sistermagpie @ July 11 2004, 02:06:58 UTC

I just finished them too. It's funny...I thought Ron and ps both seemed very much themselves, as well as M.B. Draco is obnoxious but at this point he has no connection to Harry whatsoever. Knowing how much Harry means to him 2 years from now (heh) it's interesting to see just how hung up on him he was to begin with. It makes me wonder just how he thought about him then.

Harry doesn't seem subdued to me exactly--I guess because I got used to him going for so long without posting seeing any journal enteries at all makes him seem very open! I love Malfoy's remark about Harry's not knowing his mother--it's one of the few time he completely hits the mark and says something that's hurful because it's true. But it's interesting the way Harry focuses so much on Sirius--that's another thing I think the player keeps up throughout the game. He will, you're right, start focusing more on the students, though. Though I always felt like he was always more focused in the journals on his godfathers--it's really Malfoy who brings him out the most in terms of students.

The way ps posts over and over in Harry's journal is such an interesting decision on his player's part. It's like he just can't help himself when it comes to Harry. He keeps thinking of more things to say and coming back to get another word in until Harry responds (ignoring him doesn't help-something Harry later turns around against him). That never really goes away, like when he tries to not speak to him and can't or, even better, when he does not speak to him for a while and then practically explodes with a post of everything he's wanted to say about Harry.

I love the Unholy Trio interaction as well, with Draco telling MB to lose weight and her joking about her womanly curves (and telling him the conversation is over) while Pansy does Draco's homework and yells that she can't feel her legs. It'll be interesting to see how the whole Pansy-gets-expelled thing plays out. That reminds me...darque_pansy is deleted, right? Will that make anything confusing? I'm not sure. It seems like originally they were going for Pansy having a crush on Draco, which then freaks him out, which makes her angry. But that's going to be more interesting knowing that these three have such a long history with OTT fights being par for the course. I think knowing so much more about their relationship will make it easier to read their earlier interactions more accurately.

Snape's interesting--it's strange seeing him posting so much. It's not quite right-as someone said, he sounds more like himself (or what he'll become) when Sirius writes about him. Remus does sound different in this first entry, but I have a feeling he'll be more of himself soon. I figure in the beginning they may have felt like they needed more of an explanation for the adults to be posting, but eventually they realized they didn't need much of one. The parents that post seem to be the ones that are just more concerned with what their children are up to at school.

It's nice seeing Penelope there too, where we can see what a good couple she and Percy make. That's one of many things that read differently now that you know the ending (though we know they're a couple from the beginning). Fred and George's posts of course take on a different tone-well, not really. I mean, they just sound funny and I don't think about one of them dying when I read it. But I pay more attention to which is which, knowing how things turn out. Lavender's interactions with ps are definitely right there from the beginning, and I'll be interested to watch Neville vs. Malfoy too.

One thing that really struck me as so wonderful was the way everyone starts out complaining about Malfoy, and the way Hermione in particular says that he's going to keep everyone from really interacting in a positive way when of course the opposite is true. Even when it's just by providing a common enemy, he becomes a focal point for integration--though it was interesting to think about how Hermione and he never made peace that we saw. (I think this is a good decision, and that it's particularly interesting given Harry's not quite comfortable feelings about Ernie.)

black_dog @ July 11 2004, 10:31:16 UTC

Harry doesn't seem subdued to me exactly--I guess because I got used to him going for so long without posting seeing any journal enteries at all

Well, I should be more specific -- he definitely does seem to post and comment a lot early in the game, at least compared to his later habits. I guess that would make sense since they have to establish him as a character before they can make it work to just wonder what he's doing behind the scenes. But I don't think the volume of his posts translates into real self-revelation. There's a formality and stiffness and reserve to his posts -- his initial post is full of neutral, content-free words like "cool" and "wierd" and interestingly, "personal" is sort of paired with "wierd" -- he's clearly not comfortable talking about himself. He's distantly polite to Neville ("good . . . good"). He ignores Lavender's petition in his journal. His note to Percy is so stiff and awkward it's funny.

And yet if we're tempted to think he's just dull, there are two comments that leap out, both on this thread: Where he rips into Malfoy for suggesting his mother liked it "doggy-style," and then when he's talking to Ron about turning Pansy's hair green and going to see the Cannons and you can really hear his enthusiasm. So I definitely feel that his initial impression is someone who has a lot going on that you don't see, but who is deliberately contained, someone who sort of uncomfortably withholds himself to the point of unsociability unless something sparks him.

