another wall were 'Special Effects' sweets: Droobles Best 
>Blowing Gum (which filled a room with bluebell-coloured bubbles that 
>refused to pop for days),"

Surprisingly like the orbs in the prophecy room. Aren't lost 
prophecies going to really really piss some people off? I posted 
before about that, the person is told "oh, yeah, there was a prophecy 
about you, but it was destroyed in the battle of the DoM." Unless, of 
course, the prophecies knew they were going to be destroyed... *LOL*

>
>ravaun:
>As I have already stated Harry's home environment provides the 
>first two steps. (re Maslow)
>Of course in defense of your argument Harry could be a boy locked 
>in a closet wallowing in his own urine and fecies and imagining all 
>of this stuff. In this case Harry would already be in the full 
stages 
>of ptsd.

Thanks for the aside to my theory, which, I point out, doesn't 
require an actual closet, but represents a figurative closet that may 
be real, and comprises, as I never tire of pointing out, a parallel 
reading, in the same way the muggle world is parallel the witch 
wizard one, or the RW is parellel the Rowling one. Again, the space 
between them is a diagonal, the alley, the staircase of the first 
book, so analogies aren't direct, but on an angle. Think of what we 
do reading Rowling as our imaginations operating within the victim 
(the boy in the closet) and using our resources to help him 
manufacture a way of staying alive - the books as arena or quidditch 
pitch where our act of suspending belief (or disbelief, if you 
insist) duplicates the act of a boy in a closet. The books represent, 
or certainly reveal, our pre-ethic, as mentioned above, and I suggest 
the arguements on the list reveal, to a large extent, how people's 
strategies apply to other things as well - phrasing a theory or a 
musing, interacting with the list elves etc.


>Del:
>So I was thinking that *finally*, we were going to see how 
>to deal with emotional trauma. But no ! The only answer seems to 
be : 
>get angry, get pissed off, keep everything bottled up inside, blow 
up 
>in someone's face once in a while, and you'll be quite fine. Grrr...

There is a difference between prescriptive and descriptive. Some 
think children's books need to be prescriptive. Thus, if the books 
are seen as children's books, these people will see what happens in 
them as prescriptive. Of course, I disagree on both counts - or 
rather, let me clarify that the prescriptive element in the books 
exists in this way - that no one quality is key, that a person is all 
of their qualities, that all of them together are necessary, and even 
so fragile in their allotment, but regardless of this, it is what one 
does, consciously or not, with the choices given to them, that 
matters. etc. etc.

>And now that I think of it, I realize that one reason for my non-
>fascination with that book is that too often, the WW was either :
>* already known to us (most of what happens at Hogwarts)
>or
>* too much like a direct transposition of the real world. St 
Mungo's, 
>for example, was a slight disappointment to me.

This was evident from the start of the series. There are, for 
example, a couple instances of the standard against which things are 
compared as being muggle. I think ron's comment about the weirdness 
of hearing voices "even in the wizard world" counts as one, though, 
of course, ron knows HP is "from" the muggle world... it's the use of 
the "even" that signals here... Little cracks in the space between 
worlds, in both of the cases I have mentioned, that is, between 
muggle and witch wizard and between RW and Rowling, are jarring. I 
wrote that, if harry had sobbed uncontrollably (and been seen to do 
so) at GoF, it would have dropped the bottom out of the careful 
fantasy, and we would be staring straight into our own troubled and 
horrifying world - a world where boys who live in closets isn't 
unheard of, etc. etc. In OOP, we are treated to a quite little moment 
by the lake, which, in this scene, becomes the chorus of the RW, 
somewhere in harry's consciousness. At least, that's what the imagery 
seemed to me. (Do I believe Rowling familiar with eliot's objective 
correlative idea? hmm... I do think she is at least familiar with 
Kant and with ethical imperatives...)

Her comes Rosebeth:
>Okay, I got a little off topic. The other thing I wanted to say is 
>that Harry has no idea how to properly deal with all of these 
>emotions. Look at how he reacts to Molly's hug at the end of GF. 
>Now, it's a month later and he has no clue and he's all alone. 

