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bmull Wrote:Bob Schroeck Wrote:As for 1, well, Dumbledore had some idea what he'd put Harry into, vis-a-vis his aunt's family and their attitudes -- he did admit and apologize for that in the denouement of one of the books, though I can't remember which one. I don't remember this, he apologized for keeping Harry in the dark about the Prophecy in book 5 and then for not telling Harry about the Hallows in book 7. "You had suffered. I knew you would when I left you on your aunt and uncle's doorstep. I knew I was condeming you to ten dark and difficult years."
Dumbledore says this to Harry in chapter 37 of Order of the Phoenix. I did err in that he never really explicitly apologized. He expressed regret and sadness, and made some justifications, but never actually said "I'm sorry for doing that to you." A lot of fic writers have seized upon this passage as proof of a malevolent Dumbldore, when all it really is is proof of a pragmatic one -- is it better to put 1-year-old Harry into a family that will treat him well, only for him to possibly be killed by the remainders of Voldemort's movement within months, or put him in with a possibly abusive family that will nonetheless guarantee his survival? Dumbledore chooses a living Harry over a dead one. Period. He regrets the side effects, but they do not come into consideration for him at all.
-- Bob
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Does anyone know of a fic where Harry grew up lionised and priviliged and becomes an insufferable spoiled brat?
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"The Pampered Red Prince" by someone I can't remember, most any "universe hop/Neville was BWL" fic
Anyway, 1 and 3 have been well covered by now, but for 2, just look at how he handles discipline in the school - Draco, Harry & co., the Twins all allowed to run wild with a wink and a nod or a slap on the wrist if pressed, Snape and Luna obviously, viciously bullied for years and nothing done about it, Snape viciously bullying students and nothing done about it, on and on. No consequences for misbehaviour
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means that kids will only push the boundaries further, and learn that no matter how beastly they act they'll either get away with it or suffer minor, temporary inconvenience. The only exceptions are McGonnegal's Forbidden Forest detention and Umbridge, which went way too far the other way, and Snape's detentions which were part of his bullying rather than discipline as such.
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Wouldn't the job of handling discipline fall to the staff, and the heads of the Houses specifically, not Dumbledore? Also, I think it is less likely that there are no consequences for misbehavior, and more that we just don't see them, as they aren't usually relevant to the plot. For example, the mirror Sirius gave Harry was originally made so that Sirius and James could communicate with each other when they were is separate detentions. That probably means that happened rather frequently. The Twins are occasionally mentioned as having served quite a few detentions as well, but we only ever really hear about it when Molly is yelling at them for it (and comparing them to Percy, earlier on.)
The wiki actually has an article on this subject, and it doesn't look like the situation is quite as bad as you make it out to be. For example, Neville was banned from going to Hogsmeade for the rest of the year in book three, for writing down the passwords to the Tower, and leaving them where they could be stolen. I think that is a bit more than a minor, temporary inconvenience, as is banning Quidditch players from playing.
Also, do we ever actually see Snape bully any students other than Harry and Neville?
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Harry and Neville count.
While there are detentions and such handed out fairly often, major infractions are treated no differently than trading a few jinxes between classes, and any time Dumbledore is shown getting involved, his reaction is always, always along the lines of "surely there's no need to be so harsh and make a fuss, I'm sure everything will be fine." Including when there was an unknown (Really? Not one painting caught sight of a giant snake and tattled?) monster petrifying students.
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I honestly don't ever recall Dumbledore acting like that, except for times when Snape was demanding punishments for Harry.
Also, how recently was bullying recognized as a serious problem? This is a society that accepted corporal punishment for schoolchildren, within living memory ( Arthur Weasley was caned for being caught out after curfew with Molly.) Bullying among children is likely just seen as 'children being children', maybe the magical equivalent of roughhousing, so long as no one is seriously injured (and the school nurse is capable of regrowing your bones overnight.) It's not right, but I don't think it is entirely fair to pin all the blame for that on Dumbledore. I'd be willing to bet that Dumbledore had something to do with the removal of corporal punishment though. It seems like something he'd be involved in.
