PoA Chapter Ten

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Ginny brings Harry a get-well card that sounds far too adorable to have been made by the chick who shows up two books from now as Harry's ideal girl.

Harry now remembers the Grim as accompanying near-fatal accidents. If you’re as confused as me about the first one, Harry now remembers himself being almost run over by the Knight Bus as a near-death experience. There is a lot of examples in the book of how people make this prophecy stuff work, I will say that. Which is weird given it turns out this entire series turns on a bunch of people following a prophecy.

Malfoy’s now doing imitations of Harry falling off his broom until Ron throws a crocodile heart at his face. Okay, that makes me laugh. (The crocodile heart.)

Hmmm. Ginny will be doing imitations of Harry falling off his broom in HBP. She’s definitely studying Malfoy for tips on how to get Harry’s attention. (Note that Ginny will do her imitations after yelling at Dean for laughing at Harry’s fall to begin with.)

When Lupin returns, the class erupts in complaints about Snape having the gall to give homework as a substitute. The really are being ridiculous about this here. They might as well complain that Snape had the gall to teach instead of entertain them making balloon animals all period.

Remus naturally dismisses the assignment he gave. If they doubted that he was one of them.

Seeing the Hinkeypunk, a little wispy creature in a box that squeaks, I can see why the kids were disappointed in having to study werewolves.

Why exactly is Dumbledore so mad about the Dementors on the Quidditch field? I know he’s trying to keep Harry safe so he can kill him in his own time, but it’s not like Harry doesn’t risk a fatal fall every time he plays Quidditch. Maybe he should yell at those guys whose job it is to bash iron balls at his head while he’s 50 feet in the air.

Btw, the Dementors were at the Quidditch field at the same time Sirius was and thus were kind of doing their job.

In case it wasn’t clear already, Lupin assures Harry that the Dementors affect him more than anyone else because he’s had all these horrors in his past. Horrors he’s far too young to remember, actually. I have to say that what happened to Neville’s parents was worse. In fact, if one were making a case for Harry having faced a lot of horror, I'd say it was at the Dursleys.

People recently claimed that we didn’t know how old the characters were when the movies were cast, but this chapter keeps stressing how young Lupin is. Though I don’t know how Harry manages to figure out he’s young despite the grey hair and lines.

Lupin says most prisoners at Azkaban go mad within weeks. A shame that after this book people will come bopping out of the place no worse for wear all the time. Sure Bellatrix is a nut but she appears to have been that way before Azkaban as well.

Lupin says Sirius must have found a way to fight the Dementors. I wonder if he’s considering that Sirius might be innocent?

Hermione’s looking forward to shopping for her parents’ Christmas gifts at Hogsmeade. Not that she’s going home to see them for Christmas. And the thing is, I would never see this as being a bad thing (of course we want her at school) except that it actually does culminate in Hermione mind wiping them both.

Btw, I saw a still from DH where Hermione's in her Muggle room. It makes me nervous they might actually include the mindwipe.

Harry’s been riding a school broom since he lost his. It’s slow and jerky. It’s kind of strange to me the way Quidditch really is a game about equipment, and JKR both gives Harry the best of it and frowns on the Slytherins for their own brooms.

I mean, if Harry's having this much trouble on a school broom shouldn't he feel a bit silly about beating all those other kids who are forced to ride it? It's hardly fair.

Fred and George give Harry the Marauders map since they "know it by heart." Um, guys? It changes every time you look at it. The people in it move.

Don’t suppose they thought to use it to look for Sirius Black at all.

Harry briefly considers whether he should use a map since he can’t tell where it keeps its brain, he naturally decides to use it. I’m proud of Harry for considering it for a second, though.

Once in Honeydukes, Harry thinks about Dudley’s piggy face if he could see where he was. I’m going to give Dudley the benefit of the doubt and say he prefers candy that doesn’t sound like it was all designed to cause internal injury or nausea.

Ron mistakenly thinks Harry’s learned to Apparate. You can’t Apparate from Hogwarts, Ron!

