Hello LilaEvansDouble, there you can see my pen name again on one of your review pages. I'm sure you're jumping up and down with joy right now, as criticism tends to bring such levels of pleasure, and I'm a critical reader. I had been adamant about breaking off our dialogue to spare us both the intense emotions, but after I'd slept on my decision, I realised I wouldn't do right by you this way, not really. You see, everyone can use a second opinion sometimes. The human mind is supposed to be free, but actually, it can be quite set in the way it has taken earlier in life, unable to make that crucial lane change by itself and adopt a new perspective. That's why we need life to throw foreign facts and methods of thinking at us now and then. To get to know another viewpoint and to come closer to the ideal that's called truth. So I'll tell you what your second story, "Harry James Potter Dumbledore", has revealed to me so far. Which might become a chaotic venture, because there are so many thoughts flying around in my head right now. I will however try my best to make some sense.
Let's start with beginnings. There's the title of your chapter number six featuring a biblical topos, the paradise. This didn't stand out to me so much at first glance, but delving further into your story and the sixth chapter especially, a range of Christian themes occured to me. The fact that Albus and Minerva must marry prior to adopting a child, tells me that you've had more than just a brush with a certain scripture growing up. The recurring of subjects like gratefulness and innocence supports my theory.
What really caught my eye outright however is the forest expedition playfully undertaken by young Harry. It brought my own youthful adventures to mind at once, both those I embarked on outside and those I wrote down in my notebook. At Harry's age, I had a huge knack for suspense and horror stories. My forests were dark and full of threats. They held all which I feared too much to think about, so my subconscious had to deal with it at night or when I daydreamed. It used my imagination and love for creative hobbies to bring me into touch with the suppressed. It gave the monsters a face and a voice, so they could talk to me at eye level and help me cure that blind spot I had developed. Much later in life, I learned that this was quite a natural thing to happen, that it was something keeping people sane in general. Fears would come up suddenly in the form of symbols, embedded in a forest environment for those who dreamed and invented. The dark forest is an archetype of fear.
It's also a topos appearing in several fairytales such as "Red Riding Hood" and "Hansel and Gretel", the latter of which could be easily associated with your story. I'll explain this more fully later. Now let's get on with the most obvious interpretation of this fiction, the biblical one, and then draw connections to the other two contexts.
In "Harry James Potter Dumbledore", paradise is a property on earth. It features a beautiful landscape including a "small, quaint, one floored cabin" which has furnishings similar to those "in a normal muggle home" and is "not much" overall as mentioned in chapter three. Harry's room in there has a bed and next to it, "still along the wall", is "a matching mahagony desk with a book shelf next to it" so that there isn't "any lower wall space along that wall". It also includes an "armless desk chair" with "a dark blue cushion" on it. You could say it is the picture perfect of modesty and subservience. You may educate yourself, but only if you clutter yourself up with facts so much you won't see the forest for all the trees anymore. You may work, but you will never work through the subjects you encounter, because there is no time and space to take a break and muse about them. Whoever designed and furnished this room took great care to prevent its inhabitant from gaining autonomy. The limbless chair says as much. It is comfortably cushioned and just as nice and "cheery" as the rest of the place to keep Harry all happy and sedated. Humble, fearful, abused little Harry who probably dreamed up hell when faced with another family, one which could easily continue to mistreat him, clearly doesn't expect the cosiness and the permission to ask questions. He himself won't go find answers, though, not if Minerva has a say in the matter: "without questions to answer, we", meaning her and Albus, "would be out of a job", she explains in chapter five. Harry is not encouraged to think for himself in this house. He presumably participated in listing the "Dumbledore House Rules", however the story does not reveal how big his input was. Those rules, a set of twelve instead of ten, takes the place of the Decalogue in this world. As such, Harry's paradise is a rather dogmatic little haven.
As a human being, however, Harry is equipped with a curious and creative mind naturally. It won't be commanded, as he notices in chapter five: "he was quickly losing control of his thoughts again." And again, it happens when he enters the forest. "Once outside Harry let his imagination run wild." Harry decides that he is "an explorer to study the wild life." His educational trip leads him away from the forest trail trampled into the ground by Dumbledore and his ancestors. It's inside the headmaster's property after all, so it could be assumed it was the adult authority figures who stamped out the pathway. Harry leaves this old way for the sake of foreign experiences and new knowledge. He breakes the rule his soon to be guardians have made. What ensues is a seeming transcending of humanity as Harry practically flies through the air, jumping from one tree branch to the next, "not even letting his feet touch the ground". This brings Brecht's "Schneider von Ulm" to mind, a poem about a tailor who tries to soar up from a church roof with a selfmade flying machine, failing miserably, but certainly the biblical Fall of Man must be associated also. Because Harry does have a lapse in judgement, he does fall to the floor. There's at least one tree involved in the mishap and once stated that Harry is "lost", the imagery gets so ridiculously obvious that I must ask myself if you'd deliberately staged this chapter as a reflection of the Fall. The death Harry is afraid his guardian will bring upon him, the light which precedes the woman's appearance, so strange and unreal, markes her as a goddess. She punishes her charge promptly and later again in the cabin. So far the story seems to agree with the context nicely. It's commonly consented to that the exceeding of one's nature, seeking godhead, is a bad thing to do - Christians believe that eating from the tree of knowledge for that reason brought death into being. It also came with other perceived penalties, such as hard work and giving birth to children while in pain. The devil lurks however in the details, as is often the case.
