Deathly Hallows, Chapter 9: A Place to Hide

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Harry and Hermione happen to be together when the attack comes, so when Ron finds them, Hermione Apparates them to London. As usual, the boys are unprepared, but Hermione has packed everything they need: changes of clothes, Harry’s invisibility cloak, reference books, luggage--and whatever else they might need as the story goes on that Rowling didn’t think of right now.

Harry experiences emotion as GERD again as he thinks about the danger Ginny is in, and “fear bubble[s] like acid in his stomach.” Um, Harry, I know your science education ended at age eleven, but surely you’ve picked up from TV commercials for antacids that the stomach does have acid bubbling in it. Maybe you just have indigestion from all that rich food and champagne you ate and drank at the wedding reception.

As they walk down the street, Hermione is sexually harassed by some drunk men. Ron is about to defend her honor when Hermione drags them into an all-night greasy spoon. They are preparing to leave when they are attacked by two DEs, who had followed them into the restaurant and been sitting there for a while. This is a contrived scene because as soon as the DEs are defeated, Ron recognizes one and Harry the other. Harry even admits he should have recognized the blond one, Thorfinn Rowle, from the night Dumbledore died. Clearly, the DEs are doing a better job of educating their recruits on whom to watch for than the Order is. Any commander who’s not a complete dimwit should make sure hir soldiers or police officers know who the major enemies/criminals are and what they look like. Honestly, both sides in this rumble are so incompetent that I can’t help thinking the non-magical government just needs to protect the public, then stand back and let the magicals have at each other until all the dumbest ones are dead. It would greatly enhance the gene pool of the ones who are left.

The Trio tries to decide what to do about their prisoners and settles on Obliviation. They all insist they’ve never done it, despite Hermione’s weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth regarding her parents just two days ago. Apparently her memory charm on them was a little too good: Its blowback damaged her memory, too.

Or maybe it was too bad. Maybe Hermione’s telling at least part of the truth when she says she’s never done a memory charm--at least, a successful one. That is, perhaps she tried to mind-rape her parents and change their identities, but she wasn’t successful. Maybe when this high school girl with a fifth-grade science education tried to perform magical brain surgery on her parents, she failed so disastrously they ended up vegetables, and she had to kill them because she couldn’t take care of them.

Think about it: We have only her word they really are in Australia. Remember all my objections to the logistics of changing their identities and shipping them off to a foreign country? All those problems disappear if the Grangers are dead. In chapter 6, it says Hermione’s eyes “were swimming with tears” as she talked about them. This is not a girl who cries easily. The only other time I can think of her crying in the whole series is in book 1 when nobody will be her friend--that is, when she feels all alone in the world.

Hermione has been building up to this for a long time. In first year, she set Snape on fire. In second year, she committed a series of felonies that would have gotten HRH expelled and criminally prosecuted in a sane society. In third year, she knocked Snape unconscious with her friends and cared only for the fact she might get in trouble for attacking a teacher. In fourth year, she kidnapped Rita Skeeter, held her hostage, and blackmailed her. In fifth year, she tricked Umbridge into becoming the prey of the centaurs. She also tricked other students into agreeing to the Dumbledore’s Army contract without knowing what the consequences were for breaking it--and permanently disfigured another girl in revenge when the girl dared to put the well-being of her own mother before that of her schoolmates. In sixth year, she attacked her own boyfriend with birds à la Alfred Hitchcock, and in seventh year, she “jokes” about doing it again (in chapter 19). She also at least attempted to perform forcible brain surgery on her own parents and ship them off to a foreign country.

Look at that series of violent felonies. Try to forget it’s the life story of Hermione Granger, a character you thought you knew, and instead imagine it’s the case history of some anonymous teenager in a news story. Then tell me that murder is not the logical next step in the criminal career of someone with that record.

Back to the story:

Ron complains he can’t get his wand out of his jeans because the pair Hermione packed is his old pair, which is too tight. God forbid he should do his own packing--or laundry--or cooking--or any of those “girl jobs.”

This is a very strange restaurant: Apparently the waitress also does the cooking, since there’s no reference to any other employee being present.

The Trio discusses where to run to, and Hermione suggests the DEs may have found them because Harry still has the underage Trace on him. Ron insists that cannot be the case because Wizarding law doesn’t allow it to be put on adults. Um, Ron, I hate to tell you this, but the Ministry is in the control of violent terrorists who want to kill large numbers of people and take over the world. I don’t think they’re going to shrink from breaking any law, particularly if it will help them find their number one quarry, Harry Potter.

HRH (Hey, JKR’s pretending Harry’s royalty, so why not go with it?) decide to go to Grimmauld Place, even though Snape knows where it is and can get in there. Harry displays textbook Gryffindor bravado by boasting that he’d love to fight Snape. I can just imagine Snape sneering and replying, “Yes, Potter, because that worked out so well for you last time.”

