OOTP Chapter Thirty-Four: "The Department of Mysteries"

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

* So the Threstrals are flying faster than Harry had ever flown before, at nightfall, and at a level high enough for them to look down and see the mountains below them. I hope they all know some good warming spells, because it must be pretty cold up there.

* Note how it’s Ron who comes off worst here, falling off his Threstral, walking into it, swearing never to ride one again. Hermione, Ginny, Neville and Luna, OTOH, get off fine. This sort of thing really is starting to look deliberate, although I can’t imagine quite why Rowling seems so keen to do Ron down all the time.

* Wow, security at the Ministry sure is tight. I’m not surprised Voldemort hasn’t felt able to come in beforehand and just take the Prophecy himself. /sarcasm

* Really, though, Voldie must know how crap the security arrangements are, as lots of his DEs are working for the Ministry, so he can’t even use the “I’d assumed they were halfway sensible, and that they wouldn’t let just anybody walk into their central government building” defence.

* Harry’s sure that the absence of the wand-examining witch (which is actually a pretty Freudian job, now that I come to think of it… :p) is a bad sign, and his sense of foreboding is growing with every step he takes. He still doesn’t think to go back and try and find some backup, though.

* Ginny’s “raising her eyebrow” at Harry now as she criticises his plan to have some people stay behind as backup. I wouldn’t mind her speaking coolly and raising her eyebrows if she did so once in a while, but it seems like literally every single thing she says is accompanied by some little body movement, as if to say “LOOK I’M REALLY COOL AND TOTALLY A MATCH FOR HARRY POTTER!” It just gets rather tiresome after a while.

* Any idea what the brains were for? Was this covered in one of the interviews, or did JKR leave it to us readers to work out for ourselves?

* So is the veil meant to be like the veil between life and death, then? And I take it that Harry and Luna can hear voices for the same reason they can see Threstrals, because they’ve seen death? And Sirius falls through because it would be an indignity for any human to kill a true Gryffindor like him, so he’s got to be killed by Death itself, without any human intermediaries.

* And Harry’s fascinated by the arch because he’s rather morbid and depressed and would probably welcome the idea of sliding into peaceful oblivion. Or, more likely, going to Heaven, where he and all the other Gryffindors are waited upon by dead Slytherins, who completely hate having to serve their arch-enemies. This saves space and allows Gryffindor Heaven and Slytherin Hell to be combined in one location.

* “‘That’s it then, isn’t it?’ said Ron excitedly, joining Harry in the attempt to force the door open. ‘Bound to be!’” Normally I’d point out that locking a door in a top-secret government department isn’t necessarily that significant, but given the security of the Ministry as a whole, I think Ron may be onto something here.

* Ron’s starting at the locked door “with a mixture of apprehension and longing”. Since I can’t remember much about the DOM section coming up, I’m not sure whether this turns out to be significant. Judging by JKR’s past form, I’d say the odds are about 50/50.

* I like the way Harry assumes that Sirius must be where he was in the dream, as if Voldemort couldn’t have moved him at all in the intervening time.

* Harry showing his usual primary school mentality here. “That prophecy’s got my name on it, therefore I’m allowed to take it!”

* And Harry gets ambushed by the Death Eaters! What an unexpected surprise. Or, on second thoughts, maybe not.

Comments

[sunnyskywalker]

That would have thrown quite a wrench in things! Would Barty Jr. have Imperiused some hapless nobody to be caretaker, then? Assuming Voldemort could get a message to him. He doesn't seem to have trusted any of the free DEs to do the job, but maybe he would have had to resort to Lucius Malfoy. That would have been interesting.

