Harry Potter Blaming Dumbledore or Mcgonagal for not noticing something wrong with Ginny

[slickrcbd]

I've seen quite a few fics that blast Mcgonagall and sometimes also Albus Dumbledore for not noticing something amiss with Ginny Weasley during the diary incident.

I feel that is somewhat unfair. Especially blaming Dumbledore.
Ginny Weasley was a first year student, and she had the diary since before the school year began, as it was slipped into her bag during the book signing in Diagon Alley just prior to the scuffle with Arthur.

Dumbledore doesn't have much direct contact with the students, let alone a mere first year student.
Mcgonagall as head of Griffindor house presumably had more contact, but she hadn't had a chance to get to know Ginny prior to that year, and therefore wouldn't have noticed any changes in personality.
Even if there were gradual changes, you have to factor in that she is attending a boarding school away from her parents for the first time in her life. That is a major change and and adjustment for her. Growing up and changing will be part of it. I'm basing this on my experience with older "kids" going away to college, but the principal is still the same.

The only people that can really be faulted for not noticing are her brothers, and any friends she had prior to starting Hogwarts, of which the only known one was Luna Lovegood. Luna had her own issues and was in another house.

At least that was my viewpoint, but so many fanfics blast Mcgonagall or Dumbledore for not noticing the personality changes in Ginny that I have to ask, what am I missing?

 

[grant]

In general I just think that they have a pretty bad school and don't seem to require any kind of staff or older student supports to help the children suddenly thrust into this. But that example doesn't really strike me as awful, no.

 

[Shirotsume]

Yeah, Hogwarts has a lot that's fucked about it, but Dumbledore probably shouldn't have noticed anything. McGonagall maybe, but it's never really been shown that heads of house are there for the students, instead just kinda being in charge of the punishments for students of their house. Which is another thing that's wrong.

 

[Raye_Terse]

McGonagall is Deputy Headmistress, which is usually a full job in it's own right. In addition, she's a full time teacher, which in reality probably means more than full time spent working. On top of all that, she's the head of house for Gryffindor, which probably carries with it some administrative duties and a lot of time spent answering questions from this or that Gryffindor. I'm not surprised she didn't notice.

 

[Garahs]

Some people just try to latch onto any excuse they can come up with to bash Dumbledore. It's usually a good sign to drop the story.

 

[bissek]

McGonagall has three jobs, and I'd say that she doesn't do the Head of House job very well, possibly because of being overworked. It's hard to say how well she does the deputy job, because most of that would be administrative tasks done off-screen. She doesn't do a good job in reining Snape in, but that might just be because Dumbledore won't let her.

Dumbledore also has three jobs (Four if you count running the Order), and I can't find any proof that he does a good job in any of them. His biggest screwup here is that he's known the Chamber was real for 50 years and never did anything to track down its location and seal it off.

But with the Ginny case, I think the first line of defense (Barring any hypothetical wards to detect dark artifacts, which might not exist in the first place) should have been the Prefects. None of them noticed anything odd, and one of them was her older brother who should have been able to tell something was up. If they had noticed and reported it to McGonagall and she still didn't do anything, then there'd be grounds to say she is significantly at fault.

 

[Altered Nova]

Why doesn't Hogwarts hire more employees? It's pretty ridiculous for McGonagall to be working three jobs like that. They are one of the most prestigious magical schools in the world and many rich students attend, so it's not like funding would be a problem.

 

[jaredstar]

the professors can be forg.ven for not noticing. They have no base line from which to work from regarding ginny. her brothers on the other hand have no such excuse.

 

[Hardcore Heathen]

Why doesn't Hogwarts hire more employees? It's pretty ridiculous for McGonagall to be working three jobs like that. They are one of the most prestigious magical schools in the world and many rich students attend, so it's not like funding would be a problem.

They only have something like 300 students, and almost 20 faculty.