They leave the restaurant after waking everybody up, thus leaving the defenseless waitress to the mercies of the muggle-hating Death Eaters. Remind me again why these are the good guys?

They enter 12GP and we have a brief recap of the furnishings in the foyer. Surely I’m not the only one who finds those stuffed elf heads really creepy and grotesque. Proving their fitness for battle with ruthless terrorists, the Trio is traumatized by Moody’s ludicrous “protections” on the house: a Tongue-Tying Curse and an apparition of Dumbledore that appears to be a giant dust bunny disguised as a decomposing corpse.

OH! COME! ON! Anybody’s who ever been to a local charity’s “haunted house” has seen scarier stuff than that! I started reading horror comic books and watching horror movies and TV shows when I was five. I was never scared by those stories because I knew they weren’t real. In my expert opinion, if JKR is writing horror, as she’s sometimes been accused of, she’s doing a damned poor job of it.

Those “protections” are idiotic for other reasons: (1) As others have pointed out, Snape can do silent magic, so tying his tongue would have no effect on his ability to cast spells. (2) If he’s as ruthless and evil as the Order thinks he is, he’s not going to be put off by a dust bunny representation of the man he killed. If anything, he’s going to laugh at the absurdity of it. Hell, I’m not a ruthless murderer, and I laughed at it.

For somebody who was supposed to be so formidable, experienced, and hung up on “constant vigilance” (a euphemism for clinical paranoia), Moody was a complete incompetent when it came to actually protecting places that needed to be protected. No wonder he resorted to torture to get captured DEs to talk. He was too ineffective to get information any other way.

As if they weren’t traumatized enough, the Three Stooges (seriously, this scene seems to have been ripped off from an old Three Stooges or Abbott and Costello short) Golden Trio then has to put up with the painting of Walburga Black shrieking racist invective at them. Harry shuts her up, but I have more to say on that subject.

I know it’s commonly accepted that Walburga was mentally ill, maybe even insane, and that’s why she acted so abominably. I don’t buy it. There is no way of being certain of her mental state without observing her behavior when she wasn’t either at home or in another place she considered safe for spewing her filth. That is, if she could behave like a perfect lady when she wanted to--say, while shopping in Diagon Alley, or at Ministry social functions--then her behavior was under her conscious control. She was therefore not mentally ill, just a vicious racist who got off on terrorizing everybody with her violent tantrums. Only if she was unable to control her behavior and conform to appropriate social norms would she qualify as mentally ill and/or incompetent. That’s why, in the various editions of the DSM, the diagnostic criteria always specify that, to qualify for a diagnosis, the aberrant behavior has to be present for an extended period and in a variety of contexts.

Harry has another Voldie-vision, and Hermione starts shrieking à la Walburga, that he has to close the mental connection, or Voldemort can plant false images in his mind. Don’t worry, Hermione. Voldemort’s much too dumb to do anything that sensible.

Harry retreats to the bathroom and lets go with the vision, seeing Draco being forced to torture Rowle with Crucio. To his credit, Harry seems to feel sorry for Draco, although not for Rowle.

However, this “terrifying” vision is undermined by more logical contradictions. Voldy snarls that Rowle called Voldy back to report he’d let Harry get away--but Hermione Obliviated Rowle, so how is that possible? And would Rowle really be so stupid as to call his Master back just to report a failure to him, knowing what kind of punishment he’d receive for his failure? I’m so tired of this nonsense, I feel like Crucioing somebody at this point.

Comments

[sunnyskywalker]

Okay, here's an example of what I'm talking about: the Harry Potter Wiki entry on Harry, under the "Personality and traits" section, claims that "Harry was not a cruel person and he never wished anyone harm." And that he could be "extremely intimidating" and that when he was angry, even his friends were wary of him, and that he eventually could perform an unforgivable torture curse just fine on the provocation of someone spitting and insulting a teacher he likes. And that love helped him overcome Voldemort (funny, didn't he have a long speech about it being the wand? and that whole blood-exchange thing Voldemort did with no love for Harry at all?). It's a big mish-mash of people deciding that when Rowling says Harry's such a nice guy and a real role model, it must be true, and looking at the text and finding some things that don't quite jive and trying to make that work, that you can't really draw a solid conclusion about whether "people" are actually looking at the books when they say Harry's nice and doesn't wish people harm. Though it does look a lot like some people put in the bits about how Harry couldn't Crucio Bellatrix because she said he wasn't sadistic enough, which proves he's nice! and then other people added the bit about Carrow later.

Er, I didn't say those quotes in OotP prove she's a murderer. I said most of them are Hermione being frustrated/angry, having been insulted herself, or being terrified for her life, which just aren't relevant to determining whether she cares about other people.

