Chapdisc CoS 6 / Snape and Harry and Legilimency / Chapdisc Cos 7

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 188964


> Carol wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/188953>:
> 
> << It was certainly unfair that Harry was given a superior broom in SS/PS (and put on the team rather than being punished for disobeying a teacher) >>

Catlady responded: 
> Okay, Harry should have been punished for disobeying a teacher, but it would have been unfair if he were punished and Draco wasn't. But that he got a place on the Quidditch team and a broom is not unfair. First, it was already established that the team was looking for a Seeker, and that there had been players as young as Harry in the past (a mere century ago!). Second, every player on each House team got a decent broom. I think Harry's Nimbus 2000 was paid for with money from his own Gringott's vault, not paid for by McGonagall or Dumbledore.
>
Carol responds:

that's not the impression I got. I think if Harry's money had been used, we'd have learned about it. (McGonagall would have told him.) I think she desperately wanted a Seeker and couldn't resist the opportunity. (If Harry had been a Ravenclaw, would she have run to Flitwick to tell him that she'd spotted the perfect new Seeker in training for the Ravenclaw team? I think not. If it had been Draco who had caught the Snitch, would she have reported the incident to Snape? I'm sure that she wouldn't have.)  

As for other team members having decent brooms, they have what their parents can afford. Oliver (I think) points out Cho Chang's inferior broom in OoP, and Ron rides the broom he got as his reward for becoming a Prefect (a Comet 260 or whatever). When Harry's Nimbus 2000 is smashed by the Whomping Willow, he has to ride a school broom until Sirius Black sends him a replacement (and while the replacement is confiscated).

Harry caught that Snitch, a feat that not even the legendary Charlie Weasley could have accomplished (or so McGonagall says), yet Harry was an untrained first-year on a school broom used to train first-years to fly. Harry doesn't need a new broom, especially not the best available at the time, nor does he deserve one after having violated a teacher's instructions. (If the punishment for breaking the rules is being made a Seeker, Draco should have been made one, too. After all, McGonagall neither knows nor cares about Harry's good intentions in retrieving the Remembrall, and when her interests aren't at stake, she attempts to enforce the rules fairly.

Carol, thinking that this is one of those points we'll never agree on