Goblet of Fire: Page 702
Why Fudge ruined everything, more Wizarding law enforcement weirdness, why the Dementors need to form a union, and the strange way that Dumbledore walks.
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From the beginning, you can tell that this one is going to be a barn-burner.
Here’s how page 702 of Goblet of Fire opens:
“’You should never have brought it inside the castle!’ yelled Professor McGonagall. ‘When Dumbledore finds out‑‘”
What’s happened is that Fudge has brought a Dementor with him into Hogwarts as he goes to question the recently-revealed Barty Crouch Jr. The Dementor, immediately on encountering Crouch, sucks out his soul, which, let’s face it, is not out of character, as far as Dementors go. So now Crouch can no longer give any evidence, willing or not, regarding what he did, why he did it, and who is back (spoiler alert: it’s Voldemort. Although that’s probably obvious, because there’s not really anyone else who is talked about “coming back.” It’s not like in movie five, when Fudge gasped “he’s back!” another Ministry guy could have said “Who? Voldemort??” and Fudge could have responded “What? No, not at all, I meant Celestina Warbeck’s estranged husband.”).
Lots of things about what Fudge has done, though, stand out. The way I see it, there are a few possibilities for what actually happened:
1) Fudge is just generally a weak, scared person, so he brought a dementor with him for safety because he wasn’t thinking straight and a boy had just been killed, and he literally did not think for a second about the consequences.
2) Fudge had some idea, whether conscious or deep-down, about what had happened, and he couldn’t have any dangerous ideas like “he’s back” getting out in the open, so he brought a Dementor with him to silence the one guy who could conclusively reveal what had happened.
3) It’s standard procedure to bring dementors to things like this, and unsanctioned and unjust dementor’s kisses happen all the time, and the only reason we don’t know is that mainstream print media in the Wizarding World is an utter joke.
The book seems to imply, later on, that the kiss wasn’t planned: as soon as the dementor came in, it just swooped down and sucked out Crouch Jr.’s soul, and that was that. There’s an outside chance, I guess, that Fudge and the dementor planned the whole thing beforehand to make it look accidental and help Fudge avoid blame, but that really doesn’t seem like something that Fudge would do, because he’s just not that smart. Fudge also hasn’t even gotten an inkling of the notion that Voldemort has come back through the whole ordeal — that comes later — so it seems unlikely that he would have gone into the encounter looking to hide potential evidence. Thus, the book seems to point toward the first possibility; Fudge is just completely paralyzed with fear and indecision, and this is the result.
There are still a bunch of questions about Wizarding law enforcement, which I’ve addressed before. Why is Fudge — literally the Minister of Magic, the Wizarding version of the Prime Minister — going into an interrogation with nobody but Professor McGonagall and a dementor? Imagine if MI6 captured a terrorist who had just killed someone, and they were interrogating him to find out if it was part of a bigger plot to blow up Westminster Abbey, or something...and the interrogation squad they sent in was three people: a random teacher who happened to be nearby, a prison guard with a really bad personality, and Boris Johnson.
Obviously, that’s not what would happen: approximately 60 bodyguards would clear the room first, and if the PM was going to come in he’d only stay for as long as it took to take a photo, then he would leave and the actual interrogation specialists would take over, and once they’d finished, someone would tell the PM what had happened in a safe office very far from the place where the actual terrorist was.
But for the sake of argument, let’s say Fudge himself is a skilled interrogator, even though basically everything about him says the opposite. Maybe he comes in, starts spinning that lime green bowler hat, and suspects start spilling faster than cracked flower pots. He still brought a dementor with him...for security. What in the world is this guy thinking?
At their best, dementors can provide security, albeit not completely intentionally: by just sort of being there and gliding around, they slow everyone else down and make them too morose to fight. But Fudge has just seen in the previous book that the dementors are no longer obeying orders: in Prisoner of Azkaban, he himself agrees that after watching them attempt to administer the kiss to a completely innocent person, they can be removed from Hogwarts immediately. Fudge knows — he’s literally had conversations about this fact — that the Ministry is no longer completely in control of the dementors; they’re basically just flying around kissing anybody they want. Fudge is fully aware of this. He’s said it himself.
