[HPforGrownups] Re: Hermione must be stopped, ...-Hermione's Crimes/Trusting Snape

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 149415

kchuplis:

Wow. It's just amazing how different people view a word. I would never
equate Draco's example and Harry getting the Slughorn memory in anyway.
I mean, I guess I see the connection but definitely manipulative does
not imply a favorable thing to me, nor "coolness". The term
manipulation just has never had good connotations to me.

Magpie:

I may have not been clear.  My point is that the good manipulator is not 
called manipulative because you're not aware you're being manipulated. Think 
of someone just very good at getting what they want.  When you call someone 
manipulative it often means that you feel manipulated.  It's like the 
difference between Ferris Bueller and a guilt-tripping mother in law or 
something.

I wouldn't put Harry's scene with Slughorn and Draco's midnight duel on the 
same level morally, but I still haven't heard another word that seems to 
cover what they're doing as succinctly as manipulating another person.  I'm 
not really trying to link the two scenes in a major way in canon.  If there 
is another word I'll gladly just say okay, every time I've said manipulative 
change it in your mind to this other word (as long as I think the word 
actually covers the behavior I'm thinking of).  With Slughorn we're talking 
about a scene where Harry gets an old guy drunk, brings up his dead mother 
to make him feel guilty, offers absolution (while I think assuming Slughorn 
won't remember it later) and calls himself the Chosen One.  Bringing up Lily 
and calling himself the Chosen One are both things we know Harry doesn't do 
naturally, but he's doing it here to get Slughorn to do what he 
wants--willingly.  Harry himself, iirc, recognizes Tom Riddle as doing 
things he himself does in a memory where Tom Riddle is trying to get 
information for an evil plan.

-m