let us have a symposium!

sharing HP metas and lore, practising my English and obsessing over HJP, TMR, APWBD, SS and book!GD (and almost all ships between these famous five)

[pembelinda]

Dream Team: Ron

So, Ron.

Having a good sense of humour is linked to a higher level of (emotional) intelligence. Films design him in a way that circumstances provide us with comic relief through him, but he is the one supplying the other two with a cleaner state of mind through constant rearrangement of reality, otherwise known as jokes. Humour requires a high degree of cognitive flexibility (recognizing patterns, resolving contradictions, shifting between different interpretations), and it invokes a pleasant intellectual reframing in others. Harry jokes too, but his humour has a cynical edge to it, he often pushes boundaries to an uncomfortable place, which does not really help in stepping back from the situation.

Ron’s thought process is usually free from unhealthy tendencies of a tad too obsessive Harry and a tad too (for a lack of a better word) compulsive Hermione. I am afraid their shared obsessiveness-compulsiveness would not be half as productive without Ron (sorry not sorry for the lame joke).

He does not gain his knowledge of the magical world through books (though he is obviously also highly successful academically, and this requires book smarts too), but through paying attention at family dinners. He remembers the most obscure details of conversations (about legislation, wizarding customs, leading beliefs, security risks etc.) heard there.

Research does not really support the assertion that being good at chess equals superior strategic thinking or high intelligence, but in the fictional context it is supposed to invoke exactly this stereotype. How good is he at chess? Well, the self-playing chess set in the PS is one of the most impressive artefacts we see in the books. While wizards most certainly do not have any mathematical knowledge worth talking about, their chess sets are semi-sentient (they likely inherit the owner’s personality, remember some of plays, and owning the figures for a while means they are more likely to follow your commands and not give contradictory “confusing” advice, as HArry puts it). In practical terms it means Minerva has enchanted an existing set, likely her own or that of a Hogwarts champion (“for the best-played game of chess Hogwarts has seen in many years”). So, he is very good.

This game aside, it was his brilliant idea to fake spattergroit effectively making DE think Harry is alone in the hiding in one smooth move. His strategic moves may be less in quantity, but not in quality. That is the goal behind strategy: you strike once, but the domino effect is achieved. He is also similar to Harry in thinking quickly on the spot (stealing the spare wand, remembering about the Basilisk fangs etc.)

His strategic mind is not properly explored in the series because they almost never have an opportunity to strategize or plan anything beforehand. They are only ever on quests because this is how Rowling writes, and this is what makes Hermione shine more than Ron or Harry (and Harry at least gets to demonstrate his incredibly quick thinking all the tome). She never puts them through any problems that require longer strategic planning (for Ron), or more time or resources for research (for Harry). Two missions they went to marginally prepared for (Gringotts and the Ministry in DH) severely suffered under a lack of adult guidance. Elementary mistakes they made would have been spotted by the most average of average adults trained in such line of work. Put together with otherwise sound reasoning during both missions, this is especially frustrating (though fun! this is why it is this way!)

I can never shut up about their stringent workflows on the run. We see how fully competent adults (Ted Tonks, goblins, Dirk Cresswel) cook in the open, without any protective charms, such a strong contrast to the trio (though adults are right to use real fire, in this case the trio is too cautious, the smoke most certainly would be covered by the extensive charms they use).

And of course, there is common sense both Harry and Hermione often lack in their obsessive and compulsive ways of thinking, respectively. During the Devil’s Snare accident, he puts Hermione’s knowledge (“it likes damp and dark”) and Harry’s solution (“light a fire!”)  together to prompt Hermione to conjure fire. It stays so later on: Hermione figures out the basilisk, Harry figures out the location of the Chamber, but Ron thinks of a practical solution, he is the most grounded, down-to-earth guy, and his healthier mental state is one of the many causes of that.

All these examples also show how Ron is crucial to Harry’s mental health and normal development. He provides Harry with things missed from his formative years and a safe haven to think about not just solving cases, but also life aspirations (it is Ron that nudges Harry into thinking whether Cho is still what Harry needs etc.)

While Hermione is the best at analytical thinking, boys are better at big picture thinking, top down for Ron, and bottom up for Harry. Like I have said, dream team. It is almost as if they are fictional!

Ron is also the one who takes over the leadership when Harry is indisposed: he kept in mind their initial plan to destroy the cup with fangs while Harry was busy solving the last horcrux mystery.

He is also the most efficient fighter after Harry, which showcases bodily intelligence (Harry neutralizes 3 DE during the Battle of Seven Potters, Ron 1, Hermione none).

Unpopular opinion but him leaving the Aurors and joining the WWW is a good move for him. After all, he is not standing behind the counter, he is helping the Weasley Empire – wizarding technological breakthrough - grow and go international. Finally putting his strategic chops to real use while supporting his brother. I will sleep well if they introduce chess sets supporting remote games and games without a partner as one of their products. After all, why waste the time McGonagall spent on the prototype!