My reason for asking if Snape had bullied anyone else was that if he hasn't, then his bullying is specific to them, and therefore only would have started during their first year. He was very strict, and biased toward Slytherin and against Gryffindor before that, but wouldn't have been bullying. Also, we don't know if Dumbledore did try speaking to Snape in order to get him to stop acting like that. We just know that he didn't do it where Harry could see. (And it isn't like Dumbledore could threaten to fire Snape, as Snape needed to be close to Dumbledore publicly for Voldemort to believe that Snape was his spy. And if Voldemort stopped trusting Snape, that would most likely be quickly followed by Snape's death.)
With regards to the level of punishments, from what we see, major infractions get a lot more detention periods than the minor ones, which usually only seem to involve a single detention. What they are required to do for the detentions also varies, so the level of punishment can be altered by this as well. (The usual detention, IIRC, typically involves having to perform some tedious manual labor, which could easily be done in seconds with magic. I imagine that that can only add to the punishment.)
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Magical Cores.
Magical power indexes that can be determined through the casting of a simple spell. ("That's Harry Potter! His Hammerstein Magical index is over nine thousand!")
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Bob Schroeck Wrote:bmull Wrote:Bob Schroeck Wrote:As for 1, well, Dumbledore had some idea what he'd put Harry into, vis-a-vis his aunt's family and their attitudes -- he did admit and apologize for that in the denouement of one of the books, though I can't remember which one. I don't remember this, he apologized for keeping Harry in the dark about the Prophecy in book 5 and then for not telling Harry about the Hallows in book 7. "You had suffered. I knew you would when I left you on your aunt and uncle's doorstep. I knew I was condeming you to ten dark and difficult years."
Dumbledore says this to Harry in chapter 37 of Order of the Phoenix. I did err in that he never really explicitly apologized. He expressed regret and sadness, and made some justifications, but never actually said "I'm sorry for doing that to you." A lot of fic writers have seized upon this passage as proof of a malevolent Dumbldore, when all it really is is proof of a pragmatic one -- is it better to put 1-year-old Harry into a family that will treat him well, only for him to possibly be killed by the remainders of Voldemort's movement within months, or put him in with a possibly abusive family that will nonetheless guarantee his survival? Dumbledore chooses a living Harry over a dead one. Period. He regrets the side effects, but they do not come into consideration for him at all. Ah, sorry, I didn't think of that as anything but regret. In the long run, keeping Harry alive, even if not loved, was better than having him dead. I do think the side effects were considered but there weren't any better options. The protections were very strong and kept everyone that would kill him away. If you look at it we don't know what happened before he was a Hogwarts but we do know that he was not really harmed until he had been away from the house for a while. It only took two weeks to "recharge" the wards protections during the summers. That should mean that while he lived there before Hogwarts he was protected all the time. Once he went to Hogwarts the protections started to fail and allowed him to be harmed.
I do think that what using his blood to resurrect Voldemort did was just allow Voldemort to touch Harry and not be harmed. If Voldemort was allowed access by the blood to the wards I feel he would have attacked and killed everyone at anytime. Nothing else makes any sense of having to wait until Harry was an adult to be able to attack the house.
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I always wanted to ask... if the Hammerstein Inex tests magical power, what does the Rodgers Index test?
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The quick, easy, utterly reliable magical oath - frequently of the form "So-and-so pulled out his wand and said, 'I swear on my magic that this is the truth. So mote it be.'" - with the penalty for swearing falsely being loss of the oathgiver's magic.
The notion that when the prophecy says "he shall have power the Dark Lord knows not", it's referring to a singular, specific ability - "a power", rather than "power".
"The Ancient and Noble House of So-and-So," a concept that authors tend to obsessively focus on in stories where it appears. As far as I can tell this came from a single line where Sirius was being sarcastic about the family he hated.
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Not to mention the people who interpret that phrase (in Sirius' original use of it) as referring to number twelve, Grimmauld Place...
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ClassicDrogn Wrote:I always wanted to ask... if the Hammerstein Inex tests magical power, what does the Rodgers Index test? H[e]art.
