PoA Chapter Six

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

The first thing Harry notices the next day is that Draco Malfoy is doing impressions of him fainting to laughing crowds. I know this joke will soon get old and people will stop laughing? But I can’t believe they’re even laughing at it now. Either Draco Malfoy is a comic genius and we just don’t hear the routine that goes with the fainting, or wizards have been seriously warped without TV, literature or theater. What teenagers would find this funny?

I mean, as much as I hate to defend HBP!Ginny, her impression of Harry falling off his broom at least had a context to explain why it was funny. The joke was that Harry was bellowing at people when he got socked in the head with a metal ball that should have killed him. Nobody saw Harry faint and there was nothing funny going on at the time.

Pansy Parkinson has a face like a pug. And totally deserves it.

Harry consoles himself with the fact that the only time he and Malfoy faced each other at Quidditch, Malfoy definitely came off the worst. I’ll bet he feels even better when he remembers that the same is true for just about anybody stupid enough to play Quidditch with Harry.

How was McGonagall expecting Hermione to keep this secret about the Time Turner, btw? Even if she doesn’t really have any friends besides Harry and Ron, it’s not like she doesn’t make herself noticeable in class. Don’t tell me that not once during the year did two students not complain about her in conflicting classes to each other and figure it out.

My canon is now that the whole school except Harry and Ron knew that Hermione was using a Time Turner. Several of them even stole it a few times to do something fun.

Oh god, here comes Hagrid swinging a dead polecat. Because he only likes giant predators.

On their way to Divination they pass a painting that’s kind of a Don Quixote rip-off.

I don’t care what anyone says. I like the way Trelawney decorates her room.

The fog in the room makes Harry feel sleepy and stupid. Which might be the most self-aware Harry has ever been.

Harry predicts Ron might work for the MoM. He could be right. Maybe Ron’s just got 3 jobs instead of the 2 he gets in post-DH interviews.

Once again Hermione randomly decides that something is illogical while accepting that she can turn a frog into a teacup by waving a stick over it. And naturally she’s kind of right.

Or not. If Trelawney's seeing a big, black dog in Harry’s tealeaves, she’s right. And in HBP she was batting something like .397.

McGonagall then announces that Trelawney’s an idiot and Divination is worthless. Harry Potter: So awesome he makes useless subjects true!

Seriously, all Trelawney's true predictions center around Harry. Which I guess validates the centaurs views as well.

McGonagall also says Trelawney predicts a student’s death every year. Ron must be silently resenting why she had to pick Harry this year, stealing what he’d think was his one chance to be the center of interest.

I do like the implication that Hermione really does dislike Divination because she can’t be good at it, but since it really does seem to be a crock, I can’t like it that much. It seems to basically just be a class for poseurs who like putting on an act.

Ron and Hermione aren’t speaking to each other now. I'm sure the crazy hot make-up sex is the heart of their marriage.

Oh god, give me a second to gird my loins for Hagrid’s dumb class.

If you’re waiting for any parallel to be drawn between Draco’s attitude towards Hagrid and Hermione’s attitude towards Trelawney, stop. They’re exact opposites, because Hagrid’s a noble drunk and Trelawney’s a useless drunk. Or something. Also Hagrid’s a half-giant and Malfoy’s a jerk.

Yup, Malfoy’s a total jerk, even calling into question Hagrid’s being qualified to teach class.

Hagrid leads up the animals and introduces them by saying the first thing to know about ‘em is that they’re proud, so don’t insult one or it’s the last thing you’ll do. Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle are whispering in an undertone, the same way Harry and Hermione and Ron have done a dozen times before. Only it’s totally different to do it in this class, so what happens is totally their fault.

I have to go off on this here, because in the past I’ve gotten in tons of long, detailed lectures on how peoples’ riding instructors gave speeches on how dangerous horses were where they made sure everyone was paying attention, and made everyone show they knew the rules, and watched everyone carefully and if they did anything wrong they made them sit out for the day. Only it’s given as an explanation for how Malfoy is wrong here, as if that’s not exactly what Hagrid doesn’t do, and his whole schtick isn’t not getting how dangerous animals are so treating them as if they’re not.

Hagrid’s class isn’t really going over well, so Harry has to step in to back him up. I guess to repay Hagrid for all those times he almost got Harry killed or got Harry in trouble and felt no responsibility for it.

For all the stuff about hippogriffs being proud, apparently they’re okay with Hagrid dumping a kid on their back and slapping them on the ass. I guess since it’s Harry it’s a compliment.

Harry has a big ride full of wonder, proving that if you’re a Gryffindor all animals are glorified taxi services.

