Also, a story rec.

[sapote]

In Loco Parentis by Dolores_Crane. Harry Potter; in which someone tries to make the world consistent. If you are going to read this, please read it first and then come back; it's one of the few stories where I really think spoilers would diminish it. (Of course, if you want to ask me about specific things you prefer not to read before clicking through, please do - you could comment on another entry, even, and I'll get back to you.)

1) I felt like this story contained some of the most authentic descriptions of adolescent female sexuality that I've read to this point.

2) Here's where the spoilers start: oh holy shit, of course Hermione is not subject to Muggle law, which means of course her parents don't have parental rights over her per se, which means of course Dumbledore is in loco parentis. That's a brilliant piece of world-building extrapolation. The only step that's missing between canon and that is the step where you think to yourself "Self, the Harry Potter universe is secretly pretty fucked up." And who among us isn't already a couple of steps down that particular road?

3) I actually whited out with rage - completely unexpectedly - when Hermione went to Wizard Abortion Jail. Like, there was a rushing in my ears and the screen went all blurry. It just happened so suddenly - she'd done what I consider a responsible thing, she'd resolved a bad situation, she was coping, she was a grownup, and BAM, humanity pulled right out from under her.

(Honestly, if I have one quibble with this story, it's that she forgave Harry for his abortion tantrum. To my mind fetus-daddy womb-entitlement fits are one of the few things people can never come back from. Like, she went to jail and he did nothing because of his uterus entitlement complex. I don't think I could ever set down the stabbity rage on that one. But other people are not me, so. I'm not criticizing the author's choice, just exploring my reaction to it.)

4) Okay, the thing that Tonks - or is it Hestia - says in the second chapter, about how as long as Voldemort's out there, everyone can backpat because they're not a bigot if they're not an actual Death Eater?

WHEN I TRY TO TALK ABOUT OUR PROBLEM? THIS IS OUR PROBLEM. Seriously, every single year in high school civics we discussed racism, and every single year we watched the same documentary on the Klan. Which I guess is a good life lesson: hey, kids, don't join the actual klu klux klan! Meanwhile, I came through high school in two essentially segregated school systems, and no one ever talked about it. But hey: still not the Klan!

I'm just saying, this story describes the problem much better than my flailing attempts ever have. You must be okay, because you've still got a nose.

5) This was very close to the end, but I appreciated the revisiting of the House Elf question and how it shapes wizards. To quote Ursula le Guin, it's the wizards' house, although they did not build it, and do not wash its floors. I mean, there's only three thousand of them. How many house elfs must there be in Britain? HOLY CRAP IT'S ABOUT THE BRITISH CLASS SYSTEM and also racism. It can be about both! Let's just split the difference and say it's about social stratification and oppression.

Anyway, these are thoughts I have. If you, internet friends, have read this story, I would like to discuss it with you, as it is still burning a hole in my brain ten hours after finishing.

Comments

[wychwood]

I also thought this story was kind of amazing! And horribly sad, in a lot of ways; Hermione spends so much of the story really seriously miserable, mostly for reasons that aren't entirely (or at all) her own fault.

Also also DUMBLEDORE in this fic. I mean, he is basically always massively fucked-up, but this is like WHOA THERE. The whole "Oh, Harry must be the baby-daddy because prophecy!" and then what happens to Hermione because of that - I mean, the whole wizard abortion jail is really hideous anyway, but the way Dumbledore is about it all, just, wow.

Hestia and Tonks were so awesome! Although that made me sad for Hermione too.

MORE THOUGHTS LATER.

[sapote]

I know, and she's that snowed-under kind of miserable that you get when you can't really assess what's happening because you're too close and there's too much of it. And then once she puts a name to it, she starts to get better! Which is true and also awesome.

Dumbledore in this fic kind of broke my heart, because I love Dumbledore, but the canonical man is such an egotist. Again, the only step missing between canon and this Dumbledore is the step where you go "wow, this is actually kind of fucked up."

I loved Hestia and Tonks. I also loved Hermione's mother a lot. I know the books are all about that childhood fantasy of being independent and not needing your parents, but I'm older now and the Hermione in this story needed her parents. She needed someone in her corner, and I was so glad when they came in.

[wychwood]

I always liked canon Dumbledore, but the more I've seen people talk about what he actual does, rather than Harry's perspective on him, the more I've realised that he acts in deeply worrying ways. And unfortunately, yeah, I can almost see canon Dumbledore ending up like this. Like you say, ego, and the belief that he! he alone! can reform Lucius like he did Snape (or, you know, like Snape did, but I don't suppose Dumbledore sees it that way).

I really love that one scene where Hermione is walking back from Hogsmeade listening to Tonks' tape, and the Janis Joplin song comes on. Like you say, naming is so powerful with that sort of buried-under-everything feeling. Stress and misery and depression and you can't see them for so long. Hermione in this story is so utterly believable as a teenager, in that way, the big emotional mess of it all; I don't really expect her as a character to end up like that, but it's certainly plausible. And the way she trips over the consequences of being a Muggle in a wizarding world she doesn't fully understand...

Hermione's mother - I adore the bit at the end where she answers a question about Hogwarts because she's read Hogwarts: A History. It was awesome, and also: yes! This is where Hermione came from.

I thought the treatment of the Slytherins in this was really interesting; there's kind of a Guantanamo thing going on with them, but at the same time they're not any nicer - or even necessarily innocent - just because they've been unjustly imprisoned. And it's scary but credible that Harry and the Order and Dumbledore's Army are mostly ok with the Ministry's repressive and undercover tactics when they're aimed at the people they think of as enemies instead of at them.

The house elves - After that nightmare moment, not so much when she'd found out about the House Elves at Hogwarts, as when she'd found out that if she said But this whole society is founded on slavery, on the enslavement of a whole race, the wizards would just blink at her and say Yes. But they like it. And so would the House Elves. - yeah. That whole thing squicks me deeply, and it explains so much about the wizarding world (that... actually I don't think Rowling intended!).

[sapote]

I feel like with the house elves, Rowling started off wanting to create an unjust situation, and then got deeply uncomfortable with the degree to which it was unjust and tried to cover it over - which of course made it much much creepier. Someone trying to explain away an atrocity is always much more alarming than an atrocity called an atrocity, though sometimes it takes longer for the penny to drop.

Re: the Slytherins: there was an article in the New Yorker this summer about a case in which the death penalty was almost definitely applied incorrectly - the specifics of the case were pretty horrifying, but also, with modern investigation, have been shown to be almost definitely completely the result of an accident, not premeditated murder. And in the next edition of the New Yorker, the head of a major group for the abolition of the Death Penalty wrote in to chastise the author of the article for cleaning up the degree to which the defendant was a fairly unpleasant man. "You don't have to like someone to think what happened to them was unjust", specifically, is what he said, and went on to say that in fact making it seem like all victims of injustice are likable is, in the end, destructive to social justice, because what do you do when you have to apply justice to someone who really pisses you off?

[sapote]

Also, thank you for thoughts! I have so many on this!