deathtocapslock | OOTP Chapter Two: "A Peck of Owls"

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OOTP Chapter Two: "A Peck of Owls"

* Well done, Dumbledore, setting a Squib and an unscrupulous petty thief to guard the Chosen One. There’s absolutely no way those security arrangements could prove inadequate.

* So DD knew that the Dursleys were abusing Harry, and yet did nothing to stop it. And we’re supposed to think of him as the “epitome of goodness”, are we?

* So Mundungus Fletcher’s gone off to buy cauldrons when he should’ve been looking after Harry. Am I the only one to get flashbacks of Hagrid at this point?

* Also, I wonder why Dumbledore keeps hiring incompetent subordinates. Does being around useless people make him feel better about himself, or something?

* Look how the Dursleys’ concern about their son is played for laughs. If they weren’t so pathetic, they’d obviously realise that having your soul almost sucked out is part of growing up. It makes a man out of you, just like bullying does.

* Harry’s threatening to attack Uncle Vernon. Yes, I know that Vernon doesn’t treat him very well and Harry’s not thinking straight, but still, you’d have thought that a boy with the Power of Love ™ would refrain from threatening defenceless Muggles.

* Silly Dursleys, not believing poor Woobie!Harry like that. Obviously when your only son arrives on your doorstep in a state of considerable distress, and claims to have been attacked by a wizard with the means, motive and opportunity to attack him, the correct response is to ignore everything he says and listen to the slightly disturbed attacker. Obviously.

* Actually, it’s struck me that that comment could apply to most concepts and events in the last three books.

* BTW, does anyone know what Dudley did actually hear? Did JK Rowling mention it in one of her interviews?

* Harry’s really not doing his case any good here. By losing his temper like that, he’s making himself look like exactly the sort of person who would magically attack someone he didn’t like.

* In hindsight, “that awful boy” sounds like a very good description of James Potter. Note, though, that again disliking Harry’s parents is being used as an indicator of moral inferiority.

* Tcha, silly Dursleys, being terrified that Harry might attack them. Never mind that he’s acting rather aggressively, that they’d be practically defenceless if he did attack them, and that their last encounter with a wizard didn’t exactly end well.

* I like how “I deliberately provoked Dudley into losing his temper by humiliating him in front of his friends” becomes “Dudley thought he’d be smart with me”.

* Why is it that Rowling!Muggles never seem to be able to pronounce any magical words? “Dementors” isn’t that hard to say, and I don’t see why Uncle Vernon has to say “Dementoids” instead. It’s sad that JKR feels the need to artificially stunt all her Muggles’ intelligence like this in order to make the wizards look better.

* “Of course they didn’t get his soul, you’d know if they had.” Really, Harry? Really? The Dursleys are Muggles, and therefore are not expected to be familiar with Dementors. How are they supposed to know the symptoms of soul-removal?

* I don’t think Vernon’s “struggling to bring the conversation back to a plane which he understood” so much as trying to find some good in the situation, which, IMHO, is a perfectly natural and understandable reaction.

* God, but Harry’s being so unsympathetic here.

* It’s not really that strange that the Dursleys don’t flinch when they hear the name Voldemort. For a start, they don’t know who he is; secondly, that whole “don’t say the name!” thing was ridiculous. You don’t hear Muggles flinching when someone says “Hitler”, for example, and I doubt Voldemort was any worse.

* It’s a bit hypocritical of Harry to bitch about Vernon not showing sympathy about the murder of his parents whom he can’t remember, when he himself has been so unsympathetic about Vernon’s only son almost being killed just now.

* Petunia’s eyes are “so unlike her sister’s”. Just to remind us that Lily was awesome, whilst Petunia isn’t. Although personally, I’d much rather be friends with Petunia and Lily. Yes, she might be a bit nosy and snobbish, but at least she wouldn’t laugh when I’m publicly humiliated by the school bully.

* TBH, if I were in Uncle Vernon’s position, I’d probably want Harry to go, too.

* “The Kitchen, Number Four, Privet Drive.” So wait, how does DD know Petunia’s there? Either he’s an omniscient plot god or he’s just a normal human being like the rest of us. Either one could work, IMHO, but to try and portray him as both, as JK Rowling does, just seems contradictory.

* I wonder what Dumbledore did to make Petunia so scared of him?

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* “What could spoilt, pampered, bullying Dudley possibly have been forced to hear?” This could have provided an opportunity for some interesting character development, but unfortunately, it doesn’t go anywhere.

