Marietta

[Dana]

No: HPFGUIDX 169558

zgirnius:
> Yes she was! She was the duly appointed Hogwarts High Inquisitor, 
> by whom the rules being broken were promulgated.
<snip>

Dana:
No, she didn't have specific Hogwarts authority by the time Marietta 
ratted on her friends, she was a Ministry official that reported the 
dealings at Hogwarts to the Ministry and as a result new regulations 
were appointed by the Minister of Magic. She did not have any 
specific authority over the students. She could not get Harry 
expelled on her own suspicions as she needed Fudge for that.  


> zgirnius:
> She may have known that the Ministry had it is for Dumbledore, but 
> that is rather different from saying she 'knew' there was a smear 
> campaign. What I think it is more likely she heard from her mother 
> was the Dumbledore had gone off the deep end, and was spreading 
> false rumors about Voldemort's return and trying to cause a panic. 
<snip>

Dana:
Can you explain the difference to me. DD had been someone that was 
held high by the majority of the WW and then suddenly public opinion 
changed because the Ministry of Magic portrayed both DD and Harry as 
lying and attention seeking in the Dailey Prophet. That is called a 
smear campaign and it has the specific function of dividing public 
opinion and support. The public is the most powerful ally one can 
have, without it a government is soon to fall. Many students already 
had an opinion about Harry or DD due to these campaigns and Marietta 
coming from a home that supported the MoM would have known this too. 
That is why she did not go to DD or her head of house to report the 
illegal DA group but instead went to Umbridge. If Marietta would not 
specifically have known anything about the smear campaign that was 
going on, then the highest authority at Hogwarts at that time was 
still DD and not Umbridge and she therefore should have reported to 
him instead.  


zgirnius:
> I do not understand the relevance of resistance movements in WWII 
> to this discussion, I confess. The rules and regulations were 
> being made by the government of the WW, the same government, run 
> by the same people, who had been running it throught the course of 
> the series. There was no ivasion, coup d'etat, etc. The same 
> government that had been there all along simply decided it was not 
> going to go along with Albus Dumbledore. This was surely a 
> mistake, as we know in ways Marietta and her mother could not hope 
> to, since we see what Harry sees.
<snip>

Dana:
It was not the same government as it had always been. This 
government suddenly felt the urge to control Hogwarts and clearly in 
the public opinion separate themselves from DD and undermine his 
authority in the WW. There was an invasion and a coup d'etat, just 
not at the MoM but at Hogwarts where DD was head. As we see in the 
relation to the MoM but also LV, Hogwarts has a strong centre in the 
WW because it is were the young people of the WW are and it 
therefore is an important military stronghold. The one that controls 
Hogwarts controls a large part of the WW opinion because essentially 
the power to win a war is with the young. 
Marietta did not just made a mistake, she became scared that if the 
Ministry took over Hogwarts that she would be removed or worse just 
by her mere association with this organisation. 

In the WWII people who just lived next to people who gave refuge to 
Jewish people sold that secret to the Germans because they were 
scared for repercussions if they found out just by living next to 
these people.  It was the same with underground organisations that 
fought against the occupation of the Germans, sometimes people were 
part of this or just learned about it and then got scared for either 
their direct involvement or the possibility to be associated with it 
and in an attempt to protect themselves they gave this information 
to the Germans and this did coast people their lives. 

It might be hard to compare Hogwarts and an attempt of the MoM to 
take over control as a sever act of aggression as was seen in WWII 
but it actually is because students were used as political leverage 
and just to smoke out a potential enemy of the established order. 
This is how dictators start taking over a country without initially 
using military force, they take over schools and dictate what can 
and can't be taught to the students and they take over the media and 
begin a propaganda campaign to mould the sheep, so resistance of 
taking away people's right of truthful information. The resistance 
is taken out, outside of public view so that the government always 
seem to act correctly while it actually smothers people's right to 
speak and defend themselves against an upcoming threat. 

You might not consider it of any importance because Hogwarts seems 
so insignificant and the WW so irrelevant but these campaigns happen 
in RL too with deviating results for people living in these 
countries and people ratting out opposing groups keep such 
governments at the height of their power because it makes them able 
to act before these groups can gain power by convincing others to 
join them in the fight for their rights to the truth. Fear is how LV 
rules and in OotP the MoM used the same means to control the 
students at Hogwarts. Umbridge clearly tries to install fear that 
one will be punished if one goes against the MoM and why she 
installs ever so many new rules and has them pinned to the boards of 
all the common rooms. It had an successful effect on Marietta and it 
had its consequences just like it has its consequences in real life. 

