GOF Chapter 1: The Riddle House
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deathtocapslockPrologue 1: Why GOF, why now?
I have enjoyed the sporkings on this site immensely. They point out all that went wrong with HP, all that could have been done better, all that seemed like it was leading somewhere. They also show how characters can easily be seen in a different light than Rowling seems to have been intending to portray them. (One of the delightful surprises about a huge fandom such as HP has is that somewhere around there is a fan for any character, however minor or negatively portrayed. There are sympathetic fics about Pansy, Millicent, Lavender, Terry, Vincent ...) It is time to give back to the community. January seemed like a good time to start, as my temp job was supposed to have run out of funding. My contract has been extended for a while (with a further extension likely) so I decided not to wait. I'll just do these when I can.
I chose GOF because IMO this book encapsulates Rolwing's problems as a writer. This is where she tried to build on her earlier successes and reach higher, with a more complex tale, more twists, more side-stories, more red herrings and foils, more themes - and ran into her limits - with obvious plot holes, apparent world-building with insufficient foundation and insufficient thought to her backstory. She never resumed her pace. She tried to deepen the world-building in OOTP, reverse some implications readers picked up - none of this went anywhere later. As for contradictions and plot holes - she only managed to dig herself deeper. Not to mention unintended(?) implications.
In this reread of GOF I intend to pay particular attention to fitting information we know after the fact - not just from GOF but the entire series. I will try to explore as much as possible what characters were doing outside Harry's view, what they certainly knew, what they likely knew and what they may have known at each point. In particular Albus Dumbledore (AKA Dumbles, Dumbly, The Twinkly One, Twinkly and Twinkles) and Severus Snape, but also others (Lucius Malfoy, Igor Karkaroff, the two Crouches, Winky etc). In the end, I might even understand what the heck was going on.
Prologue 2: Where we are when this book begins.
The climax of the previous book took place on the night of June 6th 1994. On this night Harry was briefly reunited with his godfather Sirius, while Peter, the true betrayer of the Potters, was exposed (well, to some) but escaped in rat form. The following morning Harry revealed to Dumbledore that Sybil Trelawney had made a prophecy about Peter escaping to bring Voldemort back into power. Peter's escape also made the clearing of Sirius' name an impossibility (according to the Twinkly; would anyone doubt him?) and Sirius escaped on Buckbeak to parts unknown. Note that despite knowing where Peter was heading and despite having some mysterious 'sources' reporting Voldemort's whereabouts in Albania we see no sign of Albus himself doing anything to stop Peter, nor do we see any sign of him recruiting anyone at the Ministry or among his 'friends' (for want of a better term) to do so. Yet only 2 years previously he spoke to Harry of delaying Voldemort's return again and again. So did Albus believe in the inevitability of the prophecy? Or did he believe that attempting to prevent it from coming true would make it so? Or was he insincere about his plans in PS?
This book starts on August 23rd 1994, some 2.5 months later (based on the Lexicon calendar, which is well reasoned about this).
GOF Chapter 1: The Riddle House
This is one of those chapters which isn't from Harry's POV. Any chance Frank Bryce is more observant than Harry? Well, he's a Muggle, so he may have logic. OTOH he's a Muggle, so he's stupid. We'll see.
The narrative voice places the death of the Riddles half a century previously. If taken literally, that would be in 1944, the summer before Tom Jr's 7th year, when he was 17 (and a year after the basilisk adventure). This is contradicted by the information from HBP. Let's just take the half-century as an approximation.
The Riddles were unpopular for their snobbishness, so I suppose they deserved to be killed by their psychopathic scion, and we shouldn't care?
OTOH people were initially surprised by Frank's arrest. I suppose it's because lower class people are good and law-abiding? The way Stan Shunpike can't possibly be a DE. But within minutes they 'remember' how odd he always was (even before the war, it seems).
The Muggle police released Frank when they found no evidence connecting him to the deaths. How peculiar, who would ever think of such a thing?
After a series of families, now the Riddle House is owned by an absentee landlord. Any chances it is Tom Jr himself, who took the place over in order to keep people away from his Horcrux in the nearby Gaunt shack?
I'm wondering if Frank's 'obsession' with the house has any magical reason.
We are told 'Frank knew at once what was going on.' Yet he was wrong, the fire in the Riddle House was not lit by village boys. IOW any time Harry 'knows' something is fair game.
