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Elkins smiles across the sand to Lilac, Nicole and Gail, who are standing hesitantly at the shores of Theory Bay, all three of them decked out in CONNIVING CHICK'S REVENGE life-jackets. She waves shyly at them. People who can filk always make Elkins feel unaccountably shy, as she herself cannot tell a balalaika from a theorbo, a fluegelhorn from a clarion, a celesta from a harmonium, a lithophone from a marimba.
Although every once in a while, when the wind is southerly and the weather clear, she can manage to discern a hawk from a hand-saw.
Just.
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Lilac (also sporting a set of FAT CHANCE AT BALL water wings, just for good measure) wrote:
Here's one thought I had about this...what if Arthur was under Imperius before Ron and Ginny were born and that bits of Imperio magic were passed along, not so much genetically as it were, but magically?
And Anna suggested something very similar, when she proposed that Neville might have somehow been magically affected by his parents' exposure to the Cruciatus.
Hmmm.
Frightened by Imperius in utero, eh?
(Or, in Neville's case, frightened by Cruciatus in retroactive utero.)
Well, it's possible. It does strike me, though, that in terms of the thematic emphasis on blood vs choice, the distinction between a genetic predisposition and one caused by the magical equivalent of parental chromosomal damage is really moot. In either case, you're still talking about a predisposition which is beyond the individual's control and not even strictly speaking a matter of "nurture," or of upbringing. It's still a heritable condition, even if it is not genetically determined. Even in the real world, many of the things that we believe to be "heritable" are now believed to be not strictly genetically determined, but also largely a matter of somatic environmental factors, like parental hormonal balance and body chemistry and the like.
So I don't know if I think that there's all that much difference, really, between a genetic magical predisposition and an "environmental" one that nonetheless has an inescapable and quasi-somatic effect on children. It comes to exactly the same thing, doesn't it?
I'm not really all that concerned, though. I don't honestly think that JKR is trying to make a case for individual volition being able to conquer everything. That Harry is small and agile is a matter of physical inheritance, as is the fact that Hagrid is enormous and very strong, as is the fact that the children of muggles are usually muggle, while the children of wizards are usually magical -- Squibs exist, but they are rare, even more rare than Muggle-born witches and wizards, according to Ron.
I think that the text emphasizes quite strongly the notion that it is what one chooses to do with ones particular talents that matters the most. I don't think that the text anywhere implies that heritable conditions do not exist, or that heredity does not play a significant role when it comes to the particular talents and weaknesses that one has to work with.
Would it damage the books on the thematic level, though, if it were to emerge that some people are more vulnerable to the Imperius Curse than others for reasons other than inherent weakness of will?
I guess that all depends. Do we feel that it damages the books on the thematic level that Harry seems to have been blessed with an inborn talent for resisting the Imperius Curse?
Actually, to be quite honest, sometimes I do rather feel that way about Harry and his Imperius resistance. It bothers me a bit that he's got that. I think that I would have liked it a lot better, in some ways, if JKR hadn't given him that particular talent.
But I can live with it. And if I can live with Harry's freakish native talent for shrugging off the Imperius, then I guess that I could also live with the idea that some people might have to work even harder than everyone else if they want to break free of the curse.
It's not fair, no, but then, if I had to pick the one thing that I think that JKR does the very best in these books, I would probably cite the clear-eyed yet compassionate approach she takes to that one fundamentally unpalatable truth: Life Just Isn't Fair.
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Richelle, however, points out that we do have canonical evidence that fathers and sons do not always exhibit the same facility with Imperius resistance.
Richelle:
Okay, I have one problem with this. There's both Barty Crouch Sr. and Jr with the Imperius Curse. It took Jr years to break it, whereas Sr broke it in a matter of months.
True. Really, strength of will doesn't seem to have ever been one of young Barty's personal strengths, does it? He went completely to pieces at his sentencing. Harry observes him in the Penseive reacting far more dramatically to the dementors than his co-defendents seem to. He was on his death bed after only a year in Azkaban. And by the end of GoF, at any rate, he's also mad as a hatter, which in the fictive world, if not the real one, is often indicative of a failure of will -- as, for that matter, is allowing oneself to be corrupted by Dark Wizards in the first place. Crouch Sr, on the other hand, is rather consistently depicted as quite strong-willed, if also corrupt in his own way.
Then, young Barty didn't look a whole lot like his father either, did he?
<Elkins gasps as the sand suddenly begins to shift beneath her feet. Out in the Bay, the ships toss wildly in the waves. Lilac, Gail and Nicole, safely up on the promenade, clutch onto a bench for support. The visitors in the Canon Museum up on the hill scurry to position themselves beneath the lintels of the doors. Elkins screams to the heavens...>
Thematic consistency, Jo! Thematic consistency! For God's sake, is it really all that much to ask?
