The Wizarding World of Harry Potter (a thread for Potterheads)

I mean, I sort of feel like she doesn't just want to maintain the status quo, she actually wants to make it worse than it already is--oppress the magical creatures more! get rid of the Muggleborns altogether! I mean, she doesn't have any issues going along with Voldemort's plans and literally holding the trials to determine who's Muggleborn herself. she makes up fliers about how Muggleborns are tainting their pureblood community--and honestly, all of this strikes me as kind of ironic, because she's not even a pureblood herself. she's a half-blood.

 

I don't remember if she always had the anti-muggleborn sentiment, to be honest, or if it was more magical creatures and non-humans with Fudge and more anti-muggleborns around Voldermort's era. Partly to ingratiate herself with the new company and keep a good position within the government (more her loyalty than anyone in particular within the government) and partly due to "And fuck Hermione Granger in particular."

 

according to what JK's offered us, which is admittedly not much, Umbridge has always hated Muggles and Muggleborns, because of her mother, who she apparently despised for being a Muggle, and her father's sentiments towards her mother (a Muggle) and his son's lack of magical ability. she pretended to be a pureblood to everyone she met after her mother vanished with her brother.....and apparently, what she suggested should happen to Muggleborns and the non-magical community behind closed doors was so bad that even other bigots were shocked by it! yayyyyyyyyy she's apparently always been a terrible person for basically no reasonnnnnnnnnn

 

plus, it's....not like Fudge didn't have some blood status prejudice, imo. I mean, a lot of people who were pureblood or half-blood did, but....having a boss who shares at least some of your prejudiced feelings is kind of gonna help along the bigotry train, imo.

 

i like that jk rowling included those ironies! i think it was a good detail to put in. voldemort is half blood too, and i thiiiink it was comented on in one of the books that being a half blood was fairly common for death eaters, they just hid it? (that might be my brain meshing fanfic and canon tho..... idk)

 

I'll take "Reasons I Ignore Pretty Much Every Bit of Harry Potter Paracanon" for $2000.

 

basically tbh
like, I like the idea that Umbridge was prejudiced against Muggles and Muggleborns from a young age and was interested in pureblood superiority and all that jazz, because it would make her a more interesting character to explore in some ways--like, if she hates Muggles, how does she feel about her Muggle lineage? ashamed of it? angry? does she hate her father for not taking a pureblood wife? what does she think of, idk, quarter-bloods and three-quarter bloods, because I'm willing to bet if she was obsessing over it like I think she might've at times, she probably would've considered her feelings on that at least once. does she hide her lineage because she's scared? because she doesn't want to deal with bigotry towards herself, so it's easier to pretend to be pureblood and be bigoted towards others?
but no, we just got "well she's always hate Muggles and Muggleborns, who really knows why, and she pretends to be a pureblood and she has no feelings about this otherwise".
like....give me the irony that she's all about pureblood supremacy when she's a half-blood! give me mixed feelings or at least some kind of emotion about it!
not this bullshit.

 

yeah, Voldemort and Snape were half-bloods. of course how could I not remember the Snape part :P
I don't remember the thing about the Death Eaters, but there's a lot I don't remember from the books--it's been so long since I read them.

 

ISTR it wasn't DEs specifically, but most wizards full stop that were half-blood (or at least some fractional amount). Because there just plain aren't enough wizards to maintain a population without horrific amounts of inbreeding otherwise.

 

yeah, that makes sense. it is sort of fascinating to me, though, that several of the half-blood characters we see buy so deeply into the pureblood supremacy thing, and....we don't even ever really delve into why. I want to know more about that, and why they bought into it so much, there are so many reasons for consideration!
it gets more interesting when you consider the fact that the most prominent pureblood family in the book, the Weasleys, clearly disregards the blood status bullshit. actually, quite a few of the pureblood characters we see in the book disregard it--Ernie MacMillan, the Weasleys, Sirius Black, Lavender Brown, Neville Longbottom, Alastor Moody (the real one), the Potters, the Prewetts, Kingsley Shacklebolt....probably also Luna Lovegood.
like, it's just very interesting to me that you have so many purebloods moving away from pureblood supremacy....and then on the other end, you've got a half-blood clinging to it so strongly, who has followers who are purebloods and half-bloods alike who all also buy into pureblood supremacy, and then we've got two other prominent half-blood characters who also seem to buy pretty strongly into pureblood supremacy. possibly a third. why did those three in particular latch on to pureblood supremacy? why were half-bloods willing to follow Voldemort? and at the end of the first wizarding world war, how many half-blood Death Eaters do you think went to jail while pureblood ones walked free? because you can't convince me that money and status were not involved in the trials of pureblood Death Eaters.

