Deathly Hallows, Chapter 6: The Ghoul in Pajamas

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Author's note: I have no idea why the final sentence in one paragraph came out smaller than the rest of the post. It was all posted and enlarged together.

This chapter starts with more wallowing in the “shock” of grief over Moody. I’m sorry, but why is this a shock? They were in a battle! People get killed in battles! They act like he was walking across the street and got run over by a car, or died in some other unexpected manner. This angsting is ridiculous!

Harry decides to sublimate his self-indulgent wallowing grief by gearing up to hunt the Horcruces. Ron tells him they can’t leave until after Bill and Fleur’s wedding, or Fleur and Molly will “kill us.” I knew that French chick was a sleeper agent! She must have Imperiused decent Mrs. Weasley.

Molly tries to pump Harry for information about the Horcrux hunt. Her old-fashioned, magic-powered, wringer washer does the laundry while they talk. Thanks, I’ll take one of those stupid “muggle” washers with a spin cycle any time.

She manages to keep the Trio from getting together to discuss the hunt by giving them wedding-related busywork that keeps them apart. Molly Weasley, secret Slytherin!

Harry wonders aloud why there’s been no governmental hearing about his use of underage magic during the battle. Is it because he had no choice, or they’re trying to cover up Voldemort’s attack? Gee, I don’t know, maybe it’s because there’s a war going on, and people have more important things to do than worry about anybody doing underage magic.

Fleur says Harry needs to be disguised for the wedding in case any of the guests talk too much after hitting the champagne. I guess non-alcoholic champagne is out of the question, even in such special circumstances. Harry assumes this means Fleur suspects Hagrid of talking about their plans to leave 4PD. Well, you know, Harry, those foreigners are such bigots. They just can’t believe a good-hearted, dumb guy like Hagrid is trustworthy just because he once got drunk and blabbed--uh, never mind.

Arthur confesses to Harry that he’s got Sirius’s motorcycle hidden away for future dissection. “[I]t’ll be a great opportunity to find out how brakes work,” he gushes. Three words, Arthur: Public. Library. Card. Get one. Use it.

The Trio finally gets together and wastes more time with more phony grieving about somebody they barely knew. Hermione works off her tension by compulsively rooting through her books, trying to decide which ones to take on the hunt and which to leave.

Then she does one of the most offensive things in this very screwed up book and weeps crocodile tears--which should now be called Hermione tears, in her honor--about mind-raping her parents and shipping them off to Australia.

THIS DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE! Her parents are the Grangers, not the Howard Hugheses. They’re middle-aged professional people with an office, employees, and clients. They can’t just take off and disappear into the ether without somebody noticing they’re gone. How are they going to close their office? What are they going to tell their employees, patients, and colleagues? How are they going to make a living in Australia? They can’t practice as dentists, unless their unnatural daughter also came up with falsified credentials for them to use. But no, that can’t be right because that would also require falsifying the records at the college and dental school they attended, as well as the British governmental agency in charge of licensing. Surely the Australians would check the Grangers’/Wilkinses’ credentials before issuing them professional licenses. I know Hermione’s supposed to be a SuperCompetent!UltraMarySue!Self-Insert!, but it’s just idiotic to even suggest she could pull off deceiving two sophisticated national governments, as well as a university or two. It’s insulting to the reader’s intelligence.

That’s not even to consider that mind-raping the Grangers to such an extent that they no longer remember being parents could very well have damaged the parts of their brains that they use in their profession. Playing with somebody’s brain isn’t like changing the oil filter in a car. The brain is interconnected; even the very best brain experts would be leery of modifying someone’s mind the way Hermione did, for fear it could have unexpected, even disastrous, consequences. If anybody wants to argue with this, ask yourself: Would you want to have highly complex, experimental brain surgery performed on you by a 17-year-old with no training or experience, and whose scientific education ended at age eleven? I didn’t think so.

What a monster this girl is! She’s just as bad as Voldemort and Dumbledore in her willingness to take over and play with other people’s lives without their knowledge and consent. All for villainous treachery the greater good, of course. If her parents never remember her again, they’ll be better off--and it’ll be no more than she deserves.

