PoA Chapter Twenty-Two

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Fudge is telling Snape the Prophet will want to interview him, and he’s sure Harry will tell them how Snape saved him. LOL!

Harry and Hermione duck into a deserted classroom and don't make out. That's how we know it isn't fanfic.

Dumbledore greets Harry and Hermione with a big grin for following his instructions. It almost makes me wish they'd just never gotten his cryptic hint about the Time Turner just so they could be like…well, why didn't you just tell us to do that, then?

Pomfrey stands over Harry and Hermione to make sure they eat their chocolate. Is that really a problem, kids not eating their happy-feeling-giving chocolate?

Snape yells about being unable to disapparate in Hogwarts. Snape and Hermione: SOULMATES!

Dumbledore appears to be enjoying himself at Snape and Fudge's distress, which is pretty dickish. Snape honestly thinks that Sirius murdered Lily and James and tried to capture him, even if he's got a personal grudge against the guy too.

I guess it’s hard not to tease old Snivellus when you get the chance, especially if you're teasing him about something that means a lot to him.

Dumbledore took a risk with that "two places at once" line. Snape would know Hermione's secret and given his sensitivity on this issue he might have started yelling about how they used her Time Turner.

Hagrid comes up to the Trio by the lake. He's sweating and has been drinking all night. Interesting choice for the “friend to children” character.

It’s Lupin's last scene, and he still manages to pull off something brilliant in it. After forgetting his potion, endangering people on the grounds and pretty much being the cause of Peter's escape, he manages to make Snape the bad guy because he told the Slytherins and cast his resignation as something he's doing because he's too noble for his own good rather than really being called for. Well done, Lupin.

Also, Snape told the Slytherins out of spite for losing the Order of Merlin.

Harry proclaims Lupin the best DADA teacher he's ever had. Don't worry, Harry, you'll get a nice DE to take his place next year to take that crown.

Lupin also gives them back the map because now that he's not a teacher he doesn't feel guilty about it. Nobody really believes in rules or restrictions for any good reason.

Lupin says James would have been disappointed if his son never found any secret passages out of the castle. Typically, Harry didn't find any. Some just dropped into his lap for plot purposes.

Am I the only one who reads tons of negative emotion in the last Dumbledore/Remus scene? Because I just can't imagine Dumbledore as anything but coldly furious at learning how much Remus lied to him. He's probably already planning the werewolf spying that never goes anywhere.

Dumbledore explains a life debt, though the whole Snape life debt story is a lie.

Harry confides in Dumbledore about his Patronus because he knows he won't laugh. Harry, nobody would laugh. Stop giving Dumbledore fake sensitivity. Look what he just did to Snape.

Dumbledore says something kind of nice to Harry about the dead not leaving us. I think it’s made nicer by being placed before the books got into constantly and self-consciously Teaching Us About Death without actually saying anything.

Dumbledore references Harry's Patronus on the Quidditch Pitch. I mention it because years from now Harry's Patronus will be some big secret as if he didn't produce it in front of a large crowd.

Everyone's pleased at how justice was done: by relying on Dumbledore to go twinkly and make sure things happen the way they want.

The Trio has passed all their classes—as I would certainly hope. Harry thinks Dumbledore might have stepped in to keep Snape from failing him. Thus basically adding another crime to Snape's rap sheet without having any real reason to think he committed it.

Snape's fingers twitch whenever he gets near Harry, as if he wants to put them around his throat. Which is ironic because he probably wants to kill him for putting himself in so much danger.

So, wait, when does Dumbledore tell Snape the truth about Sirius? Is he just letting him stew about it now?

Hermione's dropped Muggle Studies, I imagine to the relief of everybody else in the Muggle studies classes. Can you imagine Hermione would be in a class where she really did know far more than not only every student but the teacher as well?

She drops two classes and has a normal schedule again. It seemed like she was working a lot more than two extra classes.

Ron casually mentions his dad getting tickets to the QWC. Getting a whole stack of tickets that are hard to get via deals with people at work is "usual" for Arthur.

