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Suggest pagesMuggles' Guide to Harry Potter/Books/Order of the Phoenix/Chapter 17
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Chapter 17 of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Educational Decree Number Twenty-Four
Contents |
[edit] Synopsis
In the common room on Monday, Harry and Ron find a large notice announcing Educational Decree Number Twenty Four, outlawing all unapproved student organizations. All current student groups have been disbanded and must request approval from Professor Umbridge to reform. Harry says that someone must have informed Umbridge about their meeting. Ron suggests Zacharias Smith or Michael Corner, and sets off to tell Hermione. She says that no one from the meeting could have told because she secretly enchanted the parchment everyone signed to reveal any snitches who break the vow of secrecy.
Approached at breakfast by Fred, George, Ginny, Neville, and Dean, Harry says that despite the decree, they are going ahead with the defence class. Hermione says the prefects will be joining as well. Hermione waves off some members approaching from Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, saying she will talk to them later. Angelina Johnson is deeply dismayed by this decree, because it also bans Quidditch teams, and she will have to request permission to reform the Gryffindor team. She begs Harry not to upset Umbridge again.
During Harry's History of Magic class, Hedwig appears on the windowsill carrying a message from Sirius, but her wing has been injured. Harry takes her to Professor Grubbly-Plank in the staff room, who says Hedwig was attacked but can be healed. Sirius' message is extremely short: "Tonight, same time, same place." Professor McGonagall, who is also in the staff room, reminds Harry that all communication channels may be monitored. Hermione wonders later if someone tried to intercept Hedwig. Harry, trying to reassure himself, points out that the message was still sealed.
Before Potions class, Draco Malfoy makes a rude comment about people with mental infirmities staying at St. Mungo's. Neville, pushed beyond endurance, tries to fight him. Harry and Ron restrain him, just as Snape arrives. Seeing the scuffle, he promptly penalizes Gryffindor ten House points. Ron asks what that was all about, but Harry, though he knows that Death Eaters tortured Neville's parents to insanity, keeps his promise to Dumbledore and says nothing. Professor Umbridge is present and taking notes. She asks how long Snape has been teaching, and he replies fourteen years. In response to her questions, he also says that he has applied repeatedly for the Defence Against the Dark Arts post, and was always refused. Umbridge asks why and Snape suggests she ask Dumbledore. Straining to hear Umbridge and Snape's conversation causes Harry to ruin his potion.
That evening, Angelina says there is no Quidditch practice, as she is still waiting permission to reform the team, although the other Houses have been approved. Harry and Ron's attempts at homework are interrupted by Fred and George demonstrating the latest Skiving Snackbox: the Puking Pastilles, which induce projectile vomiting.
Late that night, Sirius' head appears in the fireplace. He tells Harry that he heard about the defensive magic group from Mundungus Fletcher, who was in the Hog's Head during the meeting, disguised as the heavily-veiled witch. Sirius passes Mrs. Weasley's message that Ron is forbidden to get involved, and her advice that Harry and Hermione likewise abandon it. Sirius, however, approves, and encourages them to continue. Harry asks for suggestions on places to meet. Sirius suggests several locations but they are unsuitable, then looking sideways in the flames, vanishes. A hand suddenly appears in the fire, grabbing at where Sirius' head just was. Harry, Ron, and Hermione run; looking back, Harry recognizes Umbridge's hand.
[edit] Analysis
Umbridge clearly has many ways to obtain information. She willingly goes overboard with rules and regulations (i.e. banning all student organizations to prevent the student Defence Against the Dark Arts group from meeting) to cement her ever-growing authority. Rather than further discouraging Harry, who was becoming increasingly depressed over Hagrid's absence, no Quidditch, and being unable to regularly communicate with Sirius, this only makes him more determined than ever to move ahead with the defensive arts class and to combat Umbridge's dictatorial reign. Umbridge has become a tyrannical symbol of oppression that Harry and the other students rebel against, helping unite the Houses as the Sorting Hat had advised, and as Dumbledore had stressed the year before. We do not find it surprising that only Slytherin is missing; we are already seeing that Umbridge is biased heavily in favour of Slytherin House, and as a result, Slytherin feels the pinch much less than the rest of the school. This oppression will also help students to rally around and support Harry, though many likely remain skeptical that he actually witnessed Voldemort's resurrection.