Rowling makes an effort to force this protagonist to be isolated and lacking support (no phone, distrusting the police), just like her main one - so as to pull him into a position to listen to plot clues.
Wormtail feeds his Lord liquid food. Poor Tom!
When Frank realized the intruders were grown men rather than pranking boys, why did he stay? Surely they were up to no good and in his physical shape I doubt he expected to overpower them if a fight broke out.
Somehow Tom lives on food that includes snake venom as an ingredient.
They have just arrived that night, from a journey that started in Albania. Of course we know they had wands (Tom's, Bertha's, maybe Peter's as well) so they could have done it in a hop, skip and jump, by multi-step Apparition. Assuming they knew places along the way to serve as intermediate destinations. Well, Tom would know, as he has a history of travel. Also, Portkeys can work at international range (as we shall see at the Quidditch World Cup) so that would be another option. OTOH if Peter had never been to the continent before - does this mean he couldn't have used magical transportation for his outward journey? How long must that have taken? Well, perhaps a rat can catch rides on trucks and boats. He did know to head for Albania - at the very least from what Dumbles said at the end of COS.
Why can't they proceed with the plan until after the Quidditch World Cup? Was Moody going to attend? Or did they already know Crouch Sr was planning to take his invisible son to the game (which implies they scouted the Crouch home before arriving at the Riddle House)? Or was Rowling looking for an excuse to mention a non-Muggle word to rouse Frank's suspicions?
Ah, the Ministry would be on higher alert, OK.
Note the date again. In 8 days their plan would require Barty Jr to use Polyjuice in order to be able to impersonate Moody. Oddly Frank doesn't notice the smell of cabbages. Is he anosmic in his old age? Was the smell of Polyjuice covered by other smells in the old house? Or did Peter order Polyjuice by owl? (Barty's confession states 'We had prepared the Polyjuice Potion beforehand' but 'prepared' could mean 'had it ready to use', not necessarily actually made from basic ingredients). In any case, Peter would have had to order ingredients from somewhere, including 2 possibly restricted ones, so I think it's a toss-up between the two options.
So Frank believes he is listening to the conversation of spies or criminals, but sticks around. That answers my question, he is one of the stupid kind of Muggles. Or the Muggle equivalent of Gryffindors.
Peter tries to convince Tom not to use Harry for his resurrection plan. Is he feeling guilty about being involved in killing the son of the friends he once betrayed? It can't be the action of any kind of magical compulsion, as using Harry's blood to make Tom's new body was the best favor Peter ever did to Harry. Peter expects to be able to find a substitute in 2 days. Tom doesn't trust Peter to return. So I suppose the two of them never parted at all since Albania? Does Tom demand that Peter take him to the bathroom with him?
Tom thinks Peter came to him for lacking other places to go. Is life with Tom really more attractive than the dumpster of a restaurant?
Tom won't survive if he isn't fed every few hours? I thought he had Horcruxes? It won't be pleasant, but he should be able to survive.
Tom believes his plan is effective, which coming from him probably means - at least as convoluted as Albus' last plan against him. It looks like one-upmanship between the two of them.
US edition claims one more death is needed to get to Harry. UK edition talks of one more curse. Neither makes sense. Was the one death supposed to be Crouch Sr? Moody? Both were kept alive and controlled by Imperius. Crouch - as cover up, Moody - as source of hair and information. So no murder was planned, and at least 2 separate curses were. (Anyway, as if Peter would be concerned about the number of people he killed or cursed - he already killed 12 in one curse. But those were Muggles, so they don't count.)
Tom is planning on being joined by an actually faithful servant. Doesn't it sound as though Peter doesn't know who this person is?
Peter brought Bertha Jorkins to Voldemort. Apparently they met in Albania while he was on his way. The information Voldemort managed to extract from her appears to have included the following (at the very least): Barty Jr is alive and being kept prisoner by his father; also, he remains loyal to Voldemort. The Triwizard Tournament will be held at Hogwarts the coming school year. Moody will serve as DADA teacher at Hogwarts. I do not know if she had specific information about the Triwizard tasks (though she may have), and she definitely did not know Barty would be having an outing to the Quidditch World Cup, as her visit to the Crouches must have been several years previously, when she still worked in Crouch's department, before transferring to Bagman's. All this means the Triwizard Tournament was not something Albus came up with after learning Peter was on his way to Tom, but something that had already been in the plans by then. Whose idea was it? Why revive the Tournament after centuries of dormancy just then?
