CHAPDISC: HBP7, The Slug Club

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 145938

<Snip AnitaKH's model summary--very concise and well-expressed. Thank
you!>
> > 1. This is the beginning of what will be a year-long obsession    
with Draco for Harry.  In hindsight, what does this reveal about  
Harry's powers of discernment?
> 
Betsy Hp responded:
><snip> Draco is not just a happy little Death Eater in training.  I 
> think this insight coupled with his blindspot regarding Draco's 
> humanity is what leads to Harry being petrified on the compartment 
> floor, completely at Draco's mercy. <snip>

Carol:
Rather than answering the question, I'm just going to respond to this
portion of Betsy's comment. I agree that Harry underestimated Draco in
this scene but I don't see how this incident relates to Draco's
humanity. Harry's eavesdropping reveals Draco feeling miffed and
making excuses for being left out of the Slug Club and bragging about
the mysterious mission that Voldemort has assigned to him, but Draco's
humanity (or perhaps we should say his "humanness," since "humanity"
implies compassion) isn't all that evident here. And his "mercy" is
nonexistent--he petrifies Harry, stomps on his face and breaks his
nose, covers him with the invisibility cloak so he won't be found, but
takes care to observe where his hand is so he can tread on it on his
way out. He certainly seems like a happy little Death Eater to me
(aside from his disappointment regarding the Slug Club). Good thing
his mission wasn't to AK the Chosen One. It would have been all too
easy. (Draco does make a mistake, though, leaving the blinds down so
that Tonks can deduce which compartment Harry is in.) I'm assuming you
meant mercy ironically since IMO neither mercy nor humanity is much in
evidence here. 

As for Harry's powers of discernment, possibly they're improving. He's
certainly right that Draco is up to no good and I think he's correct
about the Dark Mark, though I don't know for sure. But he and his
friends have had five years to practice their detective skills. It's
about time we saw at least one of them arriving at a correct
conclusion, especially since DD won't be there at the end of the book
to unravel the mystery. I don't think his more or less accurate
assessment of Draco has any bearing on that great enigma, Snape,
however. Harry, as we'll see in the next chapter, is determined to see
the worst in him. And when has Snape ever broken Harry's nose, left
him to be sent back to London under an invisible cloak, and trodden on
his hand as a final gesture of hatred and contempt? I'm not talking
about the tower scene here; it hasn't occurred yet and we really don't
know the full story, I'll bet my HP books on it ('cause if we do know
the whole story and Harry is right, I don't want them any more, thank
you.)

> > 2. The Aurors in the scene are men we have never seen before.  Is
this done to highlight the changes at the Ministry of Magic, or is 
there some more sinister reason?

Carol responds:
I don't think there's anything sinister about it--unless Scrimgeour is
sinister. They reflect his ex-Auror, G-man (I don't know the British
equivalent) style of running things. Efficient anonymity, or the
appearance thereof. Tonks and Moody are conspicuously absent, either
because they're assigned elsewhere (Tonks, of course, meets the train)
or because they would call attention to themselves or both. I'm not
altogether sure that Scrimgeour trusts them, given his suspicions that
the Order was hiding Sirius Black the previous year, even though SB is
now known to be innocent of the murders he was imprisoned for and is
of course dead. Scrimgeour seems to be a by-the-book, law-and-order
man. Bet he got on swimmingly with Barty Sr. before Barty was
Imperio'd. And there's a real contrast to Fudge with his pin-striped
cloak and green bowler hat in these bearded, Muggle-looking Aurors.
Could Scrimgeour be trying to draw Muggle Britain's attention away
from the WW and its troubles, in contrast to Fudge's well-intentioned
if patronizing visits to the Muggle PM?
              
> 
> > 3. Compare this train scene with the early train scene in OOP. How
do his feelings toward Neville and Luna compare in the two scenes? 
What does this scene do for our understanding of the Harry in HBP?

Carol responds:
Harry is beginning to understand through Neville and Luna that
forgetfulness and eccentricity do not in themselves make people
worthless, that appearances can be deceiving (a lesson Harry still
hasn't learned with Snape), that courage and resourcefulness and
loyalty and other virtues are not confined to "cool" people (like poor
Cedric, whom he didn't fully appreciate for other reasons) or to
Gryffindors. It's a step toward growing up, a step, maybe, toward
house unity (if Harry somehow finds himself back at Hogwarts). Neville
and Luna will never take the place of Ron and Hermione in his
affections, but at least he's coming to understand and appreciate them
and to defend them against the Romilda Vanes (a Gryffindor, yet!) of
Hogwarts. (Side note: We see some unpleasant Gryffindors, including
Romilda and McClaggen, whose first name escapes me. So while we've yet
to meet a likeable Slytherin kid, at least we've met some unlikeable
Gryffindors aside from Pompous Percy. It's a start.)
    
