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deathtocapslock* First of all, sorry this is so late, I'm afraid I've been a bit busy preparing to go back to university.
* This is the chapter in which Hermione officially crosses the line from “occasionally strident and self-righteous but on the whole likeable and sympathetic character” to “dangerous sociopath”.
* “‘A gorgeous centaur...’ sighed Parvati.” I must say that, given the, erm, associations of centaurs in classical mythology, this sort of thing rather creeps me out. Is JKR aware of the implications of what she’s writing? Or did she just throw it in without bothering to think it through?
* Hermione’s dropping dark hints about what Umbridge is going to do, revealing the plot like any good author avatar would.
* So Harry can remember the names of centaurs he met once four years ago, but in DH he won’t be able to remember a face from a picture from one chapter to the next. *coughplotconveniencecough*
* Wow, centaurs sure are arrogant and condescending people. No wonder Dumbledore felt enough of an affinity with Firenze to hire him as a teacher. He recognises a kindred spirit when he sees one.
* If I were JKR, I’d be hesitant to dignify the wizarding conflicts with the term “war”. They’re more like gang wars than what most people would think of as warfare. Which is why epic fantasy doesn’t really mix with a “secret magical people in this world” plot. Epic fantasy generally centres around mighty empires, big wars and bloody battles, but these things are generally quite noticeable, and any wizards fighting in large-scale conflicts would be found out pretty quickly. So the wizarding war pretty much has to be low-key to make it plausible that Muggles wouldn’t know about it, and the end result is that we get a lot of build-up and very little payoff.
* Firenze spends the whole lesson teaching them something which he doesn’t expect them to do anyway, and which is anyway a bit uncertain and useless. So he’s about as good as the average Hogwarts teacher, then.
* “Indeed, Harry sometimes wondered how Umbridge was going to react when all the members of the DA received ‘Outstanding’ in their Defence Against the Dark Arts OWLs.” Only kidding, Harry will be the only one to get an “Outstanding” mark, because he’sa Mary Sue just the most awesome DADA student ever.
* Although everybody always goes on about how smart Hermione is, and from what we see of her she doesn’t seem noticeably worse in DADA than she does in other subjects, so if she only got an “E” in her Defence OWL, that’s probably because Harry’s not a very good teacher... :p
* Seamus’ Patronus “was definitely something hairy”. *mind goes into the gutter*
* Hermione’s Patronus is an otter, even though she’s one of the least otter-like people in the series. On a Doylist level, this is probably because JKR’s favourite animal is the otter, so her author avatar will have one as her Patronus, obviously. On a Watsonian level, perhaps Patronuses don’t represent what your personality is like, but what you need to guard you and keep you out of trouble. So Hermione’s is an otter because she needs fun-loving people around her to stop her getting too serious about everything, Ron’s is a weasel because he needs smart people to compensate for his mental inadequacy, and Harry’s is a stag because he needs a proper father-figure to help him, not an abusive one like Uncle Vernon or a scheming and manipulative one like Dumbledore. Patronuses which change when somebody falls in love show that their caster needs to be loved by their intended in order to feel happy and secure again.
* Dobby appears, wearing “his usual eight woollen hats”. I quite like the suggestion that it was this sight that made Hermione drop her SPEW activities, as she saw that her hats were all going to this one elf, and that they were therefore pretty useless from a freeing people standpoint. (Can anybody remember if SPEW is brought up again in this book?)
* Umbridge is here! I bet it’s times like this that the DA wish they had a second, secret entrance from the ROR. That way they could slip away while Umbridge and her cronies sat uselessly in front of the main entrance.
* Draco’s concealed “beneath an ugly dragon-shaped vase”, to match his ugly and monstrous soul.
* Umbridge has “an indecent excitement in her voice”. I wonder if this is how Hermione would sound to those on the receiving end of her little schemes.
* When I first read this scene, I didn’t really mind the “Sneak” curse, because I just sort of assumed that Madam Pomfrey managed to find a way of removing them after a couple of weeks. Then we found out that she still had the scars years later and... yikes.