The way ps posts over and over in Harry's journal is such an interesting decision on his player's part.

And on rereading some of the posts, I wonder if the implied obsession isn't reciprocated, even though Harry isn't ready to express it yet. It's interesting that when Lavender wants PS banned from the internet, it's Harry who speaks up to say that PS didn't actually kill the rabbit, he just found the picture. He calls for Dumbledore to "do something," presumably short of actually banning PS.

Um, and that's enough html references. I was feeling guilty for being too lazy to put them in my initial post.

I'm wary of reading too much into the Slytherin Trio right now, mainly because we only have the one comment by MB, and Pansy was a different player. My impression from this Pansy's comment was that their relationship was completely one-sided, that PS took her utterly for granted and didn't care much about her.

Speaking of changed players and characterizations, I was sorry to see that blondenarcissa's early posts have been filtered/suppressed. (You can still see that they exist, by looking at her calendar view.) I can definitely see the sense of this, since the genius of N's eventual characterization was the hiddenness of her real nature and motives. But I remember looking up those posts when I was first trying to figure Narcissa out, and they're screamingly funny -- Narcissa as gin-swilling, Lucius-bashing DE dominatrix and general shit-kicker. I hope maybe we can collectively talk her player into unscreening those comments for just a little while, so people can enjoy them as a "variant" edition.

I'm really fascinated by your suggestion that PS serves as a "focal point for integration," drawing everyone together if only against a common enemy. As a game-design issue, that makes perfect sense. I also think you're right that he never made peace with Hermione in the end, and I posted elsewhere about how right it seemed that his final conversation with Ron was sort of an awkward failure, despite mutual goodwill. So I think the integrity of his characterization holds up to the end -- he's not an easy person to like, ever, even if it's hard to quite resist him. I also wondered whether H's tolerance of Ernie's homophobia ultimately reflected a gradual estrangement with Harry over the H/D thing.

sistermagpie @ July 11 2004, 15:18:18 UTC

There's a formality and stiffness and reserve to his posts -- his initial post is full of neutral, content-free words like "cool" and "wierd" and interestingly, "personal" is sort of paired with "wierd" -- he's clearly not comfortable talking about himself.

Oh yes, definitely. It's great to look at the start of the game and see how people respond to the journal itself right away. Harry is completely self-conscious, almost as if he's up on stage fidgeting and everyone's staring at him. Percy loves the chance to lecture. Lavender likes to decorate. Neville has that sort of well, people probably won't pay attention to me here either but let's see what I do with it. Hermione is, of course, all into the project but at the same time you can tell it's a school assignment in which she wants to do well. The twins see a good way to torment Percy and Ron. Ron's stating his opinions right away. Snape hasn't quite become himself yet, and Sirius is sort of resentful about the whole thing. Remus is smooth. And then there's ps who takes to it like a duck to water.

Harry's always wary of people not in his circle that he trusts, and here he's comfortable talking to Ron and, in his own strange way, Malfoy. That's very canon, I think, especially after GoF where Harry seemed most confident with these two. With Hermione I think he probably feels like he's more dealing with her school persona on the journals so you don't see their closer interactions as much. I wasn't sure what to make of his jumping in on Lavender's thread, though it seemed right. I thought maybe his main thought was just that he wanted to correct an error. But I do wonder just what Harry feels , since he's not jumping in on any anti-Malfoy things. I wonder if he just thinks that will bring more attention down on himself, or that nothing will ever get Malfoy off his back.

I know Pansy was different early on--though I seem to remember her slipping pretty easily into their new interaction post-Beauxbatons. So since that friendship was so ultimately important I'm trying to make it all coherent in the end. They didn't erase anything that happened, but ultimately whatever is there has to fit into what we know, and we know that three of them were supposed to be lifelong friends. So I'm trying to work the earlier different!Pansy into that. I figured taking Pansy for granted was always something ps did at times (like when she has to listen to him talk about Quidditch), but so was Pansy and MB teaming up on him. In the end I thought that Pansy and Draco always had difficulties that MB/Draco didn't because Pansy was so directed towards romance, thanks to her mother and maybe her own crush. So I feel like in the beginning the Trio is still there, as always, but Pansy and Draco are on a real collision course. I don't think this jibes with what the original players were doing-they were probably doing a more straightforward one-sided thing where ps was a jerk and Pansy lashed out, but the later versions add more depth to it for me. I mean, knowing that ps at this point is sickened and horrified at the idea of being gay, his relationship with Pansy is full of landmines.

black_dog @ July 11 2004, 20:08:08 UTC

They didn't erase anything that happened, but ultimately whatever is there has to fit into what we know, and we know that three of them were supposed to be lifelong friends.

