PoA Chapter Thirteen
Apr. 23rd, 2010 03:15 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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deathtocapslockOh no. It’s a Quidditch Chapter. Can I just say that Harry wins and skip this one?
It looks like the end of Ron and Hermione’s friendship because they’re so angry at each other. End of a friendship, beginning of a true love marriage. It’s often hard to tell the difference. They both involve so much hostility.
Yeah, I’m sure sex will clear all this constant bickering right up.
I have to say that even though Ron’s wrong? Crookshanks has been trying to attack Scabbers in plain sight for months, so it’s ridiculous for Hermione to claim that Ron's just got something against Crookshanks when what he's always had against Crookshanks is exactly this, that he's always trying to attack his dang rat. Ron just doesn’t know the real reason. Even if Hermione doesn’t think Crookshanks really did it she ought to show she’d feel sorry if he had, and in general have sympathy over Ron's injured and lost pet.
But then, this is the book for wizard pet owners blaming the victim and being proved right about it in the end.
Hermione's not even trying to prove Crookshanks didn't do it with logic or evidence or something. She really does seem to just be saying that he can't be accused of something because she likes him. Which is pretty much the way the justice system works in the Wizarding World so I guess that's why she eventually goes into law.
I wish I could just appreciate this as proof that Hermione's not really logical or fair at all when it comes to these things, but I don't think that's quite what I'm supposed to get out of this.
Oliver announces that Ravenclaw's playing Cho Chang as Seeker—shouldn't they have the same Seeker as always like everyone else?
Cho's had some problems with injuries. That's because she's weak, Oliver. Doesn't have the spine to really be a match for Harry.
Oliver seems like he's going to say something about Cho being a good Seeker, but then dismisses it by once again alluding to the fact that her broom can't possibly win against Harry's super broom. Which is still not unfair at all.
Harry gets on his broom for the first time and confirms that yes, he's now just about quadrupled his skill by riding a better broom.
The team cheers for Harry every time he catches the Snitch. Or more to the point, they cheer for the broom that's just given them a ridiculous advantage.
Oh, and apparently the Firebolt is so good it makes the rest of the team better too. They're inspired by "the Firebolt in their midst."
At least now we can see where Harry’s "Dementor problem" comes in handy. Wood can allude to it and make it seem as if Harry’s still got some sort of challenge in the game. Iow: Sure he's essentially been given a sports car for a bike race, but what if another bunny rabbit hops onto the track and he has to swerve? The suspense is killing me!
That must be why it still doesn't occur to Oliver to make sure the Dementors are kept off the field, or plan to call a time-out if they come near it. Oliver's too much of a good sport to call interference, but not enough of a good sport to eschew the Firebolt. It's a very specific level of sportsmanship.
Madam Hootch falls asleep while chaperoning, which is weird and out of nowhere.
Harry sees eyes in the darkness that he mistakes for the Grim, but it's really Crookshanks. Actually it presumably really was the Grim, with whom Crookshanks is hanging out. Clue!
Everyone in the school comes over to fawn over Harry’s broom, without a resentful eye in the bunch. And certainly no accusations that Harry's showing off by bringing his broom to breakfast. It's a well known fact that Firebolts are powered by Weetabix.
Percy says something funny to Harry, and Harry naturally takes no notice of it.
Oh wait, here comes the resentful eye. Malfoy comes over to have his face rubbed in the Firebolt. He makes a lame joke about it needing a parachute in case of Dementors; Harry makes a lame joke about Malfoy needing an extra arm on his broom to catch the Snitch. The Gryffindor teams laughs uproariously. Fun reader activity: Imagine the reaction of the school and the narrator if Draco Malfoy got a Firebolt and brought it to breakfast.
Malfoy returns to the rest of the Slytherin team and they put their heads together, probably asking Malfoy if it was really a Firebolt. The Slytherins can't actually walk over to Harry themselves like everyone else, so they just lurk in the shadows like a big, ugly mob with Malfoy as a messenger.
I can't imagine why people doubt that the Slytherins really did come back to fight in DH even though it's not in the text.
Harry takes off his school robes and sticks his wand in his tee-shirt. That sounds uncomfortable and difficult to reach.
Also, Harry wears tee-shirts under his robes now.
Ravenclaw’s only got one girl on the team. Because Gryffindor's always a leader in tolerance. They're the non-sexist house too! Right, Nu!Ginny?
This despite the fact that everyone who really loves Ginny treats her in a paternalistic fashion.
