OOTP Chapter Thirty-Three: "Fight and Flight"

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

* A mercifully short chapter, this – only eleven pages long.

* Umbridge’s breathing is “ragged” now. Is this meant to be another example of Sadist!Umbridge? Like getting a thrill of pleasure at the prospect of using the weapon on the students?

* It “seemed incredible to Harry that twenty feet away there were people enjoying dinner, celebrating the end of exams, not a care in the world…” Meanwhile, it seems incredible to me that JKR has to keep resorting to this sort of contrast to emphasise Harry’s emotional state. Couldn’t she try something new once in a while?

* What’s with this emphasis on Umbridge struggling to keep up with Hermione? It’s been mentioned twice now on the first two pages (“Hermione marched purposefully across the grass – Umbridge jogging to keep up” and “She… plunged straight into the trees, moving at such a pace that Umbridge, with her shorter legs, had difficulty in keeping up”). Is it just meant to belittle Umbridge even more by making her seem physically weak and weedy, since constantly comparing her to a toad just isn’t enough?

* Umbridge isn’t doing a very good job controlling Harry and Hermione, is she? You’d have thought that as the person with the wand and no moral scruples about using it, she’d be able to force Hermione to slow down and tell her what exactly the weapon is.

* Also, how does the school make sure that no animals ever run out of the Forest and endanger pupils? There don’t seem to be any physical fences or other boundaries which could prove a hindrance, and we’re never told of any invisible magical field either. What if the Acromantulas (say) grow too numerous to support themselves off what they can catch in the Forest, and decide to spill over into the Hogwarts grounds?

* Maybe the plan is to just keep feeding them Hufflepuffs so that they’re too full to go after any of the more important students. That’s why the school authorities keep Hufflepuff as a sort of rag-bag House with no real distinguishing characteristics; it’s so that they know who can be sacrificed without real loss.

* In the finest tradition of HP villains, Umbridge suddenly has an attack of stupidity and angers the centaurs enough to make them all go after her.

* “Nooooo!” shouts Umbridge as the centaurs drag her off. Is it just me, or is that the sort of dialogue you’d expect in a comic book rather than a (supposedly grown-up) novel?

* Hermione’s worried lest Grawp kill the centaurs. Personally my money would be on the centaurs winning: they’re faster, more intelligent, more numerous, and their bows give them greater range.

* Now Harry’s started spitting at Hermione, who’s just saved Harry from being tortured and got rid of Umbridge for them. What a charming boy he is.

* Harry and Hermione’s friends appear, and say that Ginny was the best out of all of them at fighting off the Slytherins. As if we needed to be told.

* Ginny’s set her jaw “so that the resemblance to Fred and George was suddenly striking.” There is a striking resemblance, but probably not in the way JKR thinks.

* Ginny’s acting “coolly” again, a sure sign of danger.

* So Harry was all upset a few pages back because he and Hermione supposedly didn’t have enough time to go back to Hogwarts and retrieve their wands, but now they’ve got enough time to fly all the way to London? Seriously? Isn’t there a better plan they could think of? Like, I don’t know, going back and trying to convince Snape? Or using Umbridge’s fireplace to try and contact the Weasleys? Are they really stupid enough not to think of any alternatives? On second thoughts, don’t answer that last one.

Comments

[oryx_leucoryx]

You skipped the most interesting part of the chapter - Hermione's 'negotiation' with the centaurs. Where she basically tells them she doesn't appreciate them any more than Umbridge does - they were just useful tools to her (compared with Umbridge thinking of them as animals). If Grawp had arrived just a bit later Hermione would have shared Umbridge's fate, whatever it was.

[urbanman1984.livejournal.com]

Quite right - seriously what to make of that dialogue now the series is over? Or Hermione's observation about Firenze "I never liked horses?" If Pansy Parkinson said it was okay Lupin left and added "I never liked wolves" Hermione would have been outraged at the bigoty...

It can only be summed up by "It's Okay If A Gryffindor Does It."

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

IOIAGDI is so accurate. I remember when someone ranted to me about how prejudiced Snape was in referring to Lupin as 'the werewolf'- when I think it's understandable coming from someone who is confronted by enemies in the very place where he was set up by Sirius to be attacked by Lupin in werewolf form, that's hard to look past- and totally overlooked Ron shouting at Lupin, 'Get away from me, werewolf!'

You'd think that'd be worse, coming from a kid who'd liked and respected Lupin, who'd been treated well by him. But no, it's Snape being proven as the horrible person, as always. *eyeroll* Love how the prejudices in our main characters are overlooked time and time again. Or they're not counted as prejudice- anti-Muggle sentiment, for instance, because Muggles are inferior to wizards, so it's okay to use spells on them and exploit the situation as one sees fit.

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

Ah, but Hermione's not being prejudiced here. Yes, she treats the centaurs like tools, but she does the same to everybody else as well. Probably she'd act the same if it were a group of students hiding out in the Forest, like the DA does in Deathly Hallows. So that's alright then.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

You make a good point. Hermione seems to make a habit of treating everyone like tools rather than people. She knows best, after all.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Hermione/Dumbledore OTP! Seriously, treating others like tools is a salient characteristic of psychopaths. More evidence Hermione is one.

[oryx_leucoryx]

One of my favorite Pratchett quotes, the conversation between Granny Weatherwax and the Quite-Reverend Mightily Oats on the nature of sin:

"It's not as simple as that. It's not a black-and-white issue. There are so many shades of gray."
"There's no grays, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That's what sin is."
"It's a lot more complicated than that-"
"No. It ain't. When people say things are more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth. People as things, that's where it starts."
"Oh, I'm sure there are worse crimes-"
"But they starts with thinking about people as things…"

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That's what sin is."

Oh, that's a great conversation! It reminds me that somewhere in the Attachment and Loss Series, John Bowlby quotes someone as saying child abusers regard children as "need-gratifying objects." All abuse, criminality, racism, sexism, etc, begin with regarding the other as an object.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

What a creepy thought! Moreso because it sort of makes sense.

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah. I write about villains a lot and so I've started looking into a lot of ideas about what might cause a villain to do evil, and it all comes back to the idea that someone else is less worthy than you of respect or consideration- something the Harry Potter books have in spades. Of course what most of those books then assert is that nobody is immune.

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

Oh, how could I have left that bit out? I suppose I was just being charitable, and assuming that Hermione wasn't thinking straight because she was frightened, and that she didn't really mean what she seemed to mean about using the centaurs as tools. Looking back on it, though, this sort of thinking isn't exactly uncommon for Hermione ("Ginny, the best thing for you to do would be to use a series of boys to make Harry jealous!" -- or was it to get a bit of practice, I can't remember?), so I think you must be right.