Filch, Flitwick, DADA Professor, McGonagall, Pomfrey, Snape, Sprout, Trelawney, Hagrid, Burbage (Muggle Studies), Binns, Babbling (Runes), Dumbledore, Hooch, Pince, Sinistra (Astronomy), Vector (Arithmancy)...I think that's everyone?

Even if you factor out Filch they've got approximately 1 teacher per 15 students, which is better than most universities. And they've got House Elves for support staff.

 

[Rising Dragon]

Concerning Dumbledore not knowing the location of the Chamber of Secrets, keep in mind that the man never professed to know all of the secrets of the school--his finding the Room of Requirement was very recent for him, to the point where some students knew about it when he did not. It's possible he's tried to find it before and failed, and besides, even if he had, how would he have gotten in? You need to know parseltongue to open it. Does Dumbledore know parseltongue? Doubt it.

As for McGonagall and her duties, they happen offscreen mainly because they don't contribute to the story, and because the narrative follows Harry--who, as we know, grew up having to fend for himself. He's not one for asking others for help, and when he does, he'd do so by going to his friends first, like Ron, Hermione, or Hagrid. Doesn't help that most of the time he needs help with something, it's related to the ongoing crisis and therefore almost certainly against school rules--so McGonagall wouldn't be the wisest choice to go to about needing help with breaking the rules. Therefore we don't see him going to help from her often, but that doesn't mean the rest of his house wouldn't.

Now, for the Weasley brothers, you're right--they have little excuse. But I do know that siblings can be neglectful without meaning to, especially out of their household. At Hogwarts, they all have their own lives. Percy's busy brown-nosing his way into an eventual job, the twins are usually running amok with Lee, and Ron is guaranteed to get swept up in the latest crisis. Harry, meanwhile... well, he had Dobby trying to save his life by killing him. Beyond that, I remember people DID notice that something was going on with Ginny, but they came to the wrong conclusions, like when Mrs. Norris got petrified.

 

[TC_Hazard]

the professors can be forg.ven for not noticing. They have no base line from which to work from regarding ginny. her brothers on the other hand have no such excuse.

Pretty much this. The professors don't really know enough about Ginny to know how a "normal Ginny" would act. At most, they'd probably chalk it up to first year nervousness.

Her four brothers who go to the same school as her however...

 

[Rising Dragon]

Like I said, those four brothers had their own lives in the school. Three of them were MUCH older than her, and the one closest to her age was busy with Harry and Hermione trying to figure out if Draco opened the Chamber.

Also, another fact to consider: Ginny's a Weasley. She hails from the biggest family of "blood traitors" in magical Britain. Who in their right mind would suspect that she opened up the Chamber of Secrets? Who would believe that the Weasleys, the biggest family of "blood traitors", would be descended from Salazar Slytherin? No one. Not a single person, I daresay.

Another thing to consider: the real heir of Salazar Slytherin was none other than Voldemort, and Dumbledore knew that. He was probably trying to figure out if/how Voldemort got back into the school after the loss of his host, before any of his faithful servants had returned to him.

 

[ArchfiendRai]

Just a reminder: Rowling is terribad at math. Personally I just ignore all things related to numbers that comes out of her, because making sense of it gets a little annoying.

But yeah, Mc works three jobs, and the only one she seems to actually be good at it teaching. As the head of house, she's dropped the ball more than once. A simple one was never noticing Neville's wand issues. She's the head of house, and I'm assuming that can be sort of crossed with councilor for the students. Not like they have one of those officially at the school. She should have at least noticed and brought it up.

As for vice duties? Not like theres much to go by.

But not noticing that Ginny was getting possessed? As has been said, there was no baseline. How would she have been able to tell? It's not like Ginny was always possessed. Like Tom would be stupid enough to possess her in the middle of class.

If anything, all you can really blame her for is being a bit unapproachable and dismissive. She did it in Stone when the trio came to her with their concerns. Another was in Phoenix, where she just told the rebellious, track-record-for-disregarding-authority teenager to just keep his head down with Umbridge. It's like she wasn't paying attention at all for the past four books.

