sistermagpie | The Screwtape Twins

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The Screwtape Twins

I was just reading

narcissam's thread on When Character Hate Goes Bad and this side topic came up that seems like an interesting thing to get other people's opinions on.

It comes out of the common conversation about the twins' antics, beginning with:

Might they be people who go too far on the other side, a la Crouch, Sr.? Maybe, but they really aren't that serious about anything. Nor will they ever be consciously evil--they're careless and thoughtless, and have an occasionally cruel streak, but they aren't out trying to destroy things and hurt people.

And is followed up by another poster with:

I've seen the argument about F&G being as or more evil than Voldemort before, and I just turned away shaking my head. Thanks for spelling it out; and word on the rest of what you said too.

Now, frankly I'm not so sure the twins aren't that serious about anything--I think at times they are. I don't think they'd ever be consciously evil, but then...not many people are motivated by the urge to be consciously evil. I also in general always think it's silly to compare one character to another in general in this way--like by saying Fred and George are "more evil" than Voldemort, as if evil is something we can really measure that way, and being more or less evil than another person has any bearing on who you are. People can do damage all sorts of ways besides setting out to cause damage. But I'm not really thinking here on how Fred and George will ultimately be used in the series, though. I'm not sure how they will be. When Harry is revolted by his father and Sirius' treatment of Snape he says he had thought they were like Fred and George, indicated *he* sees a big difference between them, but that line could just as easily be signaling to us that they are alike in a negative way (perhaps Fred and George won't get the wake-up call James did, for instance).

The question I thought was interesting, though, was how much one's motivation would matter in this kind of situation, especially to the victim? In general I do think motivation is important--very much so. But you get into a sticky area with motivation when it comes to things like jokes, because what's the motivation, exactly? It's not really accurate to say the twins aren't intentionally hurting people because often they are intentionally hurting people, they're just dong it out of something other than personal malice. In the series, for instance, Fred and George have intentionally caused people to break out in boils, given somebody something to choke them, thrown hexes at them (in fact, twice from behind, I think), and caused one person long-term brain damage. They've also just made people feel silly, stuck a firecracker in a salamander, whacked a puffskein with a bat (iirc), and given somebody arachnophobia.

What I said on the other thread was this:

What does it mean to say they're not out to destroy things and hurt people? I mean, sometimes they are out to do hurt or destroy and even when they're not, if you were hurt by someone would you really feel better about it if they were just kidding around rather than intentionally trying to hurt you? Because I'm not sure I would. That might just add a layer of humiliation to it as well. It's a really awful feeling to have someone do something that hurts or humiliates you, or destroys something you care about, and then feel pressured to laugh at it because otherwise you don't have a sense of humor. At least with a mean bully you might get some sympathy. With the joker bully you have to hear how he's a great guy!

Like I said, I'm thinking of this more in real world terms, but Fred and George maybe make a good jumping off point, because it seems like sometimes people are dismissive of readers who have a truly negative reaction to them, thinking those readers just don't "get it" when in fact they maybe do get it and just can't help but identify with the person who's the butt of their pranks.

This subject probably wouldn't be complete without C.S.Lewis' thoughts on the subject, from The Screwtape Letters. Happily,

pharnabazus was nice enough to quote the exact passage today in another thread, so I can just cut and paste it:

"The real use of Jokes or Humour is in quite a different direction, and it is specially promising among the English who take their "sense of humour" so seriously that a deficiency in this sense is almost the only deficiency at which they feel shame. Humour is for them the all-consoling and (mark this) the all-excusing, grace of life. Hence it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame. If a man simply lets others pay for him, he is "mean"; if he boasts of it in a jocular manner and twits his fellows with having been scored off, he is no longer "mean" but a comical fellow. Mere cowardice is shameful; cowardice boasted of with humorous exaggerations and grotesque gestures can be passed off as funny. Cruelty is shameful-unless the cruel man can represent it as a practical joke. A thousand bawdy, or even blasphemous, jokes do not help towards a man's damnation so much as his discovery that almost anything he wants to do can be done, not only without the disapproval but with the admiration of his fellows, if only it can get itself treated as a Joke. And this temptation can be almost entirely hidden from your patient by that English seriousness about Humour. Any suggestion that there might be too much of it can be represented to him as "Puritanical" or as betraying a "lack of humour"."

