Sportsmanship/legitimacy

[houyhnhnm102]

No: HPFGUIDX 151942

Betsy Hp:
 
> Actually, the corruption on display in the Triwizard Tournament 
> could easily be seen as an echo of the corruption in the WW.  
> Especially in the way it helps Voldemort achieve his goals.  The 
> interesting thing is it shows that Dumbledore is as entangled in the 
> corruption of his world as Lucius Malfoy or Arthur Weasley.  Even 
> when he fights against it (the age line, for example, or his refusal 
> to help his Champions cheat) he gets pulled in.
> 
> Hmm, perhaps this is what the bad sportsmanship is all about?  The 
> attempt to entangle Harry in the corruption as well?  Which raises 
> the question: is Harry getting sucked in, or is he resisting the 
> pull?

houyhnhnm:

This is the conclusion I have been coming to as I have followed this
thread.  I have been flipping back through some of the earlier books
(at random, not any systematic way) and I have been struck several
times by Harry's fundamental decency in his early confrontations with
the Wizarding World, a deliverance which at first appears to be so
felicitous but is already turning sour by CoS.  The example which
comes to mind immediately is the the way Harry's first thought, after
being brought to task for helping to fly the Ford Anglia to Hogwarts,
is not for himself, but for the trouble he may have gotten Mr. Weasley
into.  There are many other examples up to and including his
determination to let Cedric in on the inside information about the
dragons to which he has been privy.  It is not Harry who shows
unsportsman-like proclivities, but the world of which he has become a
part.

I have been wondering whether or not the corruption in the WW is
somehow connected with the moral fragmentation in that world as
evidenced by the House divisions at Hogwarts.  Just as ambition is
apportioned solely to Slytherin (and is allowed to be expressed in a
debased rather than a virtuous way), so the concept of fair play is
allotted solely to Hufflepuff, rather than being integrated into
Wizard culture as a whole.