Well, this is the crux of the matter in how you read the early posts among the three of them, and I guess I would dissent from this a little bit. The "lifelong friends" thing is given some wonderful emphasis later in the game. And I could be misreading. But at this stage, I'm wary of reading it into their current relationship. I sort of rationalize this by saying all these families knew each other as children, and that past is available to them sentimentally when and if they happen to be friends in school, but their actual school friendships may fluctuate.

One reason I'm skeptical about the "lifelong friends" thing is that a crucial early plot point is that Draco is badly hurt when Harry says he has no friends -- he ends up punching him in the nose, and Harry covers for him, and there are further repercussions between them, and it's the beginning of a change for the better in Harry's attitude toward him. So I've always tended to assume that the "no friends" thing stung PS so badly, because it was true.

Maybe a possible compromise position would be that MB is willing to be friends, but PS doesn't quite see her as a real person right now. As for Pansy, I think they did delete a lot of Darque!Pansy stuff, including her journal, but I remember stumbling across an elaborate thing where she writes him a long poem in goth!mode bemoaning the fact that he doesn't appreciate her -- she must have been a nightmare when she was aggressive.

On the whole, I think the idea of development -- that one of the big changes in PS is that he became capable of real friendship -- is a reasonable alternative to the idea of consistency in the Trio's friendship. And I lean that way based on my spotty reading of the early stuff, but it will be interesting to see if that hypothesis holds up as we go along.

sistermagpie @ July 11 2004, 22:18:30 UTC

This is really interesting because I'm really not sure how to take these early posts. I just I agree that this wasn't something being written into the early relationships (though Millicent and Draco seem to interact the way they do later in their first posts here), but I guess I'm not sure what to do with the retcon, then. Maybe I should just take these early posts as not yet Pansy and figure she "starts" post-Beauxbatons. I just find myself wanting to fit this whole time when they seem to genuinely be hurting each other into that storyline. I may not be able to do it. I just wonder what to do with the expulsion.

I'm not sure how I feel on ps being so isolated in the beginning. His interaction with MB sounds just like most of their later interactions. Two years from now he's still calling her fat and she's still flatly disagreeing. I think maybe this gets into something about her character in general, in that I feel like although she's a favorite of mine I sometimes feel like I don't find her admirable the way other people do. I think she's a wonderful character (a favorite of mine) and very strong in a lot of ways, but in other ways I think ps can be the better person and is responsible for her personal growth as much as she's responsible for his. In some ways I think she's very like Lucius-moreso than Draco is.

MB seems very tribal to me-she has the people that are hers and if somebody else crosses the line with them she protects them, however much she might torment them or fight with them herself. But just as there were ways MB taught Draco about connections with people I feel like his own difficult relationship could do the same for her. I mean, it's funny...we think of Draco as having no friends but MB isn't that easy either. At the end of the game she needs Draco more than ever, despite a just-budding relationship with Nott that's not yet strong enough to comfort her after Pansy and a relationship with Harry through Draco. Draco seems to have truly won Seamus' friendship and Harry's, and be accepted by Dean and Ron. One of MB's last scenes has Draco taking *her* to one of their tea parties, with Seamus inviting her partially for ps. He's also giving her shelter at the Manor.

So I feel like yeah, Draco's got a lot of problems here and as yet it's hard to ever imagine him being a good person, but I think a lot of what changes him comes from within himself. That it's partly his desire for connection (despite having developed a personality like the Great Wall of China) that makes him change and that changes others for the better. I don't know what I see this having to do with this early ps/mb interaction-maybe nothing. I guess it just seemed right to lay out just what we thought ps' arc was about and how the other characters played into it, now that we know the whole thing. And when it comes to the Slytherin kids it didn't seem to me that Draco was unique in needing to make himself more vulnerable and giving if he wants to have real friendships. You seem to feel that MB was always wanting and waiting for ps to change, but I think I feel like she didn't see him that way.

black_dog @ July 11 2004, 22:46:48 UTC

You seem to feel that MB was always wanting and waiting for ps to change, but I think I feel like she didn't see him that way.

