I Would Sell Out the Nation

[condwiramurs]

I promise I'm still chipping away at Indestructible.

But after I responded to mary's comment on my latest essay, discussing Severus' motivation for joining the DEs, I had another small revelation that snapped some massive realizations about the WW and the HP books into focus for me.* Enough strands for another essay series if I try to follow them

Comments

Witch hunts-- are you now, or have you ever been?

[terri_testing]

Funnily enough, my leisure (re)reading this week before you posted this, Condwiramurs, was Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna

Re: Witch hunts-- are you now, or have you ever been?

[condwiramurs]

Thank

Re: Witch hunts-- are you now, or have you ever been?

[condwiramurs]

Thinking further here:

I went back and looked at that scene outside the portrait. And it's written differently than I recalled, but in a way that's very interesting. She doesn't say 'you can't wait to be Death Eaters.' Look:

There was no pity in Lily’s voice. “It’s too late. I’ve made excuses for you for years. None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you. You and your precious little Death Eater friends - you see, you don’t even deny it! You don’t even deny that’s what you’re all aiming to be! You can’t wait to join You-Know-Who, can you?”
He opened his mouth, but closed it without speaking.Look at what she says: "your precious little DEATH EATER friends." And then about LATER JOINING YKW

Re: Witch hunts-- are you now, or have you ever been?

[condwiramurs]

It's the DA and Marietta. Only nobody was making you unknowingly sign a cursed parchment that would scar you if you spoke beforehand. They just weren't explaining precisely who and what was behind anything, and leaving it seem like mere discussion.

And only very very quietly making further individual approaches to likely candidates they've used this to IDENTIFY.

And Severus just more or less unknowingly tossed a giant roadblock up between him and the preservationists. Leaving him more open to the draw of the abolitionist camps. Which necessarily cloak themselves, some more than others. Within each other.

Re: Witch hunts-- are you now, or have you ever been?

[melodyssister]

This is absolutely fascinating. Weirdly, it reminds me of potionpen's Subjectiverse fics over on AO3, specifically Valley of the Shadow. There is a great deal of discussion of the difference between Slytherin and Gryffindor worldviews - are you reading each other, or is this a zeitgeist thing?

Re: Witch hunts-- are you now, or have you ever been?

[condwiramurs]

Thanks - I'm glad you're enjoying it. It's really just grabbed my mind lately.

I've heard of but never read the Subjectiverse series, I don't think. I'll have to check it out!

Re: Witch hunts-- are you now, or have you ever been?

[sunnyskywalker]

Now you have me imagining young accused DEs swearing that they don't know why owls keep bringing them issues of The Death Eater World News, Mr. Crouch. Must be a mix-up at the owl post office.

Maybe that's where Regulus got most of his newspaper clippings: from the underground DE press!

Re: Witch hunts-- are you now, or have you ever been?

[condwiramurs]

The Death Eater World News. XD Now we know why the Lestranges were sought out and recruited - swythyv once mentioned that a historical figure by the name of Lestrange was involved with the creation of the modern newspaper form, and theorized that our Lestranges might still have some direct relationship to the Daily Prophet

Re: Witch hunts-- are you now, or have you ever been?

[sunnyskywalker]

DE-sympathizers on the Prophet staff seems like such a missed opportunity. For all we know, the staff was actually bitterly divided while all pretending to follow the same editorial line. Was that turn of phrase on that one article anti-Muggle in an ordinary Secrecy-supporting wizarding supremacist way, or in a Secrecy-overturning way? Is Lucius Malfoy attacking Arthur's Muggle Protection Act because it he thinks it gives the Ministry too much far-reaching power to invade good upstanding wizarding homes on spurious charges, thus threatening wizarding privacy and liberty, or because he secretly doesn't care to make it easier to keep magic-revealing artifacts out of Muggle hands? And whatever Malfoy meant, what did the reporter intend to convey

Re: Witch hunts-- are you now, or have you ever been?

[oryx_leucoryx]

And Hermione never paid attention because there were no House-points in that, nor any adults she wanted to impress.

Re: Witch hunts-- are you now, or have you ever been?

[sunnyskywalker]

We never see her read fiction or poetry on her own initiative, because she's too busy cramming for exams. (Pause to sigh at the lack of appreciation for the arts in wizarding culture.) So yeah, I really doubt she writes any or keeps track of whether anyone else does. (Parvati and Lavender probably do...) If Hogwarts had a journalism program that could actually win you House points, Hermione might have had a crusading journalist phase (editorials about House-Elf liberation!), but they don't.

I can understand why Hogwarts doesn't support a journalism club, though. Can you imagine what would happen if kids started learning how to investigate stories? They wouldn't have stopped at asking Binns about the Chamber one time in class; they'd have been looking at yearbooks to see who was in school at the time, cross-referencing against Nature's Nobility to see who might be an heir of Slytherin, tracking down whose grandparents were there at the time and owling them for more information, asking McGonagall and Hagrid what they remembered from