[pembelinda]

Dream Team: Ron, Hermione, Harry

“Time to split up the dream team, I think”. As much as Snape is being sarcastic here, he is also absolutely correct. Harry, Ron and Hermione are a dream team. It is not just because their strengths complement each other in the most beneficial – for the narrative - ways, but also because, by the end of the series, they have grown and enriched one another. There is no doubt that they will be exceptionally successful individually, though the way we usually make it be is rather stereotypical and largely not based on the actual textual data. I would not be so bothered if it did not say something about the way we think about intelligence, teamwork and talent overall, and (lately) the way we talk about “intelligence” of artificial intelligence (and so the value of humans).

I will share my thoughts on what each one brings to the table and how they change in subsequent posts, but a matter even less addressed is the way they work as one brain, achieving what otherwise would not have been possible for children. Hermione spends more time reading in general, but they research and brainstorm an insane amount of time together. Starting in their first year, they spend months perusing the whole library in search of the identity of Nicholas Flamel, using every 10 minutes in between classes to sneak into the library, they also “searched through their lunchtimes, evenings and whole weekends” during the Triwizard Tournament, they generally invest most of their free time towards our amusement. Such cuties. They also start researching the most obscure cases of beasts baiting together, just how many 13-year-olds would even have gotten through more than one case study? I wish someone would have taught them more efficient ways to work though…

They also spend an impressive amount of time discussing all the bizarre events they stick their noses into, often talking in circles like three overly enthusiastic new recruits, but more often than not coming up with decent conclusions based on very little data they have. Even when the end result is mostly achieved by one of them, they usually discuss it on-page or off-page in detail. Remember their brainstorm before the 7th year “trip” they go on? We see glimpses of how they have discussed the necessary preparations, the way horcruxes work and are destroyed, and the ways to get anything done while they are actively prevented from meeting up more. All three of them end up utilizing this discussion later on.

While such a communal effort is very convenient for the plot demanding rapid mysteries unravelling, it is very interesting to dissect what each of them actually likes and learns to do in the process, as well as what individual urges and interests are put on the back burner or left unexplored (hopefully temporary! cause they too deserve unrestricted exploratory freedom other characters enjoy during their Hogwarts years!) So, let us start! I will start with Ron.

[pembelinda]

Scarlet Auror Robes: Have We Made Them Up?

So much beautiful art featuring scarlet robes. Does it not fit so well with well-established bravery and chivalry of Gryffindor colours? Does it not rhyme perfectly with deadly scarlet eyes of Voldemort? Alas, I am forced to conclude scarlet Auror robes are not actually canon.

It has bugged me for a while that Aurors should have a uniform. After all they are not supposed to be the police (in the sense that they are not routinely working with the citizens of magical Britain). Aurors, like their real-life counterparts (MI5, MI6, CID, even SIB, etc) should be wearing civilian clothes, because they almost always work in disguise. Secret agents are usually instructed to wear the most inconspicuous clothes invented by humanity. But is not red the most counter-productive colour for a job requiring high scores in Concealment and Disguise?

It seems like the lore has stemmed from personal preferences of one particular Auror and one particular MC. This particular Auror has just happened to draw Harry's attention, and fandom has rolled with it.

The Aurors had covered their cubicle walls with everything from pictures of wanted wizards and photographs of their families, to posters of their favourite Quidditch teams and articles from the Daily Prophet. A scarlet-robed man with a ponytail longer than Bill’s was sitting with his boots up on his desk, dictating a report to his quill. A little further along, a witch with a patch over one eye was talking over the top of her cubicle wall to Kingsley Shacklebolt.

The very same Auror is spotted right after the duel between Dumbledore and Voldemort:

‘He was there!’ shouted a scarlet-robed man with a ponytail, who was pointing at a pile of golden rubble on the other side of the hall, where Bellatrix had lain trapped only moments before. ‘I saw him, Mr Fudge, I swear it was You-Know-Who, he grabbed a woman and Disapparated!

Healers wear lime-green robes, Wizengamot members wear purple robes, Quidditch players wear robes of a distinct type, but it seems like Aurors do not wear any uniform! They might come the closest to the wizarding army, but magical warfare is too different from ours, and Aurors merge functions of intelligence agencies, the army and serious crime units, so it makes sense for them to dress to not impress.

The only thing I want to know is whether it was Yaxley that originated this trend [UPD: I was corrected, it is not Yaxley, it is Auror Williamson]. I have absolutely nothing but Harry's opinion about his dressing style to back it up, but is it not a good indication in itself?

The man’s scowling, slightly brutish face was somehow at odds with his magnificent, sweeping robes, which were embroidered with much gold thread.

