HBP Chapter Fifteen: "The Unbreakable Vow"

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

* It seems that everywhere Harry goes, girls congregate under sprigs of mistletoe in such numbers that they block the corridors off. Ahh, such a burden it is, being the Boy Who Lived.

* Ron’s still got scratches from Hermione’s bird-attack a few days later. Remember though all you fanficcers, Ron’s clearly going to be the abusive one in this relationship.

* Actually, Ron’s right: Hermione is being kind of hypocritical here. Better not let her hear it, though, or she might get out the attack canaries again.

* Neither Harry nor Hermione seem particularly shocked to discover that a gang of girls are essentially going to try and date-rape him. Once again, I throw my hands up at the bizarre system of ethics the wizarding world seems to have.

* Of course, if you can sneak love potions into school disguised as cough medicine, you could probably sneak poison in the same way. Perhaps Malfoy came to the same conclusion, hence his poison!mead plot later in the year.

* Not that Harry or Hermione will ever think of pointing out this security loophole to Dumbledore, of course.

* Incidentally, a really sensible junior Death Eater could just smuggle in a muggle weapon like a gun. No magic detector would be able to pick it up.

* Madam Pince’s reaction to seeing the Prince’s book seems a bit OTT, especially since there must be a spell to remove the writing. Maybe she’s an ex-Slytherin, and still likes to go into big theatrics every now and again.

* Harry and Hermione return to the common room arguing over whether or not Pince and Filch have something going on, which is clearly a more interesting and worthy topic of discussion that the attempted murder last week.

* “Luna was demonstrating her usual knack of speaking uncomfortable truths,” whilst JK Rowling was demonstrating her usual flaw of telling rather than showing.

* Incidentally, I don’t think Ron’s actually that unkind by wizarding standards, and certainly not compared to Hermione or even Harry. Lazy, whiney and irritating, sure, but he’s never disfigured anybody’s face or (as far as we know) fantasised about torturing his teachers. Maybe Luna’s been hearing a lot from Hermione recently about how upset she is by Ron, and this has affected her views of him.

* Harry asks Luna to the party, and hastily adds that he just wants to go as friends. As if there was ever any danger of the Chosen One deigning to go out with an inexperienced wimp like her. Come back when you’ve bat-bogied a few people and snogged some other boy a few times, then you might be worthy of Harry’s attentions.

* A gaggle of girls is standing excitedly next to the vampire, because the girls in Hogwarts are all stupid and air-headed and just the sort of people to go out with a blood-sucking monster. It’s all part of the books’ arguments against bigotry, no doubt.

* Man, what’s with all the Zach Smith hatred going around? Harry’s “revolted” that Hermione thought of asking him to the party, so much so that he even starts speaking in italics. What, is questioning Harry’s judgement really such an unforgivable crime?

* Frankly, I wouldn’t put it past Hermione to tell Ron how he really made the quidditch team.

* I wish JKR didn’t try and make Luna seem funnier by having Harry think how funny she is. If Luna says anything funny, we readers can see that for ourselves; if not, having Harry laugh doesn’t make it more funny, it just makes Harry look slightly weird.

* I’m surprised Malfoy doesn’t have more admirers, with that consumptive Romantic poet look he’s got going on.

* So Harry overhears Snape and Malfoy talking, and discovers that Snape suspects Draco of having had a hand in the Katie Bell affair, that Draco’s been in contact with a known Death Eater, that his “master” has set him some task the completion of which will bring great glory to Malfoy, and that he doesn’t think he’s in any danger from practitioners of the Dark Arts. Surely now somebody will take Harry seriously and help him investigate, right? Right?

Comments

[nx74defiant.livejournal.com]

a gang of girls are essentially going to try and date-rape him.

The sexuality portrayed in HP is odd. It is only the girls, not the boys that do that. Does using magic weaken a wizard's sex drive?

What, is questioning Harry’s judgement really such an unforgivable crime?

Do you really need to ask?

