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deathtocapslock2012-04-11 01:01 pm
OOTP Chapter Thirty-Seven: "The Lost Prophecy"
* It seems Dumbledore’s room is too calm for our hero, and contrasts with his sense of loss, complementing the role of the sky, which is also often jarringly pleasant. It’s like Harry’s environment is part of some vast and sinister conspiracy to make him feel angsty.
* “It was [Harry’s] fault Sirius had died; it was all his fault.” Don’t worry, Harry, you’ll find a way to blame Snape soon enough.
* “‘Dumledore thinks very highly of you, as I am sure you know,’ he said comfortably. ‘Oh yes. Holds you in great esteem.’” That’s right; it’s not easy to get lackeys who swallow your every word quite so unhesitatingly, so it’s best to appreciate them when you’ve got them.
* Harry starts mourning for Sirius using – how could anyone thing otherwise? – copious amounts of CAPSLOCK.
* Dumbledore’s not really very good at comforting bereaved people, is he? Being all smugly calm and philosophical like that is just going to anger Harry even more.
* Dumbledore blames himself for not telling Harry that Voldemort would try and lure him to the DoM. Really, though, any half-way intelligent person could have realised charging off like that was a bad thing to do. Dumbles ought to be blaming Harry’s stupidity.
* I’m surprised – JKR’s managed to describe the dawn without adding how the Sun’s cheerful brightness offset the gloom in Harry’s heart.
* A word of advice, Dumbledore: there’s no need to bother asking Harry a question starting with the words “Did you not wonder…?” because the answer’s invariably no.
* I like the way Dumbledore spends a whole year ignoring Harry lest Voldemort in order to keep their friendship secret, when half the book’s subplots seem to revolve around people using Harry as a way of getting back at his pal Dumbledore. Yeah, great secret-keeping, Twinkles.
* Well, I say “friendship”. I’m not sure you can really call it friendship when one person lies to, manipulates and orders around the other one.
* So, if Voldie wanted to hear the prophecy, either he’d have to sneak into the Ministry and risk revealing himself, or he’d have to get Harry to retrieve it for him. Again, I’m not sure why sending a group of Death Eaters into the Department of Mysteries would seem that much less suspicious than going himself. Maybe if they were captured the plan was to have them claim that they were trying to get the prophecy to see if it contained any info on how to get the Dark Lord back, whilst denying that Voldemort was back already.
* Harry finally accepts that his stubborn and lazy attitude was the cause of his failing to master Occlumency. A pity he doesn’t resolve to work harder more generally.
* Apparently Sirius was the one person for whom Harry would go to any lengths to rescue. Personally I’d have thought that Ron or Hermione would rank higher, but maybe Voldemort thought that kidnapping them would be too difficult and look too suspicious.
* Harry’s fixed on Severus as his scapegoat for Sirius’ death. I suppose that squashes any chance that he might have reflected on his own behaviour and resolved to change it.
* “‘I trust Severus Snape,’ said Dumbledore simply.” Dumbles, you need to get over this idea that simply saying “I trust this person” is enough to make everybody else trust them, too. I know the WW doesn’t abound in critical thinkers, but still, there are limits.
* “I thought Professor Snape could overcome his feelings about your father” – note how Dumbles describes the affair as if it was all bitter old Severus’ fault for not moving on. Somehow Harry’s snooping into the Pensieve – which, as well as being a breach of trust, represents quite a serious security risk – isn’t worth mentioning at all.
* “Dumbledore lowered his hands and surveyed Harry through his half-moon glasses. ‘It is time,’ he said, ‘for me to tell you what I should have told you five years ago, Harry. Please sit down. I am going to tell you everything.’” This sounds quite exciting, until you hear what “everything” actually is.
* Harry can’t be hurt by Voldemort because of Lily’s sacrifice. OK, fine, so why can’t Voldie just send a couple of minions round to do the job for him?
* And just how does Privet Drive become Harry’s home for the purpose of the enchantment? Is there a certain number of days he has to spend there per year? If so, why not just get Harry to stay there for as long as necessary to keep the protection working, and move him somewhere else the rest of the year? We know that it’s nothing to do with Harry’s own attitudes, since he’s considered Hogwarts his real home since Philosopher’s Stone.
* So Dumbledore claims that he loved Harry too much to put his plan into action, whilst apparently having no problem manipulating Severus and ignoring the safety and happiness of his other pupils. I suppose this would suggest that, whilst Dumbles can form attachments, his main flaw is that he has difficult seeing those who he isn’t already attached to as proper people.
* Dumbledore says that the prophecy could have referred either to Harry or Neville, because they were both born at the end of July. Still, it would be fun to speculate on who else it could be. I remember once reading a theory that it was actually Draco. The “as the seventh month dies” part could mean the seventh month after the prophecy was made (do we ever find out when the interview happened?), and Voldemort “marked him as an equal” when he set Draco the task of killing Dumbledore, the leader of the opposing side, a task you’d normally expect Voldemort to undertake himself. The plan to let the DEs in through the Vanishing Cabinet was quite clever, so “the power the Dark Lord knows not” is clearly intelligence. Draco led to Voldemort’s death by disarming Albus on the tower, preventing Voldie from gaining mastery of the Elder Wand and fatally weakening him for his final duel. As for the “parents who thrice defied him”, maybe Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy argued with Voldie over seating arrangements when the DEs were meeting at Malfoy Manor. (“Look, Voldemort, I don’t care if you are the Dark Lord, it’s my goddamn house and I’ll sit at the head of the goddamn table!”) See, it all fits!
