cirakaite @ October 9 2003, 15:57:58 UTC

And why is Millicent using Pansy's journal to reply? *g*

maggie_malfoy @ October 9 2003, 16:04:47 UTC

And why will Millicent put books in Draco's bed? Tune in to find out next week...

*grin*

<3's M.B.

lunadeath02 @ October 9 2003, 16:11:09 UTC

I hope just_harry replies.

("he's" still my fav. character, even though "he" hardly posts)

maggie_malfoy @ October 9 2003, 16:15:54 UTC

even though "he" hardly posts</small>

He's such a tease! :)

flickerflare @ October 9 2003, 16:20:19 UTC

yeah, but um, what does harry replying have to do with malfoy's entry? it's not even about harry at all, i can't see why he would or what he'd say.

acetal @ October 9 2003, 16:47:04 UTC

Well possibly the reason M.B. was angry at Draco was because of Draco/Harry. This would also explain why she was posting from Pansy's LJ.

la_trix @ October 9 2003, 17:47:24 UTC

I don't get it ... why would Draco/Harry explain M.B.'s being angry OR her posting from Pansy's journal?

peccavium @ October 9 2003, 23:13:11 UTC

This must be some sort of NrAgeder logic, wherein nothing is actually logical and everything is a (oh-so-cleverly!) veiled hint about potterstinks/just_harry.

I myself employ this brand of logic aaaaaaaaaall the time.

la_trix @ October 10 2003, 00:49:49 UTC

heh. All roads lead to H/D slash.

noirenails @ October 10 2003, 02:06:01 UTC

Veni, vidi, vici.

acetal @ October 10 2003, 17:20:49 UTC

Well, considering Pansy is supposed to be Draco's girlfriend, not Harry, M.B. could be annoyed about Draco betraying Pansy by two-timing her with Harry and using her as a beard.

...

I now have an image of Draco with a beard.

M.B. posting from Pansy's LJ could not only be a hint to Draco on why she's upset, but reminding him which side she'd come down on if it was a choice between Draco and Pansy.

Seems perfectly logical to me.

*shrugs* But as others have said, PS/J_H isn't the root of everything, even in Nocturne Alley. ;)

sistermagpie @ October 9 2003, 17:08:37 UTC

Thank goodness. M.B. has been angry at Draco for ages now. I love his attempts to get her to talk and get her attention ('bout time!), eventually resorting this. I do hope she tells him what she's angry about, though. I'm glad he's wanting to know even when she's ready to just get over it and not tell him. Do it, M.B.--make him actually show remorse for making you feel badly!

This isn't the first time with the silk souffles. Draco "failed" to bring them to her in the past...but I have no idea what the real significance behind this is. I find myself wondering if he forgot her birthday, but he does seem to remember birthdays.

petitesl @ October 9 2003, 17:35:07 UTC

he does seem to remember birthdays.

I dunno, I was of the opinion that the reason his present for Lucius was late was because he forgot the birthday. Maybe he did it again?

sistermagpie @ October 9 2003, 17:39:27 UTC

This would have been ages ago, M.B.'s birthday I mean. I was thinking more of how he remembered Pansy's birthday. Poor M.B., whatever it is.

I wonder about the little references to Draco stealing M.B.'s books to feel more manly. Has he been stealing something else of hers to feel more manly? Doesn't seem like he's been doing that lately. I'm totally confused!

petitesl @ October 9 2003, 17:53:29 UTC

Doesn't seem like he's been doing that lately.

Lately? Has he done it before? What else would he steal...her cat? I am uber confused.

sistermagpie @ October 9 2003, 20:07:02 UTC

M.B. seemed to get very angry last year when Draco and Pansy decided to go out, and we thought she was married at Draco "stealing" her girlfriend to try to look straight. She was angry at both Pansy and Draco. But he hasn't been putting on a big "Pansy's my girlfriend" show lately, and M.B. isn't angry at Pansy.