 

I say possibly a third because I have Suspicions about Peter Pettigrew, who's never confirmed a half-blood or a pureblood, though he's definitely one or the other. he says he defected out of fear when he's being threatened by Sirius and Remus, but....I mean, let's face it, you're hardly gonna be honest if you know admitting to supporting Voldemort for realsies is gonna get you killed or jailed for sure--pleading that you were scared for your life at least is a better self-preservation tactic.
besides, he faked his death after Voldemort "died" the first time--he literally could've just immediately turned himself in for his safety and then claimed to be Imperiused in court, or failing that, he could've said he was forced into it out of fear for his life....but c'mon, the "I was Imperiused!" claim got so many other Death Eaters out of jail. but instead of doing that, or even just going into hiding normally, he faked his death in the middle of a street and cut his finger off so they'd think he was really dead. and then he took up residence with Ron's family. like?? why. why the huge elaborate scheme. what does it accomplish? I honestly can't even figure that part out.
and yes, he supposedly went back to Voldemort for protection after escaping Sirius and Remus....but c'mon. the Ministry thought he was dead. his Animagus form is a rat. he could've gone into hiding as a person. he could've gone into hiding as a rat! he could've turned into a rat, snuck on to a boat, and left the friggin' country! I doubt that the magical communities communicate much between countries. but no....instead, he goes on a search for Voldemort, and nurses him back to health, and does everything in his power to get Voldemort his body and power back. like, I'm sorry, but I think in his heart of hearts, even if he didn't admit it to himself, he bought into Voldemort's ideals at least a little bit.

 

and yes this maybe has a little bit to do with the fact that I want a genuine villain who's from Gryffindor JUST LET ME HAVE THIS OKAY

 

I thiiiink it's supposed to be implied that she's generally good at chameleoning and toadying if she thinks it'll get her what she wants? Fudge, I think, didn't have anything specific against magical creatures and non-humans, but could definitely be talked into "for the childrenz!!!!" type panics that would end up with legislation against whatever the person who last talked to him didn't like. And Umbridge didn't like magical creatures or non-humans (she certainly didn't like having to deal with them or be around them), and he trusted her. (And let's be honest: Remus' very publicized non-compliance with his medical regime as far as being a werewolf in a position that gave him ready access to and authority over children diiiiid not help matters at all - I bet Umbridge used the hell out of the leverage that gave her.)

I suspect that Fudge's prejudices against Muggleborns (and maybe halfbloods) were along the lines of "they need to pay their dues and assimilate". He, of all people, was buying the hype about keeping the secrecy being an utterly necessary thing if wizarding society was going to survive, after all. Umbridge - I'd buy that she's a couple steps further along, at least in public? "They bring valuable fresh blood into the community, but how can we believe that they're really trustworthy if they're not trying to marry a proper wizard or witch and make sure that they've cut off all ties outside the wizarding world?" Possibly worse in private ("good only for breeding stock and menial positions, the sorts you wouldn't want to have a real wizard dealing with" type bull, and I should probably be concerned that it's so easy for me to figure out the sort of bull that would be getting spewed).
But she's enough of a toady that she'll spit out whatever prejudices the guy in charge approves of as long as it's not too heavily divergent from her own, I suspect.

With regards to why there's so many purebloods moving away from pureblood supremacy, while a halfblood clung to it and got so many other people to buy into it - I strongly suspect that Tom Riddle was just using whatever was going at the time and that he may have actually been co-opting the recruitment pool for a pureblood old boy's club; I don't think he bought that purebloods were Absolutely Better, he just went "fuck it, I want to have the most power, what's going to get me that" and chameleoned his way into trust. He probably does think that someone with magical power is empirically better than someone without that, though; it's just that letting people work with their assumptions of 'well, obviously you're a pureblood kid whose parents died and you got found by Muggles, it's simply tragic that you grew up not knowing your own culture' worked a lot better for him, and let him get people to trust him faster.

Why did other halfbloods trust Tom? Because at the time, at least, he was a silver-tongued spinmaster (although I suspect that this didn't just start vanishing as chunks of his soul started getting shoved into inanimate objects - I think he tended to keep up the act only for as long as he thought he needed to; he didn't really ever use it in the Muggle orphanage or at least hadn't been doing it in a very long time. If Dumbledore hadn't warned Tom off of trying his tricks at Hogwarts, I suspect that things would've gone very differently; housemates writing home to their parents going "holy crap, this Tom Riddle kid is a nutter" and Dippet probably calling in the Ministry to get an Auror to deal with this clearly insane kid who somehow had a homegrown Imperius and Cruciatus as well as command of non-verbal wandless magic.
I'm not sure if Tom would've survived more than a year or two at Hogwarts without that warning, frankly. Dumbledore did a disservice to the world not just by not turning him in (like he was legally obligated to), but by giving him a frigging heads-up that it was going to get bad attention by people who could actually do something about it if he waltzed around stealing things and terrorizing his classmates.

