deathtocapslock | Deathly Hallows, Chapter 4: The Seven Potters (Reply)

Because no one can eat just one. :D

I like the way Harry tries to get Hedwig to take a last look around and remember all the good times they had at 4 Privet Drive. I’m sure Hedwig’s had about as much fun as you did, Harry, what with being stuck in a cage most of the time, ignored by you, and mainly let out to serve your communication needs.

Harry is startled out of his nostalgic musings by a deafening roar. It’s Hagrid on a giant motorcycle, which is no doubt supposed to be parallelism with his arrival in the first chapter of PS/SS. He brought Harry into the muggle world by motorbike, and now he’s taking Harry out of the muggle world the same way.

He is accompanied by several other people on brooms and thestrals. As soon as they land, they drop their Disillusionment charms, yet apparently none of the neighbors, not even the man who heard Harry yelling earlier, notices this tidal wave of noisy strangers suddenly appearing in the Dursleys’ yard. I think a more likely explanation is that the neighbors take the same attitude toward 4PD that people adopt who live near a crack house: Pay no attention to the goings-on there. Pretend everything’s normal. It’s safer that way, for your body and mind.

One of the visitors is Kingsley Shacklebolt. Now wait just a darn minute! In just the previous chapter, Vernon was told Kingsley couldn’t escort him and his family because he was busy guarding “the Muggle Prime Minister.” Yet now he suddenly has all this free time to escort Harry Potter on a dangerous mission?

Oh, I see. This is like that old social dodge where somebody visits somebody else who doesn’t want to see them, and the butler says, “So-and-so is not at home.” What that really means is “So-and-so is not at home to you.” Kingsley is too valuable to waste his time on Harry’s lowly “Muggle” relatives, but Harry himself is important enough to bother with. Kingsley himself confirms this, saying the PM can do without him for one night because “You’re more important.” Yeah, some teenager trapped in the middle of a tiny community’s gang rumble matters more than the political head of a major country’s government.

This is an interesting passage: “Harry’s heart seemed to expand and glow at the sight [of this group.] He felt incredibly fond of all of them, even Mundungus, whom he had tried to strangle the last time they had met.” Like mother, like son. Apparently Harry is like Lily, somebody who cares more about people in the aggregate than specific individuals who might make inconvenient demands on him or her. If anybody wants to object to this, I say, “Look at the evidence.” Lily destroyed her relationship with the last surviving member of her family of origin by bullying Petunia with magic. Even though they’d only been married a short time, her marriage to James was already crumbling when they died, or he wouldn’t have been leaving his wife and kid at home while he sneaked out under his invisibility cloak to have fun.

Look also at Petunia’s treatment of Dudley and Harry: excessively indulgent to one and callously neglectful to the other. Parenting is learned behavior. I think it’s probable that Petunia was reenacting her and Lily’s childhoods with the boys, only in this case, it was the child without magic who got petted and fawned over, and the magical one who was treated with coldness and contempt. Given the one glimpse we have of Harry’s relationship with his parents (the letter and photo to Sirius), it looks like Lily was indulging Harry just as much as Petunia indulged Dudley, and that Severus was right to assume Harry would have been a pampered little princeling under normal circumstances.

“Easy to Be Hard” (written by Galt MacDermot, James Rado, and Gerome Ragni) iis my favorite song from Hair, although the Three Dog Night version is the best. Part of it says:

How can people be so heartless?

How can people be so cruel?

Easy to be hard.

Easy to be cold.

How can people have no feelings?

How can they ignore their friends?

Easy to be proud.

Easy to say no.

Especially people who care about strangers,

Who care about evil and social injustice.

Do you only care about the bleeding crowd?

How about a needing friend?

I need a friend.

It’s no wonder Harry thinks and Lily thought Dumbledore was so great. Albus is another one who has no problem sacrificing individuals, even without their knowledge or consent, for “the greater good.” Lemony Snicket had some choice remarks about this in The Slippery Slope. The youngest Beaudelaire orphan, Sunny, had been captured by Count Olaf and his henchpeople, and her siblings, Violet and Klaus, were trying to get her back. They came up with a plot to capture Olaf’s girlfriend, Esme, by tricking her into falling into a pit and trading her for their sister.

“We wanted to trap you,” Violet said, “so we could trade you for the safe return of Sunny Beaudelaire. But--”

“But you didn’t have the courage to go through with it,” Esme said with a mocking smile. “You volunteers are never brave enough to do something for the greater good.”

“Throwing people into pits isn’t the greater good!” [their friend] Quigley cried. “It’s villainous treachery!”

“If you weren’t such an idiot,” Esme said, “you’d realize that those things are more or less the same.”

It’s really too bad Rita Skeeter didn’t wait until after the gang rumble war was over to write her biography of Dumbledore. The perfect title would have been Villainous Treachery and “the Greater Good”: Albus Dumbledore’s Life of Lies.

Back to the story:

Moody tells Harry about their silly plan to Polyjuice six people to create Harry decoys. If they’re going that route, why not just Polyjuice everybody? That would be even more confusing. Moody assures Harry, “Even [Voldy] can’t split himself into seven.” I know that’s supposed to be a reference to the Horcruces, but why can’t he? Imagine how confusing it would be if all the DEs were also Polyjuiced to look like Voldemort, although with his apparent alopecia, that might be problematic. Instead of the Battle of the Seven Potters we’d have the Battle of the Fourteen Potters vs. the [How many?] Voldemorts. How cool would that be? A lot cooler than what we got.

