PoA Chapter Twenty

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

The image of all of these guys coming down the stairs is pretty hilarious and creepy at the same time.

As they creep awkwardly back in the tunnel I find myself thinking it’s too bad they don’t have cell phones. Then I think this probably would have been a good moment for Lupin or someone to send a Patronus to Dumbledore to tell them to have people there to meet them outside the tunnel. Too bad Patronuses don’t work that way yet.

Sirius makes no effort to prevent Snape’s head from bumping along the tunnel. Which is understandable at the moment, but I’m sure Snape’s been described doing things gently in that kind of circumstance. This is the kind of thing that seems like JKR making some subtle point but in the end I don’t think she is. It’s just funny when Sirius or the Twins is petty this way.

Some sort of explosion takes place in Harry’s stomach when Sirius asks to live together. For a moment I fear Harry’s going to do something really messy and wonder if the Shrieking Shack has a working loo, but it turns out he’s just overcome emotionally.

Oh Sirius, you’ve totally done it now. You want to actually be Harry’s family? Dumbledore’s not having that!

Oh look, the full moon. Good thing you all knocked out Snape since he would have no doubt been yapping about it for the past fifteen minutes, thus keeping Lupin from leaving the Shack with you all.

And certainly keeping Lupin from chaining himself to people with broken legs. He might as well be chaining himself to a hickory-smoked ham.

Anyway, without Snape obviously Lupin’s going to forget about the full moon and being a werewolf tonight. He’s been too busy rushing through the tunnel where he almost killed somebody as a werewolf to the house that was built to house him while he was a werewolf, reuniting with his friends at school who became Animagi to hang with him while he was a werewolf and confessing how he’s a werewolf until he was interrupted by the guy he almost killed as a werewolf who’s yelling about how they tried to kill him in the very tunnel that connects to this very house with this very werewolf who btw forgot to take his werewolf Potion tonight.

Maybe he should have written it on his hand.

Btw, apparently Lupin can walk around just fine under the full moon if it’s covered by clouds. Which would indicate that all he has to do to get around his curse is to stay indoors and away from windows for three nights a month. Or carry a parasol.

Actually, I feel like the moon coming from behind the clouds should probably be a Jabootu thing. In werewolf movies the moon always rises by emerging from behind the clouds that part like a curtain and begin the transformation.

Go Peter! Look, I’m sorry, I know he’s evil but the guy’s a survivor!

I wonder if Peter had remembered the full moon and was waiting his chance, in fact. Rats have to think about these things.

Harry trying to cast his Patronus here while Sirius cowers is pretty great. Nothing bad to say about this bit, really.

Well, except that I’m not sure why Sirius is a man here. He was last seen as a dog and he said Dementors don’t bother dogs. Did he turn into a human just as they snuck up on him Stealth Monster style? There’s a hundred of them and you can feel the coming a ways off.

Harry’s using the thought that he’s going to live with Sirius to cast his Patronus. Nice the way that Dumbledore’s excellent plans for Sirius in OotP effectively take away that greatest hope for both of them (meaning Sirius and Harry) here. Not in this book, I mean, but later.

Really, the whole way that Dumbledore inserts himself as Harry’s awesome mentor and father figure is one of the ickiest things in the series. I guess because it’s not even presented as something he’s doing on purpose, but it plays like a barely-conscious impulses that show so clearly through the character. (Choices show who we are.) Sirius is like the anti-Dumbledore, and he dies trying to be Harry’s family and escape Dumbledore’s horrible home for him.

Dumbledore puts Harry in a horrible family too. But he does tease them for ten minutes so that makes it okay.

Seriously, let’s review: Dumbledore takes James’ invisibility cloak when the family’s in hiding, which might have helped them a little. He intentionally places Harry with a family that hates him (making him a little underfed but not a pampered prince!). He gives evidence against innocent Sirius. He doesn’t curb Snape’s behavior or try to make peace between them. He insists Sirius live in the childhood home of his nightmares. And he apologizes…for being the guy who’s so squishy about Harry he gave him the house cup and didn’t tell him he was planning to have him killed because he wanted him to be happy.

