DH reread CH 13-14

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 186500

Zara wrote:
> They were themselves all along. They did not poison Mr. Cattermole with a Puking Pastille in some sort of moment of personality derangement. It was a part of a plan they had worked out in cold blood over the course of weeks.

Carol responds:
"In cold blood" makes them sound like murderers. To be fair, they're new to long-term planning that involves disguises, and overpowering other people to get their robes and name tags, not to mention stealing their identities, seems necessary and Fred and George's products a convenient means for doing so. Just as they don't consider what they'll do once they get inside (a point that someone, perhaps Harry, realizes too late), they don't consider the rightness or wrongness of what they're doing. Would Stunning an innocent person (perhaps causing him or her to bruise his head on the sidewalk) have been any better? Admittedly, Puking Pastilles were a particularly bad choice, but even Nosebleed Nougats or Fainting Fancies involve incapacitating an innocent person.

One purpose served by this scene, intended or unintended, is to show the readers that Fred and George's products are perhaps not quite so amusing as they've previously seemed. (We've already seen another of F&G's products, Peruvian Darkness Powder put to genuinely evil use.) There are two questions here, I think. The first is whether the products are as innocent and clever as they seem (I'd say no, but that's just my opinion); the other is whether, in this instance, the end justifies the means (my instinct is to say no; there must be a better way).

The kids thought that they had come up with a good, if not necessarily brilliant, plan, and it certainly worked, but it contained a number of flaws because of circumstances they didn't anticipate, including making a man so ill that he had to go to St. Mungo's.

Could they have gotten in at all without impersonating MoM employees? And if they did have to impersonate people, how else could they have made sure that those people didn't show up at the MoM and by doing so, reveal the imposture?

All I can think of is that they should have used the Invisibility Cloak. Just using Nosebleed Nougats instead of Puking Pastilles wouldn't really solve all the ethical problems involved--though, admittedly, it would have been less unpleasant for the victim and less revolting for Hermione (who, presumably, won't resort to using them again).

But I agree with Zara that they were themselves all along. Those selves were three teenage kids desperate to get into the MoM to retrieve (okay, steal) a Horcrux from an evil woman in order to destroy it. Excellent motivation (even the stealing can be loosely justified by the fact that it wasn't Umbridge's in the first place and by necessity--the kids have been breaking rules all along for "the greater good"), and they lack the experience and sophistication to come up with a better method, not to mention that Dumbledore himself resorts to Confunding people or ordering them to be Confunded to achieve his ends, and Kingsley thinks nothing of Obliviating Marietta for a similar purpose. And, later, Harry resorts to the Imperius Curse, not only on a Death Eater but on a Goblin who's just trying to do his job. It seems no different to me from Snape Stunning Flitwick so Flitwick can't follow him to the Astronomy Tower. People who are in the way can be used or abused as needed to achieve good or necessary ends.

I don't like it at all, but that's the way it looks to me right now: "All's fair in love and war."

Zara:
> The chapter showed us what Harry and Co. were fighting, in all its gory details. The personal corruption in the new Ministry (worsened, I would say, when Umbridge has her eye, and people threaten relatives of coworkers to obtain services, or turn each other in in hopes of getting their jobs). And of course, the very worst, the treatment of Muggle-born witches and wizards under the new regime. So I think it showed, starkly, what was the underlying motivation of the Trio in this book. (Because it was their disgust and disapproval of what they saw, that motivated them to rescue Mrs. Cattermole and the others).

Carol:
Right. That's the purpose for the chapter, which is quite enlightening in terms of what the Ministry takeover means (and helps to foreshadow a few later incidents, such as Dirk Cresswell's flight from the DEs and all the encounters with Yaxley). Also, of course, we see what Umbridge is up to and just what a horror she really is. Perhaps what's revealed here is JKR's justification for the means the kids used to get into the MoM. It's certainly the lesser of two evils by a long shot. But they didn't know what they would find. They just wanted to get inside. And I don't think they even considered the means they were using as a necessary evil, just a necessity, with the rights of the various MoM employees, including, by a twist of fate, Mafalda Hopkirk (the apparently innocuous author of Harry's expulsion letter) not even considered.

(Quote from DH:) 
> > "Harry could still see the blond-haired youth's face, it was merry, wild; there was a Fred and George-ish air of triumphant trickery about him" - p.233

Carol:
This quotation is quite revealing in terms of Harry's initial reaction, especially in retrospect when we know who the blond boy is. Fred and George's wild inventiveness taken to extremes, and especially their "triumphant trickery," could be extremely dangerous.

But I think, too, that there's a marked (and unstated) contrast with the other really Dark Wizard of our acquaintance, Tom Riddle. Like Tom, Gellert Grindelwald is handsome and, we later learn, extremely intelligent, but his charm is unforced. He's always laughing, in contrast to Tom, who (as a boy) is always serious and cold. His charm, an acquired politeness and seeming interest in others, is only a tool, a means of using others and manipulating them for his own ends. Gellert, in contrast, is lively and merry and wild. He reminds me not so much of Fred and George as of the young Sirius Black. It's easy to see why the young Dumbledore, also brilliant but probably more serious and less inclined to take risks, would have found him not only fascinating but irresistible. Whereas Tom represents the worst of Slytherin, I think that Gellert combines the traits of Ravenclaw and Gryffindor, intellect and recklessness taken to extremes, not as a Riddle-like obsession with self and death but as knowledge and entertainment on a grand scale. But there's an element of Slytherin, too, ambition and a lust for power that dwarfs Voldemort's.

Altogether, Grindelwald is a fascinating figure of whom we don't see enough, a much more appealing and compelling character (IMO) than Voldemort, whom the old Grindelwald, facing death at Voldemort's hands, clearly holds in contempt. He, unlike Voldemort, seems capable of regret and repentance, if not a deep remorse on the level of Snape's for much greater crimes.

To me, he seems (as a merry-faced youth) to be yet another "abandoned boy," expelled from Durmstrang with nowhere to go. Yes, he's already capable of evil, apparently guilty of torturing Aberforth and Ariana and perhaps guilty of killing Ariana, and, yes, he's obsessed with power, Stunning Gregorovitch and stealing the Elder Wand. But I can't help feeling that, with guidance and direction, he could have become great and good rather than great and terrible, in contrast to Tom, who, it seems, never had the potential for good.

Carol, wishing that we knew more about Grindelwald, the golden boy gone wrong