If this were a rational world populated by human beings, Dudley probably would have been forced to confront the fact that his parents were needlessly abusive to his cousin head on, including the nightmares he'd had since he was little that he would someday screw up in their eyes and then *he'd* be the abused, neglected one. This would eventually lead him to realize that a large part of his behavior, including the bullying, was a result of him seizing any little action his parents praised and then ramping it up to eleven to try and make sure that they didn't stop loving him. This would include eating more than he necessarily felt like (because normal growing boys have good appetites, and he *was* normal, not a freak like Harry), asserting himself (which was Not Whining - his parents always said so), and demonstrating his leadership abilities like his dad always told him to (it wasn't *his* fault that people needed some sense knocked into them before they saw the best way to go about things. Really, he was starting to understand why his dad was frustrated all the time - people just didn't *listen.*). Harry, of course, needed to be kept in his place for the good of the family. That had to be why his parents acted the way they did. As a good son it was his responsibility to help keep his trouble making cousin in line, no hard feelings....

Except the dementor tore down that facade of excuse and willful ignorance, ripping it apart to get at all those delicious insecurities and doubts underneath. Once Dudley recovered from the initial shock he had to deal with those truths. He had a few painful, awkward conversations with his parents that skirted the subject, but could never bring himself to broach it directly. Not as a teenager, not when he was so unsure of where he really stood in his parents' regard. Harry, of course, was at Hogwarts, and writing was too awkward, even if he could figure out how to get the mail delivered. When Harry returned, he made it very clear that he wanted nothing to do with Dudley, and Dudley generally respected that, still not sure whether to pretend that nothing happened, or to try to make amends.

Eventually, he decided on the latter, but had no idea how to go about it. He couldn't ask his parents, and he didn't dare risk his reputation trying to ask his peers (who probably wouldn't know a thing about it anyway) or look it up. So he settles on things that made him feel better when he was down - food, tea, only healthy stuff is in the house now. He'd make a sandwich and bring it to Harry's door, bring his hand up to knock, and then... freeze. He doesn't know what to say if Harry answers. Can't find the words to explain himself, and doesn't want a fight or to make Harry feel like he's try to threaten him like he did when they were little. So he'd take the plate away and eat it himself or put it in the fridge. One day, he starts just leaving them outside the door for several hours at a stretch, just on the off chance that Harry will come out and find them. No note, because he's still bad with words, but he's hoping that Harry will ask what it was doing there, and that if he's not the first one to speak, he'll know what he's supposed to say...

Of course, this is Rowling world, so he was probably just flat out told by the soul sucking demon that he was a terrible person for treating the Chosen One so horribly. No personal development or painful epiphanies needed. Now he must grovel to Harry!Christ that he might repent himself of sin and maybe, just maybe, be allowed into the promised land and not be cast into the fires of everlasting damnation.

Hey, I like that! :) Although it is a bit sad to think that it's almost certainly more believable, interesting and sympathetic than what Rowling actually thinks happened...

Oh, wow... *Cough*

"I think that when Dudley was attacked by the dementors, he saw himself, for the first time as he really was. This was an extremely painful but ultimately salutory lesson and began the transformation in him."
That's the quote.

I am going to paraphrase some early Dane Cook for you because it's applicable and I'm sure it's what you're thinking. "Damn it! I was right! I hate that I'm like Nostradamus and I can predict Rowling's tropes!"

*sigh* Knew it.

I've found that the trick to predicting the lovely Ms. Rowling's attributed motivations is to assume the most petty, caricatured, and flimsy excuses for her self-deluded 'bad guys.' Yes, self-deluded. You see, like Dudley they all secretly know that they are deeply horrible people who are wrong to even think the slightest bit badly of Saint Harry the Pure. However, they're all just lying to themselves when they think that they have "reasons" for not liking him or not falling over themselves being nice to him or even (a sign true and utter depravity in the Rowling verse) being a little mean to him and/or calling him names.

(Actually, this is sounding disturbingly like those fundies who insist that everyone else on the planet KNOWS that their god is the real one but are lying when they say they don't so they can... be sinful... without feeling guilty... or something.)

What Rowling and the fundies seem to find completely incomprehensible is that almost no human (or applicable sentient creature) since the inception of the species has actually thought of *themselves* as "evil." Other people, HECK yes, ourselves, no. We all have reasons for the things we do, and we all like to think of ourselves as being basically good people, even if we mess up some of the time. Even when we do do things that we know (or just feel) are "bad" or "wrong," we still have excuses about how it isn't *that* bad or *that* wrong, and anyway it's just this one time and it'll never happen again so-I'm-still-basically-a-good-person.