For starters, we can see in several places throughout the story that Harry's adults are not perfect. Dumbledore openly admits to being "wrong now and then" and Minerva, the temperamental "Dragon Lady", does not resemble an angel either, so to say. Both fellows need time to ponder and talk through the directives they list in order to find an acceptable set of twelve, rules meant for the entire family, rules which they don't adhere to when it comes to the crunch. Once the boughs are broken and the lapse has happened, Harry loses all right to respect under the adults. It is true that he failed his pledge to Minerva also, as he had agreed not to stray from the path laid out for him - the forest rule had been thought up in a group discussion - but it is unclear, again, how much say the boy is granted in such a bout. Looking at wearing-the-breeches Minerva McGonagall, we can guess who is in charge there. It is probable she just forced her rule on Harry without a true chance of rejection. Harry might have voiced protest at it, since it's a pure restriction lacking obvious benefits for him, contrary to the rule of respect. So the order to follow the way seems lighter on consent than the House Rule of respecting each other. Also, Harry disobeys the forest order in the rush of wonder, being "entertained", and regrets his actions at once - whereas Minerva, though sighing heavily as heard in chapter six, chooses an impious deed against the child premeditatedly while seemingly being in control of her emotions. Her tone is "firm, but not angry". The question remaines wether she manages to clear her inner turmoil prior to the decision. She appears much calmer and rational than Harry during the act of disobedience, however, on the outside. Something still weights on her heart, an emotion not hostile to Harry, but is it guilt? "She sighed. She didn't want to do this. She was getting too old, and Harry had behaved so well the past two weeks." Her thoughts disclose doubts about the fairness of her intentions. Her charge didn't cross her rules before, so she now asks herself if she should act as crassly. The prospect of punishing Harry causes her pain, so she will know at a certain level that her doings won't be received with cheers - yet she stops at this vague concern, she does not get to the bottom of the issue. Why might Harry dislike the punishment? Minerva will never know; she deems herself incapable of solving the conflict between her principles and empathy. Hence, the touch of guilt she feels stays hidden beneath the surface of old habits. "You broke the rules, and now you have to face the consequences." This is how Minerva works, how she has been indoctrinated. She must react to disobediance and what her reaction will turn out to be is settled as well. We see her and Albus confering about the matter at hand, but judging from the conversation's shortness and her confident demeanour afterwards, there was no deep pondering involved. "[...] I have no qualms about spanking children when they deserve it", Minerva says. "I would say you have definitely earned yourself a spanking Harry James [...]" So her conscious concern remains the question of proportionality. It is unclear if she weights disrespect against disrespect deep down, somehow feeling without knowing what she is about to do and believing she had been stepped on by purpose - although Harry's explanations rule this out. He only got "distracted". It is more likely that Minerva compares measures - of pain maybe. The thought that causing pain at will implies disrespect, that she might break a promise, does not really cross her mind.
So we have a strange crash between two divergent, yet very similar characters in this story. Whilst Minerva struggles with exploring her feelings, getting a clear picture of all perspectives involved and breaking a habit when necessary, Harry lets youthful exuberance rule himself, jumping at the unknown far too quickly. Minerva keeps her emotions down, Harry lets them carry him up into the sky. Both persons display an unhealthy, virtually nonexistent relation between emotion and reason. Hence, they're both bad decision makers. They're both flawed.
Minerva proceeds to hit Harry's bottom even when he is a "sobbing mess" already, she seems blind to his distress, yet later she does comfort him - which does imply a trifle of awareness on her part. She chooses to ignore the pain the tears reveal, but she knows it is there. Thus, her open denial towards Harry must be taken as a lie. "You're just fine", she tells him. My guess is that she wants the tears to disappear and the whole situation to just be "all over", so it can be swept under one of those large fluffy rugs in the cabin, right together with her guilt. She resorts to the suggestive sentence for this reason. It is herself she wants to make believe in peace, still it is Harry she addresses, and Harry she tells what to feel - which is an enormous procacity. You just don't dictate your fellow's mindscape, it is not your place to rule this most private space, nor is it possible. It is ridiculous. You may believe that you have won when all misery seems to vanish from your opposite's face, but actually, you have only lost an important link, because the pain you fear so much will flee into dark forest scapes and hide from view there, forming a blind spot. Harry does calm down, he gives Minerva a hug and still wants to be adopted by her, but is he honest with himself all the while?
We have at least one liar here, that is for sure. Authority figure Minerva who's meant to symbolise God, does not seem so divine on closer inspection. She speaks the untruth, disrespects Harry's privacy, natural autonomy, right of physical and emotional integrity. She fails two promises she has made, one of them knowingly. She can't be God, because God is flawless. So who is she really? And who is Harry?