* Not only is that extremely vindictive, but it doesn’t actually help the DA in any way. It didn’t stop them being betrayed in the first place, and it didn’t alert them to the fact that Umbridge was coming to get them. If this had been a one-off incident and the curse hadn’t been permanent, I’d be inclined to put it down to youthful lack of thought, but when you compare it to some of Hermione’s other actions (her treatment of Rita Skeeter, or sending those canaries after Ron), it seems like a rather worrying pattern is starting to emerge...
* Minerva gets all self-righteous about Willy Widdershins being let off. I wonder whether she feels the same about Mundungus Fletcher, or whether petty crooks are OK just as long as they’re on her side.
* Also, she’s not above a bit of petty corruption herself, since she lets Gryffindor Quidditch players off homework when a match is coming up.
* So Kingsley memory-wipes Marietta to stop her telling. You know, this is exactly the sort of mentality that leads DEs to Imperius people and get them to do their bidding: not caring about your victims’ autonomy, just violating their minds when it’s convenient to do so.
* Also, if they are going to mind-wipe Marietta, why not do it to Percy, Fudge and Umbridge too? That would get them out of trouble entirely.
* And really guys, Umbridge has a list of DA members and access to Veritaserum. Obliviating one witness shouldn’t be enough.
* I’m surprised Umbridge thought she could get away with manhandling students like that in front of Dumbledore. I mean, that man’s just so concerned about his students’ welfare.
* Hermione left the membership list pinned to the ROR wall. Well done, Hermione. Not that any DA members will point out this idiocy to her. Nor will they point out the fact that her defensive jinx was (a) vindictive and useless, and (b) not told about to them when they joined up. Maybe they’re all worried she’ll brand the word “COMPLAINER” across their forehead if they speak up.
* Dumbledore taking the rap is all very noble and everything, but I don’t see how it’s meant to help. Fudge can still charge the pupils with attending, even if they didn’t organise it, and now Dumbledore’s ensured that he’s going to be on the run and unable to give them any help.
* Face-scarring aside, I actually quite liked this chapter. It was quite well-paced, and I never really felt like I was wading through pages of filler. It will be interesting to see if the other chapters will be more like this now the book’s reaching its climax, or whether the quality will slip back down again.
* This is the chapter in which Hermione officially crosses the line from “occasionally strident and self-righteous but on the whole likeable and sympathetic character” to “dangerous sociopath”.
* “‘A gorgeous centaur...’ sighed Parvati.” I must say that, given the, erm, associations of centaurs in classical mythology, this sort of thing rather creeps me out. Is JKR aware of the implications of what she’s writing? Or did she just throw it in without bothering to think it through?
* Hermione’s dropping dark hints about what Umbridge is going to do, revealing the plot like any good author avatar would.
* So Harry can remember the names of centaurs he met once four years ago, but in DH he won’t be able to remember a face from a picture from one chapter to the next. *coughplotconveniencecough*
* Wow, centaurs sure are arrogant and condescending people. No wonder Dumbledore felt enough of an affinity with Firenze to hire him as a teacher. He recognises a kindred spirit when he sees one.
* If I were JKR, I’d be hesitant to dignify the wizarding conflicts with the term “war”. They’re more like gang wars than what most people would think of as warfare. Which is why epic fantasy doesn’t really mix with a “secret magical people in this world” plot. Epic fantasy generally centres around mighty empires, big wars and bloody battles, but these things are generally quite noticeable, and any wizards fighting in large-scale conflicts would be found out pretty quickly. So the wizarding war pretty much has to be low-key to make it plausible that Muggles wouldn’t know about it, and the end result is that we get a lot of build-up and very little payoff.
* Firenze spends the whole lesson teaching them something which he doesn’t expect them to do anyway, and which is anyway a bit uncertain and useless. So he’s about as good as the average Hogwarts teacher, then.