LOL, no, I offered that as a compromise! I don't quite know what to make of her at this point, because I haven't read enough of the evidence, but I was mainly registering dissent from the idea of the Slytherin Trio as a fact right now. At best, MB is showing she can handle PS' abuse, is not rattled by him. It's possible this reflects an amused tolerance for him, maybe even an interest in him as a potential friend, but the evidence is still pretty much zero either way, I think, at this point in the game.

My overall sense of MB's arc as a character, in light of the end of the game, is that the rage she expressed over Pansy's death unlocked an emotional authenticity that was new for her, and was a crucial development for her. And the growing friendship among the three of them over the final year prepared the way for that. MB has always been highly defended, a kind of tank or fortress as was clear when Draco transferred Dumbledore's protective spell to her after the outing. Her resistance to real emotion, her constant retreat behind teasing and snark, and the shame she feels at her few moments of letting her guard down (like with Susan Bones) are the marks of her own injuries, her own big challenge that she has to get over, even though on the surface MB seems very strong and is very funny.

That closed-up-ness makes it really hard to know when MB is showing genuine affection. But I do see a lot of evidence later in the game that MB is fond of PS and cares about him. I don't really see that yet in the current threads; I just see the snark. So, since I don't see the whole range of feelings yet, I'm not quite willing to say that they sound like they do later in the game. I'm holding to my hypothesis that they're not really friends, yet, except in the most superficial sense. But it's hard to argue from a negative and that's why I'm cautious until we get a chance to read more of her posts.

It's fascinating to think about the total paths of these characters' development, which is what all this early stuff opens up for us as readers. I guess I sort of want to be aggressive about making hypotheses, and I'm maybe biased toward assuming there's a pattern of dramatic change in all the characters; but I also want to preserve some skepticism until we get further on and the evidence builds up.

sistermagpie @ July 12 2004, 00:30:14 UTC

LOL, no, I offered that as a compromise!

LOL! Oops, didn't mean to go overboard.:-) No, I totally see the same things you're seeing here, that MB is just handling ps' snark, not only not backing down but getting the last word. I don't get anything like affection in her post, though I thought her reminding him that he picked her was significant--she seems to have been picked for the team by Draco, which makes sense if he has good reason to know how well she plays. He wanted her on the team.

Reading your post I think I realized the way I might be just seeing things from a slightly different angle, which is that while I agree that the Slytherins grew close in the past year and were able to be better friends to each other than they were before, I tend to read some later developments as things that were revealed as well as things that developed. Reading their posts you can see why outsiders wouldn't think of them as friends. But I thought when we saw more of them we started to see the affection underneath the snark. So it wasn't just that these were three people who started out with a shallow friendship that got deeper, it was also that this friendship was misleading on its surface.

So if I was looking at these posts for how the game developed I'd say oh, maybe when they started they just had the snark and later the players developed more to the friendship. But from the pov of what I know about the characters I know that MB has a box of badges this kid made him when he was 5 that she's kept all this time, and he's her Patronus.

But yeah, I think Pansy's death was a huge development for her. I think part of what I think is so sweet at the end is that MB doesn't really know what to do with her new feelings and ps has just emerged as somebody who is actually someone who looks out for his friends. That, to me, was one of the most surprising (though believeable) things about the glimpse we got of what he would one day be. Not that MB was destroyed or anything--she was strong in return for ps in having to break the news of Lucius' death etc. But I felt like she was always good at being the rock...it was going to be hard for her, as you say, emotionally authentic. She'd sort of always been able to be amused or affectionate from a distance.

airaloki @ July 28 2004, 18:28:42 UTC

Sorry that this is not exactly on topic, but where does this happen?

a crucial early plot point is that Draco is badly hurt when Harry says he has no friends -- he ends up punching him in the nose, and Harry covers for him

could you show me the link?

sistermagpie @ July 11 2004, 15:28:02 UTC

Oh, and I forgot about the Ron/Hermione stuff at the end:

I also think you're right that he never made peace with Hermione in the end, and I posted elsewhere about how right it seemed that his final conversation with Ron was sort of an awkward failure, despite mutual goodwill. So I think the integrity of his characterization holds up to the end -- he's not an easy person to like, ever, even if it's hard to quite resist him. I also wondered whether H's tolerance of Ernie's homophobia ultimately reflected a gradual estrangement with Harry over the H/D thing.