Moody also says the DEs know the “the rough position” of 4PD. Since they’ve taken over Hogwarts and have access to student records, why don’t they know the exact address? For that matter, how crummy are their spies, if they don’t even know the home location of the one target it’s essential for them to destroy?

Harry yanks some hair out of his head for the Polyjuice, proving Hermione’s observation that magicals lack logic. I would have gone for my hairbrush. Oh, wait. That assumes Harry actually grooms himself, and we have ample evidence that’s not the case. How silly of me to assume normal standards of cleanliness for the major character in a best-selling book series.

Once Harry’s hair is added, the potion turns gold, which means he really is the Golden Boy. Lame! Moody gives the extra HPs clothes to change into once they’ve transformed. Why can’t they just use size-changing charms on the clothes? Or is that only in fanfic? Moody also has eyeglasses. Where did they get six pairs, all in Harry’s prescription? Duplicating charms? If so, why didn’t they use the same charms on the clothes? This would have been the perfect time to use some of those Transfiguration charms they’ve been studying for six years, and that were never otherwise used in the entire series. I have to agree with Harry that this whole situation is extremely bizarre.

Apparently everybody is as dumb as Harry, since part of their accoutrements is a cage for each containing a stuffed owl (fake, I hope). So nobody thought to say, “Harry, why don’t you let Hedwig fly free? It’ll be a lot safer for her.” Because there would only be one owl then, and she’s so loyal she’d insist on flying near her beloved master? I don’t think so. All Harry would have to do is tell her he was heading for the Burrow. She could fly ahead and wait for him there.

Fleur-as-Harry insists on going with Bill and gives him “a soppy, slavish look that Harry hoped with all his heart would never appear on his face again.” Because a look of hatred and rage directed at Snape, Draco, or whoever, is so much more becoming to the face of a young hero. Besides, I’d gotten the impression Harry already directed “a soppy, slavish look” at Dumbledore every time they were together. At least Fleur’s looking at her future husband that way, not some manipulative, neglectful old geezer. Yet we’re supposed to believe it’s just Rita Skeeter’s dirty mind that led her to suggest there was something, um, inappropriate about the relationship between Harry and Albus.

Harry is assigned to ride in the sidecar of the motorcycle that Hagrid’s driving/flying. Those expansion and contraction charms must exist because we’re assured the bike used to be Sirius’s, and there’s no way he and Hagrid could ride the same size bike. More logical inconsistencies.

Tonks and Lupin have gotten married, so Polyjuiced Ron looks guiltily at Lupin when he puts his hands around Tonks’s waist. Don’t worry, Ron. Remus won’t be jealous. He doesn’t really love her. He was railroaded into this marriage. His true love’s been dead for over a year.

In another piece of idiocy, Moody bellows their ultimate destination, the Burrow, to everybody as he leaves. It’s true Harry is going somewhere else first, but there’s no reason the DEs can’t just go to the Burrow, Disillusion themselves, and wait for Harry to arrive. That’s what I would do, if I were listening.

Even more sensible would be to obtain a couple of black market rocket launchers and just stand on the ground waiting for Harry to fly by. Not sure which Harry is which? Just shoot all of them to be sure. That has the added benefit of taking out several enemy soldiers no matter whom you hit. Good thing I’m not in this book. It would have been over before page 60.

As soon as they get airborne, Harry and company find themselves in the midst of at least 30 DEs, who shoot first and ask questions later. They start shooting AKs right and left, which proves the villains are as dumb as the good guys. Their orders are to capture Harry, not kill him, and in the chaos of a dogfight, there’s no way they could be sure their spells weren’t hitting their quarry, particularly since there were seven of them.

In one of the most gratuitous deaths in the entire series, Hedwig gets killed. I did and do find this really offensive. She was an innocent animal, not a combatant. She had no choice about being in this battle, and thanks to Harry’s stupidity and selfishness, no way to save herself. Her death does nothing to advance the story; it only provides cheap sentiment.

It also provides another logical contradiction: Harry has been neglectful of Hedwig for most of the series, but now we’re supposed to believe he’s so devastated by her death that he can’t even comprehend it. Considering she was a sitting duck--er, owl--trapped in the cage, what did Harry think might happen? I’m tempted to say nobody could be too stupid to anticipate this, but this is Harry Potter I’m talking about, so maybe I’m wrong.

When the DEs attack, Hagrid causes several cartoonish “defenses” to sprout out of the motorcycle, including a brick wall and a giant net. A burst of rocket-like acceleration--dragon fire, because genuine “muggle” rocket boosters would be beneath them, or maybe beyond them--causes them to accelerate so suddenly the sidecar breaks off the bike and starts falling, which gives Harry the chance to finally make himself useful by saving himself with a levitating charm, after which Hagrid snatches him out of the air.

Harry supposedly displays his informed attribute of affection for Hedwig when he explodes the sidecar to keep it from hitting the ground and feels “a dreadful, gut-wrenching pang for Hedwig.” Is that her you’re mourning, or yourself, Harry? She’s already dead. Destroying her body won’t matter to her.

This battle proves the truth of something Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert said years ago on their movie review program: In bad movies, the bad guys shoot dozens of times but never hit the good guys, while the good guys shoot only a few times but always hit their targets.

Voldemort comes after Harry, and for once Harry acts like a normal teenage boy when his wand acts on its own and starts spurting golden fire at Voldemort. Surely I’m not the only one who sees something really gay in this. Harry + Voldy OTP!

The chapter ends with a bang as the motorcycle goes into a nosedive. Harry and Hagrid both crash, Harry into a lake and Hagrid onto the ground.