I do kind of love the fact that if Sirius really was trying to kill Harry he probably would have been in that passage since he does know about it. Harry's using a map Sirius himself made to find it, innocently thinking that means Sirius could never ever know about it.

Ron points out that Harry is safe in Hogsmeade because there’s all these other people around, even though Sirius’ big crime was killing a whole bunch of people on the street in broad daylight to get to one person.

Hermione then brings up the far bigger reason Harry shouldn’t be in Hogsmeade. He hasn’t got a signed form!

Typically, Harry has come to Hogsmeade without a coat.

Rosmerta is a "curvy sort of woman" with a pretty face. Ron, at least, probably isn’t looking at her face.

The hardest thing to believe in this chapter is that any of these relatively normal people would want to go for a drink with Hagrid.

Finally people have a discussion about Sirius that includes that they’ve all known him since he was 11. Oddly, no one brings up that his whole family are Slytherin dark wizards and that his younger brother was also a DE.

Luckily, Madam Rosemerta doesn’t know how a Fidelius charm works. Don’t hold it against her. JKR isn’t quite clear how it works either. It changes in every book.

Dumbledore was still worried when Sirius offered to be Secret Keeper, because you know how angry Dumbledore gets when he’s not the keeper of every single secret ever told.

It still annoys me that Hagrid took Harry since he had orders for Dumbledore even though Sirius was apparently Harry’s legal guardian.

McGonagall now feels a little bad about being impatient with Peter. Not so bad she won’t be just as bad to Neville.

Btw, Peter was fat. Which I’m sure has nothing to do with his moral character. But everything to do with his lack of talent.

Fudge worries about Voldemort with his most trusted servant and shudders to think of it. You’re right to shudder, Fudge. Voldemort + Peter + Barty = a villain the entire British WW will have to work hard to keep in power.

Things that happen twice
Harry deals with a second object that can interact with people--and he (or JKR) actually remembers the warnings he gave about it.
I think we’ve got a competitor in the race for "most convenient eavesdropping moment" here, but DH is still in the lead.
Harry gets a second singing card from Ginny, which is presumably validation that the first one was from her too, if that wasn’t already obvious. This is the way Ginny I showed affection.
Apparently the Whomping Willow also gravely injured people. Clearly the same mind that decided to plant that on school grounds hired Hagrid and vouched for him having no responsibility whatsoever for the time that animal went after a student.


It’s a gun. No it isn’t! It’s Chekov! No it isn’t!

It's the Grim!
Status: Fired. Nicely woven back in here!




Jabootu Score: 0

Shocking, I know, but it’s mostly because nothing really happens, but Harry gets two really important things so you have to appreciate that.

Comments

[va32h.livejournal.com]

Yes, I am the Do-Over lady and thank you for reading and reviewing. The whole experience of writing that story actually made me even more resentful of JKR.

It was really quite challenging to keep the story dramatic and full of conflict, when the HP universe has so many magical fixes. I mean really - all Harry had to do at the end of HBP is go to the Room of Requirement and say "I need all of Voldemort's remaining Horcruxes and something to destroy them with. Thanks!" Books over, page one.

So I had to keep coming up with reasons why Harry couldn't do that. Why the trio couldn't apparate on occasions where other travel would be more interesting or move the story forward. Why Dobby or Kreacher couldn't have done whatever the trio couldn't do for themselves.

And getting everything right! Constantly going back to previous books and making sure this thing or that was still available, would be where my story needed it to be (or how to get it there). I mentioned the Int'l Museum of Quidditch in my fic, and made sure it matched up with the description in Quidditch Through the Ages. Any creatures I mentioned in my fic were straight out of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

I figured if I could do that in the course of six months (and without the additional motivation of getting paid to do so!) Rowling certainly could have done so herself. Her refusal to do so is just...it's insulting really.