BTW, note that in the Priori Incantatem event we get no evidence for any spells cast by the wand between Lily's death and Bertha's death, nor any between Bertha's death and Frank's, though we do get the echoes of the various instances of Cruciatus that Voldemort cast in the graveyard (both on Harry and Avery) as well as the shade of Peter's silver hand. Which means that whatever Tom did to Bertha (which must have included some torture at some point) and whatever other magic Tom and Peter did over the course of the year was not done with Tom's wand but either Bertha's or Peter's wand. I'm wondering now if before Tom had the BabyMort body he possessed Peter like he did with Quirrell a few years back, so it was PeterMort that did the physical actions that created BabyMort. BTW, how come Tom's wand works for him at all? Wasn't this wand defeated by Lily at Godric's Hollow?
Peter claims he thought Bertha might be useful, but Tom doesn't believe him. Well, Peter knew Bertha from school as a gossip. And from his life with the Weasleys he may have heard she worked at the Ministry and had once been a close assistant to Crouch. So it's not unreasonable for Peter to believe she might know something of value, though impossible to predict what that might be.
Tom tells Peter that in*reward* he will be allowed to be as useful as Bertha. Peter has enough brains to realize this is not good news. Oh, Tom's followers would certainly give their right hands to perform this task. Can't complain about Tom lacking a sense of humor. (Remember who else were promised rewards by Tom? Barty and the Lestranges. Theirs didn't turn out any better than Peter's.)
Poor Tom, forced to kill Bertha because she could identify Peter, and at the same time she became mentally incapacitated by Tom's interrogation techniques. "It would be an insult to her memory not to use the information I extracted from her, Wormtail." You are so funny, Tom, I could die.
Frank finally realizes he should go to the police. A bit too late. (BTW Harry is so important, even a complete stranger is concerned about danger to him.) Frank hears Tom hissing to Nagini. He does not hear Nagini's response, though Tom says he heard news from her. This has been consistent since COS - people who aren't Parselmouths can only hear the hissing of Parseltongue when made by a human, but not when made by a snake. So Twinkly may have learned enough of the language to understand what the Gaunts were hissing in the memories from Little Hangleton, but that doesn't help him locate the basilisk.
Nagini can recognize that Frank is a Muggle? Snakes certainly are perceptive in the Potterverse. Peter's face shows fear and alarm - why that reaction to being found by Frank? Or is this still his reaction to Tom's hints about how useful he was going to become? Or perhaps his reaction to Nagini's proximity?
Frank sounds very daring when he has no way of escape. Not very different from a Gryffindor in a tight corner. The last thing he sees in his life is Babymort. Yikes! Oh, and somehow Harry Potter's awakening is related to all this.
I have enjoyed the sporkings on this site immensely. They point out all that went wrong with HP, all that could have been done better, all that seemed like it was leading somewhere. They also show how characters can easily be seen in a different light than Rowling seems to have been intending to portray them. (One of the delightful surprises about a huge fandom such as HP has is that somewhere around there is a fan for any character, however minor or negatively portrayed. There are sympathetic fics about Pansy, Millicent, Lavender, Terry, Vincent ...) It is time to give back to the community. January seemed like a good time to start, as my temp job was supposed to have run out of funding. My contract has been extended for a while (with a further extension likely) so I decided not to wait. I'll just do these when I can.
I chose GOF because IMO this book encapsulates Rolwing's problems as a writer. This is where she tried to build on her earlier successes and reach higher, with a more complex tale, more twists, more side-stories, more red herrings and foils, more themes - and ran into her limits - with obvious plot holes, apparent world-building with insufficient foundation and insufficient thought to her backstory. She never resumed her pace. She tried to deepen the world-building in OOTP, reverse some implications readers picked up - none of this went anywhere later. As for contradictions and plot holes - she only managed to dig herself deeper. Not to mention unintended(?) implications.
In this reread of GOF I intend to pay particular attention to fitting information we know after the fact - not just from GOF but the entire series. I will try to explore as much as possible what characters were doing outside Harry's view, what they certainly knew, what they likely knew and what they may have known at each point. In particular Albus Dumbledore (AKA Dumbles, Dumbly, The Twinkly One, Twinkly and Twinkles) and Severus Snape, but also others (Lucius Malfoy, Igor Karkaroff, the two Crouches, Winky etc). In the end, I might even understand what the heck was going on.
