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

[xerox78.livejournal.com]

/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./

So, Lavender is a ridiculous girlfriend whom Ron is ashamed of because she's nice to him, wishes him luck in Quidditch, and stands up to Snape for his sake. Yet Hermione is his True Love because she does nothing but berate and belittle him (and later abuse him with vicious birds)?

Her behavior is justified by shippers that she was violent toward him because she just LUVS him so much. And her snapping and snarling at him was because she was just so frustrated with his cluelessness and throwing hints to make him get together with her. I've never seen an explanation as to why a literal know-it-all like Hermione thought that being a nasty snot to someone as "clueless" and "stupid" as Ron would make him think, "Hermione is being rude to me again. She must be frustrated because I haven't caught on that she fancies me. Let me declare my undying love to her" rather than "Hermione is being rude to me again. She can't stand me. She fancies Krum/Harry/whoever, not me. But Lavender seems to really like me."

Nobody refutes Hermione about anything. She's proven to be right in the end about Ron's rat in PoA, so nobody has to take her to task for showing no sympathy for Ron and stupidly insisting that Crookshanks couldn't have done it even though there was ample evidence that he could have. Lavender never takes her to task for loudly pointing out that Trelawney couldn't have been right about Lavender's rabbit when Lavender was mourning him. The most that anybody does about SPEW is to just ignore her or refuse to join. When she lectures everybody about needing to study, nobody tells her to just shut up and leave them alone. And, of course, nobody turns on her for hexing Marietta.

And she's never called out for leaving the DA member list lying around for the Inquisitorial Squad to find and for Umbridge to know every DA member. If Harry or Ron had done that, she would have let them have it, then given them the silent treatment and the other DA members would have been angry, too. Oh, and taking the OotP text literally, there's no indication that Hermione ever actually signed the parchment she made everyone else sign.

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/Her behavior is justified by shippers that she was violent toward him because she just LUVS him so much./

*cynically* Uh-huh. And Marvolo Gaunt almost strangled Merope because he "loved her so much."

/And her snapping and snarling at him was because she was just so frustrated with his cluelessness and throwing hints to make him get together with her./

If Hermione is so brilliant, she should have realized that throwing passive-aggressive "hints" toward Ron wasn't working. Lavender was open and direct with Ron; she knew what she wanted and she was nice to him. That's why she got him first. Hermione never bothers to actually tell Ron how she feels about him, just like Nice Guys never bother telling their crushes how they feel about them and then act all outraged when the women date other people. Ron can't read minds, Hermione. Just open your mouth and tell him how you feel. I know that it's not easy, but acting like a nasty, demanding brat will not make him think that you're madly in love with him; it'll make him think that you don't care about him.

/I've never seen an explanation as to why a literal know-it-all like Hermione thought that being a nasty snot to someone as "clueless" and "stupid" as Ron would make him think, "Hermione is being rude to me again. She must be frustrated because I haven't caught on that she fancies me. Let me declare my undying love to her" rather than "Hermione is being rude to me again. She can't stand me. She fancies Krum/Harry/whoever, not me. But Lavender seems to really like me."/

Because she's smart in academics, but is utterly stupid when it comes to romantic matters.

[karentheunicorn.livejournal.com]

Because she's smart in academics, but is utterly stupid when it comes to romantic matters.

It's Proof that Hogwarts Library's self help section doesn't exist. There is no Wizards are from Mars, Witches are from Venus book out there for Hermione to read.

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

Or, more likely, wizarding understanding of gender dynamics has never progressed beyond that point.

[xerox78.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but it sounds like they have The Rules. :-\

[xerox78.livejournal.com]

Hermione never bothers to actually tell Ron how she feels about him, just like Nice Guys never bother telling their crushes how they feel about them and then act all outraged when the women date other people. Ron can't read minds, Hermione. Just open your mouth and tell him how you feel.

But...but...she's old-fashioned! She can't make the first move with a guy! Only skanks (like Lavender and Cho) do that!

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

she's never called out for leaving the DA member list lying around for the Inquisitorial Squad to find

Everyone crucifies Marietta, but it's Hermione's list that gives everyone away. Withou it, they might've been able to do a 'her word against ours', but the list was damn incriminating.

What makes it worse? That she was warned of the possibility of the list getting into the wrong hands and she acts like it's the stupidest suggestion ever.

ʹErnie, do you really think Iʹd leave that list lying around?ʹ said Hermione testily.

ʹNo. No, of course not,ʹ said Ernie, looking slightly less anxious. ʹI ‐ yes, of course Iʹll sign.ʹ

NICE GOING. How hard is it to obscure the paper so nobody else can read it? That's a fanon invention, I think? A spell that hides the writing on a page.

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

"How hard is it to obscure the paper so nobody else can read it? That's a fanon invention, I think?"

In COS, Hermione tries all sorts of spells on Riddle's diary to see if it might have writing in it which has been magically concealed, so there are clearly some ways of making your words invisible.

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

Also, just as I posted this I remembered that later in OOTP people are enchanting copies of Harry's Quibbler interview to make them look like blank pieces of parchment, so JKR doesn't even have the excuse of forgetting since COS that this sort of thing is possible.

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

ARGH, that's so irritating, she keeps making things up that should provide our heroes with all sorts of tools and yet they don't make use of them at all!

Honestly, JKR. Put some boundaries. Stop making people so powerful and then having them make stupid mistakes. >:[ It's one thing for people to be 'human' and 'flawed', but FFS, Ernie outright STATED HIS CONCERN about the paper getting them in trouble and she scoffed at him! *snarls* It just seems so frakking arrogant. I really wish she had to deal with consequences for her actions, it annoys me so much.

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

I think that's many people don't like Hermione. Not only is she exasperatingly self-righteous, but she and the text don't even realize it, not even when she's proven wrong. It doesn't make her look strong and resolute; it makes her look like a deluded, hypocritical idiot. And the fact that she punishes Marietta when it was mainly *Hermione's* fault that the DA got caught...again, not at all that different from what Voldemort does to the Death Eaters.

Ernie voices a valid concern and she just *snaps* at him. As if she, Hermione Granger, would ever do something as thoughtless and careless as leaving a valuable list lying around for anyone to see! That's something that Neville would do, not her!

...Except that she did. And the only person who points that out is Cho and we're meant to see her as weepy and irrationally jealous when she tells Harry that it was horrible for Hermione to hex her friend. Not even the narrator recognizes that Hermione was partly to blame. Harry and Ron sure don't.

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

If she'd read Enid Blyton growing up (which is practically required reading, she must've!), she could've tried 'invisible ink' (lemon juice revealed by putting the paper near a flame, lol- I always wanted to try that IRL)...

[oryx_leucoryx]

Hey, I showed it to my daughter a few years ago (it worked!). That's one of the advantages of being a parent - you get to catch up on things you missed out as a kid.

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow, that's so cool you tried it and it worked! :D