Understanding Marietta (long) (Was: Evil Hermione)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 154959

colebiancardi wrote:
>
> well, the point that I was trying to make is that Percy values
authority. He has broken off ties with his family because of that
value. And he encourged Ron to break off any ties with Harry and to
talk to Umbridge. In a way, he WAS asking Ron to betray Harry and
their friendship.
>
> Marietta seems to be the same way. She may not have thought of it
as betrayal - perhaps she was taught to respect the authority figure
without questioning them. There are people like that out there. And
perhaps she felt that these students were harmful to the rest of the
school
>
> don't get me wrong - I don't care for snitches and I always question
authority. However, that was the comparison I was trying to make with
Marietta and Percy - they respect the authority figure, which Harry is
not one.

Carol responds:
I think you're on the right track with your Percy/Marietta comparison.
granted, Percy actually knows Harry and he's opposing his family
rather than going along with them, but both of them seem to consider
Umbridge a legitimate authority figure (and unlike Pettigrew, neither
is knowingly turning friends and Order members over to a murderous
Dark wizard).

Percy calls Umbridge "a delightful woman" and he goes along with
Fudge's official line that Dumbledore is losing his grip. He even
believes, with much less excuse than Marietta, that Harry is lying
about Voldemort's return.

I think we should consider what Marietta knows and doesn't know
regarding both Voldemort (the primary reason for starting the D.A.)
and Umbridge (the secondary reason). Certainly she knows that Umbridge
is teaching theory (or a particularly useless variety) instead of
practical DADA skills. FWIW, if Marietta is a sixth year like Cho,
she's not concerned with her OWLs, and if she's not planning to take a
DADA NEWT, Umbridge's "teaching" may not be a major concern to her as
it is to fifth-years like Ernie Macmillan and Michael Corner (or
Hermione herself). Granted, that's a rather selfish perspective, but
it's also a natural one. Certainly, she expresses no interest in
learning DADA from Harry. She's there because Cho wants her to be, and
Cho is there because she likes and admires Harry, and because whe
wants to find out what happened to Cedric.

Whether Marietta thinks she needs DADA for NEWTs or not, and it
appears that she doesn't, it seems to me that she would have changed
her mind if Harry or Hermione had convinced her that Voldemort is
really back. But her mother's boss, Fudge, and her mother's colleague,
Umbridge, believe that he isn't, as does her mother, who is working
with Umbridge to police the Floo Network at Hogwarts. And the Daily
Prophet is reinforcing the message that Dumbledore is a delusional old
fool. Even Percy, who only recently left Hogwarts after seven years
with DD as headmaster, believes it. Why shouldn't Marietta? And the
Daily Prophet depicts Harry as, in Percy's words, "unstable and
possibly violent." Percy should know better, but why would Marietta?
She's in a different year and a different House and has never had a
class with him, never so much as sat at the same table for a meal. And
Harry is yelling at the people who showed up for the meeting, telling
them that he's not going to tell them what happened to Cedric. If he
won't explain how he knows that Voldemort is back, why should Marietta
(or Zacharias Smith, for that matter) believe him?

It's quite likely that Marietta knows that Umbridge is giving Harry
multiple detentions for spreading "lies," but she doesn't know what
Umbridge does to Harry in those detentions. No one knows except Harry,
Ron, and Hermione. Not even Dumbledore knows. Nor can she know that
Umbridge sent Dementors to Little Whinging to attack Harry. Not even
Harry knows at this point. And the attempted Crucio, of course, hasn't
happened yet.

What, then, does Marietta "know" about Umbridge? She was presumably
present for the start-of-term feast, so she may have heard the first
few words of Umbridge's speech before Cho starts "chatting animatedly
with her friends" (OoP Am. ed. 213), but it's unlikely that she
understood any more from "progress for progress's sake must be
discouraged" and similar sentiments than any other student (except
Hermione) in the whispering, giggling, restless audience. What she
probably did notice is the pink cardigan and the little black bow and
the little-girl voice that doesn't match the toadlike face and build.
The reader knows that Umbridge is anything but harmless. Hermione
deduces that "the Ministry is interfering at Hogwarts," as do the
teachers, but the other students don't appear to notice the "important
stuff hidden in the waffle" (214). Perhaps Marietta already knows that
Umbridge is Fudge's Senior Undersecretary and it doesn't concern her.
After all, her mother works for the Ministry, and as far as Marietts
knows, the Ministry is looking out for the best interests of the
students. A bit annoying to be addressed as if you're five years old
and a bit amusing, judging from Parvati's reaction, to be told by a
seemingly harmless old toad in a pink cardigan that she's "sure
they'll be very good friends" (212), but nothing sinister, nothing to
worry about.