Likewise, she can't seem to wrap her mind around the fact that otherwise good people do behave immorally from time to time, and that *this needs to acknowledged!* If you call out your characters for their misdeeds, and have them learn from them, they become a flawed, but ultimately MORE heroic person than someone who was perfect from the beginning. But of course, her characters are never wrong about anything, and so utterly noble and pure on top of it. Hence, Harry the Perfect Torturer.

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Ooh, thanks for that rec!

Seconded. Thank you.

Thirded. This is so interesting - Harry acting believably damaged, Dudley actually growing up, and (particularly in the sequel) Harry channeling Snape, and realizing just how fatherly Severus Snape really was to him.

But I was always convinced that the dementors would show Dudley his parents turning on him, as they had on Harry. "Himself as he really was?" Nonsense!

I don't think either can be true, because dementors aren't boggarts. They don't show you your fear, they show you actual past experiences that are upsetting. But if Dudley did fear his parents turning on him then he'd relive a situation that brought on such thoughts. For example his parents punishing Harry.

But does it have to be a memory of a situation that actually happened, or is the emotional response inherent in the memory the most important piece? After all, some nightmares are more terrifying than anything that actually happens to us in our lives, and can have just as much of an impact on our emotional states.

What I'm trying to say is that it's clear that dementors work with memories, not speculation, but it seems to me that if you *have* a memory where thinking or dreaming lead you to a moment of fear/despair/other-tasty-to-dementors-feeling, then that memory should also be fair game.

In other words, if Dudley had feared his parents turning on him like Mary J and I have speculated, and worked himself into a state over it even without any single defining/catalytic event, then it feels like those memories of fear should be just as viable as any other.

* Mrs. Figg seems to have a close association with cats, just like Filch. Is that an inherent power of Squibs? And if so, is that the source of the association between witches and cats (Squibs and almost-Squibs being the magical folk most likely to fall into Muggle hands)?</>

Is it implied that some of her cats are (like Crookshanks) part-Kneazle?

* So Mundungus Fletcher’s gone off to buy cauldrons when he should’ve been looking after Harry. Am I the only one to get flashbacks of Hagrid at this point?

Didn't Hagrid deposit an 11-year-old Harry on Diagon Alley and then go off drinking?

* Also, I wonder why Dumbledore keeps hiring incompetent subordinates.

Yet another side that he's the real villain! Only a villain would hire such incompetent henchmen!

** Now that I think of it, isn’t Harry being a little silly in staying at the Dursleys’? Couldn’t they keep No. 4 Privet Drive as his official residence, but have him live with a wizarding family – say, the Weasleys – who’d be able to deal with magical threats like Dementors?

Or why not have an on-site bodyguard? It's not clear how the Dursleys protect him - e.g., how far can he go from the house? Was he safe at school? at the zoo? If strange wizards could hug him in the street, could others not attack him? Could they hire a Muggle to kill him?

If strange wizards could hug him in the street, could others not attack him? Could they hire a Muggle to kill him?

Could they Apparate away with him? Hand him a Portkey to Mount Doom? A cursed magical artifact of their choice?

Or could they imperius a muggle or a non Death Eater affiliate magical creature to attack him? We are clearly giving this a lot more thought than JKR ever did, but it does look like Dumblebore was bluffing about the existence of this supposed protection - except that Voldemort seems to think it exists, so perhaps it is an Emperor's Clothes kind of trick on Voldemort.

Maybe this is it - no one in their right mind would think the Greatest Wizard In The World (TM) would leave the Chosen One unprotected, so they never even try. Except that I'm not sure all the DEs are smart enough to think that, and Voldemort has personally benefited from Dumbledore's negligence in the past, so...

* Now that I think of it, isn’t Harry being a little silly in staying at the Dursleys’? Couldn’t they keep No. 4 Privet Drive as his official residence, but have him live with a wizarding family – say, the Weasleys – who’d be able to deal with magical threats like Dementors?

Maybe it's something to do with laws of hospitality granting the guest protection once they've been fed by the host - presumably Harry has to live there for a minimum amount of time for it to count. Not that JKR put the slightest bit of thought into it, and it's not like there was any real reason to keep him ignorant of the wizarding world (if Dumbledore was worried about Harry being treated like a god before he was the right age to appreciate it, why didn't he raise him?).

I hate this canon. I can't even fanwank anything remotely suitable to solve some of the plot holes.

/* So DD knew that the Dursleys were abusing Harry, and yet did nothing to stop it. And we’re supposed to think of him as the “epitome of goodness”, are we?/

And in the sixth book, he gets mad at the Dursleys for not "doing as he asked." Well, you *knew* that they weren't "doing as you asked." You've known it for *years.* Why wait until *now* to reprimand them for it?