The Weasleys are damn lucky they’re loyal enough that Dumbledore didn’t feel threatened by them, and that they had so many children he could feel relatively secure that Harry couldn’t get too much personal attention from them no matter how much they wanted to give it.

Harry and Hermione could very well have died here. Harry’s not even supposed to know how to do a Patronus. I mention it because of what it says about the safety of the school that Molly had such faith in at the start. The place is literally crawling with soul-suckers that eat students as easily as convicts, and Dumbledore’s making faces about how frustrated this makes him really doesn’t make him any less in charge.

Of course, had Harry and Hermione been eaten I’m sure everybody would have talked about how it was their own fault, really, for being out past curfew. The Dementors are only following their instincts. Nothing unsafe about it if the students would just do what they’re supposed to do. Didn’t they listen to the instructions about not going out after dark?

Short chapter this time. The next one’s going to be interminable, though.

Things that happen twice:
First mention of a unicorn, I think. Harry apparently thinks they’re bright. They’ll show up for real in the next book.
No the use of a Patronus to call ahead and tell people you’re coming, something that will be pretty standard starting in I think GoF.
Peter escapes pretty much the way he escaped the first time.
The whole walk back from the shack echoes the Prank.
The Patronus galloping through the woods is reminiscent of Snape’s silver doe in DH.
Ron’s out, then Hermione’s out and Harry faces things alone, reminding me of PS/SS.

It’s a gun. No it isn’t! It’s Chekov! No it isn’t!
Sirius asking Harry to live with him
Status: Not fired. Albus bent the muzzle of the gun to prevent it.
If you thought Harry might get a happy ending with Sirius, stop.

Something exploded in Harry’s chest
Status: Fired!
That was his chest monster hatching in his stomach, from which it will migrate to his chest in HBP.




Atomic Grenade
Hermione has no idea what Peter did to Ron. Always handy with the atomic grenade, that Peter!

The Cricket Rule / Day-for-Night
Don’t think any of these are going to remind Lupin he’s walking around under a full moon as a werewolf, though…

Exploitation Filmmakers’ Credo
…even though Snape just reminded it of him a few minutes ago.

One Radio Rule
No, really, Lupin. Don’t use that Patronus to make sure there’s a guard waiting to take Peter on the other end of the tunnel.

Spring-Loaded Cat
Peter finally gets back at Crookshanks by spring-loading him right off the ground and knocking him out.

Jabootu Score: 6

Comments

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

>So give it up Oryx Leucoryx! With all due respect, even Albert Einstein wouldn't be able to reconcile Rowling's wand garbage! :-)<

Well, that's certainly true enough. Wand *mastery* was a rabbit out of her hat, at the last minute used to grease the wheels, and keep the plot moving without haveing to go back and write the links that would have connected the indigestable chunks of plot into something coherant.

It allowed her to pretend that Harry had control of Tom's wand without ever coming face to face with him. It allowed her to kill Snape off ingloriously and keep him from taking over every scene he was allowed to appear in. She must have been wracking her brain on how to pull both of those off.

Over in one or other of my Red Hen essays I made an argument that the Elder wand just plain rejected Tom flat out, because; 1. the first time he faced it, it beat him all around the Atrium of the Ministry of Magic. There is no way that he was the boss of it. and; 2. it happily works with murderers. So fragmented souls are perfectly all right with it. But it insists that all the fragments be present. We get enough (inadvertent) hints through the series that it is a viable hypothesis that magic is an attribute of the soul to suggest as much.

Rowling never looks for simple explanations for why things happen in her stories. The reasons always have to be *big* and *flashy* and *dramatic*. But, y'know, none of that makes any f them any better. She cuts the ground out from under her own feet.