As for Dumbledore? People will take ANY excuse for turning him into the devil.

 

[Shirotsume]

Well, to be fair, Rowling is fucking terrible at saying one thing and showing another. She shows Dumbledore as an unrepanent evil sociopath, but he gets treated and said to be great and good and amazing. Much like trying to say Snape is anything but a sadistic fuckwit who isn't smart enough not to run to bigger bullies when someone picked on him, so he takes it out on a dead guys son that Snape is shown as.

It's a bit disturbing, honestly, seeing Harry defend Dumbledore, like when talking to Scrimgeour outside the Burrow. It's like reading from the point of view of an abused significant other who can't stop coming back.

 

[Hardcore Heathen]

Just a reminder: Rowling is terribad at math. Personally I just ignore all things related to numbers that comes out of her, because making sense of it gets a little annoying.

The "300" number is from fan estimates. Rowling herself says somewhere around 1,000 which is...not supported in the text or films. (5 boys in Harry's dorm, assume 5 girls, = 10 per year per House, = 10 x 4 x 7 = 280, which is about how many people show up in the full-length shots of the Great Hall in the movies).

The thing is, HP has some narrative inconsistencies just because of the type of story it is. And you can deal with that by just rolling with them or trying to iron them all out. You can't really fix some of the inconsistencies, because that just draws more attention to the ones that you left behind. So you're basically left with reworking the entire setting, which tends to give you this idea that you're "fixing" something that is "wrong." And that's where a lot of arrogance and bashing and shit come from, imo.

 

[Jimbobob5536]

Ignore/roll with the little details you don't like in order to look at the bigger picture of the overall plot, the 'Greater Good' of the story if you will?

 

[Ashaman]

She shows Dumbledore as an unrepanent evil sociopath, but he gets treated and said to be great and good and amazing.

I have no idea what the fuck you are talking about.

Dumbledore worked hard to save lives and improve the world of magic as a whole, as well as worked and sacrificed his life to beat 2 separate Dark Lords.

The evil work of his youth he spent the the rest of his life regreting and repenting for, and was shown caring for people all the god damn time.

Dumbledore is in no way a saint, was a manipulative old bastard who could be callous when neccessary, and you could eve call him arrogant, but evil? Unrepentent? A sociopath? Nope, nope and nope.

The only people that can really be faulted for not noticing are her brothers, and any friends she had prior to starting Hogwarts, of which the only known one was Luna Lovegood.

I'm going to need a source for that one.

In the book, our first introduction to Luna is Ginny saying shes "alright", greeting her friendily - and then ignoring each other for most of the rest of the trip. (Except when Luna was being cucoo.)

I vaguely remember them living "near" each other, which is an extremely relative term for a bunch of teleportors, but I can't recall them being friends pre-Hogwarts.




On that note, can someone remind me of the ways Ginny was acting oddly in the second book?

 

[Rising Dragon]

By October, Ginny was looking sick--the book described her as looking peaky, but at the time the common cold was going around, so Percy merely gave her a Peppering Potion to deal with it. She was highly distraught after Mrs. Norris' attack during the first time she opened up the Chamber of Secrets, but her brothers wrote it off as her having been a cat lover. She got increasingly upset with the next couple of attacks, both of which had other excuses for--she sat next to Colin in Charms class, she was worried that Ron might get expelled, etc.

Ginny, to her credit, did try to tell Harry and Ron her suspicions that she was responsible for the attacks, but that one attempt was foiled by Percy, who thought she was going to tell them that she caught him making out with Penelope. That, of course, was the attempt that pissed off the Horcrux for the last time and set the climax of the story in motion.


As for her friendship with Luna, she wasn't that close to her until they were both in Dumbledore's army. She called her Loony Lovegood, but later on she'd defend her when others ridiculed her. Luna, however, felt differently, and always appreciated Ginny's friendliness to her, so that's likely where that came from.

