Marietta yet again

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 176889

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "eggplant107" <eggplant107 at ...>
wrote:
>
>  "zeldaricdeau" <zeldaricdeau@> wrote:
> 
> > you must have your own idea of an 
> > objective code of morality 
> 
> It's subjective not objective and you just try to do things that you
> figure will bring more net happiness to the world, sometimes it's easy
> to determine which acts will do that and sometimes it's not, you do
> the best you can. In Marietta's case it was easy (unless she is a
> moral imbecile) to figure out that Harry was a better person than
Umbrage.

Carol responds:
You keep on repeating that, but I think you forget that Marietta not
only doesn't know Harry (she's in a different House and a different
year), she has also been reading in the Daily Prophet that he's a liar
and Dumbledore is a doddering old fool. (Note that Dumbledore has been
deprived of several important positions because he's supposedly losing
his grip.) The Minister of Magic himself doesn't believe Harry. Even
Seamus Finnigan, Harry's dormmate for four years, has his doubts
(though Harry's insulting Seamus's mother doesn't help matters).

Umbridge, a Ministry representative like Marietta's mother, is telling
the students of Hogwarts that the claim that Voldemort is back and
that the students are in no danger. She tells them to come to her if
they hear "lies." Marietta has no way of knowing that Harry's claims
are true and Umbridge's are false. Certainly, she can see that
Umbridge is becoming increasingly powerful at Hogwarts, usurping
authority from Dumbledore (though she's not yet headmistress), but in
Marietta's view, "Dumbledore's Army" is being formed to oust Fudge and
his administration and replace them with Dumbledore himself, the man
who claims with no evidence except Harry's word that Dumbledore is back.

If Marietta knew that Umbridge had sent Dementors to Little Whinging
to attack Harry and yet supported Umbridge, or that Umbridge was
willing to use Veritaserum and even the Cruciatus Curse on students to
obtain information, then she would indeed have been a "moral imbecile"
to support Umbridge. But no one (except HRH and Susan Bones, who was
told by her "auntie") knows about the Dementors because the incident
was kept out of the Daily Prophet, and not even Harry knows yet that
Umbridge sent them. Harry suspects but doesn't know for sure about the
Veritaserum (which, in any case, was fake thanks to Snape) and the
attempted Crucio hasn't happened yet. And Harry has told only Ron and
Hermione about the blood quill. (Lee Jordan, the only other person on
whom it's used that we know of, doesn't seem to spread the information
around.)

You expect more of Marietta than is humanly possible given the
available evidence for Harry's sanity and truthfulness and moral
superiority. Yes, she told on her fellow students, one of whom was her
friend, and, yes, the students she told on could have been expelled.
But the idea that she could somehow know that the angry boy who
refuses to answer Zacharias Smith's questions about what happened to
Cedric Diggory or to offer convincing evidence that Voldemort is back
is morally superior to the seemingly motherly woman who offers her
friendship to the "children" of Hogwarts needs canon support that you
have not yet offered.

Carol, who thinks that Marietta, like Fudge, believes that Dumbledore
and Harry are lying in part because they don't want to believe them
but in part because they have been given no good reason to believe
otherwise