Ron saves Sirius's little owl when Crookshanks looks at it with too much interest. Say good-bye, Crookshanks. From now on you'll pretty much just be another object that needs to be carted around or disposed of in every book.

So Sirius sent a cat with a postal order that said it was from Harry Potter but ordered them to take money from the account of Sirius Black. And that worked. That would have been interesting to see.

The fact that this didn't get noticed should explain how easy it is to sneak around the WW.

Ron is quite cute when someone actually a) remembers him and b) gives him something. He even holds it out for Crookshanks to sniff because Ron’s the one that gets scenes where we see he was wrong about something and learned better.

One final Owl. Everyone has a pet. The animal theme can end.

And Harry leads the Dursleys through the station knowing he can threaten them with physical harm. Yay!



Things used more than once:
Owl Post…Again!
Snape might not have really saved Harry here, but he has before…
It's as if the only reason Dumbledore told that bs story about Snape owing James a life debt, besides the many useful ways it was used (it was a good cover story for Lily/Snape and gave them the Prank to fight about) was to introduce the concept for Harry and Peter. Snape never seemed to have been beholden to James at all. At least not that way.
Yes, Harry will get tired of hearing how he looks like his dad but has his mother's eyes, DD.
Lupin predicts letters from parents about the werewolf teacher. There will later be threats of letters about the half-giant teacher. Though Dumbledore protects Hagrid.
The weather is perfect, yet Harry is in low spirits. I think Harry ought to think of being checked for the opposite of Seasonal Affected Disorder.
Gryffindor has won the House Cup for the third year running. Always nice to see the Underdogs win. Every time.
Harry arrives home with a threat for the Dursleys. This type of thing needs to keep getting upped in later books, however, because otherwise Harry wouldn't be downtrodden there. So after Sirius the murderer we get the whole Order threatening them and then Dumbledore showing up to knock them around the heads.



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

I’m sure Harry will tell everyone how Snape saved him
Status: Fired one day, but avoiding anything like self-reflection or gratitude on Harry's part.

Life debt!
Harry did a noble thing in saving Peter. Life debt! A million ideas how that will play out and…
Status: That's it? Peter flinches himself to death? It's like hanging a gold-plated blunderbuss over the mantle in Act I and having someone vaguely point to it in Act IV.
Harry has his mother's eyes
Status: I think it was fired in some way that didn't come across so much? Lily inspired men to love her to the point where they can't look at Harry without being affected.




Idiot World
It's never so obvious as when they think they've got things pretty good, really.

Informed Attributes
The narrator breezily tells us what all others are thinking through Harry's pov, which has a 50/50 chance of being right.

Offscreen Teleportation
The ability of a tiny owl carrying something its own weight can keep up with a speeding train.

Selling Wood
I always picture Dumbledore doing this in his good-bye to Lupin.

Jabootu Score: 4

Wow, that's the whole book. I can't believe how long I've been doing these! They were fun.

And sorry to everyone who found them the hurtful, rage-filled screeds of fury of a duplicitous, whiny Slytherfen!

Comments

[elanor-x.livejournal.com]

Snape yells about being unable to disapparate in Hogwarts. Snape and Hermione: SOULMATES!

Re-read this chapter today and thought the same thing. Shows that in this world Harry & Ron aren't dumb for constantly forgetting it, since Fudge, the Minister AND former Hogwarts student, is on the same level.

Dumbledore appears to be enjoying himself at Snape and Fudge's distress, which is pretty dickish.

Yes, and since Snape, unlike Fudge, is aware of his surroundings, I wonder what he thought about that. We're told Snape was staring from Fudge to DD and then, after seeing DD's twinkling eyes (if Harry noticed, Snape definitely had), "stormed out of the ward". Had he understood Sirius was innocent then? Or just that DD had his own reasons to be happy? I suspect Peter's escape was A-OK from DD's pov.

Harry confides in Dumbledore about his Patronus because he knows he won't laugh. Harry, nobody would laugh.

It's the effect of being raised by the Dursleys. In DH he is afraid people will comment on manually digging Dobby's grave and prepares a scathing remark too.

