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deathtocapslock* Wow, so Hermione’s started lecturing people on being tactless now. Truly the world has been turned upon its head.
* Also, whilst Harry’s romancing of Cho isn’t the best, it’s still better than what Hermione “I’m going to treat my crush like dirt then act all offended when he goes out with somebody else” Granger tries.
* For “Ginny’s not bad”, read “Ginny’s good enough to become a professional Quidditch player a few years out of school.”
* Hey, Ginny’s been breaking into the broom shed and using other people’s stuff without their permission! At the age of six, no less! She’s so awesome and sassy and super-feminist!
* Although the idea of Ginny doing this to become awesome at Quidditch is a little implausible. Yes, she could learn how to fly, but there’s still the whole catching/throwing/tactics side of the game.
* Plus, of course, if Ginny’s really so good, then why didn’t she show any interest in playing before this book? About the only reason I can think of is that the positions on the Gryffindor Quidditch team were all filled, leaving her with no opportunities to play. But this raises a whole new set of issues. We never hear of flying lessons after that one time in PS, and Harry never seems to do any non-Quidditch-related flying. So what do other students do? Do they not have any opportunities to learn or practise flying at all after their first year?
* Apparently they’ll have to kill Zach Smith if he beats them in Quidditch. Repeat after me, boys: it’s only a game, and disliking Harry does not make somebody automatically evil.
* Now we have one of the rare sensible moments in the book, where Hermione points out that everybody’s taking Quidditch way too seriously.
* The Quidditch match is skated over in a paragraph, rather than getting an entire chapter dedicated to it. Harry isn’t playing, so it isn’t important enough to warrant a longer description.
* So how many of the Gryffindor players are new? I was under the impression that it was just Harry, Fred and George who’d been replaced, but the dip in quality seems to be far worse than you’d expect with just three new players, especially given that Ginny is quite a good Seeker.
* Ginny acknowledges that luck played a part in her catching the Snitch, unlike Harry, who never seems to reflect on how lucky he is to have the best broom out of anybody in Hogwarts. Brooms only make a difference when someone else has the better one, clearly.
* Also, the whole issue of which broom is better and who’s got the best is a bit hard to work out. I think they implied in PS that the Nimbus 2000 was quite a new make, probably only a couple of years old. It’s then made obsolete by the Nimbus 2001 in COS (which is another thing that’s been bugging me – are we meant to infer that there have actually been a total of 2,001 different makes of Nimbus brooms over the years?), which in turn is made obsolete a year later by the Firebolt. But then there seem to be no advances in broom technology whatsoever for the rest of the series. Just how quickly are new brooms being invented?
* Then there’s the fact that nobody but Harry seems to get a Firebolt. You’d have thought that at least one of the rich, spoilt purebloods with whom Slytherin House is apparently filled would have managed to talk their parents into getting one.
* Angelina refuses to get rid of Ron, claiming that he’s good really. Given the complete lack of any evidence for this so far, I think that nepotism is a more likely explanation.
* Slytherin are now the favourites to win, which, given how important the Seeker is, implies that Draco’s actually quite good when not facing somebody on an unbeatable broom.
* Wow, Harry’s impressed with Ginny’s performance! And he’s, like, the best Seeker Ever™! She is so cool and awesome!
* Harry tries to get to sleep, but finds himself too busy hating Snape and Umbridge. For a pure-of-heart chosen-hero-cum-messianic-archetype, he sure does feel a lot of hatred.
* Does the Neville-Sprout-McGonagall dream have any symbolic meaning, or is it just there to look suitably weird?
* Given that Voldemort might be trying to manipulate his mind, Harry ought to be less eager to have these dreams. Especially given his worries earlier that Lord V might be forcing him to attack people.
* Isn’t a Knut supposed to be the smallest denomination of wizarding currency? Because if so, paying a Knut for a newspaper seems remarkably cheap. Maybe the Daily Prophet can afford to be so cheap because it’s fired all its journalists and fact-checkers, and just regurgitates Ministry press releases.
* Or maybe it’s actually a Ministry-run paper designed specifically to churn out government propaganda, which is why it toes the party line so much. Although that doesn’t explain why everybody takes it so seriously – people tend to distrust papers which become known for being too close to the government.
* This whole “everybody believes Harry once he gets his story out there” scene is rather touching, until you remember that there was nothing stopping him getting his story out sooner, other than his own pig-headedness.
* Hermione picks up yet more information from the girls’ toilets. I suppose the Hogwarts girls are so gossipy to make up for the boys’ complete lack of interest in the world around them.
* “And it seemed that Hermione was quite right.” So no change there, then.
* I’m not sure why Seamus is so apologetic to Harry. After all, when he asked what happened, Harry refused to tell, insulted his family and threatened him with a wand. From Seamus’ POV, there’s no evidence that Harry’s telling the truth, and lots of evidence that he’s the sort of unstable, potentially violent person the Ministry’s portraying him as.