Anyways. Tom was, during his buildup and at least part of the first war, good at spinning a story his audience wanted to hear, if he didn't think they were already aware of what he was. So kids like Snape? "They don't really respect you - they don't respect us, but if you come join my side, I'll show you ways of making them respect you. They'll kneel to you and give you everything they should have offered at the beginning, you'll be second only to me in power and I'll teach you some of my most secret arts" and similar tunes would've gotten played. He probably even gave them just enough to make it feel like he was keeping his promises, for a while!

Also, we don't know what's up with Peter Pettigrew's blood status, no. But I'm not sure it necessarily has to have anything to do with his blood status, for how he got flipped to Voldemort's side, honestly! I think it's got everything to do with how Sirius and James tended to treat anyone not-them - or at least, it's got a lot more to do with that from Peter's perspective. (I'm all for a Gryffindor villain, tbh - no reason why all of them should come from Slytherin! Heck, considering how the worst traits of the house tend to involve glory-seeking, we ought to see more Gryffindor villains.)
See, we know at least a bit about what the Marauders were all up to right after getting out of Hogwarts. Peter went into a Ministry position of some sort - Sirius and James were kicking about at loose ends, and Remus was drifting from short-term job to short-term job. Sirius and James weren't ready to settle down yet, and I think James' parents had died recently - they suddenly had a lot of ready cash (I doubt James would've been about to stint Sirius), and nothing pressing to make them settle down and behave themselves. So they would've been behaving like frat boys, basically - partying every night they felt like it (which was probably most nights of the week) and trying to drag Remus and Peter in on their antics.

And Remus - well, he's at loose ends often enough, he'd probably participate and he needs them during the full moon, he can't afford to upset them. But Peter? He probably went a few times during the week - and regretted it the next day, when he was struggling to work with a hangover, assuming all that'd happened was them getting wasted. And after that, "sorry, I have work the next day, how about we get together this weekend instead" would've started falling from his lips. I doubt James and Sirius were much impressed by it, and I doubt they were hesitant about showing it.
So when one of Voldemort's gang came around, poking for an insider in the Ministry, I bet it wasn't hard to butter up Peter and get him to tell them a few things. Small things! Harmless things! He probably complained a lot about how he was being treated by his friends, too - enough that "well, what have they done for you lately" came into play.

I don't buy that he went back for protection, honestly - I think he went back because he figured, might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, and didn't see the point in trying to switch sides when one side had a very pissed-off Sirius who wasn't going to be placatable any time soon. Plus, Team Dumbledore really would've given him two options: 1) being turned in to the Ministry (and being sentenced to Azkaban afterwards, and probably put under special watch or given something so that he couldn't get out by using his Animagus form), or 2) being hidden from the Ministry on the condition of behaving like a traitor seeking redemption - heaping himself with (figurative) coals, wearing hairshirts, making it so very clear how he was Very Sorry and Did Not Deserve Their Mercy, and basically having to beg for any scrap of power or information he ever got again, quite possibly being sent in to Death Eater circles to go play expendable double-agent.
Meanwhile, Team Voldemort: functional second-in-command, practically the guy in charge if he could keep Voldemort from catching on, and access to a hell of a lot of info and power. (Also all the wands he could steal.) All that role would take was managing to toady and grovel enough to make it seem like he was too pathetic to be worth killing - and hey, how warm does dignity or pride keep a person, anyways? He'd already spent the past twelve years as a pet rat, while around the Weaseley twins, and it wasn't that much different a role from the one he'd ended up playing to Sirius and James anyways.

I think he figured that Voldemort would get himself blown up eventually, and he'd be able to scurry off again - more powerful, much better informed, and with an awful lot of useful goodies that he'd picked up in the process - and go to ground somewhere well away from Magical Britain and Harry Potter and anyone who might've ever heard the name 'Peter Pettigrew'. I bet the Malfoys and the Blacks and the Lestranges all had a few nice holiday villas somewhere warm - and if he didn't manage to find out about one, he'd be able to get to Magical Brazil, maybe, and hide there. He wouldn't even be the first ex-pat.
He wasn't counting on the arm, and I don't think he managed to figure out a way to get rid of it without it going off; I suspect his original plan involved him sparing Harry and then getting the hell off the battlefield (and away from Britain in general) while Harry was still in the throes of mercy.