To consider this question, we must trace back the forest trail towards the thicket and then look into chapters of life bygone. In the covert, we meet Harry, freshly fallen from a tree and still bleeding from open wounds. Sorry as he is, he wallows in regret, and it is interesting which words he uses to describe his fail. An "ungrateful brat" is what he deems himself, obediently echoing the term his abusers have tagged him with. The Dursleys, two magic hating muggles who sought to keep him small, so he would do their housework and serve as their punching bag, believing he owed them this and more. We also hear Minerva yelling the word at Vernon Dursley when the man swears at her and tries to expel her from his home. It is what slips from both person's tongues when faced with presumed disrespect and the displeasure that ensues. While Harry says it to himself as a chastisement, Minerva shrieks it outwards in an attempt to punish the offending opponent. However, she has once been a child as well, and look at the household where she's lived: "While her mother had been a witch, her father had been a muggle, and her mother had locked away her wand at marriage. Therefore, Minerva had grown up in a muggle home, and it was under Albus' tutelage that she had excelled so much in school." Chapter two further explains Minerva's reasons to put her mentor on a pedestral, but I have no doubt that other people tried to gain her gratitude first - because, let's face it, what would a power-deprived mother and her average husband do with their exceptional witch of a daughter? What values would they want to instill in her? Magic and might? Never. They would not like the creativity nature had given her, the power to rearrange and give rise to something new. They could not deal with that, being so limited themselves. Their withered pride would urge them to keep her small, make her dependent - on them of course. And what better way to achieve dependence in your daughter is there, other than to spoil her sated, while telling her to be thankful? She would feel she was unworthy of everything she got, yet unable to turn down the gifts and search herself a better home. She would feel the command to be grateful and kneel down in front of her parents, as if they were gods to worship from the dust. Minerva might have voiced objections at one point, but years of servitude can crush a spirit. I think, she must have served her parent's egos willingly at last. Just look at Albus Dumbledore, the man she chose to marry, he is a charitable father playing power games - "I hope you can forgive me for putting you through all of that." He has left Harry with cruel guardians, he has ignored his warning hunches, allaying his alertness with hope, and now he steps up to the boy he's failed, all "kind", "sad" and "tired", the seeming picture perfect of a rueful sinner - and makes up excuses. And asks for forgiveness. He has some gall, I must admit. He's also very smart, speculating for Harry's mercy. Of course the child won't reject him. A docile sinner you give your hand and help him up, or so comity dictates. An open request is hard to deny. Hence - relationship repaired. And all it took was guile and sugar. That's the guardian figure Minerva chooses for her charge. This is, most likely, a mirror image of her own father. Minus the magic of course. We remember, Minerva's dad was an ordinary man. He might have been worldly-wise, but I can't see him as an artist or an overly intellectual person. He would have been one for the step by step approach instead of creative leaps, slowly and painstakingly nearing his goal. Yes, hard work is the kind of thing men like that take pride in, looking down on 'lazy' wizards jealously. It is also what we see reflected in Harry's room. Harry, who might have taken on the name "Dumbledore", but who is very much a McGonagall junior too, gets a desk and bookshelf, but no wall space. No dallying around, I presume. The muggle father has passed on his views successfully. He would not have insulted his daughter's gift openly, if he was as cunning as I think, but rather treated it with ignorance, praising sweat production like one American inventor once did: "Genius is one percent inspiration, and ninety-nine percent perspiration."
Still there is a chance that he might have shown his dislike outright, starkly abusing both Minerva and his wife, telling them to be glad it is not worse. In this case, we would see Severus' situation play out, and Severus is so much Minerva's shadow side, is he not? You even compare him to the devil in your other story on this website. So let's stay with the assumption that Minerva comes from a more or less abusive home. She has worked her way up to the top getting help, but it did not go without trouble I'm sure. Jealous parents are a hurdle to overcome, you must struggle out of their grasp and maybe, even moving away, gaining distance in time, the family ties will never break. The mental ones will stay hooked and corrupt your thinking. I fear Minerva still believes herself undeserving of help after all, there is a void behind her confidence. It's like an empty, half starving stomach, it needs food to fill itself up and stay strong. So what - or whom - does Minerva feast on?
It's not the sweets for her, we come to know in chapter six. Sweets are a guilty pleasure, they can result in rotting teeth and "dying of a blasted heart attack". Minerva uses illness as a pretext to miss out on the dainties, so they remain reserved for "fun loving", "always so confident" Albus Dumbledore who does not think that nature will punish him for indulging himself. He is an optimistic man, a little childlike and naive maybe, but also kind and giving to himself. Despite, or maybe because of his knack for manipulation, he feels he does deserve something good. He seemingly gains absolution when his polite dialogue partner accepts his excuse, and he can forgive himself, because they say you do that no? Comity dictates. It has a nice side and an arraigning, and Dumbledore, ever the optimist, chooses the former one. This way, he gets remission by trickery and plays the innocent child before the adult Fall, mostly to fool himself I guess. Dumbledore is an age-wrinkled mockery of a baby boy.
Minerva, his forbidding, high-strung counterpart, does not share his overindulgent tendencies. She is the harsh visualisation of penance: her "lips would go thin" at the sight of sweets. She doesn't want to be a carnal woman, she clamps her mouth shut and tight and fights her desires. While her mentor shows optimism and trust, she is afraid of punishment, pessimistic and full of self-doubt. Minerva won't treat herself to a little pleasure. She is seen with healthy food instead. In chapter four, she actually eats a "dinner of roast, mashed potatoes and gravy, rolls, and corn on the cob". Otherwise, we do not find her consuming anything, but she is mentioned next to eggs and porridge in chapter five and it is implied that those are meant to be her breakfast, too. So let's investigate the breakfast scene a little further, shall we?
There is Harry standing in the kitchen by himself, he's been driven out of bed by Dursley household habits and the sting of uncomfortable questions. They are like a swarm of bees "buzzing" around his head, depriving him of deep sleep and facilitating an early morning rising. Yet he cooks the breakfast silently and only Minerva's entering the kitchen and questioning him breaks the quiet. Inconvenient truths about the Dursley's are unearthed, happenings seeming normal to Harry, because he can still shrugg them off. He is "busy with some eggs" while doing the gesture, so he does not see Minerva's upset face, he does not notice anything amiss until - "'They kicked you?' Minerva's tone was sharp, and Harry spun to face her quickly." She has brought him out of his reverie then, shattered the illusion with her own alertness. The rug has been pulled out from under their feet and now they have to concern themselves with the dirt that had been swept under there. They meet one smirched, guilty pair of hands belonging to meddlesome Albus Dumbledore and some fury fingers wanting to wring the wizard's neck. Minerva is afraid of committing murder, so to say, not trusting her emotions and fearing rule transgression. Even more, the deed already committed weights on her conscience. And then, there are Harry's uncomfortable questions, of course.
