GOF Chapter 18: The Weighing of the Wands

[oryx_leucoryx]

Oooh! Harry hates being the hero of Gryffindor now that Ron isn't talking to him! Hermione solves his dilemma by bringing him breakfast, so he can delay meeting the student body for a while. (Yes madderbrad, Hermione/Harry OTP, but only on Hermione's side.) Ah, at least Hermione believes him! (Not necessarily for the right reasons, though, because nothing really prevented Harry from placing his name in the goblet or arranging for it to be placed there. The hard part was arranging it for the Goblet to spout his name out.) But Ron - he is just jealous for the attention Harry is getting, that's it! Not because he thinks Harry selfishly went on an adventure without him, no, not at all. Hmm, I think there is much support for Harry/Ron here (and nice foreshadowing of Ron as the one Harry would miss the most). Hermione recognizes it, thus trying to do some damage control by claiming Ron doesn't really believe Harry entered of his own choice. (So far the trio shipping looks like: Ron->Hermione, Hermione->Harry, Harry->Ron. Which is why no pairings of 2 members of the trio in a mutual relationship looks like it could work.)

Hermione is practicing her Molly skills - nagging Harry into being sensible. He does listen, eventually, and writes to Sirius (3rd letter ever). Aww, Harry remembers to say he hopes Sirius and Buckbeak are OK. See, he can express thought of someone else once in a while. Why doesn't Hermione encourage Harry to talk to Dumbles? I suppose she already drank enough of his Kool-Aid to think that if there was anything Dumbles could do to help he'd already do it or something. I wish I could say she saw through Dumbles' game and realized he wasn't interested in Harry's survival, but her behavior in later books contradicts this.

The Hufflepuffs were usually on excellent terms with the Gryffindors - they didn't mind being ignored or thought of as duffers. Harry's Gryffindor thinking gets him believing the Hufflepuffs are bothered by their glory being stolen. No Harry, that's not what they are thinking. They are thinking you cheated, that's what bothers them. Had the rules said each school has 2 champions they'd have had no problem with you being the other one.

Now Hagrid wants the kids to take the skrewts for walkies. The beasts are now strong and hard to control, but Hagrid isn't supervising the class, he is just taking Harry aside for a private chat. BTW Hagrid believes Harry because Dumbledore does. Well, if Hagrid formed an unpopular opinion on his own we'd have had to suspect Harry has fallen into 'interesting creature' category. Oh and walking skrewts will certainly prepare the students for their OWLs next year.

Harry fails at Summoning Charms, just like Neville. (But apparently unlike Ron. Sometimes Ron does better than Harry at magic, but only when it doesn't matter to the plot and especially if the two of them are estranged so Harry doesn't have to worry about complimenting Ron.)

Harry notices how cute Cedric is. And how popular he had become with the girls. Is Harry just a bit jealous of Cedric or for Cedric? (Harry/Cedric OTP?)

It is now almost 2 weeks since Harry was chosen as champion - when the Potter stinks badges appear. BTW the message supporting Cedric is red, the message taunting Harry is green. So you'd know which House is associated with positive messages and which with negative ones. Draco is proud of his badges because with their morphing ability they are more advanced than Hermione's single-message SPEW ones. Draco/Hermione OTP! (Though since it is Harry's attention Draco seeks with the badges then it may indeed be Draco/Harry OTP.) Notice that almost all of Draco's more inventive ideas are inspired by Hermione? Badges, sending instructions to Rosmerta by charmed Galleon, smuggling poisoned mead into Hogwarts. Though using the cabinet was entirely his own.

