COS Chapter Eight: "The Deathday Party"

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

* Everyone’s got such a hate-on for Percy that he’s described using negative imagery even when he’s doing something nice. Here he’s “bullying” Ginny into taking some potion for her cold.

* Knowing what will happen in GOF, everybody’s probably going to blame him for thinking that Ginny’s a little bit ill, rather than realising that she was just being possessed by a Horcrux-ified diary which once belonged to a dark wizard who’s been dead for eleven years. Christ, Percy, are you blind or something?

* Although in retrospect it’s obvious that Ginny’s just too awesome to suffer from such petty ailments as the common cold, so maybe he should have noticed.

* Oh no wait, she hasn’t yet become MarySue!Ginny, so she might still suffer illness like the rest of us mere mortals.

* Obviously Harry’s going to be drenched to the skin, but why’s he splattered with mud? The whole point of Quidditch is that they players fly a long way above the ground, so they wouldn’t have much opportunity to get muddy. Unless Harry fell off a lot… Wait, did I just implicitly diss Harry’s SuperQuidditch!Skillz? Ignore that.

* In the last chapter, everybody acted as if Slytherin spying on Gryffindor’s try-outs was a dirty, underhanded thing to do. Fred and George have been spying on Slytherin. Slytherin, as far as we know, never actually spied on Gryffindor (or, indeed, anyone). IOIAGDI, obviously.

* I highly doubt that the Nimbus 2001 is so good as to make all other brooms obsolete.

* Nearly-headless Nick died in 1492, but the clothes he’s wearing seem more Elizabethan in style, i.e., about a century later. Perhaps there’s a ghost clothes shop where spirits can keep up-to-date with the latest fashions, but NHN just likes Elizabethan fashions so much that he stopped going after around 1600.

* Of course, this sort of fanwank wouldn’t be necessary if JKR had actually bothered to think about her setting, and either gave Nick more period-appropriate clothing or made this his four hundredth deathday instead.

* If the purpose of the Headless Hunt is to play ball games with members’ own heads, excluding members who aren’t fully decapitated seems quite reasonable to me.

* Once again, JKR, trying to enforce rules ≠ “endless battle against students”.

* Filch has been cleaning all morning when any of the teachers (and probably quite a few of the pupils) could have done it in an instant with a quick “Scourgify!” No wonder he’s in a bad mood, really.

* Although I do wonder why Dumbledore hired him as caretaker. Perhaps he just enjoys watching him being humiliated.

* So what is this mysterious power that connects Filch and Mrs. Norris? Does the fact that Filch is a Squib rule out magic, or does being a Squib just mean that he can’t do wand magic, but can still be magically connected to his pets?

* Is it wrong that I’ve always totally rooted for Filch against Fred and George?

* By making Filch’s eagerness to hang pupils by their ankles “common knowledge”, i.e., unsubstantiated rumour, Rowling handily manages to turn us against him whilst avoiding having to provide any evidence to back this up.

* I can’t help but wonder why Dumbles keeps Peeves around. Possibly it’s so that he can handily distract Filch when Our Hero is in trouble. Or maybe blackmail’s involved. “Don’t forget, Twinkles, I’ve got your old love-letters from Gellert Grindlewald. So if you even think about getting rid of me…”

* Harry apparently has no qualms about looking through other people’s correspondence. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen!

* One of these days I’m going to write a fic where Harry suffers karmic revenge for being such a jerk. So his schooldays will be made a misery by people reading his private letters, hexing rude words across his face, beating him at Quidditch by buying superior brooms which make every match a foregone conclusion…

* Nice to see that wizards have picked up on the irritating Muggle habit of deliberately misspelling words in their brand names.

* Any guesses on how exactly a warlock differs from a regular wizard?

* Harry put the envelope down two feet away from where it was. D’oh!

* Filch is obviously ashamed of being a Squib, suggesting that they suffer from prejudice from fellow wizards, unlike Muggleborns. “Mudblood” is still a worse insult than “Sneakin’ Squib,” though.

* NHN is prepared to destroy a priceless antique in order to get Harry out of detention. Good to see he’s got his priorities straight.

* NHN seems like a bit of a joke, to be honest. About the only time we see him interacting with Gryffindor students is when they needle him at the feast; the rest of the time, they just seem to ignore him.