The history of sexism in the WW is kind of interesting, actually. There are some clues that they don't have the same history as Muggles since magic should be an equalizer. But when it comes down to it we usually get the exact same slightly old-fashioned stereotypes as you'd get in a Muggle story: few girls on the sports team, double standards in romance, no girls in the Slug Club back in the 50s etc.
Cho's a head shorter than Harry at 13? I never realized she was supposed to be so tiny.
Harry develops a chaste crush on Cho immediately. Gotta set this up for GoF! Work it, JKR!
Harry effortlessly outpaces Cho to the Snitch, but is set off-course by a bludger. Fred vents his frustration at the guy who hit it by hitting a bludger directly at him. Kind of like Crabbe will do to Harry later, only when Crabbe does it it's after the game's over and super super obnoxious. Also when Fred does it it’s funny. (But not as funny as when Super!Ginny plows into Zachariah Smith! The scurvy coward!)
McGonagall yells at Lee for commenting on the brooms instead of the Seekers, but since the last few chapters have made painstakingly clear that this really is a broom competition he actually is doing an accurate commentary. Cho’s Cleansweep having no chance really is what's going on in the game. (I can hear Malfoy in the stands now: "Now we're not even allowed to say that Potter's got an unfair advantage?)
Because of her bad broom, Cho actually shows herself a far better and smarter flier than Harry does in the whole series. No informed attributes here.
It sucks that she'll therefore need to be outclassed by super!Ginny in HBP, even though Cho's good flying skills are an actual character trait and Ginny's are just part of her general Ideal-girl-for-Harry-ness in HBP.
Fred yells at Harry for being a gentleman and orders him to knock her off her broom if he has to. Again, this is exactly the kind of behavior that's been established as the mark of a terrible sportsman when Slytherin does it.
I notice that mostly because of the people who used to try to claim that Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle dressed as Dementors on the field are guilty of attempted murder. As if they could make Harry faint just by just putting on black cloaks. And as if Fred didn’t just make clear that falling off your broom is a normal part of Quidditch.
It's a "low, cowardly trick" because they're Slytherins, but it’s actually not a bad distraction tactic to dress up as a Dementor here. If Fred, George or Ginny had done it it would no doubt have been considered quite plucky and clever and a good show all around. It might even have been funny in a slightly less nasty way when they wound up in a heap.
But let's pretend that Harry actually overcame something to catch that Snitch. Our poor little underdog hero!
Actually, props to JKR for playing it as the afterthought that it should be. It's just a little extra cherry on the sundae for Harry, really.
Harry’s carried off on everyone’s shoulders, because the rest of the team might as well not have even been there, as usual. They should really be carrying the Firebolt on their shoulders.
No signs that Ravenclaw resents this loss. Yet we know they house some sore losers, right Nu!Ginny?
Getting back to the animal theme, Ron says he won't forgive Hermione because she won't admit she's wrong. Which handily makes Ron the one in the wrong. But I'd think the real issue isn't that she insists her cat is innocent but that she shows no sympathy for people about their dead pets.
Ron's woken by Sirius standing over him with a knife. That must have been pretty exciting for Ron. Again, one of the weaknesses of this book is that the actual story isn't happening to Harry, it's just going on near Harry. Those of us in Harry's pov have to be contented with Quidditch matches.
Percy pins his Head Boy badge to his pajamas. Awww.
How exactly does McGonagall always hear noises in Gryffindor? Where does she live?
McGonagall immediately says that Sirius couldn’t have woken Ron, because he couldn't get through the portrait hole. Did she actually just say that? Sirius is the only person to ever escape Azkaban. That's kind of his thing. But he couldn’t get through this kind of idiot security?
Neville gets blamed for the break-in. Yup, no reason to look any further up on the chain of command there.
Things that happen more than once:
Harry wins a Quidditch match again.
Second Dementor on the field, only this one's fake so Harry hears nothing at all. It's like how in Jaws you know the first shark on the fourth of July is a fake because there's no theme music.
Owner of pet that seems to very clearly have done something wrong claims pet is innocent and doesn't apologize for it.
Sirius has gotten into the Tower again.
Somebody's declared the single hero of the Quidditch game--in OotP it's Ron.
Harry digs Quidditch chicks.
Ron gets angry at someone for reasons that seem to imply a genuine emotional hurt that this issue merely brought up, but it's set up so that it will be resolved by Ron admitting he was wrong on a technicality.
Harry sees the Grim again.
It’s a gun. No it isn’t! It’s Chekov! No it isn’t!
The Grim
Status: Totally fired. Bulls-eye.
Harry totally wants to date Cho
Status: Fired. But only as a practice shot before Ginny.
Harry dreams about following a silver thing with hooves.
Status: Fired in this book, but you can’t help but think of Snape’s Patronus reading it now.