Actually, I'm not too worried about Ron and Draco. I thought at the end there it wasn't ps that was freaking Ron out but the whole situation. He *was* scared of ps after seeing him sitting with Pansy's body, and he was also kind of nervous talking about Harry. I thought his thumbs and all were awkward, but that he really was happy that ps was concerned. They still had their usual inability to talk without misundersanding each other, but the most important thing for Ron seemed to always be that a) if Harry liked ps then that was all Ron needed to know and b) if ps showed he cared about Harry he was alright by Ron. Since ps was showing that in those last threads, I think Ron was cool with him. His last "K" was, imo, nervous but also optimistic.

The other thing is that Ron was always going to be a bit blundering about this being Harry's boyfriend, which I think adds even more nervousness. But I felt like eventually Ron and ps would settle into a better relationship. Mostly because ps took such a big step in the end and was no longer trying to drive Ron crazy. It might take a while but with both of them making an effort I thought things would be okay.

Hermione's very interesting in that light. She'd always be friends with Harry, of course, but I couldn't help but feel the same way, that there was an estrangement there. And I didn't think it came from ps' use of the word "Mudblood" either. That is, I don't think Hermione's feeling was that she couldn't believe Harry would like someone who was cruel to her--though that could be part of it. I thought it was something more subtle that turned more on Hermione's judgments-that Harry was disappointed in them and Hermione was hurt Harry took it that way. Something like that.

black_dog @ July 11 2004, 20:29:12 UTC

Well, I guess I do like your optimism about Ron and PS after all. It's pretty significant that Ron was able to forgive PS after the vicious things he said -- though of course it was only after PS had suffered a comparable loss. But I think you're right -- at the end, Ron was willing to be open to PS for Harry's sake, and that's maybe all that matters in the long run.

I do think it's a nice touch, though, that this wasn't handled as some sort of final sentimental reconciliation, with everything just fine. Compared to the relatively easy conversations PS was having with Seamus and Dean, his final conversation with Ron involved all sorts of awkwardness and hesitation and not-quite-getting-it. But maybe the goodwill is more important, and will triumph in the end.

Interesting point about Hermione -- are you suggesting she senses some disapproval from Harry for the way she was always so skeptical about the H/D relationship? I'm thinking about the "there's no point to this" thread, where she jumped in, and I imagine Harry and Hermione must have had some fairly intense words about that afterward.

We know from Veritaserum night that Hermione doesn't take the whole relationship seriously - thinks it's some kind of physical attraction thing, plus Quidditch. So there are two paths from there -- either she's startled into a realization that it does matter (and I see no sign of this, frankly) or she just leaves it as something hurtful and puzzling to her and moves on with her own life. Hermione doesn't seem one to question herself that way, and the tone of her posts with Ernie toward the end suggested to me that she was very happy with the new direction her emotional life was taking -- even a bit full of herself -- not at all inclined to introspection about things, and moving on from whatever didn't work for her.

I remember blaming Hermione a little bit for the PS/JH blowup over the Bonzai Buddy affair -- she mau-maued something that was really none of her business and forced Harry to take a position against PS. And I wonder what she and Harry each felt after Harry beat up Malfoy on her behalf on the train coming home. I bet at some level Harry resented that -- how much does he need to prove to Hermione, and how long does he have to keep doing it, against his own interests? And I think the final straw for Hermione would have been when JH and PS finally reconciled again.

I guess what I'm saying is that there's a potential for real tension, real latent hostility here, that is probably suppressed out of respect for their friendship but that wouldn't surprise me if I saw it emerging in passive-aggressive ways. I think the H-H friendship has dramatically cooled, just as she's grown away from Ron a bit. She's fully centered on Ernie at the end, and not looking back.

sistermagpie @ July 11 2004, 22:22:20 UTC

I definitely got that with Hermione too. It's funny you used the term "full of herself" because that was the vibe I started to get in her Cleudo post. That's part of Hermione's personality in canon, but there's a different tone when it's referring to her social rather than academic life.