Pranks are often very important in stories where characters were at school together in just this way. Pranksters often wind up getting stalked and terrorized by victims of their funny jokes. Nero Wolfe dealt with the aftermath in "The League of Frightened Gentlemen." HP has already dealt with it with Sirius' Prank on Sirius. HP appears to have given us a prank with an even more serious result with Montague, but it's not really addressed.

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I find the idea of people being consciously evil very disturbing, because what do people think that means, exactly? That, say, Stalin didn't care about politics at all; he just wanted to kill as many people as possible, because his ultimate goal was to be wicked? That line of argument is something I just don't understand, and that troubles me. Mainly, I think, because the logical thing to do seems to be to extend conscious wickedness to everybody who believes that the end justifies the means, and that feels insanely judgmental and -- why am I even letting myself think about this? It is so disturbing, and honestly, the fact that it seems a natural extension of the series' morality is the scariest thing of all. At this point, I can't really view the wizarding world as anything but a dystopia, and I don't know how to feel about the fact that the window-dressing seems to override the shop's contents, as it were. Or, er, yes. Word, as always.

Uh, topic. The problem I have with people elevating carelessness above malice is that I don't see that careless people change once their inadvertent cruelty is pointed out to them. Initial motivation is a sidenote, really, because once you tell someone that they're bothering or hurting you they should back off, but practical jokers, as quoted, pinpoint your pain and twist the knife -- and so they become malicious, if only through defensiveness.

And carelessness seems to be predicated on the fact that you don't matter, which can be the cruelest thing of all. At least malice would offer some remnant of dignity.

Yes, you just hit on two things that really strike me about the whole issue. First that the whole thing about a joker is that there's often the idea that if you said something was hurting you, they would just say, "No it isn't, it's just a joke." And then where are you? If somebody has a string of people who are still suffering the ill-effects of something they've done and they still think it's funny, can that really be said to be a joke? Maybe they still aren't really thinking what they get a kick out of is causing pain, but if you break it down they are. And many times you do see just what you described, people getting more malicious in defense.

And carelessness seems to be predicated on the fact that you don't matter, which can be the cruelest thing of all.

Yes, I feel like that's the easy trap to fall into if you focus too much on it being a joke. I mean, everyone's probably had times where they were meaning to be joking and the other person took them seriously; it's not like all humor or all practical jokes come out of the other person not mattering, but it *can* be about other people not mattering, certainly, especially if there's a history of doing things to people and not really caring.

I don't see F&G as that bad at all but I think that is because I'm holding them to "Wizard's Standards" what I mean by that is it seems so simple to heal some one or fix a problem with magic that the magical world has a very low value on physical safety.

Things Fred and George do can seem down right horrendous to us but when you can mend bones with the wave of a wand, or regrow them with a potion in a day or so giving some one boils you can spell away just looks like harmless mischief. I think what they did to Dudley was out of line, but they may not have spent enough time around muggles to know just how bad a thing it was.

The physical problems might be easily fixed, but there is still the mental that needs to be dealt with. I don't know what the cure for humiliation in front of peers would be.

I think one of that most worrisome things about the WW in the books is that when it comes to mental health they don't care. They have a very primitive view of mental health, like with Sirius. He had a problem, they saw it they even spoke of it! Using it against him in front of Harry, But not one person did anything to help. Sirius was pushed aside as a nuisance only useful because he provided a place for order meetings, and kept the house elf under control. Harry himself has several emotional problems but they are all just ignored. The general attitude seems to be "If a can't wave my wand to fix it you just have to get over it." So if some one wanted help with mental or emotional trauma they would need a good muggle psychiatrist.

In addition to the mental anguish, I think the twins really *have* begun to cause damage beyond reasonable wizarding standards. Most injuries can be fixed in a matter of minutes; Harry's bones were regrown in less than a night, and McGonagall recovered from four stunners (near deadly, based on the reactions) in less than a week. Yet F&G shoved a classmate into a vanishing cabinet for no real reason (and not as a joke, either) and weeks later, he still had brain damage. Additionally, with the ton-tongue toffee, they essentially poisoned a Muggle as all the wizards were leaving the area -- it was entirely luck that Dudley happened to eat the candy before Arthur had left. Magical medicine can't do a whole lot to help someone when there are no wizards in the area, and as far as we know, the Ministry wasn't alerted (as w/Marge), so who knows how long it would have been for Dudley to get help. If they didn't realize this would be a problem, I have a hard time cutting them slack for it.

