CoS 18

[pauraque_bk]

Chapter 17 generated an unusual amount of discussion! Y'all are smart kids. :*


CoS 18: Dobby's Reward

[...]just as Harry found himself and Ron being swept up into Mrs Weasley's tight embrace.
'You saved her! You saved her! How did you do it?' (241)

I think it's weird that we're not shown Molly hugging *Ginny*, just the boys. The way Ginny is treated in this chapter is weird generally. More on this in a few pages.

[Dumbledore:] 'Very few people know that Lord Voldemort was once called Tom Riddle. I taught him myself, fifty years ago, at Hogwarts. He disappeared after leaving the school ... travelled far and wide ... sank so deeply into the Dark Arts, consorted with the very worst of our kind, underwent so many dangerous, magical transformations, that when he resurfaced as Lord Voldemort, he was barely recognisable. Hardly anyone connected Lord Voldemort with the clever, handsome boy who was once Head Boy here.' (242)

Except the "intimate friends" with whom Tom was already using the name at school! One wonders who they were... or if they even existed. We know Tom was a favorite of the staff, but was he popular? A half-blood in Slytherin today would meet with bigotry, but was that the case in the 1930s and 40s? Was he admired for his accomplishments, or seen as a geek, a weird uber-smart teacher's pet? Early on, I think it's Harry who compares Tom to Percy (though it might have been Ron, I can't recall).

Dumbledore offers no indication of *why* Tom disappeared, nor whether he set off to explore the Dark Arts or merely fell into them. My sense is that he was already interested in immortality, which could be confirmed by his urge to "back up" his memories in diary form, as caesia390 commented in Chapter 13. I can't find it now, but someone also said in a comment that it makes sense for him to have a great interest in permanence and personal security, given his childhood circumstances.

[Dumbledore:] 'This has been a terrible ordeal for her. There will be no punishment. Older and wiser wizards than she have been hoodwinked by Lord Voldemort. [...] Bed rest and perhaps a large, steaming mug of hot chocolate. I always find that cheers me up [...] You will find that Madam Pomfrey is still awake. She's just giving out Mandrake juice -- I dare say the Basilisk's victims will be waking up any moment.' (243)

We talked about this passage a bit in the last post. How can it be considered sufficient to "not punish" an 11-year-old kid who's been mentally violated, forced to do terrible things, and very nearly killed? To dismiss her suffering with a prescription of bed rest and chocolate (even considering its known magical properties) seems like madness. But it's not inconsistent with the wizarding world's general attitude toward suffering and psychological damage -- these things just aren't taken seriously.

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. The last time we see her in this book, she's giggling over Percy and his girlfriend (250), and we hear nothing more from her about the events of CoS until OotP, where she seems offended that the incident slipped Harry's mind. But who can blame him? All the other characters seem to want nothing more than to gloss the whole thing over.

On another note, in the last chapter gmth quite reasonably asked how Nick was able to take the potion. _hannelore suggested that splashing it on him could work, but aside from that, I haven't the foggiest. Nick is mentioned once in passing in PoA, but what happened the previous year is not remarked upon.

'Am I a Professor?' said Lockhart in mild surprise. 'Goodness. I expect I was hopeless, was I?' (244)

Again, we don't know the exact nature of Lockhart's mental state here, but if we can take this as something he truly believes about himself -- or believed about himself at one time -- it's very interesting indeed.

'He tried to do a Memory Charm and the wand backfired,' Ron explained quietly to Dumbledore.
'Dear me,' said Dumbledore, shaking his head, his long silver moustache quivering. 'Impaled upon your own sword, Gilderoy!' (244)

Hm, so Dumbledore knows about Lockhart's memory-modifying ways. And appears to be amused by his fate! I think this supports the notion that Dumbledore hired Lockhart in the first place to teach him a lesson of some kind.

'You can speak Parseltongue, Harry,' said Dumbledore calmly, 'because Lord Voldemort -- who is the last remaining descendant of Salazar Slytherin -- can speak Parseltongue. Unless I'm very much mistaken, he transferred some of his own powers to you the night he gave you that scar. Not something he intended to do, I'm sure...' (245)

And yet, after intentionally pouring his soul into Ginny, she's left unscathed. Right-o.

'It only put me in Gryffindor,' said Harry in a defeated voice, 'because I asked not to go in Slytherin...'
'Exactly,' said Dumbledore, beaming once more. 'Which makes you very different from Tom Riddle. It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.' (245)

Man, where to start with this?

1) When Harry asked for anything but Slytherin, he wasn't making an informed decision. He'd heard some exaggerated claims about what Slytherins are like, and, more immediately, wanted to avoid getting stuck in a dorm with a kid he already disliked.

2) It's hard to read this and come up with anything but "Slytherin is bad", which is just... sigh. Possibly "personal ambition is bad", which goes along with Lockhart's severe punishment, but ambition is Slytherin's symbolic trait, so there you are again. Is Harry virtuous not because he fought to save Ginny, but because he chose to wear red and gold?

3) It may not be the best of ideas to incorporate a major "free choice" theme into a story where you've also got real prophecies, not to mention a time travel event that's depicted in a way that suggests pre-destination. If for no other reason than that it makes my little head hurt.

[Dumbledore to Lucius:] '[...] Several of them seemed to think that you had threatened to curse their families if they didn't agree to suspend me in the first place.' (246)

Mm. The implication being that Lucius is more powerful than your average wizard, I guess. Special Dark Powers?