This is how one of DE at the Astronomy Tower is described. Yaxley also ends up being the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement after Voldemort takes over. Was it the same impeccably dressed man? Do we own this headcanon to Harry's preferences in men? I dearly hope so.

[pembelinda]

Of witchcraft, of wizardry

I do not particularly like the gender-neutral term wixen coined by fandom - not because I know German, I also do not like the term magicals - but because it does not feel organic in-universe. We need a gender-neutral term, but there is a fundamental issue with choosing one that combines terms witch and wizard. It is true that throughout the series, when aimed at people of all genders, we almost always see wizards or witches – something that out-universe is caused by the existing literary tradition (The Worst Witch, etc.) It is also true that wizard and wizarding are used by default.

On paper, such double use of a term as both gender-specific and gender-neutral in the absence of grammatical gender in Modern English is asking for a term that does not function as a generic masculine.

None of the terms for magic users – save for warlock, which is male because of the -ck suffix, and initially not negatively connoted, unlike in the real world – are inherently gendered in the real world. However, I also do not agree that honouring the real-world usage of witch, wizard, mage, sorcerer, etc, as truly gender-neutral terms for magic users that simply practice different types of magic or represent different schools of thought works canonically.

 Historically (in-universe), the world wizard was indeed gender neutral. The Sorting Hat, which is as old as the founders, still refers to the four of them as wizards:

There lived four wizards of renown, Whose names are still well known.

It is not a coincidence, as at this time witchcraft and wizardry were still separate practices. All founders were practising wizardry and thus were wizards; they represent a classical archetype of a wizard (etymologically it is derived from “wise”), since they are scholars, not some wild witches, and they build an academic institution. It just also so happens that with time Hogwarts starts teaching many forms of magic and becomes a school of witchcraft and wizardry.

Some of the classes like flying on brooms, potions, and divination are historically associated with women and witches[gender-neutral]. They are linked with the wild, the nature, the womanhood. (NB: the now regressive author used to be rather progressive by making both practices available to people of all genders).

Ironically, even we as fandom, started seeing broom flying as something that fits boyhood more than girlhood. Culturally, broom flying used to be associated almost exclusively with witches, brooms are after all a household item and were heavily associated with witch hunts, but as many things introduced to everybody, it started to be seen as more worthy of the boys. Slytherin implicitly favours boys over girls on their team, because Quidditch is seen as elite and flying is not feminine anymore.

Potions - like their real-world analogies of cooking and folk remedies - are left to men on a professional level and to women in the household. Feminine-coded Divination attracts as many girls as boys and is one of the main research areas in the DoM – and yet somehow it still looked down as irrational by some of the characters, while its more academic analogue - Arithmancy - is male-coded and respected.

Astronomy, History, Charms, Transfiguration, Arithmancy, Ancient Runes (and Alchemy, though it is not in the Curriculum) are associated with studied men, academics, sitting in libraries and wearing beards – and so with wizardry. Some of the classes are less obviously associated with either witchcraft or wizardry, but let us talk about it sometime later.

Other terms also appear to have once been widespread, but are currently largely obsolete. They stay in historical titles (Grand Sorc., Chf. Warloc., the Warlocks’ Convention of 1709, a sub-committee of Sardinian sorcerers). They are still used in the neutral stylistic register (Witching Hour, with the popular singing sorceress, Celestina Warbeck, warlock called Perkins), but there is a second negatively connoted meaning for each of them. It is especially obvious when used side-by-side (venerable-looking wizards arguing over the latest article in Transfiguration Today but wild-looking warlocks). Underage Sorcery is something wild, something you are supposed to stop using after having received the privilege to learn from books (hi Harry).

See, the only truly gender-neutral and practice-neutral term that is used in the series is wand-carriers, and it is uttered by a Goblin. Why? Well, because homo sapiens might have erased the differences between sorcery, witchcraft and wizardly, by generously allowing other homo sapiens, bar squibs, to study in one place, but the same courtesy is not given to other beings wielding or not wielding magic (Non-Wizard Part-Humans is the legal term for those of mixed descent, Magical Creatures is for those of non-human descent). Magicals also does not seem like a very inclusive term, since some of the creatures – merpeople, giants – do not wield magic.

So where does it leave us? Is wizard a better gender-neutral term? It leaves an opening for being truly inclusive once wandlore and Hogwarts are shared with everybody, but it defaults to wizardry as the preferred practice. “Wixen” does not solve this either, because “witch” and “wizard” have different stems. (Is is better to default to this stem?) Something derived from sorcerer and sorceress? Something derived from magician for humans, and something altogether different for all beings? Is the difference meaningful? Whatever the answer is, the magical society is very far from any form of consensus or even animated discussion on the topic.