* So the big revelation about the prophecy turns out to be… that Harry will have to kill Voldemort! Seriously, worst. Revelation. Ever. I get that it might be surprising to Harry, who doesn’t know that he’s living in a Fantasy novel, but seriously, JKR, the whole “hero slays the Dark Lord” trope is common enough that most readers were almost certainly expecting Harry to end up killing Voldemort. To set this up as some sort of big reveal just looks cliché and boring.
* Harry hears the sound of people going to breakfast and is, once again, surprised that people can be happy while he isn’t, although it’s happened so often I’d have thought he might be used to it by now.
* “‘I feel I owe you another explanation, Harry,’ said Dumbledore hesitantly. ‘You may, perhaps, have wondered why I never chose you as a prefect?’” Well, Harry might have saved the school a few times, but he’s never really shown any of the qualities necessary to be a good prefect – hard work, people skills, conscientiousness. Personally I’d rather have an explanation for why he made Ron a prefect instead.
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Oh yes, one more stroke of brilliance by Dumbledore. It's not as if Voldy, having access to Harry's mind, might have access to his memories - all of which show him to be Dumble's most spechul student ever...
* Apparently Sirius was the one person for whom Harry would go to any lengths to rescue. Personally I’d have thought that Ron or Hermione would rank higher, but maybe Voldemort thought that kidnapping them would be too difficult and look too suspicious.
Wrong. Neither is half as handsome as beautiful Sirius. And that's what matters!
* Harry’s fixed on Severus as his scapegoat for Sirius’ death. I suppose that squashes any chance that he might have reflected on his own behaviour and resolved to change it.
Seriously, back in the days, I thought this would come to bite Harry (and his side) in the ass - his celebrity status inside the book and with the universe at large always preventing him from the consequences of his actions (or rather from drawing the right conclusions for more than five minutes. It's the same thing in HBP with the sectumsempra incident. HIs first reaction is right - but heaven forbid he should be left with it!
* “Dumbledore lowered his hands and surveyed Harry through his half-moon glasses. ‘It is time,’ he said, ‘for me to tell you what I should have told you five years ago, Harry. Please sit down. I am going to tell you everything.’” This sounds quite exciting, until you hear what “everything” actually is.
Not to mention it's far from "everything". It's just another pack of lies by omission.
* And just how does Privet Drive become Harry’s home for the purpose of the enchantment?
Seeing as Rowling's magic tends to be rather mechanical, I have always taken this to be along the line of official residence. You need to be registered under this address which means you have to go there during your holidays.
Love your idea about Draco as the real vanquisher of Voldemort. Although it won't wash, as Harry was able to take it down without going insane.
worst. Revelation. Ever.
OMG, don't remind me. I don't think anybody was dumb enough to really believe this was all there was to it at the time. In conjunction with Rowling's claim of having worded the prophecy very carefully, I thought there must be some hidden meaning in it - like the whole thing just NOT being about killing each other, but to vanquish Voldy in some other way, e.g. by destroying his artificial persona of Dark Lord (it didn't talk about Harry vanquishing Tom Riddle, after all.
In hindsight, I've no idea what Rowling was thinking here....
Harry might have saved the school a few times, but he’s never really shown any of the qualities necessary to be a good prefect – hard work, people skills, conscientiousness. Personally I’d rather have an explanation for why he made Ron a prefect instead.
Ah, but have you ever stopped to consider, what it is exactly, that constitutes an ideal prefect in the HP universe? I suspect, it's something quite different from your ideas as mentioned above.
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Is the insanity spell related to the Prophecies themselves, or is it a security measure done by the Ministry? If they employ a wizard to go "Oh, look, here's a Prophecy about Harry and Voldemort, I'd better put a 'Send everyone except Harry and Voldemort insane' spell on it," then the fact that Harry was able to take it down might mean nothing more than that the Ministry thought he was the subject.
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I wondered if he behaved similarly at Ariana’s funeral and that’s why Aberforth broke his nose.
/I like the way Dumbledore spends a whole year ignoring Harry lest Voldemort in order to keep their friendship secret/
Oh, yeah, because it’s not like Voldemort could have learned how special Harry was to Dumbledore through Lucius, who would have probably heard tons of complaints from Draco about how Harry was Dumbledore’s pet. It’s not like Voldemort thought that Harry’s status as the Boy Who Lived would have naturally guaranteed special interest from Dumbledore. Oh, no, Dumbledore’s plan of ignoring Harry like a passive-aggressive middle-schooler was genius!
