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]

Good question. How long did it take for Snape to get ahold of them - or just one or two of them, if they have a phone tree (well, Floo tree) set up? We know he wasn't out rescuing Umbridge, because Dumbledore did that later. Was everyone in the shower for six hours? Did it take take forever to ask the IS members what they saw and send them to bed?

And he wouldn't have had to "hack" any protections on the fireplace which might record the conversation, because Umbridge's isn't monitored and he could send a Patronus message even if it were. Though we have no idea how long those things take to travel long distances, so maybe Umbridge's fireplace had a private setup which recorded all calls for her personal archives (never know when you might need blackmail material?) and Snape's Patronus messages would be about as slow getting to any Order members as Thestrals are getting to London, so he had to either spend time covertly and temporarily disabling the one or waste time sending the other. But that's introducing too many "what-ifs" for my taste.

[oryx_leucoryx]

We don't know how Severus contacted the Order, but Albus tells us it wasn't via Umbridge's fireplace and he probably didn't send his Patronus because the following year Albus was surprised to see it was still the doe. So he must have had some other method - maybe he arranged for Phineas to visit a portrait in the dungeon.

We are supposed to believe he went to search for the kids in the forest and only sent his message when it was clear they were not there. If he arrived at the forest after the thestrals had cleared the school area then he had no way of knowing whether the kids made it out of the forest without searching and verifying they weren't there (being eaten by Acromantulae or whatever).

[lynn-waterfall.livejournal.com]

He wouldn't have even known that they were *going* to the forest, though. Eventually, he may have checked, but the forest was only discussed after he left. He probably searched the castle first of all, and while not knowing (at least at first) that Umbridge wasn't there.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Didn't the members of the IS hear that Hermione was leading Umbridge to the forest, or at least out of the castle?

[lynn-waterfall.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think so. Okay, as soon as he thought to ask them, he'd have an idea. He might have to be wary about what/how he asked them, though. Maybe not.

[maidofkent.livejournal.com]

The IS don't know that Hermione is taking Umbridge to the Forest. All she says in front of them is that she will take Umbridge to the weapon - no indication of where it is meant to be hidden, or whether it's inside or outside the castle. I suppose Snape could question any portraits who might have seen them and learn that they left the castle, but he'd still have to check the grounds themselves, and presumably check they hadn't got back inside by another entrance.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

He may not have been out rescuing Umbridge, but he was out looking for the kids - and, I'd guess, it would have taken him quite awhile to figure that they had gone to London. As far as he knew, they were in danger in the Forbidden Forest, and had no way of leaving there. None of them had brooms and none of them were old enough to apparate.

My two cents.

[sunnyskywalker]

In that case, calling out the Order to form a search party sounds a lot more efficient than wandering around the forest himself. Maybe they did that before trying London. (Though, given Harry's record of ending up in difficult-to-get-to places, like the Chamber of Secrets, maybe sending one person to check just in case while the rest searched the forest would have been a good plan. They could Apparate back to the area quickly enough if the kids weren't in the Ministry, and if the were, one adult as backup who can call for more is better than nothing.)