Ron is standing with Dean and Seamus. Because he is a boy with normal social skills - when he doesn't get along with his best friend he has others to turn to. Ah, in typical style Draco managed to provoke Harry into hexing him. And he expected it, which is why he was ready to hex at the same time. Clashing hexes will appear again in this book, but will be different (because the wands involved will be 'brothers') and again in the finale of DH. What I don't understand is why does Harry's hex bounce to Goyle while Draco's bounce to Hermione. Had the spells clashed exactly head on, I'd expect each one to bounce on its caster. If they clashed at a slight angle, I could understand if Harry's spell had hit Hermione who was standing next to him, and Draco's had hit Goyle. But we can't have Harry hexing Hermione, even by accident, so Rowling shows us how she fails at physics once more. (In DH Tom's spell bounces exactly back at him while Harry's goes straight ahead and hits Tom too - that's a different variation of the same physics!fail. Harry should have disarmed himself. But that wouldn't look good, so it didn't happen.)

So, Hermione reacts to being (temporarily) facially disfigured in panic. This is a second time for her, after the Polyjuice mishap 2 years previously. She notes to herself that if she ever wants to hurt anyone badly she should go for the person's face.

Severus arrives and wants an explanation. Draco gives a truthful though very partial and one-sided explanation. Harry tries to add the missing details but it is Ron who forces Hermione to show her face to Severus. What a considerate way to treat his love. Meanwhile the Slytherin girls, while giggling, are making an effort to go unnoticed by Severus - their giggles are silent and they take care to remain behind his back. This tells me they know that their behavior wouldn't go down well with him if seen.

Severus' "I see no difference" has been interpreted many different ways by fans, but whatever he meant by it, the kids on both sides take it as an intentional insult and he does nothing to correct this impression. He has good reasons not to like Hermione's treatment of him over the years, but right here she was a bystander who became collateral damage, so that's most un-nice of him.

I'm not sure why Harry thinks it was lucky Severus couldn't hear what he and Ron called him. He knew they weren't complimenting him, and they ended up losing 50 points and serving detentions anyway. Harry is livid about the injustice done to him and Ron. Right, The-Boy-Who-Lived-To-Be-A-Champion should be allowed to yell and swear at his teacher. It's in the small print of the binding magical contract, I'm sure.

Note that neither Draco nor Harry gets punished for dueling. Because as Terri has shown under Dumbledore teachers are not allowed to punish students for rule-breaking the teacher did not witness hirself, unless the student confesses. Well, one can argue that in this case Harry did admit to hexing Draco. So Harry would be punished in any case. But the way it is presented, it seems that had Harry and Ron joined the class quietly neither would have been punished.

Poor Harry! Even this shared experience doesn't return Ron to him! Most definitely Harry/Ron, from Harry's side. Meanwhile Harry fantasizes of Cruciating Severus. Well, this degree of wanting revenge is certainly the evidence of how full of love he is. Dumbles is right, Harry was never-ever tempted by the Dark Arts, no way!

They were supposed to brew antidotes (to which poison? or are these general purpose, broad target antidotes, while the more specific ones are NEWTs level?), and Severus was going to poison one of them to see if hir antidote worked. He was going to randomly select Harry for this purpose, because those are the rules of this universe. And Harry was going to waste his antidote on some revenge fantasy. Lots of sense he has. Fortunately he is saved by Colin. Severus is not letting go of Harry easily, but eventually surrenders to the words of Bagman, as delivered by Colin. So whom did he poison?

Fleur has the attention of both Cedric and the photographer. But not Viktor. Maybe coming from Bulgaria he built up resistance to Veela charms? Or perhaps only a quarter-Veela wasn't enough for him? Or was he already head-over-heels in love with Hermione?

Turns out this wasn't just a photo-op, there's a wand-weighing ceremony coming too. But before that Harry has to endure his first interview with Rita Skeeter. In a broom cupboard. In the dark. Where Rita pushes him on a box. Hints of child-rape?

I wonder whose intelligence is operating the Quick Quotes Quill - Rita's or something spelled into it by its manufacturer. If Rita really is 43 then she was 2 or 3 years ahead of Lucius at Hogwarts, maybe around Molly and Arthur's age. Also Bellatrix's age. She probably knows from way back then how to get at these people if she wants to.

