GoF 28

[pauraque_bk]

GoF 28: The Madness of Mr Crouch

'Winky is getting through six bottles [of Butterbeer] a day now,' Dobby whispered to Harry.

'Well, it's not strong, that stuff,' Harry said.

But Dobby shook his head. ''Tis strong for a house-elf, sir,' he said. (466)

Because they don't weigh very much, presumably.

Remarkably, I still sometimes hear people doubting that Butterbeer is alcoholic! The wizarding world doesn't see a problem with selling alcohol to children.

Half-a-dozen house-elves came hurrying forward, looking disgusted. One of them picked up the bottle, the others covered Winky with a large checked tablecloth and tucked the ends in neatly, hiding her from view.

'We is sorry you had to see that, sirs and miss!' squeaked a nearby elf, shaking his head and looking very ashamed. 'We is hoping you will not judge us all by Winky, sirs and miss!'

'She's unhappy!' said Hermione, exasperated. 'Why don't you try to cheer her up instead of covering her up?'

'Begging your pardon, miss,' said he house-elf, bowing deeply again, 'but house-elves has no right to be unhappy when there is work to be done and masters to be served.' (467-468)

Since we were just talking about Sirius's depressive drinking, this reminds me of it again. In OotP, Sirius's misery will also be hidden away as Dumbledore stows him at Grimmauld Place rather than addressing his ultimately fatal unhappiness.

Have we already discussed the way the elves speak? Unless awkward speech is part of the original Brownie myth, JKR seems to have chosen to make her elves sound uneducated -- especially since they don't all make the same grammatical errors. If they were raised and educated as humans, would they speak like humans?

[Hermione's hate mail:] You are a WickEd giRL. HaRRy PottEr desErves BetteR. gO Back wherE you cAME from mUggle. (470)

The reaction to this is a little subdued... Ron tells Hermione again that she shouldn't have made trouble, rather than expressing horror that she should receive racist hate mail. Interesting that this one is made of cut-up letters, disguising the sender's handwriting. They're afraid to openly announce their anti-Muggleborn views.

Harry took off his watch, which he was only wearing out of habit, as it didn't work any more, and stuffed it in his pocket. (472)

This is the second time in two chapters that Harry's non-working watch has been pointed out (it stopped working after he spent all that time down in the lake). Is there any significance to it?

I had forgotten Hagrid's lesson with the Nifflers. Aw, it's cute!

'Count yer coins! An' there's no point tryin' ter steal any, Goyle,' he added, his beetle-black eyes narrowed. 'It's leprechaun gold. Vanishes after a few hours.'

Goyle emptied his pockets, looking extremely sulky. (472)

Hm! Are the Goyles hard up for money too, or is Gregory just greedy?

Percy's letter was enclosed in a package of Easter eggs that Mrs Weasley had sent. Both Harry's and Ron's were the size of dragon eggs, and full of home-made toffee. Hermione's, however, was smaller than a chicken's egg. Her face fell when she saw it.

'Your mum doesn't read Witch Weekly, by any chance, does she, Ron?' she asked quietly. (476)

Hermione can laugh off bullies (sometimes), and Rita causes her more anger than anguish, but Molly's harsh judgment gets to her. Understandably. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised that Molly would jump to conclusions about her, since she's the one the "scarlet woman" talk was coming from.

'What d'you reckon it's going to be?' [Cedric] asked Harry, as they went together down the stone steps, out into the cloudy night. 'Fleur keeps going on about underground tunnels, she reckons we've got to find treasure.' (477)

Since when do Cedric and Fleur hang out?

'I've done ... stupid ... thing ...' Mr Crouch breathed. He looked utterly mad. His eyes were rolling and bulging, and a trickle of spittle was sliding down his chin. Every word he spoke seemed to cost him a terrible effort. 'Must ... tell ... Dumbledore ...' (482)

I guess the "stupid thing" is supposed to be going with his wife's plan to get Barty Jr out of Azkaban, though the way it's phrased makes it sound like something more recent than that.

