Deathly Hallows, Chapter 21: The Tale of the Three Brothers

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Xeno tells the Trio the DH symbol is not “dark” in the sense Viktor Krum thought. He adds he was wearing the symbol in case another believer saw him and could help him find the Hallows. Isn’t it great that he used someone’s else happy social occasion to promote his own selfish, crazy agenda?

He then asks if they know “The Tale of the Three Brothers.” Ron and Hermione say they do, but Harry doesn’t. This shows how intellectually disinterested he is: He’s had the Beedle book sitting around for five months and has been sitting in a tent with it for four months, frequently bored out of his mind, with nothing else to do for entertainment, but even though it’s a short book, he still hasn’t read it! Sheesh! And I’m supposed to find this guy admirable enough to be worthy of emulation? I mean, that is one of the characteristics of a hero/heroine.

Hermione reads the story aloud at Xeno’s request. One thing Rowling got right in the 3Bs story is that it takes place at twilight in Beedle; Ron puts in that his mother always said it was midnight. Either way, those are in-between times of day, neither day nor night, or neither night nor morning, respectively. In folklore, those are the times when the veil between the living and dead or secular and magical worlds is thinnest, and strange things can happen.

We know the story, so I’ll just briefly recap it. Three brothers are walking together when they come to a river that can’t be crossed. They use their magic to build a bridge and are crossing it when they are confronted by the three billy goats gruff Death himself. (I guess if Aberforth were in the story, it would be goats. Or maybe Death would be a goat. Instead of using a scythe to “reap” souls, he’d butt them into the next world.) Death is PO’d because he was “cheated” out of three lives by their magic. Wow. If he’s mad at these brothers because they deprived him of three lives, how much angrier must he have been at Ignaz Semmelweis. His studies of disinfection in maternity wards saved countless people, particularly once Joseph Lister and Louis Pasteur used those studies to develop the germ theory of disease and infection. No wonder Semmelweis was ridiculed and died young, after being beaten to death in an asylum. That was Death’s revenge. At last the truth can be told!

Anyway, Death pretends to be pleased with the brothers’ cleverness and offers each one a prize for beating him. The oldest brother asks for an unbeatable wand, the second for a stone that can raise the dead, and the youngest for something that will keep Death from finding him, which turns out to be the Ultimate Invisibility Cloak, the possession of Death himself.

After the brothers separate, they proceed to put their prizes to use. The oldest brother is a Gryffindor an egotistical blowhard who likes to pick fights, so he promptly goes into a bar and starts bragging he can take anybody in a fight. A Slytherin Another wizard hears him and waits until the loudmouth has passed out drunk in his room. Then he creeps in, cuts the braggart’s throat, and takes the wand.

The second brother is a Ravenclaw too smart for his own good, so he goes home and calls for his dead girlfriend. She shows up, but she doesn’t belong in the living world, and at last the brother becomes so distraught about their inability to be together that he kills himself.

The third brother doesn’t take any chances. Literally. He’s so much a Hufflepuff careful that he lives a long life, literally hiding under the Cloak the entire time, and when he becomes tired of living, he goes with Death willingly, passing his cloak down to his heirs.

Although they’re not called “the Deathly Hallows” in Beedle, Xeno insists that’s what the story is about. The four argue some about it, but we know the pot isn’t cracked in this case. Yes, tiresome as it is, Gary Stu Potter really does own an artifact of Death itself. There’s enough BS in that contrivance to fertilize the entire Corn Belt for decades.

Xeno insists the other Hallows are real as well, which, given the seventh HP book’s title, is inarguable, no matter how stupid it is. Only Hermione is adamant the story isn’t true; her wrongness is one of those annoying situations where feelings and faith triumph over reason. Look, Ms. Rowling, I put up with that nonsense for years on The X-Files. I didn’t like it there, either, but that show was usually so imaginative, well-written, and well-acted, and had such likable main characters and interesting supporting characters, that I was willing to give the irrationality a pass. You are no Chris Carter, nor are Ron and the Hs Scully and Mulder. Voldemort is certainly not Cancer Man.

Xeno goes down to the kitchen to make Plimpy soup. However, if Luna has come back, there is no sign of her. HRH don’t notice that inconsistency.

