goblin property and Harry cheat/NeedValor&3Founders/Lucius/Luna/Reckless

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 184035

Aussie Hagrid wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183996>:

<< Griphook asserted that the sword was a lost Goblin masterpiece of
goblinwork, taken from its owner by Godric Gryffindor. "It belongs
with the goblins!" (snip) Harry found the idea that Godric Gryffindor
had stolen the sword unpleasant. Hermione told them that she knew of
no such story, but that wizarding history often glosses over wizards'
ill treatment of other races. >>

'Taken from its owner' sounds like a claim that Godric either snuck
into the goblin's home/workshop/treasure vault to grab the sword and
exit with it (burglary), or that Godric physically attacked the goblin
and subdued him and took the sword from him (mugging, robbery).

As we know from CoS, the sword has Godric Gryffindor's name spelled
out on it, worked into its structure. To me, that shows that the sword
was custom-made for Godric, probably because Godric commissionned it,
rather than on spec, and it is therefore terribly
unlikely that Godric got it by burglary or robbery. By far the most
likely way that a bloke who commission a custom-made personalized
object from an artisan could steal it is by not paying the artisan,
and Godric seemed to have enough money not to need to cheat tradesmen,
and miserliness is not a characteristic Gryffindor vice.

Altho' I suppose I could make up some unlikely stories, in which the
artisan made the personalised object for his own use, just because he
liked having other people's names on his stuff, or the artisan made
the object on commission but then refused to hand it over, either
because of having quarreled with the bloke who commissioned and
feeling generally hostile, or because the object came out so well that
the artisan wanted to keep it to show off.

If the bloke had already paid for the object, then it is the artisan
who is the thief, and if the block sneaks into the artisan's workshop
under cover of darkness using a Hand of Glory or an Invisibility
cloak, then the bloke is retrieving his property from a thief rather
than being a thief himself. If the bloke took the artifact before he
had paid for it, that seems to me to be an argumentative case in
contract law.

But there is no reason to think that any such a thing occurred
between Godric and his goblin swordsmith. I thought Harry was
excessively sensitive to even wonder if Godric really had stolen it.

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183997>:

<< his view that Goblinmade works, paid for by Wizards, belong to
the Goblin who made them is preposterous. >>

Altho' I agree with many of your points, "preposterous" is a big
word.

Aussie Hagrid wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183996>:

<< Bill explained that "[t]o a goblin, the rightful and true master of
any object is the maker, not the purchaser" and that they considered
the concept of passing on ownership among wizards after the purchaser
had died to be theft. >>

It seemed to me that Bill's explanation meant that normal goblins
thought they were selling their handiwork only for the purchaser's
lifetime, and therefore they felt deeply offended that purchasers
willed the artifact to heirs and maybe even sold it while still
alive. By the way, under this logic, they wouldn't have thought
Godric stole the sword; they would have though his heir stole it.

>From Bill's explanation, it seemed to me that normal goblins would
have been satisfied if the contracts of sale had stated (and been
obeyed) that whenever the artifact was inherited or sold, a
specified fee must be paid to the goblin maker or maker's heirs.
(For all I know, a goblin's heirs are the colleagues who learned
smithcraft from the same master rather than a relative.)

Such a contract is not preposterous. I read once of a then-current
painter who painted a contract on the back of each of his paintings,
which he made purchasers sign, that whenever ownership of this
painting was transferred, 5% of the price must be paid to the artist
or his heirs. He did that because of contemplation of the cliche of
artists starving in garrets, occasionally selling a painting for
enough to pay more paints but not enough to pay rent, and during the
dot.com boom, that painting sold for over ten million dollars.

Anyway, I don't know when wizards started buying artifacts from
goblins. If it was still a new practice in Godric's time, there
could INNOCENTLY be conflict because the buyer and the seller had
different unstated assumptions about 'obvious' parts of the deal.
But both sides should have been able to figure out the problem in
no more than a couple hundred years, and solve it by making
contracts that stated all those terms.

Griphook, however, seemed to me to believe that no artifact made by
goblins should ever be owned by a wizard, not even for just the
wizard's lifetime. I don't know what he thought the maximum term of
renting a goblin-made artifact to a wizard should be (one hour, one
day, one year, twenty years?) or what very high standards the wizard
would have to reach in order to be allowed to rent an artifact for
even one hour, but his view seems to me to be based on ideological and
racialist (species-ial-ist) opinions, not on opinions of contract law.
I think it was correct for Rowling to refer to him (in some Q&A) as a
fanatic.

Aussie Hagrid wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183996>:

<< Harry decided to tell Griphook he could have the sword after
helping them get into the Lestranges' vault, but not to tell him
that it might be years. >>

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183997>:

<< we see Harry forced by circumstances into making a somewhat
ethically iffy bargain--he intends to keep his promise to give
Griphook the Sword of Gryffindor as his reward, but only when he's
through with it. If Harry had named that condition, he'd have been
more honest, but Griphook might not have agreed to that condition,
and Harry couldn't take that chance. >>

Harry's bargain struck me as worse than 'ethically iffy' -- I might
class it as 'ethically challenged'. I was really bothered that he did
it, not only because of karma(*), but because in the likely event that
something went wrong, it would be another straw on the fire of
goblin-wizard hostility.

I think he should have told Griphook he needed the sword to destroy
the Horcruxes, and would give it to Griphook once all the Horcruxes
were destroyed. Griphook might have agreed to that or provided another
very powerful magical artifact with which to destroy the Horcruxes. If
Griphook had just outright refused, then Harry could have tried
another strategy, such as the one he did use.

(*) I said 'karma' in an entirely Euro-American way, with no
implications about Buddhism or Hinduism, but that seems to be the
word we use nowadays to mean 'what goes around, comes around', or
'the people you pass on the way up are the same people you pass on
the way down'.