<After a few tense moments, the rumbling stops. Elkins shakes her head, pulls a small notebook and pencil out of her pocket, and walks across the beach to the Richter sensor buried deep in the sand. She bends down to read the meter, winces, whistles softly. She makes a quick note in her book, shoves it back in her pocket, and shrugs helplessly.>
Oh, well. I guess that we really can't complain too much about the fault line, can we? After all, if it weren't for that little quirk of geology, then this Bay wouldn't even exist.
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Could Lucius have targetted Ginny in part because he knew that she would be unusually vulnerable to the Diary's effects?
Lilac:
OOOHHH, one more thought...is this why Lucius picked Ginny in particular? Because he knew that she would be susceptible because he put Arthur under Imperio 15-or-so years ago? Things that make you go hmmmmm...
Hmmmmm, indeed!
I've always found myself curious about Lucius' plans for that Diary, actually. The timing of his slipping it to Ginny always seems to suggest to me that it was actually a spur of the moment decision, that Lucius was inspired by seeing the Weasleys there in the shop (not to mention by his brawl with Arthur and his irritation with the recent raids on his manor), and that he acted on that sudden impulse.
But if that's true, then one can't help but wonder what the original plan as supposed to be. Did he originally intend to use Draco to get the Diary to Hogwarts? That seems unlikely, given that he went out of his way to warn Draco to stay well out of the entire affair. Also, he did bring the Diary with him to Diagon Alley, which seems to suggest that it had been his plan from the very start to slip it into some student's kit.
I think that he meant to give it to Harry. From the very start, it is Harry Dobby identifies as particularly endangered by the Diary plot, and it is Harry Dobby tries to keep away from Hogwarts by any means possible. Lucius also might well have suspected that Harry might have inherited Voldemort's Parseltongue talent, just as that shrewd calculating look that Snape throws Harry in the Duelling Scene suggests that Snape might similarly have some inkling about how that entire dynamic works. After all, we are given to understand that just like Snape, Lucius Malfoy does know an awful lot about the Dark Arts.
My feeling is that Harry was the intended recipient for the Diary, and that Lucius changed his plan at the last minute out of pure malice and spite.
Of course, that doesn't mean that he couldn't have known all about Arthur's tangle with Imperius, or even suspected that Arthur's children might be vulnerable. But I don't think that Ginny was his original choice to serve as the conveyor of Riddle's Diary to Hogwarts.
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Could a Weasley vulnerability to Imperius have been what Crouch/Moody was hinting at when he refused to give Ron credit for potential Auror talent?
Lilac asked:
Could this also be the reason why Moody does not tell Ron he would make a good Auror? Because it's difficult for Ron to even overcome the after effects of the Imperius?
Huh. I suppose that Crouch/Moody's comments do usually have more than one meaning, so it's possible that that was indeed the "Moody meaning," if you see what I mean.
As for the Crouch meaning, though, I've always been extremely partial to Charis Julia's analysis of Crouch's evaluation of the Trio's Auror talents -- so partial, in fact, that I've been seething with envy over it for months now. I wish that I had written it myself. I'd paraphrase it for you, but I couldn't possibly do it justice, so let me just give you the link to Charis' post:
That's my favored interpretation. I also think that Crouch was trying to stir up trouble by refusing to give Ron the stroking he so obviously wanted there. He hoped to make Ron feel inadequate, and to set off his envy. He was being cruel.
But it is true that Crouch's statements almost always carry two separate meanings. They can usually be read at face value as well as at the second level. So perhaps Real!Moody genuinely would have passed on advising Ron to consider a career as an Auror. Because of the Imperius? Could be.
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Lilac:
I think Veronica and Elkins have a pretty water-tight vessel floating now. However, I do like the 7th Son theory, so I hope your trimaran does have a cabin so I can visit there. That is, if I ever brave the waters of theory bay. *sighs*
Hey, Veronica's even letting the Operative!Arthur people have berths, even though they spend half of their time picking on the Auror!Arthur brigade and the other half trying to scuttle the trimaran altogether. She's a regular old Dumbledore, is Captain Veronica. So I'd say that there's sure to be plenty of room on that ship for Seventh Son adherents.
I just don't know about this "Arthur Weasley used the Imperius Curse" spec that Eloise has been handsawing out there, though. I think that one just might qualify as a mutiny.
—Elkins, who only really cares for Seventh Son when they serve it up on the Trimaran as a side dish to a big bloody helping of Imperio'd Arthur, Unwilling Filicide
Posted to HPfGU by Elkins on October 16, 2002 5:02 PM
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