* Wow, JKR’s acknowledged that one of the Twins’ “jokes” isn’t actually very funny. Catch me, somebody, I think I’m about to faint.
* So Rookwood’s terrified of Voldemort’s vengeance, even though he hasn’t done anything wrong. Seriously, Voldemort’s not very good at inspiring loyalty in his subordinates. He sounds like one of the people who hears “it’s better to be feared than to be loved”, and then goes around acting like a total jerk, even though the original Prince went on to say that it’s even better to be both feared and loved, and that you should inspire fear in such a way that you don’t also inspire hatred.
* “We have wasted months in fruitless schemes” = “We’re all so incompetent, it takes us months to cast a simple Imperius curse on somebody”.
* I like the way Hermione uses Harry’s dream to come up with various theories, then remembers to be all bossy and authoritarian and tells him not to have any more dreams in future.
* Erm, Hermione, forgetting what Harry saw won’t stop him having any more dreams. It might, however, deprive the good side of some potentially valuable information.
* Harry’s refusing to speak to Hermione and hating Snape. In other words, he’s just his usual whiney self.
* So how could Teenaged!Snape shoot down those flies with his wand? I thought that magic was meant to be banned outside of school? Or would any Ministry wizard operating the Trace just assume it was his mum doing it? This would, of course, give an unfair advantage to Pureblood or Halfblood kids, who could just pass off any magic as their parents’; but then, I suppose fairness isn’t exactly at the forefront of the wizarding mind.
* Snape’s giving Harry a lot of praise, by his standards, not that Harry picks up on it.
* McGonagall’s looking “as though what she were watching made her feel faintly sick.” Given how little regard she has for the Divination professor, I assume this is at least as much because she dislikes Umbridge as because she feels sorry for Trelawney.
* Dumbledore hiring Firenze is either a sign of how awesomely tolerant he is, or an attempt to annoy Umbridge by hiring somebody he knows she’ll dislike. Any bets as to which it might be?
* Also, whilst Harry’s romancing of Cho isn’t the best, it’s still better than what Hermione “I’m going to treat my crush like dirt then act all offended when he goes out with somebody else” Granger tries.
* For “Ginny’s not bad”, read “Ginny’s good enough to become a professional Quidditch player a few years out of school.”
* Hey, Ginny’s been breaking into the broom shed and using other people’s stuff without their permission! At the age of six, no less! She’s so awesome and sassy and super-feminist!
* Although the idea of Ginny doing this to become awesome at Quidditch is a little implausible. Yes, she could learn how to fly, but there’s still the whole catching/throwing/tactics side of the game.
* Plus, of course, if Ginny’s really so good, then why didn’t she show any interest in playing before this book? About the only reason I can think of is that the positions on the Gryffindor Quidditch team were all filled, leaving her with no opportunities to play. But this raises a whole new set of issues. We never hear of flying lessons after that one time in PS, and Harry never seems to do any non-Quidditch-related flying. So what do other students do? Do they not have any opportunities to learn or practise flying at all after their first year?
* Apparently they’ll have to kill Zach Smith if he beats them in Quidditch. Repeat after me, boys: it’s only a game, and disliking Harry does not make somebody automatically evil.
* Now we have one of the rare sensible moments in the book, where Hermione points out that everybody’s taking Quidditch way too seriously.
* The Quidditch match is skated over in a paragraph, rather than getting an entire chapter dedicated to it. Harry isn’t playing, so it isn’t important enough to warrant a longer description.
* So how many of the Gryffindor players are new? I was under the impression that it was just Harry, Fred and George who’d been replaced, but the dip in quality seems to be far worse than you’d expect with just three new players, especially given that Ginny is quite a good Seeker.
* Ginny acknowledges that luck played a part in her catching the Snitch, unlike Harry, who never seems to reflect on how lucky he is to have the best broom out of anybody in Hogwarts. Brooms only make a difference when someone else has the better one, clearly.
* Also, the whole issue of which broom is better and who’s got the best is a bit hard to work out. I think they implied in PS that the Nimbus 2000 was quite a new make, probably only a couple of years old. It’s then made obsolete by the Nimbus 2001 in COS (which is another thing that’s been bugging me – are we meant to infer that there have actually been a total of 2,001 different makes of Nimbus brooms over the years?), which in turn is made obsolete a year later by the Firebolt. But then there seem to be no advances in broom technology whatsoever for the rest of the series. Just how quickly are new brooms being invented?
* Then there’s the fact that nobody but Harry seems to get a Firebolt. You’d have thought that at least one of the rich, spoilt purebloods with whom Slytherin House is apparently filled would have managed to talk their parents into getting one.
* Angelina refuses to get rid of Ron, claiming that he’s good really. Given the complete lack of any evidence for this so far, I think that nepotism is a more likely explanation.
* Slytherin are now the favourites to win, which, given how important the Seeker is, implies that Draco’s actually quite good when not facing somebody on an unbeatable broom.
* Wow, Harry’s impressed with Ginny’s performance! And he’s, like, the best Seeker Ever™! She is so cool and awesome!
