Hermione the Vigilante?

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 149315

ericoppen:
> As for Edgecombe, until I see some proof that she _was_ under 
> pressure, and I mean as in "Ve haff _vays_ of makink you talk, 
> Englische Schweine!" I'd say that Hermione's response was rather 
> mild.  "Sneaking" is a BIG no-no in any teenage society, and 
> Edgecombe, as one of my learned HPfGU colleagues pointed out, 
could 
> easily have had all 28 of the DA tossed out of Hogwarts on their 
> collective ears.  Or, for all we know, sent to juvie Azkaban.  Had 
> _I_ been Hermione...well, Miss Edgecombe would've had a nasty 
fatal 
> accident, and _who_ more surprised about it than Little Miss 
> Studious?

Magpie:
I have to stick in something that really bothers me about this 
argument.  First, there's no reason to doubt Marietta was pressured, 
and she didn't need "Ve Haff vays" pressure to talk.  She's a kid at 
school involved in an illegal study group that she herself has shown 
signs of never being comfortable with and her mother may be telling 
her this is a dangerous thing and the *right* thing to do is to go 
to the authorities.  This is something Hermione herself would do 
under some circumstances and I think that if we actually knew her 
story her decision wouldn't seem quite as lame.  

What I'm bothered by sometimes, though, is that that there's no 
acknowledgement that the risk of expulsion was exactly what everyone 
was signing up for.  This doesn't absolve Marietta of her own 
responsibilities for her own actions-obviously she was the one who 
told and that's going to have consequences for her, especially from 
the students in trouble.  But if the DA members are going to take a 
risk and talk about there being things more important than school 
than that's their risk.  It seems silly to then turn around and act 
like it's all Marietta's fault they got in trouble--they took a 
risk, they weren't very bright about who they relied on to cover for 
them, and they got burned.  It's like if I was playing hooky from 
school and somebody saw me and told on me.  Yes, they're the ones 
that got me in trouble and I'd be annoyed at them for tattling, but 
obviously when I cut school I was taking that risk.  (And yes, I do 
understand that the group had good reasons for starting the DA and I 
think they made the right decision, but part of that decision was to 
risk expulsion.)  I have a hard time believing anybody would really 
have "harsher" on any of these people than Hermione is, unless maybe 
they've done jail time themselves.  Hermione is not nice.

Where I stand on Hermione in general is this.  I don't believe in 
the idea that characters have a running score card of things they've 
done wrong in my eyes that they must be punished for by book's end, 
preferably with a speech explaining what they are being punished for 
and why.  What I do believe, though, is that it is unrealistic to go 
through life treating people the way Hermione often does without 
having it eventually come back to bite you on the butt.  Just as 
Rita Skeeter eventually libeled somebody who fought back, so is 
Hermione taking that risk when she uses people, or decides she knows 
what's best for them and she'll manipulate them into doing it, or 
she'll punish them for their crimes.  It's a grea tway to make 
enemies, and although Hermione thinks she can handle any enemy who 
comes along, maybe she can't.

I don't think this is a foreign idea to JKR.  The Prank continues to 
be a pivotal and mysterious incident in the Potterverse, but it 
boils down to a "stupid Prank" (in the eyes of the Prankers) that 
nevertheless continues to drive the Prank-ee and cause problems 20 
years later.  More than one murder mystery, I believe, has turned on 
the idea of someone carelessly hurting someone and later not knowing 
who is stalking them.

So it just seems unrealistic in a way JKR isn't to say that Hermione 
just "takes care" of people and they stay taken care of.  I don't 
expect everything she's done to come back and bite her on the butt, 
but it's hard to believe something won't, especially with Hermione's 
arrogance (in fact, I read the above post rather quickly the first 
time and mistakenly thought the "arrogance" getting someone in 
trouble referred to Hermione and not Umbridge, since Hermione is 
called out for being arrogant) and conviction she's always right.