Dumbles shows up and stops the rape-by-quill. Aww, Rita wants to hear Dumbles' reaction to a piece in which she was nasty to him. She called him an obsolete dingbat. I wonder over what. Which of his ideas are now considered old-fashioned? Aren't we supposed to think Albus was ahead of his day in his pseudo-egalitarianism? Are the 'many wizards in the street' whom Rita considers her audience more exclusivist or more egalitarian than Albus?

Ollivander will check that the champions' wands are in good working order. Because a school champion might fail to notice hir wand not answering correctly. I find it a bit odd, but never mind. Of course Ollivander can only test that the wand is performing spells, he can't test the degree of mastery the champion has over hir wand. But since the whole mastery business is something Ollivander only learned in preparation for his encounter with Harry in DH (or a convenient lie he made up) he doesn't care about it now.

Wands have personalities. Which sort of match those of their owners. The wizarding world should employ wand-makers as Seers.

Fleur's wand is inflexible and temperamental. Cedric's is pleasantly springy. Viktor's is thick and rigid. Harry's was described in PS as 'nice and supple'. (And Harry is so supple Twinkly can bend and shape him whichever way.) Ollivander is so objective he likes wands he made himself more than those made by others.

Thanks to sistermagpie for the Freudian symbolism of the spells used to test respective wands, foreshadowing all the wand humor of DH. Fleur's wand, appropriately feminine in its shortness relative to the rest, produces flowers. Cedric's wand (which he polished the previous night!) only produces smoke rings, foreshadowing Cedric's death and appearance as shade (no grandchildren to hear of his victory over Harry, sigh), while Viktor's thicker wand lets out a blast like a gun. It also produces birds, though these aren't set to attack anyone. (Did Hermione learn this spell from Viktor?) Harry has yet to start polishing his wand in any frequency. That's why the spell Ollivander chooses for this wand is more reminiscent of urination than ejaculation, according to sistermagpie.

Of course the purpose of the whole ceremony is a page-long trip down memory lane in which Harry reminds us his wand is the brother of Tom's. (The longest wand of a human wizard as far as we know - and yes, Tom was human when he got the wand.)

The ceremony is followed by the promised photo-op. Wizards have no magical solution to getting a group photo of people of different heights. May I suggest a magical equivalent of Photoshop?

Hermione wasn't at dinner, and Harry assumes she was still getting her teeth fixed. The way she described it later on I doubt it took as long as that. Maybe she was spending time at the hospital wing accompanying Ron - the most likely to have been randomly selected for poisoning once Harry was unavailable. (And not very likely to have been capable of producing an antidote that worked.)

Sirius' reply arrived by owl - he wants to set up a meeting for firecalling because his info is top-secret. We know Sirius is now living practically next door. So why does it take him almost 2 weeks to reply, and why does he set the meeting for over a week ahead, only 2 days before the first task? Perhaps that's how long it took him to find a house he could make sure to be empty on that night.

Comments

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

No, it's Hermion/Harry. And Harry/Ron. Everything is one sided like that.

Sadly I have to agree with you. Well, everything but the Harry/Ron. But yeah, the H/Hr friendship was lopsided. And the 'anvil sized hints' as to R/Hr was all going one-way too, all Ron's jealousy towards Hermione's suitors, there was nothing romantic in Hermione's attitude to Ron.

I'll allow that Harry prized Ron's friendship as slightly higher than Hermione's, if you dig out the microscope - in the grand scheme of things they were both his 'best friends' - but there was nothing romantic about it IMO.

[oryx_leucoryx]

I'll allow that Harry prized Ron's friendship as slightly higher than Hermione's, if you dig out the microscope - in the grand scheme of things they were both his 'best friends' - but there was nothing romantic about it IMO.

I doubt Rowling intended Harry to be anything other than straight, but when she adds almost complete Veela-resistance (he only fell under that influence once, didn't even notice it later) to his 'specialness' and he pays so much attention to the appearance and body language of some boys I can see where some people get gay vibes from him.

[fishinginthemud.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm positive Rowling didn't intend Harry to sound at all gay. She comes off just as cluelessly self-centered as he is, and would be shocked at the suggestion.