'And imagine,' Dumbledore went on, 'what might have happened then ... The Weasleys are one of our most prominent pure-blood families. Imagine the effect on Arthur Weasley and his Muggle Protection Act, if his own daughter was discovered attacking and killing Muggle-borns[...]' (247)

This seems to be conjecture on Dumbledore's part. It makes sense, but only Lucius knows for certain.

[...]and Lucius Malfoy had been sacked as a school governor. (250)

Who appoints and dismisses the school governors, I wonder?

And together they walked back through the gateway to the Muggle world. (251)

And that's that.


After allowing time for discussion of this chapter, I'll do a wrap-up post. The rest of the re-read posts are here.

Comments

[millefiori.livejournal.com]

Re: Ginny. Might she have been a disappointment for the Weasleys? They might have been expecting a seventh son, and instead they got a girl.

I always interpreted it as Molly and/or Arthur wanting a girl (since there hadn't been a Weasley girl in some godawful long stretch of time) and just continuing to churn out children until they finally got what they wanted. Which doesn't necessarily preclude her being a disappointment to them. If they had some convoluted idea of what a daughter was supposed to be like and Ginny didn't fit the mold, they could be disappointed with her. Molly in particular seems to very fixated on her kids fitting into a mold rather than appreciating them for themselves.

[serriadh.livejournal.com]

Do we know if Arthur has many brothers/sisters? Because the seventh son of a seventh son can have some fairly powerful connotations IIRC. Perhaps that's why they were disappointed in Ginny?

SS x

[millefiori.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure, but I'm assuming no sisters, since JKR said Ginny was the first Weasley girl in something like seven generations. (I'm afraid I'm very fuzzy on that quote.)

I wasn't aware of the seventh son of a seventh son thing, so that didn't occur to me!

[pauraque]

I felt certain there was a statement denying that Arthur had six brothers on JKRowling.com, but a quick look didn't reveal it. Maybe there's evidence of this elsewhere, or maybe I'm imagining things!

[snakeling]

That's a good explanation. High expectations crushed by the harsh reality ;)

I was more thinking along the lines of the seventh son of a seventh son. There's been no girls in the Weasley family for a long time, so it is not that much of a stretch to imagine that Arthur might be a seventh son. Arthur and Molly might have been trying to get seven sons too, but the birth of Ginny would have dashed all their hopes as the seven sons have to be born in a row.

Re: Molly fitting their kids in a mold. That's an excellent point. I'm particularly reminded of her exchange with Ron and the twins in OotP. I'm too lazy to look it up, but it's the one that goes:

Molly: Oh Ron, you're a prefect, that makes everyone in the family!
Twins: What are we, chopped liver?

It certainly seems as though she ignores everything and everyone that do not fit into the molds she provided for them.

The maroon jumpers, too, are a proof of that. She does not bother to check that Ron likes maroon, or even that it goes with his hair; she has decided that Ron's jumpers would be maroon, and so they are. I wonder whether the other kids also get the same colour in jumpers.

[millefiori.livejournal.com]

the seven sons have to be born in a row.

I'm not familiar with the seventh son thing. If having a girl born in between ruins it, mightn't Fred and George muck it up too, being born of the same pregnancy?

Molly: Oh Ron, you're a prefect, that makes everyone in the family!

You know, she's not only slamming the twins here, but Ginny as well! It also bothers me that she has a policy of buying things--in this case a new broomstick--when one of her kids meets one of her goals, but not when there's something they need.

I suspect I judge Molly a bit harshly because she's the sort of person I don't like in real life, I don't think she's a good mother in the books, and I think being one of her kids would be a nightmare. (Why did Bill and Charlie both take jobs in other countries?!)

[snakeling]

I did some research, and it seems that the seventh son of a seventh son is pretty universal and cross-cultural, in that they're supposed to be special. But, about everybody disagree on what "special" means *g* It can mean anything from "gifted for healing" to "most predisposed to become a vampire".

The only time I found a mention of the seven sons in a row was in legends about the Argentinian werewolf. I doubt that the Weasleys intended for their seventh son to become a lobisón, and anyway, AFAWK, they have no ties with Argentina.

I'm completely with you re: Molly :) I suspect that if I were to meet her, I would run screaming the other way in two seconds flat.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I don't think having a girl would make any difference actually. My main understanding of the "seventh son" idea comes from The Dark is Rising where the main character (boy wizard) is one, but he's actually the tenth child born. He thinks he's the sixth son until finding out when he's 11 that his parents' first child died as a baby, making him the seventh. His parents merely say that there were some jokes about him being the 7th son of a 7th son, but that they stopped pretty quickly because they didn't want him to get any silly, superstitious ideas about having a sixth sense or something.

[serriadh.livejournal.com]

that's where I first heard it as well. In Terry Pratchett, I think the same idea is used, but it's the 8th son of an 8th son, because 8 is his magic number.
I'd forgotten Will was actually 10th child.

[slinkhard.livejournal.com]

It also bothers me that she has a policy of buying things--in this case a new broomstick--when one of her kids meets one of her goals.

Interesting association with Lucius Malfoy of all people, there - you don't get presents, you get specific rewards for attaining set guidelines.
Which would probably horrify Lucius and Molly!