Wow, that's the whole book. I can't believe how long I've been doing these! They were fun.

My only dream is for you to spork DH, that last book just demands it. I am sure you know what I mean. ;)

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

"My only dream is for you to spork DH, that last book just demands it. I am sure you know what I mean. ;)"

Has anyone here sporked GoF? It's been a while since I've read it but I think that was the time JKR acquired her protection from editors.

[elanor-x.livejournal.com]

Yes, sistermagpie. Check somewhere in the beginning.

[oryx_leucoryx]

But every book needs to be resporked post-DH.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Heh, you are so so right!!! There's a whole new level of laughter in every book when it can be compared with Rowling's final failure. Or when we look back and see the roots or hints of what was to come. :-(

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

ITA. I've read a few sporks pre-DH, but for true hilarity, a spork of the earlier books needs to compare and contrast with the epic fail of DH.

Because prior to it, people still had hope that JKR would tie up loose ends and justify rambling and pointless plotlines and redeem her characters and things were skewed towards hoping for the best. I seriously want to scream and cry when I read all the fan theories and speculation on where she might take the characters and plotlines, most of which were better than what eventually was published.

Sporks post-DH make me feel better by mocking the massive doses of stupid throughout the book. And it's always funny to compare something silly in the previous books with the ridiculously, excessively moronic in the last book.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but it also makes us look silly for thinking that Rowling would fix things, tie up those loose ends, redeem her characters, when her lack of discipline and writing inadequacies were apparent from the start. :-(

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

There were evidently still editors around during GoF. We can thank one of them for being spared Mopsy the dog-lover.

But I don't know how much actual input they had after Rowling fell into her "plot hole". She claimed to have had to rewrite about a third of the book. And I don't know how much examination the rewrite got.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Is there anything at all that is known about this infamous 'plot hole'? 'Cause it must have been a DOOZY if even Rowling saw it!! Given the ones which either (a) slipped past her or (b) which she didn't care about!

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Well, Rowling *claims* that after having it all planned out to use the Weasley cousin, Mafalda (first-year Slytherin) as an exposition device, she realized that there was no way that the kid could have access to the information she was designed to deliver.

In response, she wrote the character out of the book and gave a lot of the information she was supposed to deliver to Rita Skeeter.

I am inclined to think that this much is true--insofar as it goes. But that it isn't the *whole* truth. Because the way the whole series started going off the rails after that one discovery that she had a flaw in her "plan" suggests to me that either there was a lot more wrong, or that when she tried to patch it, whole sections of it unraveled on her.

I mean, sure, we can see all kinds of false reasoning in the narrative in the first three books if you dig back through the postings here, but the overall story arc was on course and seemed to be *going* somewhere. By the end of GoF nothing seemed to go anywhere, it just flailed until we got to the end of the book, and then the next book took up somewhere else and flailed some more with scarcely a glance back, as if the previous events had never happened. By HBP, she was carefully contradicting information she had given us in the previous volume and effectively trying to rewrite what we'd already read. By DH she was contradicting what she'd told us six or seven chapters earlier.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

I agree that the Mafalda thing/admission doesn't seem to weigh up to what I would call a 'plot hole'. At least not a BIG 'plot hole'.

Because the way the whole series started going off the rails after that one discovery that she had a flaw in her "plan" suggests to me that either there was a lot more wrong, or that when she tried to patch it, whole sections of it unraveled on her.

I honestly think it was a simple case of her having never thought the whole thing out; the 'grand plan' being quite threadbare and empty as it got further along. Hence all the filler material in the last two books.

By HBP, she was carefully contradicting information she had given us in the previous volume and effectively trying to rewrite what we'd already read.

Oooh! I've long known that DH was unique in its absolute contradictions, but I'm more hazy on HBP; I've thought the sixth book didn't have any out-and-out 'objective' errors. I.e. a sufficiently zealous/slavish fan could choose to 'ignore' the literary problems with the book and claim it was a masterpiece. I detest HBP but I've believed that it can't be "proven" a failure like DH.

