Marietta, was Slytherin's Reputation

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 185652

Carol responds:
> > I think, though, that you've forgotten that Kingsley Obliviated
Marietta, so she has no way of telling Madam Pomfrey what happened.
> 
> Shelley:
> Are you assuming, then, that this Obliviation is permanent- that
Marietta would have no way of remembering EVER that she betrayed the
DA? <snip>

Carol.
In a word, yes. There would be no point in Lockhart's Obliviating the
people whose exploits he took credit for or in the Obliviators
modifying Muggles's memories when they saw Giants or Wizards if the
Obliviating was not permanent. And the very word "obliviate" ties in
with oblivion, the state of being forgotten. Her memory has been wiped
clean, permanently, of everything relating to her betrayal of the DA.
 
> Shelley:
> No, we see in the books that the specific remedy must be applied for
the particular ailment- a beezor stone removing poison, for example.
Miss the exact remedy, you don't get results, but that is not to say
that the exact cure is "hard".

Carol responds:

Possibly not the best example since a Bezoar, as Snape informs us,
works for *most* poisons, not just one. Some have specific antidotes,
others none, but a Bezoar is as close as the WW comes to a panacea for
poisons. Similarly, "Finite Incantatem" works to stop most
spells--minor hexes or jinxes, anyway. Snape stops all the jinxes and
hexes in the room with that countercurse during the Duelling Club
scene in CoS. Some spells, like Stupefy, have their own countercurse.
(Sectum Sempra has an elaborate songlike or chantlike countercurse
that most likely only Snape knows.) But that doesn't mean that someone
like Snape wouldn't know a countercurse that would work for Hermione's
hex--or be able to work one out once he recognized the spell. If you
recall, Flitwick and McGonagall stripped off all the spells that had
been put on the Firebolt looking for a curse or hex, and Snape
identified and removed the curse on both the opal necklace and Marvolo
Gaunt's ring. I doubt that he'd have any trouble removing Hermione's
hex, whether she looked it up in the library or invented it herself.
Snape, after all, invented his own hexes and countercurses. He can
think as Hermione did in that respect and he has much more experience.
But the whole question is hypothetical since he doesn't seem to have
been given the opportunity to help Marietta.

Shelley:
> I hardly think that Madame Pomfrey, being a school nurse, would know
the solution for EVERY hex or jinx that the students would come up
with, especially since they have an entire library full of them at
their disposal, should they be smart enough to look some up, as
Hermione was. I think Pomfrey missed that this was a curse, which
required a different treatment than the usual hex of pimples. I don't
think it would have been hard to cure Marietta at all.

Carol responds:
Technically, it was a jinx since Hermione jinxed a piece of parchment,
but I don't think the exact category matters. What Madam Pomfrey
didn't know was how Marietta acquired the pustules. Surely if there
was a hex to spell "SNEAK" across someone's face in the library, it
wouldn't have been hard to look up. I think that 1) Hermione invented
the hex/jinx and 2) Madam Pomfrey didn't know that the pustules had
been caused indirectly by the breaking of a vow. Snape, familiar with
the Unbreakable Vow, might have known more than Madam P. about the
breaking of magical contracts just as we know he knew much more about
Dark Magic. I wouldn't underestimate Madam Pomfrey's knowledge--she
certainly would be familiar with the schoolkid hexes that the kids
routinely used against one another. She certainly knew how to deal
with Densuageo, for example, when Draco tried to use that hex on Harry
and accidentally hit Hermione. Many of those minor curses, regardless
of designation as jinx or hex (JKR is remarkably inconsistent in her
terminology, anyway), would respond to Finite Incantatem or wear off
on their own. The others she could probably deal with. But, like the
curse on the opal necklace, this one was clearly beyond her expertise,
not because it was Dark magic (it was Hermione's spell, after all) but
because she had never encountered it before and it did not respond to
the usual measures. I don't think she had the skill to recognize and
treat an unknown curse, but if she had known that it was a jinx on a
piece of parchment, she might have known where to look. Lacking that
information, she was like a physician looking for the virus that's
infecting a poison victim. Snape, OTH, might have had a clearer idea
where to look or what spell to cast, but his expertise apparently
wasn't requested. (He was the Potions master at that time, for one
thing, and the DADA teacher, Umbridge, was as baffled as Pomfrey.)

Carol earlier:
> > Since Marietta's mother was at this point a Ministry employee
(what happened to her when the DEs took over, we don't know), I
suspect that her mother would have sent her to St. Mungo's or had
sufficient influence to get special advice from a Healer, but, if
that's the case, it didn't help much.
> 
> Shelley:
> I don't get that either from the books- we are notified when people 
> disappear from the school to go to St. Mungos, and we are not told
of that 
> of Marietta, leaving me to believe that she stayed at Hogwarts.

Carol:
I meant over the summer, between the time she was cursed and the time
she returned to school in HBP wearing a balaclava. If I were her
mother, I'd have taken her to St. Mungo's immediately. But if she went
there, they, too, were stymied.


 If Madame 
> Pomfrey believed that she could fix it with Dittany, or some other
topical solution, and Marietta was in no way prevented from still
taking classes and doing her school work from this (on the surface
appearance, very minor) ailment, then there would be no real "need" to
go to St. Mungos. 

