The Rise and Fall of LV...(was Re: Wizarding Top Ten

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 187983

Alla wrote:
<snip>
> Harry was in the textbooks when he was a baby, yes? So I see no reason why he will not be in the textbooks, only with ten times more praises - saved us all, etc, etc. 
> 
> Same thing about Dumbledore, me thinks. WW is always very good to praise people after the fact.
> 
> 
> Now Snape definitely should be there because he deserves it, but will he be there? I don't know. I think he will simply because WW will do whatever Harry says.
> 
> I don't know, if we were to figure out how truthfully events will be described THAT I have no idea. <snip>

Carol responds:

Interesting comments, which I pretty much agree with. We've seen that news reporting in the WW depends on who's in power, which distorts the sources available to historians, and we've seen two types of historians, the scholarly and general (Bathilda Bagshot, now dead) and Rita Skeeter, actually more biographer than historian, aiming for the sensational and speculative (though not wholly off the mark in her biography of DD).

With regard to the events on the day (or rather night) of Voldemort's defeat, I think that Rita Skeeter will eagerly interview anyone who was there and her version of events will circulate and become "common knowledge." She would probably try and fail to interview Harry, Neville, and any other heroes of the battle but would be mostly confined to eyewitness accounts by ordinary citizens, which, of course, will be confused, incomplete, and conflicting, as eyewitness accounts usually are. They will also be biased (pro-Harry, pro-DD, the hero/mentor who made Harry's victory possible). It will be hard to get an objective account of Snape though some Slytherin students may be happy to step in and say good things about the Slytherin who turned out to be a hero. Other witnesses, including students, may have a hard time getting past their anti-Slytherin biases and their belief that Snape murdered Dumbledore. It will take persistence on a par with Rita's and a determined objectivity to get past this mass of muddled memories, preconceptions, and prejudices to find anything like the truth, and, unfortunately, there's no correspondence between, say, DD and Snape to use as supporting evidence (as Rita Skeeter had for Albus's friendship with Gellert). It will help if Snape's Pensieve memories, along with DD's collection, are preserved and if someone allows the biographer access to the memory of Harry's vindication of Snape and Voldemort's last moments. Otherwise, legend will triumph over fact and Harry, now reconciled to celebrity but averse to publicity, probably won't attempt to set the record straight, to the best of his ability, until late in life, if at all. As long as LV is dead, the surviving DEs are safely in Azkaban with no way out (Lucius Malfoy excepted), Kingsley is in charge of the WW, and Snape has a portrait in the headmaster's office, he's probably satisfied. We know that he never cared much about the history of magic and almost never read Bathilda's book.

I suppose our best bet is for Hermione to write a history of magic in the twentieth century to follow up on Bathilda's book. Of course, it would have a pro-Harry, pro-DD bias and it would be hard to write objectively about herself and Ron, but she might attempt to do justice to Snape, just as she recognized that the boy Snape, the HBP, though perhaps "dodgy," was not evil.

But, that possibility aside, we see in the two accounts of DD's life, Doge's eulogy and Skeeter's scandal-laced biography, the two extremes of historical-biographical writing and forms of distortion that will probably appear in accounts of the Battle of Hogwarts. None will dare to praise Voldemort, but objectivity will be difficult to come by. We see that all the time in Muggle historical writing. Even when written sources are available, they reflect the writer's bias (conservative or liberal; British or French or American; Yorkist or Lancastrian; or whatever, depending on the era and the part of the world in question) and the preconceptions of the historian. Absolute accuracy and objectivity, like perfect recall of events we witness, is humanly impossible, and even events witnessed in a Pensieve would be subject to the witness's interpretation, as we see with Harry's reactions to his many Pensieve excursions (and, for that matter, his interpretation of what he sees himself as recorded by the narrator).

So, will Harry continue to be a hero to the majority of the WW? Yes, though I think his status will be reduced to that of a celebrity who once did something important for the country. Will DD be like many dead leaders on the winning side, remembered for his accomplishments and forgiven for his many failings? Yes, I think so. Eventually, he'll become a Merlin figure, a famous Great Wizard on the Chocolate Frog cards and a name on the History of Magic OWL. And Snape? It's hard to say. Maybe other children besides Albus Severus, mostly the sons of Slytherins who liked and admired him, will name their kids after Slytherin's most famous hero. Or maybe he'll become like Richard III, with people still taking sides and debating his motives five hundred years after his death.

Carol, freewriting on Columbus Day morning and wishing everyone who has the day off an enjoyable free Monday