/If they weren’t so pathetic, they’d obviously realise that having your soul almost sucked out is part of growing up. It makes a man out of you, just like bullying does./

And just like being nearly killed by a wild animal does. And if you or your parents complain about it, then you're just a coward who wants to get people into trouble.

/“What could spoilt, pampered, bullying Dudley possibly have been forced to hear?”/

You know, Harry, maybe there's more to Dudley than you know. Maybe, despite being a spoilt, pampered, bullying brat, Dudley has his own issues. Did you ever think of that? I know that he's been horrible to you, but do you think that maybe this moment just goes to show that he's human too? No, of course not. And don't worry about Draco in the next book, because he's just a spoilt, pampered, bullying brat, too. What could he possibly have to worry about?

/“Dementors” isn’t that hard to say, and I don’t see why Uncle Vernon has to say “Dementoids” instead. It’s sad that JKR feels the need to artificially stunt all her Muggles’ intelligence like this in order to make the wizards look better./

Yet Arthur Weasley's inability to pronounce the word "electricity" is played for laughs and not taken as a sign of low intelligence.

/* It’s not really that strange that the Dursleys don’t flinch when they hear the name Voldemort. For a start, they don’t know who he is;/

This moment just goes to show how isolated Harry has already become from Muggles. He judges their world by wizarding standards. He's surprised that the Dursleys don't care about Voldemort because after all, *wizards* are scared of Voldemort.

/secondly, that whole “don’t say the name!” thing was ridiculous. You don’t hear Muggles flinching when someone says “Hitler”, for example, and I doubt Voldemort was any worse./

Which is why I'd like to read a fanfic scene where a wizard is trying to explain to his Muggle friend/relative about why they shouldn't use the name and the Muggle just flatly looks at him and says it anyway. And when the wizard freaks out, the Muggle scoffs about how nobody is afraid of saying Hitler's name or Stalin's name, etc., and yet the oh-so-powerful wizards get their knickers in a twist over saying this one guy's name.

Curiously enough, you don't hear wizards flinching whenever somebody mentions Gellert Grindelwald, even though he was a very powerful Dark Wizard too. In fact, practically nobody mentions him anymore, even though he had an agenda that was very similar to Voldemort's and conquered much of Europe. Do you think that years after the epilogue occurs, Voldemort's name will also be forgotten?

/* Petunia’s eyes are “so unlike her sister’s”. Just to remind us that Lily was awesome, whilst Petunia isn’t. Although personally, I’d much rather be friends with Petunia and Lily. Yes, she might be a bit nosy and snobbish, but at least she wouldn’t laugh when I’m publicly humiliated by the school bully./

Hmm, Lily turns a blind eye to James bullying Snape, and Petunia turns a blind eye to Dudley bullying Harry. If Petunia had been in Snape's position, I wonder if her treatment of Harry would be some twisted way of seeking revenge on Lily and James. And no, I don't care what this passage says; they are not polar opposites. "The Prince's Tale" showed us that Lily was just as petty and shallow as Petunia. The only way that they're opposites is that Lily was pretty and magical and Petunia isn't.

This moment just goes to show how isolated Harry has already become from Muggles.

Remember in the first book when Ron is amazed by Harry saying Voldemort's name on the train?

If Petunia had been in Snape's position

I think she is in Snape's position. They are both committed to keep Harry alive and protect him physically, both manipulated into this position by Albus. Severus is also committed (to himself, not Albus) to his moral state, to make sure he does *not* become the next James.

True, but I meant if Petunia had been relentlessly bullied and tormented by James while Lily stood by the sidelines and laughed. If Petunia had hated James as much as Severus did, for the same reason, then it would be eerie if her treatment of Harry was supposed to echo Lily's treatment of her, if her hatred of Harry was fueled by her hatred of James.

You've known it for *years.* Why wait until *now* to reprimand them for it?

They moved Harry to a bedroom after the first owl addressed to the closet. And one reminder was enough to get Petunia to object to Vernon throwing him out here. And Dumbles knew it. If he had wanted the Dursleys to treat Harry differently he could have arranged for it. Heck, he could have rewritten their memories to believe he was Dudley's twin. That Twinkly didn't interfere suggests to me he liked things the way they were, he was expecting to benefit from them.

He should have dropped a bag of gold off with the baby. The Dursley's don't seem like 'rich' people. The house sounds like a average middle class to lower middle class home. You'd think if Harry had all that gold rolling around a bank that there would be some sort of compensation for them to take care of the kid.

