GoF CH 4-6 post DH look

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 181740

Alla quoted:
> "A report for the Department of International Magical Cooperation," 
> said Percy smugly. "We're trying to standardize cauldron thickness. 
> Some of these foreign imports are just a shade too thin - leakages 
> have been increasing at a rate of almost three percent a year" - p.56
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Okay, I could have just as easily quote something else
characterizing Percy's activities in this chapter, but I think this
one nails something I felt but could not express well some time ago.
> 
> Everybody knows about Arthur and Percy's fight in OOP, right? <snip>
I think this quote to me explains the best why I felt that Arthur was
absolutely, positively 100% right and Percy is absolutely positively 
100% wrong.
> 
> No, I do not mean that Percy was wrong in trying to prepare for his
job. <snip> I am saying that Percy was wrong in not seeing that
Ministry IMO is indeed using him.
> 
> I think the topic of that report shows clearly that he was given an 
> absolute nonsense to work with, nothing important, that he is not 
> being valued at all. Cauldron thickness? What does it matter at all?
> 
> IMO of course.

Carol responds:

I suppose that if a faulty cauldron leaked boil potion or something
similar all over the user, it would matter (just as defective tires
matter on an SUV). It does sound like boring work, but someone has to
do it, and who better than an eager new junior official, all of
eighteen years old as of GoF?

My thought when I read it, though, was that JKR was making fun of
bureaucracy, with all its paperwork and not much work of real
importance, as well as making fun of Percy's eagerness to please and
general officiousness. 

I don't think they're using him, really. He certainly gets to do some
important work (judging the Second Task of the TWT) later on. what
interferes with Percy's career (which was doing remarkably well for a
mere kid) is Barty Sr.'s murder and Percy's failure to realize that
his boss was under the Imperius Curse. (They're scapegoating him at
that point; none of the senior officials realized it, either.) 

And then things turn around and he's promoted again, which is when
Arthur thinks Percy is being used and Percy thinks he's being promoted
on his own merits. No doubt Arthur is right, but Percy is all of
nineteen and the Barty Sr. business wasn't his fault. I can see both
sides. I don't, however, think that the cauldron thickness report is
foreshadowing. I think it just shows how dreary Percy's job is at that
early point, and how eager he is to make a good impression.

Carol, who may well be misremembering or forgetting something here