I think both of these are deeply tied to The Prank (because no discussion of "jokes" in HP is complete without it) and the grudge that Snape still holds over it. I strongly suspect that right after it happened, Sirius tried to pass it off as a joke, and Dumbledore basically agreed. I think Sirius saw it as a joke, but there's no denying that there was also a high degree of deeply personal malice. Calling it a joke or prank, though, takes all that away. I think Dumbledore went with the prank-gone-bad explanation in hopes that it would calm Snape down, because surely being a victim of a prank is better than having someone trying to murder you. Except it's not. If someone's trying to murder to you, there's no doubt you're important to them, enough so that they'll risk quite a lot and go to extreme measures over you. If it's a *joke* and nearly deadly, even if you're obviously not a random target, then you don't even matter enough to think through what will actually happen. Not only are you not important enough to kill, but you're not even important enough for them to pay attention to whether or not you'll live. For the headmaster to *agree* that it was a joke is basically affirming that opinion. "Well, sure, it's Severus, so I can see that they were trying to be funny and didn't think it through. Why would they, when it's only Severus?" ((not actually Dumbledore's position, but Snape's likely interpretation thereof))

There are other factors involved, too. If this was a prank that went *wrong,* what on earth would have happened if it went *right*? He would have *actually* died? Also, treating it as a joke can't help but imply, "You had the worst scare of your life and nearly died? Haha, that's so funny!" I hope I don't need to explain why this is bad. Finally, less relevant to the joke explanation, I think that given the situation and the times, I have a very hard time imagining any way that Snape would conclude that this was anything *other* than a murder plot; for the headmaster to disagree and brush it off is unthinkable, unless he really doesn't care (or is implicitly in on it). All in all, I have a strong suspicion that Snape's grudge over this "prank" would be held a lot less tightly if people didn't think of it as a prank and didn't expect him to just get over it.

Of course, this is a specific situation, so not directly applicable to the twins, but you can see the same attitude in the way they treat Dudley and Montague, both of whom supposedly deserved what they got. With other people, their jokes tend to have less malice and more "fun," but that just heightens the level to which other people don't matter. Also, Remus and Sirius basically say that Snape wasn't their only victim, so it's quite likely that they, too, were usually "funny" and supposedly benign. I think that shows a real flaw in that way of thinking, as well: getting used to seeing these jokes done at others' expense as funny and harmless starts to erase the already thin lines of what's not a joke and what's harmful, so you don't notice that you're suddenly well over them. I think that would cover the ton-tongue toffee as well as The Prank.

Don't get me wrong: I dislike the Twins as profoundly as anyone here, since their idea of "humour" is strongly dependent on other people's discomfort. However, what we're forgetting is their context. The HPverse is a universe of casual cruelty both in description and in action, where remarks describing disorientation and pain are casually inserted for a bit of a laugh. Quidditch referees disappearing in the middle of a game and then turning up weeks later in the Sahara Desert? Hahaha. First-years sent out into the Forbidden Forest, with all its dangerous widlife, in the middle of the night as a dentention? Teeheehee. People risking "Splinching" during Apparating, leaving body parts behind them? Oh my sides, that's just too funny.

If this is typical of the HPverse's humour - and I would argue it's mostly like that, hazards and even picturesque death at every turn - then the Twins fit in rather well. Except that they're actually superior to most of what goes on, because whilst the HPverse's cruelty is often random and unwarranted, JKR has written the Twins as meting out Prank Justice to those who objectively deserve it.

Look at the list of their victims:

- Quirrell. F&G send snowballs to pelt the back of his head; since we only retrospectively know who's on the back of his head, couldn't this be interpreted as a sign that F&G's pranks unerringly grativate towards punishing evil?

- Montague. The situation is presented very much as "he was going to snitch on us, it was us or him"; not only does this make it a matter of self-preservation (fair enough) but if the Vanishing Cabinet does cause brain damage, what's it doing in a school where anyone can access it? It's the school's responsibility to provide a safe environment, and it could easily be argued that F&G had no malicious intent beyond getting Montague out of the way before he squealed on them.