Ron complements Hermione’s evil with his own stupidity. He shows Harry their family ghoul in Ron’s pajamas, telling Harry that when they leave, the ghoul will take Ron’s place by pretending to be Ron as a victim of spattergroit. The problem is, the smell from the ghoul is so bad it’s like raw sewage; Ron can’t even stand it for five minutes, so how is his family going to tolerate it indefinitely? Evil on one side and dunderheaded on the other: Imagine what their kids are going to be like.

We now pause for a message from a sane author who respects her fans: Vicky Holmes is one of the team of writers who writes the Warriors books under the name Erin Hunter. In 2006 she spoke to fans about Graystripe, the best friend of Fireheart, the hero of the first series: “There are going to be three manga novels coming out featuring Graystripe's adventures from the moment he is taken from the forest to...the moment he returns to ThunderClan!...I had a lot of fun coming up with the story lines because Graystripe has always been a fascinating character for me. In the first books he was in danger of becoming Firepaw's stooge, the butt of jokes and maybe not the brightest cat, but he showed a much more complex side to his character when he fell in love with Silverstream and then took his motherless kits to join RiverClan. Hopefully I've explored this other side in the upcoming manga books. You'll have to let me know!”

Aaahhhh. This is a woman who (1) respects her fans and cares about their opinions; (2) tries to write logical, interesting stories; (3) wants all her major characters to be competent and interesting. She doesn’t feel it necessary to dumb down her supporting characters to make her main character look good. Her main character is intelligent, competent, and moral enough that he doesn’t need that kind of artificial propping up.

Why couldn’t you have cared this much about your work and fans, J K Rowling?

Back to the story:

Ron insists this ghoulish deception is necessary because when the Trio doesn’t turn up at school, the DEs will go hunting for their families to make them betray the Trio’s plans. It is now official canon: Ronald Weasley, sidekick, doofus, and the dumbest member of the Golden Trio--is now more intelligent than Voldemort!

Read it and weep, ladies and gentlemen.

After Ron explains his plan fully, Harry is flabbergasted: His friends had gone to so much trouble to be with him. *sob* They really were going to risk their lives to help him defeat Voldemort. *boo hoo* He’s too overcome to tell them what their devotion means to him. I’m overcome, too, but obviously not for that reason.

They continue to discuss their plans, and things move along reasonably until Hermione says something really stupid again. She tells Ron and Harry how she used a Summoning Charm to fetch the Horcrux books out of Dumbledore’s office. She acts embarrassed as she insists it’s not really stealing because they were still library books even though they’d been pulled from the stacks and secreted in Dumbledore’s office.

Once again I ask, What the hell? (1) How did she know that’s where the books were? There was no mention of their being there before. For all she knew, Dumbledore could have taken them home, sold them, given them away, or burned them. (2) Why weren’t there protective spells put on the books to keep them from being removed from the office? One would think anything precious enough to be tucked away in the Headmaster’s office would be defended effectively. (3) If Hermione is no longer a student at Hogwarts, she should no longer be able to check books out of its library, so yes, she is stealing. Even if former students are allowed to check out books, keeping books checked out indefinitely is also stealing. (4) She’s planning on risking her life to defeat ultimate evil. I think stealing a few books is acceptable under the circumstances. (5) She had little problem with mind-raping her parents and upending their entire lives, but she cavils at taking a few books? Just when I think the morals in this book can’t get any more screwed up, something like this happens to prove me wrong.

Hermione says The Horcrux Handbook, I mean, Secrets of the Darkest Art says the only way to heal one’s soul from making Horcruces is by feeling remorse for one’s crimes. Well, Voldemort is a psychopath, so that’s never going to happen. They’re incapable of remorse because they have no consciences.

She also says that once the vessel containing a part of the split soul is destroyed, the soul bit is destroyed with it. That means Voldemort can never put his soul back together again, à la Humpty Dumpty. I’m now imagining a chorus line of little soul bits dancing together and singing in very high voices a slightly altered version of Taylor Swift’s hit song:

We are never, ever, ever

Getting back together.

We-ee are never, ever, ever

Getting back together.

You go talk to locket,

Talk to diadem, talk to cup.

But we-ee are never, ever, ever

Getting back together.

Like, ever!

