GOF Chapter 18: The Weighing of the Wands
Apr. 29th, 2011 06:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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deathtocapslockOooh! 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.
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.
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Re: Harry and best friends
Date: 2011-05-02 09:20 am (UTC)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.