I don't want to take your time or bog you down, but can you briefly enumerate those 'contradictions'? Are they incontrovertible? Like the many failures in DH? *bounces up and down* :-)

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

I can't off the top of my head remember what it was that snagged me. Just that there were two or three things that as I read them, hit the "*That's* not right!" gong. There's a whole lot of things that don't *quite* fit what had already been established. But only that 2-3 that seemed just flat-out *wrong*.

I'd probably have to reread it to find them, and frankly, I'm not about to do that.

The contradictions were *much* more blatant in DHs. I personally am particularly annoyed by Harry's blind assertion that Tom already knew what a Horcrux was when he asked Slughorn about them -- when in the actual scene in HBP Sluggy had flat-out *told* us all that the subject was *already banned* at Hogwarts by then. But it pales in comparison with Remus assuring us in chapter 11 that you can't trace an Apparation unless you catch hold of the person Apparating -- undermining the whole 7 Potters sequence back in chapter 4, or some of the other razberries she blew us in the course of that 634-page F-you note.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

But it pales in comparison with Remus assuring us in chapter 11 that you can't trace an Apparation unless you catch hold of the person Apparating -- undermining the whole 7 Potters sequence back in chapter 4

That's one I hadn't heard of before! Thanks!

[oryx_leucoryx]

I personally am particularly annoyed by Harry's blind assertion that Tom already knew what a Horcrux was when he asked Slughorn about them -- when in the actual scene in HBP Sluggy had flat-out *told* us all that the subject was *already banned* at Hogwarts by then.

That is a possible reading of what Dumbledore told Harry. I'm not sure Tom came up with the idea of a 7-part soul on the spot while talking to Slughorn. He could have done reading outside of Hogwarts before that conversation. I bet one of his friends had a nice collection of antique books that included 'Secrets of the Darkest Art' or similar at home.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Oh there are all kinds of ways to fanwank it. He could have already found the Room of Hidden Things by then and been digging through the banned books.

But the fact is that nothing that we say in the conversation between Albus and Harry really supports Harry's assertion. It all just looks like a sloppy attempt to claim that she didn't write what she clearly did write, because she's decided that it's no longer convenient.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Harry's interpretation is based on Dumbledore saying: "You heard Voldemort: What he particularly wanted from Horace was an opinion on what would happen to a wizard who created more than one Horcrux, what would happen to the wizard so determined to evade death that he would be prepared to murder many times, rip his soul repeatedly, so as to store it in many, separately concealed Horcruxes. No book would have given him that information. As far as I know - as far, I am sure, as Voldemort knew - no wizard had ever done more than tear his soul in two."

If all Tom had available to him was that comment in Magick Moste Evile (just add k's and e's to make it look evil, ha!) then the whole idea of a seven-part soul came to him as he was talking to Slughorn and he was just asking sincerely about a term he came across and knew nothing about. But if he learned of Horcruxes elsewhere, already contemplated the significance, decided he wanted a seven-part soul and just wanted to know if there was any theoretical or technical problem with that ('No Tom, that can't be done. Nijel the Nasty tried spitting his soul in three, caused an earthquake and was never heard of again!') - sounds more like the Tom of Byzantine plots.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

I miss the Tom of Byzantine plots...

[oryx_leucoryx]

Obviously side-along Apparition is an HBP addition that contradicts previous books - it certainly makes the rescue by team of broom-riders in OOTP superfluous. (And raised the question why Lily didn't Apparate with Harry out of their home when they heard James' warning. Post DH the answer to that *may* be that if a wand is needed for Apparition Lily couldn't have done so because her wand wasn't on her person.)

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

Mopsy the dog-lover?

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

On the official site. There is an entry (I can't recall exactly where) about cuts to GoF. Mopsy the dog lover was one of them. Lived in Hogsmeade and Sirius was mooching food from her.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Here: Extra Stuff: Edits

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Snape does definitely seem to get in that moment that Dumbledore's in on it. I don't think he gets that Sirius is innocent because he'd be so set on that idea after all that time. Knowing Dumbledore he might think he just protected him for some reason of his own.