Thread response post #3

[brimtoast.livejournal.com]

A LOT of interesting storylines have been running lately. Anyone who has a second, link to a thread or two of interest, and a comment about it, and I'll copy it into the post.

Here are mine:
-Whoever guessed the Mirror of Erised would be in Buckingham Palace was correct. We still need to figure out what Harry saw, though.

-The kids wonder how Muggles ever got along without wizard favors. That's like taking the wands away from wizards and then wondering how they ever got from place to place without cars.

-I cheered at Tonks breaking free of the Crouches.

-The sympathy between Pansy and Sirius is great. "Hello, dangerous criminal." "Hullo, rabble-rouser." I hope they get a chance to meet in person someday. Also, Remus and Sirius's interactions are so sad.

-Amycus's evil Christmas message made me laugh.

-At 11, shouldn't Harry be too old for "let's be friends because our parents are friends"? It struck me as another example of how he is oddly childish sometimes, which I suspect is due to an upbringing where he was rarely encouraged to think for himself or take care of himself.

From travelintheways:
-I found Draco's Christmas post very interesting: "Mostly, I wish that things and people would just let Harry alone! He's never done a bad thing to anyone and he's a much pleasanter person than me, so, I wish that... they would just let him be." For the most part, Draco's been staying in his canon character, and I found this outburst of genuine empathy touching and intriguing. He must mean all the, ah, attention Harry's receiving after bumping into the Mirror.

Comments

[lapin-agile.livejournal.com]

The thing that strikes me, not only about Harry's openness to Seamus now he's Mr. Rosier's foster son, but about all the Hogwarts kids save Padma and Millicent is how little clique-ishness they are displaying so far. It's especially striking to me about Pansy, because it's such a contrast to the usual way she's portrayed in fandom. On one of our early speculation threads someone noted how different the Slytherin kids seem to be in this AU where they have not grown up as the offspring of a shamed, defeated group of former Death Eaters but have grown up, instead, as the next generation of Wizardom's social elite. I agree that this means they are not automatically defensive and ready to disparage those who judge them (as, for instance, Draco is in canon), but I expect that we should see a social pecking order emerge pretty soon to replace all the generally friendly interactions we've seen this past term. We've seen hints in Draco's coolness towards Padma when she tried to presume on her mother's connections with his mother, but he seemed to soften some. And Teddy and Millicent seem to have a more developed sense of superiority than Pansy, Sally-Anne, or Harry. I'm holding my breath to see which of these kids will develop a full-blown bias against half-bloods and whether that will marginalize Sally-Anne within Slytherin House (or whether house solidarity will prevail as the more important value).

It seems that at eleven, these students are still on the cusp of adolescent social sorting and haven't begun separating themselves into fiercely separated groups. That's something to look forward to... ouch.

Speaking of which... I've been missing Ron. I've really enjoyed his interactions with Pansy.

[brimtoast.livejournal.com]

As long as there's such a stark in-group/out-group contrast between wizards, mudbloods, and muggles, I doubt that social cliques and house loyalties will ever be as strong as they were in the books. But I do think you're right that these guys are at an age where cliques get stronger. Also an age where the good opinion of peers starts to be more important than the good opinion of adults, right? I've spent the last two weeks in the company of an eleven-year-old, and it's really a pretty cool age.

[lapin-agile.livejournal.com]

I doubt that social cliques and house loyalties will ever be as strong as they were in the books.

Maybe, but I see hints in Padma's snobbishness that we should see the usual amount of icyness to those beneath me and prickliness about those who think themselves better than me. Many of the parents (the Malfoys and Lestranges, whom we see directly, and the Patils, Browns, Blacks, Notts, and Strettons, whom we see indirectly) seem acutely tuned to the social pecking order, so I'd be very surprised if their children do not pick up their parents' social biases.