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Tabouli suggested a new spin on FLIRTIAC:
In Harry's fifth year, however, the situation is too serious. Dumbledore can no longer justify keeping talented a witch hidden in feline form, and reunites Filch with his beloved in human form, thus gaining a new member of staff...Professor Norris, the new and female professor teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts!
Oh no, Tabouli! Just think of the terrible potential for heartache!
I mean, we all know that the new female DADA professor is always the one who finally manages to break through poor dear Sevvie's nasty old shell and win his warm and squishy heart, right? And we all know how Snape and Filch feel about each other. So you can't go putting poor Mrs. Norris in the middle of all that, Tabouli, you just can't! I won't allow it! It would be far too ugly, and too too cruel.
<Elkins pauses to consider, then raises one eyebrow>
Although...
Although it would make for one great bang-up of a love triangle, don't you think? Especially if combined with the Kitty-Gro variant of FLIRTIAC?
After all, as you yourself said:
Moreover, Filch knows that Snape not only knows about his tragic secret, but is devoting hours of research to the one thing that matters most to him in the world... curing Mrs Norris.
Ah...but why? Why does Snape devote all of those hours of research to curing some Squib's muggle-born girlfriend? Just because she was once, like Snape, an ally of Dumbledore? Just because of his regard for Filch? Just because he feels a little guilty about helping to invent the Kitty-Gro? Just because he's a Great Big Softie when it comes to doomed romance?
Naaaaah.
No, it's obviously because he was in love with her himself! And furthermore, he still is.
(Could even Snape and Filch not be friends under such circumstances?)
But of course they would have to have become friends! It's one of those classic male-bonding things. It's that "united through their shared love of the same woman" thing, don't you know. It's that old Romantic Rivals thing. Works every time.
But oh, how ugly things could become once Mrs. Norris is returned to human form! Fifteen years ago, admittedly, she chose the older and more worldly (if far less magical) of the two men. But would she make that same choice again? Perhaps now that she's had fifteen years of Filch's company, Filch's Lover Is Regretting that decision? Perhaps now that she is no spring kitten herself, she might find Snape's boyish charm and youthful good looks (hey, it's all relative, right?) far more appealing than Filch's worldly wisdom and serene maturity? (I said it's relative, dammit! Relative!) Forced to choose once more between these two paragons of masculine desirability, would Mrs. Norris make the same decision the second time around?
Oh, how Filch wonders sometimes — especially on those nights when sleep simply refuses to come. How he wonders in the wee hours, as he stares sightlessly at those useless Kwikspell course notes, waiting for the first light of dawn...
And Snape wonders too, of course. Why else would he be working so hard on that antidote?
So long as Mrs. Norris cannot express her opinion, this tension may go pleasantly unresolved, adding a special piquancy to those tender moments when Filch tends Snape's wounds or helps him to cover up those pesky grey hairs.
But oh, once she is transformed back into a woman, what on earth will happen?
<Elkins contemplates the possibilities, then smiles to herself>
Yes, all right, Tabouli. You've sold me on it. But only if I can turn it into a love triangle.
::innocent look::
But surely that's perfectly okay with you. Right?
I think the evidence before us is clear, ladies and gentlemen, so much so that I might take some time out from LOLLIPOPS and rewrite the FLIRTIAC manual...
Your canonical evidence is indeed most impressive (I particularly liked the Polyjuice Precedent)! But might I suggest one further bit of canon that helps to support my variant?
The smirk. That little smirk on Snape's face when Filch is overcome with grief over Mrs. Norris' petrifaction in CoS. One thing that Kitty-Gro utterly fails to explain to my satisfaction is why on earth Snape would be suppressing a smile there.
But if Filch is his romantic rival, you see, then it makes a bit more sense. Snape knows perfectly well that Mrs. Norris has merely been petrified, not killed, and that her condition is both painless and reversible. That Filch does not himself realize this is indeed rather pathetic. Snape bothers to suppress the smile because he really does have some affection for Filch. But what he's really thinking there is: "A man like this could surely never hold her. She will be mine!"