- Percy. Most of the Twins' tricks are focussed on him, and it becomes a bit of a chicken/egg situation (did Percy leave the Weasleys because of F&G, or did F&G start playing tricks on Percy after Percy intimated he was too good for his family?) Whatever the truth of that matter is, Percy shows bad judgement generally - his idolization of Crouch in GoF, his pompous letter and support for Umbridge in OotP - and his story arc isn't looking healthy at the moment. I think he probably will turn evil and, if he does, F&G knew it before everybody else.

- Umbridge. Do we deny that she's a valid target for the Twins' pranks? We don't? Good.

- Dudley and the Dursleys. Do we deny that... We don't? Good.

As for their other "victims", the kids who tested the sweets in OotP were volunteers (and the nature of Wizarding medicine and spells made their discomfort short-lived in any case). Finally, they teased Ron and unwittingly gave him the phobia of spiders, but can anyone reading this who has siblings honestly say that there wasn't any that sort of thing going on in their family? Kids are cruel to each other, often unwittingly but also as a means of exploring boundaries. Younger siblings can often be left with lasting traumas as a result of what their elder siblings did to them at a tender age. It's life, unfortunately. It doesn't excuse F&G, but it doesn't make them calculating sadistic monsters either.

What I get from Fred and George is the uncomfortable feeling that they have inbuilt Evil Detectors, and that their tricks are unerringly directed towards Those That Deserve Them. This leads, in turn, to the even more uncomfortable feeling that we're not supposed to regard them as the bullies they would so obviously be in the real world. I believe JKR likes them, and that because she likes them she's going to ensure that they never do anything objectively Wrong. It's the spectacle of bullying, but with the proviso that the people being bullied deserve everything they get.

Gah. Real Life doesn't work like that.

I guess whoever came up with the idea that the Twins are more evil than Voldemort might have a not completely wrong thought. Voldemort has a plan - a better world (although is defined by his terms.) That in itself is not evil. Many people envision better worlds - according to their beliefs. What makes Voldemort evil is how he deals with people standing in the way between reality and his ideal. Voldemort is evil because of the means he uses to accomplish his ends. He is evil for evil's sake.

The Twins have no goal when they do their pranks. The goal is the prank itself - the harm it inflicts on the victim. Their pranks are not comparable to what Voldemort does on his way to a better world, but they are the whole purpose. The Twins do evil - if you define "inflicting harm on unsuspecting and often defenseless victims" that way - for its own sake and that is quite questionable on its own terms.

I suspect that Rowling does think the Twins' pranks are funny and not mean-spirited. If her exposition fairy is allowed to define attempted murder (The Prank) as "stupid trick" then I don't that Ursula Guin will ever have a reason to retract her criticism of HP as "mean-spirited".

And more wankily...

There was an infamous legal case recently where a bunch of teens did some horrible things to another human being, because they thought it was funny. And they taped and showed their friends. Who obviously found it funny, too. One of teens had to lose that tape before any criminal investigation took place. (I am not more detailed, because this would errupt into a huge of fountain of "There is no justice in the world!!!")

These people thought it was funny. And their friends thought it was funny. So funny that they didn't ask about the victim; that they didn't care. Humour seems to be an excellent way to get rid of ethics and empathy.

Huh. I wish I had something intelligent to say, but I don't really. I love Percy to pieces and thus it makes sense that I am not fond of the twins. But I can't remember really being fond of them at all, as I loathe jokesters. Whether it's practical jokes or spoken jokes, I don't like them. I think it stems from the fact that I have a hard time reading people and have difficulty knowing if they're serious or joking, unless it is really obvious. Plus I am, sadly, very gullible. If I knew a Fred'n'George in real life, I'd avoid them like the plague because I'd be a ridiculously easy target.

I think what bothers me most is that for their brand of humor, it mostly relies on the humiliation of the person getting joked. It'd be one thing if they took the humiliation on themselves willingly and everyone laughed at them. But they're forcing it on others and taking the humor credit and I just don't like it. They almost never set themselves up for the joke, they're safe from it.

I don't think they're particularly malicious, they're just very self-centered. They don't think about how the joke might make their target feel bad, they're after the gratification of having pulled off the joke successfully. And while I might, *might*, be able to forgive that in younger kids, I can't of people the twins' age.

Meh, maybe I did have something to say after all, although I have doubts to whether it is intelligent or not.