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The Wanderer Wrote:The quick, easy, utterly reliable magical oath - frequently of the form "So-and-so pulled out his wand and said, 'I swear on my magic that this is the truth. So mote it be.'" - with the penalty for swearing falsely being loss of the oathgiver's magic. I recall a fic that addressed that gimmick. Harry regularly faked this by not actually drawing on his magic while making the oath, but just casting a silent 'Lumos' to make the wand-tip glow as if he had. Everyone thought he was actually swearing the oath for real and believed him.
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Another thing, since mention was made of HP movie fashion in the DW8 thread.
The movies show the characters wearing modern clothes underneath academic gowns. Which directly contradicts the books...
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"It's a movie about a fancy British school, everyone knows they wear uniforms. Robes? Nobody wears robes except for graduation or klan marches, just give 'em a capey thing over the business casuals."
I have a special little headache that pulses everytime I see someone write about a character's "(house) necktie," I swear.
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To be fair, the books do describe non-robe clothing - the Weasley jumpers, for instance.
It's plain that some wizards, at least, do wear only robes; there's the evidence of the one in an argument on arrival at the Quidditch Cup, if nothing else. But it also seems plain that robes aren't the only clothing that wizards wear, either.
Still, the notion that everyone at Hogwarts is wearing pants et cetera underneath their robes is an annoying - and annoyingly common - one.
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The Wanderer Wrote:To be fair, the books do describe non-robe clothing - the Weasley jumpers, for instance.
It's plain that some wizards, at least, do wear only robes; there's the evidence of the one in an argument on arrival at the Quidditch Cup, if nothing else. But it also seems plain that robes aren't the only clothing that wizards wear, either.
Still, the notion that everyone at Hogwarts is wearing pants et cetera underneath their robes is an annoying - and annoyingly common - one. Erm, I always got the idea that they were. When I was reading the books, the idea of "robes" translated in my head to being the robes that Oxford dons only wear nowadays as ceremonial garb, but that they used to wear when working (much like barristers and magistrates in the British courts wear wigs and robes when in the court, or did up until recently). Given how freaking cold Northern England/Scotland can get in the winter, it struck me as just simple sense to wear trousers (or pants, for us Americans; I would think that most of the students of Hogwarts would wear "pants" rather than go commando), especially if going out to see Hagrid, play quiddich, or engage in some other physical activity (like working with Professor Sprout). I suppose that it could be a more involved set of robes, similar to what Hollywood puts Dumbledore in, but I always got the impression that the kids were wearing something a bit more modern under them.
Although, if you wanted to play it as they aren't, it would make sense for Harry and Hermione (and any other muggle-born children) to wear muggle clothing under their robes, leading to possible fashion faux pas or other trouble, with Draco and other purists sneering at them, and Snape or other professors counting off for them being "out of school uniform." And, of course, given that Harry has a waning and waxing level of popularity, other kids could easily start aping his choices of clothing (one of the books has a first year that fanboys all over him, I forget the name).
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Oh, I've no doubt that tunic and trous are popular choices under the robes, but the supplies list says three student robes, black, not three sets of business casual uniform and tie with an open front sleevey cape thing. With tge warmer weather, Kid Snape jud had his grundies on under the robe, and there was the fellow at the World Cup in a muggle sundress because he liked a refreshing breeze 'round his privates, so it probably varies by personal preference, but in general yes, high fantasy wizard robes.
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Neville Longbottom with a special hate on for Bellatrix Lestrange, to the point that he has an in-battle tropism for her.
-- Bob
---------
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...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Bellatrix and Narcissa physically/mentally altered to fit with their husbands, possibly by overly strict marriage contract. Freed from these bonds they spontaneously revert in age as well and become eager to doubleteam young Lord Potter-Black-Grindlewald-Gryffindor-Emrys-Pendragon-Nazareth.
The Lovegoods are close relations to the Malfoys, and Selene's death was actually an asassination.
The name 'Malfoy' is actually a curse for some ancestral doublecross.
Frank L & James P were partner Aurors
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