Prologue 2: Where we are when this book begins.
The climax of the previous book took place on the night of June 6th 1994. On this night Harry was briefly reunited with his godfather Sirius, while Peter, the true betrayer of the Potters, was exposed (well, to some) but escaped in rat form. The following morning Harry revealed to Dumbledore that Sybil Trelawney had made a prophecy about Peter escaping to bring Voldemort back into power. Peter's escape also made the clearing of Sirius' name an impossibility (according to the Twinkly; would anyone doubt him?) and Sirius escaped on Buckbeak to parts unknown. Note that despite knowing where Peter was heading and despite having some mysterious 'sources' reporting Voldemort's whereabouts in Albania we see no sign of Albus himself doing anything to stop Peter, nor do we see any sign of him recruiting anyone at the Ministry or among his 'friends' (for want of a better term) to do so. Yet only 2 years previously he spoke to Harry of delaying Voldemort's return again and again. So did Albus believe in the inevitability of the prophecy? Or did he believe that attempting to prevent it from coming true would make it so? Or was he insincere about his plans in PS?
This book starts on August 23rd 1994, some 2.5 months later (based on the Lexicon calendar, which is well reasoned about this).
GOF Chapter 1: The Riddle House
This is one of those chapters which isn't from Harry's POV. Any chance Frank Bryce is more observant than Harry? Well, he's a Muggle, so he may have logic. OTOH he's a Muggle, so he's stupid. We'll see.
The narrative voice places the death of the Riddles half a century previously. If taken literally, that would be in 1944, the summer before Tom Jr's 7th year, when he was 17 (and a year after the basilisk adventure). This is contradicted by the information from HBP. Let's just take the half-century as an approximation.
The Riddles were unpopular for their snobbishness, so I suppose they deserved to be killed by their psychopathic scion, and we shouldn't care?
OTOH people were initially surprised by Frank's arrest. I suppose it's because lower class people are good and law-abiding? The way Stan Shunpike can't possibly be a DE. But within minutes they 'remember' how odd he always was (even before the war, it seems).
The Muggle police released Frank when they found no evidence connecting him to the deaths. How peculiar, who would ever think of such a thing?
After a series of families, now the Riddle House is owned by an absentee landlord. Any chances it is Tom Jr himself, who took the place over in order to keep people away from his Horcrux in the nearby Gaunt shack?
I'm wondering if Frank's 'obsession' with the house has any magical reason.
We are told 'Frank knew at once what was going on.' Yet he was wrong, the fire in the Riddle House was not lit by village boys. IOW any time Harry 'knows' something is fair game.
Rowling makes an effort to force this protagonist to be isolated and lacking support (no phone, distrusting the police), just like her main one - so as to pull him into a position to listen to plot clues.
Wormtail feeds his Lord liquid food. Poor Tom!
When Frank realized the intruders were grown men rather than pranking boys, why did he stay? Surely they were up to no good and in his physical shape I doubt he expected to overpower them if a fight broke out.
Somehow Tom lives on food that includes snake venom as an ingredient.
They have just arrived that night, from a journey that started in Albania. Of course we know they had wands (Tom's, Bertha's, maybe Peter's as well) so they could have done it in a hop, skip and jump, by multi-step Apparition. Assuming they knew places along the way to serve as intermediate destinations. Well, Tom would know, as he has a history of travel. Also, Portkeys can work at international range (as we shall see at the Quidditch World Cup) so that would be another option. OTOH if Peter had never been to the continent before - does this mean he couldn't have used magical transportation for his outward journey? How long must that have taken? Well, perhaps a rat can catch rides on trucks and boats. He did know to head for Albania - at the very least from what Dumbles said at the end of COS.
Why can't they proceed with the plan until after the Quidditch World Cup? Was Moody going to attend? Or did they already know Crouch Sr was planning to take his invisible son to the game (which implies they scouted the Crouch home before arriving at the Riddle House)? Or was Rowling looking for an excuse to mention a non-Muggle word to rouse Frank's suspicions?
Ah, the Ministry would be on higher alert, OK.
