Apologies and responsibility

[lady.indigo at gmail.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 139374

On 9/2/05, lupinlore <bob.oliver at cox.net> wrote:
>>Her legitimacy and claim to obedience puts makes that of
Snape, only a potions teacher, seem paltry indeed. Why now, should
Harry be respectful of Snape or Sluggy, people whom he does not trust
and who have never given good reason to be trusted or respected, when
he is positively encouraged and rewarded for not being obedient and
respectful to Umbridge? Because Dumbledore says so? Yeah, right. I
wouldn't buy that one, either.<<

Lady Indigo:
Okay, what? How does simply learning the way you're supposed to learn in an 
academic situation equate to 'respect for Slughorn'? I'd have said he 
shouldn't cheat for any professor in any class, not unless a dire situation 
- which affected the good of all - called him to. Harry wasn't using the 
book for a blow against Slughorn most of the time; frankly if he wanted the 
guy to leave him alone he should have probably kept his head down, instead. 
And I don't believe that he kept the book around solely to help get his 
hands on Slughorn's memory. He started using it and made the descision to 
keep it long beforehand, kept using it for a few chapters after the memory 
was produced, and only made the connection once or twice at all. If he found 
it necessary to cheat just for the good of getting his hands on the memory, 
knowing at the time that what he did was wrong, I'd have excused it. Instead 
he never even owned up to the fact that it was just that.
I never, ever suggested that the reason Harry should 'tow the line' when it 
came to his two Potions professors simply because they were authority 
figures. That would have been ridiculous, considering how cruel or 
incompetent authority often is in these books. I said that he should only 
break the rules when it was necessary or the rules were decidedly, obviously 
unfair. "Don't cheat" and "don't intrude on other people's privacy" are fair 
rules. 
Slughorn was essentially harmless in his case, so the cheating was 
unnecessary unless it was solely to retrieve the memory - and it wasn't. I 
personally think that with his attitude towards it, Harry would have cheated 
either way. And while Snape was using aggressive and unfair teaching methods 
it would have done Harry good from a practical perspective, the fact that he 
needed to fight Voldemort on these terms, to try and learn it the 'proper' 
way (as common sense dictates that Voldemort probably wouldn't give him the 
same opportunity to poke around in the Dark Lord's memories). Hence the 
cheating and the Pensieve were both Harry breaking fair rules for completely 
unnecessary reasons. It had nothing to do with authority at all.

Lupinlore said:
>>Far from it, Dumbledore seems not to think 
that any sort of systemic or formal preparation for facing Voldemort 
is particularly important, and seems to be totally satisfied with 
Harry's grades and his methods for obtaining them.<<

Lady Indigo:
If Occlumency were completely unimportant, why would Dumbledore throw two 
enemies into a room together and expect them to get along for the sake of 
it? Unless it's supposed to be some attempt at mediation, in which case I'd 
say Dumbledore's an idiot, but the Snape's guilt debate aside he's 
definitely not.
I think he put things like Harry's cheating and Occlumency aside for what he 
felt was more important at the moment, especially in light of their 
constantly learning about what Voldemort was and wasn't capable of.


Lupinlore said:
>>Given those types of attitudes 
and maladroit handling, at Harry's age I would have readily realized 
I had practical carte blanche for rule breaking and enjoyed it to the 
fullest. I have to say, considering the situation he has been a 
veritable model of rectitude, honesty, and restraint.<<


I'd by no means go that far in praising him. And if Harry's so totally 
incapable of having a moral compass because of these things, doesn't the 
fact that he's the hero of this story bother anyone? Especially in light of 
this being a children's book - and believe me, I am the LAST person to say 
'think of the children' most of the time.
Lupinlore said:
>>The very authorities that Harry had just seen throw Hagrid into 
Azkaban for no other reason than that they feared public pressure and 
had to have someone to blame? The very authorities that yielded to 
blatant bribery from Lucius Malfoy? Yeah, right.<<


Lady Indigo said:
I meant approaching someone more like Dumbledore, who they knew they could 
trust and who could give them advice on how to best present this to the 
Ministry so they'd be believed. So you honestly think that, barring the need 
to save Ginny as soon as possible, their best course of action was to take 
justice into their own hands, and throw Lockhart down in the Chamber with 
them when they knew that he was incompetent and could easily be killed?

- Lady Indigo