PoA Chapter Eleven

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Harry asks a question I’ve been asking for a while: why hasn’t anyone told him his parents died because their best friend betrayed him? I love it when I can identify with Harry.

Yes, Harry never asked. But you’d think that would be a big part of the story, especially once Sirius becomes front page news. We know why the people charged with being his handlers haven’t told him, but you’d think it would be gossip.

I guess the WW rumor mill is like the Hogwarts one. Very respectful of plot surprises!

The Trio don't talk about it during dinner because Percy is near them. I never noticed how much of a negative thing Percy is even in PoA. It's like the same thing that makes him so misguided and awful in the next three books is supposed to be clear now.

Meanwhile, Fred and George have set off dungbombs because they’re in high spirits. Fifteen years old.

I'm probably not supposed to be thinking now about that poor guy to whom they gave boils this year while he's stressed out about his OWLS.

Harry looks at his photo album and for the first time wonders about the best man. That is some impressive tunnel vision there, Harry. You never wondered that before, really?

A hatred such as Harry had never known is coursing through his veins. We will become very familiar with this feeling of Harry's in his future. It's his amazing power of love!

Peter resembles Neville in Harry’s imaginings, because he didn’t think to look for Peter in the album too, even though he obviously would have been there.

Come to think of it, there is a parallel there. Neville and Peter are both dismissed for being pudgy and uncool. Both are completely underestimated yet wind up being the most impressive people on their respective sides. And both continue to basically be dismissed as hangers on that make the cool people look good for being nice to them.

Harry starts to lecture Hermione and Ron about what they would do if their parents were killed by a guy...I might as well out myself here and say that if that were me I really don’t think I’d have any desire to strap on a gun and going looking for the guy myself. That’s why I’m a coward.

Ron tells Harry that Pettigrew’s mother only got a finger of him back. This is presumably to remind us about the missing finger but more importantly, did Ron just admit that he’s known more of the story than he’s ever told all along? Whoa!

Double whoa—Peter has a mother? I suppose she must have been killed off.

Just realized that Harry’s talking about Lucius giving Draco information on Sirius because he was in Voldemort’s inner circle when really it’s family history for Draco.

Hermione tearfully tells Harry his parents wouldn’t want him looking for Black. Harry says he’ll never know what they wanted because thanks to Black he’s never spoken to them. Excellent use of the orphan card there, Harry. Bravo.

Just then there’s a nice little moment of Crookshanks flexing his claws and Ron’s pocket quivering. That’s the good thing about rereads.

Ron suggests they visit Hagrid. WTF, Ron? Are you trying to make everything worse? Thanks a lot. I’d rather have Hermione read us whatever essay she’s writing.

I just realized that Herimone’s having her homework spread out over 3 tables is probably supposed to show that she’s got three timestreams worth of homework.

I’m sorry, who on earth decided that Hagrid had no responsibility for the attack in question? Of course he had responsibility. He’s the frigging teacher.

Oh wait, I see, it’s Dumbledore who told them he had no responsibility. Hagrid could have fed somebody to the hippogriff and he’d still have no responsibility as far as Dumbledore was concerned.

Sirius, not so much. If you’re going to go being more loyal to your friends than Dumbledore, what do you expect?

Dumbledore must really want Buckbeak executed so he’s pretending it’s out of his hands.

Yes, the animal's going to be "executed" to make it as clear as possible that we’re supposed to be seeing Buckbeak tried like a human for a crime. A crime for which he is innocent because the author cleverly made "I attacked him because I didn’t like his pointy ferret face when he insulted me" an animal instinct.

But Hagrid said Buckbeak wasn’t a bad hippogriff, Ron says. Yes, because Hagrid is a great judge of good and bad hippogriffs.

Btw, what does that even mean? Sorry, this whole thing just obsesses me. Usually in that context he'd be saying this was OOC for Buckbeak, but of course that's not true. He absolutely can be counted on to attack people if they say something insulting. But in this series it seems to just hook into the whole "good kid" vs. "bad kid" set up. When he attacks people he has a good reason and it's not a sign of a bad character.

Buckbeak, it turns out, has been lying in the corner all this time without anyone noticing. Okay. How big is this thing? Big enough to fly two people around.