I'm glad, too, that Ron and ps remained awkward. Really, there's a lot Ron doesn't know how to deal with here (he really doesn't know how to feel this kind of sympathy for ps, or accept ps' own attempts at niceness, plus frankly I think Ron's always going to make gaffes about the gay aspect). But I especially take heart from ps telling him when he was joking-I think eventually Ron will understand when he's joking, just as he picked up on when ps was just pretending not to want to do something. Plus a lot of ps' problems with Ron in the past came from his trying to hide what he cared about, and that seemed exactly what he'd stopped doing at the end. Also it's funny that Ron, from the beginning, is the one that describes ps as "stalking" Harry and his friends. I think Ron understands that on some level, given their original places as two potential friends for Harry, one of which he rejected.

So there are two paths from there -- either she's startled into a realization that it does matter (and I see no sign of this, frankly) or she just leaves it as something hurtful and puzzling to her and moves on with her own life.... And I wonder what she and Harry each felt after Harry beat up Malfoy on her behalf on the train coming home.... She's fully centered on Ernie at the end, and not looking back.

I saw that too--though I agree that the resentment would probably be supressed. I don't think she ever took the relationship seriously, which would just have gotten more painful for Harry the closer he got to Draco. In fact, this relationship affected all his friendships-he and Seamus got closer because Seamus could understand it, Ron opened himself to ps because of it, jh got to know MB. Draco obviously never warmed up to Hermione but strangely, I think his mentioning of her in Harry's post was a sign that he acknowledged the friendship.

I guess it's hard since we don't know how Harry and Hermione made up after their fight. It feels like they didn't deal with things the way he and ps did. That is, that fight was the beginning to the final act with the DEs. With Hermione it seems like things just went on as they had, that they didn't really get to the bottom of things, and then with Peter's escape it got brushed under the rug. Harry may also have clung to her more strongly after the Lavender incident when he told himself she was right about ps all along, with Hermione enjoying being proven right. Then that didn't prove to be true either--in fact it brought out possibly the big confession from ps in the screened comment.

Also, just as you wonder about Harry's hitting Draco on the train, what about Hermione punching Draco for money? That was after the Quidditch game, after the Mystery Weekend, so at the time right before Harry started trying to talk to ps again. In one of Draco's last posts about Pansy he said he'd gotten more details about her fight with Hermione and I've always wondered if that fight wasn't really about Hermione hitting Draco. It's IC for Pansy to after people who hurt Draco and Hermione didn't seem to get any punishment from anywhere else. Harry may have felt he had to stay out of it since Hermione was the one ps had insulted, but I can't imagine he'd feel totally comfortable with it since it was just done in a spirit of a general hatred of ps. Supposedly it was for Lavender but... Ron, by contrast, was just sort of wearily accepting about what ps did. I always had the feeling the time Ernie saw Pansy and Draco by the lake holding hands Draco was talking about that punch, even if the Mystery Weekend seemed a much bigger deal.

It did seem to me she was completely focused on Ernie at the end and as much as I love Ernie, I wonder what that means. The Hufflepuffs are so their own people.

black_dog @ July 11 2004, 23:02:03 UTC

I especially take heart from ps telling him when he was joking

You're right -- that's a definite reversal of a typical note in their conversations, and it's worth commenting on. PS always made a speciality out of winding Ron up, sometimes at extreme length, and Ron did his best to do the same back to PS. Here he's walking away from that strategy, earnestly "trying to have a serious conversation" with Ron -- no games. Interesting that you can see that earlier, winding-up pattern right from the start of the game, with PS making comments to Ron that keep the conversation going even as Ron gets more and more baffled and frustrated.

we don't know how Harry and Hermione made up after their fight. It feels like they didn't deal with things the way he and ps did . . . it seems like things just went on as they had, that they didn't really get to the bottom of things

It's really interesting that you felt that, because I had the same feeling even though there's not real proof either way. It just feels like they would have left things unresolved, partly because the gulf is so wide, and partly because Hermione tends to be such a know-it-all and Harry probably wouldn't bother beyond a certain point if he wasn't getting anywhere.

It's funny you used the term "full of herself" because that was the vibe I started to get in her Cleudo post.