* Harry tries to get to sleep, but finds himself too busy hating Snape and Umbridge. For a pure-of-heart chosen-hero-cum-messianic-archetype, he sure does feel a lot of hatred.
* Does the Neville-Sprout-McGonagall dream have any symbolic meaning, or is it just there to look suitably weird?
* Given that Voldemort might be trying to manipulate his mind, Harry ought to be less eager to have these dreams. Especially given his worries earlier that Lord V might be forcing him to attack people.
* Isn’t a Knut supposed to be the smallest denomination of wizarding currency? Because if so, paying a Knut for a newspaper seems remarkably cheap. Maybe the Daily Prophet can afford to be so cheap because it’s fired all its journalists and fact-checkers, and just regurgitates Ministry press releases.
* Or maybe it’s actually a Ministry-run paper designed specifically to churn out government propaganda, which is why it toes the party line so much. Although that doesn’t explain why everybody takes it so seriously – people tend to distrust papers which become known for being too close to the government.
* This whole “everybody believes Harry once he gets his story out there” scene is rather touching, until you remember that there was nothing stopping him getting his story out sooner, other than his own pig-headedness.
* Hermione picks up yet more information from the girls’ toilets. I suppose the Hogwarts girls are so gossipy to make up for the boys’ complete lack of interest in the world around them.
* “And it seemed that Hermione was quite right.” So no change there, then.
* I’m not sure why Seamus is so apologetic to Harry. After all, when he asked what happened, Harry refused to tell, insulted his family and threatened him with a wand. From Seamus’ POV, there’s no evidence that Harry’s telling the truth, and lots of evidence that he’s the sort of unstable, potentially violent person the Ministry’s portraying him as.
* Wow, JKR’s acknowledged that one of the Twins’ “jokes” isn’t actually very funny. Catch me, somebody, I think I’m about to faint.
* So Rookwood’s terrified of Voldemort’s vengeance, even though he hasn’t done anything wrong. Seriously, Voldemort’s not very good at inspiring loyalty in his subordinates. He sounds like one of the people who hears “it’s better to be feared than to be loved”, and then goes around acting like a total jerk, even though the original Prince went on to say that it’s even better to be both feared and loved, and that you should inspire fear in such a way that you don’t also inspire hatred.
* “We have wasted months in fruitless schemes” = “We’re all so incompetent, it takes us months to cast a simple Imperius curse on somebody”.
* I like the way Hermione uses Harry’s dream to come up with various theories, then remembers to be all bossy and authoritarian and tells him not to have any more dreams in future.
* Erm, Hermione, forgetting what Harry saw won’t stop him having any more dreams. It might, however, deprive the good side of some potentially valuable information.
* Harry’s refusing to speak to Hermione and hating Snape. In other words, he’s just his usual whiney self.
* So how could Teenaged!Snape shoot down those flies with his wand? I thought that magic was meant to be banned outside of school? Or would any Ministry wizard operating the Trace just assume it was his mum doing it? This would, of course, give an unfair advantage to Pureblood or Halfblood kids, who could just pass off any magic as their parents’; but then, I suppose fairness isn’t exactly at the forefront of the wizarding mind.
* Snape’s giving Harry a lot of praise, by his standards, not that Harry picks up on it.
* McGonagall’s looking “as though what she were watching made her feel faintly sick.” Given how little regard she has for the Divination professor, I assume this is at least as much because she dislikes Umbridge as because she feels sorry for Trelawney.
* Dumbledore hiring Firenze is either a sign of how awesomely tolerant he is, or an attempt to annoy Umbridge by hiring somebody he knows she’ll dislike. Any bets as to which it might be?
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-19 03:38 pm (UTC)He was explicitly told to practice clearing his mind before going to sleep.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-21 01:26 pm (UTC)(Wild theory -- Dumbledore wanted to look like he was doing something to help Harry, but also wanted to information which Harry's dreams could bring. So he arranged for Harry to have Occlumency lessons, but made Snape teach him a version of Occlumency which wouldn't be of much use in these circumstances.)
no subject
Date: 2011-09-21 02:23 pm (UTC)duj's theory was that the purpose of the Occlumency lessons was to drive home the fact that Severus was an Order member. Even so it takes Harry too long to remember.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-21 07:17 pm (UTC)So, Rowling needed for it to be possible to block the mind-link. At the same time, however, the plot of OotP demanded that Harry failed at closing the link so that Voldemort could lure him into the DOM through his visions. The problem, though, is that Harry is a Gary Stu, and a Gary Stu never fails at anything when he makes the effort, but neither is it a Gary Stu's fault if something goes wrong. So how could Rowling explain Harry's failure to block the visions? It couldn't be because of weakness or inability, nor could it be because he hadn't tried hard enough. The only solution left was that his failure had to be somebody else's fault.
Thus, Rowling made it Snape's fault that Harry was tricked because Snape had failed to teach him properly. She couldn't have made it Dumbledore's fault because Dumbledore is God.