Horcruxes have never been *fashionable*, after all. How can we say that the Elder wand has ever been taken by someone who made one before? (Here's a hint; it isn't in the hands of anyone who ever did so by the time we caught up to it.) Let alone made *7* of them. It would have been far more economical for Tom to have simply, by his own actions, have *disqualified* himself from *ever* being able to take control of that wand.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

It allowed her to pretend that Harry had control of Tom's wand without ever coming face to face with him.

Yep. Harry won without any special magical power or ability. Just because of luck and the presence of the sooper dooper wand.

It allowed her to kill Snape off ingloriously and keep him from taking over every scene he was allowed to appear in.

Not being a Snape fan - although, as I've mentioned in the last few entries, I've recently had it pointed out to me that he honestly was on the side of the good guys for altruistic reasons (well, reasons beyond "for Lily!") - I hadn't thought of that, but you're right; Harry was so hopefully outclassed in that 'duel' against Snape at the end of HBP it might have been exactly as you say; Snape was more mature and certainly more magically gifted/powerful.

(It's what made me laugh so hard, early on in my perusal of DH 3 years ago, when Harry was boastfully making grandiose statements about hoping to meet Snape for a rematch. Hah!)

Your two theories are okay I suppose, but they're just guesses. Rowling deliberately kept the whole wand mess vapid and nebulous in DH because she knew she was on thin ice. Ollivander's ambivalence when telling Harry of the new rules was horrible to read; I could just imagine Rowling's nervousness as she broke her own canon when she wrote his dialogue.

Sadly there's nothing of the new rules in the first six books to see if your theories hold water. Your #1 is just a guess, an added constraint - you're saying that, once beaten by a wand (in the hand of another wizard) it will never accept you? Hmmm. I can't think of any A beat B, then B beat A sequences from the canon. Harry beat Draco twice, Snape beat Harry once, etc.

#2 seems even more of a guess, although I guess the elegance there is that murderers would have a special place in Death's heart. But then you argue against that by blindly stating that 'all fragments must be present'.

I've mentioned before the theory that was written by fanfic author Paracelsus recently in his wonderful story "Coming Back Late" on portkey.org. In it he states that the Elder Wand chose not to work for Riddle because, in cheating death by creating horcruxes, he'd insulted Death so much that none of Death's Hallows would choose to work for him. I thought that was an excellent notion.

We get enough (inadvertent) hints through the series that it is a viable hypothesis that magic is an attribute of the soul to suggest as much.

I don't see the hints about magic being an attribute of the soul at all. And wouldn't that mean that Voldemort would be running on one out of eight cylinders by the end?

Rowling never looks for simple explanations for why things happen in her stories. The reasons always have to be *big* and *flashy* and *dramatic*.

Oh, sure; she went for the grand images without putting in the work necessary to hold them up. By the end of the series she was so happy to bung in the scenes she'd waited so long to insert the whole series was falling down all around her, but she didn't care.

It's an "oh, maths!" sort of thing I'd say. Rowling is the type who doesn't really care about the details; certainly not when she was having such fun at the end, with no restraints or limits.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Other authors make mistakes too. The background of a character changes slightly. Some years disappear from a timeline. Whatever. With Rowling the problem is the plot of different books depends on her world working differently each time, and when she changes the rules we are not supposed to notice it wasn't like this all along. Also, her 7 books are supposed to be a single story where there are many characters we learn about from different angles in different books - and we never get a complete picture in one place. We are clearly meant to patch information from different books, but between contradictions and hints that never get fleshed out (or things that get fleshed out just a bit and inconsistently) the outcome is incoherent.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

>I don't see the hints about magic being an attribute of the soul at all.<

Er, we are directly told that Muggles are unable to become ghosts. Are you then going to claim that Muggles do not have souls? Clearly there must be something different or something more about wizard souls which enable them to leave a consious imprint of their souls behind. I find it very difficult to believe that there are any *more* differences between wizards and Muggles apart from the fact that one has magic and the other does not. They can interbreed, after all.