"'How did you guys know I was at my aunt and uncle's?'", the boy asks. "'Albus, Hagrid and I left you on your aunt's doorstep the night your parents were killed Harry.' Minerva focused on breathing evenly. There was no need to tell the boy it was contrary to her better judgement."
"'I see.' Harry mulled this over in his brain a moment as Minerva took the plate of eggs from him, and flicked her wand over them without a word. 'What does that do?' 'It keeps the eggs warm and fresh', Minerva replied simply with a kind smile. There was something about the innocence of the boy that was keeping her calm."
The food changes hands in this moment. It is not given away, but taken from Harry by Minerva. She takes the viand that would nourish Harry's body. She seizes quite a bit of power consequently, making Harry's development dependent on her. "Why now"? Let's ask the question captioning the scene and apply the wider context to the small one, but disregard Dumbledore's excuses for once. See what Harry finds in thought, what he does not say out loud, what he does not even recognise as the solution to his riddle: "Now they were all scared of him, so didn't end up ordering him around, and kicking him all over Surrey." He means the Dursleys here, but he could as well have spoken of Minerva in a way. She is as much afraid of Harry's inquisitiveness as the muggles fear his magic. While the Dursleys must expect rightout retribution in the form of spells for years of physical abuse, Minerva the bystander apprehends the moral pointing finger of her charge. She cannot allow Harry to get free of the chores he had to do in Surrey, gaining time to actually think over his situation and have an insight unfavourable for her. She does not want him mulling over breakfast either, so she just swaps positions and shifts the power. There are two handings over of might in this story: family ties change hands, including the right to assign household tasks, and dependence wanders from Harry himself to an outer position. "I see", we hear him say to Minerva's admission and echoing it later in the scene, but it would seem the boy sees less and less. While we can guess he had a light-bulb moment first, we must concede he gets increasingly distracted during chapter five. In the end, he buys Dumbledore's excuses: "'I see.' Harry could just stare at Albus. It all really did make sense. Harry might not like it, but it made sense. With that thought in mind, Harry gave a small smile and nodded. 'I can forgive you.'" All which remains his are the emotions lurking beneath an agreeable face, the dislike at what he learns, an unspoken warning that all is not well in paradise. Intuition however, the childlike sensing without knowing, is superseded by a highly questionable adult "sense". As such, the verb "to see" undergoes a change in meaning here. At first it is inner perception, unclear but true to the self, then it is outer reason formed into words, conflicting with what emotion feels is true. As sensing sinks deeper into oblivion, the questions recede; Harry becomes unarticulate, quiet and compliant. He has lost "control of his thoughts" indeed, just not in the way his abused mind would willingly admit. They don't run free on the surface anymore, they are out of his grasp, somewhere hidden.
We encounter intuition again in chapter six when Harry decides to go and play in a dark place. He lets his "imagination run wild" there and chooses to explore what is covered by the sea of green the forest's canopy of leaves certainly resembles. His acrobatics between the trees seem humanly impossible: actually picturing a forest, it becomes clear that the individual plants would not stand close enough to each other to jump from branch to branch, all homo sapiens skills considered. The weightless, groundless journey appears as unreal as a dream, and I suspect it is just that: a figment. We see Harry going to bed "perfectly happy being silent" after he got his punishment and it is said that "he slept soundly", however both statements from the storyteller must be taken with a grain of salt. Considering it is Minerva who 'wears the breeches' in this text, trying to dictate Harry's feelings, and that it's her who represents the clarity of reason here, I think the teller sides with her orders and his words are very much tidied up, free from inconveniences as the plot progresses. Before Harry goes to bed, Minerva utters the threat to "repeat the lesson", meaning the spanking, should she find Harry awake when she comes to check on him. So the boy would be afraid admitting trouble sleeping and the teller would hush up any messes happened during the night. It is unsure which emotions exactly follow Harry into the dusk, but it can be assumed that all pretence aside, they are not anything too happy. They would not make for fluffy clouds dreams - they would be nightmare inducing. So did he sleep, or did he wake in pain? Or rest and rise in pain both, gliding from one nightmare to the other? It seems that evil never ends for one Harry Dumbledore. When he drops off the text of his "little paradise", we witness the ultimate suppression and destruction of a character. His mindscape becomes the "cracked" mirror seen in his earlier Surrey home, scattering and dislocating memory pieces all over the past.