Hagrid explains he couldn’t leave him tied up in the snow for Christmas, probably thinking that the Christmas part is what would really make the wild animal sad.

The Trio doesn’t see any particular harm in Buckbeak just because they saw him attack someone for calling it a "big, ugly brute" while petting it. Iow: He didn’t hurt any of us. What harm could it be? WTF is up with Lucius making an official complaint about him?

Hagrid announces the guys who decide these things are all in Lucius's pocket, as they always seem to be even though it never pans out for Lucius. Who does Lucius think he is favoring his stupid only child as much as Hagrid cares about one of his pets?

Hagrid really is supposed to be right of course. The only reason anyone would have for executing Buckbeak is that they’re DE-sympathizers or being bribed or caving to the first two groups.

Harry can’t bring himself to berate Hagrid about Sirius now that he sees how sad he is. Figures it would be at exactly the same moment I wish somebody would suggest Hagrid suck it up for once and not blame everything on the nearest kid handy.

Hagrid’s killed all the flobberworms. But this isn’t a tragedy, as they aren’t interesting. Nor have they performed any special liking for our heroes.

Wow, think about that. In his funk over somebody thinking of killing his one animal he wipes out a whole pack of other animals through irresponsibility and general neglect.

Hagrid moans about his days in Azkabanand mentions the day he had to let Norbert go as one of the saddest in his life. Yeah, remember that day when Hagrid was being stupid with animals and Harry and Hermione got detention for it? Hagrid’s just always the victim.

The narrator reminds us that Norbert was the baby dragon Hagrid won at cards. It fails to remind us that wasn’t it also in the game of cards where Hagrid blabbed about Fluffy? Or am I remembering that wrong?

Everybody starts helping Hagrid in his defense, because naturally Hagrid won’t be doing it himself.

Funny that nobody ever considers Hagrid’s defense to just be Hagrid taking responsibility for the whole thing, which you’d think would help, wouldn't it? The animal should be found innocent because his owner put him in a dangerous situation, gave shoddy safety instructions and wasn't watching carefully.

The kids don’t manage to find anything where a hippogriff got off in this sort of case, probably because people usually do put down animals that attack people. Damn. You’d think there would be some special book out there full of cases where animals savaged people everybody kind of wanted to savage themselves. I’m sure they’d find a precedent there.

Props to Sirius for being classy enough to give Harry his broom for Christmas instead of flying it in through the dining hall.

Not sure where Sirius got the money to buy this thing. Can he just walk into the bank and withdraw from his own account without anyone being suspicious? Did he do it in dog form?

Ron thinks Dumbledore sent it anonymously because if he openly spent hundreds of dollars on a student "some git like Malfoy" might "think" it was favoritism. I’m not ready to believe that JKR doesn’t mean that to be ironic, but the jokes about favoritism do kind of sit on the idea that favoritism towards our favorites is okay.

It’s great the way Ron has a whole list of people at the school he honestly believes would spend a ton of money on a broom far better than Harry needs just because poor Harry Potter broke the one he had and has plenty of money to buy another.

Look, Harry shouldn't have to ride a broom without mysterious sentimental value.

Ron happily announces Harry’s broom costs more than all the Slytherins' brooms put together. You remember, those brooms we were supposed to look at with disgust because they were vulgar display of wealth. Harry wins again!

Hermione keeps looking darkly at Harry’s broom as if it, too, had been criticizing her cat. LOL. Just had to write that because it’s funny.

I can’t imagine why Trelawney doesn’t usually come to meals when McGonagall spends the whole time making snarky remarks about her second sight.

::sigh:: Why doesn’t somebody do that to Hagrid?

A first year goes red at being addressed by Dumbledore—a rare treat for any student not a close personal friend of Harry’s.

Ha ha. Hermione’s right. The broom was indeed sent to Harry by Sirius Black.


Things that happen twice
Hagrid again depends on the Trio to help him out of his problems.
Harry gets yet another top of the line racing broom from an anonymous donor.
Baby’s first hatred greater than he’s ever known before coursing through his veins. Get used to that feeling, Harry.
Not the last joke about Harry being favored and it being cool sometimes.