[karentheunicorn.livejournal.com]

Thats why the crap is so funny, because she was serious.

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

>>>>...but when she adds almost complete Veela-resistance (he only fell under that influence once, didn't even notice it later) to his 'specialness' and he pays so much attention to the appearance and body language of some boys I can see where some people get gay vibes from him.

In addition to that, she just didn't write him as believably interested in girls. Lavender and Parvati, for instance, are just giggly airheads in his eyes. His reaction to his first kiss is that it was "wet." His interest in Ginny seems to be mostly driven by his jealousy that she's dating Dean. And he spends weeks in a tent with just Hermione and never sees her as anything more than a sister.

I'm sure she envisioned Harry as straight; she just did a crappy job of writing him that way. I'm not sure if it's because she didn't know how to convey sexual desire in a children's book, or if it's because she kept him in the "girls have cooties" stage of emotional development for too long, or if it's because she couldn't get out of her own head enough to realize that a typical teenage boy's reactions to various girls might sometimes be very different from her own reactions. Jo might have felt nothing but contempt for girls like Lavender and Parvati when she was a teenager, but Harry should have noticed whether or not they had big boobs.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

I'm absolutely certain that Harry was completely heterosexual; he started showing attraction to Cho back in book 3. I think most of the fandom holds that the Harry/Cho thing, growing gradually over three books, was quite well done.

However -

In addition to that, she just didn't write him as believably interested in girls. Lavender and Parvati, for instance, are just giggly airheads in his eyes. His reaction to his first kiss is that it was "wet." His interest in Ginny seems to be mostly driven by his jealousy that she's dating Dean. And he spends weeks in a tent with just Hermione and never sees her as anything more than a sister.

I agree totally. Outside of H/Cho Rowling kept Harry pretty sterile. The 'official' H/Ginny was borne totally from jealousy. Although, on the few times he thinks of Ginny after she jumped on top of him at the end of HBP he does ruminate about her kisses that tasted like firewhiskey, her lips on his, so I think it's clear, again, that Harry's a red-blooded boy.

The complete absence of seeing Hermione as anything but a platonic friend is something close to ludicrous. No boy would be a friend with a girl - particularly a pretty girl (viz the Yule ball and Hermione's being prettied up for Ron by book 7) - without at least considering her as a possible romantic interest. I think - if Rowling had wanted to be completely authentic, to be *complete* - she should have shown the boys talking about Hermione once or twice along those lines.

But Rowling couldn't have that, it would have spoilt her 'surprise'. That's the source of a lot of the artificiality of the series, Rowling wanting to hide her simple little surprises. Harry linking up with Ginny was supposed to be a surprise/climax ... so we never see Ginny at all until books 5 & 6. We never see how awesome she's supposed to be. So when she's unveiled in all her glory in book 6 it comes over as completely contrived.

Similarly ... if Harry and Ron had talked about Hermione then we wouldn't have had Ron's angst with the locket and his jealousy of H/Hr. So no, can't have Harry ever thinking about Hermione, EVER. We're just told immediately after the Ron-facing-his-demons scene "oh, I never thought about Hermione that way, evah". And thus the whole thing largely falls flat.

Harry should have noticed whether or not they had big boobs.

Heh. Yes, that's a good way of putting it. Certainly the (male) fans wondered about these *critically important* issues! :-) Susan Bones has a big bust, that's fanon fact, I don't think fanfic authors are allowed to write otherwise. Lavender normally comes similarly equipped. For some reason I notice and remember these things ... :-) ... so Harry should have also!

But like I said above, Rowling *did* try to have Harry act like a red-blooded normal boy once he linked up with Ginny. After she jumped on top of him in the tower it was all kisses whenever her thought of her. Which is what makes H/G so superficial and trite in my opinion ... but at least it was a straightforward case of heterosexual teenage lust/attraction.

JKR and hot blooded heterosexuals

[urbanman1984.livejournal.com]

I think any woman who is as inept at writing fiction as JKR, would inevitably write men and boys as being androgynous.

