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

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

The good guys are usually identified in terms of their loyalty to Dumbledore . . . Everything Dumbledore presents seems designed to make kids feel safe, even when they aren't.

Well, I'm willing to concede that Dumbledore tolerates a cult of personality. :) But I honestly think a more important issue is the set of attitudes he encourages in his followers. And to me, he definitely does not seem to encourage a habit of dependence on himself, or passivity in the absence of his direction. I mean, in PS/SS and CoS the Trio are his favorites because of how judiciously they act on their own initiative, even after his warning about rulebreaking at the beginning of CoS. At the climax of PoA, he even encourages Harry and Hermione to go on a dangerous mission with the time turner, which they pretty much have to improvise. And a huge issue in OOTP is that he's not around, that Harry is forced to rely on himself.

I think it's too simple to say that he "makes the kids feel safe, even when they aren't." I think maybe a fairer formula is that he makes the kids not feel despair, even when things are going badly. And that's not necessarily about a fatuous optimism or false feeling of security -- ideally it's about an intelligent acceptance of risk and a commitment to hope and action.

Look, for instance, at D's opening lecture in PS/SS. He mentions, quite calmly, that people should stay away from the Forbidden Forest (and I believe also the third floor corridor?) or else "they will die a horrible death" or something like that. That's all -- a plain statement of facts, no big warning signs posted, or barbed wire to actually keep you out. It's a dangerous world, and you start by accepting that -- no one's going to baby you, and you have to show a certain prudence. When Dumbledore fails, I think people also make a mistake in thinking this disproves his message, because "no guarantees, no safety" is an essential part of his message.

Moreover, what you say about Dumbledore not caring about the essentials and true definition of a house really supports the idea that he dislikes Slytherin and can't be arsed to actually figure out who they really are. After all, they're the kids who choose power over all else and are thus bad.

I don't know, I think we're talking slightly at cross purposes here. I don't agree that D is ignoring the true, essential nature of the Houses. I think his point is that there is no such essential nature, or at least that it is wildly exaggerated. Harry rejecting Slytherin does not equal Harry rejecting power just because Slytherin = power. It has to do with Harry's own specific circumstances, what Slytherin might have meant to Harry. For someone else, Slytherin might not be about power so much as family tradition, or a certain way of life, or a certain approach to solving problems. I know this reading contradicts a lot of what we take for granted about Slytherin, but aren't we all often complaining about Harry's limited and one-sided POV on Slytherin?

I think that on some levels he tries his best. On other levels, though, I think that he's complacent, or doesn't understand people at all, or has priorities that are just completely out of place.

Let me, just for the sake of argument, turn these points upside down: Maybe "trying his best" is all anyone can do, and expecting more represents a kind of "magical thinking" that is to be discouraged. Maybe "complacency" is a function of his age, his having seen it all, including some real horrors, so that he's gotten well past his young students' narcissistic denial that awful things can happen, and works with the world as he finds it. And maybe his different priorities are a function of his wisdom, which may in fact be a two-edged and somewhat cruel thing.

Back over to you! :)

[arclevel.livejournal.com]

Starting at the bottom again - I work best that way. ;-)

Maybe "trying his best" is all anyone can do, and expecting more represents a kind of "magical thinking" that is to be discouraged.

I didn't mean that he should do more, actually. That was the "compliment" part of the statement, and I was trying to acknowledge that we do expect more from him than is always reasonable. In other words, I agree. :-)

I think I understand what you're saying about the Slytherin speech a little better now. What you say actually *is* how I see Slytherin (family tradition, etc). I just don't get the impression that's how Dumbledore sees it. Or if he does, then he makes no attempt to quell the wholly bad perception that students in other houses have of it, and I have a problem with that. Here, Harry expresses horror that he was considered for Slytherin, and rather than suggest that there wouldn't have been anything wrong in that, he'd still be a good person, or some other house-neutral statement, he reinforces Harry's opinion that Slytherin is innately bad by reassuring him that he is a good person because he chose Gryffindor. Perhaps that's not how Dumbledore meant it -- I expect that consciously it wasn't -- but I think that's clearly how it came across. If, as you say, D'dore was talking specifically about a rejection of personal gain, than I think that makes some inaccurate assumptions about Harry's conversation with the Sorting Hat and reasoning about houses (which wouldn't be out-of-character for him). Given that, since those are the assumptions that he made, that suggests to me an assumption that those are the first things that do come to mind when he thinks of Slytherin House, even if he knows full well that students join it for other reasons.