It’s a gun. No it isn’t! It’s Chekov! No it isn’t!
Peter and Neville are totally connected! Neville will be a traitor.
Status: Put that gun away and apologize to Mr. Longbottom.

Three tables of homework
Status: Fired in three timestreams!

Know what Pettigrew’s Mother got back?
Status: Fired. She got back an important way to distinguish Scabbers as Peter Pettigrew.

Thirteen at a table! Ron will die! Harry will die!
Status: Well, Harry did dramatically go off to his suicide and Ron got poisoned. Basically the usual thing where it depends on the interpretation.

Malfoy knows...he says if it was his family…
Status: Fired, if with blanks. Malfoy kind of would do exactly what Harry did in a similar but not as righteously heroic situation. Only not heroically.




Designated Hero
Yeah, I feel really sorry for Hagrid here. Luckily the heroes have taken on the quest to make sure he suffers no consequences for what happened in his class at all.

Idiot World
Do I even want to know how one mounts a defense for a hippogriff? Wouldn’t you just watch Draco’s memory—or Hagrid’s memory—and decide that Draco deserved it?

Misdirected Answering
Harry might be distracted by Hagrid’s animal woes, but I’m not.

Spring-Loaded Cat
We’ll be seeing a lot of these.

The Stealth Monster Rule
Oh, there’s a giant hippogriff in the room and we just didn’t notice until it started loudly slurping up blood.

Jabootu Score: 5

Comments

[eir-de-scania.livejournal.com]

Oh my goodness, were people really analysing things like that back then, when Rowling was implying that she had a brilliant master plan all ready to be unveiled? Wow.

*** Yes, we did, and it was good fun. Personally I didn't expect a brilliant master plan, just a decent one, I might add. ;-)

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Yes, we did, and it was good fun.

I've discussed before how much fun there is in 'analysing' the canon text, even now with all the interference from Rowling in the sidelines telling us via interview edicts how we're supposed to read it. I appreciate the intellectual challenge such activity provides; it's the only way to get our money's worth from the books!

I've only pulled apart DH and such the last two years, though; I was never involved in any of the theorising back in the day. The amount of effort that was put in then - wow.

And, while I accept it was 'good fun', it's still awfully sad, too. You must have had many fan friends who dropped out in disgust once the last couple of books were published?

Personally I didn't expect a brilliant master plan, just a decent one, I might add. ;-)

But we didn't even get that! :-(

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

No, we didn't.

A lot of people disliked OotP, but hung on after it. It was HBP that jumped the shark for a significant minority. There was a lot of bailing after that.

I thought that by up-ending most of what she'd been feeding us from the beginning, HBP had actually offered us some really interesting possibilities, really clumsily handled. But no such luck. I question whether Rowling realizes *even yet* that she completely contradicted us everything she'd ever told us about Tom Riddle in it by what she *showed* us was supposedly his backstory.

To absolutely no purpose whatsoever since the only thing that she used from that book was the fact that Tom had already managed to acquire the Locket and the Cup.

[oryx_leucoryx]

I'm not sure what contradictions you are thinking of (besides the timeline which is all screwy), but my conclusion after seeing the Gaunts and knowing Tom met Morfin was that there was no way in hell Tom could maintain a belief in the superiority of purebloods over half-bloods like himself after that encounter. Therefore I decided he was merely using the existing beliefs among his House-mates and their children to mobilize supporters and to fight wizard-Muggle miscegenation - in which he found a personal threat because the only ones talented and powerful enough to overcome him would be other half-bloods. As it turned out, the only one he ever feared, the Chosen One and his own agent who killed the former and whom he felt compelled to kill in order to dare kill the latter were indeed all half-bloods.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Yes, that. Athough I'd already picked up that he probably despised wizards every bit as much as Muggles in his speech in the Little Hangleton graveyard.

But no, what I mean by contradicting everything she'd ever told us, was the trajectory she gave him.

She'd been using him as a Hitler puppet all through the whole series, but then gave him a backstory that was impossible to reconcile with it. Hitler was a *public figure*. He was duly *elected*. Tom appears to have been an outlaw from the time he murdered Hepzibah Smith and fled the country.