We have no clue what M.B. was mad about, but it seems like she didn't want to talk to Draco so would only communicate through Pansy--that led to her posting from Pansy's journal. Sort of like saying, "Tell him he can't do anything right..." She used that phrase in their last argument, I think, when Susan Bones invited her to lunch and she accepted.

darcourt @ October 13 2003, 19:39:06 UTC

she was married at Draco "stealing" her girlfriend

Hee hee. Is there another meaning for "married" of which I am unaware, or is that just a highly entertaining Freudian slip?

sistermagpie @ October 13 2003, 20:19:53 UTC

A very impressive Freudian slip if I do say so myself!!

black_dog @ October 9 2003, 18:10:47 UTC

It's kind of nice to see PS showing concern for a friend, even if he's doing it in a distinctively Dracoish way. I wondered about the "manly" business, too -- we know M.B. has gotten annoyed at PS in the past when he goes into denial about sexual stuff or failed to follow through on things with Harry. But I'm wary about making PS/J_H the root of every little thing that happens around PS. And I found it interesting that PS avoided using his "shapely girlfriend" icon when the manly issue came up, but perhaps he can't use it around M.B. with a straight face. If PS has done anything to annoy MB, he seems genuinely oblivious about it -- he comes as close as he is capable of doing to simply asking her, "what have I done to offend you?" and he seems happy that she's finally willing to talk over Silk Souffles.

I continue to wonder if the Susan business a week or so back is a clue -- maybe M.B. has some health thing going on? Or the NA bylaws permit Boot to get her pregnant? Then again, she says fairly specifically that she was annoyed at PS but "forgot" why. Hmmm, usually if I ramble like this I can talk myself into some theory, but I'm out of things to say and I'm coming up dry.

Anyway, it's good to see them posting like this. NA posts have been a bit thin on the ground lately. I suppose we've been spoiled. Good to know the chewing reflexes are still working.

sistermagpie @ October 9 2003, 20:37:30 UTC

I agree--I'm thrilled to chew over this!

She seems to be echoing things she said in the thread when Susan Bones invited her to lunch. Back then he seemed--to me at least--to also be clueless about what he'd done. And her saying he "can't do anything right" makes it seem like it's not so much something he did on purpose but that he disappointed her in some way--that's what she said in the other thread: "What kind of friend would I be if I wasn't disappointed in everything you do." Also, the moment that M.B. drops the Pansy journal and addresses him directly is when he asks her what she is angry at him about, and there seems to be a little dig there about his not knowing why she's angry.

He did use the shapely girlfriend icon once when she said he also liked silk souffles (good lord, the code!). She told him not to argue with him about his diet. One could of course read this as his sexual tastes as well (as in, don't argue with me about your tastes). She brought up Harry and Seamus in that thread but that doesn't mean she's angry about anything to do with them. She could have just thrown them at him because he was laughing at her lunch with Susan. But it seems like it's just her way of saying: I have silk souffles. You like them too. Perhaps we could eat together. But Draco misses the point and says, "I like silk souffles?" She she has to say, "Yes, you like them. Ask if you can have some, stupid." But then she does bring up the macho thing twice after that.

I did take his whole post as basically a way of stopping this fight. He let's her know he's noticing what she's doing and says he hasn't done anything to her but since she won't talk to him he's talking about it loudly in the journals. I so love ps/M.B. I love his story about Pins--how could M.B. not care that he got scratched? How could she not notice when he kicked Pins? He's not mad at Pins anymore...why is she mad at him?

I don't think pregnancy is any kind of an option but it does seem like the same fight as the Susan Bones post was. I like how what she's saying has all these echoes in past things: M.B. feels Draco just can't do the right thing by her or in general. When Draco came back from Cannes--perhaps this was when he had some sort of falling out with j_h?--M.B. asked him to pick up Silk Souffles for her and he didn't. She said he "failed." Terry got her silk souffles. She brings up Draco's reading her romance novels again, which we've heard about.

It seems like she got him where she wanted him, though. Like he has to ask directly what's wrong with her, makes a joke about his being able to whistle. She sulkily says yes, it's because he can whistle. He drops all pretense and asks her what's wrong (big deal for ps not to continue the game), she gets coy. It seems like she felt awkward (vulnerable maybe?) about saying what it was because she changes the subject and asks what's up with him. Rather than just accepting her talking to him again he really wants to know what was wrong, she thinks about it and invites him for silk souffles, presumably so they can talk in person.