There’s also the fact that dementors don’t really provide the kind of security that Fudge needs. If Fudge starts interrogating Crouch Jr. and Crouch Jr. grabs Fudge around the neck, it’s not like the dementor can cast the impediment jinx on him. What Fudge needs — not to belabor the obvious — is a big group of aurors. He needs Crouch Jr. tied to a chair with about 20 wands pointed at him. Or even one single auror. One guy who doesn’t even need to be a genius, just to say “stupefy” if Crouch Jr. gets too violent.
This episode also calls into question the Ministry’s whole relationship with the dementors. The initial, shaky premise of the relationship, as I understand it, is that the Dementors guard Azkaban for the Ministry, and in exchange, the Dementors get to feast on the bad feelings of the inmates. But this really doesn’t seem like a fair deal for the Dementors, for a few reasons.
For one, the Dementors seem to particularly relish performing the kiss, and feeding on actual souls, as opposed to just making people unhappy and sucking out tiny bits of emotion. Guarding Azkaban, they barely get to use the kiss at all. The Dementor’s Kiss is basically the wizarding version of the death penalty, and that’s a really rare thing! In fact, the dementors don’t even get to administer the kiss if someone is sentenced to death: the Ministry has the death chamber for that. Here’s a complete list of all the times we’ve seen even a reference to the kiss being used:
1) When the Ministry authorizes the Dementors to use it on Sirius Black.
2) When the Dementors attempt it on Sirius and Harry at the end of PoA.
3) This scene, when it’s used on Barty Crouch Jr.
4) When Umbridge orders it used on Harry and/or Dudley.
5) In Snape’s Defense Against the Dark Arts class, there’s a picture of a wizard on whom the kiss has been used.
Let me know if I’m missing any, but I don’t think I am. So basically, the kiss comes either A) when someone escapes Azkaban and the Dementors get to chase them down, which has literally never happened before Sirius did it, B) when a Ministry official illegally orders the Dementors to use it, which I really can’t imagine happening that often, even considering how bad the Ministry is, or C) when Dementors can snatch a chance to use it before someone like Fudge can tell them not to. It still seems really rare, and the Dementors clearly want to use it more often.
Dumbledore knows this: that’s why he tells Fudge that he needs to remove the Dementors from Azkaban, because they’re likely to join Voldemort. In Half-Blood Prince, sure enough, we see that the Dementors have done exactly that. But why do they need Voldemort at all? Why did the Dementors need the Ministry at all, come to think of it? The only “benefit” the Ministry was providing, it seems, was unhappy people, which the Dementors could just find on their own. In book six, we see that the Dementors are overrunning England, breeding, causing chilly mist, and making everyone unhappy. Fudge says it’s because they’ve joined Voldemort, but here’s the thing: they could have just done that anyway.
Why guard Azkaban? The Dementors could just leave, glide over to England (or, now that you mention it, any place on earth with people), and start sucking on souls. Maybe magical governments would try to do something about it, but as we see in Half-Blood Prince, the Ministry seems pretty much powerless to control the Dementors once they decide to start doing their own thing. The Dementors are out in the middle of the North Sea guarding Azkaban, when there’s a giant supply of fresh souls over on the mainland. The Ministry can’t control them: they have no reason not to leave.
Here’s what the Dementors need: they need organization. They need representation and planning. Yes, I’m saying exactly what you think: the Dementors need a union. Frankly, they already have way more negotiating leverage than they need: If the Dementors had a union rep who could go to the Ministry and say “you’re giving us absolutely nothing, and if you don’t give us more, we’re going to start sucking out everyone’s souls,” the Ministry would find it pretty hard not to at least meet the Dementors halfway.
The Dementors also need a new job: they’re really not suited for guarding a prison. They need a job where there are enough expendable souls to keep them happy. I think I have just the thing (more sensitive readers may want to gloss over this section):
Build the Dementors a veterinary clinic.
People are putting animals down all the time. Just bring the animals in, and before the actual vet does the deed, let the Dementor suck out the animal’s soul. It makes the procedure even more painless; it could be a selling point. Round up stray animals, and let the Dementors suck out their souls. You could also use the Dementors (I can’t even believe what I’m about to say) ecologically. Send them to Florida to rein in the out-of-control python population. Give them free reign in the National Parks to let the forests grow back. It’s like when they introduced wolves into Yellowstone and it pretty much transformed the world. I can already imagine a four-minute YouTube video: “Dementors were introduced into the Grand Tetons National Park. You won’t believe what happened next.”
