Deathly Hallows reread CH 1 -3

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 186242


> Alla:
> 
> You know, I used to think that mistrust of the establishment and burocracy is one of the main themes in the series. But after Rufus Scrimgeour dying rather than betraying Harry, I really do not think that she condemns establishments per se. Or mayb I should say that at least as much as she condemns burocracy, she shows that people should try hard to work together instead of just washing their hands, like Dumbledore did, IMO of course.
>

Pippin:
If JKR didn't think people needed keeping in order, she wouldn't have given us Dudley. She's okay with authority, she just wants to see it properly used. After all, Arthur's a ministry employee. 

Given JKR's personal experience with the dole, I tend to see Petunia as a caricature of the welfare state: grudging, furious, bitter, spitefully neglectful, mildly abusive and a whole lot better than nothing. Just ask Merope. 

 I don't see Dumbledore washing his hands of the Ministry. As he said, as long as they opposed Voldemort, they were on the same side. He went  so far as to rescue Umbridge from the centaurs, and I think he would have saved Scrimgeour  if he'd had the opportunity. 

But Scrimgeour was a professional investigator and the previous head of the auror office. If he wasn't curious about the scars on Harry's hand, or about how two dementors came to be in a Muggle area, or who in the Ministry might have sent them, it's because he didn't want to know. Dumbledore (and Harry) tried to get Scrimgeour to see that he needed to fight corruption within the Ministry as well as outside it, and Scrimgeour wasn't interested.

 We can tell from his offer to Harry that integrity wasn't something he cared about in his staffers. They just had to make him look good. By the time he realized he needed people he could really trust, it was too late. 

I don't think Moody had any inside information that Thicknesse had been taken over -- Snape was in no position to get it to him. IMO, it was obvious to Moody that Thicknesse was making it harder for the Order to defend Harry from Voldemort, and that gave Thicknesse away. 

 Harry believed himself that no one could defend him from Voldemort once the protection expired. So did Scrimgeour. So to Scrimgeour, it would be most  important that the Ministry make a show of having tried. Thicknesse's plan did that, and therefore in Scrimgeour's eyes it wouldn't be evidence of disloyalty.

Scrimgeour himself had integrity -- but he wasn't willing to enforce a culture of integrity at the Ministry. OTOH, though Dumbledore's own integrity can be questioned, he did enforce a culture of integrity at Hogwarts. 

Pippin