State of the DA (was:Fear as a Crime (Re: muggle baiting )

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 156162

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> Betsy Hp:
> I think Harry's indifference is the reason the DA *remained* 
> fractured.  But you had members fighting in the corridors during the 
> ride to Hogwarts.  Obviously something went wrong.  If, of course, 
> the DA was supposed to be a step towards the Houses uniting.  I 
> think that's what Hermione was hoping for, IIRC.
> 
> But I think especially when you've got the Hat's song in OotP, that 
> Harry didn't take the uniting of the Houses seriously is something 
> still to be delt with.  That the DA failed and why it failed I think 
> (hope) will have to be faced in book 7.
> 
> Betsy Hp
>
Carol responds:
I think you've raised an interesting question: did the DA fail or not?
It depends, doesn't it, on what the objective was?

For Harry and Hermione, it was partly opposing Umbridge and partly
preparing to fight Voldemort. But it doesn't seem to me that anyone
else saw it exactly that way. It seems pretty clear that only Ernie
Macmillan, Luna, and some of the Gryffindors really believed that he
was back. For Fred and George, it was "The Ministry of Magic Are
Morons" group--IOW, an anti-Umbridge league. (Dumbleodre's Army
suggests a similar objective--support the headmaster against the
intruder who already seemed to be usurping his authority and granting
herself unheard of powers.) For the others, it was a way of making up
for Umbridge's spectacularly inadequate DADA lessons and of passing
their DADA OWLs. (For Marietta, presumably a sixth-year, it wasn't
even that.) Once the students in Harry's year had passed their OWLs
and made it into NEWT DADA (for which they may have needed only an
A--Snape seems to have had diffeent standards for DADA than for
Potions) and once they had a real DADA teacher (Snape), they didn't
need Harry's DADA lessons any longer. For them, at least, the DA had
served its purpose. And even Hermione didn't seem to think they needed
to hold meetings during sixth year. (as for Harry, he was a wee bit
distracted by Draco Malfoy.) Only Neville and Luna seemed to see the
DA as something more important than OWLs, and even for them it was as
much a social club as a defense league--in Luna's words, "almost like
having friends."

I don't think that the DA's purpose was ever to unify the school
houses (all except Slytherin) though it temporarily brought students
from three of the four Houses together. It may have served as a first
step in that direction--the antithesis of Quidditch, which pits the
Houses against each other in a less than friendly rivalry--but it
certainly didn't make Zacharias Smith into a Gryffindor ally.

Carol, wishing that there was no jinx on the DADA position and Snape
could have taught it all along