Note the date again. In 8 days their plan would require Barty Jr to use Polyjuice in order to be able to impersonate Moody. Oddly Frank doesn't notice the smell of cabbages. Is he anosmic in his old age? Was the smell of Polyjuice covered by other smells in the old house? Or did Peter order Polyjuice by owl? (Barty's confession states 'We had prepared the Polyjuice Potion beforehand' but 'prepared' could mean 'had it ready to use', not necessarily actually made from basic ingredients). In any case, Peter would have had to order ingredients from somewhere, including 2 possibly restricted ones, so I think it's a toss-up between the two options.
So Frank believes he is listening to the conversation of spies or criminals, but sticks around. That answers my question, he is one of the stupid kind of Muggles. Or the Muggle equivalent of Gryffindors.
Peter tries to convince Tom not to use Harry for his resurrection plan. Is he feeling guilty about being involved in killing the son of the friends he once betrayed? It can't be the action of any kind of magical compulsion, as using Harry's blood to make Tom's new body was the best favor Peter ever did to Harry. Peter expects to be able to find a substitute in 2 days. Tom doesn't trust Peter to return. So I suppose the two of them never parted at all since Albania? Does Tom demand that Peter take him to the bathroom with him?
Tom thinks Peter came to him for lacking other places to go. Is life with Tom really more attractive than the dumpster of a restaurant?
Tom won't survive if he isn't fed every few hours? I thought he had Horcruxes? It won't be pleasant, but he should be able to survive.
Tom believes his plan is effective, which coming from him probably means - at least as convoluted as Albus' last plan against him. It looks like one-upmanship between the two of them.
US edition claims one more death is needed to get to Harry. UK edition talks of one more curse. Neither makes sense. Was the one death supposed to be Crouch Sr? Moody? Both were kept alive and controlled by Imperius. Crouch - as cover up, Moody - as source of hair and information. So no murder was planned, and at least 2 separate curses were. (Anyway, as if Peter would be concerned about the number of people he killed or cursed - he already killed 12 in one curse. But those were Muggles, so they don't count.)
Tom is planning on being joined by an actually faithful servant. Doesn't it sound as though Peter doesn't know who this person is?
Peter brought Bertha Jorkins to Voldemort. Apparently they met in Albania while he was on his way. The information Voldemort managed to extract from her appears to have included the following (at the very least): Barty Jr is alive and being kept prisoner by his father; also, he remains loyal to Voldemort. The Triwizard Tournament will be held at Hogwarts the coming school year. Moody will serve as DADA teacher at Hogwarts. I do not know if she had specific information about the Triwizard tasks (though she may have), and she definitely did not know Barty would be having an outing to the Quidditch World Cup, as her visit to the Crouches must have been several years previously, when she still worked in Crouch's department, before transferring to Bagman's. All this means the Triwizard Tournament was not something Albus came up with after learning Peter was on his way to Tom, but something that had already been in the plans by then. Whose idea was it? Why revive the Tournament after centuries of dormancy just then?
BTW, note that in the Priori Incantatem event we get no evidence for any spells cast by the wand between Lily's death and Bertha's death, nor any between Bertha's death and Frank's, though we do get the echoes of the various instances of Cruciatus that Voldemort cast in the graveyard (both on Harry and Avery) as well as the shade of Peter's silver hand. Which means that whatever Tom did to Bertha (which must have included some torture at some point) and whatever other magic Tom and Peter did over the course of the year was not done with Tom's wand but either Bertha's or Peter's wand. I'm wondering now if before Tom had the BabyMort body he possessed Peter like he did with Quirrell a few years back, so it was PeterMort that did the physical actions that created BabyMort. BTW, how come Tom's wand works for him at all? Wasn't this wand defeated by Lily at Godric's Hollow?
Peter claims he thought Bertha might be useful, but Tom doesn't believe him. Well, Peter knew Bertha from school as a gossip. And from his life with the Weasleys he may have heard she worked at the Ministry and had once been a close assistant to Crouch. So it's not unreasonable for Peter to believe she might know something of value, though impossible to predict what that might be.
Tom tells Peter that in*reward* he will be allowed to be as useful as Bertha. Peter has enough brains to realize this is not good news. Oh, Tom's followers would certainly give their right hands to perform this task. Can't complain about Tom lacking a sense of humor. (Remember who else were promised rewards by Tom? Barty and the Lestranges. Theirs didn't turn out any better than Peter's.)