You know, it just occurred to me that all the Founders’ Artifacts got made into Horcruces--except Godric Gryffindor’s. What, are the Sword and Hat too pure to be contaminated by the slimy Slytherin Tom Riddle? Do they have some speshul “Dark magic-repelling” properties the other artifacts don’t? This is just so--so--disgusting of JKR. It’s bad enough she slobbers all over Gryffindor in the text of the books; she has to favor it in subtle ways like this as well.

The Slytherin locket is also the only Horcrux that taints the Trio for several weeks and causes problems for their relationship right before it “dies.” How convenient that they weren’t in contact with the cup or diadem long enough to be tainted by those objects.

Of course, there is another interpretation Rowling apparently didn’t think of. *cackles fiendishly* Maybe the reason the Gryffindor artifacts weren’t tainted by Riddle is because Gryffindor House is already so corrupt it was impossible for Tom to poison anything associated with it any further.

After some more info dumping about Horcruces, Harry starts angsting about Dumbledore again, wishing, as he did in chapter 2, that they had spent more time together, gazing into each other’s eyes, sharing the secrets of their souls, learning everything about each other...No, there’s nothing gay going on here. Just keep telling yourselves that, Potter apologists.

His musings are shattered when an enraged Molly Weasley slams open the bedroom door, demanding the Trios help with sorting wedding presents. Where did all these presents come from? We’ve seen no indication before that the Weasleys had much of a social life. Are they all from furrin acquaintances of the Delacours?

The Delacours arrive and prove, despite their foreignness, to be gracious people with far better manners than their hosts. For some reason, everybody is crammed into the house, instead of putting the Delacours, at least, into one of those expanding magical tents that figures so boringly prominently in the story later. Since the security spells are on the entire Weasley property, there’s no reason a tent couldn’t be set up in the yard to relieve overcrowding in the house.

Molly asks Harry how he wants to celebrate his birthday, and he starts angsting again about all the trouble he’s putting her to. Maybe I should keep a tally of all the times in this book Harry angsts about something he shouldn’t.

Comments

[urbanman1984.livejournal.com]

>> What a monster this girl is! She’s just as bad as Voldemort and Dumbledore in her willingness to take over and play with other people’s lives without their knowledge and consent. All for villainous treachery the greater good, of course. If her parents never remember her again, they’ll be better off--and it’ll be no more than she deserves. <<

I have no reason to defend Dumbledore or Voldemort, but in this instance they actually come across as better if you look at the text objectively. Dumblesnore was an exceptionally powerful wizard and as far as we know, he had decades of life experience before he started to play games with other people's lives.

And Moldymort had at least completed a Hogwarts education and become head boy (if nothing else) before he started attempting Dumbledore's level of Machiavellian scheming.

Hermione started to play games with people's lives without even Voldemort's achievements (let alone Blunderbore's) to her credit. However, the rules are that she is a Mary Sue, so has an exalted status for no reason at all.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Dumblesnore was an exceptionally powerful wizard and as far as we know, he had decades of life experience before he started to play games with other people's lives.

Whoa, wait a minute. What about his plan to take over the world with Gellert while dragging his handicapped sister around under the Invisibility Cloak like a piece of ugly luggage? He was 17 when he made those plans.

As for Moldyshorts, he was a 5th year (I think) when he started he started murdering people and making Horcruces (Myrtle with the diary, Tom Sr with the ring).

You're correct that Hermoninny was not nearly as accomplished as they were when she started ruining people's lives, however.

[urbanman1984.livejournal.com]

Dumblesnore only fantasised about these things when he was 17. All the action on his part that came from it was his fight with Grindelwald. This must have made him realise that he had to pursue power in moderation and to do so prudently.

He does eventually start manipulating others and running people's lives for them on a grand scale, but as far as we know, he is of advanced years and experience when he actually starts DOING it instead of just daydreaming about it.

V does kill people when he is a fifth year, but I was thinking of grander Machievellian schemes and rearranging the lives of multiple other people.when I wrote that. He starts his immoderate quest for absolute power after leaving the employ of Borgin and Burkes. He is like an Egodore with no sense or self-restraint. Hence he is must less successful than his old enemy.