 

I mean, if we're basing anything in canon, Umbridge was apparently not against Muggleborns because of secrecy. she just hated Muggles and Muggleborns, and she apparently spouted uncharitable enough views that fellow anti-Muggle and anti-Muggleborn people would be shocked by it....so I have to imagine it went further than "they need to cut all ties or we can't trust them". I don't think she was actually interested in having them in the community at all, honestly, whether as breeding stock or otherwise--you have to remember how Muggleborns are viewed by people who don't like them, after all. they may be magical, yes, but they're still Muggleborn. they're effectively just magical Muggles who got lucky. according to JKR, Umbridge at the very least wanted Muggleborns out of the Wizarding world--how it happened doesn't seem to have mattered much to her as long as those dirty, disgusting, tainted Muggleborns were gone. she didn't consider them 'valuable fresh blood' because the only good blood to begin with was pureblood. she didn't seem especially concerned with logistics, either.
I don't think she was super into the idea of, say, torturing Muggles, or total wizard supremacy over Muggles, but I certainly don't think she wanted Muggleborns in the community, or at the very least, if she was willing to let them in the community, she didn't want them to be valued in any sense. I mean, honestly, I think her "preserve what must be preserved....and prune practices that ought to be prohibited" is probably linked to that sentiment--she wants pureblood bloodlines to be preserved, and she wants the whole "spreading out the wizarding blood by marrying Muggles/Muggleborns" thing to be, at the very least, pruned down. she wants less of it.

re: Voldemort.....I dunno. I think, at the very least, he felt that wizards were inherently better than Muggles and Muggleborns. I mean, he's described as 'despising' the Muggle orphanage, despite the fact that he was basically able to torment people freely there, it's not like the orphanage has a way of getting ahold of Dumbledore....and it's not like Tom didn't have magic-related powers that didn't require a wand and would still be able to cause harm. so the only reason I can think that he would've hated it was that.....it was in the Muggle world and it was full of Muggles. on top of that, he seemed to believe that wizards were inherently more capable than Muggles--he initially refused to accept that his mother could've been a witch because she died, and he couldn't seem to fathom a witch dying from childbirth. on top of that, he shows some pretty explicit hatred for his father, which probably comes at least initially from his father abandoning his mother, but he focused it into hatred for his father as a Muggle, and I think then eventually hatred for all Muggles--he renamed himself Lord Voldemort, after all, to rid himself of the reminder of his "filthy Muggle father". not to mention that he managed to open the Chamber of Secrets on his own, and he could've used that power to take out anyone--but he chose to purge Muggleborns only if he had his way, because he felt those were the only ones at the school truly unworthy of studying magic, which means that on some level, he did believe blood purity was important, and that at the very least, purebloods and half-bloods were Inherently Better. and he only stopped because he needed Hogwarts still. and then he framed Hagrid. probably because, again, in his eyes, Hagrid was a disgrace to wizards, on the same level as Muggleborns and Muggles--not people, not worthy of existing at his school, in his world, tainted because they weren't fully human or because they had no magical blood, so what did it matter if he framed them or killed them? but I'm also inclined to think he believed that if you had half or more magical blood, then you were worthy of being in the wizarding world. of course, he also believed himself to be inherently better than everyone around him, because he was a giant narcissist descendant of Slytherin. which of course just made him inherently better. add to that the fact that believing that Muggles, Muggleborns, and half-humans are inherently worth nothing doesn't really affect his beliefs about himself, and I think it's safe to say he definitely bought into blood purity at least somewhat. I think he was probably angry about his Muggle lineage, maybe even ashamed of it a bit, and wanted to distance himself from it, but I can still see him thinking that half-bloods are fine because they're still half magical, at the very least. but I do think he bought into blood purity at least somewhat. like....he put himself first, even before his ideals, but I do think the things he did and tried to achieve were reflective of what he actually believed, at least to an extent.

of course, I think Tom also believed wizards who didn't use their powers to survive whenever necessary, or do whatever they needed to do, were a disgrace to wizardkind, considering the fact that when Tom met his uncle, Morfin Gaunt, he decided it was perfectly all right to use Morfin as a scapegoat for Tom's murder of the Riddle family--and I think Tom felt this was acceptable because Morfin was, in Tom's eyes, a complete disgrace to wizards. of course, he also killed the Riddle family, I think, mostly out of revenge for his mother, but also at least in part because they were Muggles. they were Muggles, and one of them dared to spurn a pureblood, so they deserved to die in his eyes.

