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

* 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.