I think it's very similar to George Lucas and Star Wars. They create a universe, then get bored with it and decide to take it in an entirely different direction, then act surprised and wounded when the fans aren't thrilled about it.

There's nothing wrong with a writer deciding to go in a different direction with their story. But they shouldn't pretend this is where the story was going all along. Clumsy attempts at retrofitting a new idea into existing canon is just insulting to the reader. Just as there is nothing in Star Wars Ep IV-VI to even hint at all the nonsense Lucas gives us in the prequels, there's nothing in the first 6 books that would make even the most careful reader think that the ultimate Voldy showdown would depend on 'wand mastery'.

I do think Rowling likes her books. Because she hasn't actually thought about them. I participated in the Bloomsbury live chat and asked the question about Harry performing Crucio - that it seemed totally out of whack with previous books' portrayal of Unforgiveables. Her answer was "Harry's not perfect." Clearly to Rowling, Unforgiveable was merely a name, not a concept.

[lissa2.livejournal.com]

OMG I must have a link to the do over, please!!!

Reply 1 of 2

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Thank you for writing the story! :-)

Why Dobby or Kreacher couldn't have done whatever the trio couldn't do for themselves.

I hold the situation with house elves to be another one of Rowling's blatant inconsistencies. One of the many gimmicks she'd pull out only when she needed them to push the plot where she wanted it to go (which is overall one of the most damning symptoms of her *laziness* as a writer). We have these very powerful magical creatures (Dobby kicked Lucius's behind, Kreacher kidnapped Fletcher, Dobby easily subverted the Ministry's mail and 9 3/4 infrastructure, Winky controlled Crouch, they can zap through Apparation wards, Dobby could waltz into Malfoy Manor whenever he liked, I could go on) ... but they're only employed to Harry's advantage. He uses them to spy on Draco. He uses Kreacher to grab Dung. Dobby saves rescues everyone from the Manor.

Rowling happily used the elves to move Harry from square A to square B in the story, but otherwise kept them out of sight. Harry was the only wizard who ever thought to use a house elf to pursue his goals in the war, wow. Oh, except for Riddle, what, 20+ years earlier, in secreting away one of his horcruxes.

So this particular complaint of mine parallels your own problem with the elves ... why didn't all the wizards, good and bad, use these extremely powerful magical creatures who are at their beck and call? Just like they were used for all manner of other duties? "Death Eater elves #1 - #10, go and grab Harry Potter and bring him to me". But no. Only Harry is allowed to think of this. And Riddle, once. Bleh.

Plus Rowling tripped herself up with the end battle, where she wanted the elves to make an appearance - all the magical races suddenly race to the good guys' aid - but she couldn't have the Hogwarts house elves win the battle with a snap of their fingers. So they come boiling out of the castle's kitchens ... waving carving knives and cleavers. No magic at all. An easy problem to solve if you're a lazy author (with no real editors).

I figured if I could do that in the course of six months (and without the additional motivation of getting paid to do so!) Rowling certainly could have done so herself. Her refusal to do so is just...it's insulting really.

That's really interesting ... and refreshing, too. Even today there are so many authors - usually of canon-compliant stories that start off after DH proper, with Harry suddenly realising how wonderful Ginny was and apologising profusely for ignoring her in the seventh book :-) - who are so gushing in their gratitude to 'Jo' as to make one nauseous. I've been picking faults in Rowling's series the last couple of years, but, again, my hat's off to you by going the extra step and 'proving' to your own satisfaction how lazy/arrogant Rowling was.

I do think Rowling likes her books. Because she hasn't actually thought about them.

Yes. A combination of her 'oh, maths!' mind simply not objectively considering her own work ... and perhaps an inability to distinguish what's 'understood' in her mental image of her world but hasn't actually made the transition to the printed page. She's seemed quite honestly puzzled sometimes by the fans not picking up immediately on things that seem 'obvious' to her - like how Harry and Ginny are equals, perfect for each other and 'soulmates' and so forth being one example. 'Go back and re-read' we are instructed. Sorry, Jo, it's not there. Okay, the 'shipping' is a trite example, but there have been other such cases.