* “Indeed, Harry sometimes wondered how Umbridge was going to react when all the members of the DA received ‘Outstanding’ in their Defence Against the Dark Arts OWLs.” Only kidding, Harry will be the only one to get an “Outstanding” mark, because he’s
* Although everybody always goes on about how smart Hermione is, and from what we see of her she doesn’t seem noticeably worse in DADA than she does in other subjects, so if she only got an “E” in her Defence OWL, that’s probably because Harry’s not a very good teacher... :p
* Seamus’ Patronus “was definitely something hairy”. *mind goes into the gutter*
* Hermione’s Patronus is an otter, even though she’s one of the least otter-like people in the series. On a Doylist level, this is probably because JKR’s favourite animal is the otter, so her author avatar will have one as her Patronus, obviously. On a Watsonian level, perhaps Patronuses don’t represent what your personality is like, but what you need to guard you and keep you out of trouble. So Hermione’s is an otter because she needs fun-loving people around her to stop her getting too serious about everything, Ron’s is a weasel because he needs smart people to compensate for his mental inadequacy, and Harry’s is a stag because he needs a proper father-figure to help him, not an abusive one like Uncle Vernon or a scheming and manipulative one like Dumbledore. Patronuses which change when somebody falls in love show that their caster needs to be loved by their intended in order to feel happy and secure again.
* Dobby appears, wearing “his usual eight woollen hats”. I quite like the suggestion that it was this sight that made Hermione drop her SPEW activities, as she saw that her hats were all going to this one elf, and that they were therefore pretty useless from a freeing people standpoint. (Can anybody remember if SPEW is brought up again in this book?)
* Umbridge is here! I bet it’s times like this that the DA wish they had a second, secret entrance from the ROR. That way they could slip away while Umbridge and her cronies sat uselessly in front of the main entrance.
* Draco’s concealed “beneath an ugly dragon-shaped vase”, to match his ugly and monstrous soul.
* Umbridge has “an indecent excitement in her voice”. I wonder if this is how Hermione would sound to those on the receiving end of her little schemes.
* When I first read this scene, I didn’t really mind the “Sneak” curse, because I just sort of assumed that Madam Pomfrey managed to find a way of removing them after a couple of weeks. Then we found out that she still had the scars years later and... yikes.
* Not only is that extremely vindictive, but it doesn’t actually help the DA in any way. It didn’t stop them being betrayed in the first place, and it didn’t alert them to the fact that Umbridge was coming to get them. If this had been a one-off incident and the curse hadn’t been permanent, I’d be inclined to put it down to youthful lack of thought, but when you compare it to some of Hermione’s other actions (her treatment of Rita Skeeter, or sending those canaries after Ron), it seems like a rather worrying pattern is starting to emerge...
* Minerva gets all self-righteous about Willy Widdershins being let off. I wonder whether she feels the same about Mundungus Fletcher, or whether petty crooks are OK just as long as they’re on her side.
* Also, she’s not above a bit of petty corruption herself, since she lets Gryffindor Quidditch players off homework when a match is coming up.
* So Kingsley memory-wipes Marietta to stop her telling. You know, this is exactly the sort of mentality that leads DEs to Imperius people and get them to do their bidding: not caring about your victims’ autonomy, just violating their minds when it’s convenient to do so.
* Also, if they are going to mind-wipe Marietta, why not do it to Percy, Fudge and Umbridge too? That would get them out of trouble entirely.
* And really guys, Umbridge has a list of DA members and access to Veritaserum. Obliviating one witness shouldn’t be enough.
* I’m surprised Umbridge thought she could get away with manhandling students like that in front of Dumbledore. I mean, that man’s just so concerned about his students’ welfare.
* Hermione left the membership list pinned to the ROR wall. Well done, Hermione. Not that any DA members will point out this idiocy to her. Nor will they point out the fact that her defensive jinx was (a) vindictive and useless, and (b) not told about to them when they joined up. Maybe they’re all worried she’ll brand the word “COMPLAINER” across their forehead if they speak up.
* Dumbledore taking the rap is all very noble and everything, but I don’t see how it’s meant to help. Fudge can still charge the pupils with attending, even if they didn’t organise it, and now Dumbledore’s ensured that he’s going to be on the run and unable to give them any help.
* Face-scarring aside, I actually quite liked this chapter. It was quite well-paced, and I never really felt like I was wading through pages of filler. It will be interesting to see if the other chapters will be more like this now the book’s reaching its climax, or whether the quality will slip back down again.