Reepicheep (the Talking Mouse) wrote:
She might be in her cat form for any reason, but I seriously doubt she'd be any kind of lover of Filch. I mean, we all know how he is described; can you see any sensible girl falling for a guy like him?
A sensible girl? Of course a sensible girl could fall for a guy like that! He may have all sorts of sterling qualities that we the readers, limited in our perspective to Harry's point of view, might just never have seen.
I mean, just think of the, uh...tenderness he shows to Snape in PS/SS, helping him tend to his wounds. Think of the, uh, depths of emotion that he shows in CoS, as he sobs over poor petrified Mrs. Norris. Think of...of...
Well, yeah, okay. Now I'm out of examples. But surely the man has many admirable traits that have simply not yet been brought to light.
Filch is not, it is true, very much in the way of eye candy. But then, surely sensible girls shouldn't care about such things. That's for frivolous girls.
Hmmph. First Captain Charis goes denying poor Peter a teenaged love interest ("who would have him?" she asks, just because he was a little short and podgy), and now here you go, picking on Filch! What a bastion of Lookism we are here at HPFGU, aren't we!
Besides, it could well be that Mrs. Norris was just really really into those manacles.
Tabouli objected:
Ah, but no! We only know how he's described now, after years and years of anguish over his feline beloved have turned him cruel and hysterical. . . .Perhaps as a younger man he was dashing and devoted!
Erm. Well, really, if we go by the Kitty-Gro FLIRTIAC timeline, then it can't have been more than fifteen years, can it? I don't really know if I believe that to be quite enough time to turn someone young and dashing into...well, Filch.
But hey. Who cares?
<Elkins dons her "Society for Yes-Men, Cowards, Ostriches, Passive-Aggressives, Hysterics, Abject Neurotics, and Toadying Sycophants" spokesperson's hat>
After all, ugly, creepy, mean-spirited, cruel old hysterical people need love too.
<Having thus done her duty, Elkins removes her hat>
Reepicheep added:
Also, if we think of JKR's use of names, I don't think anybody called Filch (OED: to filch - petty stealing) can ever be a likeable character. (Of course, if we assume her to be evil, then it would be a different matter, but as a cat lover I refuse to consider this idea.)
Oh, come now! Filch isn't evil. He's unpleasant, yes, not a terribly likeable fellow. But I don't think we've seen any evidence that he's evil.
And Mrs. Norris is certainly not evil. She's very compassionate. Just think of all of those times that she's stared right at Harry while he's been skulking about in that invisibility cloak, and yet not turned him in! She's a real softie, is Mrs. Norris.
How about the idea that she was turned into a cat to ESCAPE Filch's hateful attention (see Daphne and Apollo, and Apollo wasn't half the creep Filch is!)?
Hmmm. Well, if you want to run with the classical allusions and the significance of names (and since you really do seem to dislike Filch), then might I suggest that you focus on Filch's first name: Argus?
If you run with the name Argus, then with only a slight twist on the legend, you could propose that Filch might actually be an ally of the wicked Mr. Norris, appointed by him to keep watch over his erring (and now transfigured) wife. This would, of course, make all of Filch's endearments—"my sweet" and suchnot—merely an expression of a kind of perverted prison-guard sadism, and his hysteria over Mrs. Norris' petrifaction in CoS the purely self-indulgent tears of a man who fears that he has failed the instructions of his powerful and dangerous master and may himself therefore soon be facing merciless punishment.
It also could provide you with endless happy hours of speculation over just who Mrs. Norris' lover could have been. (Bonus points if you make it be Florence!)
I prefer FLIRTIAC, myself. But I offer you the Argus Theory as a gesture of peace and good-will, and of open relations between Rapier-Wielding Talking Mice and Bleeding-Heart SYCOPHANTS.
—Elkins
Posted to HPfGU by Elkins on March 11, 2002 1:56 AM
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