Depression ... in OotP - Cho/Marietta

[huntergreen_3]

No: HPFGUIDX 110789

Pippin wrote :
>>Cho seems to be doing okay by the end. When she passes Harry in the
train corridor, she blushes instead of bursting into tears. She's
started a new relationship with Michael Corner, and she's stuck by
Marietta, which I have to admire, even though I don't admire Marietta
herself very much.<<

Del replied:
>>I understand why Marrietta did what she did, and I can't really 
blame her : the girl was stuck between two diametrically opposed 
loyalties.<<

HunterGreen:
I don't really blame her either. I blame Cho more for bringing her to 
the meeting when she clearly didn't want to. Yes, Marietta could have 
refused to go, but who knows what Cho said to her to convince her to 
come in the first place. And then after she had signed it really 
didn't matter if she was going to meetings or not, on paper she was a 
member of the group (and I'm sure Cho kept pushing her to come 
along). As the reader, we're stuck seeing everything from Harry's 
perspective, which of course makes what Marietta did look horrible 
and unforgivable. 
But from her point of view, its rather understandable. Her role 
models (her parents, the government) were telling her that Voldemort 
was not back, and that Harry was unstable. On top of that, she was 
being told that if she was found out to be a part of that group she 
would be expelled. Perhaps Harry, Ron, Hermione and the others were 
committed enough to learning DADA to take that risk, but she has far 
less motivation. Look how long it takes her before she actually says 
anything, I'll bet she was obsessing about it from the first meeting 
on. It might have even come up over Christmas when she was at home 
with her family. She was faced with being expelled and therefore 
ruining her future, and betraying her friends. From her point-of-view 
what she was doing was the "right thing", since the students were 
breaking school rules. I don't think she did it maliciously at all.

Of course that doesn't mean that what she did wasn't wrong, and I do 
think she deserved to have 'sneak' written across her face. However, 
Cho deserves as much of the blame as she does. Cho should have known 
better than to bring Marietta to any of the meetings.

Del:
>>As for Cho, I guess you're right and she's finally getting better by
the end of the year.<<

HunterGreen:
I wonder how she was when she wasn't around Harry? We only see a 
small window of her behavior, it could be that she was able to 
control herself when she was not around a reminder of what happened 
to Cedric. I don't know if she was necessarily clinically depressed 
any more than Harry.