> > 4. In this chapter, Harry spends time with people of two very
different rungs on the social ladder: the Slug Club -v- Neville and
Luna (whose lack of popularity is touched upon several times   
in this chapter <snip> Discuss Harry's very different opinions of the
two social circles.

Carol:
Not much to say here that I haven't already said in response to
question 3. Harry seems to have taken the measure of Slughorn pretty
accurately (assuming that the narrator's observations reflect his
perspective. He sees how quickly Slughorn discards Belby, for example,
and he understands his motives for including everyone present. He's
not particularly eager to associate with McClaggen, Gryffindor or not,
especially since his father is a friend of Scrimgeour's, and he's
certainly not eager to associate with a haughty, arrogant Slytherin
like Blaise Zabini who, we find out later, regards Ginny as "a filthy
little blood traitor."

Side note on Blaise, whom some people expected to be the Good
Slytherin. I feel as if he's one of the boxes that Lupinlore, I mean
JKR, checked off her list. She's shown him to us and he nicely
illustrates Sirius Black's little aphorism, "The world isn't divided
into good people and Death Eaters, Harry." Except for his views on
blood, Blaise reminds me of the young Sirius Black--handsome,
arrogant, haughty, too good for everyone (except, in Sirius's case,
the equally "cool," athletically talented, rich, clever, outgoing
James Potter). But Blaise, interestingly and ironically, is black. In
the Muggle world of a hundred or so years ago, he would have been the
victim of racism, but in the WW he's a proponent of its equivalent,
blood prejudice. Race doesn't matter in the least to Slytherins or any
other Wizards or we'd certainly hear some foul insults from Draco's
mouth, but magical blood does. And Blaise, whose mother appears to be
a "black widow" in the sense of a spider who kills her mates (no
connection with her race), holds Draco's DE father in contempt. He's a
little hypocrite, he's not in the least likeable, he's a bigot, but
he's not likely to be recruited by Voldemort. And he's also a plot
device. JKR needs a Slytherin other than Draco to be present at the
Slug Club meeting so Harry can follow him and eavesdrop; he also needs
someone who can talk about Theo Nott, who rather oddly isn't present
in what the narrator refers to as the sixth-year Slytherin
compartment. Neither, of course, is Pansy Parkinson's "gang of
Slytherin girls." Maybe they're all falling over Theo in some other
compartment, though I rather doubt it. (Theo was my candidate for Good
Slytherin and I'm still hoping we'll see more of him. I just hope he
doesn't drop out of Hogwarts to join Draco and share his "glory.")

> > >>(question 4 continued):
> > What about Draco's perception of where he is on the social ladder?
(the attempt to impress that seemingly was trigger by being snubbed by
Slughorn, his relationship with Pansy who seems determined to form
some kind of attachment to him, etc.)

Carol: I agree with Betsy that Draco's attachment to Pansy, and more
particularly hers to him, was already formed. If a boy like Draco has
a girl who's the leader of her own little gang falling all over him,
he's not going to refuse her attentions. (Harry's prejudices may be
showing in the narrator's references to Pansy as a girl with a face
like a pug. Interestingly, the description doesn't appear in HBP.)
We've seen that Pansy really does care about Draco; she went running
after him in tears when he was hurt by the hippogriff (sp?). Pansy has
a softer side that she conceals (she liked the unicorns, for example)
and she strikes me as rather naive. She's going after the top-ranking
boy in her circle, the one who has always been the leader or the
Slytherins, and she sees his orders from "*Him*" (Voldemort) as
glamorous and his mysterious mission as necessarily admirable, a cause
for increased devotion. But Draco can't tell her what it is, and later
he turns to a Mudblood ghost for comfort instead of Pansy, a
flesh-and-blood girl who, for all her faults, really cares about him.
What would she think if she knew what he was trying to do? Would she
help him or turn away in horror? Would she scorn him as a fool or pity
him when he seems doomed to failure and death? Is she another Narcissa
in the making, fiercely devoted to Draco as Narcissa is to her husband
and son? Pansy is in for a rude awakening in Book 7. I only hope we
get to see it.
> 
> > 5. Neville mentions that his wand may have been the last
Ollivander sold before he vanished.  Do you think this is one of those
throwaway lines that will be significant later?  How?