Like a starving person, I leap on M.B. and PS's ambiguousness in a frenzy!!

black_dog @ October 10 2003, 18:17:33 UTC

I like how what she's saying has all these echoes in past things: M.B. feels Draco just can't do the right thing by her or in general.

She said he "failed."

There is so little to go on here, substantively, but the mood is pretty distinctive. It feels less like a fight over a specific incident than one of those situations where a person you care about inexplicably gets on your nerves, where you get extremely frustrated and disappointed with something about them. It's the same mood, maybe, that made M.B. say she was ready to leave Hogwarts, that induced her to flash a smiley at Susan Bones for the hell of it (though she came to her senses quickly, there.)

Where could this discontent and irritability come from? To be realistic, the aimlessness of the plot right now is probably totally external to the story -- there was a lull like this last fall, I think, and maybe it's just the NAers settling back into work or school after vacation and having other things to do. But the sense of spinning one's wheels also seem to resonate well with where the story itself stands right now.

I go back to an idea of what it must feel like at Hogwarts right now. I rambled a while back about how the silence, the lack of memorial, for the attack and the dead students feels like a kind of emotional repression or denial of what happened in June. Also there's the seventh-year thing: I'm remembering what the last year of high school felt like -- a sort of restlessness, a discontent that things you daydreamed about never happened, combined with an uneasy forward focus that's half sense of adventure, half dread of the unknown. All of this can make a person irrationally impatient with the daily muddle, can make them crave some grand gesture or new emotional adventure or decisive break with routine.

The NA game itself feels full of disappointed gestures and suspicious compromises right now, uneasy paperings-over of things that ought to have made for exciting explosions. I'm thinking of Lucius/Narcissa, all that wonderful tension this summer dissolving into the bathos of a sentimental reconciliation, with Narcissa angling for a private island and being bought a trip to a cheesy resort instead. In the same way, we see the grand romance of Harry/Draco dissolving into a shopping date in Glasgow and a trip to a Quidditch match. All that buildup -- is this what it all comes to? And is PS content with that, because to push it further would be frightening?

So people are muddling along when they should be shouting, "Hey! Death Eaters! War! Falling in Love! Coming Out! Big Choices!" The one thing PS has always been is passionate and uncompromising -- but now he's buying into the muddle as well. Maybe it's fear, maybe it's just the seductive comfort of daily routines when big choices seem like an enormous effort. But I suspect Millicent hoped and expected for much more from Draco, needed him to be a kind of magnetic north for orienting her own anger at the world, to be a pioneer for her own rebellion.

I don't know -- does this make sense? To M.B., Draco's apathy about his own life, deliberate distance from strong feelings, is unworthy of him. It's also putting him out of sync with Millicent's mood -- the glorious weirdness of her Susan adventure was totally lost on him. She was counting on more from him, not this sustained pose, this defensive distance from his own and his friends' real issues. It's really bothering her.

My house of cards, submitted for you to knock over!

sistermagpie @ October 10 2003, 20:55:06 UTC

Hee! I have no clue!

But I definitely agree with how M.B.'s mood sounds--like this is a general discontent and connected to her wanting to leave Hogwart's. Draco, too, though, was going through something really emotional that seemed formless. His earlier sleeping, edgy-sounding posts, his aimless discomfort (it seemed) when Harry and Ron went to play Quidditch. I love the idea of him suddenly getting on her nerves. If he did something specific it's just impossible to know what it is!

In the past M.B. has sometimes been impatient with her friends' behavior, especially when they seem to be going along with parents M.B. thinks are ridiculous. But I don't know exactly what M.B. would have opinions about. Like...what would she want Draco to do this year? What choices is he really supposed to be making? We can see the obvious choices of the future (*cough*DeathEaters!*cough*) but what is he failing to do now at Hogwarts? M.B.'s "I'm ready to leave" post is the day after the Cannons match, right after Draco posted about his dream and listened to the match on the wireless. He was out of sorts during that night. Perhaps he did something then or the next day, still in his bad mood? He talked to Seamus that night and M.B. doesn't like Seamus but she knows they talk.

