Hermione's parents (was Re: A Sense of Betrayal / Unforgiveables)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 174326

Katie wrote:
<snip>
> > Hermione's Muggle parents could not begin to comprehend the danger
they, and their daughter, were in. Had Hermione come to them and 
said, "Mum, dad, I am dropping out of Hogwarts to go on a long and 
possibly fruitless search for the soul pieces of an evil overlord, 
and after we find them, we're going to fight him to the death. Tea?",
they would have either though she was insane, or they would have
wanted to protect her. Either way, they would have been unable to
understand the real danger they were in, because these things are not
part of the Muggle world. 
> 
Magpie responded:
> And yet every single person reading the book is a Muggle and can 
> understand. 

Carol:
Perhps because we've been reading the Potter books? Hermione hasn't
even told her parents about Blast-Ended Skrewts and the everyday
dangers of sports and classes at Hogwarts, AFAWK. She has spent very
little time with them. The closest thing I can think of to an
expression of concern or affection for them is buying them (ugh!)
Self-Flossing String Mints (or some such thing for Christmas). She
doesn't seem to have a very high estimation of either their
intelligence or their ability to understand magic or her life at
Hogwarts. 

In SS/PS when Ron says, "And you could ask your parents if they know
who Flamel is. It'd be safe to ask them," Hermione responds, "Very
safe, as they're both dentists." So, erm, going to university and
dental school and whatever is required to become a dentist in England
means you've never heard of a famous alchemist? (Of course, Hermione
assumes that Flamel is a contemporary wizard, but she could at least
have said "they're both Muggles.") The only excuse I can find for
Hermione's attitude in this scene is that she's twelve years old.

Magpie:

<snip> Hermione's parents have been nothing but supportive of her
being a witch. 

Carol:
Would they be that suportive if they really knew what went on at
Hogwarts school or during Hermione's vacations? Hermione has never
told her parents the truth. I doubt very much that they know that she
and her friends followed a possessed Dark wizard into a forbidden
corridor; that she was Petrified by a Basilisk; that the Trio narrowly
escaped being bitten by a werewolf; that her friend Harry was
kidnapped, tortured, and nearly murdered by the Dark wizard whose
resurrection he was forced to witness; that they and other friends
were nearly killed by Death Eaters in the MoM; that their DADA teacher
"murdered" their headmaster. Even when she decides to go to 12 GP
instead of joining them on vacation, she says she's staying at
Hogwarts to study. It seems likely that she would simply let them
think that she was going back to Hogwarts this time, too, even though
she's nearly an adult in the Muggle world (eighteen in September) and
they would let her make her own decisions as always. I just can't see
her saying, "Mum and Dad, Harry, Ron, and I are dropping out of school
so we can destroy Horcruxes because a Dark Wizard and his Death Eaters
are taking over the WW and Muggles like you are in particular danger."

It's perfectly in character for Hermione to take things into her own
hands without consulting her parents. I'm actually happy that she
loves them enough to want to protect them, and there's no question
that as the Muggle parents of a runaway "Mudblood" companion of
Undesirable Number One, they would be in terrible danger.

It seems to me that telling the truth is out. I don't see how they can
possibly believe her when she's never given them a hint that the WW
isn't the happy, magical world of Diagon Alley in Hermione's first year. 

I don't necessarily approve of her method of protecting her parents,
but I can see Katie's point. Hermione's parents have even less idea
than the Dursleys (who at least know about Voldemort and Dementors)
what they would be facing if they stayed. And if she finally told them
the truth she's been withholding about what the WW is really like and
how much worse it is now, and that helpless Muggles can be victims,
too, especially if they're related to friends of Harry Potter, they
might well think she's exaggerating (or insane.)

What, then, are her options? The happy oblivion she's given them may
be reversible (I'd kind of like to know what I was doing as Monica
Wendell, thank you), and Australia is certainly safer than England as
of DH. It seems impossible for the Ministry and its DE minions to
trace her there.