Carol:
It's certainly a hint that we'll find out what's up with Ollivander.
I, for one, don't think he's dead. Voldemort wants something from
him--and it doesn't hurt to take him out of circulation, either, so
that LV's enemies are forced to buy inferior wands for their children.
I'm just glad that Neville found an Ollivander wand, or rather that an
Ollivander wand chose him.
    
> > 6. What is the composition of Neville's wand, and will it be
important?

Carol:
Cherry wood and unicorn hair, as others have said.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with snow along the bough . . . .

Pure white blossoms which, in combination with the unicorn hair,
suggest innocence ("pure as the driven snow," as Magpie said). And
someone else pointed out the Druidic(?) associations of cherry wood,
which include success in finding (Horcruxes??), unification,
competition, and war. The triumph of innocence? Dumbledore talks about
the purity of Harry's heart (or is it his soul?), but IMO, Neville has
him beat, never having felt hatred or vengeance that we know of. Let's
hope he doesn't start hating Snape and that he finds the strength to
defeat Bellatrix without killing her or resorting to her own favorite
weapon, Cruciatus.

> > 7. Luna comes up with yet another – er – quirky creature.  What 
are the chances that Luna's wacky creatures will be proven real? And
if so, which ones?

> Betsy Hp:
> My only interest in this is if somehow Luna proves Hermione wrong
about something.  It'd be a funny scene and would probably do Hermione
some good.

Carol:
Ah, well. I thought she would come back from her summer holiday having
actually found a heliopath or whatever creature it was that she and
her father were after, if only to show Hermione that books aren't the
answer to everything and can even be wrong. (I mean, we thought
dragons, unicorns, and hippogriffs were mythical beasts till JKR set
us straight, right? Those other books were wrong! Well, okay, I really
do know that the HP books are fiction but I prefer suspending my
disbelief.) So I guess Betsy and I agree on this one.
> 
     
> > 8. As we learn about each student's connections during Slughorn's
luncheon party, whose story, if any, do you suppose will prove to be
important in book 7?

Carol:
Hm. Possibly McClaggan's connection with Scrimgeour will amount to
something, but as I said above, I think Blaise Zabini was mostly a
plot device (and an illustration of a person who upholds the Slytherin
pureblood ethic without being a budding Death Eater). Personally, I
hope to see more of Theo Nott, who, like Draco, was excluded from the
Slug Club because of his father. Maybe Draco, whose actions in HBP 
(attempted murder, an Imperius Curse, accessory to DD's murder, aiding
and abetting Death Eaters, endangerment of the staff and students of
Hogwarts) have surely made him an outlaw, will hide out with Theo
during the summer? Then again, I suppose he could elope to America
with Pansy. We just don't know. (Skipping question 10 because I
answered it here and above.)

    
> > 11. I find the end of this chapter difficult to read, wishing at
an emotional level that Harry would use more caution. Harry's
impulsiveness has gotten him into scrapes before, and he once again
takes a chance and loses.  How do you think this tendency will play
out?  <snip>

Carol:
Harry might just as well be Sirius's son as James's for all the
caution he shows. (I think James took risks for fun, but Sirius was
out-and-out reckless, and Harry seems to be following in his
footsteps.) The incident with Draco on the train certainly didn't
teach him a lesson, as shown by his experimenting with Sectum Sempra
later and raging at Snape even though he thought Snape wanted to kill
him. He hasn't learned from the Pensieve incident with Snape, either,
apparently. Harry will have to learn self-control on a number of
levels (resisting impulses and controlling his temper in particular),
and he doesn't have very much time. Still, he's the hero of the books,
and I think at the last moment he'll make the right decision, whatever
that decision may be. I have no doubt that he'll defeat Voldemort and
only a little doubt that he'll survive himself, but I hope it will be
through learning the lessons he still needs to learn and not through
luck. He shouldn't win because he's JKR's idea of the Virtuous Hero
and therefore deserves to win. He should win because he's earned his
victory. If he's really Dumbledore's Man through and through then he'd
best remember Dumbledore's words about right vs. easy and trusting
Severus Snape and defeating Voldemort through Love, not through
vengeance or recklessness.

Carol, with apologies for writing a tome when she thought she had
nothing to say