I'm not saying the Dursley's were right to treat the child the way they did but still - Here have a baby to take care of - you didn't plan on having to take care of 2 one year old boys Petunia but you will care for the baby because it's your relation.

Imagine your expectation of a life at the moment is your 1 child, and then you end up getting another unexpectedly. I don't care how wonderful a person you are thats got to put stress on you and your family.

But hell, anyone that drops a baby off in the middle of the night in November with just a note attached to it isn't all that caring. I can't say DD or MM gave a damn about him either.

The fact that Minerva McGonagall is right there and allows it doesn't say much about her either. She protests but I don't even remember if they knocked on the door or rang the doorbell. Didn't they just walk away?

It would have served them right if a wild animal had of walked up and ate little one year old baby Harry.

but I don't even remember if they knocked on the door or rang the doorbell. Didn't they just walk away?

No knocking or ringing. Petunia just found Harry when she took out the milk bottles. Good thing there was an early morning outdoor chore. Had it been the weekend who knows when she would have seen Harry (or what was left of him).

Dang it! Pratchett does it better, despite writing what started as parody and became satire. When the witches need to arrange for strangers to adopt the infant heir to the Lancre throne they put them to a test of character and when they pass the witches give them the infant plus money for his care.

(In Ankh Morpork orphans are traditionally left on the doorsteps of the guild-houses, so they can be brought up with a profession. Since it is a known arrangement one can assume that at least the sensible guilds have some arrangement to keep the infants from freezing to death. I won't trust the Guild of Fools, Joculators, Minstrels, Buffoons and Mime Artists, though.)

It would have served them right if a wild animal had of walked up and ate little one year old baby Harry.

And Dumbles announced that now Voldemort is finally gone? Except Severus' Mark would prove otherwise, so maybe not. I guess he would ahve realized there were other horcruxes sooner than in canon in that case. I don't think Dumbles wuld have been really troubled. Minerva and Hagrid yes.

So wait, how does DD know Petunia’s there?

Duh, she's a woman! You KNOW what we're like! We need to be in the kitchen, cooking for the boys, washing their underpants, all those little thrills we get taking care of our menfolk.

Yes, I know that Vernon doesn’t treat him very well and Harry’s not thinking straight,
You know it. If Rowling('s Stans) would just acknowledge that he's not perfect, it would be fine. I mean damn, I've got a stupid RP character, but I always either explain his (flawed) logic or just flat out say in the prose that his behavior is stupid/irresponsible/irrational/childish. Chastise your darlings, Ro.

“What could spoilt, pampered, bullying Dudley possibly have been forced to hear?”
LET'S THINK!
Spoilt? Everything being taken away would scare him.
Pampered? Abject poverty would scare him.
Bullying? Sounds like someone has control issues and that being the target would scare him.
But I give a free pass on this one since I can't expect Harry to think like that. No snark in that sentence either- he probably just couldn't fathom it and that's understandable. He's just not good at putting himself in the place of others. And I kinda expect it. He was brought up around supposedly selfish people, so what else is he going to learn but how to be selfish? Or, Hell, not even selfish, but just only thinking of himself since he had to do that to survive?

This again is part of my series of "Flaws don't make you a bad person, for fuck's sake!" pleas. I'd respect Harry so much more if we got to see the negatives of his abuse. Otherwise, why are we vilifying the Dursleys? If he really was starving, physically abused, emotionally abused, and tormented, why didn't it leave anything behind other than broken glasses and a svelte figure?
If there wasn't much abuse and Harry's just a normal, baw-ing teenager, then why the Dursley hate?

Come on, now... if people would acknowledged that Harry's TV only gets The Harry Channel (all Harry all the time!) and that it's selfish, would it be the same as saying "Harry is bad, the series is bad"? No! I can love a character and see their warts!

The Harry Potter Fandom: "I love oranges" means "I am an anti-apple extremist and all apples must die".

>> The Harry Potter Fandom: "I love oranges" means "I am an anti-apple extremist and all apples must die". <<

Seen the annoying orange videos? ;)

Why no, can't say I have.

"* “Of course they didn’t get his soul, you’d know if they had.” Really, Harry? Really? The Dursleys are Muggles, and therefore are not expected to be familiar with Dementors. How are they supposed to know the symptoms of soul-removal?"

Even with the gravity of the situation, the way you worded it ("the symptoms of soul removal") made me chuckle a bit.

In all honesty, though, I think Dudley would probably be a living vegetable if the Dementors got him. Which somehow makes Harry's lack of concern even more infuriating. >:-(

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OOTP Chapter Two: "A Peck of Owls"

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