HBP Chapter Twenty-Four: "Sectumsempra"
Nov. 23rd, 2013 01:27 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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deathtocapslock* It’s a good day for Hermione – she gets to feel superior at Ron because he was too cowardly to break up with Lavender, pleased that their relationship broke up anyway, and amused by the knowledge that she was instrumental in making this happen. If only she could find some excuse for righteously branding a nasty word across Lavender’s face, her day would be perfect.
* It turns out Ginny and Dean split up, too. Harry “thought there was a rather knowing look in [Hermione’s] eye as she told him that, but she could not possibly know that his insides were suddenly dancing the conga.” I don’t know, Harry, I wouldn’t put it past her to learn Legilimency and go around mind-reading people – for the greater good, of course…
* Harry and Ron have spent the whole class talking and consequently haven’t learnt anything. So obviously, if he gets savaged by a hippogriff, he totally deserves it.
* Harry’s interior monologue is being a bit presumptuous here, like of course Ginny’s going to go out with him if he asks, and the only issue is how Ron might react. The idea that Ginny might not actually want to go out with him at all doesn’t really seem to cross his mind.
* Harry’s curiosity about Katie even drives Ginny from his head. Wow, he must be curious. I mean, he normally spends so much time thinking about his crushes.
* “In his mind’s eye he watched a parade of Crabbes and Goyles prance past, all transformed into girls.” Now there’s an interesting slash-fic idea if ever I saw one. :p
* It would be a complete waste of Felix Felicis to try and get into the RoR, says Hermione. Because obviously, if you’re trying to guess the precise formula of words which will let you into a room, incredible luck isn’t going to help you at all.
* Although if they want some more FF, is there any reason why Harry can’t just take a swig of the stuff and ask Slughorn for another bottle? Or even just use some of his inherited fortune to buy some? I’m sure there must be professional potion-makers he could buy from.
* Of course, the Trio were perfectly happy to spend months brewing a ridiculously complex potion in COS, so I’m not sure why they don’t consider doing so now. I mean, come on, they’re the wizarding world’s only hope for stopping the most powerful dark lord in a century, they need all the advantages they can get.
* Dean’s upset that his relationship with Ginny has ended. Ginny on the other hand is totally fine and perky. Of course.
* Harry keeps getting hit by Bludgers because he’s too busy looking at Ginny to keep his eye on the, er, Snitch. And no, I don’t know why looking at the Snitch all the time would help him to avoid a completely different ball, either.
* “The run-up to this crucial match had all the usual features,” not least another desperate attempt to convince us that (a) Gryffindor actually have a chance of losing the Cup, and (b) Quidditch is really important and we should totally care about how well Gryffindor does.
* Harry still hasn’t forgotten about Malfoy. I wish the readers could, because then this whole Quidditch subplot might stop seeming so pointless and uninteresting by comparison.
* Only kidding, Quidditch subplots have always been pointless and uninteresting since at least POA.
* Harry finds Draco and Moaning Myrtle an “unlikely coupling”. Clearly he hasn’t been reading enough fanfic.
* Harry sees Draco crying, leading him to realise that, even if he doesn’t like him, Malfoy’s still a human being with emotions and difficulties just like Harry, and Harry should try and get past his dislike and treat him as a fellow person. Lol jk, they have a fight and Harry doesn’t feel a twinge of sympathy even when he cuts Draco’s chest open.
* Not sure how Harry and Draco can keep missing each other from opposite sides of the bathroom, but whatever.
* Wow, Malfoy must really be speaking slowly if Harry can say “Sectumsempra!” in the time it takes Draco to say “-o”. Maybe it’s that Malfoy theatricality making him cast all his spells in a villainous drawl.
* Oh look, that mysterious spell marked “for enemies” turned out to be quite dangerous. Never saw that one coming.
* So what’s the significance of this “incantation that sounded almost like a song” which Snape uses to heal Draco? Is it some ancient spell which predates the introduction of single pseudo-Latin words? If so, is Snape’s description of Sectumsempra as “dark magic” a piece of evidence in favour of the theory that dark magic is older, less “tamed” magic?
* So Draco goes to the Hospital Wing, and Harry immediately forgets about how he almost murdered him, instead focusing on the far more important question of what will happen if his Potions crib sheet gets taken away.
* Not sure why Snape doesn’t insist on going with Harry to the Gryffindor Common Room. Surely he must realise that Potter might try and switch books or something?
