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HP Survivor :: PoA 9

I am hopelessly addicted to

hp_survivor. Even if you haven't been following the game,

killing_curse's hilarious parting speech is not to be missed.

Lesson: Ordering your tribemates around never, ever works. Even if you *are* the Dark Lord. Tsk.

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On the canon side of things, the discussion of Chapter 7 has hit 50 comments! *analysis happiness* Check out exchanges on anti-werewolf bias, whether Snape was right to expose Remus, and the mysteries of the Snape-Neville interaction.

And the debate on how much Snape and Lupin each contribute to the animosity is still going strong in Chapter 8. Unsurprisingly, I have quite a lot of Snapeists on my flist, but

fernwithy has been admirably representing the Lupin-lovers' side, for which I thank her. *g*

Also from Chapter 8:

"Anybody who says JKR isn't capable of subtlety or complex characterizations should be smacked upside the head with a copy of PoA."
-

marinarusalka

Word.

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PoA 9: Grim Defeat

Augh, the puns! Mercy, JKR, mercy!

'It's very lucky he picked tonight, you know,' said Hermione [...]. 'The one night we weren't in the tower.' (123)

I'm blanking on why Sirius *was* there that particular night. Anyone? Bueller?

'[...]I'll have Mr Filch restore [the Fat Lady].' (124)

atdelphi recently pointed out, Squib or no, Filch is assigned to restore a magical painting, and apparently does quite a good job.

'It seems -- almost impossible -- that Black could have entered the school without inside help. I did express my concerns when you appointed--'
'I do not believe a single person inside this castle would have helped Black enter it,' said Dumbledore, and his tone made it so clear that the subject was closed that Snape didn't reply. (124-125)

Snape is in the right, though not for the reasons he thinks. Remus isn't actively helping Sirius, but he's lying to Dumbledore by omission -- not revealing that Sirius is an Animagus, which apparently means he can get past the Dementors. I feel bad for Snape here, the way Dumbledore shuts him down.

'I must go down to the Dementors,' said Dumbledore. 'I said I would inform them when our search was complete.' (125)

Apparently, one can talk to Dementors. Or at least, Dumbledore can.

'But I'm afraid no Dementor will cross the threshold of this castle while I am Headmaster.' (125)

Because they're Voldemort's "natural allies" (GoF), no doubt.

But it wasn't Professor Lupin who looked up at him from the teacher's desk; it was Snape. (127)

Whatever the reason Dumbledore refuses to let Snape teach DADA, it doesn't apply to letting him sub for a day or two. I wonder if this was arranged previously, or if it's designed to placate Snape after Halloween night.

'You are easily satisfied. Lupin is hardly over-taxing you -- I would expect first-years to be able to deal with Red Caps and Grindylows. Today we shall discuss--'
Harry watched him flick through the textbook, to the very back chapter, which he must know they hadn't covered.
'--werewolves,' said Snape. (128)

Ah, back to his usual theatrics. Snape must know the real reason they're behind, which has nothing to do with Remus. Of course, that in itself is nothing compared to the fact that he's brazenly attempting to lead the class to the conclusion that Remus is a werewolf. This is quite a dramatic escalation of the animosity, far worse than anything Remus has done to him (though not, of course, worse than anything Snape *thinks* Remus has done to him).

It's also good to remember that Snape thinks Remus is collaborating with Sirius, and that Dumbledore refuses to entertain the possibility. In addition to taking obvious pleasure in belittling and endangering Remus, Snape may think he's doing the right thing for the school: This is the only way he can think of to get Remus fired, for everyone's good.

'the werewolf differs from the true wolf in several small ways. The snout of the werewolf--' (129)

At least a hundred Dementors, their hidden faces pointing up at him, were standing below. (134)

Emphasis added. Things to keep in mind when judging the movie's canonicity.

[...]the silhouette of an enormous, shaggy black dog, clearly imprinted against the sky, motionless in the topmost, empty row of seats. (133)

So... Sirius climbed up to the top of the stands, unnoticed? Seems a little unlikely.

[Voldemort:] 'Stand aside, you silly girl ... stand aside, now...' (134)

He seems to gives Lily a chance to save herself. Hm.

'Still in the showers,' said Fred. (135)

Mm, magical plumbing.

Past re-read posts are here.

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fernwithy has been admirably representing the Lupin-lovers' side, for which I thank her. *g*

More'n welcome. I mostly hang out with Lupin fans; it's been interesting to see a totally different... well, book almost!

I'm blanking on why Sirius *was* there that particular night. Anyone? Bueller?

I would assume it was because he knew it was Halloween and figured it would be a time when the kids were downstairs and the pets were all snugged in their cages. I mean, he went there, too, so he'd know the rhythm.