* I bet the Slytherins treat their ghost better. They probably hold a big party in their common room every time it’s the Bloody Baron’s deathday, with music, dancing, and various wizarding party games. The highlight of the night is a play (written by and starring Draco Malfoy, of course) about the Baron’s death. It’s absolutely excellent. :)

* Off on a bit of a tangent here, but isn’t the Baron supposed to have been contemporaneous with the Hogwarts Founders? Which would mean that he lived sometime during the Anglo-Saxon period, which would mean that he couldn’t be a baron, as the rank was introduced by the Normans, who didn’t control England until 1066…

* F&G are feeding a firework to a salamander, continuing the long tradition of cruelty to animals in the series.

* “‘A promise is a promise,’ Hermione reminded Harry bossily.” Because only bossy kill-joys care about such things as keeping your promises. Most normal people are fine with the idea of just breaking them whenever you feel like it.

* Apparently when their bodies died, the ghosts’ musical taste died too.

* Rather careless (some might say rude) of Nick to invite three living people along and then not bother to provide them with any food.

* Rotting food might have a stronger flavour than normal food. Unfortunately, it’s also a not very nice flavour.

* So, the good guys can’t stand Myrtle and make fun of her behind her back; the evil Slytherin Draco Malfoy, OTOH, is able to get past her unpleasant exterior and make friends with her. I’ll just chalk that up as #147 on the “Instances when the bad guys actually seem better than the good guys” board.

* Rather rude of Sir Patrick to interrupt Nick’s speech like that. Makes you wonder why exactly Nick invited him.

* Or why he’s so keen to join the Hunt, for that matter.

* “Time to kill… I smell blood… I SMELL BLOOD”? Do basilisks always speak in such a melodramatic way, or is it just putting it on to amuse Harry? Or did it just pick up the Slytherin theatrical habit from Salazar or Tom?

* Given that all the students are coming up from the same place, why exactly are they coming in from different ends of the corridor?

* I know that people often think of Draco as a bit of a drama queen, but pushing to the front of the crowds and shouting “You’ll be next, Mudbloods!” seems ridiculously over-the-top (not to mention rather stupid), even for him. I literally cannot imagine what his motivation for doing this is meant to be.

* Actually, I think Olivander shows us a spell in GOF to make wine fly out of their wands. Maybe Draco’s just discovered this, and currently drunk off his arse.

* Or maybe Rowling just hooked his testicles up to car batteries and turned up the voltage until he agreed to be one of the book’s red herrings.

* Come to think of it, a lot of the plot/characterisation in the series would make a good deal more sense if we assume that that’s what happened. “Look, Sirius, I don’t care if you’re smart enough to figure a way of staying sane despite being surrounded for twelve years by an army of depression-inducing monsters, before masterminding an escape from an impregnable island fortress and evading the biggest man-hunt in recent wizarding history for almost a year, I need you to be really reckless and immature in this book so that you can get killed at the end and make Harry feel miserable. Quick, Dobby, get the car batteries!”

* Hey, maybe that could be a new acronym, for any time when someone does something inexplicable or otherwise out of character: QGCB (for “Quick, get the car batteries!”).

 

Comments

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

Randomly, I hate the word 'bossy'. It seems developed solely to put down females who are assertive and not meekly melting into the background as they ought in the presence of their male superiors.

Back around 1970 the feminist group The Red-Stocking Collective published "The Bitch Manifesto", the basic premise of which was that all the qualities that when shown by a woman resulted in her being labeled "bitch", were all qualities that were considered positive when shown by a man -- as you point out, strength and confidence, also intelligence, assertiveness, ambition, boldness, and a healthy sense of self-worth.

The word "bossy" I think is just a polite codeword for "bitch"... :-/

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

Just because troglodytes use that epithat to indicate assertive women doesn't mean that there ain't no such thing as an annoyingly bossy, nagging, overbearing little girl...

You are correct, it doesn't.

But what epithet do people come up with to label an annoyingly bossy, nagging, overbearing little boy?

[mmmarcusz.livejournal.com]

I think it's more that people have a more positive view of their own actions. I am assertive, you are bossy; I am confident, you are arrogant; I am brave, you are foolhardy, etc.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

But sometimes people use "bossy" to mean the other person is reminding them of their duties when they'd rather not be reminded. Exactly as in this case. It's a put-down of the no-fun "goody-two-shoes" in the crowd.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

Yes, I agree to the actual differences between bossy and assertive (and nagging). I just want to suggest that, in some cases, the term "bossy" is applied where it doesn't belong just because someone wants to put a different light on things. Kids are good for that - the older sister who comes in and tells them, "Mom said clean up this room" is "bossy" even though she's only conveying Mom's orders (yes, probably in that whiny, sing-song voice young swots use). It can also be used in the sexist way - the woman is bossy, the man is assertive - when the situations are identical in every other way. People mis-use language all the time for their own ends.

