Scrimgeour and Harry's hand (Was: Why didn't DD reveal Voldemort's identity?)

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 186810

Steve bboyminn wrote:
> On a similar but unrelated note, and something that makes me laugh when I think about it, is Harry showing Scrimgeour the scar on the back of his hand. Do we actually know that Scrimgeour knows about Umbridge's 'cutting quill' and how and on whom she used it at school? 
> 
> If not, then Scrimgeour must be puzzled as to why Harry is always shaking his fist at him. I think we are meant to think that Scrimgeour understands the gesture, but we don't know that he does because the story never tells us so. So, every time Harry shakes his fist at Scrimgeour I laugh thinking that Scrimgeour can't figure out why, or can't understand the significants of it.
><snip>

Carol responds:

That's what I think, too. How could Scrimgeour possibly know why Harry is raising his fist to him? It looks like a gesture of defiance and it certainly is connected to his retaining Delores Umbridge at the Ministry, but how can Scrimgeour possibly know about Umbridge's horrible quill or understand that Harry was forced to write "I must not tell lies" in his own blood? Now if Harry had held up his fist and said, "See these words carved in my hand? Umbridge did that to me!" Scrimgeour might have examined them and asked questions. But Harry refuses to tell McGonagall, and Dumbledore is avoiding contact with Harry, so the only people who know about the punishment (other than Lee Jordan, who suffered a similar if less prolonged detention) are Hermione and Ron, neither of whom is likely to inform Scrimgeour even if DD or McGonagall would have done so. And certainly Umbridge, who turned Fudge's photograph upside down so it wouldn't witness her (intended) Crucio of Harry ("what Cornelius doesn't know whouldn't hurt him) is certainly not going to tell Fudge's successor that she has tortured the boy now widely regarded as the Chosen One for telling "lies" that turned out to be true.

Obviously, Scrimgeour would know that Umbridge had been the Ministry-appointed DADA teacher, that she had risen to become High Inquisitor and imposed a good many decrees on Hogwarts, and that she had eventually usurped DD's place as headmaster. He might know that she had "run afoul of {Hogwarts'] Centaur herd. But not being a fan of Dumbledore's and being himself suspicious of DD's activities outside the school, he would not have considered all that an adequate reason for dismissing a high-ranking Ministry official who had only (he thinks) been carrying out Ministry policy at the time. (I have my own theories about Umbridge--I think she influenced Fudge rather than the other way around--but that's irrelevant here.)

At any rate, I think that Scrimgeour must be mystified by Harry's gesture of defiance, seeing it primarily as the result of a thorough brain-washing by Dumbledore. Scrimgeour has his faults, certainly, but I don't think he would have retained Umbridge as a Ministry employee if he'd known how thoroughly unscrupulous and sadistic she really was. Nor can he possibly have anticipated that she would become the head of the as-yet-nonexistent Muggle-born Registration Commission after his own murder by the Death Eaters.

I don't find it amusing, but otherwise I agree with you. It's an ironic misunderstanding between two people who are both enemies of Voldemort. Unfortunately, Harry comes to respect Scrimgeour only after Scrimgeour is dead.

Obviously, JKR can't have Harry and Scrimgeour working together for her plot to work, but I don't think that the mutual misunderstanding is just a plot device. I think it's part of an ongoing motif first suggested by Dumbledore at the end of GoF, something about "His power of sowing discord is very great" and the enemies of Voldemort must be united or they will fall. (That motif doesn't work out as well as I would have liked--it looks as if the Ministry will be almost completely restaffed after Kingsley takes charge--though Percy seems not to have resigned after since he's still talking about broomstick regulations at the end of the book.)

Anyway, I see parallels between Scrimgeour and Snape. Harry misunderstands both of them, failing to see that they're on the same side that he is and judging them both on the basis of what seems like ironclad evidence but isn't, and sees their true worth only when they're dead. The raised fist is only one of many ironic misunderstandings or miscommunications throughout the book. Possibly, DD's failure to cooperate with Scrimgeour is another. We can only wonder what would have happened if the Ministry and Dumbledore had not so profoundly mistrusted each other and if Dolores Umbridge had never entered the picture.

Carol, wishing that Scrimgeour had lived up to his potential as a tough and able Minister for Magic