Deathly Hallows, Chapter 16: Godric's Hollow

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Is everybody still with me? I know it was hard to get through that last installment. Unfortunately, not much happens in this chapter, either. We have to plow through it before we get some excitement in chapter 17.

This chapter starts with a sickeningly sweet illustration of the Holy Family Potter Family Memorial Statue. Lily is holding baby Harry on her left, while she and James, on her right, gaze adoringly at their child. They all have little patties of snow on their heads, which makes them look like they’re wearing halos. *gag* That particular ornament would be the last headgear I would imagine James Potter wearing.

Harry is so freaked out by Ron’s desertion that it hits him like a death. Ron’s empty bunk is “like a dead body in the way it seemed to draw his eyes.” Harry has to keep telling himself Ron is gone for good, “as though repetition would dull the shock of it.” He thinks, “He’s gone. He’s gone. He’s gone and he’s not coming back.” That’s what you say when somebody dies.

But Ron is not dead. He’s better off than they are, living with his family in a real house, eating good food in full meals whenever he wants. Ron is the one who is part of the living world as it’s commonly understood, with Harry and Hermione wandering through--and dragging us through--a bizarre purgatory of searching but never finding, wanting but never getting, their emotions dulled, drifting like dementors from one location to another, trying to suck out the soul of meaning from this mindless quest, a meaning that always remains just out of reach.

The Deadly Boredom continues as the Hs set up a new campsite. They take gender-stereotyped attitudes towards Ron’s absence, with Harry being constantly angry and Hermione crying nonstop. This is so boring, I want to punch both of them just to relieve it. They might not feel better, but I sure would.

This is so totally phony: Harry’s reaction to everything is to throw a tantrum. Hermione didn’t act like she cared that much for Ron for, oh, I don’t know, forever? Yet they’re devastated by his--I almost said, “death”--absence? I think what they’re really feeling is fear, anger, frustration, and physical/mental/emotional exhaustion because of this fruitless hunt they’re on. But it’s too scary to admit to their real fears--that they’re not up to the job, that Saint Albus screwed them over by leaving them ignorant--so they sublimate their feelings into grief over Ron’s leaving, which is expressed as anger and sadness. That’s not to say they aren’t really grieving, just that’s greatly exacerbated by their other problems.

Harry starts map-stalking Ginny, watching her dot move around Hogwarts, even hoping the intensity of his staring will break into her sleep so she’ll know he’s obsessing over thinking about her.

Okay, that’s just creepy. I admit, I can imagine Snape doing such a thing with Lily, if he’d had this map when they were teenagers. But we’re supposed to regard him as “greedy,” “controlling,” and “obsessive.” He’s supposed to be an example of what not to do with the girl you love. Yet here again, we have Harry behaving the same way as Severus probably would in the same situation, yet apparently we’re supposed to regard Harry’s inappropriate actions as--what? An outgrowth of his loneliness? An expression of love? His desire to protect his girl? Whatever it is, it’s not creepy, controlling, possessive, obsessive, “greedy,” or any other of those baaaaaaad things it would have been if Severus Snape had done it with Lily. Not when Harry’s doing it.

For that matter, James probably did map-stalk Lily when they were teenagers. In SWM, he sounds like a potential batterer, with his “teasing” threat to hex Lily, and his offer to leave her greasy friend alone if she’ll go out with him. It’s common for batterers to make “joking” threats of violence, or to force their women’s compliance by threatening the loved ones, human or animal, of their women. So Harry’s spying on Ginny is just another case of, “like father, like son.” Sorry, Harry, Snape is right about you two again.

I don’t care what JKR says: It’s not okay if a Gryffindor does it! It’s not okay if anybody does it. Whoever does it, it’s sick behavior, the sign of unhealthy dependency, poor boundaries, immaturity, and serious control issues--self-control, as well as a desire to control the “loved one.”