I submit that that's because he is alone, and that the idea of family 
supplied by the Weasleys is unsustainable, in an valid way. Look how 
Molly despairs at the boggart - her decision to pretty near adopt 
Harry, and pay the consequences, may cost her very dearly. She even 
lets Sirius know that she is quite conscious of this fact. Some 
resent her for saying it. Harry knows it by the bodies on the floor. 
What if all this potential danger only ends in the one they're 
supposed to be protecting dying anyway! And maybe Molly guilty of 
thinking, if harry had died, perhaps somehow her family wouldn't be 
in quite such danger - not rationally, but viscerally.... That's what 
I read in the headquarters scenes anyway...

>It's the same kind of reaction a little 
>kid has when the doctor tells him "it won't hurt", and then it does, 
>and the kid gets angry, rightly so !! So when JKR asks me to swallow 
>with a smile things like : "Harry doesn't care about finding more 
>about his parents" when she's taken so much pain previously to make 
>me understand that he's desperate to know more about them, "it 
>doesn't matter which House the Marauders were in" when she's taken 
so 
>much time describing a school dominated by the House system, and so 
>on, I feel betrayed and I get angry.

Excellent example of how the books operate on an organic level. My 
theory is that they operate for us (adult readers) the way the wizard 
world operates for the boy in the closet. Like harry, we may feel 
betrayed and angry when the bottom of fantasy falls out, when we are 
disillusioned. As for investigating parents, I was adopted, and not 
until I was 30 did I even concieve, when my son was born, an interest 
in finding out about my biological parents, and then mostly for 
health reasons. They were not there. It was a fact, not an aching 
absence that determined everything I did. I didn't, however, live in 
a closet.

>I'm not the one who decided that Harry was a normal 
>little boy to start with. If she had told me that he was NOT normal, 
>then I would accept whatever he does because I couldn't know how he 
>is supposed to react. 

He is not normal. Normal is a radar word in books, don't you think? 
What writer uses the word "normal" to express the idea of normal? 
Just an observation. It's not that the omniscient narrator is 
fallable, a rather radical thought for popular literature, but the 
opposite - that we are going to be introduced to an idea of normal 
that is far from what we would normally call normal.

>?? Seems quite the opposite to me. How can you correctly apply rules 
>that you don't even know ? I'm not saying that Harry should only 
>learn rules and never do things. I'm saying that along with doing 
>things, he should try and figure out why people act differently than 
>he would. Learning those rules would not stop him from acting, it 
>would in fact help him figure out how to reach others, how to make 
>them do what he wants, how to obtain what he desires.

If he were a full-fledged adult, he might do this. He is not, 
according to the book. But, more significantly, your view seems a 
little manipulative. Thank goodness harry isn't studying "how to win 
friends and influence people." Egad! And where in all that chaos is 
what he desires? Does Rowling remind us about that very often? She 
does mention things like wishing not to be different (no scar), 
cherishing difference (scar), and such, but when has he stated, or 
Rowling stated, what he desires? Did I miss it? At any rate, rules in 
society change so often, sometimes, that learning the vast majority 
of them, or of a certain sector of society's rules, can be an 
incredible waste of time. (soundtrack - Binns droning)

>To be harsh, I'd say he ends up getting 
>Sirius killed precisely because he tried to keep Sirius safe ! He 
>refused to talk to him, he refused to confide in him, he refused to 
>use his gift, he refused to figure out why those Occlumency lessons 
>were so important. In other words, he refused to learn the rules, 
and 
>he ended up making a major mistake. And all of that just because he 
>thought he knew better than anyone else what was going on, and he 
>wouldn't let anyone try and teach him a few things about the world 
he 
>lives in.