Sadly, the power of the HP juggernaut was such that Rowling wasn't obliged to 'think' about her work ... or have it subjected to rigorous editing. And so we got the failure that is DH.

reply 2 of 2

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

I participated in the Bloomsbury live chat and asked the question about Harry performing Crucio

Oh, excellent! I've often wished that someone could ask her a question and then, if she tries to get away with saying "it's in the books (go back and re-read)", do a follow-up and ask "can you show us where, Jo?".

I'd read that at least one of her in-person publicity engagements was controlled - questions to be submitted in advance - but I guess an online chat wouldn't be like that?

Clearly to Rowling, Unforgiveable was merely a name, not a concept.

I'd read an opinion once by a pro-Jo fan that Rowling *deliberately* had Harry cast two of the three Unforgiveables - the Imperius and then the Cruciatus - so as to set things up for the reader to expect him to cast a Killing Curse in the final showdown. The post was one of those that try to laud Rowling for hidden depths, desperately looking for the barest, sketchiest sign of *something*, even just a sentence or two in the canon, which can be inflated to support the notion that Rowling's work encompassed magnificent truths, profound philosophical statements and the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything. In this case 'Jo' was extraordinarily clever in setting the readers' expectations that Harry would go to the dark side by casting a Killing Curse, apparently.

If that was Rowling's intent - and I strongly doubt it, since it's something she hasn't patted herself on the back for, or even hinted at, in any of her pompous post-publication propaganda - then she failed. There was no build-up of suspense, no drama, no escalating tension, no fear that Harry was going 'dark' or otherwise being pressured to use these 'dark' spells, etc. No 'cost' to using the spells at all (a drawback to Rowling's simplistic magical mechanics IMO). I was pretty well disengaged from Harry and DH by the end - it was such a lethargic, passive and horrible book! - but I had no feeling that Harry was being enticed to go to the 'dark side' at all. And I never came across anyone else who thought that ... until my pro-Jo acquaintance turned on his electron microscope to try and search for pearls of great wisdom in Rowling's garbage. And from what you said not even Rowling thought of that explanation in her answer to your question.

Re: reply 2 of 2

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

It would have been more complex if she had meant to lead people into thinking Harry would cast the AK by ramping up the use of the other Unforgivables but then, if she had thought that deeply into it, she would have thought more deeply into the rest of the book and series and we wouldn't be having this discussion now.

Imperius I can believe in a wartime situation. I thought the way they used it was proper for the circumstances and, within that scene, they even have the Universe expose them as frauds. Unfortunately, that pay-back was a fluke.

I wouldn't have had trouble with Harry casting the AK on Voldemort, either, given the circumstances. It's a killing spell in a killing war.

I have plenty of trouble with his use of Cruciatus. According to current thought, there is no reason, even in war, to torture someone. See Guantanamo for a real-life example. If she wanted to show that Harry was no saint, IMO she used the wrong spell to do it. The one she was groping desperately for was Imperius but, as I said, that one (IMO, of course) actually made sense for the context in which it was used.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Wow, that was you asking that question? I remember getting into a long conversation parsing her answer. To me it sounded exactly as it seems like it came across to you: It's not even very significant that Harry performed a Crucio after all that build up, not to mention the fact that it's torture.

[va32h.livejournal.com]

Yep, that was me! My claim to fame! I remember so well her answer. "Harry is not now - nor has he ever been - perfect." And that was it.

Of course the chat was far too jammed for my follow up, which would have been. "WFT??? So why didn't FakeMoody just tell Neville to STFU, it's not like Bella is perfect, what's he so upset about? So no action is intrinsically evil. Good and bad are really just a matter of who's doing what to whom. What a morally bankrupt philosophy. How dare you try to package this and sell it to my kid!"

