The job is hers. You literally can’t fire her because the goblet would be annoyed. I suppose a hogwarts headmaster not educated at hogwarts could hire a DA teacher also not a graduate of that school and end this whole farce that way, but this not happening by accident so far is perfectly plausible.
I’m still not seeing anything in the text that suggests that the goblet is protecting her job, as opposed to her personal safety and the security of her possessions.
Edit: Ah, I see. You’re suggesting that the job is a thing which is hers. But why do you believe it possible for Baba Yaga to tell the goblet to lay off new teachers? In canon, you can’t undo a goblet contract even if it is accidental/accomplished by cheating/unwanted by all parties.
The wording wasn’t “personal safety and security of possessions” Whoever wrote this in-universe was being very silly. The limit is blood and anything which is hers. That’s not limited to physical objects, but covers things like her life, her liberty, and, yes, her job. For the students, it’s a very secure wording—she really can’t hurt them. Heck, if I was her, I’d feel obliged to ask students at the start of term to freely give up their ignorance, tough maybe that is implied in a contract of teaching.
Edit: She can tell it she gives the new teacher the job freely for the duration. That way it isn’t a taking. It doesn’t alter the contract, it alters the situation.
Similarly, just on a practical level, I am betting the marriage to Perenelle was a declaration of joining in front of the goblet. “All that is mine I freely share with her” sort of thing.
Fair enough. I understand your theory now, and it seems consistent with the evidence. But why do you have 90% confidence that Voldemort’s reading is wrong?
Also, if you’re taking the contract completely literally, then Baba Yaga can harm students all she likes, as long as she doesn’t shed any blood. A powerful Dark Lady should easily have the spell arsenal and creativity. In fact, if killing a student doesn’t count as “taking” their life (which works on a poetic reading, but not on a practical one—a person’s life is who they are, not something separate from them which can be taken), then “there is indeed a certain useful spell which solves the problem” quite nicely.
I am assuming the goblet is borrowing the natural language parsing of the people subject to it, sorting hat style. And no one not being argumentative on the internet would read it that way.
Which means it really is a flawless blanket protection from intentional harm, and the blood part is utterly redundant.
As for why I’m so sure Voldemort is wrong:
Well, there is the outside view, in which I just have trouble with the idea that a 16 year old virgin is a sufficiently supreme plotter, manipulator and cold-blooded killer to pull this off on someone who has been a feared witch for centuries. Not impossible, but very low probability.
A witch who can look like whatever she feels like and who is a byword for “Scary badass” inspiring crushes and devotion in her pupils? Pupils that are utterly safe from her? Odds: Nigh-Unity.
Also, it just doesn’t hang together logically. Baba breaks the contract and then Perenelle kills her? Double-dipping on the causes of death, there.
I could see it being an accident, in which case that counts as one of the most traumatic consensual sexual debut’s I can recall reading about, ever. That is where I put most of the residual probability. 30 some percent.
But as an intentional plot ? It has way to high a chance of going wrong. Anyone able to think it up would know better than to try it.
Your idea caused me to connect two dots. Perenelle and Alissa Cornfoot. They are both students who are attracted to badass professors. On one level, the example Miss Cornfoot provides plausability for Prenelle’s interest. On a more conspiracy-theory-y level, Perenelle is still hanging around near the stone?
Aren’t you simultaneously arguing that the current situation has arisen because of a poorly worded, excessively literal contract and because the goblet is borrowing the natural language parsing of its users in a “do what I mean” fashion?
I am arguing that the contract was made absurdly sweeping because the framers were erring on the side of paranoia in a big way.
Which does work, in that they are safe from all means of harm excepting only that BY is for obvious reasons free to teach any hogwarts graduate anything said graduate or student is capable of learning in the field of battle magic, even if this means one of said students enemies gets his or her ass kicked into orbit.
Flip it around; Do you think the students dropping their names in the original goblet would have considered it a violation of the pact if she had destroyed the noble or ancient status of the family of a hogwarts student?
I am pretty sure the answer is yes. Their intent was to prevent all offensive actions. Because the spell is symmetrical, this absurd scope protects her standing as the teacher of battle magic.
OK. That makes sense. I am uncomfortable with your theory because it reaches a long way beyond the few facts we are given in the text, but then I have felt that way about other theories which have recently turned out to be correct.