I especially wonder about the Marietta thing.  There's no real 
reason for JKR to bring it up again in HBP.  She could have just 
dropped it and we'd assume the marks went away over the summer or 
forget about it.  We had two books of constant SPEW and that was 
suddenly not mentioned in HBP, so why does this one thing need to 
continue?  Marietta has been memory charmed, so it's not like she 
can connect the marks to her actions.  She has no memory, 
presumably, of why she did what she did.  If she does remember she 
may not regret her actions (much less think she ought to apologize 
to Hermione).  All the other consequences of her actions have been 
undone--the kids are still in school, Umbridge is gone, Dumbledore 
is back.  Only this one consequence continues, without serving any 
real meaningful punishment for Marietta.  

So why is it there?  Just to give Harry some mild vindictive 
pleasure whenever he looks at her, despite never giving her a 
thought otherwise?  Am I supposed to get vindictive pleasure out of 
seeing a character who barely has any lines suffering?  I don't have 
that much anger towards her.  So I'm not sure why it's there.  It's 
only mentioned in the beginning of HBP so perhaps it is just 
supposed to be a throwaway moment.  

Or else not.  See, I just keep thinking of how in OotP the cabinet 
incident made a huge impression on me.  We get, like, three mentions 
of how Montague is still suffering the effects of the Twins' joke 
weeks or months later. We get that scene where the Trio considers 
doing something to help him and easily dismisses the idea.  I had 
the same kinds of questions then--am I supposed to just get pleasure 
out of a minor character with no lines suffering brain damage after 
a minor scuffle with other students that happened off-screen?  When 
I brought it up in fandom I often found people either didn't 
remember the incident, didn't remember the after-effects, or thought 
it was all about justifying the actions, sometimes by changing the 
facts.

I was ever so happy when the cabinet plot was revealed in HBP.  I 
thought it was the perfect result of that subplot in OotP.  Because 
it wasn't about "punishing" the Twins or making them responsible for 
what happened.  Yes, Malfoy got the idea for his plan from what 
happened to Montague--it was the Twins' experiment that showed him 
the secret--but obviously the plot was all his own.  But I liked 
that when he told the story there were just enough things to suggest 
Montague's side of the story.  Rather than the gormless hulk he was 
in OotP he was a young wizard in trouble who got himself out of it.  
He "could have died" according to Malfoy, which calls up images of 
Montague's friends caring if he died when Harry and his friends 
don't. And "everyone else thought it was just a good story," calls 
up images of Montague telling the story to a group of friends who 
all want to hear what happened to Dorian.  

It's a small thing, but it just hints at the reality behind the 
illusion that really, the world revolves around us and our friends.  
Other people have other stories and pressures on them.  The same 
kind of pressures we easily make allowances for when we know the 
circumstances. If you go through life dismissing this reality of 
others, judging them, handing out punishments and seeing them as 
less real than you are...that's going to get you into trouble, no 
matter what your good intentions.  We see that with the centaurs, 
when Hermione thinks their culture is simple enough to be 
manipulated by her.  We see it with the house elves where Hermione's 
trying to trick them into freedom have led to them refusing to clean 
Gryffindor Tower.  (Unfortunately Dobby takes the hats and cleans 
the tower, thus both keeping Hermione ignorant and silencing the 
house elves.)  I'd imagine Cormac McClaggen might think poorly of 
her as well.  Cho, for all everyone seems to think she should hate 
her friend, seems to maybe see herself as responsible for putting 
Marietta in a bad position.

So yeah, it's not just about Hermione considering herself judge and 
jury of the WW for me, but just that putting someone in their place 
doesn't mean they'll stay there.  Hermone begins the books as the 
girl Ron says, "Has got to have noticed she's got no friends."  
She's made friends since then, but she hasn't lost the parts of her 
personality that made her initially disliked.  I think canonically 
we see that she likes manipulating people--when they do what she 
wants and prove she understood them it's like getting the right 
answer on a test.  But eventually that kind of thing means you've 
got to watch your back.

-m