Vacation yay! :: PoA 6

[pauraque_bk]

I've just come back from visiting keladryb in South Lake Tahoe, and am relaxed and happy (and sunburned). I hadn't had a vacation in a long time. Kel was a gracious host, and the scenery was breathtaking. She let me win at ping-pong. We built a sand castle. French toast was consumed. And we watched West Wing and the last fifteen minutes of Chamber of Secrets, so our respective fandom needs were satisfied. Simple things in life, dude.

I skimmed my flist a couple of times on her comp, but I'm not going to try to catch up. If you posted anything that you wanted me to see, let me know.

One thing I did catch: hp_survivor starts today! Woo! *waves pom-poms for purveyorofaid*

*

And now that I'm back, on with the reread!

PoA 6: Talons and Tea Leaves

[...]the first thing they saw was Draco Malfoy, who seemed to be entertaining a large group of Slytherins with a very funny story. As they passed, Malfoy did a ridiculous impression of a swooning fit and there was a roar of laughter. (75)

'I'm dying!' Malfoy yelled, as the class panicked. 'I'm dying, look at me! It's killed me!' (90)

Draco is a complete drama queen. He also doesn't have much cause to get a grip on himself, since his "ridiculous" theatrical behavior has apparently made him very popular.

'That little git,' [George] said calmly. '[Malfoy] wasn't so cocky last night when the Dementors were down our end of the train. Came running into our compartment, didn't he, Fred?' (75)

So, Neville wasn't the only one wandering into other compartments that night. I'm still not sure I see the logic in this.

[George]: 'Most of the prisoners go mad [in Azkaban].' (76)

Again, this is common knowledge, remarked on casually.

'[...]And around Easter, one of our number will leave us forever.' (80)

Easter. Not Beltane, not April. As usual, the WW acknowledges Christianity in an oddly secular way. Perhaps this could go along with the idea that the break with Muggle society was traumatic to wizarding society, and that they still cling to the trappings of Muggle culture for this reason.

'[...]Oh, and dear --' she caught Neville by the arm as he made to stand up, 'after you've broken your first cup, would you be so kind as to select one of the blue patterned ones? I'm rather attached to the pink.' (81)

Trelawney really isn't a bad fortune teller, in the Muggle sense: she can size people up quickly and accurately, and use their insecurities to predict something likely and effective. She asks Neville immediately if his grandmother is well, suggesting to me that for all her talk about rarely coming downstairs, she knows perfectly well who Neville is. Neville reacts with immediate fear, so she tries him again with this prediction about the teacups -- an educated guess, given that he's already trembling (80), and she may have heard from other teachers that he's a klutz. He fulfils that prophecy, so she goes after him once again, predicting he'll be late for her next class. This all looks like the work of an experienced Muggle fortune teller.

The real question is, how aware is Trelawney of what she's doing? She does have real talent, but it's wild, and activates without her being consciously aware of it (GoF). Does she really believe she's magically telling the kids' futures here?

I took a religious anthropology class some years back, and the textbooks I was set have some fascinating articles on the psychology of magic-users in societies that believe in magic (unlike our own). Of course, many magic-users truly believe they have magic, but some know they do not. I remember an interview with an African shaman who was hiding a terrible secret -- he had no magical talent. He didn't question that magic did exist (in other shamans), and his tribe believed he had magic, so he'd learned to fake it, but he couldn't face telling them the truth.

I don't see this in Trelawney. I think she's deluding herself, not really aware that she, too, has learned to fake it. Her alarm at Harry's tea leaves seems real to me.

I also wonder if the wizarding education system just isn't up to dealing with Seers. Trelawney's prognostication seems about on the same level as Harry's magic as a child. We're told again and again that Seeing is tricky and not to be trusted (McGonagall says so in this chapter), but ALL magic is uncontrolled until it's educated. Looking into the past is commonplace and reliable in this world (the Pensieve), so why not looking into the future?

He could tell that he wasn't the only one who didn't [know what a Grim was]; Dean Thomas shrugged at him and Lavender Brown looked puzzled[...] (82)

Lavender's a Muggleborn. I'd forgotten that.

'My -- my Uncle Bilius saw one and -- and he died twenty-four hours later!' (85)

Aw, Ron's middle name is after his poor uncle who died after seeing a Grim.

Neville ran repeatedly backwards from his, which didn't seem to want to bend its knees. (90)

Harry, too, is wary of the Hippogriffs and doubts his ability to control them (89), but he doesn't let it show. Again, Neville plays out Harry's anxieties.