Since Harry's censored mind has been forbidden from speaking truth even in the darkest hours, his fears must search themselves another hiding place. The nightmare is mirrored back into a preceding experience, mingling with it, trying to pose as a part of plain daylight reality. As such, the forest scene gaines a rather symbolic quality. Its single elements must be viewed as metaphors depicting the events following 'the Fall'. We remember - in the cabin, there was Minerva feeding Harry a true feast including "3 bowls of onion soup, and what felt like a loaf of bread, a block of cheese, and a bushel of fruit" and a "tall glass of milk". She speaks in a "firm, but not angry", "softer" tone to him and Albus says that he wants only "what's best" for him. They assert not to send him back to the Dursleys. No physical abuse anymore, is what they want him to believe. However, not even Harry is completely fooled by the niceties. Dumbledore's "kind" voice makes "Harry's stomach twist in knots." His emotions and psychosomatic reaction anticipate what is about to happen: the spanking, the break of a promise. And during the ordeal, Harry is not even allowed to "hit, kick, bite, or try to harm" his torturer in any other way. His anger at being failed once again by the adults in his life, has no outlet valve - it meets a strong counterforce and thus, has no choice other than to hit home to its starting point like a bullet coming back from the sky, losing to gravity. "Angry at himself Harry went over and kicked a tree. This gave him no aid however as it made his foot start throbbing." So who is the tree? Is it Harry, or rather Minerva? Harry "had climbed a tree, and seeing branches of another tree so close, had jumped onto those. He continued his journey like this for a while, not even letting his feet touch the ground, but after 15 minutes he got over confident. He misjudged some of the branches, and they broke under his sudden weight." So the teller sets the boy apart from the trees at first, but then they come together in a journey of trust, the plants carrying the human. All goes well until a weak spot is discovered in both travelers - Harry gets "over confident", placing too much trust in his companions, and these in turn let him down literally. It's a union fallen to the ground and we could easily share out blame equally amongst all participants, it would be facilitated by the connectedness of it all, but we must take into account that we are talking about an abused child here, latching onto the first chance at happyness, and - well, a plant. A tree that hasn't gotten enough sun and nourishments maybe, so it was too slim to bear the boy's weight. Can we truly make Harry responsible for his deed and the tree for his inability? Would it be wise to place blame at all? I think that both travelers look very similar to each other when it comes to responsibility; the boy has abuse still fresh in his mind and the plant life, although grown up, still suffers from a lack of opulence. They have different roles in the union, failing differently, but it seems they are chips off the same old block, so to say. They're just not at the same stage of life. Harry is the younger version of Minerva. His witching guardian had been abused herself to help a damaged ego feel good. She was materially cared for, but this came at a dear price: her self-confidence. For everything she got, she had to be 'grateful', because her father wanted her to believe she was not really worth the gifts. He wanted to be her superior in every way. Thus, Minerva became dependent. And as long as she stayed a good little slave, everything was well in "paradise". If she expressed free thoughts though, or rebelled in any other way, she was deemed "ungrateful" and most likely punished physically. Disobedience equalled failure in her old family and on failure, there followed pain. As a consequence, Minerva became afraid of being recognized as flawed and unable to deal with mistakes properly - we can see this in the breakfast scene. Very cunningly, the woman moves heaven and hell silently, underhandedly, to hush up her blunder. She is good with the abilities she's got. She knows how to work her magic, because she has apprenticed to Dumbledore, the wizard, and her sly father before. But to learn how to use a wand, Minerva had to act against her father's ego first and place herself above him. She was more powerful than him now when it came to sorcery, however, a childhood's worth of brainwashing cannot be forgotten. The price for being so "ungrateful" as to seize power was her material comfort. Minerva is nothing and deserves nothing, that she believes deep down. She would not take sweets from her father anymore or from anyone else for that matter; she is unworthy. A thin-lipped nothing. That yawning void inside of her has a long, sticky tongue though, or rather a long magic stick at its disposal. As it can't have any sweets, it will go for tasty children instead. Does that read too much like a fairytale to you? Then let's look at the breakfast scene again.
"'I see.' Harry mulled this over in his brain a moment as Minerva took the plate of eggs from him, and flicked her wand over them without a word. 'What does that do?' 'It keeps the eggs warm and fresh', Minerva replied simply with a kind smile. There was something about the innocence of the boy that was keeping her calm."
This time, I won't indulge the headline and ask for the moment, get distracted by Dumbledore and scattered all over the storyline. This time, I will take another leaf out of Harry's book and "see" the truth between the lines right there. I'll assail that piece of text with my own questions, namely "what", "how" and "why again".
So what is it Minerva takes here? It's the eggs. Eggs are embryos in the biological sense of the word, living things at an early stage of development. You could say they are the most innocent beings possible, they have not even been born yet. They are children still isolated from the world and its knowledge by a shell, unaware of the goings-on outside, naive. However, chicken eggs especially are also food you can eat and on the factual level of this story, they are treated as such. Harry was preparing them for breakfast, about to digest a meal cooked by himself. His questions during the scene could have brought him independence, casting a doubt on the witches role in his misery - he could have found her partly responsible and queried her reasons behind the upcoming adoption. Are they really all altruistic? Of course not. Minerva is no angel and her guilt makes a great incentive for assuming care. She wants to repent quite desperately, being upset about Harry's treatment at the Dursleys' and her mistake. However, she is incapable of just coming up to the boy and saying so plainly, honestly. Plus, she needs something to fill up her confidence void. A little power play can do that just fine. It's what her father has taught her: if you're a nobody, get others to bow to you. Make them think they need to be 'grateful' for everything you give them. However, would Harry kneel down in front of Minerva thankfully if he knew she's getting something out of the deal? I think not. He might say 'thank you', but he would not buckle. You see, there's a fine line between appreciation and deep gratitute. You can appreciate something for its intrinsic value or the motive with which it was given, respecting repentance for example, but gratefulness is not objective or idealistic anymore, it goes directly to a subject. It is so big and reverent that it weights more than a mere appreciative 'thanks', so it can't be attached to an object like the phrase - it equals an object at least. Thus, in a human relationship where giving and taking always comes from both sides, gratitude would have no place, except to make the exchange uneven. It's only deserved for an altruistic gift and amongst mankind, there is no such thing as pure altruism. Nature provides that for everything you hand out, you get something in return. It's her way to make sure you won't die from poverty. So if you show gratitude towards your fellow human, you basically say he or she didn't receive anything of worth from you and consequently, you devaluate yourself. Gratitude really should be reserved for nature herself, or destiny, or God if you are religious. Those entities don't profit from us people. The Christian God is said to be perfect, complete, he doesn't need to get anything from the humans and add it to his being. Minerva however is a needy person. She takes the eggs and bewitches them silently, keeping the spell's name from Harry. In best Dumbledore-style, thereby she places a distraction in front of the boy, arousing his scientific interest in the piece of magic and diverting his thoughts from a more important matter at hand. To the attentive reader, though, she reveals both her agenda and one of the ways it is carried out throughout chapter five and six. The reader knows it is Harry's "innocence" that is "keeping her calm", helping her inward peace, and he can associate it with the freshness of the eggs. This detached observer also knows what or rather whom the eggs shall symbolize in this moment. So I deduce that Minerva aims for Harry's ignorance, or innocence, which both her and the teller lump together for a reason I'll explain later. The wordless enchantment of the eggs, "what does that do"? It keeps them ignorant. So magic is trickery of the diverting kind, leading to naivety in this instance. It is wrapped in palliative, falsifying words, and adorned with kindness. Guile and sugar is one of Minerva's ways to go, but it is mainly Dumbledore's method, and we know very well of whom he has learned it, don't we?
