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deathtocapslock* The fact that Harry’s now going out with Ginny seems to interest a great number of people, unlike the fact that Harry almost killed a student, which nobody outside Slytherin really cares about.
* Wow, the narrative voice makes Harry’s rôle seem so passive when it refers to him as being “involved in horrific scenes of Dark magic”. It’s almost as if he were an innocent victim or hapless bystander, rather than the guy slicing somebody’s chest open.
* Ginny apparently told Romilda Vane that Ron has a tattoo of “a Pygmy Puff, but I didn’t say where”. Erm, OK… *disturbing images of Weasleycest fics flash through mind*
* Hermione approaches Harry with an “unpleasantly purposeful look on her face”. No, she doesn’t want to talk about the Malfoy-slicing incident or the recent spate of attempted murders, she wants to present the most recent fruits of her Half-Blood Prince obsession.
* All this Prince stuff is making Hermione look really weird. I mean, it’d be bad enough if there wasn’t anything else going on, but there are far more important and interesting mysteries to solve. It’s like Hermione’s just unbelievably insecure, and finds it impossible to cope with somebody else seeming smarter than she is. People getting murdered? Not now, I’ve got a rival to discredit!
* It’s OK what happened with Malfoy, says Ron, because he was alright in the end. Kind of like how it’s OK to try and poison somebody if they by chance happen not to drink the poison. They were fine, and the fact that they easily could have been killed is neither here nor there.
* Harry’s still got a modicum of human decency left, so his conscience squirms when he thinks of Malfoy. Because he’s pretty callous, though, it’s only a slight squirm.
* Harry finds detention “particularly irksome” because it cuts into his time with Ginny. Yeah, missing a couple of evenings with your girlfriend is totally an over-the-top punishment for almost killing somebody.
* Yay, let’s all laugh at the depressed alcoholic teacher!
* Professor Trelawney didn’t think that students knew about the Room of Requirement, despite the fact that one of the most interesting things to happen in Hogwarts last year was… the discovery of an illegal study group meeting in the Room of Requirement. Seriously, I’d hazard that the entire school knows about the Room by now.
* Of course, they should have known about it already. Judging by the amount of stuff in there, quite a few pupils have hidden things in the ROR, and I’m surprised the information hadn’t trickled into the student body as a whole long before Harry came up.
* Or maybe people do know, but none of them mentions it because it’s convenient for everybody – staff and students alike – to have a place where they can just dump any embarrassing and/or incriminating stuff, no questions asked.
* Harry gets all bitchy and superior about Trelawney’s not finding out who the mysterious voice was. Yeah, because his own investigations this year have been going so well.
* Although I am quite surprised he never asked Trelawney what she said to get in, given that he’s basically spent the best part of a year trying to work out the precise formula of words he needs to use.
* Trelawney’s been predicting disaster and calamity to Dumbledore – correctly, as it turns out. Not that this will cause anybody to reconsider their low opinion of Divination generally and Trelawney in particular. Still, I suppose that if the fact that Dumbledore’s essentially basing his entire strategy around one of her prophecies didn’t win people over, nothing will.
* Firenze seems to find Trelawney comical, although I note that he wasn’t able to predict Dumbledore’s death.
* “AND YOU LET HIM TEACH HERE AND HE TOLD VOLDEMORT TO GO AFTER MY MUM AND DAD!” Well, to be fair, it’s not like this would have been Dumbledore’s only questionable hiring decision.
* “Haven’t you noticed, Professor, how the people Snape hates tend to end up dead?” I’m not sure I’d start down that line of reasoning if I were you, Harry. People might start looking at the piles of maimed bodies that have been accumulating since you came up to Hogwarts.
* “Please do not suggest,” says Dumbledore, “that I do not take the safety of my students seriously.” Sorry, Professor, I was just thrown by the fact that you routinely permit incompetents with no common sense to teach children dangerous magic, have hired Death Eaters as staff members, and are currently doing bugger all to stop a string of attempted murders which have almost claimed two lives already.
* Oooh, Dumbledore, how clever of you to pretend to be going to the pub when actually you’re going somewhere else entirely! I’m in awe of your super spying skills.
* And we’re off to get the Horcrux! Yay!
* Wow, the narrative voice makes Harry’s rôle seem so passive when it refers to him as being “involved in horrific scenes of Dark magic”. It’s almost as if he were an innocent victim or hapless bystander, rather than the guy slicing somebody’s chest open.