Past re-read posts are saved in memories here.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_hannelore/]

Welcome back!

While you were gone, I posted a challenge at genfic_hogwarts that everyone write Neville's P.O.V. a la "Fight Club."

"I am Neville's churning stomach."

_{or, rather, I didn't. Hee.}

One thought I was toying with the other day was, what if Trelawney is channelling the "celebrated" Cassandra? While her alarm at Harry's tea leaves seems genuine, she's enough of a dramatic person to pretend to be surprised as well. It's more of a plot bunny theory than anything else, of course. Ooh, another bunny thought: if she knows of Neville, does she know about the prophesy she gave? While it seems she doesn't recall when she does this, perhaps Dumbledore told her in order to give Harry other "signs" to be wary?

[pauraque]

what if Trelawney is channelling the "celebrated" Cassandra?

It's possible. We don't know what "normal" foreseeing trances look like, so we have nothing to compare Trelawney's to.

just being random here...

[arubyslipper.livejournal.com]

the strangest thing.
not only have i been pondering about a socially induced belief in magic, as i'm currently doing an amateur production of arthur miller's 'the crucible'; a play about puritan witchtrials, and studied mary douglas's views on the matter for my entrance exams, but i'm also listening to debussy.
love that guy.
*giggles tiredly*
what a marvelous world it is.....
eh?

Re: just being random here...

[pauraque]

Debussy rules! And yes, LJ's a small world sometimes...

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

I also wonder if the wizarding education system just isn't up to dealing with Seers. Trelawney's prognostication seems about on the same level as Harry's magic as a child. We're told again and again that Seeing is tricky and not to be trusted (McGonagall says so in this chapter), but ALL magic is uncontrolled until it's educated. Looking into the past is commonplace and reliable in this world (the Pensieve), so why not looking into the future?

Do we know that looking into the past is commonplace and reliable? We've only seen it done three times: the diary, and the two uses of the Pensieve.

The diary is obviously a negative experience.

JKR has said nothing about the Pensieve being restricted, but it seems rare, given that Snape has to borrow Dumbledore's instead of using one of his own. (Or it's just expensive, and Snape has no money.)

If Pensieves were common and/or part of the magical mainstream, I think we'd have seen them being used more at the Ministry. Instead, we see an Auror -- one whose job demands a very high level of accuracy in his reports -- just dictating.

This is pretty skimpy evidence, but I find myself wondering if looking into the past is distrusted just as much as looking into the future. Look at the collective amnesia in the wizarding world.

(And then you have Legilimancy, which is looking into the present, and we've only seen three people who can do that -- Voldemort, Dumbledore and Snape. "One of these things is not like the other thing...")

[pauraque]

This is pretty skimpy evidence, but I find myself wondering if looking into the past is distrusted just as much as looking into the future.

Perhaps. You're right that the evidence is skimpy, but what strikes me is that the characters don't seem to treat past-seeing magic with distrust and even aggression, as they do with Divination in this chapter. Dumbledore says the Pensieve records his experience exactly (or words to that effect). Though the diary is a negative experience, its accuracy isn't called into question -- what Harry saw was misleading to him, but it was truly what happened.

Look at the collective amnesia in the wizarding world.

Could you elaborate on this? I'm not quite sure what you mean.

It does put me in mind, though, of the way memory-erasing curses are thrown around in the WW, particularly towards Muggles. If memories can be changed, you might expect some degree of paranoia about it. Can a Pensieve be Obliviated? Are there spells that alter memories instead of just erasing them?

[(Anonymous)]

Are there spells that alter memories instead of just erasing them?

There are hints that this might be the case in the confrontation at the end of P.O.A. when someone (I think it's either Snape or Fudge) talks about "confundus charms".

[pauraque]

You're right, and it's Snape.

[asphodeline.livejournal.com]

welcome back

Easter. Not Beltane, not April
this puzzles me - in all the books where such things are mentioned, such as Christmas. I originally assumed it was JKR's way of dividing the school year in the same way as her readers' would be but perhaps not. Or perhaps it is a way of 'including' everyone, the muggleborns for example.
I do like the fact that Seeing is unpredictable in the WW in the same way as in ours. It is indeed a very imprecise branch of magic and seems to be equally mistrusted among wizards.
It has also set me wondering whether or not the time-turner works only backwards??

and do have a look at the news items on the Leaky Cauldron's home page. I think my aticle is still there! I made a national newspaper - fame!!