It takes "a long" time to learn "the rules" in any society - that is 
why childhood is such an extended period for human beings. And many 
never learn all of them - in fact, that would be impossible. Also, 
evolving societies, all the societies in which we live, would be 
static if rules never changed. As for "learning the rules before you 
can break them" - this is just a saying - we witness the results of 
totalitarian rule, for example, and fight against it, without knowing 
all the rules of totalitarianism, without becoming intimate with 
them. However, I would add that becoming intimate with the rules of 
totalitarianism can certainly clarify for us whether or not we have 
it in us to become so. 

>Most teenagers go through this anarchist phase, when they feel the 
>world is completely rotten.

And this is a criticism of the book, that it portrays this? I don't 
understand. i thought goteburg and geneva and seattle showed pretty 
plainly how disillusioned youth in our time have become. But then, 
well, IT happened, and suddenly being disillusioned became tantamount 
to evil...

>
>Iris:
>Should JKR have written 
>him in a consensual way? I'm not sure it would have been such a good 
>thing.
>And I'm glad Harry has defects, I'm glad he's sometimes unbearable, 
>I'm glad he's weak. I'm glad he's not what we expected him to be.
>
>~Melanie:
>If people are annoyed about the way harry was acting...I would like 
them to
>take a trip down to their local high school and watch soem of the 15 
year old
>boys there. Compared to the ones that I tutored this past school 
year, Harry
>is an absolute angel. 

Precisely. It seems some are upset because the books address real 
issues - it has nothing to do with the "realism" of the characters, 
but rather the so-called breaking of RW concerns into the quaint 
world that the naive reading of the books has posited as the real 
Potterverse.

>TAS: What you're saying is that Harry's not responding to stress but 
to
>injustice. If so, he would rail at Umbridge, but not at Ron.

Umbridge is the face of the system. Harry is cherishing and 
elaborating his hatred of the system that allows Voldemort to come to 
power under their upturned noses. Not hard to understand, really. It 
blends with the masochism theory posted around here. If we accept the 
heartless Dumbledore, or the Anarchist!Harry, then this is probably a 
necessary event - an understanding of collaborators or appologists is 
a close analogy. On a side note, Harry's nastiest moment is when he 
states it wouldn't matter to him if Grawp stomped all the centaurs. 

>Marina:
>But Harry is not "quite fine," either at the beginning of OOP, or at 
>the end, or at any point in the middle. He's as far from fine as 
>we've ever seen him before. If the book ended with Harry traipsing 
>through the daisies, going "tra-la-la, I'm so happy," but the whole 
>point of the story, to me, is that Harry is not dealing well, and 
>his failiure to deal causes serious problems, for himself and for 
>others.

It is definitely a description of the turn, of the change. Analogous 
to drug experimentation (with a sidelong glance at the bad judgement 
herbals suggested as having been operational in OOP). Closet!Harry 
and Just!Harry are coming closer together, and it is upsetting some.

>Darrell:
>I notice
>many espousing the theory that OOP proves JKR is not
>the talented writer we self deluted ones think she is.
>OK, but I still like the books. If I wanted to read a
>story of a deeply disturbed child dealing with
>horrible trauma by acting out I'm sure I could find
>that. I however am lost in the world of a child who
>has the strength of character to rise above things I
>could not. If the writing is not as refined as others
>oh well. I must not be adept enough to know or care. I
>don't try to push you to read it if it isn't appealing
>to you. Why do you feel you must try to lessen it for
>me?

How could we justify this group if the writing were as naive as some 
wish it to be, in spite of both canon and authorial authority stating 
explicitly otherwise? What attracts some is also what repells those 
same readers - dealing with things analogous to the RW, weakness of 
the RW. This is something to be examined. Perhaps some will take an 
approach such as mine, to discover a parallel reading that explains 
why I like the books so damn much, why I find them relevant. 

>Darrin (on something other than Snape):
>Very simply, Sirius was at the end of his rope. He was not useful to 
>the Order, his devotion to Harry was being challenged by Molly and 
he 
>was trapped in a home he hated. 
>I really got the vibe of a man who felt his only useful remaining 
act 
>would be to die in the service of his cause. Do I think Sirius went 
>to the Dept. of Mysteries with the idea of dying? No, but I think he 
>showed recklessness during that fight.

