This is really interesting, Sally-Anne, and it explains a lot.
I think maybe there's a fourth way, too. It's to pretend to do the wrong thing, but really to find away around it, by outsmarting him. That's safer than outright defiance. It's tricky, though, and it can be dangerous--maybe it's a good thing I'm a Ravenclaw. Like saying I'm going to kill rats and pigeons, but secretly letting them go instead. In the camps, muggleborns make an elaborate game of this, of misdirection and finding loopholes in the rules while pretending to follow them. I remember watching a woman who was hexed because she wasn't fast enough to prepare a meal. So she went back to the kitchen and prepared something incredibly elaborate, with fancy garnishes and everything--but she spit in each dish before bringing it out to the table.
If the git's trying to ruin me by making me cruel, then it won't do me any good to sneak around him by doing nasty things. I have to sneak around him to do nice things. Like--well, that photo really haunted me. (Or I guess what really haunted me was the look in the man's eyes when it went up in smoke.) It occurred to me--too late--that maybe I should have palmed that photo and burned something else, a scrap of paper instead, and then slipped the photo back to the prisoner later. Although that could have been real dangerous if the git had found it again later.
I took out my wand in the middle of the night the other night and tried to recreate it from memory as a magical sketch. I think I came pretty close to what the photo looked like.
But the prisoner was dead already anyway, and so I burned it again in the fire this morning.
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Date: 2011-07-19 01:53 pm (UTC)I think maybe there's a fourth way, too. It's to pretend to do the wrong thing, but really to find away around it, by outsmarting him. That's safer than outright defiance. It's tricky, though, and it can be dangerous--maybe it's a good thing I'm a Ravenclaw. Like saying I'm going to kill rats and pigeons, but secretly letting them go instead. In the camps, muggleborns make an elaborate game of this, of misdirection and finding loopholes in the rules while pretending to follow them. I remember watching a woman who was hexed because she wasn't fast enough to prepare a meal. So she went back to the kitchen and prepared something incredibly elaborate, with fancy garnishes and everything--but she spit in each dish before bringing it out to the table.
If the git's trying to ruin me by making me cruel, then it won't do me any good to sneak around him by doing nasty things. I have to sneak around him to do nice things. Like--well, that photo really haunted me. (Or I guess what really haunted me was the look in the man's eyes when it went up in smoke.) It occurred to me--too late--that maybe I should have palmed that photo and burned something else, a scrap of paper instead, and then slipped the photo back to the prisoner later. Although that could have been real dangerous if the git had found it again later.
I took out my wand in the middle of the night the other night and tried to recreate it from memory as a magical sketch. I think I came pretty close to what the photo looked like.
But the prisoner was dead already anyway, and so I burned it again in the fire this morning.