I believe those proverbs were meant as worldly advice, like the fairy
tales in which Rose Red is nice to nasty dwarves and Psyche is nice to
lowly ants, and latter the dwarves give a valuable magical present to
Rose Red and the ants do one of the impossible tasks that Aphrodite
ordered Psyche to do, separating black seeds from white seeds in a
huge mixed heap of tiny seeds. In worldly terms, being honest and kind
is recommended as a way to make friends and avoid making enemies and
gain a good reputation.

But there is also a metaphysical level, the idea of events outside of
human control that occur to help the kind and honest person or to harm
the cruel and dishonest person, such as the bad guy is struck dead by
a meteorite or the good guy wins the lottery.

Whether or not superhuman forces reward virtue and punish vice in 
this life in real life, in fiction it can happen.

Jerri wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/184025>:

<< I wonder, in light of what I have been reading in the discussion
and Bill's warning to Harry, if one form of goblin magic is the
ability to tell if/when they are being lied to, or someone is planning
to cheat them in some fashion. It is possible that the "handshake" was
a test by Griphook of Harry's good faith, and when he sensed Harry's
reservations, Griphook decided that Harry was just like all wizards,
planning to cheat goblins, and it is at this point that Griphook
decided to set Harry and the rest of the trio up in a trap. >>

I like this idea as an example of Instant Karma.

Aussie Hagrid wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183996>:

<< 11) Goblin ownership laws: "the true owner of an object is the
maker, not the purchaser". This sounds like our copyright and patent
laws. I can't buy a CD and copy a song onto my I-Pod. Are arguments
against the goblin law grounds for authors to re-think copyright laws? >>

I don't think Rowling intended any argument against copyright laws.
She doesn't appear to think there is any comparison between Griphook's
fanaticism and her role in copyright lawsuits about her
books.

Pippin wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/184023>:

<< Stealing something from its rightful owner is hardly a valorous
act. >>

Sure it is, if the good guys do it and it's dangerous. Like our Trio
stealing Hufflepuff's Cup from Gringott's. If it had been in the vault
of an uncooperative rightful owner instead of Bellatrix's, that
wouldn't have decreased their valor (altho' the way they threw
Imperiuses around like Mardi Gras beads may have done).

Montavilla47 wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183998>:

<< Why did the Hat only produce the Sword? Would it have summoned the
Locket, if a Slytherin had needed it? Would it have brought the Cup
for a Hufflepuff and the Tiara for a Ravenclaw? >>

As Beatrice wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/184016>, the
Sorting Hat was originally Gryffindor's hat, so maybe it had a special
relationship with Gryffindor's sword and Gryffindor's House that it
didn't have with the other Founders' artifacts and Houses. Or maybe it
just thinks that a tiara, locket, or cup would not be useful in a fight...

The sword goes to a Gryffindor in circumstances of need and valor.
Maybe the tiara of clear thinking would go to a Ravenclaw in
circumstances of research and analysis. Do we know of any special
power of Hufflepuff's cup, like causing all the people who drank 
out of it at the same meal to be friends? Then it might go to a
Hufflepuff in circumstances of facilitating a peace conference...

<< Heh. If so, Dumbledore could have saved himself (and Harry)
a lot of bother. >>

Well, if so, it could have provided my longed-for plot line in which
defeating Voldemort (destroying the Horcruxes) required the
participation of the heirs of each House, Marietta Edgecombe for
Ravenclaw, Zacharias Smith for Hufflepuff, Draco Malfoy for Slytherin,
and oh, not that it's a problem, the required Gryffindor is not Harry,
but Ron.

Mike Crudele wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/184014>:

<< I've always wondered how Lucius would have gotten involved with
Voldemort in the first place. >>

I have sometimes wondered if Voldemort is Lucius's godfather. It would
have been useful for the young Tom Riddle to get in good with Malfoys
of an older generation. I am sure the Malfoys have accumulated a vast
library including many rare, even unique, books
teaching Dark Magic, and that they own ancient artifacts, even if not
the ones most associated with the Founders, and they also had money,
which is always nice.

Aussie Hagrid wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183996>:

<< 7) Luna deserves her own question. (snip) Why do you think she
is such an important presence in Harry Potter's life? >>

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183997>:

<< It isn't so much what she does as who she is that matters.
(snip) Luna is one of JKR's more brilliant creations. >>

I agree with all that good stuff I snipped.

To me, Luna is a spiritually enlightened person (like I thought Albus
Dumbledore had become via more than a hundred years of learning from
his mistakes, until DH totally destroyed even the remnants of that
lovely illusion). I don't know if Rowling would say she is an
unrecognized saint among us, but some Christians would (because there
are saints who are known only to God as saints). I was convinced she
was going to die young because anyone who is that spiritual as a young
person doesn't need to go through a long life to learn some enlightenment.

Her role is to lead Harry, by example and un-self-conscious comment
rather than by statements, not to spiritual enlightment, because
that's a kind of advanced level, but to religion. Because, while there
are a lot of ways that religion can be mis-used, one way most
religions can be used (possibly the way they were supposed to be used)
is as a way to practice virtues and feel compassion for others and
realize that this life is transitory and, in this case, believe in an
afterlife.

Pippin wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/184023>:
<< I don't think Harry was being reckless, exactly, but I think
his conscience was uneasy with the bargain he'd made. By becoming
a godfather, Harry is formally taking responsibility for the next
generation of wizards, and like Sirius, he's off to a rocky start,
planning something he might not feel like boasting of to Teddy. >>

I thought Harry's concern was that he might be dead, insane, or in
Azkaban, and therefore unable to do anything for Teddy.