Ron doesn’t believe the 3Bs story is true, either, and he doesn’t seem to be sucking up to Hermione when he says it. He blows it off as the kind of story that’s supposed to teach lessons to children. “‘Don’t go looking for trouble, don’t pick fights, don’t go messing around with stuff that’s best left alone! Just keep your head down, mind your own business, and you’ll be okay.’” Of course, that first sentence contradicts the entire Gryffindor ethos. The second comes from the Good German playbook. Since JKR keeps shoving WWII down our throats, I wonder if she was aware of the implications when she wrote that sentence.

The Trio starts arguing about which Hallow would be the best to have. Ron proves wand = penis by saying the Elder Wand would only provoke people if you went around shouting, “‘I’ve got an unbeatable wand, come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough.’”  Look at that phrasing: “have a go” is British slang for “have sex with”; “hard enough” rather than “tough enough” or “bad enough” (either of which would be the expected phrase in that context) is an obvious sexual reference. Put the two together and the sexual implications of that sentence are unmistakable. Lower down the same page, Hermione says, “Some wizards just like to boast that theirs [wands] are bigger and better than other people’s.” Wizards, not witches.

They start talking about how “infallible” Harry’s cloak is. Um, correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t Pseudo-Moody and Dumbledore both able to see through it? So were Mrs. Norris and Nagini, but in their cases, it was probably smelling rather than seeing.

While they talk, Harry notices the painting Luna put on her bedroom ceiling of the Trio, Ginny, and Neville, with the word friends painted in gold bordering it all around. The portraits are so realistic, “Harry thought they breathed.” I know this is creepy and sad, since those people aren’t really her friends, with the possible exception of Neville, but rereading this, what I thought about was what a waste it is for someone with Luna’s considerable artistic talent not to use it.

People who can paint portraits that well are extremely rare; Pierre Mignard is the only one I can think of offhand. This is also the only sign of true artistic genius we’ve seen in the entire series. It sucks no end that so much time is wasted on stupid quests, dumb romance, and main character angsting that we never see Luna’s talent being developed, or what, if anything, she did with it. Probably nothing, given what Philistines magical people seem to be.

Think how cool it would have been if Luna’s artistic genius had been used in the resolution of one the stories.

Looking around her bedroom, Harry comes to the conclusion that Luna isn’t around and hasn’t been for weeks. When Xeno comes back with a tray of food, Harry asks him where Luna is. Xeno tries the “Plimpy fishing” line again, but Harry doesn’t buy it, not because you can’t make Plimpy soup without the Plimpies Luna is supposedly catching, but because the tray is set for four rather than five. Holy logic, Batman! Who are you, and what have you done with that dunderhead, Harry Potter?

Xeno admits he tricked them because Luna’s being held hostage by the Death Eaters, and he’s trying to get her back by trading Harry for her.

HRH look out the window and see someone arriving. Xeno tries to Stun them, but Harry shoves his friends out of the way and jumps aside, so the Stun hits the Erumpent horn and explodes it. Harry and Hermione aren’t buried in the rubble--of course--but Ron has a bureau fall on him, and Xeno falls down the spiral staircase.

Just then the DEs arrive. Thinking Xeno’s lying to them about Harry’s presence, they start torturing him. The Hs stand there silently listening to this, making no move to do anything until one of the DEs does a revealing spell, and the bad guys come looking for them.

Then the Hs rescue Ron--first trying to lift the dresser, then doing a Hover Charm. Honestly, I felt like Rowling had forgotten this charm again, then remembered it halfway through the paragraph and stuck it onto the end.

Hermione saves the day again. First, she makes the floor collapse onto the DEs, allowing them to see Harry, while Ron is covered by the cloak. Then she Apparates the three of them to a distant field.

“What a revolting development this is!” That catchphrase predates the lives of everyone on this forum, but it perfectly describes how I felt about the last few pages of this chapter. “Their daring, nerve, and chivalry set Gryffindors apart.”

HAH! There is nothing daring, nervy, or chivalrous about standing around listening while an old man is being tortured, particularly when he may already have been severely injured by a fall down a staircase. First Xeno is cursed four times when the DEs arrive. Then he is subjected to “a volley” of curses, which means at least several more. Ron can’t do anything because he is out of commission--as usual--not that he would have if he could, as we’ll see in the next chapter. But the Hs could have at least attempted to rescue Xeno. Instead, all they think about is saving their own skins. And you have the nerve to call Snape a coward, Harry?