Poor Tom, forced to kill Bertha because she could identify Peter, and at the same time she became mentally incapacitated by Tom's interrogation techniques. "It would be an insult to her memory not to use the information I extracted from her, Wormtail." You are so funny, Tom, I could die.
Frank finally realizes he should go to the police. A bit too late. (BTW Harry is so important, even a complete stranger is concerned about danger to him.) Frank hears Tom hissing to Nagini. He does not hear Nagini's response, though Tom says he heard news from her. This has been consistent since COS - people who aren't Parselmouths can only hear the hissing of Parseltongue when made by a human, but not when made by a snake. So Twinkly may have learned enough of the language to understand what the Gaunts were hissing in the memories from Little Hangleton, but that doesn't help him locate the basilisk.
Nagini can recognize that Frank is a Muggle? Snakes certainly are perceptive in the Potterverse. Peter's face shows fear and alarm - why that reaction to being found by Frank? Or is this still his reaction to Tom's hints about how useful he was going to become? Or perhaps his reaction to Nagini's proximity?
Frank sounds very daring when he has no way of escape. Not very different from a Gryffindor in a tight corner. The last thing he sees in his life is Babymort. Yikes! Oh, and somehow Harry Potter's awakening is related to all this.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-01-05 12:25 pm (UTC)I was going to say "no, because Lily didn't disarm him", but if you can defeat a wand by snatching it from someone's hand, my logic probably doesn't work here :P.
The whole wand lore thing is clearly one of those rules that JKR cooked up especially for the last book, just like the change to the rules of Secret Keeping, so I expect that you will find quite a few oddities in the same line.
This is an interesting undertaking!
no subject
Date: 2011-01-05 08:07 pm (UTC)Interview
Date: 2011-01-05 11:11 pm (UTC)Re: Interview
Date: 2011-01-05 11:56 pm (UTC)I'm pretty sure the Department of Magical Catastrophes was at the house soon after the explosion to remove anything Muggles might find suspicious.
Re: Interview
From:Re: Interview
From:Re: Interview
From:Re: Interview
Date: 2011-01-06 02:20 am (UTC)Re: Interview
From:Re: Interview
From:no subject
Date: 2011-01-06 12:00 am (UTC)Thanks for the encouragement!
no subject
Date: 2011-01-06 04:14 am (UTC)Even if Lily isn't master then it must have bounced to Harry, being the next available living being in the room AND also having a little bit of Voldie in him. (That sounds weird) - IF Lily isn't the master then obviously Harry is the master of Voldies wand.
So it bounced from Lily to Harry, and from then on, Voldie's couldn't kill Harry with that wand, because Harry was the master. Even when he killed him, he didn't kill him.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-05 01:52 pm (UTC)I think it's since he understands what will follow later and doesn't enjoy murdering people (and seeing Nagini devouring their bodies). Or, if you feel less charitable, he suspects Voldemort will somehow make Frank's appearance his fault too.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-06 12:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-06 04:34 am (UTC)The explosion might have been bigger than intended, too. On the Knight Bus, Ernie said that the WW covered up the explosion as a gas explosion, but why couldn't that have been part of what really happened? If Peter genuinely wasn't very strong magically, that seems likely. Of course, Peter probably *could* have planned for a gas explosion to be triggered by whatever magic he used, so a real gas explosion doesn't mean that Peter didn't mean to kill as many people as he did.
It's also possible, I think, that Sirius was responsible for some of those deaths. Wasn't it Jodel who pointed out that if Sirius had thought Peter was dead, he must have thought that he, Sirius, had killed him? If he thought that he'd killed him, he must have done something which could plausibly blow up the street.
If Peter knew how Sirius tended to fight -- and wouldn't he know? -- then Peter might have been able to predict that Sirius would do something that would cause a lot of confusion and give Peter the chance to disappear. It's not as though Sirius wouldn't dream of lying about his own responsibility for the Muggle deaths when he was trying to convince people of his innocence in other respects.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-07 05:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2011-01-05 04:24 pm (UTC)Oh, but of course. Just like how Tom Riddle Sr. was a snooty rich kid, so he deserved to be drugged and raped by Merope and we shouldn't care. And we should also condemn him from running away from his rapist the minute after she stopped giving him the potion and he realized what had happened to him.