Finally Harry has to admit the truth: He doesn’t know his head from his ass what he’s doing, where he’s going, what he’s looking for, when or if he’ll ever find it, or whom to ask for help. He doesn’t even know what to do with whatever he finds if he ever finds it.

We now pause for a word from our sponsor, Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell. This book is of much better literary quality, although it possesses equally warped morals:

Scarlett: All I know is that you do not love me and you are going away! Oh, my darling, if you go, what shall I do?

Rhett: I wish I could care what you do or where you go, but I can’t.

My dear, I don’t give a damn.

The Hs get so desperate for company they regularly bring out Phineas’s painting so they can talk to him. “Harry was even glad to see him, because he was company, albeit of a snide and taunting kind.” Hah! You don’t fool me, mister! You miss Severus Snape. You’ve gotten used to his sarcasm and the way he pushes you to be better. Without his whiplash tongue flogging you along, you don’t know how to act. Phineas is Harry’s substitute snotty Slytherin. If I were a Snarry fan, I could also see this as confirmation of that ‘ship.

They wander around some more, and time passes until it’s December. Harry waits until they’ve had a good meal of food Hermione sneaked out of a store under the invisibility cloak. It says she dropped the money for the food into an open till, but I don’t buy it. I worked for years in a grocery store, and tills are never left open if they have money in them. It’s possible Rowling means “drawer without money in it” rather than “till holding money.” That would be dumb, too, since anybody could just come along and take the money with no one the wiser.

Where are they getting this money, anyway? They’ve been on the run for almost three months without going to a bank. Even with Hermione’s savings, they should have been out of money a long time ago. Again, it’s possible one of them has an ATM card and a regular bank account, but that’s never been mentioned, and they both show such contempt for “muggles,” I should think they wouldn’t want any such lowly accoutrements of modern life.

Harry is about to broach the subject of Godric’s Hollow again when Hermione brings up the DH sign written in her copy of Beedle. She suggests visiting GH because, as the birthplace of Godric Gryffindor, it would be a reasonable place for Dumbledore to have hidden the sword. Silly Hermione. That would be logical. These are wizards you’re dealing with, remember? The people who, by your own admission, “haven’t an ounce of logic.”

With a plan to work on, Hermione goes all anal retentive again, insisting they practice Disillusionment and Apparating and Disapparating under the cloak. She even steals hairs so they can use Polyjuice. Where did she get that? I thought it took a month to brew, and it’s not as if she has brewing facilities or the other ingredients handy. Did she pack some Polyjuice? How long does it keep? I was under the impression from previous books you had to use it right away.

When the Hs arrive in GH, they’re surprised to realize it’s Christmas Eve. I find it very strange that, among all the junk Hermione packed, she didn’t bring along a pocket calendar, particularly since we’ve seen in previous books how much keeping a schedule means to her.

They pass the Potter statue, which turns from an obelisk with names of war dead on it into the Potters, and back again as they leave. That must be some charm on it, if it can sense when magical people are passing by and change, then change back on its own.

They reach the church, and as they plow their way through the snow in the cemetery, they find the graves of Kendra and Ariana Dumbledore. Harry imagines visiting the graves of his and the Headmaster’s families together with Dumbledore, “of what a bond that would have been, of how much it would have meant to him.” Precisely, Harry. To you, not Dumbledore. Your feelings don’t matter. Haven’t you figured that out yet? “But it seemed that to Dumbledore, the fact that their families lay side by side [technically incorrect] in the same graveyard had been an unimportant coincidence, irrelevant, perhaps, to the job he wanted Harry to do.”  Got it in one, kid! He didn’t care about you. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about anything but getting you dead so he could get Voldemort dead and eliminate the competition conquer evil once and for all.

Hermione finds a grave with the DH symbol on it, and nearby the grave of James and Lily. The dates indicate James married an older woman (by two months). In one of the few passages in DH I not just liked, but respected, Harry starts crying at his parents’ grave, the air so cold the tears freeze on his face.