"And just how would you go about calming him Hagrid?", Dumbledore asks his employee about Fluffy, the cerberus monster. "Jus' play 'im a bit o' music and he falls straight tah sleep Headmaster."
The giant has "Fluffy" dancing to his tune, Minerva feasts on Harry's ignorance, feeding him bewitched eggs, and the Headmaster feeds the boy's brain half-truths. He casts a good part of his guilt on Arabella Figg, whose wrinkled-fruit-name had to serve as a distraction already during the conversation between Harry and Minerva. It all comes down to food and magic. And sleep.
In this regard, your story is hauntingly similar to the fairytale of "Hansel and Gretel". This little text by the Brothers Grimm is well-known enough and as you are both a teacher and a mother, there's even more reason to adduce it as a context. In "Hansel and Gretel", we have two parents and two children living in poverty, and when their distress becomes so much they can't feed themselves anymore, the jealous stepmother persuades her pliant husband to abandon the kids in a forest and let them starve to death there. Smart little Hansel however knows how to use the wit God has given him; he collects a coat full of "white pebbles" reflecting the moonlight shining on him, drops the stones along his way through the forest and thus, leads himself and his sister back to the starting point of their misery. He masters the crisis through self-reliance and a good hunch where to place his trust: "God will not forsake us". He knows that the pieces of his own mind will always reflect truth, just like mirror shards showing parts of the face looking into it. So God wills and sends his light, the memory pieces can show Hansel where he comes from. Insight really is a divine gift!
The greedy stepmother however can't allow this, now can she? Suddenly, her shrewdness reaches worrying levels. She deprives Hansel of a chance to find new mirroring stones, and only gives him bread. Therewith, she shows more cunning than the Dursleys, she acts more like Minerva now. The witching guardian does not want Harry to be "saved" by his own efforts, we remember. If the boy managed that, she could not work off her debt on the quiet anymore. So she gives him the finest board and lodging, plays the nice one, pretends there was heaven on earth. She seemingly gives Harry what he desires the most: to be respected. Still, she does not consider herself to be on the safe side. She can't allow the boy the ability to confidently place trust in anything other than herself, in something as mundane as a tree for example, because - where would that end? Harry could just fly out of her grasp. On an unwitting level, Minerva must feel she has to indebt the child thrice over. Thus, she lays a snare next to her promise, or rather, she places multible prohibitive rules into her realm. It won't really make a difference which rule is broken in the end, the disobedience itself is all that matters. Every kind of noncompliance can lead to a spanking, when the parent has no respect for the child and is set on inflicting pain. Harry however has no feeling of the danger lurking there when he's playing outside. He is full of trust, believing that neither his guardians, nor the trees will let him down. When both companions fail him, the horror at being hurt is going round and round in Harry's head, together with the disappointment at his own mistake. It is all his adventure superimposed by a nightmare shows us: tree branches breaking under his weight, letting him fall to the ground that scrapes his skin. The nature entities involved in the mishap are merely depicted in their ability or inability to do something for Harry, they are portrayed as givers, not as recipients. Harry is of no value to them. Not even the trees could take anything of importance from Harry, which makes their carrying nature seemingly altruistic and the boy a potentially "ungrateful little brat". In the scene following the forest trip, we encounter the generosity of Harry's guardian in its entire creepiness. Minerva is all but force-feeding him: "You had better eat all of it young man or so help me ... After running around all afternoon like that ..." Then she hits him, because he has shown confidence as if he actually deserved something. She won't take his anger at being hurt, though. She may give out pain, but not take it. At last, Harry gains absolution through Minerva: "[...] you are forgiven." Looking closer at her kind words, their indirect quality stands out to me. Minerva does not dare to grant remission herself, she merely states that Harry is forgiven. That's a passive. It seems, when the going gets rough, chips are falling off her shining facade and Minerva must reveal that she can only pose as a medium of the giver, not as God in the flesh. She may make up rules all she likes, in the end, she will only ever be a fallen angel. In Harry's eyes, absolution is linked directly to Minerva though. Her realm becomes paradise and as the spanking experience is mirrored back into the preceding incident, her appearance in the forest comes with a light. Harry, the rule-breaker, sees her as the saviour of his guilty conscience. He also perceives her as the white knight who will help him out of a situation which is marked as extra harmfull by the punishment. Minerva truly has succeeded in binding him thrice: with gifts, an extensive inferiority complex and faked remission. Straying through the forest, Harry does not see her for the kind of person she is - an abuser praying on his ignorance - and allows her to 'save' him, even though his intuition is screaming at him to stay out of her grasp. "Didn't muggles believe that walking into the light meant embracing death?" Yes Harry, in this instance, it means exactly that! But Harry won't listen to his inner voice, and so he falls into Minerva's hands. He falls, and his mind shatteres. The shards are dislocated into his past and become unavailable for his consciousness. As such, ignorance equals what the teller deems innocence in this story. Harry is a broken mirror unaware of his condition. As long as he does not look backwards and finds something strange, he won't notice the blank spaces in his mind, and he won't know that he is missing something. A good therapist could help him or the art of authorship, because the stories we write tend to bring past occurances into the present, don't they? Our writing always reflects who we are.
