GoF 27

[pauraque_bk]

GoF 27: Padfoot Returns

And so do we. By popular demand, I think I can fairly say!

[Rita's article:] However, it might not be Miss Granger's doubtful natural charms which have captured these unfortunate boys' interest.

'She's really ugly,' says Pansy Parkinson, a pretty and vivacious fourth-year student, 'but she'd be well up to making a Love Potion, she's quite brainy. I think that's how she's doing it.' (444)

If you like the theory that Ginny's using a love potion in HBP, here's more foreshadowing.

'I told you!' Ron hissed at Hermione, as she stared down at the article. 'I told you not to annoy Rita Skeeter! She's made you out to be some sort of -- of scarlet woman!'

Hermione stopped looking astonished and snorted with laughter.

'Scarlet woman?' she repeated, shaking with suppressed giggles as she looked round at Ron.

'It's what my mum calls them,' Ron muttered, his ears going red again. (445)

Certainly reminiscent of Ron's "D'you think I want peo­ple saying my sister's a--" in HBP, though I doubt he was going to say "scarlet woman" that time. Ron is very worried about the girls he cares about being seen as sluts.

'If that's the best Rita can do, she's losing her touch,' said Hermione, still giggling, as she threw Witch Weekly onto the empty chair besdie her. 'What a pile of old rubbish.'

She looked over at the Slytherins, who were all watching her and Harry closely across the room to see if they had been upset by the article. Hermione gave them a sarcastic smile and a wave[...] (445)

I don't know whether this should be a surprising reaction from her. Instead of getting upset at the petty bullies, she later exacts her revenge on Rita, the one who's really done her wrong.

'Ah ... reading magazines under the table as well?' Snape added, snatching up the copy of Witch Weekly. 'A further ten points from Gryffindor ... oh, but of course ...' Snape's black eyes glittered as they fell on Rita Skeeter's article. 'Potter has to keep up with his press cuttings...'

The dungeon rang with the Slytherins' laughter, and an unpleasant smile curled Snape's thin mouth. To Harry's fury, he began to read the article aloud.

'Harry Potter's Secret Heartache ... dear, dear, Potter, what's ailing you now? A boy like no other, perhaps...'

Harry could feel his face burning now. Snape was pausing at the end of every sentence to allow the Slytherins a hearty laugh. The article sounded ten times worse when read by Snape. (446-447)

It's a pretty long article, too! I hope no one was actually trying to, you know, do some schoolwork while Snape was hamming it up. This is one of those times where you can't really justify Snape's behavior; he's just being an ass.

Interestingly, we get no reaction shots from Hermione here. Perhaps because the entire performance is really directed at Harry, as we can see when Snape moves Harry to sit in front of his desk, and carries on:

'You might be labouring under the delusion that the entire wizarding world is impressed with you,' Snape went on, so quietly that no one else could hear him [...] 'but I don't care how many times your picture appears in the papers. To me, Potter, you are nothing but a nasty little boy who considers rules to be beneath him.' (447)

Which is nothing we haven't heard before from him, though every time Snape complains about Harry "breaking rules" it sounds very disingenuous to me. Snape doesn't hate Harry because he thinks rules are beneath him, but because of James (and I don't think he hated James because he "broke rules" either).

Anyway, this segues into:

'So I give you fair warning, Potter,' Snape continued, in a softer and more dangerous voice, 'pint-sized celebrity or not -- if I catch you breaking into my office one more time--' (448)

'[...]But unless you watch your step, you might just find that my hand slips --' he shook the crystal bottle slightly '--right over your evening pumpkin juice[...]' (449)

Though the context is not the same, I'm surprised at how closely the dialogue here matches the "closet scene" in the movie. Of course, the movie doesn't convey Harry's reaction very well:

He didn't like the sound of that Truth Potion at all, and nor would he put it past Snape to slip him some. He repressed a shudder at the thought of what might come spilling out of his mouth if Snape did [...] there were all the other things he was concealing ... like the fact that he was in contact with Sirius ... and -- his insides squirmed at tthe thought -- how he felt about Cho ... (449)

Nice foreshadowing of the Occlumency plotline in OotP, how strongly he resists Snape's intrusion into his memories of kissing Cho -- ie, his sexual feelings (the ones that make him feel all squirmy inside! my goodness). Snarry isn't my favorite pairing, but I will totally grant that there's a wealth of relevant canon to make it more interesting.

Next comes the Trio's visit to Sirius's Cave of Angst and Rat-Eating. I always found this scene sort of pointless, and didn't resent it not being included in the movie, but now that I look more closely at it, it's actually very nice as a character interlude.

[Harry says Crouch Sr has been ill.]