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/Ron’s still got scratches from Hermione’s bird-attack a few days later./

And yet we’re still supposed to see it as funny.

/Neither Harry nor Hermione seem particularly shocked to discover that a gang of girls are essentially going to try and date-rape him./

Well, at least Hermione did try to warn Harry. Still, their lackluster reaction to this indicates one of the unsettling themes of this book: violence against men is funny and/or understandable.

/Incidentally, a really sensible junior Death Eater could just smuggle in a muggle weapon like a gun. No magic detector would be able to pick it up./

Well, then the Death Eater would have to explain to his/her comrades how he/she even knew what a gun was, which might indicate that the Death Eater was not a pureblood or that the Death Eater was a “Muggle-lover” like Arthur Weasley, so if that was the plan, the Death Eater would have to be very discreet about it.

/Maybe she’s an ex-Slytherin/

Considering Madam Pince’s personality and her animosity towards the Trio, I wouldn’t be surprised if JKR did say that she’d been in Slytherin.

/Harry and Hermione return to the common room arguing over whether or not Pince and Filch have something going on, which is clearly a more interesting and worthy topic of discussion that the attempted murder last week./

Well, Hermione feels that the identity of the person who’s been showing her up in Potions class is clearly more important than attempted murder. *grumbles*

/Lazy, whiney and irritating, sure, but he’s never disfigured anybody’s face or (as far as we know) fantasised about torturing his teachers./

And he’s allowed to fail and allowed to be called out for his behavior. When has that happened to Harry or Hermione lately? The only one who’s allowed to yell at Hermione without being portrayed as unfair is Harry and it’s not about the bad things that she’s done, but for upsetting him (breaking his wand, not replying to his letters, etc.).

/Harry asks Luna to the party, and hastily adds that he just wants to go as friends./

I actually thought that this part was rather nice. Harry is going with Luna because he sees her as a friend and feels comfortable with her.

/A gaggle of girls is standing excitedly next to the vampire, because the girls in Hogwarts are all stupid and air-headed and just the sort of people to go out with a blood-sucking monster./

It’s interesting that this vampire only shows up once in one book and then disappears. He never gets any meaningful dialogue, he’s of no importance to the plot, and is never mentioned again. So, I wonder why JKR even put him in the book.

/I’m surprised Malfoy doesn’t have more admirers, with that consumptive Romantic poet look he’s got going on./

*snorts*

[nx74defiant.livejournal.com]

Ron’s still got scratches from Hermione’s bird-attack a few days later.

I recently saw the HBP movie again. I noticed that in the movie the birds miss Ron when he ducks. Another changed to make Hermione look better.

[sunnyskywalker]

You know, you make an interesting point about there probably being a spell to remove writing from books. Wizards could have come up with some awesome annotation spells by this point, as Hermione's half-explanations about writing that only appears under certain circumstances (when she's first examining the Prince's book) indicate. You can have a book that looks pristine and so there's no resale problem, but when its owner opens it, or does the right incantation, suddenly all their hand-written annotations appear. There's probably a general incantation that most people use, one which anyone can use to call up annotations, and then there's the higher-security personalized ones where you need to know some extra specific thing to unlock them (or you have to be the person that wrote them in the first place - little chance of faking that one without Polyjuice).

There might be an entire scholarly sideline of unlocking hidden annotations in old books. You never know when some brilliant ancient witch or wizard scribbled something that could revolutionize spellcasting in the margins! For all we know, there's a section in the Hogwarts library which looks like a random collection until you know it's the books with annotations more valuable than the original texts.

And maybe there's a whole new reason for Pince to object to defacing books, too - maybe if you use the general eraser spell to clean up whatever the kids scribbled today, you risk erasing those hidden, possibly cool annotations as well. Not that she reacts as you would expect if that were the case, but maybe she can't do anything if it's the kids' own schoolbooks and just wants to impress upon them how wrong it is in hopes that they won't try it with the library books.