DADA class, if she's even taking it, may be a bit boring ("the order
'wands away' had never yet been followed by a class they found
interesting," 239), but there's no Hermione in Marietta's class to
question Umbridge's course aims and no Harry to argue that they need
practical DADA because they're "going to be attacked" (245). While the
fifth-year Gryffindors witness this little scene, the Ravenclaws and
Hufflepuffs do not. Even the fifth-year Gryffindors, Harry's
classmates, are primarily concerned about passing their OWLs without
practicing any spells until Harry speaks. And Harry says only that he
fought Voldemort, who wasn't dead but has returned, that Voldemort was
sticking out the back of Quirrell's head in their first year, and that
Voldemort murdered Cedric Diggory (in itself a condensation of the
truth). Seamus, who also partly doubts Harry's story, looks
"half-scared, half-fascinated" (245), but Harry, who is both angry and
insubordinate, has said nothing to resolve Seamus's doubts, as is
clear from the fact that Seamus stays away from the DA until the last
meeting.

Perhaps Umbridge tells Marietta's class what she tells Harry's: ""The
Ministry of Magic guarantees that you are in no danger from any Dark
wizard. If you are still worried, by all means come and see me outside
class hours. If someone is alarming you with fibs about reborn Dark
wizards. I would like to hear about it. I am here to help. I am your
friend" (245). It appears that Marietta has heard some such message,
since it's Umbridge, the Defense against the Dark Arts teacher (and by
that time High Inquisitor, a Ministry position) that she goes to for
help, rather than to her Head of House. No Gryffindor, not even
Seamus, would act on these words because they know Harry and don't
know Umbridge, but Marietta, a sixth-year Ravenclaw, doesn't know
Harry and trusts the Ministry.

To this point, Umbridge would seem to the Mariettas of Hogwarts, the
several hundred students to whom Harry is nothing but the Boy with the
Scar, a boring but benign teacher, a living Professor Binns whose
subject could be interesting if taught by a better teacher. Even when
Umbridge becomes High Inquisitor, the daughter of a Fudge loyalist
would feel no cause for alarm. As the Daily Prophet informs the
students and the WW, the Ministry is "seek[ing] reform" (306). Percy's
view can stand in for Marietta's mother's here, and perhaps for
Marietta's own: "[Umbridge] has been an immediate success [as DADA
teacher], totally revolutionizing the teaching of Defense Against the
Dark Arts and providing the Minister with on-the-grounds feedback
about what's happening at Hogwarts" (307). Nothing wrong here; just
the Ministry looking out for the students's best interests, right,
Perce (and Marietta)? And the power of the High Inquisitor to inspect
her fellow teachers is no skin off Marietta's (or Percy's) nose,
however much the teachers might resent it. Nor would Marietta care
that one of the parents speaking in favor of the move is Lucius
Malfoy, that rich and respected citizen and friend of Fudge, who sees
it as a first step toward "ensuring that Hogwarts has a headmaster in
whom we can all repose confidence" (308). Who is Marietta to question
Fudge's view that Dumbledore is no longer up to the task of running
Hogwarts? Fudge is the Minister for Magic and her father's boss, and
Dumbledore believes Harry Potter's "lies" (not to mention that his
idea of a few suitable words, is "nitwit, oddment, blubber [and] tweak").