Now that Hagrid’s demonstrated proper behavior by treating the hippogriff really carelessly, he sends all the kids into the paddock en masse. What would he have done if they’d all had a chance to take off?

Luckily Malfoy calls Buckbeak a “big ugly brute” (much the way one would probably speak to a beloved pit bull) and the thing rips a big gash in his arm, probably heading off a greater catastrophe. Neville was inches from a meltdown with his own animal.

The Slytherins yell about Hagrid being sacked, proving they suck. These are the type of people who would complain about their kid being petrified in school instead of seeing it as character-building. Probably like child proof medicine caps as well.

The Gryffindors, with Malfoy’s blood still wet on the grass, say it was his fault. Okay yeah, obviously the thing was reacting to Malfoy insulting it like he wasn’t supposed to, but could their little black hearts be smaller or stingier? It’s not even like Malfoy gets sympathy until his dad calls for the animal to be put down (since nobody actually cares about the animal besides Hagrid anyway). They immediately blame the victim.

Harry’s had far worse injuries healed by the nurse. All Harry’s injuries are worse, really, because Slytherin injuries don’t count. You have to have a soul to feel.

“Trust Malfoy to mess things up for [Hagrid],” says Ron, which would be okay if that didn’t seem to be the official reading of the scene. To review: the dozen things Hagrid did to create an obviously crazy unsafe environment for 13-year-olds and wild animals are mistakes any new teacher would make. Malfoy’s mild snottiness and acting like a 13-year-old is unforgivable, indicative of his evil nature and deserving of severe punishment.

In fact, obviously he planned to be attacked to hurt Hagrid. Just like he’ll intentionally force Harry to attack in OotP. Buckbeak and Harry are the real victims here. Draco’s just a master of making people hurt him.

Back at dinner, Harry thinks the Slytherins are cooking up their own version of how Malfoy got injured. Which must be where the whole “Malfoy lied” story always comes up, but I don’t see why Malfoy has to lie (even if he’s malingering, the injury speaks for itself so they can check it).

Note we never exactly hear this “Slytherin version” yet there’s always this vague implication that it’s ruining everything for poor Hagrid. Even though the attack had a dozen witnesses, one of whom was Harry Potter, and pensieves exist.

Hagrid deals with the challenge by drinking—-all the more reason his teaching job should be protected apparently.

Why is it that weakness is so often treated with total contempt while Hagrid sits crying in his beer and blaming his troubles on other people and still sits in the center of the inner circle? I think it’s because Hagrid’s like a pet or a baby so has special license to be pathetic.

Naturally the Trio’s all ready to back Hagrid up. It’s Malfoy’s fault he wasn’t listening. Just like it was Ron’s fault for getting bitten by Hagrid’s dragon. And every student’s fault they didn’t know to stroke their books.

The only reason I can even read this annoying chapter again is that at least I know JKR wrote Hagrid as an unpopular teacher that even the Trio eventually admit is terrible.

Also, weird as it sounds, Malfoy spends the rest of his school career listening very carefully in CoMC. Which I’m sure is a sign of cowardice? But is actually one of the book’s only examples of someone learning something from a mistake!

To review, since obviously this scene bugs me, I don’t have a problem with Malfoy getting a lesson in what happens when you don’t listen in class, or when you dick around with wild animals. (Even if what he did couldn’t actually be considered dicking around in any real sense of the word.) But the way Hagrid immediately gets turned into this innocent victim we’re supposed to rally around so he never has to learn anything drives me nuts. And then people wonder why there are fans who think Slytherins might as well be jackasses since the only time the heroes aren’t happy to watch them die is when they see a chance to dramatically rescue them for their own egos.

Things happening twice:

Ron points out Hermione is scheduled for 3 classes at once. Later she and Harry will be in two places at once.
McGonagall mentions Animagi and turns into one, just like Sirius will. Also transformation turns Lupin into a wolf and Peter into a rat.
Ron has a Great Uncle Bilius and that turns out to be his middle name.
Draco’s attitude in Hagrid’s class, though condemned, is pretty parallel with Hermione’s at Divination.
Harry rides the hippogriff, because he’s going to have to do that again later.
Buckbeak’s slashing will be totally outdone by Harry’s own slashing of Malfoy in HBP.
Also in sixth year Draco will again wind up in a pool of his own blood due to a combination of his own behavior and a Gryffindor’s actions, and again the Slytherins will be seen as making Harry’s life hard by caring.
We meet Sir Cadogan here because he’s going to fill in for the Fat Lady later.
Harry barely listens in Transformation and Malfoy barely listens in CoMC, but everyone knows the first is normal and the second is idiotic because WILD ANIMALS!

