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deathtocapslock* 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.
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Date: 2011-12-28 11:21 am (UTC)Yes, all those students who would come to Harry and Hermione's aid if they attracted their attention...guys, seriously, SCREAM. It'd take Umbridge a few moments to Silencio you both, surely enough time to get help?
Umbridge isn’t doing a very good job controlling Harry and Hermione, is she?
IKR? Why not use Cruciatus on her now to get the info instead of being blindly led around? Oh, wait, it's HP, we can't have rational villains.
Flying to London makes no sense at all. It would take HOURS to get there. But there's a perfectly good Floo that's now available and no Umbridge to be wary of. Why not contact someone? IDK if there was some protection on it that kept them from actually transporting themselves out through it, but hell, call Molly Weasley, get her to round up the Order! Adults who can Apparate are far more useful than children taking the thestral express!
(let's ignore that these are supposed to be wild creatures and not wonder why they so docilely took the children on board and came in-built with GPS to find the exact spot they were looking for. All the times I've been on planes, even in areas I was familiar with, I couldn't really identify the places beneath me. Unless they were flying low enough to be visible to Muggles, which is a whole other deal)
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Date: 2011-12-28 03:35 pm (UTC)True, but that wouldn't be as exciting and the kids wouldn’t get to do anything. It would look far more boring in the OotP movie for the kids to be waiting around to hear news from the adults instead of taking an exciting ride on cool winged horses! Also, if Harry and Co. had actually done the useful thing, then they wouldn’t have blundered into Voldemort’s obvious trap, Sirius wouldn’t have died one of the most nonsensical deaths ever, Harry wouldn’t have gotten to angst about him for the rest of the book and then conveniently remember the mirror that Sirius had given him that he could have used to contact him instead of gallivanting into Voldemort’s trap, and Harry wouldn’t have gotten to smash the prophecy which would later prove to be mostly irrelevant anyway. See? It all makes sense!
/let's ignore that these are supposed to be wild creatures and not wonder why they so docilely took the children on board/
Because they recognized that Harry and Co. are good and noble, of course! That’s why Buckbeak was so mild-mannered when Harry and Hermione were dragging him around by the end of PoA, why he didn’t attack Sirius when Sirius kicked him to get going, and why he attacked Draco for the heinous crime of calling him an “ugly brute” while patting his beak.
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Date: 2011-12-28 09:12 pm (UTC)Gryffindordiscombobulated to think of calling Molly or Tonks or anyone, they still could have blundered into the trap and gotten the same ending. Probably the DEs had an incredibly boring few hours standing around waiting for the kids to show up. ("So, Lucius... got any gum?")no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 02:36 pm (UTC)Nah, gum's a bit lower-class for the Malfoys. More likely they'd spend the time playing parlour games, like charades or twenty questions.
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Date: 2011-12-29 11:59 pm (UTC)You know, Draco probably learned his dramatic skills somewhere - maybe the Malfoys do have charades nights.
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Date: 2011-12-29 12:32 am (UTC)I LOL'd when I read this. Thank you for the laugh. Don't forget Harry also wouldn't have been able to blame Snape for Black's death, instead of say, himself (for not communicating with Sirius) and/or the twins (for baiting Sirius by calling him a coward. See, it doesn't matter if a cowardly Slytherin like Snape calls him a coward, but if a fellow Gryffindor does it, that's the grossest of insults.)
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Date: 2011-12-29 12:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-30 01:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-03 02:45 am (UTC)Do they really think Sirius could just stay where it was safe while Harry is in danger? Everything we know about Sirius is that he is not the kind of guy to play it safe.
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Date: 2011-12-29 12:57 am (UTC)(this is why I like the Young Wizards series. Those kids have authority figures they trust and rely on and seek advice from, they always do the responsible thing and go to them for help, and yet they always manage to have adventures and get caught up in situations beyond their control for the requisite excitement and tension)
*eyeroll* I wasn't going to bring Buckbeak in, 'coz I've flogged that dead horse for ages now, but DAMN, that gets to me as well.
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Date: 2012-01-04 04:04 am (UTC)Buckbeak's not a horse, he's a hippogriff. And he's still alive, as far as we know. ;-)
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Date: 2012-01-04 04:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-04 06:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 11:57 pm (UTC)I really wish Umbridge had been halfway competent in this scene. It could have been truly chilling.