Sensible!Darrin raises his head to look out upon the list. Yay. 
Except, see above - Molly wasn't challenging his devotion at heart, 
but his lack of consideration for the great danger she was willing to 
put her family in to protect him.

>(on Snape)
>
>D-Dore: "Um, no, I think a scare will be enough, Severus."

AntiSnape!Darrin returns. sigh. and Kirstini and K (Joseph?):

>it would be handled in the understated fashion 
>we've seen so far.
>"No no no, we don't want to 
>see that!"
>Personally I like to think of them as a
>couple.

I agree with all those posting this, and was frankly shocked that the 
idea of gay is still an issue for some, such that it seems a special 
case. But more to the point, as K stated, it felt like Remus and 
Sirius were a couple while I read the books after the PoA stuff - I 
can't explain exactly why, but it was just a bunch of little things, 
some the bits mentioned, like joint presents, some the tone used to 
convey these tidbits of information. At any rate, it seemed their 
relationship was cherised from the moment they became friends again, 
at a time when they both needed it. 

>evangelina:
>Maybe I never started yelling at people in all-caps, but I was 
really moody and
>irritated 
>and picking fights with everyone; repressing my feelings obviously 
didn't make
>me "nice 
>and agreeable". I don't see anything illogical with Harry's 
behaviour, nor do I
>have a 
>problem with how long his "condition" lasted as mine went on for two 
years

So was I, especially when I explained something, perhaps a little too 
concisely, and the person to whom I addressed this earth-shattering 
information said something like - what's that got to do with 
anything? Or, if it was heard, the meaning was rather seen as 
indicative of my "problem", as opposed to anything "out there." 
Harry's "voices", harry's "dreams", harry's mirror of erised, etc. 
etc.

>But all this only works if your readers are ready to learn such a 
lesson. There
>are many reasons why they may not. For one, they may know these 
lessons
>already, in which case they will not be grateful for being dragged 
through the
>unpleasantness of Harry's moral education. For a second, they may 
opt to enjoy
>Harry's anger as onlookers and not take his situation to heart. They 
may find
>him cute, endearing, a role model for expressing oneself, a role 
model for
>getting back at an unjust society, or any of a dozen ways of 
relating to Harry
>other than feeling his pain and refusal to cooperate in a way that 
leads to
>self-revelation.

I think the unpleasantness of harry's moral education is that it is 
unnecessary, as I believe most of that claptrap is unnecessary in the 
RW - his ethical self is already way, way beyond what many will 
evolve in their lives. The moral education consists, in fact, of 
being told to kneel or knuckle under, or to pay obeisance, to 
Umbridge (not a chance, torture me, no way you have power over my 
spirit etc. etc.), for a really telling example. Totalitarianism 
often has a moral context to give it bite, as it were, since the 
ideas being espoused are usually exceedingly vapid, or banal, as 
Hanna Arendt pointed out in The Banality of Evil. It is imposed 
ignorance that sets up the ostensible "need" for so-called moral 
education. Even Calvin supported open universities because he 
believed learning about the world would lead to spiritual knowledge 
too. (A nice touch, with the secular Calvinist philosophy that I've 
been posting here a while.)

>Anne:
>As for Rowling I have no clue if she is the greatest
>author of our age or a talentless hack, but I could
>care less. I love the world she created and the way
>she tells the tale. I don't care if Harry should be a
>babbling idiot under close scrutiny after all the
>horrible things he has seen. The psychological models
>are irrevalent to me. The world in which he lives is
>not real so I suspend disbelief and move on to enjoy
>characters I love and some I love to hate.

A healthy reader? Oh, my goodness... Anne, I was wondering, do you 
have a parallel reading, or perhaps a few? Seriously, I'm asking 
straight out. Does my parallel reading idea make sense to you? Or 
anyone on the list?

I mean, I joined because of the "grown-ups" part. And, as such, one 
dimensional readings of a book that so blatantly addresses RW topics 
seem rather artificially naive...

