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}
oryx_leucoryx posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
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.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-05-07 04:48 pm (UTC)IF she had time to slide crap in front of the door, like a dresser or wardrobe or whatever the hell she put there...didn't she have time to grab the baby and try to escape out the window.
Or hell, she was muggleborn...throw something at him, wait behind the door with something heavy and has he come in knock his wand out of his hand.
And another thing, why run upstairs at all, shouldn't they have had a backdoor? Why would she run upstairs instead of taking the backdoor option? It seems a little stupid that they would have lived in a house without a backdoor doesn't it? Don't most people have a backdoor? Or hell, they should have planned and had some kind of escape option, a trapdoor in the floor...SOMETHING. Yet all she can do is run upstairs. I don't get that so I'm gonna have to assume there was no back door to the house because if there was a bag door, running upstairs seems pretty lame.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-07 05:26 pm (UTC)Boxes, and something else. Nothing magikal, and pretty lame from even a Muggle angle. Seems to me that any fair-to-middling witch or wizard could easily get rid of physical objects blocking a door...
Or hell, she was muggleborn...throw something at him, wait behind the door with something heavy and has he come in knock his wand out of his hand.
Or the standard cartoon-and-Three-Stooges trick of a bucket of water balanced on top of the slightly ajar door; as someone who's been ballyhooed as this amazing witch, seems to me that conjuring up a bucket filled with water, or some noxious substance, should have been a piece of cake for Lily...
And another thing, why run upstairs at all, shouldn't they have had a backdoor?
I thought she was already upstairs taking care of baby Harry...only James was downstairs when Voldie arrived, but my memory could be failing me... :-)
Or hell, they should have planned and had some kind of escape option, a trapdoor in the floor...SOMETHING.
Yes, one would think that if you were high on the elimination list of the Dark Lord (or one of his lackeys), that you would have multiple options/plans of what to do if he/they came a-callin'...
And #1 on the list would be to never answer the door without your wand at the ready.
I don't get that so I'm gonna have to assume there was no back door to the house because if there was a bag door, running upstairs seems pretty lame.
Maybe she jumped to the erroneous conclusion that Voldie came with DEs, who were waiting outside...and maybe that's why she didn't try to escape by jumping with Harry out a window and flying/falling as we know she can do.
Doesn't explain why she didn't try side-along apparation with Harry...
no subject
Date: 2011-05-07 06:08 pm (UTC)I can't remember 100% for sure, I thought she was downstairs because, her James and Harry were in the living room or something, or thats what I thought. I thought they were playing with the baby or something or maybe she had gone upstairs. Don't have my book handy right now but I thought that they were all downstairs in the same spot but without the book I don't know for sure now and am going on memory.
Maybe she jumped to the erroneous conclusion that Voldie came with DEs, who were waiting outside...and maybe that's why she didn't try to escape by jumping with Harry out a window and flying/falling as we know she can do.
Doesn't explain why she didn't try side-along apparation with Harry...
Not sure how running upstairs and putting Harry in his crib would help though...and to add into all that WHERE THE HELL is her wand? Did she just leave it upstairs somewhere or, I mean we see throughout the series most of the kids always tend to have their wand with them. I can't remember to many instances where Harry was left standing around without hsi wand or even a moment showing him going to class without his wand. So whats the deal with Lily not having her wand on her at all, and/or not even getting it?
I guess it was just easier to write the scene with Lily and James wandless; it made the confrontation between him and Lily way easier but it seems to conflict with what we learn from all the other magical people in the series, who seem to have their wand at ever opportunity.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-07 08:39 pm (UTC)I'm in the middle of packing to move this coming week, so I don't have the books available, either...
But I seem to remember it that Lily was already upstairs, giving Harry a bath or something, and James was downstairs alone in the living room when he heard something at the door. James went to look without taking his own wand, and Voldie AK'd him.
Lily hearing this then tried to barricade herself with Harry in Harry's room, for some reason using boxes and maybe a piece of furniture or something.
Now if Lily was busy finishing up Harry's bath, or putting jammies on him to put him to bed, I'll be charitable and concede that she had reason to lay her wand down to take care of the task at hand.
Of course if it was me, and I knew someone had me and my kid on their assassination list, I'd be packing a weapon at all times, especially if my weapon is a wand that wouldn't be harmed by getting wet by baby's bath water. But that's just me.
But what is totally inexplicable -- and to me, unforgiveable -- is the fact that James went to check out the noise at the door without taking his wand. He was just reading the paper or something like that IIRC, there is absolutely no excuse that he didn't have his wand on him, especially no excuse for not taking his wand when he went to check the door.
As for Lily, assuming that she was already upstairs, there is no excuse for her not to have gotten her own wand when she heard what had happened downstairs, rather than waste time stacking boxes and chairs or whatever against the door. Unless James' and Lily's wands were together in the same place...perhaps wizards have childproof "wand safes" akin to gun safes? :-P
As has been pointed out, Lily could do wandless magik...so why didn't she do so in this case?
It seems that Rowling only cared that Voldie had killed James and Lily, and didn't want to waste time writing a credible scenario for their deaths...with the result that both James and Lily come off as pretty pathetic.
Not the case
Date: 2011-05-07 09:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-08 02:35 pm (UTC)Or a scenario that was consistent with the account of their deaths in previous books. Voldemort himself tells Harry in PS/SS that his parents were brave and that his father put up a tremendous fight. Where was this fight in DH? James went down in three seconds and, as madderbrad said earlier, Lily acted like a "helpless useless sacrificial lamb," not at all like the prodigious witch that she had been as a child, not at all like a member of the Order, and not at all like the bright student that Slughorn describes her as being.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-09 05:14 am (UTC)