 

[Shirotsume]

She shows Dumbledore as an unrepanent evil sociopath, but he gets treated and said to be great and good and amazing.

I have no idea what the fuck you are talking about.

Dumbledore worked hard to save lives and improve the world of magic as a whole, as well as worked and sacrificed his life to beat 2 separate Dark Lords.

The evil work of his youth he spent the the rest of his life regreting and repenting for, and was shown caring for people all the god damn time.

Dumbledore is in no way a saint, was a manipulative old bastard who could be callous when neccessary, and you could eve call him arrogant, but evil? Unrepentent? A sociopath? Nope, nope and nope.

OK, evil and unrepentent we can argue all day because those are pretty subjective, but sociopath? He's absolutely a sociopath. About 1 in 30 are, so it's not like it's all that uncommon, most just hide it well, and he fits almost all the traits DSM-V ascribe to antisocial personality disorder (which is sociopathy, for those of you keeping track at home.)

The first trait is a pervasive disregard/violation of the rights of others after 15 years of age, checked by at least 3 specified markers, which are:

1. Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest; (yes)
2. deception, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure; (very yes_
3. impulsivity or failure to plan ahead; (You could argue this one, but let's be honest his master plan seems pretty shit to me, but this is another case of us possibly not seeing other information that would indicate otherwise.)
4. irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults; (I don't think this applies to him all that well- I think he learned his lesson here in a rather sad way after Arianna.)
5. reckless disregard for safety of self or others; (Does fluffy wring a bell? TriWiz? etc etc)
6. consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations; (Probably not)
7. lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another. (oh jesus christ yes.)

First trait, check. 3 markers even if you ignore the arguable ones.

Second trait is that he's at least 18. Check, to say the least

Third is evidence of conduct disorder before 15. This is the sketchiest trait, because while we know this was a definite check around the time of his friendship with Grindlewald, we only know that they exchanged a letter when Dumbledore was 17, and that it was near the end of their friendship, and we have absolutely no information on Dumbledore prior, but I doubt Grindlewald completely shaped Dumbledore's actions at that age. It's just not realistic to assume Grindlewald completely overwrote Dumbledore's personality, unless we want to try and argue that Grindlewald bespelled or potioned him. It points to a yes here.

Final trait is that none of this happens during a maniac episode or during schizophrenia.


As for evil, sorry, if you knowingly and intentionally imprison a child in an abusive home and post guards to keep him there, you're pretty fucking evil in my book. And he seemed fairly unrepentant about it to me, even telling Harry straight to his face that he knew exactly what he was doing when he dropped Harry off there, and that he would still make Harry go back. ./shrug


Hence why I call him an unrepentant evil sociopath. I think he is, and I feel like the books back me up here.

 

[Ashaman]

She shows Dumbledore as an unrepanent evil sociopath, but he gets treated and said to be great and good and amazing.

I have no idea what the fuck you are talking about.

Dumbledore worked hard to save lives and improve the world of magic as a whole, as well as worked and sacrificed his life to beat 2 separate Dark Lords.

The evil work of his youth he spent the the rest of his life regreting and repenting for, and was shown caring for people all the god damn time.

Dumbledore is in no way a saint, was a manipulative old bastard who could be callous when neccessary, and you could eve call him arrogant, but evil? Unrepentent? A sociopath? Nope, nope and nope.

OK, evil and unrepentent we can argue all day because those are pretty subjective, but sociopath? He's absolutely a sociopath. About 1 in 30 are, so it's not like it's all that uncommon, most just hide it well, and he fits almost all the traits DSM-V ascribe to antisocial personality disorder (which is sociopathy, for those of you keeping track at home.)