It’s a gun. No it isn’t! It’s Chekov! No it isn’t!.
Trelawney’s prediction to Parvati
Beware a red-haired man!
Status: Dud. If only it had been Lavender!
McGonagall’s lesson
Status: 20 gun salute. Harry barely listens to McGonagall telling them that Animagi are wizards who can transform into animals, and barely watches her demonstration as she does it herself, because it’s going to be really important.




Designated Hero
We can tell they’re the good guys because they have no compassion for kids whose injuries either benefit, amuse, bore or cause problems for them and their friends while the compassion they show to innocents is lovingly highlighted.

IITS
How come Divination is arbitrarily the one kind of magic that doesn’t really work? It’s in the script.

"Watermelon, watermelon, cantaloupe, cantaloupe"
I’m sure there were a lot of angry watermelons and cantaloupes coming from the Slytherins in that last scene.

Jabootu Score: 3

Comments

Re: Albus and the Prophecy, part 4 - part A

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

My mind is fuzzy today but I think you're putting waaaay to much effort into trying to make sense of Rowling's flawed and error-riddled series. But I acknowledge that I don't recall the canon nearly as well as you.

(How many times have you read the books? I've got to ask! :-))

from Harry's report of Voldemort's speech Albus finally realized there were more Horcruces besides Harry and the diary

Well, in HBP Dumbledore says it was the cavalier way with which Voldemort treated the diary that led him to this belief. 2 years before the graveyard encounter.

... convince Voldemort he is on the right track in pursuing the prophecy by having Order members risk their lives protecting it

Who was on guard duty the night that Sirius was killed? Or is that a (convenient) plot hole? Did anyone ever ask or tell?

Third, keep Harry away from the prophecy by not mentioning it to him and later by having him learn Occlumency.

Why bother teaching Harry Occlumency if he would never be told about the prophecy?

Pay attention to the following details of their conversation: At first Severus gives the impression Lily is Tom's target.

That's not so; it's simply the case that Snape doesn't care about the male Potters, he only cares about Lily. (Which is evidence that what he feels for her isn't 'true love' IMO, BTW.) That seems clear from the conversation between them.

Before Godric's Hollow he knew Voldemort will at some point attack Harry, mark him somehow

At that stage Albus didn't know any more than Tom as to whom was going to end up being the dark lord's nemesis. It could have been Neville, or anyone else.

So I think Albus knew Harry contained a bit of Tom's soul from day one.

You say this, but where is your evidence? Dumbledore tells Harry that he only knows about the horcruxes from the end of CoS, viz the diary. And the nature of Harry's scar/connection/horcrux doesn't become evident until he starts high school at the earliest.

... And why Harry had to die.

The prophecy didn't state that *both* had to die, just one. So why would Dumbledore assume both? From right at the start?

Harry was placed with the Dursleys and kept with them for 10 years ... because growing under these conditions ... led to Harry trusting Dumbledore and being loyal to Dumbledore over all others, so that when Dumbledore told Harry he had to die in order to bring an end to the threat of Voldemort Harry will do it willingly.

I'm not opposed to that view - I think it's possible, and it's certainly a popular fanon construct - but is there anything in the canon about it? Does Dumbledore or Snape ever say anything along those lines?

So he shows up to the sight of Harry and Quirrellmort literally at one other's hand

Nice! I never noticed that before.

Re: Albus and the Prophecy, part 4 - part A

[eri1980b.livejournal.com]

"You say this, but where is your evidence? Dumbledore tells Harry that he only knows about the horcruxes from the end of CoS, viz the diary. And the nature of Harry's scar/connection/horcrux doesn't become evident until he starts high school at the earliest"
I'm not sure if this counts as evidence as such bust I seem to remember in PS/SS the conversation with McGonagall and Dumbledore outside 4PD when she asks about the scar and having it removed and Dumbledore saying something vague about it being useful (then blithering on about a scar looking like a Tube map on his knee) so he wouldn't be removing it in any way, if he could. It suggests to me that Dumbledore knew something but he wasn't telling McGonagall. Also, in the same conversation Dumbledore does seem adamant that Voldemort could return, yet provides no proof to McGonagall of why he thinks this. It does make sense that he would suspect Harry to be a horcrux from here on in, then with the diary discovery he realises there is more than just Harry. That's still two years sitting on his arse doing nothing in my books, when he should have been out looking for horcruxes to make Harry's "job" easier.

And yes, who was on guard duty the night that Sirius got killed!

