OOTP Chapter Thirty-Six: "The Only One he ever Feared"

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

* You know, Rowling, when you’re trying to create in your readers a sense of sadness that one of the main characters has died, it’s probably best not to have Neville coming in with his comedy broken nose voice. It sort of distracts from the pathos of the moment.

* Oh dear, Harry almost loses Bellatrix in the spinning room. Luckily, though, “the plot room seemed to have been waiting for him to ask” how to get out. So that’s alright, then.

* Harry tries to use Crucio on Bellatrix, but because he’s not enough of a sadist only succeeds in knocking her over. Fortunately he’s going to remember her advice about needing to enjoy the pain of your opponent (much better, in fact, that he seems to remember any of his school lessons), and by the end of Book Seven he’ll be torturing with the best of them.

* So is part of the reason why the Cruciatus is considered so bad the fact that you can only cast it with malevolent motives, unlike most spells, which don’t seem to be much affected by your mental state?

* “I know spells of such power that you, pathetic little boy, could never hope to compete—” A pity we never get to see any, then, or find out what makes them so powerful. Is it the effect they have, the effort needed to cast them, both, neither…?

* Voldemort appears, rendering his whole “I don’t want to enter the Ministry and alert them to my return” thing a bit pointless.

* Also, it would have been better if, instead of monologuing like this, Voldemort had just AKed Harry as soon as he appeared. What is it with this man and pointless, time-wasting speeches?

* “Months of preparation, months of effort… and my Death Eaters have let Harry Potter thwart me again…” Well, to be fair, Voldemort, it was a pretty stupid plan. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that you deserved to fail.

* I suppose that Dumbledore fighting Voldemort with all those magical creature statues helping him is supposed to be symbolic.

* “‘It was foolish to come here tonight, Tom,’ said Dumbledore calmly.” I’d think that addressing Voldemort by his real first name would be an incredibly cool thing to do, were it not so obviously copied from the Obi-Wan/Darth Vader scene in Star Wars.

* Albus refuses to kill Voldemort because “we both know that there are other ways of destroying a man… Merely taking your life would not satisfy me” – so he’s saving Voldemort from death in order to inflict something even worse on him. Yup, that man’s the epitome of goodness, alright.

* “Merlin’s beard – here – here! – in the Ministry of Magic! – great heavens above – it doesn’t seem possible – my word – how can this be?” Well, Minister, if you’re curious, I could recommend having a few words with your head of security, for starters.

* Dumbledore starts telling Fudge what to do. Ordinarily I’d think this was insufferably arrogant, but after being falsely accused of spreading panic for the past twelve months, I think I can forgive him for enjoying his vindication.

* I assume that Hogwarts usually has some sort of anti-Portkey wards, else any half-competent wizard with a wand would be able to teleport right into the middle of the castle. But this raises the question of how Dumbledore managed to send Harry Portkeying to Hogwarts. Does the Headmaster have the power to remove the magical protections around the grounds? But then Umbrige is in charge now, not Dumbledore. Or does Dumbledore count as the “true” Headmaster, and therefore get control over the wards, sort of like how only the true Head can get into the Office?

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So why are the Hallows Dark?

It was Terri who pointed out that one reason for the confusion in canon is that different people are using the term in different meanings, that this division is relatively recent and political, and that we see these differences in action in the conversation between Lily and Severus.

Dark Magic Doth Never Prosper, Part I

and Dark Magic Doth Never Prosper, Part II