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no subject
Date: 2011-10-06 10:09 pm (UTC)Case #1, Hermione's distressed at what she did to her parents, how they've been affected by the war. Our girl is shown to be an empathic loving witch, the 'sociopath' charge is defeated.
Case #2, you say she's thinking about *herself*. Fine ... but the distress she feels for *herself* is bouncing off the love she has for her parents; it's indirect proof of her feelings, one step removed. Put it the other way - if she was a cold callous sociopath with no feelings for her parents then I can't see why she'd be distressed thinking about them *or* herself after the mind wiping.
So I do think that, either way, the Wendell episode shows that Hermione was a loving feeling girl as far removed from a 'sociopath' as one can get.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-06 10:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-06 11:37 pm (UTC)And anyway, if Hermione was a monster who thought only of her own feelings, wouldn't she keep her parents around, in that case? Putting her selfish desire to be 'doted on and flattered' ahead of protecting them?
no subject
Date: 2011-10-09 06:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-09 09:41 pm (UTC)Firstly your suggesting that Hermione might have 'another cause' for tearing up over her parents, which shows that she's not the empathic girl we're shown ... and the reason she's not the empathic girl we're shown is because she's tearing up (over another cause) for her parents. It's circular reasoning. Or put it like this - yes, her tearing up *could* be due to a less than salubrious reason ... but if that reason is shown absolutely no-where else in the text, if there's no pointer anywhere else to suggest that Hermione doesn't simply love her parents - something that is *understood* in a story like this unless shown otherwise, for starters, not to mention everything else we see ... then you really don't have a case.
we do see her focusing on the fact that they (a) know "quite a bit" about Harry -
Which shows how close she is to her parents, right? A colder, unfeeling girl who is all "give me, give me" is much less likely to involve her parents in her life and tell her about it.
And we do see her focusing on the fact that they ... (b) they no longer remember her, rather than worrying about whether her spell worked properly
But if they no longer remember her then the spell DID work properly!
She is never mentioned at any later point as doing or saying anything to indicate that she's even thinking of them during their downtime in the tent when they have nothing else to do but worry about people they know, either.
How do we know that? Bloody Harry was so callously concentrating on his own despair, so uncaring of his best friend's feelings, she could have been sobbing over her parents' predicament and we would never know.
Incidentally, that was a neat bit of canon correction that they did in the second-last movie, wasn't it? A couple of times we were SHOWN that Hermione was thinking about her parents, in how she would unconsciously make decisions based on her life with them. I thought that was pretty good/clever of the movies (sometimes a great lens for highlighting Rowling's shortcomings). Anyway, the movie people answered you on this point, Sunny!
no subject
Date: 2011-10-10 09:19 pm (UTC)The spell might not work properly in that they forget, but permanently, when clearly it's supposed to be reversible. Since we never see or hear about her reversing it, or see the Grangers in the epilogue, we have no way of knowing whether she succeeded in that part of the spell.
Also, her explanation about them knowing a lot about Harry doesn't really hold up. What would they know that Voldemort would want? That he likes treacle tart, doesn't do his homework until the last minute, and likes Ginny? Voldemort already knows most of that (partly due to hanging out in Harry's head for unspecified periods of time in OotP), or could get it from dozens of other sources who had actually met Harry. Just kidnap Colin Creevey, or Ginny herself. What need for the Grangers, who barely saw the kid once five years ago? It doesn't seem likely either that they know anything useful or that Voldemort would believe they would. So either Hermione is a total idiot (not likely), or that is actually not one of her reasons for mind-wiping them. And if she's not telling the truth about it being a motivating factor, we have no reason to assume she's telling the truth about the fact that she's told them "quite a bit" either.
Bits in a movie that some other people wrote which JKR may or may not have known about in advance or approved of can't fill in for the book's deficiencies. If you want book!canon and movie!canon to be true simultaneously, then you have to believe that both Marietta and Cho turned in the DA at the same time, which is clearly not the case in either source alone. So it's one at a time, but not both ;-)