Dobby/ bigotry & choices /Evil!Lily & Evil!Lupin (Was: foreshadowings in CoS)

[nobodysrib]

No: HPFGUIDX 53322

> The Admiring Skeptic wrote:
> 
> <snip>
> 
> What's going on [with Dobby]? The *only* answer that fits all this 
> plot-working is that it is expressly designed to work up to that 
> last line where Harry gets Dobby to promise not to save his life. 
> For that line to happen, you need someone to try to save your life 
> and also to try to kill you in the process.
<snip some more>

GulPlum AKA Richard wrote:
<snip>
> Dobby does *NOT* make any promise not to save Harry ever again. 
> Harry asks (or rather, tells) him to promise, but both in the book 
> and the MTSNBN, Dobby's only reaction is a big smile. Whilst this 
> could conceivably be considered acquiescence, it could just as 
> likely be a very sly way of getting around making the promise.

My comment:

We don't know much about house elf magic.  Might Dobby somehow *know* 
that it will at some point be his job to save Harry?  Pre-CoS, he 
overhears the Malfoy's plotting to destroy Harry and assumes that he 
is the only one who can save Harry's life.  Only, by the end of CoS, 
he sees that he has not saved Harry's life (only endangered him) - 
this time is yet to come.  He smiles to Harry's "don't save my life 
again" comment because he knows this is a promise he cannot make.

I'm not a big Dobby fan and don't necessarily want him to be the 
saving grace in the "final battle," but I also don't imagine that 
Harry's life will only be in danger one more time over the next three 
years.  And Dobby having a greater (life-saving) role ahead of him 
correlates well with HP themes of bigotry and choices.

While house elves certainly are not as looked down upon as, say, 
werewolves, their liberties certainly go unrecognized, as shown with 
Hermione's efforts to Free the Slaves.  (This subplot was one that I 
always felt would come back later, otherwise why waste book-space 
developing it when GoF was already so long.  JKR cut out the Weasley 
cousin, leading me to believe that any subplots not needed for future 
stories would also have been cut.)  What's the best way to show that 
house elves are capable of being their own masters?  Have one save 
the day.  What better way to make the WW question what other 
tragedies might have been averted had their own house elves had free 
will?  And what better way for Dobby to show the other (obedient and 
happily enslaved) house elves that their lives are good for more than 
following orders, that they can play a more vital role in the WW?  
And afterall, HP is all about the underdog rising up and saving the 
day...

This leads into the idea of choices.  I believe Dumbledore said that 
it is the choices we make that are important (don't have the books 
with me - would love it if someone wants to look up this quote).  But 
house elves aren't allowed to make choices for themselves...  well, 
all but one, the free one, the odd duck named Dobby.  (I guess 
there's also Winky, but thus far she is too much of a drunk to be of 
any good here.)  Harry's choice to trick the Malfoys into freeing 
Dobby set forth a chain of events that will lead to Dobby saving 
Harry's life.  So, in essense, Harry's choice led to Harry's life 
being saved.  Great way to show the moral lesson of good karma.


On a different topic, Dumbledore's comment about choices has left me 
wondering...  The optimist would certainly be able to note all the 
ways that good people have made good choices, and theorize on how 
presumably evil people (Snape, Malfoys, etc.) may make (or have made) 
good choices.  But the pessimist would add in that in order to fully 
develop this theme, there would also need to be a presumably good 
person making evil choices.  And considering the equal importance of 
the present day story and the backstory, I would think that there 
needs to be at least two (past and present) situations of good people 
going bad, at least temporarily.  (I don't count Pettigrew here since 
we didn't really know him before learning he went bad.)

Some possibilities for this:
Ron - who has been set up wonderfully to play the role of Judas
Ginny - whose adoration of Harry is known by many (ahem, Valentines 
Day in CoS), which could be a great achilles heel for Voldemort/DEs 
to take advantage of.  But we have also already seen her being 
tricked into working for evil.
Sirius Black - but this would not be a huge shock to the WW, since 
he's already presumed evil.  (And I just like him too much to find 
adequate evidence - or to even postulate w/o evidence.)
Dumbledore - but if he works for evil, then we'd have to have a shock 
as large as Voldemort working for good to balance this off.  yeah, 
right.
Percy - who has shown his desire to climb the ladder
There are lots of other possibilities (please throw in any additions 
to this list), but I'm going to skip ahead to my two favorite 
speculations:

past presumed-good-person-turned-evil:  Evil!Lily.  
(But, um, she saved Harry...)  If Lily were one of Voldemort's spies, 
it would be one of the greatest shocks to Harry's life thus far (a 
good enough reason in itself for whoever to wait to tell him about 
this).  Dumbledore mentioned that he had *many* spies, which leads me 
to believe that Voldemort would as well.  And if you were Voldemort, 
would you be confidant that Pettigrew was capabale enough to be your 
only inner-circle infiltrant?  Lily would be a perfect choice - by 
being married to another in the inner-circle, he gets two for the 
price of one.  (Not that this means James was also working for V.  
Instead, Lily is in the position to get info from James and also to 
influence his decisions.)  To curb Lily's evilness here, she may have 
gotten wind of Voldemort's plot to kill Harry and gone to him, 
offering *anything* if only he spares her boy.  Give him information, 
play both sides, whatever he wants.  Voldemort *agrees*, figuring 
that she is not only a strong ally, but that once he breaks his 
promise and kills the boy, Lily will see that it was all for the best 
and stay faithful to Voldemort.   (After all, we know that Voldemort 
doesn't understand the power of family and love.)  And we know the 
rest of the story.  (There are many different ways for the Evil!Lily 
story to work - this is just one of them.)

Present presumed-good-person-turned-evil:  Evil!Lupin.
(Some of this is connected to the backstory, but I put him in 
the 'present' category since he is involved with contemporary goings-
on.)  I know that Evil!Lupin has already been discussed a lot (I've 
loved going back and reading the old posts on this subject) so I'll 
try to only bring up that which I have not already read.  Evil!Lupin 
would serve a function that Pettigrew (and Evil!Lily, for that 
matter) no longer can - Voldemort still needs to have an informer 
within the inner circle.  And it's got to be someone who is already a 
member of it (and presumably was an informant in the past), since the 
inner circle would most definitely be leery of anyone new hoping 
aboard and already suspicious of them as being a spy.  (After Black 
was thought to be the spy, turning out later to be Pettigrew, I just 
assume that they would be justifiably paranoid about informants.)  I 
also wonder why it was that (in the past) they suspected Lupin in the 
first place (hence him not being made the secret keeper.)  Did their 
suspicions of Lupin cause a rift between James and Lupin, causing 
Lupin to refer to them as only being friends "at Hogwarts"?  Could it 
be that the gang were on the right track, but just didn't think any 
further that there might be two traitors?  Or perhaps they were on 
the right track in suspecting Lupin, so Voldemort lures another of 
the inner circle onto his side, in the form of a rat.  Pettigrew 
could have easily been set up as a patsy:  If he works successfully 
as an informant (and also delivers the Potters to Voldemort) then 
bravo, but if, as Pettigrew was more likely to do, he messes up and 
cannot deliver, then (1) Lupin is still in place to deliver 
information, and (2) after having outed their (the gang's) suspected 
informant, they might feel confidant that there were no more 
informants - leaving Lupin that much more safe to deliver information 
to Voldemort.

Pettigrew made the comment in the shrieking shack that Voldemort had 
been taking over *all over,* so what else was Pettigrew to do but 
join.  If you go for both the Evil!Lupin and Evil!Lily ideas, can't 
you see Voldemort going to Pettigrew and saying, "Listen, we've 
already got Lily and Lupin - it's only a matter of time 'til all the 
rest are on my side or dead."  

One more thought on this Evil!Lupin thread - "It is the choices, 
Harry..." (paraphrase).  Just as the WW automatically dislikes Lupin 
for his werewolf status, the readers tend to like him for the same 
reason.  (Isn't it always easy to take sides with the person who is 
the target of bigotry and prejudice?)  But to trust someone because 
they are the victim of prejudice is just as dangerous as not trusting 
someone for the same reason - because the evidence forming both these 
stances comes from the *prejudice* rather than the *person*, the 
*rumors* rather than the *facts*, and completely discounts the 
*choices* the person has made.  

It would be painful to learn this lesson by having Lupin turn out to 
be evil, but IMHO for JKR to fully examine what it means to look at 
the importance of people's choices, this (having popular-opinion-
prejudice turning out, in one instance, to be accurate) is an area 
that must be covered, one way or another.

- Nobody's Rib