Honestly, I read the spork and I can see the points that the twins are cruel, the trio are mean spirited and Harry is totally devoid of conscience. In the first few books though, I really don't see it that way. These are children's book tropes: the suffering hero who gets his revenge on the perceived bad guys. I don't think it's any worse than Roald Dahl books (which I find repugnant actually but people seem to like)

With the later books though, we were supposed to be in grown up territory. I expected much more and was pretty horrified at what I got.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Are there examples of series that manage this kind of transition in tone successfully while using the same characters?

[montavilla.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I don't know of a lot of series that try to do that. The one that leaps to my mind wasn't planned as a series. I'm thinking of the Little Women books by Lousa May Alcott. In the beginning of Little Women, Meg and Jo are sixteen and fifteen, Beth is 13, and Amy is nine or ten, I think. By the end of the second book, Good Wives, (which is now published together with the first as a single novel), Amy is old enough (18 or 19) to get married. Jo gets engaged, but only after resigning herself first to becoming a "spinster."

There were two more books in the series, Little Men and Jo's Boys. In Little Men, Meg's baby twins from the second book are about ten years old. In Jo's Boys, they are about twenty and starting to get married. By the end of the book, they are mentioned as eventually having children. So, in the course of four books, she takes her heroines from childhood to grandparenthood.

There are also the Little House books, which take Laura Ingalls as a child of what, six? seven? to the young mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Oh, and d'oh! The Chronicles of Narnia do take the Pevensie children from childhood to adulthood--twice!

And then there's the Prydain Cycle, which takes Taran and Eilonwy from either tweenhood or teenhood to the brink of maturity. Actually, that's a great example of a character growing up in a five-book series. Taran starts out as a headstrong kid who longs for adventure. In the fourth book, he grows through a kind of identity crisis and takes on a number of apprenticeships in order to "find himself."

The Sword and the Stone likewise takes Wart from childhood to his destiny as King Arthur.

So, yes, it has been done. Quite a bit, really.

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Yes and no, though, IMO. We do have a lot of stories where the protagonist grows up - it's a classic trope of fiction. The bildungsroman is all about this journey. However, they don't usually shift widely in the viewpoint of the narrative itself (versus the character's perspective).

That is: in HP we start out in an almost cartoonish world where violence doesn't seem quite so real, it's all a grand fantasy with the castle full of magical things. They can be dangerous at times, but we never really fear for the protagonist. We also don't judge the world or other characters according to real-world, mature perspectives - I mean, we *laugh* when Dumbledore tells kids that going into that one corridor could kill them. If that happened in book six it would be a point of real drama and fear, not a joke. Because by then violence has become much more real, and we are asked to judge things according to a different standard that at the beginning of the series. And...the transition doesn't quite work, IMHO. It's too awkwardly done.

I guess I see the difference RE your standard bildungsroman being that, although the *character* may have a childish view at first, the author or narrator does not. There is a level of maturity there that the character eventually attains - closing the gap between *character* POV and *narrative* POV. This is how we see that the character has an immature POV at first. Whereas in HP the *narrative* POV starts out in that same immature POV, and then tries to reach a more mature perspective, at the same time that it's supposed to be telling us how *Harry's* POV is changing. So there is not such a gap between character and narrative.

If any of that makes sense. ;)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I think that's totally the issue too. I mean, there are things that I might not like in the earlier books, places where I'm supposed to be cheering when I can't. But it would never seem all that weird if we didn't follow the moral development to the place where we did.

[montavilla.livejournal.com]

Wow. That makes you a double hero. One, for rewriting DH, and two, for asking the question that was bugging all of us who tried to understand the whole Dark Arts moral quandary.

[aasaylva.livejournal.com]

Hi, I went to look for your do-over-DH and happily found the first nine chapters, but the link to chapters 10 - 30 does not seem to work! Can you do something about it?

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

I couldn't access chapters 10 onwards on that alternate site you posted to- any chance it's been posted elsewhere?

I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but it looks promising. I admire your perseverance in getting through this project, I can't imagine how much work it took to improve on that mess. *squishes*