Admittedly he was never under suspicion for that murder, since, as with the Riddle massacre, there was someone else to take the blame. But it is still impossible to reconcile the shady furtive Tom Riddle of HBP with public rallies and growing public support under the Ministry's nose until they suddenly realized he was dangerous.

And then she turns around and tries to convince us that *that* was the backstory with Regulus and his fanboy scrapbooks. What scrapbooks? The Tom of HBP would have never shown his face in public if he could have helped it. What was there to make clippings *of*. Unless Reggie was doing his own adolescent rebellion stunt and idolizing the wizarding equivalent to Al Capone.

[sunnyskywalker]

He sounds more like Rasputin than Hitler, really. Working behind the scenes, has a small group of devoted followers, really hard to kill... Maybe Bellatrix and co. held the rallies and got elected to minor posts while carrying signs with quotes from their "mentor" whom they say is too busy/superior/whatever to come out himself? That's the only way I can think to halfway shove those two versions together.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

It simply doesn't work. She seems to think that if you *say* it's the same you don't have to *show* us that it's the same. Which is fine, until you show us the *opposite*, and then it simply doesn't fit and you've blown a hole in your boat.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

And that is the way many of these things in the series work. As Dan Hemmings pointed out w/regards to the racism, she doesn't use her fictional world to illuminate things about racism, she uses racism to bring more depth to the fictional world. We just can tell the Mudblood is supposed to be a slur, but we never get a clear idea of the exact prejudice in terms of how it takes shape and works.

Likewise the many WWII parallels sit on top of something that bears really no resemblance to their real world counterparts.

[sunnyskywalker]

It's kind of hard to have a World War II parallel without a war, yes. Never mind a war that actually takes place in more than one part of the world. But perhaps she will suddenly reveal in an interview that Voldemort invaded Poland and France while we weren't looking, and there were actually a bunch of American wizards at the Battle of Hogwarts, which we would have known if we'd read her mind those chapters right.

As long as she's going for parallels that don't work, why didn't she go for the Cold War instead? Dumbledore is America! Voldemort is the Soviet Union! They sit around for years plotting to outmaneuver each other, then have proxies fight for them!

[oryx_leucoryx]

I think the story of the first war doesn't hold up even without Tom's backstory. How can you run an 11 year all-out war in a society as small as Wizarding Britain without managing to topple the government and without running out of people to kill? Unless the 'war' was a very low scale thing until '78 or '79.

Even the Hitler comparison doesn't do much. Other than the 1923 putsch Hitler's supporters were mostly having demonstrations and clashing with rival demonstrators all the way until he had the government. If Voldemort was a Hitler equivalent then what the DEs did for 11 years was marching in Diagon Alley with the occasional Muggle torture event - the QWC over and over.

Personally I think Tom's top priority was his own immortality, with the politics as an afterthought, something to keep the interest of his minions. Therefore I think that until the trip to the cave with Kreacher what interested him most was creating safe places for the Horcruxes. The cave was his big project and he spent many years filling it with enough inferi to his satisfaction. He escalated into all-out war only when he was sure of the locket's safety.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

*sigh* Yes, indeed.

It's obvious to anyone who pays attention that his primary motivation was to be immortal. In which case he didn't *need* followers. He certainly never intended to share his immortality with *them*.

The best you can do with it is claim that having a bunch of toadies soothed his vanity, since he'd manage to alienate everyone in his orphanage by the time he was six, and discovered, once he got to Hogwarts and Albus handed him a clean slate to scribble on, that he rather liked being buttered up by people who didn't know any better.

And it was easy to do, since all *he* needed to do was to tell them to go ahead and do all the nasty things they really *wanted* to do anyway, parrot back the pureblood bilge they'd been raised on, and hand them a justification for how indulging themselves "really" was serving it.

The Rasputin comparison might have played very nicely, but Rowling wanted Hitler, not Rasputin, so the whole thing wandered off into cloud-cuckooland

Really, Tom had minions just so Albus and his Order would have something to fight against.

And it strikes me that the whole concept of the Order itself was probably never intended to serve as anything more than a mirror exercise to display yet another reflection between Tom and Albus. Because there isn't any really convincing function inside the story for that, either.