I am also certain that she intended to write Harry as heterosexual, but she was either too stupid or too lazy to construct a convincing heterosexual male perspective. Due to her ineptitude a lot of the wizards in the series come across as quite feminine hence the endless speculation in fanon about the possibilities of their being into each other. Some of the wizards, including Harry, do seem effeminately homosexual but we can be sure that this is the result of JKR's ineptitude, not her intent.

In a similar way, men who are equally inept writers of fiction would write women as being mannish, or as 2D Mary Sue paper cutouts.

Re: JKR and hot blooded heterosexuals

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

----Due to her ineptitude a lot of the wizards in the series come across as quite feminine hence the endless speculation in fanon about the possibilities of their being into each other.

Actually, I don't think I read Harry as especially effeminate, but I could be missing something. Draco comes across as somewhat effeminate, though that may be more fanon than canon. But effeminate=/=gay, in any case. I think the endless speculation about various wizards being gay may be due to a combination of factors. For one, JKR sucks at writing romance, and so most of her m/f romances feel less authentic than her m/m friendships and less passionate than her m/m rivalries. Also, there simply are very few female characters who have any significant role in the story. Most of the girls and women remain in the background.

----In a similar way, men who are equally inept writers of fiction would write women as being mannish, or as 2D Mary Sue paper cutouts.

Ironically, JKR's female characters are even more poorly written than her male characters, imo. I think JKR may generally dislike other women, and it comes across in her writing.

Re: JKR and hot blooded heterosexuals

[urbanman1984.livejournal.com]

Draco's effeminacy makes it easy to imagine a messed up Harry having an unhealthy sort of interest in him. The way Harry degenerates in Half Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows makes this seem distinctly possible.

Perhaps JKR is uninterested in other women to the extent she doesn't much enjoy writing about them. It's a step beyond not being into them sexually. I actually quite enjoy writing female characters, it's another means of self-exploration.

Re: JKR and hot blooded heterosexuals

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

Ironically, JKR's female characters are even more poorly written than her male characters, imo. I think JKR may generally dislike other women, and it comes across in her writing.

I think what is going on is that Rowling makes the amateur's mistake of projecting her own feelings and experiences onto her characters; since she was never a teenaged boy, nor was she the mother of a teenaged boy, she's unable to write realistically about teenaged boys.

She's not a man, so her portrayals of her adult male characters reflect her own sensibilites and emotions, which tend to make her male characters seem somewhat effeminate.

And as you point out, Rowling seemingly does not like most other women, so most of her female characters reflect this prejudice, or they are her personal avatars (another sign of amateur writing).

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

... I can see where some people get gay vibes from him.

I really can't; I think they're imagining what they want to see. Getting mixed up between actual 'vibes' and simple 'possibility'. Like active and passive sonar. :-)

Take Dumbledore's supposed homosexuality. He's not homosexual in the canon. There's absolutely nothing showing that he is. There's simply an absence of proof (a wife, etc) that shows that he isn't. Dumbledore's representation in the books is *consistent* with his being a homosexual, but there's nothing that goes that extra step and shows that he is.

But the Harry/homosexual stuff is even weirder, it really is a case of the fans trying to swim upstream. He started showing sexual interest in Cho from book 3 (I think) for crying out loud!! Sheesh.

And the Harry/Draco people are even stranger still. They *hated* each other!

(Still, I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't note that 'hatred' is the foundation of R/Hr - outward bickering and fighting, at least. I don't subscribe to that "lazy TV sitcom writer's" trope much at all, which is one reason why I think R/Hr is full of fail. But Rowling and the fans that lapped up the canon couplings do. But still, Harry/Draco? When Harry was clearly interested in the fairer sex since book 3? When Draco was earnestly hoping that Harry or his best friend would be killed? Sheesh.)

-- he pays so much attention to the appearance and body language of some boys

Does he? Or isn't it the *narrator*?

