Tonks/Sorting Hat (Was: Harry Potter is Anti-Woman/Secret Sorting Hat)

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 181077

Magpie wrote:
> <snip> We've got a bunch of aurors who can do all the things one has
to do to be an auror. Tonks is the one who changes her hair color and
her nose for entertainment before losing her powers to despair when
her boyfriend leaves her. Then she gets married, has a baby and dies.
If somebody claimed that Tonks was incompetent at work I'd say there's
no evidence of that, but somebody gave me that character as being 
about being a strong female Auror I'd think that was disappointing.
> <snip>

Carol responds:
I agree that Tonks didn't live up to her potential to be a strong
female character (and I never saw the point of making her clumsy;
maybe JKR thinks that's an endearing trait, but it never played into
the plot.)

However, in Tonks' defense, she does a lot more with her
Metamorphmagus abilities--on page--than change her nose and her hair
color to entertain her friends. Here are the two examples I mentioned
in passing in another post:

"An old woman greeted them on the corner. She had tightly curled gray
hair and wore a purple hat shaped like a porkpie. [What's a porkpie?
Anything like a chicken pot pie?] 'Wotcher, Harry,'she said, winking
(OoP Am. ed. 181). The "old woman" is one of Harry's escorts to
Platform 9 3/4, along with the "dog" who's not supposed to be there
and gives himself away.

"Harry found himself shunted out into the cold air with Tonks (today
heavily disguised as a tall, tweedy woman with iron-gray hair)
chivvying him down the steps" (524). ("Gray" is the spelling used in
the American edition; I assume that it's "grey" in both passages in
the Bloomsbury edition.)

Tonks is briskly efficient in this scene, getting them all on the bus
and interrupting Stan Shunpike's spiel with, "Yes, yes, we know." And
when he says, "'Ere. It's 'Arry--" she responds "menacingly" with, "If
you shout his name, I will curse you into oblivion" (524). Pretty
formidable, I'd say. She splits them up and sends Remus to stay with
Fred, George, and Ginny in the back while she escorts the others to
the top deck. Stan informs Harry that "that bossy woman 'oo got on
with you" (Tonks) has "given us a tip to move you up the queue" (526).
(query to British readers--is "tip" used in the sense of a hint or has
she paid them money to go to Hogwarts out of sequence?) She's in front
with the driver and Hermione, but she can see (and probably hear)
Harry, Ron, and Stan, who has followed them.

Tonks also casts a careful eye around both before and after they get
on the bus. I think we're seeing Auror Tonks at work here. I wouldn't
mess with her, myself.

More important, perhaps, we see that when she loses her Metamorphmagus
abilities in HBP, whe's losing a lot more than the ability to change
her hair color and the shape of her nose. Like Wormtail, she can
disguise herself most effectively without the need for Polyjuice
Potion. And unlike him, she can change her appearance completely. The
little old woman and the tall, tweedy woman are not the same person.
(I'm not sure, but I think that both are her own creations rather than
being modeled on witches or Muggles of her qcquaintance.) Evidently,
she has fully mastered her natural Metamorphmagus abilities and
learned to make excellent use of them.

Sidenote on 12 GP, which we were discussing in another thread: There's
a description of it "shrinking rapidly as [the houses] on either side
of it stretched sideways, squeezing it out of sight"--steps and all, I
assume--on the same page as the second description of Metamorphosed
Tonks (524)..

New topic:

zanooda:
> If so, it's a pity Harry was such a blabbermouth and told his kids
about the Sorting Hat :-), because they (or at least Albus) definitely
know all about it!

Carol:
I think it was teasing James who was the blabbermouth. He tells Albus
about thestrals ("You said they were invisible!") and Harry tells him
not to believe everything that James says about Hogwarts. And since
Albus Severus already knows about the Sorting Hat, there's no harm in
soothing his anxiety by telling him that it will let him choose
Gryffindor over Slytherin if it matters to him (as it no longer
matters to Harry).
> 
> Magpie:
> In Harry's defense, maybe he knew it was more important that he and
his friends know nothing about the Hat than his kids, because we 
readers were supposed to be in suspense with Harry and now we already
 know about the Hat.

Carol:
Well, yeah, but I'd say that it's JKR, not Harry, who's no longer
concerned about keeping the reader in suspense.

However, it does seem like a good idea, in general, to keep kids who
don't have mischievous older brothers in suspense about the Sorting
system, in particular not telling them that they can choose the House
they go into. Otherwise, kids raised in the WW will have a significant
advantage over Muggle-borns, and will also be placed according to
their desires rather than their suitability to a particular House.
Imagine a kid with a mind like Goyle's who desperately wanted to be
placed in Ravenclaw because he for some reason perceived himself as
smart, or a cowardly kid who wants to get into Gryffindor as happened
with Peter Pettigrew. (Did he already percieve James as "the biggest
bully on the playground" and overhear him saying that he wanted to be
Sorted into Gryffindor? If he's Muggle-born, as I suspect, that would
be the only way he'd have any idea about the Houses.)

Help. I think the poor Sorting Hat does the best it can to place kids
where they belong, but when it sees what's in their minds, it sees
wishes as well as aptitudes. Would we place a scrawny little wanabe
athlete with jocks? A kid who can't carry a tune but wants to be a
classical musician with kids who have perfect pitch and can sight-read
music? It doesn't seem right to place kids based on their wishes
rather than their aptitudes. But, then, it doesn't seem right to place
them based on their aptitudes at age eleven. And Slytherin isn't
choosing based on aptitudes at all, unless we count cunning. Ambition
is a character trait, pure-blood supremacy is an ideology, and
excluding Muggle-borns based on blood is discrimination.

I like the Sorting Hat as a character. I think it wants to unify the
Houses as it specifically states in OoP. But its very existence
condemns it to divide the kids into Houses that amount to cliques and
pit them against each other. Maybe Dumbledore is right; they Sort too
soon. Imagine if Severus and Lily had had more time to be together, in
a special "House" for first- and second-years. And maybe James would
have changed his mind about Severus if he'd lived in the same dorm
with him for two years. Clever kid like that--knows all those hexes
and even invents his own spells (assuming that Severus was already
doing that at age eleven or twelve). Worth knowing, perhaps?

Carol, just explorimg ideas and not sure where she stands on the
Sorting Hat