This reminds me of something I heard years ago about an American woman whose husband died in World War II. She chose to have his body buried in France rather than shipped home, and she never visited France. When their son was a young adult, he expressed a desire to visit his father’s grave, so they made a trip there. When they got to the graveside, the widow began crying as if her husband had just died. She believed she had gotten over his death long ago, so she didn’t understand where this sudden upsurge of grief came from. She later realized that because her husband had been buried overseas, she had never accepted the reality of his death. Subconsciously, she was convinced he was still alive somewhere and would someday return to her. It was only when she saw his grave that she realized he was truly dead and was never coming back. The grief that had been held in suspended animation for decades was finally released.

That is what is happening to Harry in this scene. When Hedwig and Moody died, we got histrionic nonsense, with phrases like “he could not take it in,” “a dreadful, gut-wrenching pang,” and “his insides clenched like a fist.” Grief was expressed as if it were Irritable Bowel Syndrome, with Harry seemingly traumatized by the not-unexpected deaths of two beings he either rarely paid attention to or barely knew. But with his parents, he just cries, like a normal person. His sorrow perhaps too deep for conscious thought, he doesn’t feel anything. He’s just looking at the grave when the tears suddenly come. He wonders what their bodies must look like now, knows they don’t realize their living son is at their grave, and briefly wishes he were buried with them. Although it’s expressed in clumsy, bloated language, his sorrow is genuine. In a book that alternates Perfect Storms of overwrought emotionalism with Dust Bowls of overly detailed, stultifying boredom, this passage is an eye of the storm, standing out for its honesty and sheer rightness. If J K Rowling ditched the florid language and always wrote with such sincerity and sensitivity, she would be a formidable writer indeed.

Harry feels inadequate because he didn’t bring anything to put on his parents’ graves. Hermione intuits this and kindly conjures a wreath of Christmas roses. They walk out of the cemetery together, their arms around each other. This is a lovely scene to end the chapter with, and very appropriate for the peaceful feeling of Christmas Eve.

Comments

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Ambushed? A proper good-bye? Nice excuse, but.....

Hermione had ber bag packed with everything she considered essential (books not food....). If Harry was unprepared for departure at an instant's notice, that wasn't because it wasn't possible to predict that might suddenly be required of them.

Further, afterward.... Even if the WW has no network of post-owls for hire (since Hedwig is dead), and if there's no Floo-access from 12 Grimmauld, if Harry had thought of this contingency and wanted to give his "love" such a pronounced advantage, Harry still could have made it work.

Sent Kreacher to the Burrow with a package.

Alternatively, apparated to near Hogwarts, hidden the map somewhere accessible but hidden, and sent his Patronus to Ginny with a message about where to find it and how to use it.

As far as I can tell, the reason Harry didn't give the map to Ginny (or to the DA in toto), who could have used it to assure her/their safety (instead using it himself, the sicko, to stalk her in absentia), is, he couldn't be arsed to think for so much as a moment about her, or their, probable needs.

Our hero! Yet another tribute to the Power of Love Harry exudes.

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

You're right, there were plenty of ways that Harry could have sent the map to Ginny or somebody else in the DA. But I'm not sure I agree with your reasoning for why he kept it.

Just a couple of months earlier, in chapter 25 of HBP, Harry gave the map and his supply of Felix Felicis to his friends before he went to the cave with Dumbledore, and he specified that Ginny should take some of the potion. So I think that it is generally in character that Harry cares about the safety of his friends, or at least Harry is meant to be a character who cares about the safety of his friends.

I know that we try to stick with Watsonian explanations here, but I suspect that it simply never occurred to Rowling that the DA should have the map. After all, nobody else ever suggested giving the map to the DA, either, even though Hermione, Ron, George, Fred, and Remus, among others, all knew of the map's existence.

Maybe we can fanwank that the twins made their own copy of the map at some point and gave it to Ginny.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the laugh! I loved your reference to Harry as a sicko. The real Potter legacy: The men have sicko attitudes towards "their" women.