Hermione must be stopped, ...-Hermione's Crimes

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 149372


> > Magpie:
> > Personally, if I had a good friend who was an unregistered 
animagi
> > I wouldn't feel comfortable turning anyone into Azkaban for it.
> > But actually, it's a MONTH she's got the woman in a jar. 
> 
> Amiable Dorsai:
> About a week, maybe as many as nine days.  Certainly not a month.
> 
> "I've told her I'll let her out when we get back to London,"
> said Hermione. "I've put an Unbreakable Charm on the jar, you see,
> so she can't transform. And I've told her she's to keep her quill
> to herself for a whole year. See if she can't break the habit of
> writing horrible lies about people." GOF
> 
> Hermione said that on the train going home, she captured Rita near
> midnight on the night of the Third Task. 

Magpie:
I did remember she said it on the train going home; I just always 
took the chapter opening "When he looked back, even a month 
later..." as indicating the passage of time until the end of the 
book being a month after the events of the previous chapter.  But 
good for Rita if she was only trapped in a jar for a week.

AD:
> Even if she had, she would almost certainly have spent more time 
than
> that in Azkaban, a place that gives someone as brave as Hagrid the
> collywobbles, had Hermione turned her in.  Rita has pissed of a 
lot of
> powerful people over the years.
> 
> She got off very easy.

Magpie:
Even if it is several days, the fact that Hermione could have done 
worse does not make this in any way an act of mercy.  Of course what 
Hermione could have done was worse--it's the threat of Azkaban she's 
holding over the woman's head.  The implication is always that if 
Rita steps out of line she will do exactly that, send her to 
Azkaban.  That's what blackmail is.  If you discover someone is a 
country illegally, for instance, and use that to blackmail them into 
doing what you want upon the fear they'll be deported to a country 
where they'd be in danger, that's not being merciful because you 
didn't turn them in, it's just choosing to hold the threat over 
their head to get more out of it for yourself.  Hermione even starts 
out saying Rita must keep her quill to herself for a year and then--
unsurprisingly--comes up with something else she needs done-Rita 
must write an article to Hermione's specifications.

And I think we all get why Hermione is doing this, but my point 
certainly still stands--engage in this sort of business a lot and 
you're making a lot of enemies.  And power corrupts etc.

bboyminn:

So, by your way of thinking, it wasn't Harry's place to go after the
Stone in the first book, neither was it his place to go to the 
Chamber of Secrets and rescue Ginny in the second, nor to help Ron 
escape from Sirius Black in the third, etc.... If Harry took your 
attitude, the world would be destroyed. If he sat back and let the 
adults handle it, pretty much ALL would be lost.

Magpie:
There's an important difference in the things Ceridwen is talking 
about and what you're describing here--something different enough 
that JKR never puts Harry in this situation, imo.  Harry, in all 
these scenes, is saving someone.  He's worried a person is in danger 
or the world is in danger so throws himself into danger to stop it. 
He's risking himself. In the Hermione scenes Ceridwen is talking 
about she's being judge and jury and meting out punishment to 
others.  It's not that Hermione ought to let adults handle it--it's 
not up to any random adult to do these things either.  It's her 
thinking she has the right to decide what justice is and administer 
it.

Harry, by contrast, does not do this.  In fact, he seems to 
instinctively not do it to stay a hero.  He doesn't punish Quirrel 
in PS, or Lockhart in CoS.  In PoA he doesn't kill Sirius and then 
prevents Sirius and Lupin from killing Peter because he sees it 
would be crossing a line and really be harmful to them.  Usually 
Harry is too busy trying to protect himself and others from a threat 
to think about what punishment he is going to give someone for their 
crimes, but it seems an important part of his being the hero that he 
doesn't see it as his place to mete out this kind of punishment.  In 
the heat of the moment he will, of course, get angry and want to do 
something to the other person, but that's again the opposite of what 
Hermione usually does.

-m