Karen:
>The more I read the books and peoples reactions to them, the more I 
>feel that people find what they're looking for. I mean, if someone 
>wants to find a 'lack of female role models' then they'll find it. 
>If someone decries the 'lack of characters from non-anglo-saxon 
>backgrounds', then they'll find it. I just feel that it shows more 
>about the reader's hangups than it does about Rowling's. 
>
>I like how everyday differences are generally dealt with matter of 
>factly. 

Yes, this is the ethical element of the series that I really 
appreciate. If I have any worries about superstardom and Rowling, it 
lies here, but she has not disappointed in the least. Reading Rowling 
is not unlike guided experiences, or whatever they're called. She 
doesn't tell, she demonstrates. This is the literary equivalent of 
harry DOING ethically humanist things as opposed to having a theory 
about them. Of course, when he does start to theorize, about how to 
make Dudley afraid of picking on little kids, it goes a bit awry, in 
the book, and very very awry on the list!


Ffred:
>I find this a particularly interesting reference as it's the only 
time we
>are shown both wizard and muggle communities side by side

It was before the boy was in the closet. It was literally the only 
time the worlds were joined.

Donna:
>OoP is IMO the best of the books so far simply because it doesn't 
leave us 
>with that feeling of closure.....

Yes, indeed, the door is opening, the cracks are widening.

Marmelade's Mom:

>In the earlier books, Harry's resilience to the 
>extreme abuse he took from the Dursleys would be utterly 
>unbelieveable in the RW. Okay, suspension of disbelief perfectly 
>acceptable; that is, until in Book 5 JKR shoves cruelty and abuse 
>in our faces and demands we take them seriously. Snape was 
>abused, Sirius abused, James was a monster, all this 
>awfulness is NOT to be taken humorously or lightly. So, how 
>do we explain Harry? He should be throwing himself off the 
>highest tower in Hogwarts, or running around using 
>Unforgiveable curses against everyone who crosses his path. 
>He is a very damaged kid; the most real moments in OOP for 
>me, were his suicidal refusal to defend himself against 
>Voldemort and his demand of Dd to let him out.He has indeed, 
>had enough. Too much awful suffering.

It is the time of change, the careful fantasy is tottering, is on the 
razor's edge, as it were. Even with possible herbal contamination, 
this is quite the Closet!Harry coming to the surface. Harry has, I 
submit, appreciated his power, if not fully or realistically (if such 
things apply) but senses it, tastes it. In such a state as he is in, 
isn't it a good thing he only yells and acts so? His inner ethical 
imperative will prevent him from crucio when he is unsure, when he is 
confused. It may later too, we shall see. But with his foretaste of 
power, there is also regret, and it will temper his temper, in a 
manner of speaking. The internal editor holds back his hand when he 
is enraged. Orthanc is not assailable by force. etc. etc. To put it 
succinctly, he knows.

Kathi:

>My thinking is that Harry will be mortally wounded and, before dying,
>will forgive Voldemort

This is great - especially if he sees Voldemort's (salazar and 
godric's?) whole story in a flash or something, and is moved by it. 
But I really hope he has a moment or two of imzadi truth, with 
hermione, or even love, with luna... so sad, like frodo...

Hans (quoting Blavatsky):
>"The Self of matter and the SELF of Spirit can never meer. One of 
the twain
>must disappear; there is no place for both."

Except I believe Rowling has translated this into ontological terms - 
the world beneath, or before, "choice", meaning spirit, takes 
precidence over "understanding".

(on Meyrink's Dee):
>To ordinary people the castle looks like a
>ruin, but to the reborn John Dee it is a castle with great walls and 
turrets.
>Sound familiar? I'll leave it there; people can search internet if 
they want to
>know more.

Reminds me also of the hand-drawn piano keyboard to play on. Again, 
Rowling translating this into ontological terms. That music exists, 
and is underestimated. etc. etc.

