I think it's weird that we're not shown Molly hugging *Ginny*, just the boys.
Yes, sometimes I seriously wonder about these books and girls. Does it mean something that Molly only ever seems affectionate towards men? Is that why there just aren't many examples of female-closeness in the books? Hermione and Ginny seem like sisters-in-law to me.
A half-blood in Slytherin today would meet with bigotry, but was that the case in the 1930s and 40s?
Despite Draco, I can't get a handle on Slytherin's views. Their password is Pureblood, right? (Smart--it's the word everybody associates with them. What was the next password...bigot? Ethnic cleansing? Clumsy Aryan Parallel?) But then Draco never calls Harry a half-bloodle, despite his mother being Muggleborn. I seem to recall Tom Riddle being more focused on Harry's being a half-blood but not Draco. Anyway, that leads me to believe I don't know even how Draco breaks it all down, much less Slytherin house.
One can debate the rightness of that in the characters and their culture, but that's a separate question from whether JKR herself is taking Ginny's trauma seriously, and there's precious little evidence that she is.
On one hand one could make a case that nowadays we're too focused on trauma in the wrong way. Our modern conventions of focusing on traumatic events as life-ending or altering is sometimes destructive. So on principle I'm okay with caring for the person's physical needs and letting nature heal them naturally. (Though here seems more like they literally don't think anything of it.)
Then there's the other problem, that we're talking about possession here and Harry, as you say, has apparently become linked to Voldemort through less than this. All Voldemort did to him was throw a curse at him that backfired on him, so why assume Ginny's prolonged experience had no lasting effects? In OotP she claims to be the only one who knows what it feels like to be possessed but her experience and Harry's seem different.
I think this supports the notion that Dumbledore hired Lockhart in the first place to teach him a lesson of some kind.
While I agree with the person who said he could just be referring to the spell itself backfiring, it does seem hard to believe that Dumbledore doesn't know the truth about Lockhart anyway, doesn't it?
Man, where to start with this?
Ugh, so ridiculous. In fact, I don't even buy the part about Harry's choosing against being successful just because the hat tells him he could do well in Slytherin, since the hat doesn't hint at all that Slytherin is the *only* place where Harry can do well; he sounds like he's just feeling Harry out about how he feels about the house. Anyway, it still comes down to Harry obviously not wanting this house because the people he's liked so far don't like it and the people he doesn't like so far do like it.
Dumbledore seems to practically be saying outright here that Slytherin sucks--and I wouldn't be surprised if along with thinking Slytherin proved bad character he also thought Gryffindor showed superior character (so Hermione also proved a better person by preferring it to Ravenclaw). He's just such a jerk about it and it's amazing his final message of the book is, "You did good, Harry. You proved you were loyal to me and my house!"
The Sorting Hat should be the Headmaster. Or let Phineas have the job back. He seems to see the students as students or spotty teens and that's about it. I doubt this will come to pass, but I wonder if the Hat saw Harry's rejecting Slytherin as a bad thing because he's the only member of the staff who thinks of Slytherin as an equal house.
The implication being that Lucius is more powerful than your average wizard, I guess. Special Dark Powers?
As someone else mentioned, if he has these special powers why are they not afraid to kick him off the board? Although I'm sure we're supposed to take Dumbledore's word here, frankly isn't it just as in character for the wizards to have lied about their motives now Dumbledore's back? It's certainly more interesting to me to believe that, but I think it almost fits more in with what we've seen.
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Date: 2004-11-10 02:06 pm (UTC)Yes, sometimes I seriously wonder about these books and girls. Does it mean something that Molly only ever seems affectionate towards men? Is that why there just aren't many examples of female-closeness in the books? Hermione and Ginny seem like sisters-in-law to me.
A half-blood in Slytherin today would meet with bigotry, but was that the case in the 1930s and 40s?
Despite Draco, I can't get a handle on Slytherin's views. Their password is Pureblood, right? (Smart--it's the word everybody associates with them. What was the next password...bigot? Ethnic cleansing? Clumsy Aryan Parallel?) But then Draco never calls Harry a half-bloodle, despite his mother being Muggleborn. I seem to recall Tom Riddle being more focused on Harry's being a half-blood but not Draco. Anyway, that leads me to believe I don't know even how Draco breaks it all down, much less Slytherin house.
One can debate the rightness of that in the characters and their culture, but that's a separate question from whether JKR herself is taking Ginny's trauma seriously, and there's precious little evidence that she is.
On one hand one could make a case that nowadays we're too focused on trauma in the wrong way. Our modern conventions of focusing on traumatic events as life-ending or altering is sometimes destructive. So on principle I'm okay with caring for the person's physical needs and letting nature heal them naturally. (Though here seems more like they literally don't think anything of it.)
Then there's the other problem, that we're talking about possession here and Harry, as you say, has apparently become linked to Voldemort through less than this. All Voldemort did to him was throw a curse at him that backfired on him, so why assume Ginny's prolonged experience had no lasting effects? In OotP she claims to be the only one who knows what it feels like to be possessed but her experience and Harry's seem different.
I think this supports the notion that Dumbledore hired Lockhart in the first place to teach him a lesson of some kind.
While I agree with the person who said he could just be referring to the spell itself backfiring, it does seem hard to believe that Dumbledore doesn't know the truth about Lockhart anyway, doesn't it?
Man, where to start with this?
Ugh, so ridiculous. In fact, I don't even buy the part about Harry's choosing against being successful just because the hat tells him he could do well in Slytherin, since the hat doesn't hint at all that Slytherin is the *only* place where Harry can do well; he sounds like he's just feeling Harry out about how he feels about the house. Anyway, it still comes down to Harry obviously not wanting this house because the people he's liked so far don't like it and the people he doesn't like so far do like it.
Dumbledore seems to practically be saying outright here that Slytherin sucks--and I wouldn't be surprised if along with thinking Slytherin proved bad character he also thought Gryffindor showed superior character (so Hermione also proved a better person by preferring it to Ravenclaw). He's just such a jerk about it and it's amazing his final message of the book is, "You did good, Harry. You proved you were loyal to me and my house!"
The Sorting Hat should be the Headmaster. Or let Phineas have the job back. He seems to see the students as students or spotty teens and that's about it. I doubt this will come to pass, but I wonder if the Hat saw Harry's rejecting Slytherin as a bad thing because he's the only member of the staff who thinks of Slytherin as an equal house.
The implication being that Lucius is more powerful than your average wizard, I guess. Special Dark Powers?
As someone else mentioned, if he has these special powers why are they not afraid to kick him off the board? Although I'm sure we're supposed to take Dumbledore's word here, frankly isn't it just as in character for the wizards to have lied about their motives now Dumbledore's back? It's certainly more interesting to me to believe that, but I think it almost fits more in with what we've seen.