OTOH, "Little Miss Perfect," that "insufferable know-it-all," doesn't
seem to have consulted anybody else, any more than she did before
capturing and blackmailing Rita Skeeter or putting a Sneak Hex on the
DA parchment before they were even an official group. Hermione is
intelligent and gifted--Harry owes his life to her in DH--but couldn't
she have done something more along the lines of what the Order is
doing for the Dursleys, a safe house protected by a Fidelius Charm?
Even Lee Jordan (and it was nice to hear his voice again) is
suggesting putting protective charms on the houses of Muggle
neighbors. Why didn't Hermione protect them with a Fidelius Charm or
protective spells like the ones she placed on the tent? Or, if that
wouldn't protect them when they left the house to go to work, why not
ask the Order to place them in one of the safe houses? The worst that
could happen would be having to share a house with the Dursleys or
Auntie Muriel.

Magpie:
To me this comes across just the way it does in canon--that Muggles
are like children so Wizards can make decisions for them. Hermione has
been treating her parents this way for a while now, and it's not 
surprising that she'd prefer to just zap them for her own convenience
than want to explain anything to them. She's long since decided that
they just "won't understand" so it's not worth the effort. But that
doesn't make what she's doing right or not worth thinking about. 
> 
> How would Hermione have felt if her parents hired some wizard to
memory charm her for a year to keep her out of the fight? They would 
want to protect her too, but something tells me she'd think she ought
to make her own decisions about that rather than have her rights
totally violated. Perhaps if Hermione had explained things to her
parents they might have agreed to some protections, but she didn't
give them that chance. It's easier to just do it.

<snip>

Carol:
I think that if Hermione had been honest with her parents about the
dangers she was facing from the beginning, an explanation might have
worked, but I don't see how they can possibly be made to comprehend
just how great the danger is. So the problem is in part of her own
making. And I wonder if the reader is supposed to have exactly that
reaction: How is Hermione's taking her parents' protection into her
own hands, robbing them of their identities and their capacity for
choice, any different from what young Albus Dumbledore was advocating
on a larger scale at he same age? (I'm not comparing her with Gellert
Grindelwald, who had been expelled from *Durmstrang* for the tactics
he used to support his views.)


Magpie:
> Wanting to protect them [is not] the problem. It's the way she
decides what's good for them and completely robs them of their own
will and freedom and at the least an entire year of their lives that's
a problem, and she does it without the slightest thought that she's
done anything wrong. <snip>

Carol:
Which is perfectly in character for Hermione. She *is* wrong on one
point in the books--the Deathly Hallows are not just a legend (so
Xenophilius Lovegood is one up on Hermione), but does she make any
moral progress in this book? Ron, IMO, makes enormous strides toward
maturity. Hermione does a pretty good job of finally understanding
Kreacher. But she also sees herself as part of a persecuted minority
(Muggleborns) without seeming to see that her parents are part of a
persecuted majority that doesn't even see its danger. It's a little
too close to DD's original conception of "the greater good" and just a
step from there to "Magic Is Might."
 
Magpie:
> It just seems like this is very indicative of the way morals are
handled in the series already. In discussions of things like torture 
and stealing somebody's life without their permission, it's a very 
common response that people are asking too much of these good, good 
people, and questioning their ethics is a personal attack. 

Carol:
I agree. I'm not complaining about the works in general, just about
the confused or inconsistent morality and the possible messages the
book might send.

"We're all human, aren't we?" says Kingsley Shacklebolt. Every human
life is worth the same, and worth saving" (440). And the Muggles,
thanks to the Statute of Secrecy which is apparently still in force,
don't even know they need to be saved.

Hermione can't just hand her Muggle parents a gun and expect them to
use it against Death Eaters. If only she had been honest with them all
along and somehow prepared them. As it is, she has no choice but to
protect them. The problem, I agree, is the method she chose to protect
them.

If anyone is confused by the logic of this post, it's not you. It's
me. I can see both sides of the argument and don't like either of them.

Carol, wondering if Ron's Muggle drivers license in the epilogue is
supposed to indicate a good relationship between the Weasleys and
their Muggle in-laws nineteen years down the road