Chapter 4
Not much to add at this stage. I just thought I’d comment on the way that the Weasley family relations are used as the vehicle for a Great Big Bit of Story Exposition.
Without Percy-as-Prat there would have be some other way of explaining the falling out of favour of Dumbledore and Harry. There would have to be some other way of introducing the notion that there was a need to choose allegiance, either to Dumbledore or to the Ministry of Magic, that the war is not nearly as far advanced as Harry had been imagining, and that, in fact, the Order is still a secret, almost subversive, order. Wham. Subtle plot development. Not. Poor Percy, he’s just being so convenient here.
I feel quite a bit of sympathy for Percy, coming home all happy at the idea of his promotion. I hope he does get just a teensy chance to say ‘I wasn’t all wrong, so there’ in Books 6 and 7, but somehow I doubt it. In spite of the holes, and the lapses in logic, I can’t see that the view of Percy is meant to be anything other than how Ron and Fred and George paint it. Percy is So Obviously Wrong. He is a Crawler, who is being Used. He will Get His, etc etc. (And he made his mother cry, boo hiss.)
All of this has sharply reminded me that over the first 4 books I’ve fallen into the trap of thinking that the Ministry of Magic is, literally, structured like a Ministry within the larger machinery of Government. I had read the references to discussions with the Muggle PM about Sirius Black, and later in OotP about the Death Eaters to indicate the kind of Cabinet relationship I understand, from my own day to day working life within a government bureaucracy (working with hosts of Percys. Blerr.)
Wrong, obviously. The Wizarding World is a state within a state, the Ministry is a ‘government’ in its own right. Which raises (for me) the question of how that world is governed (clearly it’s not based on the Westminster system!), how Minister is elected, how the laws are made, why on earth the Wizarding World hasn’t risen up in revolt before this. No doubt there are essays about this out there, so I will now go and do my homework, so that I’m ready to let loose on the way the legal process works, and why this and the release of decrees throughout the rest of the book gives me the chills.
And I’ll save my vitriol for Molly until next week too.
(Eternal thanks to sistermagpie - now I'm reading the book trying to see if Harry ever baths. Or brushes his hair.)
Without Percy-as-Prat there would have be some other way of explaining the falling out of favour of Dumbledore and Harry. There would have to be some other way of introducing the notion that there was a need to choose allegiance, either to Dumbledore or to the Ministry of Magic, that the war is not nearly as far advanced as Harry had been imagining, and that, in fact, the Order is still a secret, almost subversive, order. Wham. Subtle plot development. Not. Poor Percy, he’s just being so convenient here.
I feel quite a bit of sympathy for Percy, coming home all happy at the idea of his promotion. I hope he does get just a teensy chance to say ‘I wasn’t all wrong, so there’ in Books 6 and 7, but somehow I doubt it. In spite of the holes, and the lapses in logic, I can’t see that the view of Percy is meant to be anything other than how Ron and Fred and George paint it. Percy is So Obviously Wrong. He is a Crawler, who is being Used. He will Get His, etc etc. (And he made his mother cry, boo hiss.)
All of this has sharply reminded me that over the first 4 books I’ve fallen into the trap of thinking that the Ministry of Magic is, literally, structured like a Ministry within the larger machinery of Government. I had read the references to discussions with the Muggle PM about Sirius Black, and later in OotP about the Death Eaters to indicate the kind of Cabinet relationship I understand, from my own day to day working life within a government bureaucracy (working with hosts of Percys. Blerr.)
Wrong, obviously. The Wizarding World is a state within a state, the Ministry is a ‘government’ in its own right. Which raises (for me) the question of how that world is governed (clearly it’s not based on the Westminster system!), how Minister is elected, how the laws are made, why on earth the Wizarding World hasn’t risen up in revolt before this. No doubt there are essays about this out there, so I will now go and do my homework, so that I’m ready to let loose on the way the legal process works, and why this and the release of decrees throughout the rest of the book gives me the chills.
And I’ll save my vitriol for Molly until next week too.
(Eternal thanks to sistermagpie - now I'm reading the book trying to see if Harry ever baths. Or brushes his hair.)