Yes, Xeno betrayed them. So what? He admitted he was doing it only because he saw no other way to rescue his daughter. The Trio also should have expected to be betrayed at some point. It’s part of the ugliness of war. Real war, that is, not the contrived kind of kiddie war found in this book. It’s perfectly understandable and forgivable that an old man, who has no one else in his life to love but his daughter, would put her life ahead of the lives of strangers, no matter who those strangers were. If the Trio were truly heroic, rather than heroic as an informed attribute, they would have understood this and tried to save Lovegood anyway. Saving people who don’t deserve it is part of being a hero or heroine. Somewhere in one of those umpteen books she’s read, Hermione should have read that.

I’ve certainly read it in both the Warriors and Percy Jackson series. "Chivalrous Gryffindors" Harry, Hermione, and Ron have had their butts kicked in the heroism department by a bunch of stray cats and the bastard offspring of obsolete gods and goddesses. How sorry is that?

The Fool’s Golden Trio is the worst bunch of role models ever.

Comments

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Well. Hermione apologists had better hope that Hermione has never, ever heard that Voldemort can recover Obliviated memories. And how he does so.

I discussed this a little just now in the HermioneGhoul post after this, that the DE's, Albus, Sirius, Severus, Minerva, and Harry all know that Tom can break a Memory Charm, but only through torture extreme enough to leave both mind and body of the victim "broken beyond repair", but that Hermione might not have had access to that information.

I think the idea at the end of this chapter is supposed to be, Hermione had just PROVED that Xeno wasn't lying or trying to trick the DE's when he summoned them and claimed to have cornered Harry for them. So there was no need to punish Xeno further for lying; he hadn't been. And it clearly wasn't his fault that Harry and Hermione subsequently escaped.

(And Ron was invisible, so the DE's wouldn't know he was now traveling with Harry, and so had no reason to target the Weasleys.)

Obliviating Xeno, then, was (assuming Hermione imagined her the Memory Charm could hold), first of all, protection for the Weasleys: Xeno couldn't testify that Ron was NOT languishing at the Burrow, but teamed with Harry.

But further, once questioning the old man showed he had been Obliviated, why bother messing with him further? He could give them no information, and he hadn't betrayed the DE's. So there's no logical reason to torture him further, neither to interrogate him nor to punish him.

So Hermione, very nobly, had done exactly what oneandthetruth thought a true heroine ought, and taken what steps she could to protect the craven old man who'd betrayed her/them, but only to try to save his own child's life.

Except, of course, that her clever plan will backfire, so far as protecting poor weak Xeno is concerned. (If that was her plan.) The effect of her actions is, the DE's will report to Tom that Harry was there, and the Hermione OBliviated the old man. Thus RIVETING Tom's attention (who must be wondering what Albus had sent Harry off to do) on what Xeno could tell him. Tom is pretty much guaranteed to rip Xeno into pieces, now, to find out everything Xeno was asked.

Rather than increasing Xeno's chances of surviving without further scathe, Hermione had just guaranteed his utter destruction at the hands of their mutual enemy.

(Provided, that is, that Tom came home in time to attend to the matter, and that his DE's told him the truth about what happened there at the Rook. Given how Tom reacted to DE's who sighted Harry and let him slip through their fingers, Travers and Selwyn were arguably better off claiming that Xeno had only summoned them to try, yet again, to trade a Wrackspurt for Luna or something. But then if Tom subsequently found out the truth--and he WAS a Legilmens--well, there'd be no hope of their surviving THAT.)

So if Hermione's plan were to protect Xeno from further torture, it would have backfired gruesomely.

If, as I said, that was her plan.

But if Hermione knew that Tom could break Memory Charms by sufficient torture.....

Even if she didn't know this when she sent her parents off, she had since spent four months in a tent with Harry, obsessively reviewing everything Harry ever heard Tom say, or heard Albus say about Tom,

If Hermione had any HINT of such an idea, then Obliviating Xeno wasn't merciful. it was setting him up, a la Marietta, to be punished for betraying Harry to protect his own family.

And, she would have thought, setting Voldemort on a false trail. For when she tracked down Xeno to ask him about that sign, all she got was fairy-tale gibberish about the Deathly Hallows. Let Voldemort think that THAT was what she and Harry were searching for, some imaginary unbeatable weapon or stone to raise legions of the dead to fight him, not the Horcruxes. Send Tom off on the wild goose chase the visit to Xeno had proved to be, ha!

