[HPforGrownups] Re: Responses to Marietta

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 169312

Bruce:
I agree with you. Remember, this is a school story, and one of the most
important articles of the Code of the Schoolyard is don't rat people out.
It has been a long time since I have been in school, but I remember that
the snitch, the peacher, the tattletale, whatever you called him/her was
generally considered to be at best a few steps above pond scum in the Chain
of Being.

Magpie:
So was it difficult watching Harry not get punished for all that tattling
he did on Malfoy in HBP? 

Alla:
I have no sympathy for Marietta whatsoever. Maybe because the example of
Peter Pettigrew is right there. Yes, it is not the same, even though I
disagree that DA was **just a study group**. I think the  intention to
defend themselves against Voldemort was clearly there.

I think it is one of those parallels with the twist, where younger 
generation does things better than the older one.

Magpie:
I don't see how this is true when the hex hasn't made anything better for
the good guys in this generation. The trouble, for me, of just recasting
all the characters into the Nazis and the French Resistance, is, among
other things, that it always skips over the stuff that led to Marietta
being a danger in the first place. I suspect the French Resistance didn't
get together by grabbing people from the library and presenting themselves
as a group that was just discussing philosophy and btw, those Nazis suck.
The people admitted into it were committed to the cause and were, I think,
recruited honestly and honorably. Marietta obviously never was and what's
better in that case? Giving her less of a chance to be a weak link, or
getting off on punishing her when she's been one? The intention to defend
themselves against Voldemort isn't there *clearly*. If it were it wouldn't
be a study group talking about OWLS. 

Yes, if Peter had had a hex like that put on him he wouldn't have been able
to be a spy for long (as would anyone spying on LV for the Order). But I
suspect he'd have been able to get around it with LV's help--even without
LV's help he could probably have claimed the hex was kicked off in a silly
way. But at least with Peter they had reason to trust him, they thought.
Marietta had no reason to be loyal to Hermione from the beginning, and was
obviously not signing up to have that sort of loyalty. So no, I can't see
how the younger generation was doing anything so much better than the older
one here. The Order actually seems like a pretty tight group even years
later, as do the DEs. The DA isn't much.

Loyalty based on fear *isn't* stronger than loyalty based on free will, and
Hermione's hex did nothing to help the DA whatsoever. If Peter was hexed in
return for betraying James and Lily I can't imagine that would make things
much better for the good side either.

So I think if you're going to put this all on the level of life or death
you have to actually judge Hermione on that level too. And I think she
would have been in trouble for her actions as well as Marietta's supervisor
and the person allegedly in charge of protecting the group. Marietta was an
untrustworthy member. Hermione was a dangerously incompetent organizational
leader. If Marietta's intentions of thinking it was right to side with the
Ministry don't matter, why should it matter that Hermione had really good
intentions in not wanting anyone wto betray the group? 

I don't see Marietta as an innocent here. I don't have much of an emotional
response to her betrayal, it's true, for a number of reasons.  I just also
see Hermione as making glaring mistakes that get covered up by anger at
Marietta and her hex, so that Hermione's raised to the level of some sort
of brilliant resistance leader who did the best she could when as a reader
also identifying with the resistance group in question, I don't think her
actions hold up to that kind of scrutiny at all. 

I think that like everyone else here, I naturally put myself, in my
imagination, into the DA along with those characters, and my honest
reaction as an "imaginary member" of the DA is to have far more questions
about Hermione's actions than Marietta's (who barely makes an impression
since she's got no lines and might as well have been wearing a sign that
said she was never on board).  As I've said, it seems more like a bunch of
people wanting to play at having a resistance group to actually having one,
which is why the only time they're held to that standard is when it comes
to defending Marietta walking around with purple pustules on her face when
the rest of the group's moved on to more important things like who they're
going to ask to the dance. This maybe also goes back to the whole
"development of the good guys" thing, where it seems like the "bad" guys
learn a lesson while the good guys pat each other on the back and never
examine their own actions, and so can't learn anything.

-m (who would have been far angrier at the idea she'd been secretly cursed
than anything else--and who no matter how angry she was at Marietta would
still question the sanity of anyone okay with Hermione secretly hexing them.