'Getting his comeuppance for sacking Winky, isn't he?' said Hermione coldly. She was stroking Buckbeak, who was crunching up Sirius' chicken bones. (453)

Hermione's protectiveness of Winky is obliquely compared to affection for an animal, not a human being. Clever.

Sirius paced all around the cave in silence. Then he said, 'Harry, did you check your pockets for your wand after you'd left the Top Box?'

[...]

'Are you saying whoever conjured the Mark stole my wand in the Top Box?'

'It's possible,' said Sirius.

'Winky didn't steal that wand!' said Hermione shrilly.

'The elf wasn't the only one in that box,' said Sirius[...] (454)

Indeed not. But as usual, Sirius's advice is of mixed value. He raises some valid points and introduces a lot of information, but also casts doubt on a number of innocent characters.

'Oh, I know Crouch all right,' he said quietly. 'He was the one who gave the order for me to be sent to Azkaban -- without a trial. [...] Crouch used to be Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, didn't you know? [...] Crouch fought violence with violence, and authorised the use of the Unforgivable Curses against suspects. I would say he became as ruthless and cruel as many on the Dark side.' (456-457)

It's not clear whether Crouch had special wartime powers that someone in his position wouldn't normally have. Ron gasps along with Hermione at the revelation that Crouch imprisoned Sirius without a trial, but is it the act that shocks him, or the person who committed it?

'Most go mad in [Azkaban], and plenty stop eating in the end. [...] You could always tell when a death was coming, because the Dementors could sense it, they got excited. [...] Crouch never came for his son's body. The Dementors buried him outside he fortress, I watched them do it.'

Sirius threw aside the bread he had just lifted to his mouth, and instead picked up the flask of pumpkin juice and drained it. (459)

That last is surely significant. The Trio brought that pumpkin juice, so it's not spiked, but doesn't it seem that Sirius reaches for a drink out of habit, subconsciously wishing to dispell the horrible memories he's just relived? Very much the Sirius of OotP who smells of stale alcohol, I think.

The image of Dementors burying a corpse is perhaps a little strange, but they are corporeal, so it's not completely absurd. The point is that a human gravedigger would have noticed it wasn't really Crouch Jr, but his mother, I expect.

'So you think Snape could be up to something, then?' asked Harry, but Hermione broke in.

'Look, I don't care what you say, Dumbledore trusts Snape--'

'Oh, come off it, Hermione,' said Ron impatiently, 'I know Dumbledore's brilliant and everything, but that doesn't mean a really clever Dark wizard couldn't fool him--'

'Why did Snape save Harry's life in the first year, then? Why didn't he just let him die?'

'I dunno -- maybe he thought Dumbledore would kick him out--'

'What d'you think, Sirius?' Harry said loudly, and Ron and Hermione stopped bickering to listen. (460)

This exchange works on two levels. With an example of his occasional uncanny intuition, Ron tells us the truth, but in a form we don't recognize.

Simultaneously, Ron and Hermione speak as Harry's inner voices, arguing back and forth until Harry himself has to yell for them to shut up, seeking a second opinion outside his own head. (Someone he sees as wise, though we may not agree.)

'[Snape] was part of a gang of Slytherins who nearly all turned out to be Death Eaters.' (461)

That's Rosier, Wilkes, Bellatrix, Rodolphus, and Avery. If we take what Sirius says in OotP into account, we can add Lucius to the "gang", I reckon. Whether Snape was really friends with any of these people, or was more like their "lap dog", is up for debate.

'He showed Snape something on his arm?' said Sirius, looking frankly bewildered. [...] 'Well, I've no idea what that's about ...' (461)

The practice of marking Death Eaters wasn't and isn't widely known, even to someone who has every reason to know a lot about the DEs. It's sort of hard to imagine how the secret could be kept, unless you accept that the mark could be hidden at will.

[Sirius:] 'And don't forget, if you're talking about me among yourselves, call me Snuffles, OK?' (463)

Aside from just sounding silly, does this actually make sense? Why wouldn't they just call him Padfoot? Or, say... Bob. If you overheard people talking about "Snuffles", wouldn't you be more likely to ask who that was, not less?

Well, aside from that, this is a very nice chapter. I wish they were all like this.


Previous GoF posts are saved in memories here. I should probably go read them too, since it's been so long...

Comments

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

And I'm jumping in as well just to mention this issue elsewhere, that is, the issue of "just ignoring" the Slytherins. The Slytherins (with Snape being the most obvious problem) are often very aggressive. Sometimes they are openly teasing and trying to get a rise out of people. But they aren't *always* doing that. It's Gryffindor policy to ignore or be defensive by default. In the readthrough of PS more people noticed that Draco's actions with the dragon could easily be read as an attempt to make some connection with Harry. Yes, he's going about it in an aggressive way and it's very easy to see why the Trio takes it as they do, but for many readers it still comes across as Draco blatantly trying to be included. I feel the same way when he grabs Neville's Rememberall the first time and asks what it is. It's aggressive, it's haughty, it's Draco's style, but it becomes a fight when Harry and Ron rise up together hoping for a reason to hit him. Draco's opening conversation in the robe shop is also often painted as being a bullying one when to me it doesn't seem that way at all.