I've read the proper term for the HP narrative viewpoint before, something like 'third person limited omnipotent', something like that. The point is, it's not HARRY who is narrating the story. It's the usual third-person narrator who is deliberately limiting himself to Harry's perspective. But it's not Harry. Well, sometimes it is, it's clearly Harry thinking, but many narrative/descriptive passages aren't. As I recall. I remember looking into this once when showing that Harry/the narrator weren't infallible (when coming across lines that supposedly showed that Ginny understood him perfectly (when she clearly didn't)).

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

"But the Harry/homosexual stuff is even weirder, it really is a case of the fans trying to swim upstream. He started showing sexual interest in Cho from book 3 (I think) for crying out loud!! Sheesh."

Well, that doesn't necessarily make him straight; he could still be bisexual.

As for the sexual attraction to girls, yes he is, but he doesn't seem that attracted to them: as Danny Sparks mentioned above, he doesn't seem attracted to any of the Hogwarts girls apart from Cho and Ginny, whereas a red-blooded young male should certainly notice them more. It's especially ridiculous in the case of Hermione, who's supposedly quite pretty by the last book (if not a great beauty), and with whom he spends most of his time, including that stretch in the tent when it's just him and her... Even if he just thinks "Hey, Hermione's pretty hot-- wait, no, Ron fancies her, I'm not going to do that to my best friend," he should at least notice her in a sexual way. Even in the case of Cho and Ginny, his hours spent thinking about them are generally covered in a paragraph or two spread throughout the book, whereas his obsessions about Draco in HBP, for example, are dealt with in much more detail, meaning they stick in the memory more. So yeah, I can totally see where fans get the Gay!Harry idea from.

"And the Harry/Draco people are even stranger still. They *hated* each other!"

Well yeah, that sort of love/hate dynamic doesn't make for the most healthy relationships in RL, but it's a common enough fictional trope nevertheless, so it's not really suprising to find people reading it into relationships in the HP series.

"I've read the proper term for the HP narrative viewpoint before, something like 'third person limited omnipotent', something like that."

The only remotely similar term I can think of is "third-person limited omniscient", but that would be oxymoronical, as a narrative voice cannot be both limited and omniscient.

"The point is, it's not HARRY who is narrating the story. It's the usual third-person narrator who is deliberately limiting himself to Harry's perspective. But it's not Harry."

I thought that a third-person limited perspective was essentially the same as a first-person, just with the "I"s replaced with "he"s, and so on? So to all intents and purposes, the narrative voice is so closely linked to Harry's perspective that it might as well be his perspective.

Also, I think that at least some of the "gay" scenes are specifically tied into Harry's perspective. So there's one pensieve flashback where it says something like "Tom's face was thinner and more haggard now, but this didn't detract from his looks; if anything, Harry thought, it made him look even more handsome."

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Well, that doesn't necessarily make him straight; he could still be bisexual.

*sighs*

Yes, he *could* be ... but there's absolutely no evidence that suggests it.

And in something the size of the HP series I think this is a a clear case where the absence of evidence is direct evidence of the absence of Harry's romantic interest in boys.

As for the sexual attraction to girls, yes he is, but he doesn't seem that attracted to them: as Danny Sparks mentioned above, he doesn't seem attracted to any of the Hogwarts girls apart from Cho and Ginny, whereas a red-blooded young male should certainly notice them more.

Yes, I think Danny was right on the mark with his observation that Rowling was just a bad author. Harry's a normal heterosexual boy, and Rowling portrayed him as such, turning on the girl radar, when her story needed Harry to notice a girl for specific plot related purposes. But otherwise - because she's a woman, because she's an amateur author - she wasn't able to put herself in her boy hero's shoes and show the 'background interest' in girls that would be ever-present.

Even if he just thinks "Hey, Hermione's pretty hot-- wait, no, Ron fancies her, I'm not going to do that to my best friend," he should at least notice her in a sexual way.

I agree completely. But, like I said here somewhere, Rowling didn't do this because it would have 'spoilt the surprise' that she was trying to incorporate into her story. Well, the H/G suffers more because of that, but I think if Harry had thought to himself just what you've said there the 'like a sister' comment would have been even more bland. Or the readers would have been wondering why in blazes Ron was worried in the first place.