I'm admiring your Hermione Cycle there. It's so true. This is what Hermione does, this is what more people like her do than don't do, which is probably why she had no friends until the troll incident. It also shows that she's an enabler and, possibly, sacrificing her own standards in order to make payments on that friendship. You know, it's so Gryffindor to make people earn their way if they're in any way less than you.

It also places Hermione in a subservient role. She's like the harried secretary chasing the glad-handing boss around, reminding him of his meetings and luncheon dates while he makes fun of her and, her constant ticking away in the background begins to sound bossy and then nagging. If she didn't nag him, he'd probably not make his meetings or his luncheons so he hires her on. He keeps his job, he gets the credit, he keeps her around so she has no chance to do better on her own. She, of course, clings to him because he's made so much fun of her that she thinks she needs him and is unable to get by on her own. The boss in this case thinks he's privileged and should get a pass while the secretary has self-esteem issues.

Too bad Rowling didn't carry that through with Hermione. In the end, yes, she was the boss and the boys were her inferiors. She's the one who had confidence while Harry angsted over Cho; she's the one who is really the competent one, magically speaking, while Harry, who came into the same world the same time she did is still clueless and Ron, who was born and raised to it, never does figure things out the way she does. There should have been a fall there, at least in CoS when Hermione was petrified and not doing the boys' homework for them, but it doesn't happen. It never happens. Hermione's job in the books seems to be covering Harry's ass so he never has to do what he doesn't want to do; the Universe takes over when she can't. And, listening to the nagging is Harry's payment for not having to actually put himself out to learn anything. You just wonder how he passed his O.W.L.s.

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

What bothers me is how much JKR wanted Harry to be the Everyman Character, to the point where she crippled him, left him with stunted growth because he could never become proficient with magic, never be shown working on developing his skills. That's what he has Hermione for! She does his essays, she learns the hard stuff so he can play quidditch and chess and whatnot...

But then JKR has to have her cake and eat it too- because Hermione, despite being smarter and more talented, will suddenly back out of the limelight and surrender the top spot to Harry, out of recognition that she is merely a sidekick and he the hero. Like with the DA- she thought it up, did the hard work establishing it and getting people together and making speeches...then once she warmed them up, she turned it over to Harry. There are things that Harry arbitrarily gets to do because he's the main protagonist- so Hermione can take charge of silly things like SPEW, but oh no, she can't be put forward with the DA, it has to be Harry!

And wtf with Harry outscoring her in DADA? JKR made a special point of having him do better than Hermione, which makes no sense- even less, her declaration that from PoA onwards, Harry would beat Hermione in a duel. Riiiight! Look, the boy can perform a Patronus, he did that before her (and how uncharacteristic of Hermione not to be determined to master it as well), but it's not gonna be much use in a contest between them! What can he do that she can't do better?

Anyway, that turned into a rambling rant- it's just your comment reminded me how frustrating it was that Hermione is the one almost single-handedly propelling the plot, displaying all this esoteric knowledge and amazing skills, but then she'll just meekly stand by so that Harry can outshine her in certain spots, like she knows her place is to make him look good. It's annoying.

And it's certainly not due to self-esteem issues, which would've been interesting and humanizing, but Ron's the one with the monopoly on self-esteem issues out of the trio.

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

It would be more understandable if Hermione were the sort of person who preferred staying out of the limelight, who enjoyed working behind the scenes. But she isn't. Throughout the books, we see her constantly raising her hand in class to be called on, taking charge as prefect, yelling at everybody to finish their homework or to stop fooling around, getting upset when Harry upstages her in Potions...this is not a shy, modest girl. Hermione is a person who takes charge in all other matters, so why does she automatically pass the throne to Harry in certain cases? You're right, it doesn't make sense.

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

this is not a shy, modest girl. Hermione is a person who takes charge in all other matters, so why does she automatically pass the throne to Harry in certain cases?

Exactly, right? I'm glad you get my pov on this. Hermione seems like someone who would enjoy running things, and yet she just steps aside for Harry's sake. I know there are some people who enjoy doing the legwork but are petrified of being in the public eye, but she's not anything like that, so yeah. Hmm.

Don't even get me started on how stupid the idea is of HARRY teaching people spells. I mean, he barely even knows spells for his own year level, what would he be able to teach older kids, like the Weasley twins?