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Date: 2012-01-02 02:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-02 06:35 am (UTC)As for whether anybody is competent in general, that would depend on how you define the word. Is it being good at your job? Getting others to do what you want? Accomplishing other goals? Winning at quidditch? ;-)
Snape is competent to the extent he's allowed to be, despite the obstacles thrown in his way, and unlike Harry, who has to be spoon-fed his victories by the author. Maybe that's one reason Snape is so popular: Most people know what it's like to struggle to achieve things despite overwhelming odds, so he's easy to identify with, unlike the designated heroes.
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Date: 2012-01-03 01:06 am (UTC)Grubbly-Plank at least knows her subject, so there's another possibly competent person. Not that she's around much to assess her other abilities. Sprout and Pomfrey also seem to know what they're doing most of the time, but we don't know whether they're especially competent outside their particular fields because we rarely if ever see them outside that context. (Okay, Sprout can launch attack plants and not die, at least.) Flitwick is great at Charms and dueling and terrible at class management or acting in loco parentis for the Ravenclaws. McGonagall has a similar profile (great at her subject, but look at the bullies who flourish under her watch). Who knows about Sinistra... maybe she's too competent to appear in the books.
Slughorn can brew complex potions successfully, and appears to have some ability to innovate, or at least to recognize when someone else's innovation will work. He also networks pretty successfully and has a lot of former students who still like him, and appears to have succeeded at helping a fair number of them get jobs. He can also apparently get celebrities to attend his parties, at least undead ones. He's a total failure at recognizing when someone is a charming psycho until thwacked over the head with evidence, but to be fair, hardly anyone else caught on to Tom either.
Lockhart, of course, succeeded brilliantly at memory charms and convincing everyone he was all that and a bag of chips. And he would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids!
Fred and George are successful innovators who can also read the market and give consumers what they want, very profitably, including scoring government defense contracts as well as dominating their niche of the popular consumer market. They also seem to have managed to avoid getting a public reputation as bullies, whatever some people might think of them in private, which is success of a sort.
Ludo Bagman succeeded at Quidditch and popularity, well enough to keep himself out of prison.
I think overall there's a lot more characters who are competent in a particular skill than in long-term, macro-level concerns like planning their careers, orchestrating social change, or opposing Voldemort. The ones who are better at those sorts of things tend to be Slytherins when we know their houses - Slughorn, Lucius Malfoy (who is at least a mover and shaker for a few years), Snape for the never-ending spying gig, young Tom for snowing everyone and getting away with murder for years.
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Date: 2012-01-03 01:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-03 02:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-03 03:53 am (UTC)It would also be really easy to mess up, though, so I can see your point.
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Date: 2012-01-03 04:01 am (UTC)waste on the internetdo other, more interesting things. (Why cleaning spells aren't the ones they drill into every kid until any witch or wizard with a brain cell can do them in their sleep, I don't know. Are they worried that it'll make cleaning up forensic evidence too easy and thus encourage crime?)no subject
Date: 2012-01-03 04:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-04 03:58 am (UTC)That reminds me of an old comic book I have. It's about these space travelers who go to a distant planet where only one person is left alive. The man explains he's the last survivor of a once-thriving civilization that created a fatally useful invention: a machine that allowed them to instantly bring into being anything they wanted. All they had to do was imagine it. When they got bored with whatever they'd imagined, it would disappear. With this invention, they no longer had to work, let alone struggle, so they had nothing to do but sit around and have fun. Eventually, even that became boring, so one by one, they all literally died of boredom. At the end of the story, the man tells the space visitors that they're also figments of his imagination, and he's become bored with them, too. They beg him not to wish them out of existence, but he does, and they disappear. That's the end of the story.
Not only is that story more interesting and imaginative than anything in the HP books--the proof being that I haven't read it in over 30 years, but I still remember it vividly--but it also explains why wizarding civilization is so backward: Their magic makes them lazy, so they have no reason to advance, either socially or technologically.
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Date: 2012-01-04 04:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2012-01-05 03:43 pm (UTC)That is so true. And it's incredible frustrating, that the rare competent person always get the short stick and gets maligned and/or ridiculed by all the 'heroic' morons.
Huh, that makes HP much more 'real' than I ever thought. Just not in a good way.