Of course this is clearly why Harry never talks about girls with his best mate, something that a normal boy would almost certainly do also.

whereas his obsessions about Draco in HBP

But they're not obsessions about *Draco*. They're obsessions about *what Draco is doing*.

When Harry thinks about Cho or Ginny he thinks about how pretty they are, or how they kiss (and that's all, which makes the relationships superficial but at least certainly sexual).

When he thinks about Draco he clearly *doesn't* focus on the boy's blond hair, or looks, or ... whatever. No, Harry's obsessed about what Draco's up to.

So to all intents and purposes, the narrative voice is so closely linked to Harry's perspective that it might as well be his perspective.

Yes, you may be right. I thought I'd recalled how the narrator does switch between impersonal limited omniscience and Harry's more limited perspective - "Harry thought", etc - but I couldn't find a clear example in a quick skim of a chapter just now.

if anything, Harry thought, it made him look even more handsome.

*sighs* :-)

But no chest monster. No sexual interest in the impersonal observation. Thus, no homosexuality.

Harry fantasies

[urbanman1984.livejournal.com]

It's not just interest in other Hogwarts girls that is lacking, it's the absense of fantasies on Harry's part in general about female subjects when he is in private. If Ginny were really his type, shouldn't he think and dream alot about pretty red headed girls, their fiery tresses and their voluptuous curves? But he has literally never noticed a girl or woman's curves even though they should stimulate heterosexual adolescent boys. In Deathly Hallows during the dismal camping trip, why doesn't he think about Ginny when going to sleep? He actually gave more thought of that kind to the image he saw of the young Grindelwald. You yourself have written that his interest in Ginny is totally unconvincing.

I know that this is all the result of JKR's ineptitude, not her design and that she intended for Harry to be heterosexual, but I like to interpret it literally just to spite her. I know she would be livid about it, because she has tacitly admitted that her views on male homosexuality are reactionary.

Re: Harry fantasies

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

I know that this is all the result of JKR's ineptitude -

Yup. :-)

- but I like to interpret it literally just to spite her.

Heh. Yes, I fully appreciate the intellectual challenge and sheer fun involved in that pursuit. I've really marvelled at some of the theories that I've seen espoused here on deathtocapslock. Some of the cleverest ones you just KNOW that Rowling would chuck a fit at seeing - and immediately demand that you 're-read the books', while paying attention to her instructions on how they should be interpreted - but there's little actual canon evidence to gainsay them.

-- she has tacitly admitted that her views on male homosexuality are reactionary.

Oooh, can you point me at that inteview(s)?

Re: Harry fantasies

[urbanman1984.livejournal.com]

http://www.ferretbrain.com/articles/article-247

Danniel Hemmens gives the article and an apt appraisal of it.

Re: Harry fantasies

[karentheunicorn.livejournal.com]

Is reading the link and I think Danniel Hemmens needs to be made an official member of the DTCL if they're not already =) or at least make him king for a day or something....goes back to finish reading the article.

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

"Yes, I think Danny was right on the mark with his observation that Rowling was just a bad author."

Oh, I agree that Harry's love life is badly written. I just think it's badly written in such a way as to make him look a bit gay.

"But, like I said here somewhere, Rowling didn't do this because it would have 'spoilt the surprise' that she was trying to incorporate into her story."

Maybe, although was it really that much of a surprise? I thought it obvious that Ron and Hermione would get together since the Yule Ball scene in GOF. Although given the discrepancies between what Rowling thinks she wrote and what she actually did write, I suppose she might well think that their relationship in DH was a masterful surprise.

"When Harry thinks about Cho or Ginny he thinks about how pretty they are, or how they kiss (and that's all, which makes the relationships superficial but at least certainly sexual).

When he thinks about Draco he clearly *doesn't* focus on the boy's blond hair, or looks, or ... whatever. No, Harry's obsessed about what Draco's up to."

