First potions lesson/Harry getting special treatment

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 145972

> Valky:
> Exactly! It looked as though Dumbledore was punishing Slytherin 
House,
> because he *was*, in a sense. And some may say why didn't he do 
this
> before if Slytherin had always been cheating but there was one 
large
> difference in this year compared to the ones coming before - a 
group
> of kids from Gryffindor house other had done something remarkable. 
DD
> then was able to fairly give a gigantic points boost big enough to
> overcome Slytherin's usual ridiculous lead.
> 
> Basically I think the point is that Harry and Co had done them all 
(DD
> and Hogwarts including Slytherin) a favour because his actions had
> enabled Dumbledore the means to demonstrate the true meaning of 
House
> virtue to the school.


Magpie:

So if it seems Dumbledore did something that blatantly dissed an 
entire quarter of the student body we should write an elaborate 
backstory where they deserved it with no evidence?  That seems silly 
to me.  We know nothing about Slytherin always having any sort of 
ridiculous lead in the past.  Snape is rarely if ever shown awarding 
random points to his house.  Draco doesn't seem to be racking up 
points right and left dishonestly anywhere that I remember (except 
in OotP when it's acknowledged that the point system is no longer 
valid).  We see the Slytherins doing obnoxious stuff in canon, but 
there's no evidence they ever had this kind of power--most of the 
time they seem like they'd rarely get awarded points at all. All the 
teachers seem to keep things fair amongst themselves. Dumbledore's 
been headmaster for a long time and Slytherins only won for however 
many years.  

Here's my theory on what happened: JKR wanted to make the victory as 
big as possible so she intentionally had the Slytherins insulted and 
shown to be not as good as Harry.  She wanted to humiliate the 
Slytherins and used Dumbledore to do it, and didn't think she needed 
a reason other than it would make Harry happy (which was quite 
possibly DD's motivation).  It's possible to read less obnoxious 
things into it, like by saying that the previous winner's banners 
are always up and the contest wasn't really over yet, but it seems 
like JKR wanted the idea to be that Slytherin won and everyone knew 
it, and then Dumbledore intentionally made them un-win and handed 
the cup to the kids who deserved it more.  That's the way most 
people seem to experience it.  If Ron had just said, "Unless we 
manage to win 150 points on the way to the banquet, they won," or 
something, it wouldn't be an issue.  

kchulpis:

At any rate, maybe you've all talked about this (I searched and 
didn't see anything but Yahoo's search function is less than ideal) 
and maybe some of you have seen that paragraph, but it was the first 
time it sunk in with me and I just found it an excellent connector 
in the the progression of this relationship. In fact, I've actually
been aware (probalby because I am reading it after the big iscussion 
of a couple of weeks ago) of all kinds of very small sentences here 
and there that are before the "purring beast" wakes, that are pretty 
indicative that Harry does see Ginny in a much different light than 
previous years.

Magpie:

God I hated that scene.  I think I dropped the book in annoyance.  
H/G had been already so heavily foreshadowed did we really need 
Harry to have to follow his nose to the Special Ginny Flowery Smell? 

Not that I wanted lots of emphasis on teen romance in HBP (I had a 
hard enough time getting through what we had), but I did have to 
laugh at the way the romance had to be handled exactly like the 
other Junior Mysteries.  Making it clear that Ginny's the most 
amazing girl on the planet was enough reason to figure out that she 
was right for Harry.

(And just for the record, yes, I always considered Ginny to have a 
perfectly strong personality outside of having a crush on Harry and 
no, I did not buy the change between GoF and OotP.  I preferred the 
personality she had before the "real one.")

-m