~Amber

Do we deny that she's a valid target for the Twins' pranks? We don't? Good.

Depends on what you mean by 'valid target'. Since the twins' actions don't really serve to get rid of her or protect the other students from her, they smack of simple vengeance or two wrongs making a right. That's very human, but valid?

That goes doubly for the Dursleys, whose cruel treatment of Harry is only likely to increase if they have more negative encounters with magic folks. Dursleys + Twins = vicious circle.

JKR has written the Twins as meting out Prank Justice to those who objectively deserve it.
Dudley and the Dursleys. Do we deny that... We don't? Good.

I wondered if you could just clarify something please?
I'm not quite clear on whether your argument is that JKR is purposely writing the twins as never hurting (in her own view) 'innocent' victims; or that every character the twins have 'teased' is inarguably deserving and evil.

What I get from Fred and George is the uncomfortable feeling that they have inbuilt Evil Detectors, and that their tricks are unerringly directed towards Those That Deserve Them.

There seem to be a lot of parallels drawn in the books between MWPP and the Twins.
So I guess perhaps this would apply to them - their 'inbuilt Evil Detectors' was set off by Snape and his interest in hexing and gang of friends who eventually became DEs?
And yet JKR presents this as very definite bullying...

I think it's an interesting issue, especially when considering the teachers. Snape is a malicious teacher. Hagrid is a careless one.
Their interactions with pupils both inside and outside their lessons have dangerous effects, regardless of their intentions, and yet it's bitterly argued over as to who is 'worse', and their presentation in the text varies wildly.

I am of the opinion that Rowling approves of F&G's brand of humor as well... I don't recall any of their non-Slytherin and/or non-"evil" victims express their hurt or anger for being the receiving end of the twins marvelous pranks (except for maybe Ron, but F&G were little back then thus excused). For example while it puzzles me to this day that Neville's pride and sense of self-worth was delt such a blow(I'm not brave enough to be in Gryffindor *sniff*!)by Draco's leg-lock curse, it was completely laugh-out-loud funny that he got turned into a canary in front of everyone (he must've felt the *benign vibe* from the twins~! They knew he'd be *thrilled* to be turned into an animal and not feel humiliated!)- hey it's not for us readers to decide how Neville must logically feel given his earlier reaction to being the unsuspecting victim of a practical joke in public ;););)

Oh and Nor will they ever be 'consciously evil'? What does that even mean ^^;? Like... deliberately cruel...? In that case I'd be pretty surprised if F&G of all people are completely free of a cruelty streak- since don't most people have it?

Yet F&G shoved a classmate into a vanishing cabinet for no real reason (and not as a joke, either) and weeks later, he still had brain damage.
He did? Man...I'm gona have to read OoTP again. As far as I remember he was only stuck in a toilet.

As for th TTT incident as much as I love Aurthur I can't help but place more blame on him for the incident that the twins. As their father he is well aware what they are capable of and ether should have made sure they did not bring anything dangerous with them (As Molly had apparently attempted.) or not let them go.
I think the main thing that keeps me from getting upset at anyone in the books is that ultimately they are not in control of their own actions. If anyone needs a good talking to about F&G behavior it JK her self ;)

When Harry is revolted by his father and Sirius' treatment of Snape he says he had thought they were like Fred and George, indicated *he* sees a big difference between them, but that line could just as easily be signaling to us that they are alike in a negative way (perhaps Fred and George won't get the wake-up call James did, for instance).

Let me quote this.

OotP, page 575:

... but she had described them as forerunners of the Weasley twins, and Harry could not imagine Fred and George dangling someone upside-down for the fun of it ... not unless they really loathed them ... perhaps Malfoy, or somebody who really deserved it ...

'Unless they really loathed them' and 'somebody who really deserved it' are the key lines here. Let's look at them - have you noticed that the twins do loathe more people than they should? The Slytherins because of their house, Zacharias Smith because he dares not to trust Harry, Dudley because he bullied Harry, Umbridge because she managed to remove Dumbledore from Hogwarts (well, with the DA's help, but let's not go into this). Whether or not everyone else hates Umbridge as well is not relevant, because the twins are the only ones who dare to openly laugh at her authority over them.