In this book there's the scene on the train where Draco comes in seeming to want to talk about the tournament, assuming these people will also be in the know. He arrives with an insult to Ron, but I just don't see the Slytherins as trying to start a fight there, though the Gryffindors respond to it that way.

Again, this isn't to paint a picture of the poor Slytherins trying to be friends while the mean Gryffindors smack them down, but when I read some of those scenes I also don't see a situation where the Slytherins are always attacking and the Gryffindors can only ignore or defend themselves.

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

It baffles me that ignoring people is considered a "mature" response to them, since it really strikes me as nasty, passive-aggressive, and one of the most dehumanizing things you can do to people. But no one would mistake the HP series for a text on mature conflict resolution, or an education in interpersonal skills. Maybe it takes a certain coarseness in interpersonal matters to be a successful Gryffindor type -- you have to simplify the world to act in it so aggressively and unselfconsciously.

I love your take on Draco as a kind of attention-seeker. I hold back a little bit, because I do think he has a streak of sociopath to him that I find troubling -- especially the way he aligns with muggle-killers in CoS, which is one of the few times, for me, that he really goes over the line. (I actually judge him less harshly in HBP because of the pressures on him.) But yeah, a lot of it is just that he has such a craving for attention it's sort of endearing, even if he's not always the most suave about how he goes about seeking it. I've never had a personal problem with the robe-shop scene -- he's obviously trying so hard to make a good impression on his new, potential Hogwarts friend, that I just want to hug him!

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

"Ignore them" is good advice when the Slytherins really are just trying to get a rise out of them. Harry should have ignored Draco on the Quidditch Pitch in OotP, for instance. And when Draco's taunting him I don't think it's rude to ignore him. It's just that it goes beyond that. I think Harry has always come across as someone who judges them all and finds them wanting. It crosses the line between ignoring them until they are polite and just total disdain. It's really the same thing as Harry and Snape--they have no reason to believe that Harry will ever treat them with any respect so ignoring them when they're being jerks isn't like a way of teaching them to treat him better.

I love your take on Draco as a kind of attention-seeker. I hold back a little bit, because I do think he has a streak of sociopath to him that I find troubling -- especially the way he aligns with muggle-killers in CoS, which is one of the few times, for me, that he really goes over the line.

Since HBP I've re-read and re-appreciated Elkins' "Draco the Nutter" essay. I tend to see this streak the way she describes it there. I think JKR is setting up some interest contrasts in evil characters. Tom is a true sociopath having no empathy for others. Snape, from the little we know, seems quite a bit along that path himself. We're told he slithers out of action, but his Sectumsempra spell and apparently successful stint in the DEs (where he rose to prominence) to me suggests a strong stomach for evil deeds. Draco is interesting in that he certain aspires to that. If Muggleborns are not human and are just a disease to be cured or a vermin to be exterminated, the Heir is doing a good thing. He could be a bit like those kids raised by terrorists who are 7 years old and still spouting genocidal rhetoric--not to mention they are willing to blow themselves up in its service. That's the thing about kids, that whatever they grow up with is normal.

But that's not exactly what JKR is doing with Draco, because when he's at his worst, where he's literally facing DE murders and saying they are a good thing, JKR writes him as seeming not truly happy but on the edge, feverish, quivering, overly-bright eyed. A bit mad sounding. So the effect of evil on him is a little different than it is on Tom or Snape. Tom becomes ugly and twisted and inhuman. Snape is still human but is also repulsive and unhappy, bitter. Draco may just shatter and go mad, since embracing this sort of thing always seems accompanied by signs of physical distress: a flushed face, bright eyes, quivering, trembling, grey skin, shadowy eyes, cracked voice, looking like he might throw up. So yeah, the sociopathic streak is definitely something to worry about, but it doesn't manifest the same way as, say, Barty Crouch's does.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

p.s. For clarity's sake. I'm not saying that Draco's sociopathic moments are only important because they hurt him. I think part of the idea is that even if you don't really believe or understand what you're saying your choice to say or act a certain way effects you. So I don't want to make it seem like I'm separating Draco's worst moments from his essential character. They are part of his character, only I think with him we're encouraged to see him weakening himself.