It’s hard to believe, but we’ve literally only gotten through two lines of the page. It continues. The door to the Hospital Wing bursts open; Fudge and McGonagall, still arguing, come in with Snape close behind them. Harry sits up to observe the drama.
“Where’s Dumbledore?” Fudge asks Mrs. Weasley.
“He’s not here,” she responds angrily. “This is a hospital wing, Minister, don’t you think you’d do better to—”
Unfortunately, Dumbledore comes in at that very moment and cuts off Mrs. Weasley’s response. All I can say is, if he’d waited another second, we might not have needed to wait until the end of book seven to hear the only curse word of the series.
Of course Dumbledore comes in the moment his name is mentioned. He’s probably been waiting outside the Hospital Wing all night, waiting for a tense moment so he can sweep in dramatically. Dumbledore seems to “sweep” a lot more than other people do. I move a fair amount — I run, I do push-ups, I walk around, I generally exist as a human being — but I don’t think I’ve ever “swept” anywhere, as a type of motion. Dumbledore does it all the time. Maybe I’ll give it a try.
Meanwhile, Professor McGonagall is seriously angry. “Harry had never seen her lose control like this,” the page notes. “There were angry blotches of color in her cheeks, and her hands were balled into fists; she was trembling with fury.” This is a great set-up for book five, when Professor McGonagall is basically holding in that level of anger at Umbridge for the entire book. Come to think of it, so is everyone else. Maybe J.K. Rowling wrote this scene, and thought to herself, “you know, maybe I can just keep people as angry as this page-long scene for a full book.” Thus, Umbridge was born.
Snape takes over, addressing Dumbledore. “When we informed Mr. Fudge that we had caught the Death Eater responsible for tonight’s events,” he says in a low voice, “he seemed to feel his personal safety was in question. He insisted on summoning a Dementor to accompany him into the castle. He brought it up to the office where Barty Crouch—”
This sheds some light on the questions from earlier, or at least, it does if it’s true. Fudge says he’s worried about his own safety. Of course, he could have been lying, but it really does seem like Fudge genuinely was worried about his own safety. He’s a scared guy. We also learn that he “summoned” a Dementor to accompany him, which makes me wonder: from where? Either the Dementor came from Azkaban really quickly, or there was one nearby, probably part of some Minister-protecting Dementor squad. So the Ministry has the common sense to send some security with the highest elected official in the country, but instead of just sending aurors, who aren’t creatures made of despair with an unquenchable thirst for human souls that has very recently overwhelmed all other instincts and loyalties they have, they went with the Dementors. Great government you’ve got there.
As the page ends, McGonagall is still angry. “I told him you would not agree, Dumbledore!” she fumes. “I told him you would never allow Dementors to set foot inside the castle, but—” and the page ends on a cliffhanger, at least until you get to the next one.
Now that Professor McGonagall brings it up, this blows a major hole in the whole “omniscient master of Hogwarts” image that Dumbledore has built up. There’s a freakin’ Dementor coming into his school, for goodness’ sake, and it’s about to do something that’s going to make his endgame of eliminating Voldemort dramatically harder. Seriously: how much vitriol and mockery could he prevent Harry and himself from enduring, just by making sure everyone has a chance to hear Barty Crouch Jr.’s story? And yet, all he can do is sweep in dramatically after the fact.
What both sides really need are better support staff. Obviously, Fudge needs people to protect hin, rein in his emotions, and help him make good decisions; he doesn’t have those, and that will cost him his job within about a year. But Dumbledore needs the help too. He needs a Hogwarts Security Manager, for one; he also needs some sort of government liaison. There need to be layers of cooperation behind a huge, consequential interaction like this. Because right now, the two of them are having conversations that are basically going to determine the fate of the Wizarding World — and the only people there to help them make good decisions are an angry McGonagall and a dubiously loyal Snape. It might as well be a random teacher who happened to be nearby, a prison guard with a really bad personality, and Boris Johnson.