Harry has been told, and has now seen a demonstration, that the Floo network is under surveillance by the Ministry of Magic. He will need to find another means to communicate with his godfather. It's unknown whether or not Umbridge actually intercepted Hedwig, only that something nearly caught her, injuring her in the process. If the Floo network is being monitored, as it evidently is, the limited information Hedwig was carrying ("Tonight, same time, same place") would not reveal Sirius' whereabouts, nor would it pinpoint the specific meeting time with Harry, or that it was even Black that Harry was meeting, unless the monitoring had started before Sirius' previous visit on the first weekend in the year. However, it would alert Umbridge that a meeting was planned, though it would not give any information about who Harry was to meet with unless the Ministry had become aware of Sirius' Animagus form. This latter is not unlikely; Lucius Malfoy seems to know of Sirius' Animagus form, has apparently reported Sirius' presence in London to the Ministry, and quite possibly could have mentioned that Sirius is an unregistered Animagus and his transformed shape. The scheduled time "tonight" would rule out many physical locations, as the students are forbidden to leave the school or its grounds without permission, particularly at night, so Umbridge could have heightened the surveillance on the Floo network as being among the few available contact avenues.
Snape has been teaching at Hogwarts for fourteen years, as he tells Umbridge. As Harry is now fifteen, Snape would have begun teaching at Hogwarts in September of the year that Harry turned one year old, and would have been only two months on the job at the time of Harry's parents' death and Voldemort's initial disappearance.
[edit] Questions
[edit] Review
- Why has Umbridge disbanded all student groups and organizations? What does Harry decide to do?
- Why does Neville attack Malfoy in Potions class? What does Harry know about it?
- What might have caused the injury to Hedwig's wing? Why would someone want to capture her?
- How did Sirius find out about the defensive magic group?
- How was Umbridge able to locate Sirius?
[edit] Further Study
- Why has Slytherin been given permission to reform their Quidditch team, when Gryffindor has not?
- Why would Harry ignore McGonagall's warning about the Floo Network and other communication methods being monitored? How risky was this?
- Harry has suspected that both Snape and Umbridge are Death Eaters. What about their interaction with each other either supports or discredits that belief?
- How can Hermione be so certain that no one in the defensive magic group tipped off Umbridge about their meeting? Is she right?
- Why does Molly Weasley oppose the defensive magic group while Sirius supports it?
[edit] Greater Picture
Though Ron immediately suspects a student, Hermione is confident that it cannot have happened without them knowing about it. The fact that Sirius has found out about the group, without anyone having told him about it, should cause us to suspect that perhaps another eavesdropper was aware of the meeting in the Hog's Head. In fact, we will find out later that another of the four customers in the Hog's Head, Willy Widdershins, may not have been intending to eavesdrop, but was quick enough to use the information he collected in an attempt to get himself out of trouble with the Ministry. Widdershins, we will find out later, had been charged with making Muggle toilets regurgitate, and sold the information to Umbridge in return for getting the charges decreased or dropped.
Umbridge later reveals to Harry that all school fireplaces except her own are being monitored. It is likely this monitoring that detects Sirius communicating with Harry, rather than the possibly-intercepted message Hedwig had been carrying, which contained insufficient information other than the general meeting time ("tonight"). That Umbridge has the fireplaces monitored may indicate that there is a far greater connection continuing between her and the Ministry than was suspected.
The monitoring of the fireplaces, coupled with Harry's need to communicate with Sirius, will require him to break in to Umbridge's office later in the story. He will, in fact, need to do this on two separate occasions; the first time he will be largely successful in his attempt, the second time will result in his getting caught by Umbridge.
As mentioned in the Analysis section above, Umbridge's unceasing attempts to subjugate the school may be the single greatest reason for the anti-Umbridge sentiment within the school. In this chapter we see that Umbridge's early attempts to cement her powers by unilaterally increasing them, and we see also that the immediate result is rebellion. Older readers likely will have seen the pattern of increasing oppression resulting in increasing rebellion in their own lives, but for younger readers, this may be their first exposure to this pattern of behaviour. It is to the author's credit that she is able to portray this familiar sequence of events, in this and succeeding chapters, so convincingly, without losing the older audience's interest.
As mentioned above, Snape would have begun teaching at Hogwarts in September of the year that Harry turned one year old, and would have been only two months on the job at the time of Harry's parents' death and Voldemort's initial disappearance. Revelations in the last book in the series will strongly suggest that Snape had learned of Voldemort's plan to kill Harry and his parents shortly before that, and had then become a double agent, working for Dumbledore. It would seem that it was about at the same time that Snape became Potions Master for Hogwarts, probably as part of the "anything" that Dumbledore required of him.