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

Although, if you want to be fair, they *are* friends, so maybe Hermione just felt that Harry needed to take charge for once and gave up some of the spotlight for his sake. Which is pretty nice. But that still doesn't explain why she doesn't do that for Ron as well.

/Don't even get me started on how stupid the idea is of HARRY teaching people spells. I mean, he barely even knows spells for his own year level, what would he be able to teach older kids, like the Weasley twins?/

He does know how to do the Patronus Spell well, but he doesn't really know a lot of other spells. Which is really weird, considering that he's the protagonist and we've seen him through his seven years of magical education, yet his knowledge of spells doesn't seem that much greater than it was when he was eleven. Most of the new spells that he learns and uses are hexes...and the Unforgivables.

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

I just think it's funny how Harry keeps getting in trouble for an idea Hermione came up with, hee!

IDK, maybe Hermione realized Harry was the big drawcard so she figured people would take them more seriously if the Chosen One was running things- so it's a political kind of decision.

that still doesn't explain why she doesn't do that for Ron as well

Because she thinks he's an idiot without anything of worth to contribute and she'd rather do things for him after nagging endlessly?

Yes, Harry knows the Patronus- which is so cool and such advanced magic and people were so amazed he could manage it! And then a bunch of other kids are able to learn it as well. Such difficult magic that ADULT WIZARDS can't manage, but his teaching skills are just that awesome, I guess.

his knowledge of spells doesn't seem that much greater than it was when he was eleven

YEEEEES. When it gets to DH and he can't heal so much as a papercut, I just threw my hands up in despair. The boy's known from fifth year he's gonna be embroiled in a war, but does he take the time to learn important defensive/offensive and healing spells? No! That's what Hermione's good for! *shakes head*

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/IDK, maybe Hermione realized Harry was the big drawcard so she figured people would take them more seriously if the Chosen One was running things- so it's a political kind of decision./

That's a good point.

/Because she thinks he's an idiot without anything of worth to contribute and she'd rather do things for him after nagging endlessly?/

But they're supposed to be friends... :(

How I wish that there had been another chess match in the Harry Potter series, one in which Ron could show off his prowess at the game again, beat Hermione and Harry hands down, and show to the world that no, he's really not that stupid.

/When it gets to DH and he can't heal so much as a papercut, I just threw my hands up in despair. The boy's known from fifth year he's gonna be embroiled in a war, but does he take the time to learn important defensive/offensive and healing spells? No! That's what Hermione's good for!/

I don't see why he *and* Ron didn't take the time to learn more spells. I know that it was more important for Harry to do so, since he's the Chosen One, the person who's supposed to defeat Voldemort, etc., but as part of the team, Ron should have been stocking up on spells, too. Exactly, Harry knows that there's a war going on, he knows that he'll have to battle Voldemort one day, and yet he doesn't do anything to prepare for it? He himself tells Dumbledore that he doesn't believe he can defeat Voldemort and how does Dumbledore respond? He tells Harry that he doesn't need to worry because he can love. He has the Power of Love, the Power that Dark Lord knows not.

You know, Albus, love's good and all when you're trying to bring your Sith Lord of a father back from the Dark Side. I doubt it's as good when dealing with an amoral, homicidal psychopath with no personal investment in your existence.

[oryx_leucoryx]

but as part of the team, Ron should have been stocking up on spells, too. Exactly, Harry knows that there's a war going on, he knows that he'll have to battle Voldemort one day, and yet he doesn't do anything to prepare for it?

Especially as Ron had already come of age during the school year and could do any magic he wanted to legitimately.

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

But Ron can't exceed Harry! He's the foil, there to make even lazy dumbass Harry look good! *headdesk*

I love the way JKR consistently undermines him. Whatever bad grades Harry gets, Ron's always worse. When he gets the prefect badge, Harry comforts himself that only losers get it and everyone else picks on Ron- then later, Dumbles tells him he would've given it to him, and Ron was the last resort.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Harry's advantage over Hermione is that he has good reflexes and timing - which he practices at Quidditch, not just in dueling. But unless the DADA practical exam involved a mock-duel with Tofty and Marchbanks I doubt this advantage mattered for OWLs.

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

Haha, very true! I always wonder how the boys manage to scrape through their exams, they must do some hard-core cramming during study week.

And it's so annoying Harry gets a bonus point for being able to produce his Patronus. I doubt the other kids were given similar opportunities. >:[ I know, I know, it's just a single point, who cares, but still.