HBP Chapter Seventeen: "A Sluggish Memory"

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

* Fred, George and Ginny all threw parsnip at Percy when he came over, and then boasted about it afterwards. Yeah, I’m sure the family split is all Percy’s fault. The rest of the Weasleys are totally blameless.

* Meanwhile Ron thinks he can comfort Molly by telling her that Percy’s “such a prat, it’s not really a loss, is it?” Totally blameless.

* Incidentally, I hope Percy’s still going out with Penelope. He always has so much to put up with from his family, he deserves at least one person who treats him well.

* I’m sure Percy’s spent Christmas with Penny’s family, who (I think?) are muggleborns. Being sensible, he actually got on with them and talked to them like human beings, unlike Arthur, who always saw them as a cross between cute babies and interesting animals.

* Wow, Hermione’s just being so childish here, ignoring Ron when he’s talking directly to her. I’m sure PS!Hermione wouldn’t have acted like this. I guess it’s true that being around magic for too long causes you to regress mentally.

* Incidentally, Ron’s speaking to her like a normal friend, it’s Hermione who’s doing the blanking. Still, I’m sure this argument is all Ron’s fault for daring to go out with another girl. Hermione is totally blameless.

* So presumably the wine in the portraits magically refills itself, right? Otherwise it would all have been drunk over the past thousand years. Or maybe they just get the house-elves to paint new bottles in when the old ones are finished.

* Pre-Christmas!Lavender wouldn’t have shouted “Won-Won!” like that.

* Incidentally, Ron, Rowling’s clearly decided to make you so pathetic that even getting a girlfriend makes you look stupid. I hope you’ve already reconciled yourself to being the author’s least favourite character.

* Harry recounts the Draco-Severus conversation he overheard, and Hermione gets weirdly hyper-sceptical, suggesting that “your master” might have referred to Draco’s father and that Malfoy was making an empty threat when he claimed to be friends with Greyback. What is up with that girl? Why is she so resistant to drawing the obvious conclusion when it’s staring her right in the face? For Heaven’s sake, girl, we know that Malfoy is from a family of DEs, that he’s expressed sympathy with Voldemort’s side, that he claims to be friendly with a known and highly dangerous DE, that Harry overheard him boasting to his friends about getting a mission from Voldemort, that Snape also knows he’s doing something for his “master” (and gee, I wonder which famous dark wizard makes all his followers address him as “master”?), and that at least one person has almost died this year in a botched assassination attempt. FFS, Hermione you little idiot, of course Malfoy’s up to something.

* And I’m not sure why JKR feels the need to go through this little charade of having nobody believe Harry when it seems obvious what’s happening. I mean, it’d be one thing if the evidence were ambiguous and there was a real chance Harry was just letting his personal dislikes cloud his judgement, but here he’s just obviously correct. Maybe it was to add a bit of misunderstood angst for Harry, but given that JKR seems more interested in writing a teenage rom-com than a serious and angsty book, maybe not. Or maybe it’s to add an extra bit of conflict as Harry tries to convince his friends he’s right, but this would be totally pointless, as the early books had plenty of conflict when the trio were in agreement about whom to suspect. Perhaps Rowling was so delusional by this point that she thought her whodunit was actually difficult to solve, and that the readers might find Hermione’s argument at all convincing.

* Why would Charlie’s being big stop the Twins from making jokes about him? Surely physical size should be unimportant in a world where everybody fights with magic.

* The rareness of apparition seems to vary wildly over the series. I think it’s first introduced in POA, when it was spoken of as if it were a really rare and difficult skill and Sirius Black must be a great wizard to be able to master it. In GOF it’s presented as a fairly normal thing, although difficult enough that only skilled wizards bother learning, whilst everybody else makes do with brooms and floo powder. From OOTP onwards it’s something the great majority of adults seem to do, like driving a car, with the sole exception of the current scene, where it’s suddenly rare enough that Harry’s the only one in his year who’s ever had any experience of it.

* The other sixth-years bombard Harry with questions about apparition for the rest of the day, which is more interest than they ever show about the on-going murder attempts in Hogwarts which have already injured one of their fellow Gryffindors. Seriously, what is up with these people? Why do they show so much curiosity about what ought to be quite mundane subjects to them, but not about things that actually are unusual and noteworthy?

* Unless, I suppose, attempted murder is quite a mundane occurrence in Hogwarts, which given the lax approach to discipline can’t be ruled out entirely.

* Does anybody here believe Dumbledore’s tears on hearing about Harry’s loyalty are genuine?

* Dumbledore wants to deflect Harry’s suspicions about Snape and Malfoy, but instead of taking a sensible approach to doing this – such as saying “Thank you, Harry, I’ll look into it,” or even “I already knew about this conversation, but thank you for telling me anyway” – he just tells Harry not to worry, making it look like all the adults in Hogwarts are idiots and Harry’s got to sort things out himself.

* “Ah, Harry, how often this happens, even between the best of friends!” Actually, Dumbledore, no, I don’t think that many people would manipulate and deceive their best friend and declare certain lines of questioning off-limits because “I trust so-and-so, and no, I’m not going to tell you why, I’m smarter than you so shut up and do what I say.”

* Dumbledore’s “tendency to trust people in spite of overwhelming evidence that they did not deserve it” clearly doesn’t extend to sharing his plans with any of them. Or to not manipulating them into doing his bidding, because obviously you can’t run the risk of asking them up-front and having them make the wrong decision and refuse. Other than that, though, yeah, he totally trusts other people.

* Voldemort’s hangers-on at school were “a motley collection, a mixture of the weak seeking protection, the ambitious seeking some shared glory, and the thuggish, gravitating towards a leader who could show them more refined forms of cruelty”… So how exactly did this gang of misfits acquire the “kind of dark glamour” they supposedly had?

* The Gaunts’ house was “indescribably filthy”. I wonder if this is what the Dursleys think of Harry’s bedroom.

* The Ministry “rely on witch and wizard parents to enforce their offspring’s obedience [to the under-age magic laws] while within their walls.” Yeah, like that’s ever going to happen, given the cavalier attitude wizarding society shows towards the law.

* Harry recognised Riddle at once by his handsome face. Watch out, Draco, I think you’ve got competition.

* Slughorn gives Dumbledore an obviously tampered with memory which is sure to make the Headmaster redouble his efforts to find out what happened. Harry, being a bit thick, doesn’t realise that the memory was tampered with at all.

* Dumbledore sets Harry the task of extracting the information, telling him that Slughorn “has his weaknesses like the rest of us”. Wow, really, Professor? C’mon, Slughorn’s pretty much all weakness. Cutting off his supplies of crystallised pineapple would probably be enough to make him ’fess up.

* Apparently, though, Harry is “the one person who might be able to penetrate his defences”. Given the pervy!Slughorn interpretation of his character, I can’t help finding this a bit… creepy.

* Really, though, I’m not sure why Slughorn’s actually bothering to hide the memory at all. It’s not particularly damning.

Comments

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry--I can't find it. I thought it was on Archive of our Own, but a search on Percy didn't find it.

But yeah, the story contained a wonderful description of how a bureaucrat commits sabotage!

[oryx_leucoryx]

A somewhat related real life example would be the difference between the Dutch and the Belgians resistance to the Nazi regime. According to a Belgian 'net-friend (so may be biased) - Dutch who resisted the regime did it openly, got arrested and replaced, until there was a replacement that went along. The Belgians went along with the regime but somehow often managed to mess up, be sick on a crucial day, misplace information etc.