Pippin:

>Harry was always angry. He didn't know it. It was never safe for 
>him to admit how angry he was. He can't hear the cheeky tone in 
>"I think Hermione knows. Why don't you ask her?" (just imagine it 
>spoken the way Draco would) because he doesn't know it's 
>there, and he's utterly shocked when Snape docks points for it. I 
>can sympathize with this. It took me a long time to understand 
>why my teachers thought I was sassing them. I'd been treated to 
>a lot of sarcasm at home and I didn't realize how disrespectful I 
>sounded.

Perfect Pippin Post Pleases Philosophically, Poetically. In fact, 
this happens to me even now, even on this list (of all things)! Of 
course, no need to knead this into another neat nota bene about the 
BIC LIGHTER.

Sydney:
>It doesn't REALLY make sense that the Dursley's sent Harry a 
toothpick
>for Christmas, or that Vernon drove everybody to a lighthouse to
>escape the owls. Harry's growing-up process is kind of awkward to
>follow, because he's growing not from an 11-year-old to a 17-year-
old,
>but from Cinderella into Holden Caufield. Its such a daring
>excercise, I'm in awe of it being pulled off at all!

I am flabbergasted too. But this progression only makes sense because 
of the parallelism I've mentioned and mentioned. I'm glad you brought 
up Salinger, since his characters sure acted odd, yet absolutely 
reasonably, given the stories. I don't want to see too many of them 
in rowling, though *yikes*

>Miyazake - "Adults can't start afresh, they
>just have to pick up the pieces and carry on."

Nice warning! Until OOP, I think it was possible for some readers to 
imagine a downy-fresh tabula rasa at the end of it all. Now, the 
threat is, um, well, RW...


Amicalement:
>Here we are: isn't Harry suffering from masochism? How can we 
>explain, otherwise, his stubbornness in behaving in such a way he's 
>trapped into a kind of never ending suffering?
>He behaves like the depressive victim of 
>a rape (not only of his body, but also of his soul). That's why he 
>looks for trouble, that's why sometimes he's odd, that's why he 
>doesn't speak. None of the others (except Ginny, but he's too 
>depressive to realize it) would be able, according to his own point 
>of view, to understand how he feels exactly. The worst is probably 
>that he's conscious of the problem, but doesn't have the force yet 
>to overpass it. And that, many times, a depression comprises a phase 
>of self-satisfaction in suffering.

He is trapped into never ending suffering because - he's in a closet 
(figurative or real) and has elaborated a parallel world to explain 
it, to justify it (not in any way that carries moral weight, but in a 
way that says how it continues to be) and to grant himself some 
agency in it, even if that agency means he has to actively appear to 
choose to be a victim - to himself, at least. This is the gist of the 
theory I've been explaining, BIC LIGHTER. No, harry doesn't have to 
actually BE in a closet, that is not the point, but rather that the 
books read AS IF they were the fantasies of a boy in a closet 
attempting to deal with sickening realities.

madeyemood:
>****Is it possible that Sirius's confinement to the house suggests 
the misery
>of the closeted life?
>Perhaps these various sub-cultures---gay, Jewish, Chinese, muggle--- 
>manifest our incessant grappling with our own weird unpredictable 
collective 
>and shadowy unconscious. that is, how we are constantly confronted 
by our 
>need to integrate, tolerate, celebrate the Other in ourselves and as 
a society. 
>As the Sorting Hat says, the time has come to pull together and rise 
above the 
>divisive ways that define the dark times.

bibphile 
>That should be the Houses (all of them) will be abolished by the end 
>of the series. Not just Slytherin.

I am reminded of Lessing's The Golden Notebook - will the houses be 
amalgamated? Will Harry listen to his friends? Will the teachers 
speak to each other in front of students, communicate openly? Secrecy 
in the books does indeed represent the shadowy unconscious. And your 
comment about celebrating the "other" didn't go without being 
noticed, I can promise you. *LOL* The Order of the Phoenix may find 
itself irrelevant, and the DA, to which Dumbledore belongs only by 
reference, my supplant their role PDQ.

dan
hermione harry - imzadi
luna harry - love and kisses
hermione ron - whatever