Both of them had their own little claques of flunkies and losers, all of whom either owed them, or hero-worshiped them, or had signed a contract without reading the fine print on the strength of a lot of fairly standard -- and anything but unique -- rhetoric which they were both inclined to spout. None of whom were really properly trained in anything much, and neither of whom their leaders really knew how to deploy effectively.

I will concede that Tom's moles did a much better job of undermining the Ministry than Albus's fanboys did at defending and supporting it. But then, Tom's moles *worked* for the Ministry. We do not know for sure of any of Albus's original Order (apart from Moody) who held down a Ministry job. Molly and Arthur weren't a part of it back then. Kingsley is Arthur's friend. Tonks was all of about 7 when Voldemort fell.

It's all set dressing. None of it actually has any justification.

Because we really have no idea where the Order of the Phoenix fits, since Rowling never thought the matter through. On the one hand it was totally duplicating the Ministry's efforts. And if Sirius Black is to be believed the Ministry was perfectly willing for the Order members to mix in whenever there was a confrontation with DEs in the offing. But so far as we know, the Order members really weren't trained in anything more than what one picks up in a standard Hogwarts education. About the only place that I can think of to slot them in is as a sort of Neighborhood Watch group which has a Police liason (Moody) to whom they report whatever seems to be suspicious.

Although, of course, the original Order was probably rather different from the one we met, which didn't seem to be effective at anything but running a distraction for a year, and coming to patrol the school property or Hogsmeade when Albus wanted them to. Less a Neighborhood Watch, than the school Crossing Guards.

[oryx_leucoryx]

The revelations of HBP originally bothered me more with what they said of Dumbledore than what they said of Tom. In COS we got the picture that Tom was secretly unleashing his monster on the school, the genius Dumbledore was the only one who suspected him so he had to stop and make the diary so that someone in the future could unwittingly repeat the trick.

Then in HBP it turns out Dumbledore met Tom at the orphanage already learned that Tom was a Parselmouth and had terrorized the entire orphanage, including torturing 2 kids into insanity. And Albus told nobody - not the headmaster, not Tom's Head of House. No wonder Albus was the only one to suspect him - Albus was the only one who knew Tom had the means to control a monster that could inflict the symptoms of the students that were attacked, and possessed the cruelty to do so.

If Rowling wanted to show Albus as completely repentant of all Dark Wizardry and truly caring for the safety of innocents it was a mistake to have him be the one who went to the orphanage. Have Professor Merrythought visit Tom and be the one who kept his secret. Then when the students are attacked and Myrtle dies in 1943 Albus knows Hagrid has to be expelled for keeping Aragog, but he also knows Aragog couldn't have caused the symptoms of the students that were attacked by the monster, so there must be another one. The secretive prefect who turned Hagrid in was a bit suspicious but he had no clear evidence, except for the fact that Hagrid was raising Aragog in the dungeons, in Slytherin territory. Meanwhile Merrythought can't bring herself to confess that she knew all along Tom was a dangerous boy so she retires and disappears. Years later when Tom is terrorizing the country Merrythought comes back and gives Albus the memory of the orphanage visit and puzzle pieces start falling into place.

But the way Rowling did it Albus was complicit in Myrtle's death - both before and after the fact. Even if he thought Tom might make good use of his second chance he should have stepped forward when he realized there might be a basilisk in the castle.

[oryx_leucoryx]

More things that don't add up:

- When Tom returns to Britain he is already known in public as 'Lord Voldemort', members of the general public either don't know or aren't willing to acknowledge that he is really Tom Riddle, he already has an organization known as the Death Eaters and there are wild rumors of their activities - but what are these? The returning Tom can show up for a job interview or at a pub without the Aurors being called, so whatever those rumors were he was not yet wanted by the law.

Then we have Fudge saying Voldemort had been avoiding the law for nearly 30 years - counting back from 1996 and allowing for a very permissive interpretation of 'nearly' brings us to the beginning of the war (or even earlier).

And what were the 'terrible but great' things Ollivander spoke of? After all, the Horcruxes, the secret cave etc were not known, the inferi were stashed away since 1979. So what were the DEs and Tom known for other than casting Unforgivables - bad and powerful but nothing mysterious or glamorous about them.