* I like the foreshadowing with the tiara and Vanishing Cabinet inside the ROR. Then again, given that Harry doesn’t use the textbook again, this whole hiding it scene is kind of pointless.
* Harry runs back, and arrives with a “searing pain in his chest”. Which is a coincidence, because that’s probably how Malfoy’s feeling right about now.
* So Snape gives Harry a few detentions for being “a liar and a cheat” (not even for almost killing Draco! WTF?), and Harry’s reaction is to bitch and moan about it to his friends. I mean, seriously, what is up with this boy? If I were in Harry’s position, I’d be on my knees in thanks that I wasn’t going to be expelled.
* Harry feels “sicker, he was sure, than Ron ever felt in his life” because his team might lose an intra-school sports competition. Not because his recklessness had endangered the life of a fellow-student. Urgh, just… just urgh.
* So Pansy Parkinson’s been to the Hospital Wing “vilifying” Harry. Not that she’d need to, really, I think his actions vilify him quite well enough on their own.
* Apparently “the looks on the Gryffindor team’s faces when he had told them he would not be able to play on Saturday had been the worst punishment of all”. As opposed to, say, the look on Draco’s face as he lay dying on the toilet-room floor.
* Now Harry’s worrying that Ginny and Dean might get back together if he’s not there to keep an eye on them. Can this boy get any more narcissistic?
* Also, even though Harry’s heard Malfoy say that his life’s in danger if he doesn’t carry out his task, nobody bothers talking about this new piece of information. Normally I could chalk this up to trauma at the realisation he’s nearly killed someone causing Harry to forget things, but Harry clearly isn’t traumatised at what’s just happened.
* Also, this chapter must be quite bad for H/D fanficcers. Even when Draco’s almost been killed, Harry still prefers to talk and think about his potions book and about the upcoming Quidditch match.
* Harry’s pet attack harpy valiantly rises to his aid, defending his use of deadly spells in the face of an Unforgivable Curse. Even though a less dangerous spell, like Stupefy or Expeliarmus or Petrificus Totalis, would have been just as effective in self-defence, so there’s really no need to go around slicing people’s chests open.
* “‘Oh, don’t start acting as though you understand Quidditch,’ snapped Ginny, ‘you’ll only embarrass yourself.’” Wait, where does Hermione’s apparent reputation as a Quidditch ignoramus come from? We’ve never seen any signs of ignorance on her part. Or maybe Ginny’s just using “doesn’t understand Quidditch” to mean “not obsessed with Gryffindor winning at Quidditch”, in which case I suppose Hermione, like every sane reader on the planet, doesn’t really understand Quidditch.
* So Harry ends the night feeling “unbelievably cheerful” and not at all guilty about almost murdering somebody. Fun challenge: imagine what the narrative voice would say if Draco almost killed Harry and spent the rest of the evening laughing and joking with his Slytherin friends.
* The Gryffindors are “most unhappy that their Captain had got himself banned from the final match of the season”. As opposed to, say, the fact that their Captain had almost flipping murdered someone in the bathroom. Eurgh, I know I keep going on about this, but everybody’s reactions are just bizarre. It almost reads as if the chapter was originally written so that Harry had genuinely done something minor and his being stopped from playing Quidditch was actually unfair, the Sectumsempra bit being added later and never really integrated properly into the surrounding narrative. So reactions which would have made sense if Harry had been treated harshly now seem disturbingly callous and lacking in empathy.
* Copying up records of your dad’s old school days doesn’t sound that unpleasant actually. Personally I’d be interested in seeing all the things my parents got up to.
* Oh, it looks like Gryffindor won anyway, so Harry doesn’t even have to suffer the torment of knowing that he caused his team to lose a sports match. Phew!
* TBH I think that if Ginny ran towards me with a “hard, blazing look” I’d run as fast as I could in the opposite direction.
* Naturally, the first thing Harry does after kissing Ginny is look around to make sure that his rivals are all feeling suitably humiliated.
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no subject
Date: 2013-11-23 05:08 pm (UTC)It’s not even like he made the potion himself. The potion was given to him after he won it by relying on someone else’s work. So, yeah, Harry didn’t make any effort at all.
/feel superior at Ron because he was too cowardly to break up with Lavender/
Meanwhile, she used Cormac to make Ron jealous because she was too cowardly to just tell Ron how she felt about him.
/pleased that their relationship broke up anyway, and amused by the knowledge that she was instrumental in making this happen./
Because she’s behaving like a spiteful and selfish brat. Why did JKR think that the romance subplot was a good idea, again?
