Random HP Thoughts

[lls_mutant]

I've always hated the ship Sirius/Dorcas Meadowes, just because I despise the reasoning "they were standing next to each other in the picture! Maybe something was going on!" I've also hated the logic that Remus was standing next to someone else, so the others weren't speaking to him. (If they weren't speaking to him much, how was he getting the information to be suspected of being the spy?) So when I started writing AIL, I came up with plausible reasons for why they might be standing where they were. I had Remus work for Caradoc Dearborn (the fact he disappeared neatly left him without references, thus rendering his work experience useless in terms of getting another job), and Dorcas Meadowes was an old woman who was one of Sirius's tutors.

Question: was I wrong about the old woman part?

In HBP, we learn that Professor Meadowes is retiring from the DADA position that Voldemort so covets. Same Ms. Meadowes? Wouldn't surprise me. And wouldn't a DADA prof be powerful enough that Voldie would kill her himself? And when he did, did he make a horcrux, especially since there's a connection with him and the DADA position?

Discuss :)

Also: Plot bunnies up for adoption. I may write them someday, but who am I kidding on time?

1.) Arthur Weasley having to take his wand from his grandmother because she's got Alzhemers and is dangerous with it.

2.) Remus/Sirius, post-Azkaban, and Remus actually breaks out a condom. (I somehow doubt news of AIDS reached Sirius in Azkaban.)

3.) Sirius takes the DADA position in 1981 (or 1980). Wouldn't THAT be a lovely little explanation as to why he ended up in Azkaban????

Comments

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

It also bugs me when it's used as an anti-shipping argument, because we have pictures with groups where Howard and I aren't standing together. (and we're an acknowledged relationship.)

But that's exactly why fictional documents constructed for a specific, literary purpose are different from real documents -- details that are completely haphazard in real life can and do have meaning in literature.

As for the picture dynamics, the reason I grumble about the "Lupin was estranged" argument is because Sirius was SMART. If Remus was so estranged from the rest of their little group by the time the picture was taken (which had to have been several months before Voldie's fall), then how was he a plausible spy?

Well, I think there's a difference between "interpersonal dynamics that would be obvious to the people in the photograph" and "symbolism that is invisible to the people in the photograph at the time, but obvious to the reader on a meta-level," and both are definitely present in that photo. An example of the first type of situation is the fact that Frank and Alice Longbottom are pictured together because they're married, something that both the readers and the characters know. The fact that Peter is pictured sitting between James and Lily, when we know he's going to be the one who drives a wedge into the group and puts a premature end to their marriage, is a textbook example of the second.

So, to me at least, it's plausible that JKR IS suggesting that Remus isn't on the same page as the rest of them -- that the miscommunication and suspicions that led them to suspect him as a spy have already started -- even if neither he nor the others would have said he was "estranged from the group" at that time.

Or it could indeed be random, as some details in the photo certainly are -- I don't think JKR was suggesting that the order is really a triumvirate with Moody, Dumbledore, and Dedalus Diggle in charge, for instance.

[lls-mutant.livejournal.com]

It's plausible, I suppose. Actually, it's very plausible that JKR did it on purpose. I just don't like the concept, because to me, it doesn't make sense that Remus was growing so distant at that point as people would like to believe, and Sirius still suspected him of being the spy.

Which, of course, is arguing two seperate things. You're coming at it from the angle of literary symbolism, I'm coming at it from the angle of MWPP-obsessed plot-logic :) In a plot manner, it doesn't make sense to me for Remus to be "estranged" at that point. It just doesn't work- Sirius is too smart for that. (However, Sirius as a character tends to be whatever the plot calls for.) I also think that Sirius didn't want to suspect Remus- he had to. If there was any other logical (or even not-as-logical) suspicion, I'm sure he would have exhausted that. But yeah- that's not the same thing.

I do see what you're saying- that it might actually have been intentional on JKR's part. It's one of those things we won't know until the seventh book- and even after, we may not know. (I sometimes suspect that the MWPP were not as important as some of us would like to think. Then at other times I think that their history and Voldemort's history are going to collide in Book 7.) Ah well. I just get annoyed when people use it as strong, factual evidence as opposed to suggestive evidence.

I don't think JKR was suggesting that the order is really a triumvirate with Moody, Dumbledore, and Dedalus Diggle in charge, for instance.

But it would make a really, really interesting story! :)