Regarding the Order - you can add the Longbottoms to Moody as official Ministry people in the organization, but this still doesn't help much. And we have the bit about the Potters and the Longbottoms 'both sets of parents having narrowly escaped Voldemort three times'. In the case of the Potters those 3 times must have taken place sometime in 1978-9. But how did they come to have those 3 Voldie-encounters?

I agree with your description of the first Order as Neighborhood Watch. I think a big part of what happened before the end of 1978 (the earliest possible time for Kreacher's first trip to the cave) was DEs kidnapping people, bringing them to Voldemort to be killed and made into inferi, which he later placed in the cave. Those were most of the disappearances that accompanied Voldemort's first rise. (Does anyone have an estimate as to how many inferi were in the cave?) I'm guessing many of the victims were in Dumbledore's political faction, so people around Dumbledore started fearing Voldemort back around 1970, while in the general public many people still thought he had the right idea about getting rid of Muggle-borns and putting purebloods in charge (or something along those lines). In 1979 all hell broke loose with frequent attacks and the Dark Mark showing over sites of attack, and fear of Voldemort spread more generally, the Ministry was in disarray as Sirius described to Harry. Then in 1980 Milicent Bagnold becomes Minister (WOMBAT3) and Crouch becomes DMLE head and instills his harsh measures, leading to some deaths and arrests of DEs, but mostly more deaths of innocents escalating the war and the panic, until 1981.

[montavilla.livejournal.com]

Yes, I came out of GoF thinking that, at best, Voldemort was simply using the pureblood ideology to hoodwink the DE's into following him. I was also convinced that Lucius's speech about longing to hear the slightest news about Voldemort to be a complete lie. Lucius was always about his own ambitions and it seemed very out of character--except as something he'd say to avoid getting tortured.

And since Lucius was the "face" of DE's at the time, it was easy to extrapolate that feeling to all DE's (especially when they all fled at the sign of the Dark Mark and we were told how scared they were of Voldemort returning).

So, to my mind, people like Bellatrix, Fenrir, and Peter would be exceptionally devoted, and most of the others would be more fearful than glad to see Voldemort.

No only because he's a badass, but because they would have to have realized by the time he disappeared how little he had to offer anyone. His big quest was for immortality--something none of the others seem especially interested in--and he wasn't about to share it.

In CoS, Tom was spouting the pureblood line and seemed like a self-hating half-blood. Maybe that was because he was a teenager. You know, like Hermione and S.P.E.W.

But yeah, how could Voldemort be "powerful" without being politically visible? And, if he was a rising star, why would his big ambition be to get a teacher's job?

I wondered why that whole Tom backstory left me so cold. Now I get why. It didn't make sense with what we'd been told before him.

I guess the way I would reconcile it is that Dumbledore wasn't bothering to show Harry stuff that he figured Harry would know already--the public face of Voldemort. He didn't bother to show the rallies and the political speeches. He concentrated on the hidden little stuff that no one know about--like when Tom had that grunt job at the store for five years.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Like oryx_leucoryx I'm unsure as to what the contradictions where in HBP to which you are referring.

HBP was a bad book, but (in my opinion) more due to 'general'/subjective errors like the horrible pacing, filler plots, the about-turn in characterisation to serve Rowling's precious OBHWF romances and so forth. But no absolute contradictions. Not like was the case with DH, which was an order of magnitude worse still. But you refer to HBP here like I refer to DH!?!

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

See reply to Oryx_leucoryx, above. HBP was the book where she stood everything on its head. I thought that suddenly playing switcheroo with the official Riddle backstory was a part of a comprehensive "everything you know is wrong" reveal. The 2nd half of which was to be dropped on us in the final book.

But no such thing. Rowling simply couldn't keep her story straight. She evidently thinks that declaring "he's a Hitler" in an interview in 1999 or thereabouts means that everything he ever did was met with the same reaction as the real Hitler's real actions. Even when they were nothing like.

And that's just plain stupid reasoning. You cannot write a convincing story of this nature and loose track of your villain. The villain is the *story*.