Ha, I may have unconsciously stolen it from you, then. But imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

what about Hermione punching Draco for money?

That was for Dean's bet, right? It really felt like overkill, I thought. I can't imagine Harry was too impressed.

she was completely focused on Ernie at the end and as much as I love Ernie, I wonder what that means

Personally, I suspect it's the sex. :D

sistermagpie @ July 12 2004, 00:31:10 UTC

Interesting that you can see that earlier, winding-up pattern right from the start of the game, with PS making comments to Ron that keep the conversation going even as Ron gets more and more baffled and frustrated.

LOL--yeah. And at the end there ps even started with the advantage because Ron was feeling so nervous dealing with him given the circumstances. But I think it got tiring for him quickly. And it's kind of funny, really, because Ron had always had to deal with ps and Harry hiding their relationship so of course Ron didn't know how much code he should be speaking with ps even then. I mean, the last time ps was worried about Harry, after the first attack, Ron could be more in control because ps was acting like himself, claiming he didn't care while running to his side.

It just feels like they would have left things unresolved, partly because the gulf is so wide, and partly because Hermione tends to be such a know-it-all and Harry probably wouldn't bother beyond a certain point if he wasn't getting anywhere.

That's what it felt like to me too. Hermione didn't seem to realize what she'd done wrong, and took it for granted that of course she was the best friend she could possibly be. They didn't seem to get into the Ernie issue either, when Harry tried to bring it up as a parallel not to tell Harry she didn't want her to date Ernie but just, I think, to say look, we don't always love people our friends would choose for us. And I think unlike ps Hermione is so rational it might be harder to get to the emotional heart for both of them. She just never acknowledged Draco at all, while meanwhile becoming so visibly approving of what looked like a break up. I wonder if it was like those situations where a couple fights and a friend makes a mistake of telling the person how much they always hated the other person etc...and then they get back together. No matter what Hermione said it did seem like she openly approved of the break up. And the problem may not have been that she hated Malfoy so much as her feeling that Harry was always wasting his time and the bad end was so easy for her to predict. That may have felt like a judgment on Harry's ability to find love in general.

ps, of course, was no poster child in trying to make things work with Hermione either, and he said something pretty awful to her on the train. But still, that seemed to be between himself and Hermione. He seemed to always accept that Hermione was Harry's friend and wasn't trying to turn them against each other. Also, it's just that so many of Harry's other friends made an effort with Draco and I think it will turn out to prove worth it.

Ha, I may have unconsciously stolen it from you, then.

Oh no, you didn't steal anything! I don't think I ever used that phrase.

It really felt like overkill, I thought. I can't imagine Harry was too impressed.

And we never heard anything about it, so I wonder how he saw it. I mean, Harry knows Draco gets people angry so he's not going to take his side when he doesn't deserve it. But this really does seem like something more, especially after what had just been going on between them, even if Harry and Hermione had made up.

Personally, I suspect it's the sex. :D

A-ha--so a bit like Hermione feels about H/D!

unknownwisdom @ July 11 2004, 08:26:06 UTC

I will be forever glad that this is going on, as it is easing the pain.

It's interesting to read how unsure Harry was of himself at the start of NA and how he immediately expresses some worry about having to reveal anything personal about himself, which continues throughout the game. With so much of his life having been reported in the media I think this is very IC.

...you can see where all the later jokes about “stalking” go right back to his behaviour at the beginning of the game

It's wonderful, and if you're going from reading the books directly to reading NA it's quite realistic. I also love the way that of all the things PS makes fun of in reply to j_h's comments and post, he neglects to correct the 'alot' spelling. (Which we later find out is due to the fact that he likes the fact that Harry spells it that way.)

Lavender’s weight (interesting to see the issue appear right at the start, as well as a plausible motivation for PS loathing Lavender).

I must admit, I never fully understood this aspect of their 'relationship'. The first time Draco comments to her (as far as I could see, that is...) is to tell her that she 'will pay'. I know that in the screened comment incident that Harry made some reference to Draco kissing her, but that hasn't happened yet. Is PS just plain annoyed by her, or did something else happen that I missed?

illusive_blue @ July 11 2004, 09:59:24 UTC

I will be forever glad that this is going on

Me too, mostly because I missed all this the first time round and it's great to read it as a community rather than an outsider as I can get the opinions of others and offer my own.

black_dog @ July 11 2004, 10:45:03 UTC

Is PS just plain annoyed by her, or did something else happen that I missed?

