Dark Magic (+ a little Marietta)

[muscatel1988]

No: HPFGUIDX 176807

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dumbledore11214" 
<dumbledore11214 at ...> wrote:
> And I understand and disagree. I think we **could** have seen what 
> you describe, but IMO it remains ambiguous at best, and may I say 
> IMO **nobody** treated Marietta that way. Nobody. The hex was 
> designed to mark a **traitor**, any traitor. So, nobody was 
> targetting Marietta as person, the target was IMO the act of 
> treachery.

Mus understands and disagrees too.  :-)

There's two different things going on, I think.

The first is straightforwardly Hermione's actions.  While you're right 
to say that the target was anyone who told, and not Marietta in 
particular, in a way that makes it worse (for me).  Hermione acted as 
judge and executioner (metaphorically) on anyone who told, regardless 
of who it was or what the circumstances were.  It was untargetted 
retribution; in a word, unjust.  

What she says is " 'I - I think everybody should write their name down, 
just so we know who was here.  But I also think,' she took a deep 
breath, 'that we all ought to agree not to shout about what we're 
going.  So if you sign, you're agreeing not to tell Umbridge or anyone 
else what we're up to'." [OotP, UK pb: 309]  

"Or anyone else."  But Harry must have told someone - which is why 
Sirius and Lupin gave him the Christmas present they did.  Hermione's 
parchment is not only misleading, but it's selective in how it 
interprets its purpose.  Yes, you may say this is a minor point, and 
that Sirius and/or Lupin should have been in on the deal, but there is 
clearly more to Hermione's parchment than meets the eye, and there is 
certainly more than meets the eyes of the DA members.  They are told 
that they are "agreeing" (not "promising", not "swearing") not to tell, 
and they are not told that the punishment will be lifelong 
disfigurement.  It's a magically binding contract where everyone but 
Hermione is unaware of the real terms, and where only one person gets 
punished, although at least one other breaks the agreement as stated.  
One can see why goblins might become pathologically suspicious of 
dealing with wizards.

The second is JKR's actions.  She made the choice to show us a child 
who we know had torn loyalties - torn at least between her mother and 
her friend Cho.  That's part of being a teenager, but JKR punishes a 
child for life for making the wrong choice (and doesn't punish Percy at 
all).  It's merciless.  And because she chose not to define Dark Magic, 
because she chose to have Gryffindors do some pretty nasty things, she 
is giving a pretty murky picture of what good and evil are in her 
world.  This isn't a world where good people are sometimes faced with 
doing bad things for the right reasons (we live in one of those) - it's 
a world where a bad thing is not a bad thing if a White Hat does it.  
Ugly stuff done by White Hats is either played for comedy, or justified 
without question.

On a possibly related note, I realised with a shock the other night 
that there is only one significant single mother in the heptology (I 
don't think Dean's is significant), with a child and a broken 
marriage.  Merope is a pretty chilling trope.  For this reader, there's 
a lot of hatred in these books.

Mus