[pauraque]

Yes, your article is still there! Congratulations. Aren't you cute. :)

[asphodeline.livejournal.com]

*blushes*

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

My theory has always been that religion and magic are orthogonal, not competitive. Just as there are wizards and witches from various cultures and ethnic groups (e.g. Cho, Parvati, Dean) there are probably C of E wizards and Catholic wizards and Jewish wizards and atheist wizards.

[pauraque]

In the real world, magic is often a feature of religion rather than an enemy of it. Indeed, the division between "magic" and "prayer" can be very fuzzy.

The HP universe could easily support both magic and religion, given that their magic works more like science than prayer. You say the word, you wave the wand, there you are. It's an innate power, not something granted by fickle deities or spirits. It does require some introspection (as with the Riddikulus charm), but nothing we've seen so far seems on a spiritual level to compete with religion.

The fact remains, however, that we *don't* see religion in the HP books. I'm unclear on the external reasons for this... perhaps it would have introduced too much complexity that was not central to the plot. But isn't it a natural thing to wonder? If I'm a Catholic Muggleborn coming to Hogwarts, do I get special dispensation to leave on Sundays to attend church? And perhaps more interestingly, how do I incorporate what I see around me into my spiritual understanding of the world?

[fabularasa.livejournal.com]

I think the use of the terms Christmas and Easter reflects nothing more than Britishism, since these terms are used where an American might feel obliged to say "winter holidays," or "spring break," or something of the sort. Saying "winter holidays" would certainly earn you some strange looks. Also, one is more likely to hear the terms in an academic setting, where not only Christmas and Easter but Trinity, Hilary, and Michaelmas have been (and at the older schools and universities still are) used to mark terms. So I think one may be seeing a cultural comfort level with the old names, and an indication of Hogwarts' venerable age, rather than a comment on the intersection of magic and religion.

[pauraque]

You may be interested in my reply to muridae_x further down the thread, where I continued this line of thinking.

[idlerat.livejournal.com]

The question that comes to my mind about Trelawny's comments to Neville (especially about his grandmother) is how aware she is of the importance of her first prophecy, how it's been interpreted, and its influence on the course of her life (putting her, and keeping her, at Hogwarts). IIRC, she doesn't remember her second "real" prophecy--the trance is a blackout. How does she think about these prophecies, if she is later made aware of them, in relation to her general practice? Has she any idea of how differently they are regarded by her colleagues? It seems doubtful, but I don't think this commenting to Neville about his family is a coincidence.

My -- my Uncle Bilius saw one and -- and he died twenty-four hours later!'

This is a cute precis of the logical fallacy behind divination. If Hermione had been there there'd have been a fight.

Welcome back--I've never been to Tahoe. Hear it's gorgeous!

[pauraque]

Yes, she blacks out during the second prophecy. My assumption is that the first prophecy was the same way. You raise a good question about how much she knows, and I don't really have an answer; I don't remember enough about her roles in GoF and OotP. I'd have to re-read.

This is a cute precis of the logical fallacy behind divination. If Hermione had been there there'd have been a fight.

She was there, and you're quite right!

'Coincidence,' said Hermione airily, pouring herself some pumpkin juice.

'You don't know what you're talking about!' said Ron, starting to get angry. 'Grims scare the living daylights out of most wizards!'

'There you are, then,' said Hermione in a superior tone. 'They see the Grim and die of fright. The Grim's not an omen, it's the cause of death! And Harry's still with us because he's not stupid enough to see one and think, right, well, I'd better pop my clogs then!'
(85)

[muridae-x.livejournal.com]

So, Neville wasn't the only one wandering into other compartments that night. I'm still not sure I see the logic in this.

It seems to me there's a difference in style in how the kids deal with the long journey. Harry and his friends seem to stake out a compartment in the train and make it their territory for the duration of the journey. Malfoy and his friends, on the other hand, seem to wander up and down the train seeing what everybody else is up to, and amusing themselves by seeing who they can provoke and/or intimidate. Staying in one place is probably too boring for them, although doubtless there's a carriage that is their home base and they've got a couple of fellow Slytherins back there keeping an eye on their trunks and turning away anyone else who might want to intrude upon it. And poor Neville probably got on the train late, couldn't find a seat with any of the other Gryffindors in his year, and is therefore spending the entire journey in the corridor.

As for Ginny, we know that the Trio told her to go away so that they could talk about secret stuff. So she's probably been visiting with friends in her year for most of the journey, but headed back to the carriage that was her home base and where her trunk was when the crisis hit.