It's hard to know whether ps is holding back on things or not concerning his own life. He hasn't made any big changes but it hasn't come to that yet. If ps was running in circles earlier in the term would M.B. really be disappointed in that? Remember this is the person who thought it was vaguely amusing such a fuss was made over the outing post and Draco's homophobia. If that didn't disappoint her, what could? Seems like it would have to have been something he did *to* her--she did say she was mad at him "for something" and her throwing things at him etc. seem ways to let him know that, like when she was angry at him for dating Pansy before. (Heh. Maybe he had sex with Pansy and it got him all discombobulated and M.B. found out and was angry. ::sigh:: But she wasn't angry with Pansy.) So I get the feeling he did something specific but that this thing was symbolic of the general way he disappoints her. Or something. Draco did mention running away from her after her Divination class but that seemed like their normal relationship.

Has it ever been so hard to figure out what one of the Slytherins is mad about before? Draco honestly seems clueless. I'm not even sure if Pansy knows or not. She hasn't attempted to patch things up between them.

This does make me wonder, too, what M.B.'s thoughts about DEs are in general. I can't imagine her being all "rah rah get that black mark!" I can see her thinking Draco would be an idiot to get involved in that sort of thing, especially knowing how unsuited he is for it. But she seems to have been raised with the same worldview as Draco. Does she have strong opinions on Voldemort etc.? She's definitely not up for dedicating her life to the Pureblood cause, it doesn't seem, but does she see Draco being herded in that direction and if so does she see this as a danger?

black_dog @ October 11 2003, 07:10:23 UTC

Seems like it would have to have been something he did *to* her--she did say she was mad at him "for something"

Well, if you wanted something overt, I think the way PS teased MB over the Susan thing would be a candidate. In that thread, she was clearly signalling to him that she was genuinely annoyed at being teased but he kept going anyway. And what, really, was he saying to her there? Stay cool, stay untouchable, stay the same. It's the ultimate personal disconnect, a refusal to even acknowledge something that's going on with her, and it could stand as a symbol for a more general disconnect in their freindship.

The last time PS and Millicent seemed unselfconsciously close was when she came to visit him at the Manor, with the zombie puffskein business. Things really haven't been quite the same subsequently. And what's happened to PS since? The apparition licenses, the vaguely disappointing visits with Harry, the fight between his parents. And although there are flashes of the old PS, such as in his first back-to-school post, he mostly seems more subdued than in the past. The longest glimpses we've gotten of him are his vaguely rambling, not-entirely-alert conversation with Seamus, his offhand playfulness with Ron, his all-business approach to Quidditch, a couple of casual teasing remarks with Harry.

What's interesting here is that he seems to have a huge amount on his mind, but he's also dealing. He's not sharing, he's not acting out, he seems stressed but also competent and subdued. And that competence, that inwardness, can be a little chilling to his friends -- he's not leaning on them, and he's not automatically sympathetic when they lean on him. I suspect MB misses the Draco who was all on the surface, who hid nothing, who would never have admitted hurting but who piled into bed with her and Pansy for comfort.

Again, I may be overreading what is simply a player's lack of time for a new, or at least a growing self-sufficiency and reticence in Draco's personality. But it's certainly one plausible way for him to respond to what's happening to him. He's been badly let down by his parents but he's over the indignant, hurt-child betrayal thing, he just sort of accepts it coldly and moves on. He still makes amusing and mocking posts but they no longer have quite such a desperate emotional edge. He seems to have a contented friendship with both Harry and Seamus and to have made his peace with Ron. He's much, much harder to get a handle on or a peek inside of.

I keep circling around my point but not quite nailing it, let me try again -- I think MB may be a bit intimidated by the idea of PS as someone who is a survivor, an adapter, who has acquired more self-awareness and self-control. She may even feel, as I mentioned in my last post, that this adaptiveness and self-control is in the service of "going along and getting along" with things he should be rebelling against more flamboyantly. I think she misses his neediness, misses the sense that she had his number, and feels a little lost.