According to the twins, Percy certainly belongs to the second category of the people who deserve to be tortured, because... um, because Percy dares to be proud of being made a Prefect and Head Boy, and because he dares to dream of an academic career, I suppose. There was a horrifying line in Book 3 (I hope this is the right one), when Fred and George told Harry they tried to close Percy in a pyramid while the family was in Egypt, but failed because their mother caught them. A harmless joke? Just having a little fun with the pompous annoying elder brother? I'm sorry if I lack enough humor sense, but I don't see anything funny in that.

Ron and Ginny (pre-OotP Ginny, of course *rolls eyes*) belong to that second category as well. Ron 'deserves' to be laughed at because he's an insecure, highly underestimating himself boy who'd never dream to object to his brothers. Did you notice how he didn't want to do anything against them even as a Prefect? I thought that he was afraid of what they would do to him to pay him back - maybe put a tarantula in his bed or something. From what I've seen until now, I totally can see them doing it.

Ginny's case in CoS was similar - Percy had to threaten them he was going to write their mother about her having nightmares to make Fred and George stop teasing her.

I don't know why JKR likes them - I fail to see what's so funny about them. Maybe it's just my humor sense - I've never been a humorous person, and take such things more seriously than some people seem to do. However, I will never be able to see the Dudley and Montague incidents as harmless jokes, and the way the Twins and everyone else reacted to them will always make me think that not me, but JKR has a warped sense of humor.

Whatever the truth of that matter is, Percy shows bad judgement generally - his idolization of Crouch in GoF, his pompous letter and support for Umbridge in OotP - and his story arc isn't looking healthy at the moment. I think he probably will turn evil and, if he does, F&G knew it before everybody else.

Percy shows bad judgement in refusing to critize his superiors -- but he is the most law-abiding of the Weasleys.

How do you get 'will probably turn evil' out of that?

I'm not sure the ballots are all in on the Montegue incident. There is just something altogether too fishy about the extremely *convenient* timing of his reapearance, and the all-too convenient disorientation he is showing when he did return. I am going to be very closely watching for additional suggestions in the text of HBP that might contribute to this particular puzzle when it gets turned loose. And right at the moment I suspect there may be a 50% chance that i am going to find some, too.

(My reasoning on this matter can be found in the essay entitled The Pensieve Gambit over on Red Hen. Additional observations related to that essay can be found in Maline F's North Tower essay on Losing Control over at Mugglenet.com.

http://www.redhen-publications.com/Potterverse.html )

As to the Dudley Dursley incident. No one seems to point out that this is NOT the first time Dudley has been gratuitously attacked magically by wizards who didn't like him. The pig's tail that Hagrid gave him was never reported to the authorities (good thing for Hagrid!) and was removed surgically by a Muggle doctor.

I wondered if you could just clarify something please?
I'm not quite clear on whether your argument is that JKR is purposely writing the twins as never hurting (in her own view) 'innocent' victims; or that every character the twins have 'teased' is inarguably deserving and evil.

Probably more the former than the latter, but as far as I can see they never seem to attack the "good guys" (unlike, say, Draco). The "teasing" is what they did to Ron as an infant and a first-year; actual physical contact (pelting a teacher with snowballs; shoving another student into a cupboard; trying to shut their brother inside a pyramid; tempting a greedy boy with a Ton-Tongue Toffee) is what they do to the "bad guys". Hence my remark about their inbuilt Evil Detectors somehow justifying, either immediately or in retrospect, their actions.

There seem to be a lot of parallels drawn in the books between MWPP and the Twins.
So I guess perhaps this would apply to them - their 'inbuilt Evil Detectors' was set off by Snape and his interest in hexing and gang of friends who eventually became DEs?
And yet JKR presents this as very definite bullying...

I can think of one important difference, and that's the structure of MWPP. Sirius and James are the sort of jerks who need a weaker student around to praise them, whilst Remus is the sort who will side with authority on the whole but turn a blind eye to violations of the rule whenever it suits him. Peter - well, either he was a kid with good intentions who got blackmailed or trapped into betraying his friends, or he was an opportunist who hung around with the "popular kids" to avoid being bullied himself, or he genuinely admired MPP only to draw back in loathing once the scales fell from his eyes. Who don't know for sure what exactly made Peter betray his friends; what we do know is that they - MPP - thought very little of Peter and treated him with contempt. MWPP ultimately did not fall because they were bullies, they fell because they underestimated Peter.

