Hermione and Rita Skeeter

[templar1112002]

No: HPFGUIDX 112049

Eric Oppen <oppen at m...> wrote:
> My own take on Hermione's treatment of Rita Skeeter is that, 
> if anything, Hermione was quite merciful.  Someone who was 
> less nice...say, someone like me...might have taken more 
> permanent measures.  <snip>
> 
> Instead, Hermione makes the punishment fit the crime.  Rita 
> Skeeter abused her position as a reporter to write untrue and 
> harmful things about Harry and Hermione, trusting in her status 
> to keep her safe from reprisals?  Very well.  Let her keep her 
> quill quiet, or write as Hermione dictates, for a year.  She 
> abused her Animagus powers to get "dirt" on people after having 
> been banned from Hogwarts grounds? Very well.  Let her live _as_ 
> a beetle, since she seems to like it, until Hermione chooses to 
> let her loose---and let her live in fear ever afterward that 
> Hermione might decide to turn her in. 
> 
> Hermione and her friends have no reason to trust the adult 
> authorities in their lives.  When the authorities are untrustworthy 
> or ineffectual, "self-help" justice becomes the order of the day...
> like it was back-in-the-day along the Anglo-Scottish border, where 
> we get neat words like "blackmail," "feud," and "reiver," and a lot
> of gory stories.



Marcela here:

I agree with you 100%.  After reading many posts in this thread with 
people complaining or not being 'satisfied' with Hermione's 
behaviour toward Rita, I feel confident to state that those posters 
have never lived in a society/country where the 'ruling powers' have 
complete disregard of the law (or there is no Law at all) and 
bribery and corruption are a daily occurrence.  I have lived in many 
of those, actually come from one of those, and one thing that stands 
out in a person whose grown up in a 'politically correct' society is 
that they 'expect' the bigger problems to be solved by the 
authorities because they 'trust' them... well, you take that same 
person to one of 'those countries' and after a month of bumping 
his/her head against the wall he/she is going to 'see' the light not 
on the main road but on its 'feeder' ones, lol.  It's, after all, a 
question of surviving or getting things done, the tricky part is to 
do all this within the set standards of morality and fairness.

Hermione has shown a lot of maturity of character ever since PS, she 
becomes aware that the WW is very different from her muggle one, 
people get sent to Azkaban with no trial, Dark wizards kill/torture 
for pleasure, prejudice is all around, her big 'authority figure' -
Dumbledore- lets Harry and herself brake rules (time-turner) in the 
name of 'a greater good', slavement is OK, etc... She spent the 
whole year helping Harry stay alive through the TWT, she's been 
drilled all year with the words 'Constant Vigilance' and yet, 
everybody was fooled and LV managed to snatch Harry and get his body 
back.  What is she going to do with Rita, once she caught her?  Give 
her up to the 'authorities' so that she either gets sent to Azkaban 
or goes back to writing lies for Fudge's purposes, or 'make' a deal 
with Rita herself and keep it under wraps?  She understands that 
they are at War now, she is on Harry's and Dumbledore's side, Rita 
was writing damaging articles against both of them, plus Hagrid and 
herself... why not make a 'deal' with her and have the upper hand?  
If you are offended by the 'jar cell', keep in mind that to a beetle 
a jar has house proportions, and she was being fed 'beetle food', so 
our Hermione was being 'humanitarian' and I doubt that even PETA 
could raise complaints, LOL.

The bottom line is, Rita was an illegal animagus, she was banned 
from Hogwarts yet she got there many times, she wrote lies about 
everybody, and she got caught in the act... I think that Rita got a 
fair deal, why else would she agree to keep her quill to herself for 
a whole year?  Hermione didn't act harshly or immorally, she just 
weighed the pros/cons for both parties and reached a reasonable 
conclusion.  I wouldn't even call that 'blackmail', I see what 
Hermione did to Rita is what parents do to their kids: she 
just 'grounded' Rita not to write for a year.

Marcela