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.
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Date: 2011-01-09 12:47 am (UTC)And in COS we know Voldemort could put pieces of himself elsewhere intentionally such as his memories/personality/powers in the diary and unintentionally such as with some of his power in Harry.
The idea of multiple soul bits in pet snakes/family jewelry/trophies/people probably came about during the writing of OOTP since the first of them, the locket makes it debut. Shredding the soul by murder probably during the writing of HBP.