Hermione starts taking the law into her own hands and punishing others as she sees fit in Goblet of Fire - the case of Rita Skeeter was a mere preamble compared to the kinds of things that come next.

[dracasadiablo.livejournal.com]

To be fair; the Order should have done something about her parents long ago.
They should have been informed about everything that was going on and protected. Not left in the dark and under dubious protection of their daughter.
Even if she was seen as "the brightest witch of her age" she was still very young. I don't see how could have anybody thought that she would be able to defend her parents on her own.

But nobody cared about protecting or even asking about them.

[sunnyskywalker]

Maybe the Gryffindor artifacts are already someone else's Horcruxes, and Voldemort would have gotten a "this file is locked and cannot be overwritten"-type message if he tried to Horcruxify them himself. Error! Abort, retry, ignore?

There's a further problem with Hermione's plan, if her family is like quite a lot of them are and she actually has more relatives than just her parents. Uncles and aunts? Grandparents? Cousins? Second cousins? Unless her parents are the only children of only children and all four of her grandparents are dead, or both her parents never ever speak to their families for some reason, someone is going to worry, surely? And while Voldemort might not be able to torture her cousins for information about Harry, he could still kidnap them to lure Hermione out of hiding, since he would probably assume that she's like most people he's met and would care about that sort of thing.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I tend to forget about extended families because (1) we see so little of them in these books, and (2) my own is so awful I try to forget about extended families, period. Regarding Hermione's hypothetical cousins, if she's a witch, surely she would have other magical relatives as well. It would have been great to have seen some of that in the story.

[sunnyskywalker]

Well, it is possible that she really doesn't have any other close living relatives, or that none of them are on speaking terms - it happens. On the other hand, if either were the case, I think it ought to rate a mention! This would be a good chance to let Ron be not completely deficient of common sense and ask whether she has aunts and uncles and cousins.

It's a bit weirder that Ron's extended family never appears until the wedding, actually, since they definitely are on speaking terms. Well, Molly's brothers and Uncle Bilius are dead and no one likes spending time with Aunt Muriel, but what about Arthur's surviving sibling? If "the Weasleys" are known for having too many kids, but Arthur only had two siblings as iirc he did, shouldn't Unnamed Living Sibling and possibly Uncle Bilius have had a bunch of kids? Or at least Arthur's grandparents, giving him lots of aunts and uncles and cousins. There are apparently enough Weasley cousins-of-unspecified-degree that they expect no one to notice that Harry isn't actually one of them, after all.

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Ron tells him they can’t leave until after Bill and Fleur’s wedding, or Fleur and Molly will “kill us.” I knew that French chick was a sleeper agent! She must have Imperiused decent Mrs. Weasley.

LOL!

WORD on everything about Hermione's parents. Hermione has a not-very-well-concealed ruthless streak, especially in these later books, and she's clearly learned everything Dumbledore could teach about high-handed manipulations "for the greater good." I could easily buy a postwar Dark Lady Hermione scenario - and I consider myself a fan of the character.

Ronald Weasley, sidekick, doofus, and the dumbest member of the Golden Trio--is now more intelligent than Voldemort!

Actually, I don't agree that Ron's the stupidest of the three - Harry wins that honor. From the first book Ron has had the makings to be a decent tactician; they couldn't have won the chess game without him, for instance. JKR's later attempts to make him seem stupid are, IMHO, painted-on. So I find it not that incredible that Ron is once again thinking strategically here - I just wish JKR had let him show it a bit more in the middle books. Harry, on the other hand, just makes me want to bang my head into a wall. Unthinking, unobservant, mulish, predictable, and utterly lacking in self-reflection or any impetus to stop and think before leaping - if I had him in my class I'd be on the verge of strangling him, and the most dangerous things my students handle are pencils and paper. No wonder Snape is a nervous wreck.

She also says that once the vessel containing a part of the split soul is destroyed, the soul bit is destroyed with it. That means Voldemort can never put his soul back together again

I have several major (logical and moral) problems with Rowling's metaphysics, but the idea that you can cut up a soul into discrete bits like paper, and actually *destroy* them, is one of the biggest. Also, if the soul bits are actually *separated* from the main soul, how on earth can they then act as *anchors* for that soul to keep it in this world? Doesn't the horror of the idea stem from the *tearing apart* of something meant to remain unified? I.e. the severing of a connection? So how then is a discrete bit supposed to act upon the whole? If I trap the corner of a sheet of paper under a rock, it can't blow away. If I tear off the corner and put it under the rock, the rest can still blow away! Sloppy metaphysics all around.