So when Cho drags Marietta to the meeting, Marietta not only has no
interest in the meeting but sees it as potentially subversive toward
the Ministry and not at all necessary in terms of self-defense.
Hermione mentions her view of Umbridge's class as "utter rubbish" and
is seconded by Anthony Goldstein, but Anthony and his fellow
non-Gryffindor fifth-years seem primarily concerned with their OWLs.
When Hermione gets around to her real purpose, defending themselves
against Voldemort, she's immediately challenged by that anomaly, the
agressive Hufflepuff Zacharias Smith, who demands to know why
Dumbledore believes "*him*" (Harry) (340).

Hermione's response is the unhelpful "That's not really what this
meeting was supposed to be about" ("What? We're here to learn how to
fight Voldemort with no proof that he's back?") and Harry's response
is to realize that many if not most of the students aren't there to
learn DADA at all; they want to hear his story. Rather than telling
them what they want to know, Harry confronts Zacharias with "I fought
him!" and, in essence, if you don't believe Dumbledore (who told them
only the condensed version of Cedric's murder), you don't believe me,
followed by an angry, "If you've come here to find out exactly what it
looks like when Voldemort kills someone I can't help you. I don't want
to talk about Cedric Diggory, all right? So if that's what you're here
for, you might as well clear out" (341). Yes, very convincing, Harry.
Very helpful in assuring Zacharias, Marietta et al. that you're not an
attention-seeking liar with an unstable, possibly violent streak.

What follows--Harry's ability to cast a corporeal Patronus, that he
killed a Basilisk, saved the Sorceror's Stone (from "unworthy
Quirrell," as far as the non-Gryffindors know) and faced monsters in
the TWT convinces most of them that it's worth their time to learn a
few good defensive spells from them, but in no way provides evidence
that they need those spells against a resurrected Voldemort and the
Death Eaters. The DADA lessons are not important enough even to
Gryffindor Angelina to interfere with Quidditch practice. Granted,
Ernie speaks up about the importance of learning to defend themselves
"at this critical period," but he has already publicly declared that
he believes Harry (after Luna does the same thing rather less
effectively). When Ernie wonders aloud why the Ministry has "foisted
such a useless teacher on us," Hermione says that Umbridge "has some
mad idea that Dumbledore could use the students . . . as a kind of
private army [that he would] mobilize against the Ministry" (344).

Here at last is a reason for the meeting that would make sense to
Marietta, and one that she would adamantly oppose. To be sure, she
keeps her mouth shut and reluctantly signs the parchment, but she
doesn't know that it's jinxed, and she probably feels like a traitor
to her mother and Fudge by doing so. Certainly she should not have
attended any more meetings (had she not done so, she wouldn't have
known where the meetings were).

Could she have gone to her HOH, Flitwick, to express her doubts?
Probably not, since Flitwick is loyal to Dumbledore? Should she have
sent word to her mother (before Umbridge started searching the owls?
Possibly, but her mother would undoubtedly have told her to do exactly
as she did. and either way, the SNEAK jinx would have hit her. As
Hermione says, without telling them that they're signing a binding
magical contract, "You're agreeing not to tell Umbridge--or anybody
else--what we're up to" (346). So even if she had gone to a trusted
adult for help or advice, she'd have been "horribly disfigured" by a
seemingly irreversible jinx.

I didn't mean to make this post so long, but my point is that Marietta
would see what they're doing as wrong because as far as she can see,
they're opposing the Ministry and Umbridge (whose sadistic tendencies
she would be aware of), not the returned Voldemort, a figment of their
imaginations as far as she's concerned.

I don't think that Marietta was right to go to Umbridge, but I think
she made the only decision that seemed right to her at the time. If
she'd been given proof, or even tangible evidence that Voldemort was
back, it would have been a different matter. But she saw and heard
nothing to convince her that Harry's assertions were true. (Nor did
Zacharias, but he had his OWLs to think of and wanted to learn the
spells, as did the other Ravenclaw fifth years, who may or may not
have believed Harry as the Gryffindors and Ernie did. For the rest,
perhaps even Susan Bones and poor Hannah Abbott, who botched her
Transfiguration OWL so badly, it was probably all about the OWLs.)

Carol, who thinks that if Hermione had been open with Harry about how
many people might come and why, and if Harry had calmly provided
enough information to confirm that he was not inventing Voldemort's
resurrection, Marietta would not have betrayed them and the jinx would
never have been activated