Snape is in the right, though not for the reasons he thinks. Remus isn't actively helping Sirius, but he's lying to Dumbledore by omission -- not revealing that Sirius is an Animagus, which apparently means he can get past the Dementors. I feel bad for Snape here, the way Dumbledore shuts him down.

I frankly want to know how much Dumbledore suspected. This abrupt a shut-down... it's almost like he's watching and waiting and trying not to trip any alarms. I mean, if Remus was helping Sirius, Snape's idea of putting him under closer surveillance would have served to put him on alert, while the assumption that he was totally trusted would keep him calmer... and doing whatever he was doing.

Snape must know the real reason they're behind, which has nothing to do with Remus.

And how far behind are they? I mean that seriously... the DADA curriculum seems pretty loose. When Umbridge comes in, she does make one legitimate point: they should have learned theory at some point, and ethics, and laws of self-defense. Probably before they started blasting everything in sight with jinxes, or at least concurrently with each jinx ("Here's how to do it, and here's when you should do it, and here's when you shouldn't"). That he's going to the back of the book so early suggests that he really is going far ahead of where the class is supposed to be as well as trying to tip them (read: Harry) off to Lupin.

So... Sirius climbed up to the top of the stands, unnoticed? Seems a little unlikely.
Hmmm. Climbed up under them in human form and turned to a dog when he got there? Or maybe dogs regularly come and go. Are pets allowed at Quidditch games? Maybe everyone assumed he was someone's dog.

He seems to gives Lily a chance to save herself. Hm.

This is discussed a lot, and I'm not sure how much weight to put on it. Did he just want to get to the business of killing Harry?

I've been thinking of it in light of the MoM battle in OotP--people have complained about the Death Eaters throwing minor curses like tarantallegra around instead of just AK-ing everyone. Fake!Moody says in GoF that Avada Kedavra requires a lot of magical power. Maybe it also requires a certain amount of "saving up," and if you use it, you have to rest a bit before using it again. We don't see Peter doing much magic after killing Cedric. And Voldemort is very, very powerful, but in the killing scene, he'd just killed James. Maybe if he had killed Lily, he wouldn't have had the strength left to kill his target, Harry?

Just a random thought I've had.

I mostly hang out with Lupin fans; it's been interesting to see a totally different... well, book almost!

I count myself as both a Snapist and a Lupin-lover. It's pretty hard to say that one or other is right in scenes like these though; they both have character flaws, and they're both at fault.

Nowadays, of course, my view is coloured by having read OotP. That book reinforced and expanded upon a lot of those flaws in the adult characters that might on the evidence of PoA alone just have been devices to advance the plot. It's good to see JKR going "Look! I really meant it! That's not just fan speculation, it's how that character is!", and it does make a re-read of the earlier books interesting, as you see where she laid some of the foundations for what was to come.

Clearly, though she may not have had every last detail worked out, she had the overall plot arc for all seven books worked out by the time the first one went to press, so she can feed us little details like giving Sirius a namecheck two books before he actually makes himself known.

I count myself as both a Snapist and a Lupin-lover. It's pretty hard to say that one or other is right in scenes like these though; they both have character flaws, and they're both at fault.

Oh, goodness, yes! I like them both as characters, but Snape needs to be locked inside a research laboratory and never let out again while Remus needs to be given a job where he has no responsible to protect people from his own weaknesses.

At the very least, they need their heads knocked together in this book and in OotP.

Snape needs to be locked inside a research laboratory and never let out again

I often think that it's a pity that there doesn't seem to be any university/college equivalent in the wizarding world. Snape so clearly needs to be teaching only those who actually have a passionate interest in learning his subject. Since the nearest we have to that is the NEWTs, it'll be interesting to see whether his sixth and seventh year classes are any less scarifying, when his students have at least chosen to take his class.

Remus might do very well coaching trainee Aurors, with everyone concerned fully aware that he's a werewolf. He'd be reasonably good as an Auror, of course (so long as you gave him one week in four off), but it would be a shame to waste his abilities as a teacher by not making use of them in some way.

I often think that it's a pity that there doesn't seem to be any university/college equivalent in the wizarding world.

I think it's a CRIME, and a very serious statement about Wizarding society, that they gave up the universities when they withdrew from the Muggle world.

Universities were the places where knowledge was discovered and disseminated throughout the Renaissance and Enlightenment. The lack of them in the Wizarding World is highly indicative of the anti-intellectual and incurious streak in the general population.

And yes, Snape would be quite happy as a University Professor. Allowed to fail people with impunity, encouraged to give lower-level teaching over to assistants, surrounded by other enthusiasts, and forced to do research? You wouldn't be able to pry Snape out of there with a nuclear bomb.

Remus, if he wasn't so irresponsible with his students' safety, is actually a very good introductory-level instructor. He'd be fine in a primary or secondary school. But not during wartime, or when his interests conflict with his students.