As for the sin, there is no such thing in this story. We have a 'Fall' here and the destruction of a character, also a lot of perceived guilt, but in reality, all persons involved are victims in a long chain of abuse, unable to free themselves and be truly accountable for their deeds. It could be said that Minerva does indeed 'save' her charge from sin, but only in the way that he cannot be held liable for his future mistakes. He will fail his fellow human beings, his inferiority complex won't leave him any other choice.
The teller puts the context of religion over this tale, though, siding with Minerva's idea to play God. If we wanted to indulge the teller, we could call Minerva a modern version of the fallen angel Luzifer or associate her with the evil witch in "Hansel and Gretel". In both stories, the witches' shadows are cast beyond their actual appearance. While Minerva's violent nature emerges in the trees for example, the fairytale witches' wickedness finds her way into the mind of the stepmother, so it seems. She forces the siblings to solely rely on the bread she has given them the second time they are abandoned in the forest. The food, not being under their control, does not help them in their endeavour to go home, of course. It is eaten by the birds in the wild. After wandering through the woods for days on end, the siblings come to a dainty little house - it is just what their growing hunger has been waiting for. They decide to nibble and gnaw at the edible building they've found. That this does not go unnoticed, the connoisseur of the fairytale knows very well. The evil witch makes her appearance. Hansel and Gretel fall right into her trap: "'Oh, you dear children, who has brought you here? Do come in, and stay with me. No harm shall happen to you.' She took them both by the hand, and led them into her little house. Then good food was set before them, milk and pancakes, with sugar, apples, and nuts. Afterwards two pretty little beds were covered with clean white linen, and Hansel and Gretel lay down in them, and thought they were in heaven." In this fairytale, we encounter a wall of sleep on which the evil woman's characteristics bounce off. "Harry James Potter Dumbledore" has such a dividing line also; it is drawn right after the day of the spanking. Just as the dubiousness of the old witches' care finds her way beyond the night, reflecting in the unreliable bread trail Hansel lays out, we can see Minerva's cruelty symbolised in the magic she does during the breakfast scene. We remember, one of her spells hexes the eggs and keeps Harry ignorant. That's the Dumbledore-ish power. Her other method of enslavement is plain physical brutality plus recomposition. It is provoked by her fear that Harry might not swallow everything she tries to feed him, that he might reject her or find his sustenance in another place. It is what we see play out in the form of the spanking and the following night which is symbolised by the forest scene. Violation, suppression, blanking through a threat and the shattering of a mind, the backwards reflection and settling in the event which caused it all, so we have a closed circle we can follow over and over again, or as Minerva would say, we could "repeat this lesson" to all eternity. It would be a sad joke of a life, don't you think? Harry could do jigsaw puzzles til the cows come home, he would not piece himself together, he'd only ever see the picture the toymaker wanted him to find, or rather his guardians who bought the plaything for him. Hansel would never get home, scattering breadcrumbs. Minerva would always "angrily [squeeze] the glass in her hand" that is a disobedient Harry who does not want to be filled up, and then she would, "with a wave of her wand", quickly reassemble the pieces into a seemingly unhurt container, already anticipating the next round to come. She'd smile and think: "The child really [knows] nothing about magic." But the greatest, the most ironic laugh of this story is that the almighty transfiguration teacher has no clue about magic, either. She's just another hamster in the treadmill. The fact that she holds a wand or can cast a spell that she has memorised doesn't make her a self-determined, educated magician. She is a little bit like my grandmother who, after a mutual relative had died, critisized me for my state of not knowing death, though we both were still very much alive at this point. Of course I'm still an ignoramus when it comes to lying six feet under, however I can tell you one or two things about fictional sorcery. The first one would be that magic is indeed depicted in your story, the second one: it is not exactly white magic. It is "very dark stuff", to quote one Horace Slughorn. Minerva effectively shatters Harry's mind to pieces, or rather, it is the emotions and the meaning of a certain event which are broken off and caught both in a memory circle and an associated object. A nightmare is always an array of feelings and archetypic symbols. It can give you an accurate hunch concerning your own situation fast, if you have access to it. As Harry's bad dream has been dislocated and hidden in the forest adventure which triggered the traumatic experience, all the negativity originally attached to the spanking is now associated with something random. Harry may avoid trees in the future, he may even develop a phobia of them if worst comes to worst. You could say that the forest in the Dumbledore estate or anything similar to it will act as an outside container for Harry's fears, unbeknownst to the boy. Most likely, he won't understand what struck him when he wants to run from the woods really fast next time he comes near them. Unraveling a phobia requires a range of psychological knowledge and a degree of reflection most children and young teens do not possess, so Harry will be faced with an insoluble problem henceforth. Also, since the entire spanking topic goes round and round in a closed circle as far as Harry's viewpoint is concerned, his very own perspective on it is caught in a vessel inside his own mind. This will affect his future behaviour. You see, a person's judgement on an event depends on the emotions connected to it. Bad is first and foremost an aesthetic value before it becomes a more extensive appraisal and lastly a moral one through outwards reflection. If something feels bad, then the whole thing may be bad and it will most likely be bad for other people, too. Although ethics are based on empathy at the moment also, we need the memories of our perceptions to plan unprecedented interhuman actions. The well-known motto fitting here says: "Do that to no man which thou hatest." It is an imperative which tends to work out in most cases, since humans are similar in many basic aspects. Usually, we dislike pain and we don't want our trusted ones to let us down. That's why we will stay away from people who might hurt us and we won't harm other persons, either, if we go for the ethical choice. If we have an acquired taste though concerning the more important matters in life, well then it gets complicated. Harry will most likely stay with Minerva for the rest of his childhood of his own free will, as corporal punishment does not look too terrible anymore in the mindscape accessable to him. He may end up in an abusive relationship later on or hit his own children, putting their wellbeing at risk. As such, Minerva's questionable mindset will live on and the witch will become immortal, in a way. She really has found a good little horcrux in Harry. The boy's own negative emotions have been stuffed into a very narrow break of his mind's timeline, making the remaining space available for Minerva's indoctrinations. Harry will adopt his guardians' "sense" as an irrefutable imperative and be unable to make choices independently, based on his empathy or critical thinking for example. He will be a weak link in society and have a potential for violence against his fellow human beings. Can he be saved at all?