I'm not so sure. I think that Cho's described as "very pretty" a couple of times, but I don't recall any detailed description of her, and I can't recall Ginny being given much description, either. So whilst he doesn't think much about Draco's looks, he's the same with every other character, even his love interests. (Apart from Tom, whose handsomeness is regularly noted in the Pensieve flashbacks, and Lockhart, whose clothes are given a relatively large amount of space. So the two characters whose appearance is noticed the most are both good-looking men...)

And I don't recall much about kissing, either. He describes his first kiss with Cho as "wet", which doesn't make it sound as if he particularly enjoyed it. His kisses with Ginny seem to have been a bit better ("better than firewhiskey", IIRC, although why JKR should think to compare it to a fictional drink which neither Harry nor the readers have ever drunk is beyond me), but I don't remember him thinking much about them afterwards.

"But no chest monster. No sexual interest in the impersonal observation. Thus, no homosexuality."

IIRC, the chest monster only comes out when Ginny's physically in front of him and snogging somebody else. Tom doesn't do this in any of the flashbacks. For all we know, Harry would have had much the same reaction is Tom and Hepzibah had started making out. (Hmm, now *there's* an interesting fanfic pairing...)

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Maybe, although was it really that much of a surprise?

By the end of the book, the R/Hr resolution, no.

In book 6 the H/G thing was a surprise, which is one reason why Rowling had hidden Ginny in the first five books. And why Ginny came out of nowhere looking as a highly contrived Mary Sue.

Ron's angsting over the Horcrux vision was a surprise, yes. And if Harry and Ron had done the normal boy thing and talked about Hermione as a possible romantic interest at any time over the previous 6 years then the whole "Ron agonises over Hermione picking Harry" would never have been possible at all. So Rowling just conveniently drops the possibility. And we're left with some fans trying to push Harry as a homosexual. :-)

I think that Cho's described as "very pretty" a couple of times, but I don't recall any detailed description of her, and I can't recall Ginny being given much description, either

Cho's definitely called 'pretty' I think, and I certainly recall Harry commenting that the 'girls are made all right at Hogwarts' while looking at Cho.

He also thinks Ginny is beautiful:

Ginny gave Harry a radiant smile: He had forgotten, he had never fully appreciated, how beautiful she was, but he had never been less pleased to see her.

And there's several times where he thinks about her kisses, 'tasting like fireswhiskey', 'his lips on hers':

Hagrid was struggling, and Bellatrix was panting, and Harry thought inexplicably of Ginny, and her blazing look, and the feel of her lips on his ---

No doubt about it; Harry's a normal heterosexual bloke. Making him out as a homosexual is pushing a wheelbarrow upstream, if I can mix the metaphors. :-)

[oryx_leucoryx]

I must say the juxtaposition of Harry's 'inexplicably' thinking of Ginny with Bellatrix's panting is one of the oddest in the entire series. Makes you think how much those two have in common.

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

----Harry's a normal heterosexual bloke

You may not have meant it this way, but this gives me the impression that you feel that being bisexual or homosexual is not normal.

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

"better than firewhiskey",

Better than something that presumably burns his mouth even more than normal whiskey doesn't really tell us much, does it?

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

You know you're talking about the author who invented the CHEST MONSTER, right?

I think Rowling's readers got lucky with the firewhiskey thing. :-)

Harry and best friends

[urbanman1984.livejournal.com]

Harry is presented as being so self-centred in the series that being his best friend was not much of a status. I would say that Hagrid was the one he was prepared to make the biggest sarifices for without expecting much in return.

Re: Harry and best friends

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Well, I think I've said it before here - or elsewhere online the last couple of weeks :-) - but I was impressed with how Harry did a balancing act between his two friends in HBP. Making sure that he was a good friend to Hermione as well as Ron when the two sidekicks were playing their jealous games and not talking to each other (please to note: Ron started it! :-)).

But that's about the only time Harry was so conscientious, and is easily cancelled out by his being a complete bastiche in book 7.