I do agree that he definitely wanted power--but I think his ideals of killing Muggles and Muggleborns were definitely very much his own, and I think he bought into blood supremacy at least somewhat. I don't think that was all or even mostly "I'll go along with this because fuck it I want power".

but I do agree Dumbledore did everyone a giant disservice by not only not turning Tom in but also giving him a heads-up about "yeah don't do that kind of stuff at school or you will be in Trouble with Authorities".

I can definitely see young Snape being tempted by an offer like that, though, and I think your Pettigrew analysis is pretty spot-on.

edited to add spaces so it's slightly less wall of text-y.

 

i think tom riddle hated the muggle orphanage because it was a muggle orphanage, not because it was a muggle orphanage

like harry he loved hogwarts because it nade him feel at home, and i think blood hate was secondary to that. and like harry, he was forced every summer to return to a negletful place he hated despite begging not to (even going as far as appealing to then-headmaster dippet to get permission to stay).

before hogwarts he hated the kids at the orphanage for the reasons of a childhood bully, and i think making him return there every summer was instrumental in transforming that into anti-muggle bigotry. the wizarding world reeeeeeeally needs to get its act together wrt wizarding cps/equivelent :/

 

Yeah, when it comes to canon, I don't really look at what Rowling's said after the series was done? Because she's very obviously trying to turn Umbridge into "was just Born evil, no way she could possibly have ever been good" and I'd rather look at what's shown in the actual text.

And the actual text seems to indicate, as far as I can tell, that Umbridge is a reasonably competent political animal. Fully capable of making sure that word of how she actually behaves doesn't get back to anyone who could do something about it via someone who'll be believed; one of the first things she did, once she had opportunity, was to start censoring the school mail. So I fully believe that she wasn't actually interested in having Muggleborns in the community at all, in any form - I just also think she was good enough at reading the tone of a room, such that I don't see it as likely that she's going to be ranting about what should really be done about 'the Muggleborn infestation' unless she's in a group that she's already tested to make sure they're not going to recoil at her ideas. (If she did slip up, I'd expect it to be, say, with the Inquisitorial Squads - where she'd be expecting them to follow closely enough to her views at that point, that it didn't matter if it was more extreme than they anticipated.)

Re: Voldemort - yeah, looking at it that way, it's probably reasonable to assume that he did buy into blood prejudices at least to a degree.

I do agree with Raybot that the wizarding world needs some actual CPS or equivalent - it might be something for Ginny or Luna to look at. (The idea of Harry doing something about it is...it's sweet, I just think he'd need to be prodded about it and have someone point out that there's nothing currently in place; I think Ginny and Luna are going to realize that there's nothing in place a lot faster.)

 

oh god seconded on the CPS thing
I have basically nothing else to say atm because I woke up like two hours ago after being asleep for twenty four hours and??? my brain hasn't arrived yet either apparently idk

 

Bit belated, but tossing my hat into the ring—wasn't one of the hat's songs/bits of advice to harry about "where you'll find your friends"? If Umbridge was a MAJOR hatstall, I can see the hat putting her where she'd find people who thought like her and would, er. help her along. no matter how shittastic that would turn out for the rest of the world later :|

 

I like the Sorting Hat Chats system, according to which I'd peg Umbridge as a Hufflepuff/Slytherin. Primaries are always tricky for characters whose inner thoughts we never see, so she could be a Ravenclaw who's settled on a really vile "truth" or even a Gryffindor who intuits the same, but large-scale dehumanization is kind of a hallmark of the malign Puff.

And she adapts like a Slytherin Secondary, presenting whatever face seems appropriate to the situation. She doesn't seem given to a Ravenclaw's advance planning, she just gets on with things, no matter who she works for or what happens.

 

It's a pity she got a backstory written up by JK Rowling and it's essentially "she's a blood-obsessed jerk because she's a blood-obsessed jerk", because holy damn her as a burned Hufflepuff works out really interesting. Especially if you start tiny baby Umbridge as actually being a pretty reasonable 11 year old, maybe a bit bratty but still the 'work hard for the people!' mindset of Hufflepuffs, only for her to tighten up that circle of 'who counts as people' and what kind of work is acceptable in order to 'work hard' for those who still count in that circle. Until you're left with a 50 year old saccharine sweet middle-manager who delights in tormenting children because her job is to reform this deplorable school of useless fortune-tellers and roaming monsters into something that's acceptable to the eyes of Fudge and her fellow Ministry members.

Her being evil for the sake of it kills a lot of the horror of Umbridge. Her being an absolute horror show because she's doing her job and she just delights in it because it's a job well done is so much worse.