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the rec on the "Draco the Nutter" essay. Maybe the point is to show that Draco, in "evil mode," is painfully posed between accepting and rejecting all the hatefulness? He's fascinated by the possibility of transgression, it excites him -- but at the same time, it does so because it's so highly charged, because part of him does recognize it as breaking out past the limits of his own identity and comfort zone. So he's a basically decent kid who's been introduced to evil, and can't make himself look away from it, and feels a temptation -- but also feels how much of a crackup it would be for him to succumb. And maybe, part of him wants to experience that crackup.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

What a great way of putting it. I mean, I guess you can think of it this way too. Draco comes from a long line of DEs, he's been raised to think Voldemort is the best. But he must be aware of his own terror at the idea, the way he really doesn't thrive on the Dark Arts, certainly not the way Snape does. He's good at certain things, but it seems like his whole personality is based more on shutting down things he's feeling to be what he thinks he's supposed to be. So it makes sense there'd be a desperation there, a desire to just cross over the line hoping that it will either destroy him or make him stronger. Only it doesn't seem to do either. He never appears to be able to make himself fully numb or lose it. Not yet anyway. The amazing thing about DD's offer is he seemed to be offering a solution that wasn't completely unpleasant--his family is offered safety? And he doesn't have to kill anybody? What's the catch?

[pilly2009.livejournal.com]

Hope you don't mind me joining in a little late in the game. Those touchy Gryffindors.

But for the sake of argument, I don't really recall anything aggressive starting up from the Norbert fiasco between Draco and the Trio, passive-aggressive or otherwise. They never confronted him about what he'd seen, and to the best of my knowledge, the only time Draco confronted them was when he visited Ron in the hospital wing (and I don't think we're ever given the full description of what happened there). Yes, they reacted defensively, concocted a scheme to get Norbert out of the school ASAP, but this was also in reaction to a very real concern -- Malfoy could have gone to a professor at any time, and if not him, someone else could easily have done so too.

And about the infamous robe-shop scene...surprisingly, I do agree that Draco was not being a bully there in the least, though I do feel that there were underlying issues there that prevented Draco and Harry from becoming friends, issues that aren't placed solely on Harry's shoulders. To C&P something I once said to onlyinfatuated (though it has more to do with the Hogwarts Express scene than the robe shop scene):

Next meeting on the Hogwarts Express: for all the griping about how little Harry said to Draco during their first meeting, it must be pointed out that he didn't even open his mouth to the first two lines Ron said to him -- even though Ron was also asking him questions about himself, as Draco did. This wasn't instant preference. Harry didn't just fall madly in love with the Weasley-red hair and decide "that's it, I'm going to be their friend". He was just as socially repressed with Ron as he was with Draco.

Which is why I think the differences in Ron and Draco's characters (at least back then) played a huge part in the "Final Decision". As opposed to hopping from subject to subject trying to get Harry to talk so that he could find out as much about him as possible, Ron was quiet and actually let Harry talk, let him ask the questions himself so he could determine Ron's character on his own, and actually feel like he could become a friend. It's NOT Draco's fault that he was more talkative and less shy than Ron was at this point, and it definitely isn't a bad thing that he was, or that he came off that way. It's just that, you [onlyinfatuated] accuse Harry of being socially crippled, and then rant about the fact that he acts socially crippled instead of like a normal, talkative human being when he talks to Draco. This makes no sense. You have to know that if he was really socially awkward, he wasn't going to feel comfortable with an almost-inquisition, that he is better with having to offer the information himself (as he did about his own situation at the Dursleys) rather than having it pressed out of him.
This is what I think doomed the Harry/Draco first interaction; the fact that Draco didn't know this, and on some level (maybe because he was a little socially awkward too), Ron did. You'll notice in the Harry/Ron first-meeting, Ron barely asked Harry any questions, but rather let him ask, and reveal what he wanted to.

People go on about Harry having seen something significant and key in Draco's and Ron's characters from the very beginning, or about Harry having refused to give Draco a chance while he gave Ron one; I just think it came down to Harry and Draco's being too different.

I do think it can be said that even if he were trying to be friendly, Draco was rather careless in his speech in that robe shop, and there was no way for Harry to know that Draco actually wouldn't get his broom, but ultimately, this is what I think that scene came down to.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yes, I agree with this take on both situations--I didn't want it to sound like I was laying things at Harry's door or making Slytherins into victims of Gryffindor all the time by any means. I was just saying I think there are times when JKR is writing it that the Slytherins aren't victimizing so that the Gryffindors have to defend themselves. I agree, for instance, that Ron and Draco are very different. Harry is reacting to Draco in the robe shop, just as he's reacting to Ron on the train, and for obvious reasons Draco puts him off while Ron is someone he likes. It's just that that doesn't necessarily completely tell the whole story of the Slytherin in question.