They also gave up primary schools. And, for that matter, secondary education - I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Hogwarts is nothing but a glorified trade school, with essays.

(Hi. Reading old posts.)

This is an old post! Ah, memories...

Why, yes, exactly! I liked your read-through of GoF so much, I decided to read the others.

I mean, if Remus was helping Sirius, Snape's idea of putting him under closer surveillance would have served to put him on alert, while the assumption that he was totally trusted would keep him calmer... and doing whatever he was doing.

Absolutely. I think the implication here is that Dumbledore knew all along (or at since since before the beginning of PoA) that Sirius was innocent. I'm a big Ron = Dumbledore proponent myself, so both his knowledge and his noninterference make sense to me.

And Voldemort is very, very powerful, but in the killing scene, he'd just killed James. Maybe if he had killed Lily, he wouldn't have had the strength left to kill his target, Harry?

That makes sense. From a dramatic standpoint, Voldemort associating Lily with his own mother always worked for me... (and apparently, this is what happened, if we believe Dumbly's explanation at the end of OotP). But on the other hand, I like to think that he is indeed a fairly cool evil mastermind once he gets his stride, not to be tripped up but emotion. In the actual books, we see him struggling up from nothing, but in the early 80s he had everything going for him.

I think the implication here is that Dumbledore knew all along (or at since since before the beginning of PoA) that Sirius was innocent.

I think this is very possible. He doesn't seem to have to struggle with the concept at all, despite the fact that he only has a very few minutes to talk to Sirius before he goes to Harry and Hermione to arrange his escape. There's no time there for incredulity and the overturning of 13-year-old assumptions of guilt.

Clearly though he can't have had any inkling of what really happened to Peter. Most likely he thought that there was some other dark wizard in the equation, and that what happened on that Muggle street was Peter being killed and Sirius framed by someone else who then fled. I doubt Lupin was his prime suspect, but he may well have thought that he was Sirius's... in which case appointing Lupin as DADA teacher may have been designed to pull Sirius to Hogwarts so that he could be caught in order to talk to him and find out what had really happened all those years ago.

So... while everybody else thought that Harry was Sirius's target, Dumbledore probably imagined that Lupin was. I wonder whether the attempted break-in to the Gryffindor common room and the apparent attack on Ron shook him at all?

But on the other hand, I like to think that he is indeed a fairly cool evil mastermind once he gets his stride, not to be tripped up but emotion. In the actual books, we see him struggling up from nothing, but in the early 80s he had everything going for him.

Well, Voldemort *was* a fairly effective mastermind in the late 70's, but I think a decade of being disembodied has made him lose his grip.

What he needs now is a review of the Evil Overlord List (http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html), especially the points about "I will not gloat over my enemies' predicament before killing them" and "One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation."

>:D

again, note the like to believe... it's a bit of a leap of faith, but hey... maybe voldiepants just has a pretty wacky sense of humour. he's just doing it all for fun. >:D

Maybe it also requires a certain amount of "saving up," and if you use it, you have to rest a bit before using it again.

That's always been my personal reading of the Killing Curse. And also, I feel, where the Death Eaters seeming unwillingness to deal in all things Muggle proves to be their disadvantage. Yes, AK takes a lot of magical power, but how easy would a Petrificus Totalus, followed by a nice slit to the throat be? Possibly, the DEs feel this is inelegant.

I think it's a blind spot among the wizard-raised. They rarely resort to physical violence, even when deprived of their wands -- in the Pensieve scene, Snape keeps going for his wand instead of just hitting James in the gut, which would have been just as effective.

The DEs keep casting curses at Harry and company at the Ministry, even though they were adults, outnumbered the kids, and were certainly large enough to just *manhandle* them.

The only fist-fight we've seen was Harry, Fred and George jumping Draco on the Quidditch pitch, and McGonagall broke that up with a dismissive comment about "Muggle dueling".

So maybe Voldemort and the DEs don't even think about simply picking up a knife and attacking when they're too tired to cast, though that would be the logical thing to do.

More'n welcome. I mostly hang out with Lupin fans; it's been interesting to see a totally different... well, book almost!

Indeed. Likewise, I enjoy reading the thoughts of someone approaching the text from a different frame of reference, with different sympathies. It's even more dramatic when I talk to someone who's primarily a Draco fan, or a Ron/Hermione shipper... their sense of what's important in canon is vastly different, to the point where it really is like a different book.

We don't see Peter doing much magic after killing Cedric.