It's also interesting that he now knows what happened to Bertha Jorkins; I wonder if he was treated to a little patented Evil Exposition before being placed under Imperius.

Crouch's extremely poor physical and mental condition could support theories that Peter let him escape intentionally (e.g., out of spite or to help Harry), rather than that Crouch had the strength to free himself.

'Mr Crouch!' Harry shouted. 'From the Ministry! He's ill or something -- he's in the Forest, wants to see Dumbledore! Just give me the password up to--'

[...]

Harry could tell Snape was thoroughly enjoying himself, denying Harry the thing he wanted when he was so panicky. (484)

I'm surprised that Snape doesn't take this seriously. He's usually quick to catch on when it's not an appropriate moment to toy with Harry. He never picks up on it here; Dumbledore hears them and comes out of his office himself.

Snape's presence in the corridor may be meant to serve as an alibi for him. It's pretty evident that Snape is not the one who conked Viktor over the head, whereas fake!Moody gets no such alibi.


Previous GoF posts are saved in memories here.

Comments

[arclevel.livejournal.com]

Snape may have been aware that Dumbledore was headed that direction; does it specifically say why Dd came out of his office when he did? In any case, some fans like to blame Crouch's death on Snape's stalling Harry here, which conveniently ignores two points. First, Harry was running *away* from Dumbledore's office, having given up on getting in, when Snape catches him and holds him in place (however rudely or un/deliberately)until Dumbledore comes and finds them. Second, though you didn't say anything about this point, Crouch was already dead by the time this conversation takes place. In the great Veritaserum Exposition scene, Crouch Jr says that he killed, transfigured, and buried his father, *then* looked at the map and saw Harry talking to Snape, which then gave him his idea for how to arrive conveniently onto the scene.

Someone (can't remember who) did a brilliant analysis on elf speech and determined that each of our three major elf characters has different speech patterns, but each is entirely consistent with him or herself. I think Kreacher was determined to speak with perfect grammar, other than never using first person.

Maybe we shouldn't be surprised at Molly's reaction, since she certainly does seem to go for the very conservative viewpoints. It's still pretty horrifying, though. First, that she would believe nasty things about a girl she knows pretty well and that were printed by a source she knows to be completely untrustworthy, and also that she would express it in so obvious and cruel a way as to send comparable presents to each of three young teens, but have one gift be significantly smaller and of less worth than the others. Really, given the relationship they all have, she could have sent Hermione no gift at all and her own feelings would have been far less obvious, both to Hermione and to the guys.

[slinkhard.livejournal.com]

that were printed by a source she knows to be completely untrustworthy

Doesn't she lecture Amos later/earlier (can't remember) about being angry with Harry over Skeeter's article not mentioning Cedric?

Molly's odd like that - for instance, presumbly she knows that Lockhart was a fraud post-CoS; but she's still using his book in OotP.
She criticises Rita's article about Arthur, but seems to believe her criticism of Bill.

First, that she would believe nasty things about a girl she knows pretty well

Not many of the 'good' female characters in HP seem to get along, though.
There's Ginny and Hermione, who seemed to have forged an alliance based entirely around guys (if they have a conversation not involving them, it's never mentioned/described in canon), who are their first loyalty (witness Ginny's reaction to Hermione's questioning the Sectumsempra in HBP.)
Every woman despises Fleur.
Ginny fights with her mother with much more frequency than her father, who seems to take on the traditional protective role.

Parvati and Lavendar and Marietta and Cho seem to be the only girls who get along, and neither of them fare particularly well in the authorial voice's apparent opinion.

[redcandle17.livejournal.com]

I never realized how truly awful the relationships between the female characters was before reading your comment.

