Views of Hermione

[Ceridwen]

No: HPFGUIDX 160536

Charles:
> It comes down to what you'd like to see happen. Would you prefer that 
the only person who can defeat Voldemort, and 26 other students be 
expelled and get their wands snapped, leaving them defenseless- or the 
person who would condemn them to that fate suffer disfigurement that 
would warn the DA and give them a chance to escape? 

Ceridwen:
What I would like to have seen happen is that the spell Hermione put on 
the parchment would actually have warned the DA.  This is my wish for a 
perfect re-do of the incident.  In my perfect world, the jinx on the 
parchment would have rendered the would-be traitor speechless whenever 
he or she tried to mention the DA to any outsider.  There is such a 
charm in the WW, the one used to keep the location of OotP Headquarters 
secret.  Snape tells Bellatrix in HBP that she knows he cannot "speak 
the name of the place".  This is a well-known, or at least known, spell.

Since the DA appears in the same book as our first glimpse of OotP 
Headquarters, and our first first-hand experience of a magical secret, 
such a spell should have been foremost in Hermione's mind.  In HBP, we 
learn about magical alarms that inform a witch or wizard that someone 
is approaching, so I wouldn't expect Hermione to think of that a year 
earlier.

But the jinx she placed on the parchment only harmed the traitor after 
the fact.  The DA was already betrayed.  It was useless in the end, a 
pale sop for whatever punishments were to be meted out to the DA 
members.

I agree with everyone who has posted to say that Hermione should have 
been more explicit about the jinx.  She was deliberately trying to hide 
that fact, I think, based on the way she hemmed and hawed and merely 
added that they were promising not to tell.  I do think her mind was 
clouded with the possibilities of the club, otherwise she might have 
noticed that some of the students at the first meeting were not as keen 
as she was about the DA.  If she had noticed, she might not have asked 
them to sign, or she might have explained about the jinx.

But, too, she was so eager to get the club off the ground that she said 
too much at that first meeting.  Anyone who was there had to be 
silenced.  The whole thing was mismanaged from the beginning, I think, 
and that is what caused all the problems later.

I think they did need to have a practical class for DADA since Umbridge 
wasn't teaching the subject, but instead teaching the kids not to get 
involved.  I just think more thought, and a group effort from the trio, 
should be what happened, instead of Hermione's secrecy from everyone, 
even Harry.

Just my opinion, though.

Ceridwen.