As to the Founder's artifacts, I rather like the theory (swythyv's I think) that the DADA curse was a distraction, and Tommy's real purpose in visiting was to nobble the Sorting Hat to read 'desire for power over others' as 'ambition' and thus stock Slytherin with potential recruits.

Since the security spells are on the entire Weasley property, there’s no reason a tent couldn’t be set up in the yard to relieve overcrowding in the house.

Or, for fuck's sake, an expanding spell cast on some of the house's rooms. They can make wizard-space tents with working kitchens, and Hermione can fit a bloody library into her handbag, but they can't add an extra bedroom or two - or even just a dozen feet of space for maneuvering in the dining room - to a wizarding house. Or does it simply not occur to any of the Weasleys that not everyone is as 'happy' sharing ridiculously tight quarters as they are?

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Actually, I don't agree that Ron's the stupidest of the three - Harry wins that honor.

IAWT. What I meant was, in the context of the book, Ron is presented as the dumbest member of the Trio. So to have him suddenly be smarter than the super scary villain was bizarre.

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Ah, ok, I get you now. Thanks. :)

Voldemort is such a disappointment. I love a well-crafted villain - you can't have a good story without a strong antagonist. But Voldemort just keeps dwindling from book to book until he's a total joke, forcing the plot to do pretzel twists to try and keep up.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I keep going back to what a wonderful villain Tigerclaw was in the first Warriors series. He was a classic ruthless, daring genius. I'm now imagining a crossover fanfic in which he and Voldemort get together in some way, and Tigerclaw takes over Voldy and makes Voldy carry out his plans. First he would systematically exterminate not just his enemies, but all their friends and families as well. Their deaths would be bloody, painful, and public to create maximum terror.

[oryx_leucoryx]

The books may have been intended for Severus, as Terri once proposed, but even then I'm not sure why they weren't protected. Severus was supposed to become Headmaster by September, he would have had Headmaster-level access to anything. Unless Albus expected Severus to need or have use for the books before September they should have been under protection.

As for the sword, it absorbed basilisk venom back in COS. So any horcruxes within it must have died then.

[malic-ba.livejournal.com]

Excellent point about the sword!

[dracasadiablo.livejournal.com]

Maybe the books were intended for Hermione?
If DD's plan was that the Trio should be searching and destroying horcruxes then he might have made sure they have a bit of information about them.

He couldn't have made those books a part of his will so maybe he planted the idea in Hermione mind before his suicide by Snape.
Perhaps the books could have been protected and only able to be summoned by Hermione?

[maidofkent.livejournal.com]

Maybe the books were intended for Hermione?
If DD's plan was that the Trio should be searching and destroying horcruxes then he might have made sure they have a bit of information about them.

One would think so - otherwise the Camping Trip of Doom might have lasted forever/until Voldemort won. So I like to think that Dumbledore had picked up on Hermione's propensity for nicking items and left the books by the window for her. And yes - her bleating about obtaining vital books is absurd, considering how determined she was about stealing potion ingredients in COS. Perhaps it was because the books were owned by Dumbledore..

However, given the WW's general forethought and planning, it seems just as likely that Dumbledore had left them on his desk in preparation for dealing with the locket horcrux, and the window was fortuitously open for Hermione's summoning spell to work.

[dracasadiablo.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not like JKR ever bothered with consistency.
That's the only explanation for "let's endanger others and steal expansive potion ingredients" Hermione turning into "it's not really stealing!" Hermione.
Well, that or JKR Hermione thinks that staling form Snape is perfectly o.k. because he "deserves it". So that doesn't count.