These campaigns are not supposed to evoke public up-rise and 
therefore are very subtle (although Umbridge was anything but 
subtle) and many people do not notice it until they are no longer 
allowed to do anything because it could land you a trip to prison 
and then the power a government holds over its people is so strong 
that most people just stop thinking for themselves.
 
The MoM had no right to keep information from its people just 
because the Minister himself was to scared that he could not deal 
with such a truth. People died because of it as soon as LV knew his 
rise back to power was no longer a secret and most people were not 
prepared for it and the MoM was not there to protect them from it 
and DD's organisation had to much problems of its own to do this as 
well, even if they tried as hard as they could. Could you imagine 
what would have happened if LV would have been able to come to full 
strength behind the scenes? Marietta's action gave both the MoM and 
LV more power because now DD had to fight both of them. It was not 
just an innocent "I'm going to tell on some students" and they will 
just risk detention. 


> zgirnius:
> I think this is entirely possible. However, I am equally convinced 
> she held no sincere belief in the return of Voldemort and the 
> rightness of harry and Dumbledore. (Certainly, we are never shown 
> her doing or saying anything to suggest she believes Harry). So, 
> from her point of view, she had put her mother's livelihood in 
> danger over an illegal study group, and upon realizing this, she 
> decided to rectify this by making sure it did not harm her mother.
<snip>

Dana:
Her believe of LV not returning is still taking sides if you like it 
or not. If she didn't pick a side then she would have reported the 
dealings of this group to either her head of house or DD but she did 
not, she went to Umbridge. She clearly no longer believed that 
Hogwarts business should be dealt with by those that normally dealt 
with these kinds of things and as I stated Umbridge had no specific 
authority to deal with anything concerning students being out of 
bonds. She only could install new rulings because Fudge agreed with 
her not because she had the authority to install them herself. 

> zgirnius:
> It is my own opinion that the ethical value of a choice cannot be 
> determined by looking at its consequences. Terrible things can 
result 
> from accidents, honest mistakes, or even good actions (who blames 
> Harry for Voldemort's return?), and great good from evil actions 
> (Snape and the vaporization of Voldemort, e. g.).
> 
> This makes Harry's sparing of Peter's life no less admirable, and 
> Snape's reporting of the Prophecy to Voldemort, his true master at 
> the time, no less evil.

Dana:
I disagree, terrible accidents still are a consequence of a specific 
action and choices even if the outcome was unintentional. Mistakes 
can indeed be honest but that does not mean that the consequences of 
these mistakes are therefore less real. Ethical choices do come from 
learning the consequences of specific actions and choices because 
how else would you know what is ethical if you do not consider the 
outcome of your choices or actions? 

Harry did make the right choice because he considered the outcome of 
what the killing of Peter would mean but it does not make him 
responsible for the choice Peter made to go to LV and help him back 
to power and neither does it make him responsible for Peter's 
escape. It was not his action that would have caused Peter to die, 
it was his action that prevented Peter's death. Peter going back to 
LV might have caused LV rise back to power at that specific time but 
by no means would it have meant LV would never have found another 
way without Peter at a later date. Harry did not made his choices 
for his own because if he did then he would have led Sirius and 
Lupin kill Peter but he considered it more important that they did 
not become killers and that Sirius had a chance to be set free, 
instead of having the gratitude of revenging his parents death on 
Peter. 

Marietta made a choice to rat on her DA friends because I believe 
she got scared of being associated with it if Umbridge found out 
through other means. She must have thought about the consequences 
but still choose to save her own butt and there were consequences to 
these actions that reach further then just mere detention for the 
students involved. If she truly had though about what her actions 
could mean to others then she either would have reported it to 
someone else like her head of house or DD or she would have hold her 
tong.  Marietta was not responsible for Umbridge going to RoR but 
her actions did bring Harry into danger and if DD and Kingsley had 
not intervened Harry would have lost his safe heaven at Hogwarts and 
like with Hagrid it might never had been possible to undo this. 

I do not hold Marietta responsible for the DoM or Sirius death but 
every action a person takes does have consequences; unintentional 
good, good, unintentional bad, bad, unintentional evil or just evil, 
it actually doesn't matter. Ethical choices and actions are made 
when you consider the consequences of these actions in relation to 
how these actions effect the people around you and if you make a 
mistake because you did not think enough about the consequences or 
because you could not control every single factor that influenced 
these consequences then you face the responsibility, learn and move 
on. That is what personal growth means. Hermione's choice to jinx 
the paper had nothing to do with Marietta personally but just with 
letting the person know that ratting the DA out will have a 
consequence that will show you to be the sneak and Marietta shame 
says enough about her knowing her actions were wrong. 

JMHO

Dana