That type of train, with the old fashioned compartments that seated 6-8 people opening out onto a corridor that ran all the way up one side of the train, have mostly been withdrawn from service nowadays, but they're very right for the Hogwarts Express. They're a standard train journey cliche, because of their potential for allowing the characters to both have privacy from other travellers, and to allow occasional interactions with those other travellers when the plot requires it, and they're also perfect for that travelling with a complete stranger who will become important to the story later on plot device. And J K Rowling does like playing with story cliches.

[muridae-x.livejournal.com]

(second post, because apparently I was being way too wordy.)

Easter. Not Beltane, not April. As usual, the WW acknowledges Christianity in an oddly secular way. Perhaps this could go along with the idea that the break with Muggle society was traumatic to wizarding society, and that they still cling to the trappings of Muggle culture for this reason.

Or, more mundanely, it could just be that J K Rowling comes from a country that is by and large that secular in outlook anyway, but still uses the Christian calendar to identify holidays while stripping them of much of their religious significance. It's certainly something that didn't occur to me as an issue until I heard other people voicing concerns about it. I took it at face value: that they're just words, being used as a shorthand to indicate the time of year, with no hidden or underlying meanings intended. They're also a very convenient shorthand for the British school year, which runs from early September to just before Christmas, takes a two week-ish break then runs through to just before Easter (whenever that happens to be), takes another two week-ish break then runs to early/mid July. The second and third terms are very variable in length, because they are pegged to how Easter moves about from year to year.

(Sweeping nationalistic generalisation number #4747, but most of the people that I've seen pick up on the fact that the wizarding world uses Christian cultural references have been North Americans. It's one of the fascinating things about the fact that the books have acquired such a far-flung fandom, because by coming to the books with a different cultural mindset different people have different perspectives on aspects that might otherwise get taken for granted. A fresh pair of eyes is always good.)

Of course, the only part of either wizarding or Muggle society that we see much of at all is the British one. (As guests at Hogwarts, the visitors from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang are conforming to that school's teaching year, so they don't shed much light on cultural or calendar differences.) Maybe other sections of the wizarding world do strip out all Christian cultural references?

It would seem to suggest that the Muggle/wizarding world schism wasn't in any way absolute though. When was the split off? About 1000 years ago? By that time Christianity would be several centuries established in Britain, so the wizards would have taken the "Christmas" and "Easter" references with them... but they'd have been somewhat isolated from the couple of centuries worth of yo-yoing back and forth between Catholic and Protestant that we had under the Tudor and Stuart kings and Cromwell which made any strong religious beliefs a dangerous thing to have for their Muggles.

[pauraque]

Malfoy and his friends, on the other hand, seem to wander up and down the train seeing what everybody else is up to, and amusing themselves by seeing who they can provoke and/or intimidate.

That's true; I guess it is typical for him to be wandering about.

Sweeping nationalistic generalisation number #4747, but most of the people that I've seen pick up on the fact that the wizarding world uses Christian cultural references have been North Americans.

I'm not surprised. American culture is moving away from using the names of Christian holidays when we aren't really referring to anything religious. Instead of Christmas Break, the school calendars now say Winter Break. Instead of Easter Break, we say Spring Break.

Maybe other sections of the wizarding world do strip out all Christian cultural references?

I wouldn't be surprised, because... Okay, here's the thing about this. Witch-burnings weren't orchestrated by "Muggles", but by *Christians*. I understand that JKR can't very well have Voldemort attempting to commit religious genocide -- she can only pit him against an invented group -- but it appears to me that in the real world, it would be wizards against Christians, not wizards against non-wizards.

[cleverthylacine]

Actually, a lot of non-Christian cultures fear and detest people who work magick outside of the accepted religious paradigm. Witch burnings--of which there are far fewer than Wiccans would like to think--were better organised, but if you're not doing your magick inside a controlled religious entity, people are going to regard you the same way they do bokors in Haiti or fox-keepers in Japan. It is very much Muggles vs. wizards. People who believe in magickal power yet do not possess it want to think that it is safely in the service of God, or else they have to deal with the fact that there are people who can hurt them very badly in ways that can't be easily proven, with no real restrictions on them. This, I suppose, is why Wiccans spend a lot of time talking about how their magick is basically a form of worship and harmless, even though there's not a thing in the world that can help you that can't also harm you if someone takes a mind to use it that way. Because, you know, 'karma' is such a natural concept to associate with European folk traditions.

