OOTP Chapter Sixteen: "In the Hog's Head"

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

 

* So what exactly does Vanishing an animal do? Send
it to another dimension? Send it into oblivion? Because isn’t the latter
effectively killing it (more so, in fact, because it wouldn’t get to go to
whatever passes for an Afterlife in the Potterverse)? I wonder how many
students would be happy with their Vanishing lessons if they knew that they
were actually killing kittens?

* Ron totally refusing to back Hermione up over unofficial
DADA lessons. What a perfect match those two make.

* Oh no wait, Ron was just waiting to be sure Harry
would blow up. Odd, I’d have thought that the image of an angry young man whose
friends are feared of contradicting him would have seemed more likely to apply
to Tom Riddle that to anybody else.

* It’s actually rather easy to do stuff grown
wizards can’t in the HP universe. You just have to be on good terms with the
author, and you can do anything.

* The whole Viktor/Hermione thing is a bit squicky,
really. So an eighteen-year-old wants to go out with a fourteen-year-old, and
nobody seems to think that there’s anything wrong with that (except for Ron,
who is (a) jealous and (b) doesn’t object to it on grounds of age)?

* Also, what is it that first attracted Viktor to
Hermione? He didn’t know her well enough before asking her to the Yule Ball for
it to be her personality, and Hermione wasn’t yet pretty enough for it to be
her good looks.

* Once again, Hermione seems terrified of Harry.
Perhaps she’s just worried that Harry’s overwhelming love might prove too much
for an ordinary person such as her to handle.

* I’d have thought that after Azkaban, living in a
large, stately house would be quite nice. Apparently though Sirius is feeling
cooped-up and reckless. Because a reckless person could totally carry out the
first-ever escape from Azkaban. Totally.

* Hermione stutters when she says “Voldemort” again,
even though she has no reason to. About the only reason I can think of is that
JKR kept forgetting she was supposed to be Muggle-born, and so had her acting
like a Pureblood instead.

* Also, remember when we thought that there was some
proper reason for not saying Voldemort’s name, and Dumbledore seemed really
cool and badass for saying it anyway? *sigh* How I miss those days… :(

* Hermione says that Sirius won’t be free until “the
fools” “accept that Dumbledore’s been telling the truth all along”, as if
Dumbledore’s word ought to be enough for anybody. This doesn’t seem like a
particularly open-minded and enquiring position to take, although I suppose
that Hermione’s open-mindedness has always been something of an informed
attribute.

* Harry’s barely keeping up with his homework,
because he always has to have some problem to angst about. Ron’s doing even
worse, because no matter how bad Harry is, JKR can’t have Ron doing better than
the hero. Hermione’s doing fine, because she’s a total Mary Sue who does fine
at everything.

* Hermione dismisses Harry’s concerns about Umbridge
spying on them on the grounds that “Umbridge is shorter than that woman”.
Because it’s not like Umbridge could have any informants. Or like she could
have taken some sort of potion to make herself look like somebody else. Nope.
No chance of that at all.

* Hermione’s faith that they’ll all be safe because
they won’t be breaking any rules is rather touchingly naïve. Given what they
know of the wizarding attitude to justice, however, it’s also pretty stupid.

* So is the barman who “looked vaguely familiar to
Harry” supposed to be Aberforth, then? If so, this would be one of the few
examples of continuity between DH and the previous Harry Potter books. I suppose the smell of goats is also meant to
be a clue.

* Hermione “snarls” at Ron when he suggests ordering
a Firewhiskey. Not that her constant sneering, snarling and assorted put-downs
will stop Ron from fancying her. Treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen, I suppose.

* Harry doesn’t recognise half the people coming in,
even the ones he plays against in Quidditch matches. I suppose this is part of
JKR’s desire to make the reader learn everything as Harry does, even though by
this stage she could introduce everybody as if Harry already knew them (“Following
Ginny came John Smith, a nondescript Hufflepuff in fourth year”) without
anybody batting an eyelid.

* I think the red-haired girl is Marietta, yes? In
which case, her reluctance to come is clearly meant to be foreshadowing of her
betrayal. Because it’s not like anybody could change their minds about the idea,
and become less enthusiastic as time went on; any traitor would have to have to
be against it from the start.

* What has Lord Voldemort done to warrant such a
reaction to the mere mention of his name? Going around murdering people is bad,
but not enough to make people shriek every time somebody mentions you.
Especially since mainstream wizarding society seems fine with the idea of
sending people to rot in a castle full of depression-causing monsters without
even a trial, which is arguably worse.

* “‘Well, Dumbledore believes it—’ Hermione began.”
Again, Hermione, that isn’t a good enough reason. A supposedly
independent-minded girl should know that.

* Also: yay Zach Smith! Nice to see somebody
questioning DD’s version of events. A pity his author doesn’t appreciate him
for it.

* Didn’t Harry produce a Patronus at a Quidditch
match in his third year? So why is the fact that he can such a big surprise to
everybody?

* And Harry, just because two people you’re met use
the phrase “Corporeal Patronus”, that doesn’t mean they’re related.

* Harry shows a rare moment of humility and self-knowledge
when he says that he only succeeded because he was helped out by others.

* Hermione dismisses the possibility of Heliopaths
existing, even though at age eleven she found out that magic, goblins, giants
and all manner of other “impossible” things existed. A pity nobody ever points
this out to her, really.

* “But I also think… that we all ought to agree not
to shout about what we’re doing. So if you sign, you agree not to tell Umbridge
or anybody what we’re up to.” And to have your face disfigured for the rest of
your life if you do, but we won’t bother telling you that.

