deathtocapslock | OOTP Chapter Thirty-Five: "Beyond the Veil"

* I’m surprised Lucius doesn’t just use Accio Prophecy. It would be quicker than just standing there saying “Give it to me, Potter.”

* “If Sirius really was not here, he had led his friends to their deaths for no reason at all…” Well done, Potter, you got there in the end. Really, though, you should have listened to Hermione. She was against this whole idea from the beginning. You see, this is what happens when you start thinking for yourself.

* Now that I mention it, I don’t think Harry really does much planning in Books Six and Seven, does he? Maybe he was just so traumatised by the failure of this adventure that he resolved to let Hermione and Dumbledore do all the thinking from now on.

* Bella seems impressed that Harry knows how to cast a Shield Charm, although it seems like one of the basic spells you’d want everybody to know. Maybe this is a sign of how bad DADA teaching is in Hogwarts.

* So Bella doesn’t know that Voldemort is a halfblood? Interesting. Surely a rich pureblood family like hers would have plenty of genealogical tables where she could check the pedigree of any wizarding family. Since there would be no Tom Riddle there, she must know he couldn’t be pureblood. Or does Voldemort not tell anybody his real name and identity? In which case I assume all his original followers (those who were with him when he still used his real name) haven’t told anybody. Or maybe he killed them to stop them telling.

* Of course, all this might have been avoided if Dumbledore just told people what Voldie’s real name is. It’s hard to imagine pureblood fanatics like Bella agreeing to serve a bastard halfblood like Tom.

* So Bella is considerably more violent than Lucius, wanting to attack Harry even when doing so would reduce their chances of success. I suppose this is partly due to fourteen years spent in Azkaban. Perhaps wizarding society might want to rethink their policy of sending people to a prison which turns them criminally insane.

* I assume there’s a way of listening to the prophecies without smashing them on the ground, because implementing a system whereby you can only hear them once seems a bit silly.

* “‘Dumbledore never told you?’ Malfoy repeated. ‘Well, this explains why you didn’t come earlier, Potter, the Dark Lord wondered why… you didn’t come running when he showed you the place where it was hidden in your dreams. He thought natural curiosity would make you want to hear the exact wording…’” Now, really, Voldemort, I can’t see why you thought this would be a good idea. Your entire plan essentially depends on Harry acting like an idiot, an—oh, wait, never mind.

* The Prophecy security system seems a bit silly, TBH, since it means that nobody can check what they say. Surely being able to find how to defeat Voldemort would be of great use to the Ministry?

* Voldemort going into the MOM would alert everybody to his presence, says Bella. A group of his known followers entering whilst wearing their Death Eater uniforms and breaking into a top-secret government department, on the other hand, is a perfectly normal and unremarkable thing to happen.

* “But the Dark Lord knows you are not unintelligent.” Normally I’d wonder why Voldemort would think something which is so manifestly untrue, but knowing how low Voldemort himself has set the bar…

* Harry’s side the first to use actual violence, as opposed to merely threatening. Just thought I’d point this out.

* If the DEs use each others’ real names, what exactly is the point of the masks? Surely they’d just impair your peripheral vision and make it harder to fight.

* It seems that Voldemort’s élite Death Eaters don’t know how to cast non-verbal spells, then. Or do they not exist yet?

* Neville’s stray Stupefy hits a “glass-fronted cabinet on the wall full of variously shaped hour-glasses”. I take it this is supposed to be the destruction of the Time Turners? (Although I’m not sure what idiot government would put them all in one place like this. Also, are we really expected to believe that nobody knows how to make any new ones? Or that there are no Time Turners in other countries which the Ministry could borrow?)

* Why use Impedimenta on the children? Sure it’ll knock them back, but there’s nothing to stop them from getting up and throwing some spells back at you. Especially if having cast it you just stand there and yell “We’ve got them! We’ve got them!” instead of going in to finish them off. If you want to stand around and shout, it would be better to use something which disables them completely, like Stupefy or Petrificus Totalus.

* Oh, wait, I take back what I said about non-verbal spells – Hermione does Silencio on one of the DEs, who then slashes his wand through the air and knocks Hermione out. So clearly at some of them can do non-verbals; oddly, though, he was shouting out his spells a minute ago. Maybe he’s good enough to cast non-verbal spells, but still finds doing magic verbally to be easier. (How common is the ability to do non-verbals in the WW? Would most good wizards be able to cast non-verbally just as good as if they spoke, or is being able to do them at all a mark of skill?)

* I sort of wish JKR wouldn’t write Nosebleed!Neville’s speech out phonetically (“Don’d gib id to him!”). It kind of gets annoying after a while. (And this goes for any other person with speech impediments, too. Remember, Rowling, less is more with this sort of thing.)

* Sirius dies! What a tragedy! Now I feel that I have gained a deep and important insight into the irreversibility of death! Oh, if only there were some way for the dead to come back and talk to the living – say, as ghosts, or sentient portraits, or shades conjured up a magical stone. If only…