[dracasadiablo.livejournal.com]

THIS DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE! Her parents are the Grangers, not the Howard Hugheses. They’re middle-aged professional people with an office, employees, and clients. They can’t just take off and disappear into the ether without somebody noticing they’re gone. How are they going to close their office? What are they going to tell their employees, patients, and colleagues? How are they going to make a living in Australia? They can’t practice as dentists, unless their unnatural daughter also came up with falsified credentials for them to use. But no, that can’t be right because that would also require falsifying the records at the college and dental school they attended, as well as the British governmental agency in charge of licensing. Surely the Australians would check the Grangers’/Wilkinses’ credentials before issuing them professional licenses. I know Hermione’s supposed to be a SuperCompetent!UltraMarySue!Self-Insert!, but it’s just idiotic to even suggest she could pull off deceiving two sophisticated national governments, as well as a university or two. It’s insulting to the reader’s intelligence.

It's horribly stupid.
If it all was happening in the medieval times or some epic fantasy world then I could accept that she could just relocate her parents like that.

But as it is the only way it could maybe work would be if she also used magic to steal a lot of money, then had it deposited in Wilkinses accounts and made them think they are very wealthy, we-need-no-jobs, stay-at-home-and-do-nothing people.
And even then I would find it hard to accept.

The whole thing is not just morally rotten it's also a insult to reader's intelligence.

But then No-First-Names-Given Grangers were a afterthought from the start.
JKR never bothered thinking about them at all. Since the 5th book I was expecting that DE will kill them. It would provide some drama and "darker" things for the later books but even more importantly for JKR: it would be a perfect way for her to be rid of them.
Instead we get the brainwashed for their own good plot.

Probably because Harry is the only one of the Trio allowed to angst about his parents and because JKR just didn't consider the Grangers important enough.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Which is why I take perverse enjoyment with fics in which this plot backfires somehow: whether restoring the Grangers' memories doesn't quite work (especially the part about them being her parents), or they are killed on the way to Australia, die in some disaster in Australia, fall into depression because they always wanted a child and apparently couldn't have one, have to live in poverty, working low-skill jobs in Australia, or when their memories are restored they are so upset with their daughters they cut ties with her.

[snapes-witch.livejournal.com]

And after those possible misfortunes, Snape tells her it was unnecessary because Voldemort had no interest in her parents at all.

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

It's all sorta reminding me of the anime "Shiki," in which the vampires hypnotize their victims and tell them to quit their jobs (among other things), in preparation for being kidnapped and fed upon until they died. In that case it worked because the story was set in a small, insular town with few ties to the outside world anyway, so the only people who missed them were the population of the one tiny village and not a wider community in a city or wherever.

"Probably because Harry is the only one of the Trio allowed to angst about his parents"

The sad thing is, that's actually within the realm of possibility. But one thing Rowling failed to consider about that is that since Harry's parents are already dead it means he has nothing to lose. My favorite scene from the first part of the DH movie was the bit where Ron yells at Harry, claiming that Harry couldn't understand what Ron is going through worrying about whether his family will die. I love that because of course it's completely true, but I doubt it's meant to be taken that way.

[mage-989.livejournal.com]

THIS DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE! Her parents are the Grangers, not the Howard Hugheses. They’re middle-aged professional people with an office, employees, and clients. They can’t just take off and disappear into the ether without somebody noticing they’re gone. How are they going to close their office? What are they going to tell their employees, patients, and colleagues? How are they going to make a living in Australia? They can’t practice as dentists, unless their unnatural daughter also came up with falsified credentials for them to use. But no, that can’t be right because that would also require falsifying the records at the college and dental school they attended, as well as the British governmental agency in charge of licensing. Surely the Australians would check the Grangers’/Wilkinses’ credentials before issuing them professional licenses. I know Hermione’s supposed to be a SuperCompetent!UltraMarySue!Self-Insert!, but it’s just idiotic to even suggest she could pull off deceiving two sophisticated national governments, as well as a university or two. It’s insulting to the reader’s intelligence.

THIS!

Honestly I didn't notice half of the moral problems with Hermione's plan because I was too busy going...but wait logic! You can't just drop everything and move to a new country. What happens to all their patients? Unless both sets of grandparents are dead aren't they going to wonder what happened to their children? Aren't they going to report them missing? Thus getting their names and pictures in the paper and potentially making them more obvious to Voldemort? How are the Grangers going to set up lives for themselves in Australia? And Australia is a big frigging country! Assuming the plan went off without a hitch, how the hell is Hermione ever supposed to find them again after the war?!