Re: Albus and the Prophecy, part 4 - part A

[montavilla.livejournal.com]

There's a theory that the guard was Emmeline Vance and that's how she got killed.

Re: Albus and the Prophecy, part 4 - part A

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

My essay on the Pensieve gambit posts the suggestion that Albus withdrew the guards after Harry endd up being dragged along for the ride on Nagini just before Christmas.

After that incident there was no way that Tom was not going to start working on Harry, even if Harry knew nothing to the purpose. Also, the great Azkaban Breakout took place right after the kids all boarded the Express back to Hogwarts at the end of the break. The news was in the Prophect the following morning.

Once Tom had Rookwood to tell him how the protections on the Prophecy records worked, he wasn't going to waste time sending in redshirts.If the only people who could touch the thing were himself and the Potter brat, and he had a drect link to the Potter brat, then get the kid to do the dirty work. Albus may not have been 100% accurate but he knew enough to guess that much.

Guards out, Occlumency lessons in.

Pensieve Gambit essay also postulates what the purpose of those lessons were. Albus probably knew perfectly well that the boy wasn't going to learn it from Snape. Snape had another purpose behind his part of that charade.

Re: Albus and the Prophecy, part 4 - part A

[oryx_leucoryx]

Well, in HBP Dumbledore says it was the cavalier way with which Voldemort treated the diary that led him to this belief. 2 years before the graveyard encounter.

That's what he said to Harry. But the fact is he only found the ring 3 years later, when he had all the evidence to point in its direction for years. He wasn't looking for another Horcrux because he thought there were only 2 - the diary and Harry. As he says, it was Voldemort's words about going further than anyone else in the path to immortality that really got him moving. But if he didn't say something about suspecting an other Horcrux after the diary Harry (or Hermione) might wonder why Dumbledore still believed Voldemort to be around (before Severus' Mark darkened in GOF) if his only Horcrux was destroyed, so he had to come up with a reason for him to have thought back then that there was at least one other Horcrux. His actions don't support it.

Who was on guard duty the night that Sirius was killed? Or is that a (convenient) plot hole? Did anyone ever ask or tell?

Nobody asked that I know of. I am in 2 minds about this. Either the Order stopped the watch at some point (after Arthur was attacked? after Rookwood told Voldemort only he or Harry could remove the prophecy record from its shelf?) or the guard was taken out by the DEs (or it was Mundungus Fletcher and he suddenly noticed a business opportunity). Order members that were never seen again past this point: Sturgis Podmore (should have been out of Azkaban since March), Arabella Figg (very unlikely, being unable to protect herself magically). There are some fans who think the guard was Emmeline Vance, and her kidnapping by DEs to which Severus claims credit in front of Bellatrix was from the Ministry but I'm not sure it matches the Muggle prime minister's version.

Why bother teaching Harry Occlumency if he would never be told about the prophecy?

To prevent him from *receiving* false messages from Voldemort, like the one that led him to go to the Ministry. Notice Severus' alarm in the Occlumency lesson when he sees the memory of Rookwood speaking to Voldemort. This message was sent to Harry deliberately. It was no leakage, it was a test run for Voldemort's plot. The reason to think so is its timing - Rookwood was broken out of Azkaban in mid-January, Harry had that vision in late February (after Valentine's Day). Also, Voldemort posing in front of the mirror in the vision looks like a deliberate act to catch Harry's attention.

That's not so; it's simply the case that Snape doesn't care about the male Potters, he only cares about Lily. (Which is evidence that what he feels for her isn't 'true love' IMO, BTW.) That seems clear from the conversation between them.

I'm not talking about Severus' thinking but Albus'. Severus says " - he thinks it means Lily Evans!" and Albus retorts "The prophecy did not refer to a woman" He must have been thinking Tom was insane, because there was no way Lily could match the criteria, even if we only consider the first half. Of course Severus knew Lily was 'only' being targeted as the mother of the would-be vanquisher, but that's not what he says, at least at first.

The prophecy didn't state that *both* had to die, just one. So why would Dumbledore assume both? From right at the start?

OK, I'll have to rework that. So if only one had to die, and Voldemort can't die without Harry dying as well then the conditions for the prophecy to come true aren't ready yet. Dumbledore was going to arrange to save Harry until he could dissociate the two deaths. The prophecy gave him hope Harry might survive despite evidence on the ground pointing the other way. Well, that makes Dumbledore look a bit better. Once it would have meant a lot to me.

Does Dumbledore or Snape ever say anything along those lines?

All we have is Dumbledore's need for Harry to forgive him at King's Cross and Severus' outrage at Dumbledore's (apparent) plan for Harry.