Why didn't they know about that restriction, though? It seems especially odd that they would go to all the trouble of Imperiusing Bode without also asking him, "So, what do you know about the security measures on these things?" Were they just trying to make OotP drag out longer or what? And timeline-wise, how hard would it have been, once they had Crouch under Imperius, to have him do the dirty work of Imperiusing someone to go after it? (Before he started seriously fighting it and went on "sick leave," that is. It might have been an option at least up until the first task, when he looked tired but not "wtf is wrong with him.") So long as he Obliviated his victim while leaving the Imperius intact, it couldn't be traced back to him without a great deal of trouble - and if St. Mungo's couldn't recover the memory of what Bode was doing in OotP and had to hope he would get better, there's no reason to think it would have been any different in GoF. It would have been easy enough for Crouch to find an excuse to get Bode alone, surely? ("We have an issue with something one of the foreign delegates mentioned during negotiations over the Tournament which suggested a possible breach of your department's security. If you would just step into my office to discuss it...?") Worst-case scenario, Peter could pop up from behind a trash can and zap Bode (or Podmore, or whomoever they target first) himself. Then Voldy would have had most of year 4 to find a time for Peter to sneak him in.

Maybe they didn't want to take any risks not connected to getting Voldemort's body back that year... but if so, they were going about it in a spectacularly risky way which seems unnecessary. (If they needed Harry specifically in June, Barty could just have sneaked in then Polyjuiced as a student for an hour and handed Harry a "support Cedric Diggory" badge made into a two-way portkey right before the third task, which would allow DEs to pop through, dump Harry's body, and assassinate Fudge or whatever the original plan was.) If they're going to Imperius a high-level Ministry employee and risk having a disguised DE camp out in school all year Confunding ancient artifacts and whatnot, why not Imperius an Unspeakable and ask him about security measures too? It doesn't seem especially more risky.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Voldie didn't care about the prophecy until after Harry's escape from the graveyard. He thought all the prophecy was about was specifying the threat against him. Once he dealt with the threat (while outdoing the thing that caused him trouble the last 2 times - Lily's protective magic) who cares about the prophecy? Only after Harry escaped *despite no longer having Lily's protection* did Tom consider the prophecy may have contained something more he should have considered.

[sunnyskywalker]

Because he is not a very thorough Evil Overlord :( I mean, a proper villain would probably want to steal it just in case, since it wouldn't actually take much work on his part. Then he could make sure there's nothing he missed - maybe a visual cue of some sort Snape couldn't have passed along - and meanwhile it's an excellent test run for any other Ministry-infiltrating schemes he may have on the back burner (got to make sure they haven't changed security measures since 1981, and he and Peter have both been out of the loop, and who knows what Crouch isn't aware of now that he's no longer in the DMLE). It could be essentially a side-quest in the midst of other Ministry-infiltrating schemes - surely there are other reasons to want an Unspeakable in his power, just to know what they get up to and whether they're a threat or have something he could use if nothing else? And while we're at it, let's just pop in and grab the thing because hey, it has my name on it and it would look nice on the mantel, and taking something the Ministry could use as propaganda out of their hands might be a good idea.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Also, I bet it took Severus reminding him that he never got the full prophecy for Tom to realize there could be something more there.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

But why on earth would Severus do that? Especially now we know that (alas) Jodel was wrong and Dumbledore was not laying a clever trap for Voldemort?

[oryx_leucoryx]

I'm not sure he wasn't. If all Dumbles wanted was to keep the globe out of Tommy's hands he should have arranged for its destruction. Send a minion (not necessarily Order member) to blast that shelf.

[oryx_leucoryx]

BTW not exactly a trap, just a time-waster. Get Tom obsessing about something while Albus went over his old Horcrux data, searched for Horace and some other odds and ends in preparation for the Horcrux hunt.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

BTW, what's wrong with livejournal? I can't get it to accept the icon I choose.

[mmmarcusz.livejournal.com]

Um, JKR only vaguely thought this through, why should we think it through in detail if even the author couldn't be bothered giving her characters logical motivations?

[malic-ba.livejournal.com]

Because it's fun?

Seriously, for me the interest in HP/WW lies in the world that emerges as its internal consistency is sorted out, and logical reasons are identified which could produce what we see in the books. It's a much darker and more complex place than JKR insists, but one with lots of potential. The puzzle solving is fun, and reading the creativity and logic that other people put into it is a delight.