/there was a rather knowing look in [Hermione’s] eye/
Well, Hermione knew all about Harry’s feelings for Cho and vice versa in OotP, so it’s not that surprising that she knows about Ginny too.
/his insides were suddenly dancing the conga/
Nooo, it’s Anastasia Steele’s inner goddess from Fifty Shades of Grey! D:
/Harry sees Draco crying, leading him to realise that, even if he doesn’t like him, Malfoy’s still a human being with emotions and difficulties just like Harry, and Harry should try and get past his dislike and treat him as a fellow person. Lol jk, they have a fight/
Well, like you said, Harry doesn’t read fanfiction, and at least Harry panics and shows more of a reaction here than he does in the movie. In the movie, he doesn’t panic or anything, he just stares at Draco and then walks out of the room when Snape shows up.
/time it takes Draco to say “-o”/
The fact that the Cruciatus Curse is supposed to be one of the Unforgivables and is supposed to only work when the caster really wants to torture someone makes it all the more unbelievable that Draco cast this spell. I mean, if it can be used as flippantly and as impulsively as it is here, what’s stopping everyone else from trying to cast it at people they don’t like, aside from it being illegal? The Cruciatus Curse is a torture curse, yet Draco’s flinging it out here like it’s just another hex. Maybe this is to show what an awful person Draco really is, because he’s using it without thinking, but we never see or hear of another instance where he tried to torture someone. In DH, we see that he’s clearly upset by being forced to do it. So, what gives? Or is this just supposed to justify Harry’s Sectumsempra?
/not even for almost killing Draco!/
When Snape of all people doesn’t chew Harry out for almost killing Draco, you know that there’s something wrong with the narrative.
/If I were in Harry’s position, I’d be on my knees in thanks that I wasn’t going to be expelled/
And I’d still be panicking about almost killing someone. Even if I didn’t like the person, I’d still be worried about whether they were going to be okay. At the very least, I wouldn’t just worry about expulsion, I’d worry about jail.
/So Pansy Parkinson’s been to the Hospital Wing “vilifying” Harry./
Dear Lord, talk about Protagonist-Centered Morality.
/chapter must be quite bad for H/D fanficcers/
Actually, no, a lot of H/D shippers that I saw liked this chapter because Harry and Draco got to interact with each other (and, of course, like you said before, it readily lends itself to H/D fanfics). That Harry forgets about Draco ten minutes after he almost kills him is negligible, I guess.
/imagine what the narrative voice would say if Draco almost killed Harry and spent the rest of the evening laughing and joking with his Slytherin friends./
Didn’t a milder version of this happen in OotP? Harry beat up Draco and then the rest of the chapter was spent on Harry feeling put-upon because Umbridge banned him from playing Quidditch.
/As opposed to, say, the fact that their Captain had almost flipping murdered someone in the bathroom./
Which is why I don’t understand the point of that scene. It’s a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment. Nobody talks about it again, nobody has an appropriate reaction, Harry doesn’t use Sectumsempra again (except at the end of this book) and doesn’t learn anything, we never learn how Draco feels about it, it doesn’t lead to any consequences, it just disappears from the narrative as soon as it’s over. So, what was the point?
no subject
Date: 2013-11-23 05:27 pm (UTC)I assume Snape does not punish Harry for the use of Sectumsempra because of his own guilt over inventing it (that's the only logical explanation I can come up with).
I think this chapter may also be designed to show how experimenting with a few seemingly harmless hexes can lead one down the path to Dark Magic (the old soft/hard drugs metaphor). This would actually work quite well if (a) it wasn't for the fact that everyone else we see using the same or very similar hexes remains on the Path of Light (b) Snape is the only person who ever seems to have regretted using them (c) as said, instead of thinking things over and worrying about how close he came to killing some one , Harry feels only momentary discomfort.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-23 06:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-24 10:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-23 10:58 pm (UTC)Because:
(a) The only way that Rowling knows how portray 'romance' is via jealousy. That's why the primary pairings in HP are such a joke, so sick. Rowling honestly had no idea how to showcase the 'love' other than having the principals spitefully attack each other. Ron is jealous of Hermione's potential suitors for most of the series. Hermione uses McLaggen to make him jealous. Harry's love for his 'soulmate' Ginny is born out of jealousy of Dean (the colour of his 'chest monster' is green. :-))
(b) She needed a lot of filler for HBP. By this stage Rowling didn't know how she was going to end the series and her (falsely) lauded imagination had run out of ideas; the closer she got to the end of the series and the need for 'logic', the requirement to start connecting the dots and making sense of the plot, everything she'd carelessly written before, the greater the paucity of material she could come up with. All she had for Harry's sixth yera was (1) introducing the horcruxes and (2) killing off Harry's mentor in the climax at the very end of the penultimate book. So she filled up most of Harry's year, half of her sixth novel, with puerile 'sweet valley Hogwarts' nonsense.
