Responses to Marietta (was: Misc. responses, some quite old)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 169362

 bboyminn:
> 
> I'm not trying to vilify anyone nor am I trying to 
> forgive the other. What I am trying to do is establish
> some fair and reasonable perspective to a polarized
> discussion. Those who are /for/ Hermione are depicting
> Marietta as a horribly evil person. Those who are 
> /against/ Hermione are depicting her as a horribly evil
> person, but both positions are wrong, and that is part of 
> my point.

Carol responds:
Maybe a few of us are trying to vilify Hermione, but many of us are
condemning her action, especially the secrecy and the punitive nature
of the hex, which failed to serve as a deterrent and *seems* to be
irreversible.
> 
><snip> 
> There is no need to vilify Hermione anymore that their 
> is to vilify Marietta. Again, I refuse to be more 
> upset by the events than the characters themselves are.
><snip>

Carol responds:
We don't know how Marietta is feeling now, except that she's still
hiding behind heavy make-up at the very least and seems to be staying
close to Cho. We do know that cho is still not on speaking terms with
Harry (and vice versa). And since Harry's reaction was pride in
Hermione's jinxing abilities, I'm certainly not going to use his
failure to be upset about it to form my own judgement. He didn't seem
upset about Hermione's canaries, either, or Ron's snubbing Hermione
because he thought she had kissed Viktor Krum. They're all kids;
they're all friends; and our judgments of their behavior are surely
different from their own. We're not saying that Hermione is evil, only
that we'd really rather that she stopped taking matters into her own
hands, especially without informing even her friends what she's doing.
Or at least, that's what I'm saying. I want her to grow up. (And while
we're at it, I'd love to find out that Crumple-Horned Snorkacks are
real just to show that she's wrong to treat Luna so contemptuously.) I
don't hate Hermione. She has her moments of brilliance and courage,
and Harry would have had a hard time in the third-floor corridor
without her, to state just one example. But I really don't like her
tendency to seek revenge on everyone from Rita Skeeter to Ron, and I'd
like to see her overcome that particular fault.

At any rate, I don't think that the argument is quite as polarized as
you seem to think, and I'm doing the same thing you are, which is
trying to establish a balanced perspective that doesn't involve
putting a bullet through Marietta's head or setting up Hermione as an
Umbridge in the making. (Or a heroine who deserves the Order of
Merlin, to go to the other extreme.) And while a few people do hold
these extreme positions, or something like them, I don't think it's
quite fair to imply that all of us are doing so.

bboyminn:
> 
> Again, there is that overstatement, and that extreme position that I
am trying to moderate. There is nothing ruthless and unjust here.

Carol:
That, of course, is the question we're debating. I disagree, as do a
number of other people. But, again, it's a matter of degree. Hermione
is certainly nowhere near as unjust and ruthless as Umbridge, but she
really seems to enjoy revenge and to think she has the right to punish
people beyond the authority granted her as a Prefect. At least she
could have warned people that the parchment was hexed, or sent away
anyone who didn't see the group as she did. And the canon I cited in
detail shows that very few people saw the group as she did, or
attended the first meeting for the reasons she had in mind. Nor did
Harry's words convince anyone who didn't already believe him that
Voldemort was back and posed a real threat. Hermione strikes me as a
control freak. She may well appear otherwise to you.

bboyminn:
 This is a school where kids routinely sprout antlers and have
cumquats coming out of their ears, not to mention teeth and toenails
growing to extreme proportions. A few spots on your face are not that
big a deal, though a /bigger/ deal in this case since they haven't
found a way to undo them. <snip>

Carol:
But antlers and long toenails are not disfiguring in the same way that
severe acne is (remember Eloise Midgen?), and even the victim might
find them humourous after the fact, especially since they're so easily
removed. But someone with no sense of humor (like Hermione herself)
might find the pustules much more distressful. Remember her reaction
to her elongated teeth and to having a face full of cat fur? Possibly
we can gauge Marietta's feelings from hers. And the fact that the
purple pustules spell out "SNEAK" makes it that much worse. A few
hours or days of such a punishment, coupled with the ostracism of her
fellow students would be one thing. But a year or more?

I'm not saying that Hermione is evil or even a bad kid, but I think
her *action* went way beyond what was called for. There are laws in
the U.S., and presumably, the UK, against "cruel and unusual
punishment." Too bad the WW doesn't seem to have any such laws,
especially given that the punishment is not even administered by
someone with the authority to do so.

bboyminn:
> Both Marietta and Hermione made mistakes, but you are allowed to
make mistakes when you are a teen. That's how you, hopefully, learn
not to make mistakes in the future. You learn far more from making a
mistake than you do from you parent continually brow-beating you.

Carol:

I agree with the first two sentences. But what lesson has either of
them learned in this instance? Marietta won't have the opportunity to
repeat her mistake, which she doesn't remember, anyway, and Hermione
shows no indication that she regrets her action or thinks it was in
any way unjustified or in need of reversing.

Carol, still waiting for Steve to answer the points she made upthread
about Marietta's distress, Fudge's shock at her disfigurement, the
likelihood that she was taken to St. Mungo's (where no treatment was
found), and the possibility that the parchment needs to be examined to
see which hex was placed on it