The job is hers. You literally can’t fire her because the goblet would be annoyed. I suppose a hogwarts headmaster not educated at hogwarts could hire a DA teacher also not a graduate of that school and end this whole farce that way, but this not happening by accident so far is perfectly plausible.
I’m still not seeing anything in the text that suggests that the goblet is protecting her job, as opposed to her personal safety and the security of her possessions.
Edit: Ah, I see. You’re suggesting that the job is a thing which is hers. But why do you believe it possible for Baba Yaga to tell the goblet to lay off new teachers? In canon, you can’t undo a goblet contract even if it is accidental/accomplished by cheating/unwanted by all parties.
The wording wasn’t “personal safety and security of possessions” Whoever wrote this in-universe was being very silly.
The limit is blood and anything which is hers. That’s not limited to physical objects, but covers things like her life, her liberty, and, yes, her job. For the students, it’s a very secure wording—she really can’t hurt them. Heck, if I was her, I’d feel obliged to ask students at the start of term to freely give up their ignorance, tough maybe that is implied in a contract of teaching.
Edit: She can tell it she gives the new teacher the job freely for the duration. That way it isn’t a taking. It doesn’t alter the contract, it alters the situation. Similarly, just on a practical level, I am betting the marriage to Perenelle was a declaration of joining in front of the goblet. “All that is mine I freely share with her” sort of thing.
Fair enough. I understand your theory now, and it seems consistent with the evidence. But why do you have 90% confidence that Voldemort’s reading is wrong?
Also, if you’re taking the contract completely literally, then Baba Yaga can harm students all she likes, as long as she doesn’t shed any blood. A powerful Dark Lady should easily have the spell arsenal and creativity. In fact, if killing a student doesn’t count as “taking” their life (which works on a poetic reading, but not on a practical one—a person’s life is who they are, not something separate from them which can be taken), then “there is indeed a certain useful spell which solves the problem” quite nicely.
I am assuming the goblet is borrowing the natural language parsing of the people subject to it, sorting hat style. And no one not being argumentative on the internet would read it that way. Which means it really is a flawless blanket protection from intentional harm, and the blood part is utterly redundant.
As for why I’m so sure Voldemort is wrong:
Well, there is the outside view, in which I just have trouble with the idea that a 16 year old virgin is a sufficiently supreme plotter, manipulator and cold-blooded killer to pull this off on someone who has been a feared witch for centuries. Not impossible, but very low probability.
A witch who can look like whatever she feels like and who is a byword for “Scary badass” inspiring crushes and devotion in her pupils? Pupils that are utterly safe from her? Odds: Nigh-Unity.
Also, it just doesn’t hang together logically. Baba breaks the contract and then Perenelle kills her? Double-dipping on the causes of death, there.
I could see it being an accident, in which case that counts as one of the most traumatic consensual sexual debut’s I can recall reading about, ever. That is where I put most of the residual probability. 30 some percent.
But as an intentional plot ? It has way to high a chance of going wrong. Anyone able to think it up would know better than to try it.
The story does feel like voldy saying ‘when I was 16 I seduced a teacher, I bet that’s how Baba Yaga died too.’
He means that Perenelle killed her by luring her into breaking the contract.
Your idea caused me to connect two dots. Perenelle and Alissa Cornfoot. They are both students who are attracted to badass professors. On one level, the example Miss Cornfoot provides plausability for Prenelle’s interest. On a more conspiracy-theory-y level, Perenelle is still hanging around near the stone?
Aren’t you simultaneously arguing that the current situation has arisen because of a poorly worded, excessively literal contract and because the goblet is borrowing the natural language parsing of its users in a “do what I mean” fashion?
I am arguing that the contract was made absurdly sweeping because the framers were erring on the side of paranoia in a big way.
Which does work, in that they are safe from all means of harm excepting only that BY is for obvious reasons free to teach any hogwarts graduate anything said graduate or student is capable of learning in the field of battle magic, even if this means one of said students enemies gets his or her ass kicked into orbit.
Flip it around; Do you think the students dropping their names in the original goblet would have considered it a violation of the pact if she had destroyed the noble or ancient status of the family of a hogwarts student?
I am pretty sure the answer is yes. Their intent was to prevent all offensive actions. Because the spell is symmetrical, this absurd scope protects her standing as the teacher of battle magic.
OK. That makes sense. I am uncomfortable with your theory because it reaches a long way beyond the few facts we are given in the text, but then I have felt that way about other theories which have recently turned out to be correct.