Mind you, it gets a bit more complex in that by HBP we are further told that a ghost is the imprint of a *departed* soul. From which one would *expect* this to mean that the actual soul has already left this world, and that what we see is an imprint created from the individual's *magic*. An imprint which is unable to grow, or to learn, or to move on. Clearly, from Nearly Headless Nick's statements, he is under the impression that he is indeed Sir Nicholas Mimsy-Porpington (or whatever his name was), and that he had *not* "moved on". But then it is also clear from Sir Nicholas's statements that Sir Nicholas is a fool.

It is also reasonably clear that a ghost although, by deffinition, is the residue of a magical person, no ghost appears to be able to perform magic. It may in fact be a magical echo, but it no longer *channels* magic. Although Rowling is completely inconsistent as to whether "normal" ghosts (unlike Peeves) are able to handle material opjects. Otherwise one wonders what becomes of the reams of essays set by Professor Binns in his classes.

[oryx_leucoryx]

From which one would *expect* this to mean that the actual soul has already left this world, and that what we see is an imprint created from the individual's *magic*. An imprint which is unable to grow, or to learn, or to move on.

Nice catch. So ghosts are very similar to the headmasters' (and healers) portraits, according to this explanation? They retain the personality of the departed and hir interests (Phineas cares that the last of the Blacks is gone, cares about the image of Slytherin House; the healers in portraits still diagnose conditions of people who walk by them) but they are very much stuck with the way that person was when s/he died - so whatever Albus learned from dying (or from his experience in the cave) his portrait didn't take it in?

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Yes, I should think so. The time to learn is during one's own lifetime. The imprint left would be very much the person in the state they were at the point that they left it. Frozen in time, as it were.

In some ways fanon serves a bit better than canon, though, for Sir Nick and the rest of the castle ghosts appear to at least be able to remember the students' names -- although fanon often shows Binns calling students by the names of students presumably long gone. But then they *are* aware of present circumstances, even though their own preoccupations tend to rule them. The Baron will *always* be tormented by guilt and grief and Myrtle will *always* be completely wrapped up in how a bunch of mean girls used to tease her.

Portrait!Albus is probably Albus as he was when he set out to the Cave with Harry. Totally convinced that he knew it all, and that no one else is better qualified to dictate events. I'm less than convinced that he learned *anything* that evening, other than that Draco managed to slip his leash and get his "helpers" into the castle. And I am not convinced that Albus didn't leave the castle for a couple of hours in order to let him do it. After all, he'd called the Order in to patrol. What could go wrong?

[oryx_leucoryx]

I'm not sure Albus learned *much* in the cave, but this may have been the time he was most in touch with his emotions regarding Ariana that he had been his entire life. (Still didn't regret all the stuff he messed up later - whether his lack of intervention regarding young Tom, the whole Severus vs Marauders business and a whole lot of other things.)

[ioanna-ioannina.livejournal.com]

Over in one or other of my Red Hen essays I made an argument that the Elder wand just plain rejected Tom flat out, because; 1. the first time he faced it, it beat him all around the Atrium of the Ministry of Magic. There is no way that he was the boss of it. and; 2. it happily works with murderers. So fragmented souls are perfectly all right with it. But it insists that all the fragments be present. We get enough (inadvertent) hints through the series that it is a viable hypothesis that magic is an attribute of the soul to suggest as much.
God, I love this explanation! May I use it in a fanfiction, if the need arises? I will list you in the A/N as a source.
I struggled with the stupid wandlore in my last piece and--aaargh!

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Any theories on Red Hen are free for the taking. It's part of the reason the site is there.

Sure, I *like* it when the source is credited. But a lot of times an idea gets discussed and reworked by someone else until no one can tell where it originated any more.

But the base assumption comes back to the Elder wand being unique. Once someone adopts that, it can be tweaked in whatever direction one needs it to be.