Fred and George do not have that problem. Unlike Sirius and James, they're not after adulation from a professional admirer; unlike Remus, they're not wishy-washy when faced with the demands of authority. Sad as it is to say it, F&G have more personal integrity and character than MWPP, and I'll bet JKR factored that in deliberately. That is, I think, why F&G will stay "good guys" whilst MWPP were destroyed from within.

How do you get "being good" out of "supporting Umbridge"?

If the rules are wrong and cruel, does following them unquestioningly make you a "good" person?

Depends on what you mean by 'valid target'. Since the twins' actions don't really serve to get rid of her or protect the other students from her, they smack of simple vengeance or two wrongs making a right. That's very human, but valid?

Who else was going to take a public stand against her? By making themselves mavericks and outlaws, the Weasley twins have ensured that they can afford to show her up when no-one else can. Sure, it's vengeance, but the Umbridge regime was such that someone needed to make a stand. (Pity it had to be Fred & George, whom I personally find annoying, but I would have applauded whoever had done it.)

That goes doubly for the Dursleys, whose cruel treatment of Harry is only likely to increase if they have more negative encounters with magic folks. Dursleys + Twins = vicious circle.

The Dursleys started it by mistreating an innocent baby and shutting Harry in a cupboard for much of his childhood. Had they not been such sadists to begin with, I would agree with you that the Toffee was calculated to wreck Magic/Muggle Relations. However, the Dursleys were the ones to begin that particular process, so I can't shed any tears for Dudley getting "stung" after an act of thievery.

Actually, in the Umbridge situation I would add that they don't really do anything to her, iirc, they just throw a monkey wrench into the works of the school so that all her time is spent controlling the chaos. I'd say their actions regarding Umbridge are one of the few times they don't just seem to be joking and enjoying seeing somebody suffer.

Well, how far does the apple fall from the tree? Molly is a classic domestic bully, and the twins inherited their bullying natures from her. The certainly didn't get that from their father. The whole Weasley menange for the first five books traces a steadily escalating battle between the twins and their mother. There is a limit to how openly the twins could attack Molly. That's probably one of the reasons for their having adopted aggressive "humor" as their weapon of choice in the first place.

Percy (who also likes to throw his weight around) sided with Molly. Consequently there was no limit to what they felt they could throw at *him*. It's also pretty clear that Molly had staked out a claim on her only daughter, and while the twins hadn't quite the guts to do much about it at home, as soon as Molly wasn't around they intended to take Molly's preference out of Ginny's hide. The whole business of the Riddle diary seems to have spooked them enough that they more or less backed off after that.

Ron, otoh, blindly sided with the twins, and he did NOT inherit a bullying nature. Consequently, he gets rolled over from both sides. The twins let him tag along when they feel like it or take swipes at him when it occurs to him. Molly, by contrast has been *consistently* passive agressive in her relationship and treatment of this particular child. Always *maroon* jumpers, always the sandwiches he *doesn't* like, the gawd-awfull dress robes. If he hadn't managed to immediately strike up a friendship with Harry Potter the aggressiveness might have been less passive. As it is, until he was made a Prefect I cannot off the top of my head remember any statement Molly has ever addressed to Ron that wasn't either an order or a rebuke. Now that her "golden boy" Percy has rejected her, she may well decide that Ron, now a Prefect, is a fitting replacement. We may see some very different dynamics between the two of them in the last two books. Particularly if the twins have moved out and are living over the shop.

But I really do think that a great deal of hunger for recognition that is such a basic part of Ron's character is due to the fact that he has been deliberately denied that recognition from his mother.

Arthur, Bill and Charlie seem to have managed to keep their heads down and stay out of it. Ginny would have as well, but wasn't given the option. She has developed the art of flying under the radar in self-protection.

I phrased that badly and emotively: sorry!

What I meant to say was that right now the Fudge faction of the Ministry doesn't look great. I know Fudge changed his mind about Lord Voldie's return at the end of OotP, but I still don't trust him. He was the one who summoned a Dementor in to give Barty Crouch Jr. the Kiss, which suggests to me that Fudge wanted BC Jr. silenced. He was the one who tried to get Harry imprisoned on a false charge, and then sent Umbridge to be a spy within Hogwarts. That Percy is following the Ministry blindly is not a good sign, for me.

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The Screwtape Twins

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Devil's Advocate Time

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