I really think it's the rainbows and bunnies. It just seems like that would be fingernails on a blackboard to PS. I mean, having to associate with the riffraff on the journals is bad enough, but to be implicitly put on an equal footing with Lavender, to have to take her posts seriously . . . I can see him deciding, in that instant, that Lavender would pay. :)

I don't know where the weight thing came from, except that we can probably credit PS with picking up hints and doing trial and error to find people's weak spots, and the game certainly vindicates his hunch this as one of Lavender's weak spots. Is there any canon evidence for Lavender having eating/weight anxieties?

It's interesting that you raise the issue of Draco kissing her, much much later in the game. I mean, seeing how far back the hostility goes, it makes PS' hanging out with Lavender after the Weasley-murder incident all the more sad and puzzling. He had been abandoned by all his new friends, and was hurting, and Lavender must have been the only one willing to still talk to him and play MASH with him and whatever. And then at one point, he kissed her and then he pushed her and broke her arm.

That seems like it was the last straw for Harry, who would barely speak to PS on the screened-comment thread. I guess Harry assumed that PS was just finding another way to taunt Lavender, but I wonder. I can't imagine what was going through his head then -- some mixture of self-pity and experimenting with sympathy and loathing himself for his weakness, maybe.

sistermagpie @ July 11 2004, 14:56:04 UTC

Notice too that ps is joking with MB about her weight too--though with them it's more of an ongoing lifelong thing about her calling him tiny and him saying she was fat. I assume that came out of her just always being bigger and stronger than he was. His teasing of Lavender obviously isn't the same, but it's interesting how right from the beginning MB connects his calling anyone "fat" with them having "womanly curves" which he doesn't care for. Many anorexics make the same connection, unfortunately--and Lavender's one of them.

black_dog @ July 11 2004, 19:51:25 UTC

"womanly curves" which he doesn't care for

More subtle foreshadowing! :)

And kind of interesting in its application to Lavender. Maybe he's a little attracted to her boyish slimness?

*runs away*

chinae @ July 11 2004, 23:31:27 UTC

hahahahaha

So totally love you.

black_dog @ July 12 2004, 00:49:44 UTC

<3

coughingbear @ July 12 2004, 13:25:43 UTC

It's very interesting to read these posts and see how the game started. I hadn't realised how much of a stalker ps was to everyone in the early days, by no means just Harry. His interactions with Ron are actually not dissimilar to the ones Ron is having with his brothers; in fact Ron goes into giant letters even faster with Gred than with ps. Both Ron and Draco seriously lack self-control. Draco can't resist making snarky remarks whenever they occur to him, and commenting unecessarily in other people's journals - but neither can Ron. Look at 'Percy, you talk too much. Love, Ron.' Harry is the one who has self-control, as black_dog points out, and is actually capable of ignoring Malfoy almost all the time, even though his comments elsewhere show that it costs him an effort. Harry can't let go very often - even with Sirius, he is quite stiff and polite, I thought, not wanting to be a bother.

It's funny that it's so clear how annoying Lavender must be to have on your friends list, with her multi-coloured fonts, and photos not behind a cut tag, so that ps's response is the kind of thing one sometimes wishes one could say to the person who just sent you an email with four attached photos of themselves and a background of blue sky and clouds down your 56k moden, but at the same time it's equally clear that in fact his response is way too nasty. As black_dog and sistermagpie have noted, Draco gives everyone else something to rally round about, and feel good about themselves for doing.

I was also noticing Ron and Hermione's interchanges. It's interesting that Hermione responds in a way that seems absolutely in character to Percy, thinking he's saying worthwhile things, and then Ron says "Percy, look what you've done!" As though Hermione weren't like this already? So far it's not very clear to me what Hermione sees in Ron, except that he's interested in her (which is of course an attractive thing), or what Ron imagines she's really like. (I did enjoy ps's comment on Percy, 'I haven't been this bored since my days in the womb.')

Can I ask about timing? Is this meant to be the start of the school year, even though it's May, and is this Harry et al's OWLs year? I'm a bit confused because jumping about randomly in the archives it seemed they all stayed at school over the summer.

Really enjoying reading all the comments.