/Dumbles, you need to get over this idea that simply saying “I trust this person” is enough to make everybody else trust them, too./
Dumbledore doesn’t seem to have grasped that kids HATE it when adults say, “Because I said so.” Which is basically what this reply amounts to. Look, I get that Snape didn’t want him to tell anybody the reason why Snape left the Death Eaters. But couldn’t Dumbledore just make something up? It’s not like he’s never lied before.
/note how Dumbles describes the affair as if it was all bitter old Severus’ fault for not moving on./
Or how he tacitly supports Remus’ claim that the reason for Snape’s hatred of James was a “schoolboy grudge” motivated by jealousy. Not anger that the bully who had done nothing but torment him since they met on the Hogwarts Train was praised for saving him from his best friend and fellow bully who had been responsible for Snape’s near-death in the first place. In other words, Dumbledore is just blaming the victim.
/why can’t Voldie just send a couple of minions round to do the job for him?/
Because he wants to kill Harry himself because….I have no idea why.
/Dumbledore claims that he loved Harry too much to put his plan into action/
I didn’t buy this the first time I read this. My thoughts were, “So, if you cared for him so much, WHY did you ignore him all year? Why didn’t you tell him anything?” I’m so tired of characters treating other characters like dirt and then trying to play the victim by saying, “I did it because I love you! I had to be cruel to be kind! I had to lie to you and pretend that I never cared for you and leave in you in the dark because that was the only way I could save you! It’s not like I could have explained the situation to you or tried to come up with a plan with you or anything! I said I loved you, not that I trusted you with stuff.”
The Draco theory is hilarious! XD
/So the big revelation about the prophecy turns out to be… that Harry will have to kill Voldemort!/
“Neither can live while the other survives.” So…nobody has thought to point out the huge flaw in that prophecy? “Uh…aren’t Voldemort and I alive right now? Haven’t we been alive for as long as I’ve been born?”
/“‘I feel I owe you another explanation, Harry,’ said Dumbledore hesitantly. ‘You may, perhaps, have wondered why I never chose you as a prefect?’”/
This is so random! Why should Harry care about that? Voldemort’s returned, the Ministry's calling Harry a liar, there's a sadist carving up students, Harry has formed the DA to supposedly stop her…and yet Dumbledore thinks that Harry had enough room to worry about not being a prefect? And I think that somebody else pointed out in an earlier post that this is a slap in the face to Ron as well. Yeah, never mind that Ron may have been more qualified than Harry to be a prefect (I know that that’s debatable, but just roll with it), no, the only way that he could ever have gotten something was if Harry was first-choice but couldn’t get it due to his Boy-Who-Lived status, so it was hastily tossed Ron’s way instead.
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This. Fiction is filled with character who claim to love each other even while they clearly assume that the other person will, if given all the facts, do exactly the wrong thing. I strongly feel that if you love someone - as a friend and equal - you should want to give them the dignity of being able to make informed decisions about matters that concern them. For that matter, you should respect them enough to think that they will make the right decisions - and that if they, when given all the facts, make a decision you think is the wrong one, it might be that you are wrong and they are right. If you think that all your friends are idiots, then you should really ask yourself why you go around befriending idiots.
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I also was more than a bit bewildered with the beginning of HBP. I read those books directly after each other and it was really odd, as if a reset button got pushed, but not quite successfully.
Sirius is still dead. The prophesy is still there. The war still started.
But we all don't really care about all that, because there is Quidditch to play and dating to do. Maybe Albus starting on the completely irrelevant prefect thing(there's a war going on and somebody close to Potter just died - who the fuck cares about some shiny badge?!) was a sign for things to come...
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I don't know why JKR had Voldemort be completely absent in HBP. It was jarring enough in OotP, when we had been promised this epic war coming at the end of GoF...only to have Voldemort mostly hiding out in Harry's head until the end of OotP. But at least his existence had finally been witnessed by the Ministry and they had to accept that he'd returned and that meant that Voldemort would have to be present in HBP, right? Nope, apparently all he did was order Draco to kill Dumbledore and hide in the background.
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But I didn't feel like being in a story about a war.
At all.
HBP was mostly about teenage romance and how, in the Potterverse, it makes spiteful idiots out of people. Not keeping the DA running was just baffling.
Harry coming down from his Emo Trip of Capslock was quite a relief, yes, but he really stepped into the Marauders footsteps in that book, what with the random hexing, cheating and being an all around entitled brat.(SWM obviously didn't have much of an impact, for all the drama-queening Harry did at first. Or maybe it's okay now, that Snape is properly scapegoated for Harry's and Sirius' reckless stupidity and Albus being mysterious)
The trio's priorities seem completely messed up in HBP and I don't understand why. Writing DA meetings can't be worse than writing more Quidditch, can it?
Maybe it would have taken Hermione's mind of her obsession with snagging herself a Weasley. That could only have been an improvement.
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Seriously, though, the books only present learning as either someone (usually the teacher or Hermione) stating facts, or as a student trying something over and over. Or, if it's something complicated like potions, just one try provides enough to write about, so we only hear about one.