[sunnyskywalker]

how the hell is Hermione ever supposed to find them again after the war?!

In these books? Probably "Accio parents!"

[malic-ba.livejournal.com]

Late comment, I know, but all Hermione cares about is hiding them from Death Eaters, not muggles. I'm sure she's thought about it as little as Rowling has, but the Death Eaters are pretty unlikely to try muggle sources to find the Grangers, so as long as they don't come back to the usual places they're OK.

Assuming she thought to give them magical passports, as having the Grangers' name on them would be a bit obvious, they will probably be:

1). In a mental hospital in the UK because the passports failed the machine check on exit and the authorities were able to trace them.
2). In immigration detention in Australia because the passports failed the machine check on entry and ASIO is trying to find out who they really are.
3). Penniless and homeless in Australia because they got a tourist visa on arrival but didn't have access to the Grangers' bank accounts when the cash they had on them ran out.

All of these scenarios achieve the goal of hiding them from the Death Eaters.

The missing persons reports on the Grangers don't help the Death Eaters either.

Even in the quite likely scenarios others have pointed out below, that the Grangers are:

4). Vegetables, or
5). Dead,

because Hermione couldn't do brain surgery after all, they are safe from Death Eaters.

No problem! We just need to understand wizarding priorities!

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/They just can’t believe a good-hearted, dumb guy like Hagrid is trustworthy just because he once got drunk and blabbed--uh, never mind./

Not only that, Hagrid gets drunk fairly often in the series. He’s not really the person that you go to when you want to keep a secret.

/Then she does one of the most offensive things in this very screwed up book and weeps crocodile tears--which should now be called Hermione tears, in her honor--about mind-raping her parents and shipping them off to Australia./

What gets me is that we’re supposed to see this as a horrible and heartbreaking moment for *Hermione.* Not for her parents, who she brainwashed and, for all we know, had no say in the matter. Oh, no, let’s be sad for *Hermione.* Let’s think about how hard it was for *her* to mind-wipe her parents, strip them of their identities, and send them off to another country just so that *she* couldn’t be inconvenienced. I was surprised that even the film took this route, painting Hermione’s act (which had her literally doing it behind their backs) as this great sacrifice that she had to make. They’re Hermione’s *parents.* They are not dogs that can just be shipped off to a kennel.

You already did a fine job detailing what’s logically wrong with Hermione’s plan, so there’s nothing much that I can add to that. I agree with others here that it would serve Hermione right if, after they got their memories back, her parents were so outraged by what she had done that they refused to speak with her again.

/You know, it just occurred to me that all the Founders’ Artifacts got made into Horcruces--except Godric Gryffindor’s. What, are the Sword and Hat too pure to be contaminated by the slimy Slytherin Tom Riddle?/

To be fair, Harry needed the sword to kill the basilisk and he couldn’t really do that if it was possessed. But yes, why not have the Hat be a Horcrux or give Godric Gryffindor another valuable antique? Slytherin had the locket and the ring, so why couldn’t Gryffindor have the sword and…gauntlet? Shield? Helmet? Belt? Pendant?

/The Slytherin locket is also the only Horcrux that taints the Trio for several weeks and causes problems for their relationship right before it “dies.” How convenient that they weren’t in contact with the cup or diadem long enough to be tainted by those objects./

I find it convenient that neither the diadem nor cup showed any signs of being Horcruxes at all. When Harry and Co. retrieve the cup, it’s just there. There’s no menacing aura, there are no traumatizing visions, there’s no apparition of Tom Riddle or anything. It doesn’t do anything malicious. And they had the cup with them for a while. It’s not like the diadem, which was destroyed shortly after they found it.