[arclevel.livejournal.com]

She criticized Amos *and* Percy -- both times were to defend Arthur. She doesn't so much believe the criticism of Bill as she is willing to use that criticism to back up her own opinions about Bill's hair. So in those cases, she seems to either agree with or thoroughly disparage Rita as corresponds with whatever she already believes about Rita's victim. Which, really, makes her swallowing the story about Hermione that much nastier.

That's true with the women of the series, though it's kind of hard to say how much of that is due to Harry's perspective. After all, he doesn't notice girls as much as boys (*restrains slashy commentary*), and is of an age to find typical girlishness -- like giggling, or paying attention to looks or boys -- extremely annoying. The authorial voice seems to back this up, and there certainly are a few female characters we know very well, but it's probably still a factor. In addition to the examples you gave, note that, in previous books, Pansy was accompanied by "her gang of Slytherin girls" who would giggle at the insults she threw at Harry.

Yeah, much as I hated Ginny throughout HBP, I liked her even *less* after Sectumsempra for completely turning on her best friend in order to defend Harry. (The content of her "defense" made it far worse, referring to Sectumsempra as "something good up [Harry's] sleeve".)

That's kind of a tangent, though; I hadn't meant to stress the female part of that reaction, but the fact that she would react that way to one of her children's best friends, who had stayed at their house, without apparently considering if it fit at all with the person she knew. Now that I'm thinking about it, there's a direct parallel between Molly's reaction here and Percy's reaction to Harry in OotP. We see that hurts Harry considerably more than the population at large because he knows Percy and Percy should know him, even though he's never been particularly fond of or close to Percy. I expect that would only magnify between Hermione and Molly, given Molly's status as Hermione's former host and Ron's mum. Also, we see once more where the traits that are shown so negatively in Percy clearly come pretty directly from or are shared with his family members.

[slinkhard.livejournal.com]

In addition to the examples you gave, note that, in previous books, Pansy was accompanied by "her gang of Slytherin girls" who would giggle at the insults she threw at Harry.

Cho has a bunch of female friends in GoF also, iirc.
And there's the endless girls who fancy Krum/Harry/Cedric, which the narrative usually points out, must be down to their fame/looks; whereas Ron and Harry dating girls based solely on finding them physically attractive (Cho, Lavendar, the Patil twins) is presented as almost understandable.

I liked her even *less* after Sectumsempra for completely turning on her best friend in order to defend Harry. (The content of her "defense" made it far worse, referring to Sectumsempra as "something good up [Harry's] sleeve".)

Precisely. Although I don't think anyone comes out of the Sectumsempra episode very well - I don't recall Ron's reaction, but Ginny seemed to approve wholeheartedly and focuses on petty issues to win an argument, such as Hermione's interest in Quidditch; Hermione's concern seemed to be being proved right about the Prince; and Harry getting into trouble rather than shock/objection to his actions themselves, and Harry goes from momentary guilt (although not quite strong enough for him not to remember to hide his book) to happily dating Ginny and irritation at Pansy for being upset and Snape for recieving detention; all in one chapter.

[pilly2009.livejournal.com]

Parvati and Lavendar and Marietta and Cho seem to be the only girls who get along, and neither of them fare particularly well in the authorial voice's apparent opinion.

Narcissa and Bellatrix? They've been used as an example of sisterly love overcoming love for Voldemort/Death Eating/etc. How fond of them JKR happens to be is debatable, but if she is not, it probably isn't because of their "girly" tendency to stick together.

[lanjelin.livejournal.com]

I wonder though, if Molly using the book isn't just a question of money? After all, what Lockhart did was publish other people's accomplishments in his own name, so presumably the spells work, and the Weasley's have to be careful about how much they spend.

Also, doesn't Angelina, Alicia and Katie get along pretty well? Harry is very vague about the older students (well, about most students really), so I can't say for sure. And as arclevel said, he does tend to notice boys more than girls.

(Oh, and it's "Lavender", by the way. With an "e".)