[oryx_leucoryx]

Provided, that is, that Tom came home in time to attend to the matter, and that his DE's told him the truth about what happened there at the Rook. Given how Tom reacted to DE's who sighted Harry and let him slip through their fingers, Travers and Selwyn were arguably better off claiming that Xeno had only summoned them to try, yet again, to trade a Wrackspurt for Luna or something. But then if Tom subsequently found out the truth--and he WAS a Legilmens--well, there'd be no hope of their surviving THAT.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the last we see of Selwyn. But Travers shows up again at Gringotts. So etiher he managed to keep the entire story from Tom or Xeno didn't last.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Really, the only reason I see for imagining Xeno to have lasted at all, is that Luna wasn't killed out of hand. Her only value, so far as the DE's could calculate such things, was as a lever to shift the Quibbler's editor.

But of course Tom was, we understand, still traveling on the Continent in search of the Deathstick as of when HRH escaped Travers and Selwyn. A report that Harry had been SIGHTED but not CAPTURED wouldn't necessarily bring him back.

And we don't know that anyone on the DE side short of Tom could be expected to break Xeno's memory charm.

Or, even if capable, was authorized to do so, on a high-profile prisoner who had recent knowledge of Harry Potter's plans.

So it's quite possible that Xeno was being held in the next cell over from Luna and Ollivander, or at another location, and that he was interrogated to death shortly after Luna's own escape.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Gosh, you two are a cheerful pair. I'd assumed Xeno had survived the war. It didn't occur to me that he might have died, by torture, no less, until I read these posts. Thanks. :-(

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Never occurred to me until now, frankly. But it's logical--there were Travers and Selwyn testifying that Xeno had summoned them to turn over Potter to them, and that indeed Potter and his Mudblood companion had been there. And there was Xeno, injured and Obliviated. Obviously, Granger wouldn't have bothered with a Memory Charm if the pair hadn't revealed critical information to their supposed ally before they realized he was betraying them....

Obliviating Xeno has to have riveted Tom's attention on what the old man could tell of their plans.

Yes, once Tom came home to attend to the matter, Xeno would be a goner. The only question is whether Tom had time to attend to the matter before the crisis.

And indeed, Xeno's testimony, when he were finally made to give it, would confirm that Tom head been right to seek the Elder Wand, and that Harry Potter had been set on the same quest by Dumbledore. (No doubt the reason he didn't just give the wand by the boy was that the boy had to win it somehow to gain its allegiance.)

[oryx_leucoryx]

OTOH Hermione had previously Obliviated Rowle and Dolohov, we know they got back to Voldemort (torture scene) and we see Dolohov again in the battle (multiple times), so we know Voldemort did not try to find what he was made to forget.

Also, Travers' conversation with 'Bellatrix' (Hermione) suggests he wasn't quite up to date about the goings on at headquarters. He may have decided to make himself scarce there in case his master got ideas.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Ah... but in fact that Memory Charm had already been broken (or it never did take) by the time we saw Rowle being "punished" by Draco.

Rowle and Dolohov were supposed to wake up not remembering they'd seen the Trio at all, but Tom was punishing Thorfinn for letting Harry get away.

Obviously, if you send a team out to capture a person who had just taken the Dark Lord''s name in vain (especially knowing the just-escaped-from-the-Burrow Potter is the one who usually does so), and your team comes back with a memory gap and no captives, you can easily infer what must been done to them and take appropriate steps....

Perhaps light torture suffices to break a casual Obliviatus, whereas torture-to-destruction is needed for a powerful one (which we know the one on Bertha had been).

If so, we can hope that Hermione's Memory Charm on Xeno was as sloppy as her one on the DE's.

But really, using a Memory Charm on ANYONE who's in a position to have the memory loss noted by Riddle, once you know Tom can break it (and how), is just setting the person up for torture while keeping one's hands "clean." Maybe not consciously--but on review, it was Harry, who we know FOR SURE knew about Bertha Jorkins, who suggested Obliviating Rowle and Dolohov.

And he's also the one who threw all those Stupefies at ariborne wizards in the 7P chapter, until he saw Stan, who he thought was to be an Imperius victim, and switched to Expelliarmus because Stunning Stan off his broom would probably kill the poor man.

So even if we acquit .Hermione of possibly not realizing what she was setting up her victims for, Harry did.


No, I won't kill Death Eaters. I'll let the ground do it for me, or set Tom up to.

Our noble little Gryffindor with his clean, clean wand.