As mentioned earlier, creative writing could be Harry's remedy. A story always mirrors a perspective on a succession of events and as such, a human point of view, it will provide room for intuition to work her magic - to show the perceptive reader which moments in the fictional timeline can be associated, where the blank spaces are and what to fill them with, just like the stream of a river can point you in a direction and tell you a lot about the surface condition of the land you are standing on. Writing can help the author to stand back from his life, to create the distance needed for reflection on it and mirroring will happen inside the story itself as a consequence. This way, hidden events and meanings may break through their cage and reappear in another place in the story as symbols. I personally have found that the best results are achieved when there are two or more equipollent characters voicing their opinion on an important matter. Should you notice that you cannot give every person in your story a strong voice and a certain measure of respect, then you should ponder over this weak person with extra care. Please mind that everybody and everything in the stories we write is a part of ourselves also. An insiders' tip I'd like to give to Harry and you, LilyEvansDouble, is it to pick up your old fictional stories and read them again. You may not only have a good laugh, but also understand your current situation better - because our writings do not only reflect that which has happend, but also the emotions we are not aware of in the moment of composition, feelings which may influence our actions later on. It could be that the words of a character will appear as a prophecy to you after years. Anyway, what matters most is that a story is read with open eyes and an attentive, critical mind. Once you begin to reflect on your life and evaluate your actions, the death of a certain mentality will have happened for you. It is the witless living from day to day, doing your job as you have always done and as your teachers have done it before your time, that you will have left behind then. You will come face to face with that bright-eyed monster called intuition, foresight and insight, which will not seem so scary anymore once you have shaken hands. And reach out to her you should. Set her free, give her a chance. She will be a good mentor, just not very caring for want of a better word. Acceptance, love and self-confidence you'll have to find in another place, though I cannot tell you where in the real world. You see, trust is not a talent knocking on your door sometime, it won't just come back to you as the intuitive intellect tends to reappear mysteriously. It is more like coming out of your shell on your own. For people like Harry, usually the door to trust remains closed, because it has been banged shut in their faces a few times too many. If Minerva was a morally good woman, if she had not suppressed his true free will and hit him, then there might have been a chance for Harry to grow into an ethical as well as confident human being. Now I only see two ways of development for him: to stay ignorant and become a male version of Minerva, full of self-doubts and unregulated greed, or to cultivate a sound moral code and turn into an independent, responsible being with a rather negative opinion of his fellows, too scared to take the plunge into foreign hands. In the latter case, he might lurk about the fringe of society, scrutinizing people to all eternity to find that damning stain on their clean slate, or venture out of his hiding place and test them to have them fail anyway. Hansel manages to dare the impossible and let a little duck carry him across a great stretch of water after the evil witch has been tricked and killed, but he is a fairytale character, plus he has a sister to encourage him. In real life, you don't just entrust your weight on a bird, or on a foreign entity in general for that matter if you come from an abusive home, and you do not always have a loved one with you to help your boldness. This is where Grimms' fairytale hits the brick wall, or rather, ought to have given up in the face of the sea with fear. Of course Hansel and Gretel are religious and they have shown faith in God despite their sad family history before, and even after their encounter with the witch, they may have looked out still for divine signs as genuine persons, but there is a huge difference in believing there is more in life than eyes can see, and assuming to understand the language this almighty entity speaks in the presence of misery. So how, as the owner of a clear mind, did Gretel tell her special duck from an ordinary one? It is white exactly like the cat, the pigeon and the bird which lead the siblings to the cake house, but there are many white individual animals in the world. It would be foolish to trust everything white there is, religious or no. Hence I must say that the "perfect happiness" the fairytale promises in the end, is not as certain an outcome as the Brothers Grim want to make us believe. I feel that they tell the reader only half of the truth. You do not move from one abuser to another, even more cruel one and come out of the whole mess as unscathed as Hansel and Gretel. That's what makes domestic violence so dangerous. I hope you understand this, LilaEvansDouble. I also hope that you will come into your own someday. Us humans are not supposed to be doubles, but individuals.