Well, Hermione knew all about Harry’s feelings for Cho and vice versa in OotP, so it’s not that surprising that she knows about Ginny too.
As a member of the anti-Ginny camp I think it goes further than that ... I agree that Hermione observed Harry's lust for Ginny ... and she would have told Ginny all about it. Given that Ginny herself tells us at the end of HBP - in the infamous 'breakup' scene - that Hermione was her chief advisor in snaring Harry's heart this disclosure would be inevitable.
And so Ginny's actions towards Harry all through this book are disingenuous to the extreme. When she brushes off his invitation to go to Hogsmeade she likely knows exactly what she's doing - she's playing with him, teasing him. While still going out with Dean. Ginny Weasley, The Girl Who Dates, knew exactly what she was doing. Leading up to the point where she throws herself at Harry after the quidditch game; she caught the snitch and she knows she's played Harry to a point where he's hers for the taking as well.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-23 11:19 pm (UTC)But, but--if that's the case, why didn't Severus and Lily end up together? He was jealous of her, she verbally and emotionally abused him...They should be meant for each other.
I think you're right, BTW. The only way LE/JP works is by authorial fiat. Unless you want to suppose James was more jealous and possessive than Severus, and Lily criticized James more than Severus, so the LE/JP romantic torment outweighed the LE/SS torment. That works, too.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-24 12:46 am (UTC)Rowling didn't put any effort into the romances that were off-screen, I guess. James/Lily were the perfect couple before the first page of PS was written. Snape was supposed to be in love with Lily way back when and that condition was freeze-dried and frozen for the duration of the series proper. (Part of why I don't believe that Snape's motivation to stay on the good guys' side worked; it was way too static.)
Interesting. Looking at it this way I can see the disconnect even more between what Rowling wrote and what she thought she wrote, what she tried to propagate with her post-publication interviews. In her mind H/G and R/Hr were just as perfect as J/L, no doubt. Unfortunately the OBHWF pairings had to be written as part of her series ... and the only way she could do it was by applying the sad and ugly jealousy-and-fighting-means-true-luv rule.
The more that Rowling had to write about J/E I'm sure the more jealousy would have featured as the primary feature of the pairing. That was likely the motivation behind James's humilation of Snape in "Snape's Worst Memory", right? That was all showing off for Lily ... targeting the competition for her hand.
Harry didn't come right out and attack Dean in front of Ginny ... but he fantasised about it, as I recall. He had a 'saveage urge to jinx Dean into a jelly', a 'sudden madness' in 'roaring for Dean's instan dismissal from the team'. Classic Rowling. James's treatment of Snape was exactly along these same lines, only realised. So James gets Lily.
In other words:
Unless you want to suppose James was more jealous and possessive than Severus, and Lily criticized James more than Severus, so the LE/JP romantic torment outweighed the LE/SS torment. That works, too.
Yes. I think James's nastiness at Snape was more clearly driven by romantic jealousy, which equates to 'tru luv' in Rowling's sad and simplistic world.
Rowling romance - it's all so easy! :-) But nasty too.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-24 01:59 am (UTC)Except that James attacked Severus as soon as they met, when lust for Lily wasn't a factor. I think it started because James was a nasty little thug who wanted to beat up on a safe target, which friendless nobody Slytherin Severus was. He rationalized his abuse by screaming, "Eek! Eek! Dark magic!" (Which makes me wonder whether he tarred all his victims with that brush.)
When they got older and both wanted Lily, that exacerbated the hostility that was already there.
I hope Rowling's RL romantic relationships aren't as nasty as her fictional ones. I feel sorry for her husbands, and her kids even more.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-24 02:04 pm (UTC)Agreed, which is probably why those romances which we don't see much of (Percy/Penelope, Draco/Pansy, James/Lily until Book 5) generally seem much more plausible than those we're actually shown in detail.
Come to think of it, I think this rule applies for most things in the Potterverse...
no subject
Date: 2013-11-24 05:27 pm (UTC)