Re-Read?

[sporky_rat]

Uhm. I'm not the Mod, but I thought we might all like to keep going on the Re-Read?

February, Year 3!

Yay!

(Or not, because it's Carrow, first entry. Ick.)

Comments

[alt_moderator]

Thank you! I got to thinking about that this week, since we are now a whole year out (and I had originally hoped to *finish* the re-read this week). Heh. At this rate our re-read may take another 7 years!

(I am way behind in December or so, but please go ahead and continue to read and discuss.)

[naomikritzer]

I got bogged down really badly somewhere in Y2. I can't remember where. Maybe I'll just start again in February of Y3...

[naomikritzer]

Okay, on second thought, I'm going to pick up with July of Y2 because I want to re-read Pansy being admitted to the lock and I'm pretty sure that was July or August.

[naomikritzer]

Wait, your link was to February Y2!

I'll start there.

[naomikritzer]

Okay. February 4th, 2010, Lucius Malfoy grouses about O'Connor from the portkey office. I'm pretty sure at that point Gwen was just tossing in a name, BUT -- we later decided that Seamus's mother's family was named O'Connor, and when the wards created by Seamus's mother's sacrifice wreaked havoc on the portkey system, we went looking for people in Magical Transportation and discovered that there was an O'Connor working in that office!

Dominic didn't think Moira's failure to make the necessary adjustments was actually deliberate retribution (she was a very distant relative to Kathleen) but it didn't matter all that much. (We were not specific about what happened to her after that but at the bare minimum she was sacked with extreme prejudice.)

[naomikritzer]

I just realized that "Future Interrogators Club" is wizarding Mock Trial.

(I have a child in Mock Trial, so...)

[gwendolyngrace]

Yep. Mock Trial / Speech & Debate / Forensics. That's exactly what it's meant to be.

[naomikritzer]

Just hit the hexing-Padma-bald bit.

It's funny. I was chatting with Peg and two other friends yesterday and one of them commented, basically, "always be clear about who the real monsters are in your life." Padma was not actually one of the monsters, but she was far more often the target of ire and vengeance than the real monsters were, because she was a much, much safer target.

[naomikritzer]

(I mean, she was obnoxious! But wandering around the school that year there were the Carrows, Lana Sandoval, and a Basilisk.)

[gwendolyngrace]

She really wasn't effective enough to be a real monster, and like you say, compared to the real threats, she was a much easier, more achievable target.

What always struck me was how much hate she got from the readers, as well, when in the grand scheme her petty annoyances and machinations were just an irritant for the proto-ISS crew. It was also unfortunate that there was only Seamus, really, to enable us to show her "better" qualities.

[naomikritzer]

I think it's a version of the same phenomenon that results in (canon) Dolores Umbridge being vastly more hated than (canon) Bellatrix Lestrange. Everyone has a canon!Umbridge somewhere in their past, an absolutely awful petty person who had power over them and abused it because she could.

Everyone has an alternity!Padma somewhere in their past. It fueled the hatred a lot. (I mean, most of us did not grow up with people like Carrow, thank heavens.)

[naomikritzer]

From February 15th 2010, the origin of Kiss a Ginger day:

Sally-Anne: Ron if you really think it would be brilliant to get piles of Valentines I could try to arrange something. I'm thinking I could start a superstition among next year's firsties that it's good luck to get your first kiss from a ginger and then I'll
spread a rumour that you've promised to kiss everyone who sends you a Valentine.

(And then she and Pansy decided they didn't want to wait a whole year when they could annoy Ron a mere month later...)

[sporky_rat]

Ever since then, I have always found a ginger to inform them of Kiss A Ginger Day.