[HPforGrownups] Re: Blood protection/Sirius, Sirius, and more Sirius

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 158497

katsurrius:
>> It is interesting to me that JKR has chosen this contradiction.
> She spends six books with DD telling everyone who will listen that
> love is the strongest magic, nothing is more powerful than love.
> However she puts Harry in the safest place magically, the Dursleys.
> A place without love and only blood protection.  Voldemort states he
> knows nothing of Love magic in Book 6.  This should have been
> another advantage.  JKR comes close to negating one of the themes of
> the series for the reader who notices.  Love was not strong enough
> to protect Harry or he would have been placed with Sirius or Hagrid
> or a host of other people.  Nope, love did not carry the day.  The
> magic DD sneered at in Voldemort's cave, blood magic, is what worked
> best.  I wonder if  JKR has noticed this contradiction.
>>
>
> Tonks:
> I see no contradiction. There is love and there is LOVE.  Lily's was
> the greater and gave a protection in Harry's blood that Sirius' love
> could not do.

Magpie:
But I think the point K is making is that there's all this stuff about how 
it's love that matters, or who you are that matters, and then Harry has to 
live with people who don't love him because they happen to share the same 
blood.  Sure Lily's sacrifice was important (though hardly surprising--most 
mothers would have made the same choice) but Harry receiving special 
protection from living with blood family who hate him rather than someone 
who loves him because they formed a family with his family through love is I 
think understandably seen by many people as undercutting the theme of blood 
not mattering, because you've got this big theme about how it doesn't matter 
who your parents are in terms of who you are, with the bad guys going on 
about BLOOD all the time.  It's not surprising some people wonder why that 
goes along with this magical bond that's protecting Harry.

Family is important all over the books, of course, but in most cases I think 
the real bonds seem to be more about love than blood.  Even Sirius' family 
seems like there's pain coming from love there.  That to me is what makes 
staying in the house hateful to Sirius, and that's what still ties him to 
his family.

Betsy Hp:
This is probably part of the breakdown of our views.  For me, in the 
story-book pantheon of "bad parents" the Dursleys just aren't that bad.  At 
least, not in my opinion.  I don't read a lot of children's books and those 
that I have are a bit dated.  So "bad parents" tend to be *really* bad in 
the books I've read, and the Dursleys come across as mildly horrid but 
survivable. (Harry wasn't treated like Cinderella, for example.  Washing a 
car and weeding a flower bed
does not compare to the drudgery of a scullery maid.  He was also allowed to 
keep his name and his place in society.)

Magpie:
They seem pretty Cinderella-like to me.  He doesn't do the same kinds of 
tasks as Cinderella but isn't the point that he's shunned and made to wear 
rags etc. because he's hated the way she was?  He doesn't keep his place in 
society. I don't know how much worse the Dursleys would have to be in order 
to hit Cinderella level given Harry is living in a semi-realistic society.

Sure it's survivable--DD even hints he thinks it might be good for the kid. 
But where I think it gets complicated is just in the mixing of genres. 
Harry's not being sent to just a home away from court like in King 
Arthur--he's not being raised on a farm where he works hard but has a good 
upbringing. You can't lock the kid in the cupboard, let him be beaten up and 
give him funny clothes and have him not be Cinderella.

But of course, the Cinderella set-up also requires that JKR let us meet our 
hero at a low point, and that's again where it gets sticky, because why 
would it have to be one extreme or the other?  There's no reason really that 
Harry has to either live with the Dursleys, unaware there's any other 
possible life for him out there, taking abuse or be unsafe.  Think about it 
for a few minutes and of course you can think of compromises.  JKR herself 
allows for that quickly enough, which is why Harry's no longer in a 
cupboard.

Even so, I can deal with Dumbledore putting Harry with the Dursleys.  The 
answer for having Harry live there is just, well, he has to live there to 
protect him.  The books I think present this in a pretty straightforward 
way.  Dumbledore even seems to imply he didn't care about Harry's personal 
unhappiness until he showed up at Hogwarts and wowed him and then suddenly 
he wanted to give him presents or whatever.  I can deal with Dumbledore 
doing something kind of brutal because it was protect his Chosen One.  It 
just makes it a little hard later when Dumbledore tries to later on fulfill 
both the role of fairy godfather and the person who organized the Cinderella 
household without, you know, dealing with that.  There's a reason fairy 
tales split mom into the sainted dead mother and the wicked stepmother. We 
don't hate Cinderella's father in the story for marrying the stepmother 
because I think we understand that the situation sort of just has to be. 
That's how I think the blood protection is supposed to work.  It just 
doesn't always for everyone.

Alla:

Sorry, I read the first part and decided to ask whether you mind summarising 
the idea in a few sentences? Pretty please? :) Is the idea that WW works as 
medieval society? For protection they give themselves as sort of servants? I 
just don't see any proof that
Potters indeed were Dumbledore's clients. Do we see that Potters came and 
asked for that protection? In fact, I see quite the opposite - they refused 
DD's offer to be their SC, so I do not think that Dumbledore had a right or 
duty to get involved.

Magpie:
It's a great essay--but long, yes.  The basic idea is that the Wizarding 
World doesn't really have a justice system where people are really protected 
by the law.  The way it seems to work instead is that there are certain 
powerful wizards who can protect others, and people ally themselves with 
them.  Lucius Malfoy in CoS, the essay suggests, felt he had to assert his 
own position for the wizards (probably ex-DEs) who counted on him for 
protection. The Weasleys all ally themselves with Dumbledore--except Percy 
who switches to Fudge once Fudge starts to strike out on his own.  Harry 
seems to have the making of a future Patron too.

-m