It's very definitely not a specifically Christian problem. Do some reading on 'witchcraft' in Africa, or 'fox-keepers'. The unique thing about the Christian persecution is that it was systematically organised, but really, people all over the world tend to fear and dislike those they suspect of having hidden powers that they have not firmly declared to be in the service of God/the gods.

[pauraque]

You're quite right, but I wonder how much these points apply to the British wizarding culture of the HP books. It's unclear to me exactly how the wizard/Muggle split occurred in this universe, and to what extent it crosses cultural lines. In the real world, of course, there are many cultures where magic is an accepted part of society; we haven't seen what relationship the WW has to them, if any. We also don't know (do we?) if the split occurred across Europe and the Americas at the same time, or gradually, due to various different incidents. In any case, my assumption is that British wizards' primary experience of persecution was at the hands of Christians.

[cleverthylacine]

It's one of those big mysteries I spend a lot of time thinking about so that I can include characters from other countries in my fic.

We know there's an 'international' sort of governing agency and an 'international' statute of secrecy, but we've only seen wizards who seem to be French (Beauxbatons) and Eastern European or German (Durmstrang). How aware is the British MoM of what goes on in other countries? I don't know.

We do have a date for the International Statute of Secrecy and while I don't have my references on tap at the moment, I believe it's in the late 17th/early 18th century.

I was married to a man from Hong Kong, which was a British colony until 1997 and where presumably there was some interaction between British and Chinese wizardry. I know for a fact that magick is an accepted part of Chinese life, and that people exist there who are paid to cast curses. And they are not terribly popular except, of course, when you need/want one. Rather like the police.

I was once accused of being one and my ex-husband consulted one subsequent to our divorce, which I found out after I became aware that there was a curse. (I got rid of the curse. Anything you can pay to have put on someone in H.K., there will be someone in San Francisco who knows how to get rid of it. Also, it's kind of dumb to curse an ex-wife who is a ceremonial magician.)

Primarily the persecution would be at the hands of some type of Christian, but as most of the persecutions occurred during the Reformation it's hard to say who caused most of the trouble. Nicolas Flamel, who is a historical figure, was a devout Catholic.

Rowling's magician families all seem to be, like medieval ceremonial magicians, from the upper classes. (The Weasleys are poor, but not lower class.) They study magick in school, they don't learn it out in the woods. I expect they're nothing at all like the British hedgewitches whose folk traditions were allegedly the basis of Wicca, but were actually descended of educated ceremonial magicians like Nicolas Flamel, John Dee, and Giordano Bruno. Most of these people were Christian, though they were quite often heretically so if you read their work closely. Western ceremonial magick draws liberally from Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, and the Kabbalah.

These people, when they strayed from orthodoxy and were condemned by the Church, were condemned not for 'witchcraft' but for 'heresy'. Also, witches were hanged, not burnt, in England, so one assumes Wendelin had to go to the continent to get her jollies.

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

Oh, bingo. I was just going to say this to pauraque; this conversation's been done before, and ajhalluk and others have pointed out that JKR's Potterverse mirrors the secularity of England. Religion isn't the big deal there that it is here in the US. ("Here" meaning where both I and pauraque live.)

[chresimos.livejournal.com]

Ooo, I didn't know that those holidays were just seen in a secular light in England. And it is interesting the way that different people react to the books across different cultures - though the books have gone all around the world, they're still geared towards a kind of British worldview. Hmmm.

I noticed that, too, the way the books exclude almost all mentions of Christianity except for the holidays. I just assumed that, being geared towards that British audience, the Christmas and Easter references would just be seen as normal for that type of school. Just like many other aspects of the WW imitate *our* world, so we can relate to it better - and the aspects that don't imitate are drawn out of a cultural/mythological heritage that is still familiar to us. Changing Christmas and Easter to something else, something more archaic or Pagan, would jolt us out of that familiarity, I think.


Also, I think you're right about Trelawney being like a Muggle fortune teller, but I do think she believes in herself as well. And I don't think Dumbledore told her about either of the true prophecies, which allows her to continue believing that in her day to day activities she really shows The Sight!

[amythis.livejournal.com]

We're told again and again that Seeing is tricky and not to be trusted (McGonagall says so in this chapter)....

It just occurred to me that we take McGonagall/Hermione's perspective on Divination pretty much at face value. Why do we assume that they're right? (Of course, now that I read the link to the "evil McGonagall" essay, I'm starting to question McG more.)