He mentions, quite calmly, that people should stay away from the Forbidden Forest (and I believe also the third floor corridor?) or else "they will die a horrible death" or something like that. That's all -- a plain statement of facts, no big warning signs posted, or barbed wire to actually keep you out. It's a dangerous world, and you start by accepting that -- no one's going to baby you, and you have to show a certain prudence.

To clarify, it was the corridor, not the Forest. However, this is partly my point. That is not something you should do with eleven-year-old kids (or 17-yo's, really). HRH-Neville wound up in that corridor, not because they were trying to explore against Dumbledore's precautions, but because they were freaked out, so they ran, and that's where they wound up. Moreover, Harry and Ron were trying to get into that corridor during their first week -- because they were lost! He sets up highly dangerous things within the school, then significantly understates the danger involved to a large group of teenagers, and doesn't so much as note in that area that students are please not to enter. It's stunning to me that more people *didn't* find out what was in that corridor (assuming, in fact, that they didn't).

Additionally, I think Dumbledore's grandfatherly demeanor and public image are really what cause people to assume that they're safe as long as he's around. (Until OotP, when his public image does a 270 overnight.) Back to PoA, Molly's reasoning for not telling Harry about Sirius was that Harry shouldn't have to worry and that he was safe as long as Dumbledore was around. Of course, this is largely Molly's way of dealing with kids and teens, but I doubt she'd feel this way if Dumbledore were successful in getting people to be careful of their own safety. This may not be entirely his fault, of course; you can only control people's perceptions of you to an extent. It's not actually something I blame him for, really. I just think that if that is, in fact, his goal, he's not doing well at it.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I think part of it is the "correct" response to Harry's fears just seems so obvious. Like, even if Dumbledore wants to stress that Harry should never worry that he's "supposed" to be anything when he makes himself what he is, it seems like of course he should first say that being put in Slytherin would not have made Harry a bad person. He'd be just who he is now, in a different color tie. It's just hard to think that any headmaster would stand for someone ccasually assuming that being put in one house makes you a bad person. In these days of political correctness it just seems like a no brainer.

Maybe JKR doesn't have Dumbledore say this because she's planning to *show it* in later books, or maybe we really are supposed to think of the house just the way Harry does. It's just that second possibility is very hard to do.

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

Given that, since those are the assumptions that he made, that suggests to me an assumption that those are the first things that do come to mind when he thinks of Slytherin House, even if he knows full well that students join it for other reasons.

Sorry for delayed reply, but I finally went and looked at the conversation between DD and Harry again. Actually, I think he does find a way to say nice things about Slytherin --

Listen to me, Harry. You happen to have many qualities Salazar Slytherin prized in his hand-picked students. His very own rare gift, Parseltongue -- resourcefulness -- determination -- a certain disregard for rules," he added, his moustache quivering again.

Again, sorry to persist in a quibble :) but this doesn't strike me as someone who's got a stereotypically hostile view of Slytherin. There's a certain delicacy and carefulness to it -- it's measured praise calculated to be something Harry is able to assimilate without getting into too much emotionally threating stuff about what Slytherin means. But it's still praise. It just remains hard for me to assume that Dumbledore, who has a high regard for Snape, who values the portrait of Phineas Nigellus, and who is tight with the Sorting Hat, himself possesses Harry's prejudices about Slytherin.

To clarify, it was the corridor, not the Forest.

Thanks for the clarification. You make a pretty reasonable point that the Corridor could have been better secured, just as a matter of prudence. I wonder how dangerous Fluffy really was, though, and whether it was reasonable to assume he would block any students from encountering the more dangerous barriers?

[pauraque]

I mean, in PS/SS and CoS the Trio are his favorites because of how judiciously they act on their own initiative, even after his warning about rulebreaking at the beginning of CoS. At the climax of PoA, he even encourages Harry and Hermione to go on a dangerous mission with the time turner, which they pretty much have to improvise. And a huge issue in OOTP is that he's not around, that Harry is forced to rely on himself.

You know, you're right. And this is the aspect where Dumbledore *does* effectively behave as God (following on from my other comment). Dumbledore helps those who help themselves, but it'll be easier on them if they have faith that he'll return, if they show him loyalty.

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

And in this way, perhaps, having faith in Dumbledore is a stage in teaching them to have faith in themselves.