Or, I could just be projecting. ;)

sistermagpie @ October 11 2003, 19:44:41 UTC

Oh, that's a fascinating idea! In terms of the specific thing he might have done I agree he was angering her in the Susan Bones thread, though she must have been already upset about something when she posted she was ready to leave. My initial reading of that made it seem like Draco's teasing was like kicking her right when she needed some comfort. She was feeling out of sorts, her own friends weren't helping her, she reached out to someone else on a whim and he was there mocking her for it. I'm not sure if that's "the" thing that she was angry at him about or if it was a continuation. After all his teasing of her in that thread was basically what you would expect from Draco--but then, that doesn't make it good.

I'm getting a lot of the same vibe from Draco this year as you are, that he both seems more stressed and more competent or shuttered. It seems like he's dealing a lot of things privately. Usually he's so direct about what's bothering him even when he doesn't want to be, but that's changed now. It doesn't seem to be the usual childlike things--not being friends with Harry, wanting Narcissa to pay attention to him, wanting praise from Lucius. His recent digs at Narcissa about her finding herself are the most adult insult I remember from him to her. Usually he's complaining about her not caring about him or creating a fuss over nothing from a child's pov. The finding yourself thing is more cutting, imo; I think that's why Narcissa called it cheek. It was cheek--it was more a comment about her as Narcissa than as Mother, if that makes sense.

It's interesting too, to me, that he sometimes seems to be talking into the wilderness. It may be just a player time issue, of course, but it reads sometimes like Draco is making posts almost trying to continue things the way they were but they don't get the responses they did in the past. He's stopped insulting people as much so there's not as much for people to react to in that sense. He himself seems to be going through the motions, starting to list complaints and then not caring enough to continue. His focus on Quidditch seems incredibly determined, like he's determined to occupy his mind and journal with something safe (like when he was doing Transfiguration). I was surprised Harry didn't respond to his post about the game they went to, an uncontroversial discussion of a shared time together. I think that contributes to the feeling of disappointed gestures you mentioned.

One entry that didn't seem that way was the one where he described his dream. I felt like that post brought up loads of suggestive things but it got not response except from Blaise, who's obviously weird, and Ernie who asked, "Did you enjoy talking to yourself, Malfoy?" (Something about that just struck me--Ernie might as well have said, "Do you enjoy talking to yourself, Malfoy?") Maybe I'm just projecting now but it felt like he needed to post those things because they bothered him. He got little response that we know of (for all I know Harry and he had a big long talk about what his dream meant and Peeves' past in person). Not that I feel like there was a specific response he should have gotten and didn't. In a way that post seemed like it was very private.

Maybe his journal is just changing along with him. One reason he's always been so prominent in NA is he's one of the few characters who's clearly a natural journaler. He likes keeping a journal for himself as well as others; looks over it etc. In the past he's written his journal for the public with his true feelings only peeking through. Perhaps now he's maturing and dealing with things in a way that makes him change that. The voice changes as he has more things to work out himself. When he's really upset about something he does seem to need to do that--he goes to his hole, spent a weekend in the theater. In the Q&A Harry said Draco didn't like to talk about serious things. It's interesting that it doesn't feel like Harry and Draco are connected this year, but the journals might not be reflecting the reality. That seems strange, though, because they've always had such a strong relationship through the journals.

I don't know if I'm making a point here. Just ruminating on the riddle that is ps...:-)

black_dog @ October 12 2003, 17:57:15 UTC

It's interesting too, to me, that he sometimes seems to be talking into the wilderness. . . . He's stopped insulting people as much so there's not as much for people to react to in that sense.

I went back and reread some posts from last summer, and I think you're right about cause-and-effect, here. It wasn't uncommon, last summer, for his posts to attract zero comments. When he wanted attention, he seemed to make an effort to be outrageously offensive or insulting, and predictably that would get him comments.

I was thinking about his social situation, last summer, too. It's easy to forget that he really had no friends last summer. He wasn't close to Millicent yet, he was still mocking her. Darque_pansy was of course a kind of consort at social events but he was incredibly patronizing to her and of course she eventually denounced him; his friendship with la_pensee seemed to grow slowly in the fall, as did his increasingly civil contact with Millicent. He occasionally chats civilly with Crabbe, who was less of a caricature for a while last summer. Of course, the trio were his mortal enemies.