Day-for-Night
Hootch falls asleep just so Harry and Ron can have a romantic nighttime fly together.
Designated Hero
Harry and Gryffindor win a game pretty much entirely because they have better equipment and we’re supposed to cheer for him especially loudly for it.
Idiot Picture
Sure Sirius Black escaped from an inescapable prison and we think he’s after this one kid to kill him. But Harry’s perfectly safe. The painting of Don Quixote’s idiot British cousin will protect him!
Monster Death Trap Proviso
Special mention, because in this case nobody’s even tried to catch the monster once yet, despite the fact that he's already made clear where he's desperately trying to go.
Offscreen Teleportation
McGonagall, where did you come from? Where do you always come from?
Jabootu Score: 5
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no subject
Date: 2010-04-25 01:24 am (UTC)Poor kids (the former group); they didn't know they were plot puppets set up as temporary hurdles to the blessed OBHWF pairings.
Except we didn't get much depth out of the final relationships either. Harry's monster's lust ended in a few hidden 'sunlit days' ... and then next book we've got Ginny displaying petty jealousy and Harry eschewing her company for a sandwich. And R/Hr was only evident in one rushed kiss in the final battle.
Not only do Ginny and Harry not care, it's part of the triumph of the scene for some reason.
Yes, it's quite ugly, isn't it? Every step of the way, really - Harry's monster is born over his jealous rage over Dean, his Felix Felicis is instrumental in its destruction, and then the union of our hero and his quidditch princess is anointed in a mammoth public fanfare for all to witness and adore. Cheap and nasty throughout.
Now Dean's jealous of Harry!
That's what personally insults me the most. We're discussing elsewhere in this blog entry Rowling's own personal failings and how they're evidenced in the characters she wrote (like in the deeds of my poor Hermione!). But it's Rowling's dependence on jealousy as her prime and almost only indicator of 'romance' and 'true love' which really gets my goat. The books - the 'romances' - are saturated with it. Harry's monster is triggered by Harry's jealousy over Dean. Dean gets jealous of him. Almost every appearance of Ginny in the final book is accompanied by her jealousy of anything female that might get close to Harry ('soulmates'? HAH!). Half of HBP, it seems, is tied up with the games Ron and Hermione play, each using others to make their opposite jealous. What were those 'anvil sized' hints that Ron was attracted to Hermione in the early books? The bickering and the figths and, why, his jealousy over Krum!
Ugh. It's just horrible. Yes, jealousy has its place in juvenile romances, and no-one's perfect (not even my Hermione) but jeeze, that's all Rowling had, it seems. That and the fighting-means-true-love-even-if-there-are-no-other-indications-at-all trope for R/Hr.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-25 06:23 am (UTC)But it's funny in retrospect how upwardly mobile Ginny was back then. Sure, she doesn't dump poor Neville when there's the slight chance that she could go with Harry. But she sure seems disappointed about it. And she basically says that the only reason she's going with Neville is because she's too young to go on her own. Because it would be embarrassing to go on an actual date with Neville, right?
As I see the time line, after the ball and between... whenever it is in OotP that we hear about Michael Corner, Hermione advises Ginny about dating other guys to get Harry interested. I guess this comes from Hermione's own experience with dating Viktor and the marvelous jealousy it evoked in Ron.
How will I know my love?
How will I know my darling?
Whippoorwill, give me a sign
Something to show he's mine...
How will I know my love?
When he turns green as pine wood!
When he gets jealous enough...
That's how I'll know my love!
no subject
Date: 2010-04-25 07:25 am (UTC)I never saw that!! Wonderful!! And it just adds to the whole 'jealousy' bandwagon.
Ginny told Harry that Hermione's advice was to 'be herself' but we know what that really meant. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2010-04-25 02:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-25 10:01 pm (UTC)And EVERYONE loves GINNY!!
But Ron's jealousy over Hermione over multiple books ... and Ginny's jealousy of anyone female near Harry all through book 7 ... tells us that the two Weasleys only loved their respective OBHWF partners, and no-one else. That's the ROWLING INDICATOR of TRUE LOVE. If you can't see a chest monster just follow the green-eyed monster. Doesn't all this
horrible jealousypure and untainted love, flowing through the books, just make you feeldisgustedwonderful and content?:-(
no subject
Date: 2010-04-26 02:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 04:48 am (UTC)I never thought of him as a villain by any stretch of the imagination. I guess the impulse to do that with him is following the trope of having the romantic heroine's perfect boyfriend/fiance/husband suddenly turn "bad" so that she can dump without compunction and start smooching the hero.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 06:20 am (UTC)