You're wrong here, I'm afraid. Peter resurrects Voldemort after killing Cedric! But this may not poke much of a hole in your theory, as Peter is a pretty powerful wizard:

'[...]A crater in the middle of the street, so deep it had cracked the sewer below. Bodies everywhere. Muggles screaming[...]' (155)

That's Fudge, describing the scene after Peter laid waste to the street.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. I meant in the graveyard, after he AK'd Cedric, he didn't seem to do much in the scene that required magic--it was all physical stuff that night, like, say, cutting off his own hand, cutting Harry's arm, etc. And making the Potion, but that seems to be a different sort of magic than using a charm or a curse.

I meant in the graveyard, after he AK'd Cedric, he didn't seem to do much in the scene that required magic--it was all physical stuff that night, like, say, cutting off his own hand, cutting Harry's arm, etc. And making the Potion, but that seems to be a different sort of magic than using a charm or a curse.

What makes you say that? Because it doesn't use a wand?

It's possible that there are different types of magic which can be drained at different times, but I think it's pretty evident that what Peter did required magic. Do you think that if a Muggle had assembled the right ingredients and said the incantation Peter said, they would have been able to resurrect Voldemort?

I do think that Potions are a very different class of magic--I don't see a reason except perhaps for some magic control of the fire temperature or something that a Muggle wouldn't be able to brew a working Potion, if the ingredients weren't squirreled away in the magical world. So, in theory, yes... if Voldemort had permitted a Muggle to touch him, the Muggle could have made the Potion. The actual resurrection within the Potion, I took to be Voldemort's magic. (And I am a Peter fan of sorts and agree that he's an exceptionally powerful wizard... people do tend to miss that! It just didn't seem to be what he was doing.)

Charms and Curses and so on seem to be mental power channeled through whatever causes magical power, focused with the wand. A Potion--judging by Snape's disparaging remarks about wand-waving and so on--isn't really accomplished through those means.

It's too bad we don't know anything about what magic *is*. We know it's innate -- a Muggle can't just pick up a wand and do it, nor can he see magical beings or magically shielded places. I think Potions are tied to inherent magic in the same way those things are. Otherwise, wouldn't Muggles have figured out how to make them all a long time ago? Wouldn't they be just part of science?

I'll grant you that the type of magic that casts a Charm and the type of magic that serves as catalyst for a Potion may work differently, but you're basically saying that the resurrection of Voldemort wasn't magic, and I can't agree with that.

I guess the truly telling point would be: can a Squib make potions? If they can, then it would indicate that the magic involved is in the ingredients and the spell book that defines the process, and that all that is truly required is to be enough part of the wizarding world to be admitted to Diagon Alley to buy yourself a cauldron, a book of spells, and the right ingredients. And practice, practice, practice. In other words, a learned process.

But if making a potion is beyond the capabilities of even the most determined of Squibs, then there is extra magic involved in the process of making it... and there's more to it than just learning to be a good cook.

That would be the good test of it. I took from the cabbage smell in Mrs. Figg's house that she brews Potions, but it could mean nothing.

I think that the Potions may only be usable by magical folk--that they interact not with normal physiology but with... again, whatever makes magic work.

I think that to be good Potions brewer, you would have to understand all the nuances of what makes the magical ingredients work and how they interact with the taker's magic. It's an intellectual discipline. A Muggle could theoretically master it, but the chances of a Muggle having such a complete knowledge of the magical world are pretty slim.

Potions are definitely magical, and not just because of the ingridients. If you combine asphodel and wormwood, you get a highly toxic sludge, so unless Draught of the Living Death is actually Draught of the Poisoned Coma, there is some magic from the brewer transmuting the ingredients into an effective compound.

Frankly, my thinking is that Potions is Applied Alchemy, just as pharmaceuticals is applied chemistry. The wand isn't used because it's a quick-release tool for magic. Potions work by layering power through ritual (cutting, stirring, heating) and time. Snape's "foolish wand-waving" is a teacher squelching the impulse of 11 year olds to play with their newly gained Charms and Transfiguration knowledge in a laboratory filled with toxic compounds -- horseplay in a lab being a cardinal safety no-no.

As to Peter's bringing back Voldemort, that's definite magic -- powerful ritual magic -- and rings of the Cauldron of Life from the Malbigion.

neotoma: Potions are definitely magical, and not just because of the ingridients. If you combine asphodel and wormwood, you get a highly toxic sludge, so unless Draught of the Living Death is actually Draught of the Poisoned Coma, there is some magic from the brewer transmuting the ingredients into an effective compound.

This is good evidence that there is some magic involved.

Unfortunately, it can't distinguish between the

pauraque and

neotoma's theory that the magic is imbued in the making, and

fernwithy's theory that the magic is imbued in the taking.

We need more data. Preferably all nine combinations of potions made and taken by wizard, squib, and muggle.

I said it's imbued in the making, because otherwise the Youthening Potion wouldn't have worked on Trevor, not the mandrake-based Potion on Mrs. Norris.

Good call. I think there you have it then.

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HP Survivor :: PoA 9

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