The first trait is a pervasive disregard/violation of the rights of others after 15 years of age, checked by at least 3 specified markers, which are:

1. Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest; (yes)
2. deception, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure; (very yes_
3. impulsivity or failure to plan ahead; (You could argue this one, but let's be honest his master plan seems pretty shit to me, but this is another case of us possibly not seeing other information that would indicate otherwise.)
4. irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults; (I don't think this applies to him all that well- I think he learned his lesson here in a rather sad way after Arianna.)
5. reckless disregard for safety of self or others; (Does fluffy wring a bell? TriWiz? etc etc)
6. consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations; (Probably not)
7. lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another. (oh jesus christ yes.)

First trait, check. 3 markers even if you ignore the arguable ones.

Second trait is that he's at least 18. Check, to say the least

Third is evidence of conduct disorder before 15. This is the sketchiest trait, because while we know this was a definite check around the time of his friendship with Grindlewald, we only know that they exchanged a letter when Dumbledore was 17, and that it was near the end of their friendship, and we have absolutely no information on Dumbledore prior, but I doubt Grindlewald completely shaped Dumbledore's actions at that age. It's just not realistic to assume Grindlewald completely overwrote Dumbledore's personality, unless we want to try and argue that Grindlewald bespelled or potioned him. It points to a yes here.

Final trait is that none of this happens during a maniac episode or during schizophrenia.


As for evil, sorry, if you knowingly and intentionally imprison a child in an abusive home and post guards to keep him there, you're pretty fucking evil in my book. And he seemed fairly unrepentant about it to me, even telling Harry straight to his face that he knew exactly what he was doing when he dropped Harry off there, and that he would still make Harry go back. ./shrug


Hence why I call him an unrepentant evil sociopath. I think he is, and I feel like the books back me up here.

I'm going to bed and don't particularly feel like arguing too much about this anyway, but its the bolded parts I disagree most strongly on.

Like I said before, he could be a callous and manipulative scumbag - but he didn't do it for personal gain, and in fact sacrificed his own life for the
cause and did show remorse for some of his actions even if he'd do it all over again.

Dumbledore is like a military leader at times.

He uses the lives of the men under him (even if neccessary, children's lives) but he doesn't waste them because, at least on some level, he cares.

 

[Shirotsume]

Even discounting that, he would still be considered a sociopath.

And I would argue his 'sacrifice to the cause' loses much of it's meaning when you realize he had like 5 months anyway because of a stupid mistake he made.

 

[Chuckg]

Like I said, those four brothers had their own lives in the school. Three of them were MUCH older than her, and the one closest to her age was busy with Harry and Hermione trying to figure out if Draco opened the Chamber.

On the other hand, its kinda a dick move to pay zero attention to your 11-year-old kid sister her first year living away from home, especially when she's blatantly showing symptoms that could be mistaken for severe homesickness. (Suddenly withdrawn, depressed, ill and run-down, etc.) The Weasleys in particular are supposed to be One Big Happy Weasley Family That Always Looks Out For Each Other, so its an OOC moment that suddenly none of her brothers will give her the time of day because that's more convenient for the plot du jour.

 

[Rising Dragon]

As I looked up the information, I saw that they did notice her behavior changing. But, ultimately, they drew the wrong conclusions--thinking she caught a cold, thinking she was upset because a cat got attacked and she liked cats, so on and so forth. And again, who would suspect that a Weasley would be the one to open the Chamber of Secrets? (more likely than you'd think, given the last book) And ultimately, none of her brothers would recognize magical possession.

Ron was in the same boat during his first year, remember. His older brothers didn't spend a whole helluva lot of time with him the previous year. I daresay Percy didn't spend a lot of time with the twins when they were younger (and frankly, who could blame him for that? They turned Ron's teddy bear into a freakin' spider).

 

[Shirotsume]

Ugh. Everything in the last few chapters of that book, including Ron somehow managing to open the sinks, was such a goddamn asspull the plot is prolapsed to this day.

 

[Rising Dragon]

Eh. I was okay with Ron opening the chamber. I actually felt that one would've made sense. My only real complaint with the finale was the anticlimax for the final battle between Harry and Voldemort, but I have the movie for that.