* Seriously, that “protection” is the worst ever. It
doesn’t warn you when you’ve been betrayed, it doesn’t stop anybody betraying
you in the first place, and none of the DA members know about it, so it’s not
going to have any sort of deterrent effect.

* Ginny and Michael first met at the Yule Ball. I
hope when Neville asked her to go with him he meant in a “just friends” sense,
rather than as a date, because otherwise that can’t have been a fun night for
him.

* Ron seems very worked-up about Ginny’s new
boyfriend. Ron/Ginny OTP?

* Of course, this Michael/Ginny/Ron love-triangle
won’t go anywhere, so Hermione quickly moves to more plot-relevant stuff, like
Harry/Cho.

Comments

[stephanie-draws.livejournal.com]

- Viktor: did it say anywhere he was 18? I somehow always thought he'd been 17, though nothing was mentioned. But Hermione turned 12 not 3 weeks into her first year: she's if not the oldest, then clearly one of the oldest students in her year. She was 15 years old three weeks into year 4 already! Making it 3 years age difference at the most.

But I don't find 4 years necessarily as squicky: girls mature earlier during puberty, both emotionally and physically. It depends on the individuals involved imo and their personality and maturity. (At my horrible posh private school I had a classmate who, while only a year older than me, looked and acted like an adult at age 13, without make-up or any adult dressing needed: she was regularly mistaken as a young teacher when she was with us! Of the three boyfriends she had from then on I knew not one was under 18. And I don't think they took advantage of her, she seemed very much an equal partner. She was precocious in looks and behaviour and would've looked and felt silly with a 15 year old boyfriend acting/looking his age. I initially was squicked too: age of consent is 14 here, and with her first boyfriend they were definitely violating laws. And there was an additional squick for 12 year old me: what was she doing with boys? Why would she want to?! They were for playing football with^^)

Viktor has been presented as spending a lot of time in the library. Where he'd see and meet Hermione regularly - who doesn't have friends with an intellectual bend reaching beyond Quidditch Through the Ages. He was also written as often fleeing his eager fan-club and being glad to escape their attention: so he's not into pretty groupies and taking advantage of his fame sexually. He seems to be a Quidditch-sensation because he likes to play and is very gifted at it. For the love of the game, not its side-effects and perks: not for popularity and glory like Ron is so attracted to.
Viktor isn't canonically handsome, far from it: he might simply be attracted to physically "equal" partners, rather than those massively outshining him in regards to beauty.

Character- and interest-wise Viktor seemed much more similar to Hermione than Ron. He also chose her, a muggleborn, as a date despite Durmstrang's pureblood/dark magic-reputation: I doubt Karkaroff was happy! And the fact that he didn't ditch her even post-GoF and had a lasting pen-relationship speaks rather against sexual predation as his motive, doesn't it?

It was probably Hermione's healthiest, sanest and most equal relationship of her life, given what followed. Even with Hermione clearly also choosing Viktor initially to get back at Ron. Wow, and now I sound like a Hermione/Viktor-shipper without ever having shipped them! Or any pairing, really. Their relationship - below the authorial focus as it was - seemed just so much more realistically written and likable than all those following....

[harpsi-fizz.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was about to pipe in with the Hermione age thing as well. It's one of the things I'm most grateful for, the fact that Rowling at least didn't make her "nearly 11" when first boarding the train, therefore a young genius. She really isn't a genius; magic just happens to be relevant to her interest. Take any Harry Potter fan and put them in Hogwarts, and you know we'd be all over that library, trying to see what we could do with our new power (kinda like me and Google). It's just novelty. And we know how fixated Hermione gets when she has something in mind.

[stephanie-draws.livejournal.com]

Yepp! Hermiones initial "obsessive" interest is always played as so unusual and special and sign of a supremely gifted student but it (minus the overbearing "I know, I know! And I tell you - whether you want to or not!"-attitude) reads rather how most normal, intelligent children would behave, doesn't it?

It also explains much of her initial lead in classes in addition to her reading and hard work. As time moves on, when a year doesn't make such a difference in development anymore between older teens, she suddenly seems a lot less in the lead academically than in the early years.

ETA: Sorry - double post!

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

"But Hermione turned 12 not 3 weeks into her first year: she's if not the oldest, then clearly one of the oldest students in her year. She was 15 years old three weeks into year 4 already!"

Well, I suppose that makes it a bit better.

"- Viktor: did it say anywhere he was 18? I somehow always thought he'd been 17, though nothing was mentioned."

I think it was someone on DTCL who said it, though I can't remember who/where. Now that you mention it, though, I don't think I ever read anything about it in canon, so he might be seventeen...

[oryx_leucoryx]

Viktor had to have been 17 by Halloween of GOF to participate in the Triwizard Tournament. So if he is still 17 it won't be for long. He can be anything from almost 2 years older than Hermione to slightly more than 3 years older (assuming Durmstrang uses the same cut-off date as Hogwarts). OK if his Quidditch playing got in the way of his studying that he is repeating a year he can be even older, I suppose.

[stephanie-draws.livejournal.com]

Yes, it might be the age requirement that made me think of him being 17. I don't remember if something was mentioned during his first appearance at the World Cup, that would have been my other idea for this - likely unfounded - impression of mine.

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

----Viktor has been presented as spending a lot of time in the library. Where he'd see and meet Hermione regularly - who doesn't have friends with an intellectual bend reaching beyond Quidditch Through the Ages.

It kind of mystifies me that Hermione was so interested in Ron. Even as a young teenager, I was most attracted to boys whom I found to be intellectually stimulating. Even if there had been some sexual chemistry present, I would have gotten bored with someone like Ron after a few weeks of dating.