/Tom thinks Peter came to him for lacking other places to go. Is life with Tom really more attractive than the dumpster of a restaurant?/
Not even that - Peter could have just escaped as a rat to another country and then resumed life as a human there. The British wizarding community in HP is extremely insular to the point where I don't think that they'd even bother to search for him in other countries. None of the Death Eaters attacked Hermione's parents in Australia. All of Voldemort's mayhem seems to be confined to the United Kingdom, save for when he was living in Albania. The only times that we hear about non-British wizards are during the Triwizard Tournament, the Quidditch World Cup, and a few mentions of foreign wizards in DH that had something that Voldemort wanted. So, I don't see why Peter couldn't have just set up a new life and identity for himself in another country instead of going back to Voldemort.
/Nagini can recognize that Frank is a Muggle?/
Apparently, Muggles and wizards smell differently. And here I thought that Marvolo Gaunt's comment in HBP about how he'd seen "noses like that" in the Muggle village, implying that Muggles and wizards also have different noses, was silly.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-05 05:35 pm (UTC)Comeon! You know if the UK has Voldemort, over here in the USA, there've got to have something considerably more interesting going on. Thats why Voldemort didn't dare set his foot in the American hemisphere; he knew he'd be outclassed by the kind of dark wizards tramping round these parts.
I bet Cuba and Jamaca got better evil going on. What about Africa or China or Japan or any number of countries, I bet they got more bad juju than Voldiepants DE ever had!
Think of it, Someone smarter than Voldemort + USA Muggle Government connections + Louisiana Black Magic = There has got to be some crazy crap going on here in the USA magical world.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-06 12:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2011-01-06 04:11 am (UTC)Why Voldemort doesn't have as many death eaters as he used to
From:Re: Why Voldemort doesn't have as many death eaters as he used to
From:Re: Why Voldemort doesn't have as many death eaters as he used to
From:Re: Why Voldemort doesn't have as many death eaters as he used to
From:Re: Why Voldemort doesn't have as many death eaters as he used to
From:Re: Why Voldemort doesn't have as many death eaters as he used to
From:Re: Why Voldemort doesn't have as many death eaters as he used to
From:Re: Why Voldemort doesn't have as many death eaters as he used to
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From:no subject
Date: 2011-01-06 12:06 am (UTC):) Aha! And Muggles can't smell Polyjuice either.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-07 04:30 pm (UTC)OTOH hereditary aristocrats are evil and selfish. JKR's attitude to the class system reminds me of Lewis: "Sir, with respect, your inverted snobbery is showing again."
"within minutes they 'remember' how odd he always was (even before the war, it seems)."
That part seems quite realistic to me, actually. Like how the press always finds people to comment on suspects in murder/rape/paedophilia cases (cf. the Chris Jeffries coverage, going on at the moment).
"Tom won't survive if he isn't fed every few hours? I thought he had Horcruxes? It won't be pleasant, but he should be able to survive."
Perhaps his body would die and his would survive, just like last time.
Voldie Baby Body
Date: 2011-01-07 05:32 pm (UTC)I think she was asked in an interview about it and she would not elaborate. I forgot what interview it was, I'm thinking it was the mugglenet interview but whichever it was the way she hinted at it it was to discusting to talk about.
I mean ya know, there are a few creepy ideas I have but what would gross the author out so much she wouldn't even talk about it. Unless she hasn't even thought of it yet and so gave the false idea it was something interesting.
Re: Voldie Baby Body
Date: 2011-01-07 05:36 pm (UTC)Re: Voldie Baby Body
From:Re: Voldie Baby Body
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Date: 2011-01-07 10:50 pm (UTC)Also, what did happen to Ludo Bagman? We never did find out whether he was killed by the goblins, or really was a Death Eater and got hunted down like Karkaroff was later, or had been Imperiused back then and went into hiding with Slughorn, or what, which you would think would be relevant.
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Date: 2011-01-08 06:59 am (UTC)It's like she set up all these things to be addressed and then at the half way point decided to finish it up in an half-assed manner because she didn't want to write any more Harry Potter and found Dummbledore&Grindelwald and the psychotic backstory of Tom M Riddle Jr more interesting.
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Date: 2011-01-08 01:07 am (UTC)I appreciate that the fourth book is where Rowling starting ignoring huge plot holes for the sake of her plot but they still didn't number that many in my opinion. Not in comparison with the disaster of a last novel anyway. Most fans blinked but allowed Rowling her errors in GoF.