/His musings are shattered when an enraged Molly Weasley slams open the bedroom door, demanding the Trios help with sorting wedding presents./

Oh, yeah, because not like the leader of the Order that she belongs to told her and the rest of her comrades to depend on Harry to save the world or anything. How dare you try to come up with plans to defeat Voldemort and save the wizarding world, Harry! There are much more important things to worry about, like preparing for a wedding that we’re having in the middle of a war for some reason.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

What gets me is that we’re supposed to see this as a horrible and heartbreaking moment for *Hermione.* Not for her parents, who she brainwashed and, for all we know, had no say in the matter. Oh, no, let’s be sad for *Hermione.*

That's because, as marionros would be happy to tell you, Rowling is a narcissist, and Hermione is her self-insert. Narcissists believe they are the only ones who have feelings. So the Granger parents' feelings don't matter because they don't exist. And I think you're insulting dogs by implying they wouldn't suffer in this situation.

There are much more important things to worry about, like preparing for a wedding that we’re having in the middle of a war for some reason.

Plenty of people have weddings during wartime, but they're usually quiet, hurried affairs, not attention-getting extravaganzas like this one. I wonder if JKR put it in as compensation because she knew she wasn't going to show any of the Trios' weddings?

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/And I think you're insulting dogs by implying they wouldn't suffer in this situation./

Oh, no, I didn’t mean to say that dogs wouldn’t suffer. I meant that Hermione treated her parents as if they were dogs, as if they had no say in the matter. While pet owners can love their pets very much (I should know, since I was once a dog owner myself), I think that everyone can agree that animals are not treated exactly the same as humans are or regarded as full equals. One would not sit down with a dog and have a long conversation with the dog about where the dog was going to stay while its owner was away, for example.

[attilathepbnun.livejournal.com]

Oh, that part's easy : they're *still* trying to pretend it isn't happening ..... 'If we act like its not there, it will go away .....'

*sniffs* You'd think a woman who was supposedly traumatised by losing her twin brothers in the *previous* war would know better .....

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

'If we act like its not there, it will go away .....'

Actually, you've pretty much hit the nail on the head, IMHO. I quite agree with swythyv's reading of the Weasley family in "The Weasley Family Traveling Circus" (http://hp-essays.livejournal.com/159983.html) and part III of Warlocks (http://hp-essays.livejournal.com/197330.html) (scroll down). Basically, the Weasleys are a severely dysfunctional family still dealing with the fallout of a rather nasty event (yes, Imperiused!Arthur) that hit Molly particularly hard.

Some snippets:

(from WFTC)
"I was particularly stricken by Molly's disregard of ID protocol at the Burrow in HBP Ch5. Molly had literally rather die than think about the bad thoughts. If it's all right, everybody's safe, and she doesn't have to think about the bad thoughts. And if she's wrong, she's dead, and she doesn't have to think about the bad thoughts. So it's all good."

(from Warlocks)
"As I was discovering in The Weasley Family Traveling Circus, Molly Weasley is a troubled person who will desperately deny that an elephant is in her living room - even as she furiously rearranges the furniture and shouts at the children for stepping in the poos. But her unfaceable fear (all of them dead like her brothers) never explained Arthur's history, or the damage done to the kids.

Something added shame and unspeakable fury to the fear that Molly can't handle. She cracked: and her need to avoid those issues has left an indelible impression on the whole family.

[...]

"Let's start with when and how the Weasleys crack'd, then why.

Considering the impact on the children, my prediction has always been that It happened when Bill and Charlie had safely formed their personalities (over seven years old), Percy and the twins were most vulnerable (under seven), and the youngest were infants or not born. When Molly cracked, the fissure sprang right across Percy and the twins.

In 1981, Bill was 10, Charlie 8, Percy 5, and the twins 3. It did not start before then, or later than 1982: the end of the terror, and the time of the post-war trials. That's when.

Percy and the twins are what happens when the vulnerable kids "take one for the team." Percy became Mum's Perfect Example and the twins became Mum's Diversionary Uproar. These are both unenviable roles with enormous impact on the child; they are also hard-wired to hate each other. Bill and Charlie moved far, far away after Hogwarts, which is a classic healthy response. Ron and Ginny are pathetic bit players in dramas staged for Molly's needs by Perfect Percy and the Devil Twins. As Ron observes, there's no use trying, it's all been done before - to which he might add, with precious little personal reward to the players."

But whether or not you agree with the specifics of swythyv's theory, I think there's a lot to be said for the reading of the Weasleys as a severely dysfunctional family, and that at least part of the dysfunction has to do with Molly's response dangerous situations.