Others have already covered how Neville had already worked up the courage to ask strangers about Trevor on his own, and Hermione didn't bother to ask him where he'd already looked before charging around into compartments to show how helpful she was being, showing she didn't particularly value Neville's input on the issue. Her tears in DH seem to be prompted by the fact that Dumbledore left something for her, which is ambiguous - Dumbledore was very touched by Harry's regard with his single tear, after all, while still frequently failing to take Harry's feelings into account and, you know, planning to have Harry off himself in a couple of years, which is very "greater good" style compassion if it's any kind of compassion at all. So I wouldn't take those tears as solid evidence either way.

And I'm sorry, but her analysis of Cho's feelings in OotP is far from evidence of any great sensitivity. I'm having a hard time thinking of many of my high school acquaintances who wouldn't have been able to work that out, and they were not exactly Mr. Sensatives. (So... Cho is still sad about her boyfriend being murdered several months later? really? and it's kind of awkward that she's also interested in someone now? who happened to be with her boyfriend when he died? SHOCKING.) It's just that Harry and Ron are so very dense that your scale of measurement is off. You're also overlooking that this was probably a major topic in the girls' bathroom gossip network for the entire year to date. Part of that analysis might well be Lavender and Parvati's.

[sunnyskywalker]

cont.

Hermione's parents obviously taught her what kinds of things "good people" do, and she tries to do them. I don't think they're deliberate Machiavellian posing of the "if I do these things people will think I'm good and therefore I can manipulate them MWAHAHA!" type. However, I do think it's possible that she thinks of herself as a good person - and how many people don't, honestly? even Voldemort says he doesn't think evil is a valid category, not that he's evil and loves it - and so it's very important to her that she understand the things she does in terms of why they're "good." Nothing unusual there - again, how many people don't do this? And she is driven to be the best in what she attempts, such as schoolwork, so she probably also wants to be "best at being good." Again, not uncommon, and not necessarily bad.

Thehangup I see is that Hermione very often does not understand how things affect other people or take their differences and their pain into account. So she justifies her actions to herself as good, and rarely stops to reflect on whether having what she's sure are good intentions means the methods and outcomes are also good. It would be painful if she did so and realized that deep down, her motives weren't as pure as she'd initially believed, or that the outcome was in fact something terrible. Again, this is not uncommon human behavior. And she's immersed in the wizarding world, where putting kids at risk of horrific injury or death is often taken as a matter of course and treating Muggles like lesser beings to be mind-wiped at will is actually legally required in many cases. When these standards mix with her fervent belief that what she does is good because she's good, it's a dangerous mix. Which, again, I think is understandable and even tragic. But also scary, because she could do a lot of harm while telling herself it's for the greater good. And I don't think believing oneself to be doing the right thing makes it so.

But I did think up a scenario where she didn't actually alter her parents' memories at all or even anything half as dubious, and I think Lynn came up with a perfectly good reason she might have lied to Harry about it to protect her parents from possible Voldie-intrusion into Harry's head, so it isn't like I'm bent on proving Hermione is evil. I let her off the hook for what I consider one of the worst possible things she could have done! So when I say I don't see her being super-amazingly-compassionate in the text, it's because I actually don't see it.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

It's a big mish-mash of people deciding that when Rowling says Harry's such a nice guy and a real role model, it must be true, and looking at the text and finding some things that don't quite jive and trying to make that work ...

Much like some people do here. :)

No, I appreciate that quoting other people's opinions is nebulous and doesn't stand as 'evidence' at all ... unless the canon facts that support said opinions are also available. I believe most of those quotes I provided went on to attach those facts. "Hermione is compasionate because ..." and a HP fact of Hermione *being* compassionate was then mentioned.

Hermione didn't bother to ask him where he'd already looked before charging around into compartments to show how helpful she was being -

No. Hermione *may have* not bothered to ask him - we aren't shown Neville protesting "Hermione, I've already checked here!" - where he'd already looked before charging around into compartments to be helpful. Please show me where, in this incident, Hermione said "hey everyone, please look at me and note that I'm helpful!". She said nothing of the sort. Neville's lost his toad, where is his toad, you should get dressed.

her analysis of Cho's feelings in OotP is far from evidence of any great sensitivity.

Of course it is! The 'cold blooded murderess' caricature that oneandthetruth attempted to define would never have had such insight. Or pointed it out to Harry, trying to help him/her. Or applied same insight to the house elves, and Kreacher, crying as she related their situation.

It's just that Harry and Ron are so very dense that your scale of measurement is off.

Of course there's an element of that too.

Part of that analysis might well be Lavender and Parvati's.

That's more of a stretch than simply accepting that Hermione Granger, smartest girl of her age, demonstrated progressive with a history of helping others, worked out herself Cho's situation, just as she explained. Going another couple of hops - she's suddenly part of the girls gossip network, she's now good friends with Lavender and Parvati, she's picked up gossip that Harry and Ron haven't, and just at the right time to impart it to Harry - is just making for a more complicated answer simply because that's the one you prefer. The simplest answer, and the one consistent with the character of the rest of the books, is that Hermione worked it out for herself.

Case closed. :-)