For me, it was book 6 where she simply ran out of things to write, giving us hundreds of pages of mindless filler about juvenile games of hormonal jealousy and trips down Pensieve Lane that would lead nowhere, which is where the series really took a turn for the worse. And then the last novel stands alone as a catostrophe, solid proof that Rowling hadn't known what she was doing and was incapable of writing the end game to her series.
Still, I look forward to seeing where the first signs of Rowling's future faults might be found in GoF.
Tom won't survive if he isn't fed every few hours? I thought he had Horcruxes? It won't be pleasant, but he should be able to survive.
We all know that Rowling didn't have a clue about the Deathly Hallows until she sat down to write her last novel, but I do think the horcruxes were almost as badly planned/plotted. I wonder how much she knew about them prior to book 6? When she wrote CoS did she have any idea that the diary was one gimmick of a set of eight? Voldemort was after immortality, sure ... but back then it was all unicorn blood and Philosophers Stones.
In any case, yes, the horcruxes don't seem to be that crash hot, do they? Riddle was nothing but a wraith for 13+ years, and then an emasculated homunculus after that. (How did he get from one to the other? Does it actually say that it was through the ministrations of Pettigrew?)
BTW, how come Tom's wand works for him at all? Wasn't this wand defeated by Lily at Godric's Hollow?
Heh, we're going to have lots of fun with the ludicrous DH wand rules, aren't we? :-)
Anyway, how could you say that the wand was defeated by Lily, when the woman was killed in the encounter? Maybe the result of the altercation was deemed to be a draw.
Oh, Tom's followers would certainly give their right hands to perform this task.
*groans*
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Date: 2011-01-08 06:50 am (UTC)At Book 6 she got lazy.
Instead of actually addressing the plot threads that had spunoff from OOTP, JKR dumped it all in favor of those Pensieve Home Videos, idiotic love shenanigans and stupid Quidditch. She barely paid any lip service to the important issues: the prophecy, the occlumency and the emotional toll of Sirius's death and instead everyone's character took two steps back in HBP and TDH.
The backstory exposition could easily have been handled in OOTP.
When she wrote CoS did she have any idea that the diary was one gimmick of a set of eight? Voldemort was after immortality, sure ... but back then it was all unicorn blood and Philosophers Stones.
GoF was the first time that I think Voldemort revealed his interest in immortality.
But the general possibility that he had sacrificed his humanity to survive death go back to the first book.
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Date: 2011-01-08 07:22 am (UTC)She barely paid any lip service to the important issues: the prophecy, the occlumency and the emotional toll of Sirius's death -
Well, the point is, those plot developments were only one-book wonders that she junked after OotP. That was typical of Rowling; she'd bring in something to prop up the story of one book, then throw it away afterwards. In this case, the prophecy was junked in HBP; Dumbledore, the man who'd deemed it to be so important that two, almost three wizards lost their lives in protecting it on his instructions, tells Harry in the next book that it means nothing, it's of no consequence, forget it. The Occlumency was also discarded; Voldemort had successfully used it against Harry in book #5, the boy had no defence, but in book #6 he drops this proven weapon for no good reason. And then in book 7 the whole thing would be inverted, with Voldemort actually *pushing* his most secret plans to his arch enemy ... because Rowling needed it to be that way for her artificial plot to have a chance of surviving.
And Sirius's death was likewise nigh forgotten. Although he turned up as a member of Harry's death cheer squad in DH.
Rowling always wrote each book largely as a 'stand alone' effort, but her junking so many things for book 6 - leaving a vacuum which she filled with inconsequential filler like the adolescent stupidity, the superfluous pensieve memories and the mystery of the - *yawn* - Half Blood Prince - was such a big step down in quality I think book 6 stands out as the point where she really failed with a capital F.
And then DH was a complete disaster; she just didn't know how to end the series at all. Not without bringing in brand-new gimmicks that even an amateur fanfic writer would disavow.
GoF was the first time that I think Voldemort revealed his interest in immortality.
But the general possibility that he had sacrificed his humanity to survive death go back to the first book.
So you're saying it was a suspicion in books 1-3, confirmed by Riddle himself in book 4?
I wonder if Rowling conjured up the idea of the horcruxes in book 4, then? Or even left it until book 6?
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