So I agree that's what's changed is that he has fewer people he's inclined to be vicious to, although the Hufflepuffs are, as always, good for a laugh. He even managed a civil reply to Sirius, who posted an unusual compliment to his quidditch reporting skills. (Do you suppose Sirius is making an approach to Harry by saying something nice to PS.

He himself seems to be going through the motions

Yeah, I was trying to figure out why his insults don't have as much bite. And it occurs to me, contrasting his current posts with those of a year ago, that his big rhetorical maneuver last year was to feel genuinely put-upon, to be genuinely outraged by the impositions of Hogwarts and its horrible citizens. Whereas now, there seems to be much more self-mockery, a sort of cold and subdued and rueful awareness that he is often being an asshole, as though he's a bit tired of himself and exasperated with himself.

Contrast his latest post about the fight with Hermione and Ron and Harry in the library (a very 2002 type of post for PS) with the fight with Ron and Harry over clabberts last summer. Last year's post is full of honest, astonished outrage about various indignities he feels he suffered. His account of the current fight maintains only the slightest post that he's the injured party -- he in effect confesses that he insulted Granger, then offered to hit Ron on the head, then actually hit him, then got into it with Harry as a result. And he acknowledges that he got thrown out of the library and now can't do his essay. You can almost hear him saying to himself, "what an idiot. why do I do this?"

I've often had the feeling recently that the way to read PS' journal is to take things at the opposite of face value, and that he sort of expects his friends to realize this. When he insults Harry he's being affectionate, when he blames Millicent for something he's apologizing, when he complains about being put-upon he's mocking himself. In a sense he's taking his old journalling conventions and poses, from the days when he really was a narcissistic twerp, and making fun of them, acknowledging that he used to be like this and maybe still has the same instincts even if he can't quite take them as seriously. I think this is one thing Ron eventually figured out about his tone that has made it possible to have more civil conversations.

But then again, just when we've seen PS as more inward, more self-controlled, and somewhat self-mocking, he does indeed manage to get into a brawl in the Library that really feels like a throwback to last year. What's that about? Why did he lose it? If I had to guess, I'd say it's a reminder that he really is under stress and his maturing isn't complete. I wonder also if there isn't some despair about a stalled relationship with Harry. I don't know though. Impressions?

sistermagpie @ October 12 2003, 19:27:41 UTC

Maybe these antics aren't a sign of despair but a sign he's feeling better. If M.B. had been angry at him it may have been bothering him and we know he was upset about something a while back. Perhaps M.B. and him talking things out and sharing silk souffles like old times put him back in a better mood and he ran out to "play" with the other kids. He possibly snuck up on Ernie (who was up to no good!) and chased him into the Forbidden Forest, teased Hermione when she pointed out he had the wrong book for his essay, wound Ron up, bopped Ron on the head, innocently wondered why Harry felt he had to get involved and got kicked out of the library. His post seemed to end on a high note to me--like oh well, I can't do my homework. I'm crushed! I felt like he was amused at the chaos he had created. Back in the saddle again.

I wonder if this signals him coming out of the fuzzy way he was feeling before, so he's now decided to shake some things up. I guess it could also be that he was working out some regression--did he meet with Narcissa this weekend? Neither of them mentioned it, though Narcissa's post has her settling in at the Manor and gathering up her various creatures from the people who have been taking care of them while she found herself.

saffronlie @ October 9 2003, 17:58:09 UTC

Yes, but what exactly *are* Silk Souffles?! This has, uh, driven me mad for months.

orimornie @ October 9 2003, 20:18:48 UTC

Silk Souffles ---> http://fatgoose.hypermart.net/menu/prepare.pl?R000070

saffronlie @ October 9 2003, 23:47:16 UTC

Yeah, I knew what souffles were, I just got confused over the silk thing. So I'm figuring Millicent's kind is just a brand name. Although Silk always made me think of Silk Cut which brought up all kinds of Bridget Jones references in my head, making Millicent into a desperate single with an addiction who manically counts and rations her Silk Souffles for times of trouble... and hey, Draco can be her Tom. And Colin Firth can just be around. Um, I'm going to go now.

noirenails @ October 10 2003, 02:13:04 UTC

Ahh, thank you. *frantically adds this post to memories because of the recipe and hopes she could cook*