Carol responds:

I don't follow you. Madam Pomfrey would certainly have tried dittany,
and perhaps whatever she put on Bill Weasley's injuries to prevent
scarring, too. It's patently obvious that whatever Madam Pomfrey tried
didn't work, and she, being a conscientious school nurse, or whatever
her title is, would have tried everything that she knew. Marietta went
home with no improvement. There was every need to go to St. Mungo's.
Marietta was permanently disfigured. These aren't pimples, they're
pustules, and they seoll the word "Sneak."

I said absolutely nothing about Marietta being unable to do her
schoolwork (though I imagine that she was too distraught to
concentrate when she first saw her face) and no one at the school but
Harry, Ron, and Hermione really knew what caused them--and they
weren't saying. (Actually, only Hermione knew the actual spell but the
other two knew about the jinxed parchment. So Marietta would have gone
until the end of the school year with only Madam Pomfrey's failed
treatments. Then her mother would almost certainly have taken her to
St. Mungo's, but that failed, too. Either that, or her mother didn't
take her for treatment, and I can't conceive of a mother being that
cruel to her daughter.

Speculation, of course, but one of two things happened. Either she
went to St. Mungo's and they couldn't help her, so she still had the
pustules, or she didn't go to St. Mungo's and still had the pustules
for that reason. Either way, she still had the pustules, not only at
the beginning but at the end of HBP.

Shelley:

> Thus, I don't think her parents would have been notified that she
needed hospital treatment to begin with. Madane Pomfrey would have
dismissed or underestimated the severity of the pustules, thinking she
could still fix them. I think her parents were told "she's been hexed
with pimples, we are working on it, no need to be concerned". We (as
the readership) know she's been cursed, but do the others who were
taking care of Marietta realize that? No, they wouldn't.

Carol:
I think we're talking at cross purposes here. I never said that her
parents would be notified. I'm talking about the mother's reaction
when she saw her daughter get off the Hogwarts Express with her face
concealed by a balaclava. And I don't think that Madam Pomfrey would
continue to believe that she could still do something. It's clear in
OoP itself that both she and Umbridge are at a loss. I don't think the
problem is that it's a curse rather than a hex or jinx. We're told
quite clearly that it's a mere jinx that Hermione placed on the
parchment. I think they're looking in the wrong direction for
something akin to the boil-causing hex that Harry meant to cast on
Draco. Madam Pomfrey had no problem dealing with that one. I think
that if Madam Pomfrey (or Snape) had known about the parchment, they
could have solved the problem. But Obliviated Marietta didn't even
know what she'd done to trigger the jinx/hex/curse and never knew
about the parchment. And Hermione, who knew all about it, wasn't about
to fess up. 

> Shelley:
> Again, I don't get that Marietta "deserved" it, so that people in
power and position continued to punish her, just that the real
solution was missed. 

Carol:
Then why are we arguing? I think the same thing. I *speculated* that
DD or Snape might not have tried to help her, but more likely Snape
didn't know about it and DD, being away from the school, had other
matters on his mind. I do think that their expertise could have helped
her, but for whatever reason, it wasn't offered. For one thing,
Umbridge, being herself the DADA teacher, never thought of calling in
the Potions master to tell him that the pustules had appeared out of
nowhere when Marietta revealed the DA's headquarters. I think he would
have recognized a broken contract of some sort as the trigger.
Obviously, it wasn't a hex cast by someone present at the time
Marietta was speaking to Umbridge. But, yes, the real solution was
missed because Madam Pomfrey didn't have sufficient information and
Umbridge, DADA teacher or not, didn't have sufficient expertise. DD or
Snape might have figured it out, but they weren't called in. Marietta
herself was no help whatever.

Shelley:
> I don't see Snape being consulted for any "routine" medical matter,
only life-threatening, immediate dangers. The teachers seem to be very
clear about who has which job, and seem not to step over each other's
positions out of respect. Snape would only be called in as the
"expert" when he was needed- who would think to call him for a hex of
pimples if that is what Madame Pomfrey thought it was? Snape would
have been affronted to be asked to take care of such a small matter!

Carol:
I don't think he would have been affronted to investigate a matter
that was beyond someone else's expertise, but I do agree that the
teachers are clear about who has which job. If they suspected Dark
magic, something beyond the ability of Madam Pomfrey to deal with, the
logical person to deal with it was, oops!--Umbridge herself. Snape
dealt with Dark magic in HBP not only because he knew how to deal with
it better than anyone else but because it was his job, just as it was
(theoretically) Lockhart's job to deal with Slytherin's monster in
CoS, All I'm saying is that if he'd been called in, which he clearly
wasn't, or volunteered his services, which he clearly didn't, the
pustule mystery might well have been solved.

Shelley: 
> We (as the readership) know what must be done to help her, but this
a story that Rowling tells, and the people in the story missed the
solution, and thus Marietta continues to suffer from the pustules
months later.

Carol:
Exactly. Had someone known to ask Hermione, the problem would have
been solved, assuming that she knew the countercurse. If not, just
knowing the jinx/hex/curse itself would have enabled a knowledgeable
Witch or Wizard like Snape to work one out. But knowing that the
parchment itself had been jinxed/hexed/cursed might in itself have
been sufficient. Through a combination of circumstances, including
that Marietta had been Obliviated and her friend Cho didn't know about
the parchment (and those who did know weren't talking) the pustules
could not be cured, at least not by Madam Pomfrey, who doesn't seem to
be one for solving mysteries.

And whether or not she went to St. Mungo's, the Healers would not have
had that key piece of information, either. Which is not to say that
she didn't go there. I'm betting that she did.

Carol, suspecting that the pustules will be permanent because the
mystery will never be solved