* Ginny apparently told Romilda Vane that Ron has a tattoo of “a Pygmy Puff, but I didn’t say where”. Erm, OK… *disturbing images of Weasleycest fics flash through mind*
* Hermione approaches Harry with an “unpleasantly purposeful look on her face”. No, she doesn’t want to talk about the Malfoy-slicing incident or the recent spate of attempted murders, she wants to present the most recent fruits of her Half-Blood Prince obsession.
* All this Prince stuff is making Hermione look really weird. I mean, it’d be bad enough if there wasn’t anything else going on, but there are far more important and interesting mysteries to solve. It’s like Hermione’s just unbelievably insecure, and finds it impossible to cope with somebody else seeming smarter than she is. People getting murdered? Not now, I’ve got a rival to discredit!
* It’s OK what happened with Malfoy, says Ron, because he was alright in the end. Kind of like how it’s OK to try and poison somebody if they by chance happen not to drink the poison. They were fine, and the fact that they easily could have been killed is neither here nor there.
* Harry’s still got a modicum of human decency left, so his conscience squirms when he thinks of Malfoy. Because he’s pretty callous, though, it’s only a slight squirm.
* Harry finds detention “particularly irksome” because it cuts into his time with Ginny. Yeah, missing a couple of evenings with your girlfriend is totally an over-the-top punishment for almost killing somebody.
* Yay, let’s all laugh at the depressed alcoholic teacher!
* Professor Trelawney didn’t think that students knew about the Room of Requirement, despite the fact that one of the most interesting things to happen in Hogwarts last year was… the discovery of an illegal study group meeting in the Room of Requirement. Seriously, I’d hazard that the entire school knows about the Room by now.
* Of course, they should have known about it already. Judging by the amount of stuff in there, quite a few pupils have hidden things in the ROR, and I’m surprised the information hadn’t trickled into the student body as a whole long before Harry came up.
* Or maybe people do know, but none of them mentions it because it’s convenient for everybody – staff and students alike – to have a place where they can just dump any embarrassing and/or incriminating stuff, no questions asked.
* Harry gets all bitchy and superior about Trelawney’s not finding out who the mysterious voice was. Yeah, because his own investigations this year have been going so well.
* Although I am quite surprised he never asked Trelawney what she said to get in, given that he’s basically spent the best part of a year trying to work out the precise formula of words he needs to use.
* Trelawney’s been predicting disaster and calamity to Dumbledore – correctly, as it turns out. Not that this will cause anybody to reconsider their low opinion of Divination generally and Trelawney in particular. Still, I suppose that if the fact that Dumbledore’s essentially basing his entire strategy around one of her prophecies didn’t win people over, nothing will.
* Firenze seems to find Trelawney comical, although I note that he wasn’t able to predict Dumbledore’s death.
* “AND YOU LET HIM TEACH HERE AND HE TOLD VOLDEMORT TO GO AFTER MY MUM AND DAD!” Well, to be fair, it’s not like this would have been Dumbledore’s only questionable hiring decision.
* “Haven’t you noticed, Professor, how the people Snape hates tend to end up dead?” I’m not sure I’d start down that line of reasoning if I were you, Harry. People might start looking at the piles of maimed bodies that have been accumulating since you came up to Hogwarts.
* “Please do not suggest,” says Dumbledore, “that I do not take the safety of my students seriously.” Sorry, Professor, I was just thrown by the fact that you routinely permit incompetents with no common sense to teach children dangerous magic, have hired Death Eaters as staff members, and are currently doing bugger all to stop a string of attempted murders which have almost claimed two lives already.
* Oooh, Dumbledore, how clever of you to pretend to be going to the pub when actually you’re going somewhere else entirely! I’m in awe of your super spying skills.
* And we’re off to get the Horcrux! Yay!
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no subject
Date: 2014-01-29 04:46 pm (UTC)Apparently, romance is more interesting than attempted murder. Or maybe the students are all jaded from the previous murders or almost-murders. Or maybe they were all Confunded or Obliviated. Or maybe JKR didn’t think the Sectumsempra scene through, which is why it’s all the more puzzling that she wrote it.
/the narrative voice makes Harry’s rôle seem so passive when it refers to him as being “involved in horrific scenes of Dark magic”/
Another commentator critically noticed that Ginny also used the passive tense at the end of CoS, when she mentioned Penelope Clearwater. She didn’t say, “when I attacked her,” she said, “when she – got attacked.” To be fair, though, Ginny was possessed by Tom Riddle when it happened and it was shortly after Harry had saved her from dying. So, it’s understandable in her case. The narrative has no excuses here. Harry wasn’t possessed by anyone and he’s old enough to take responsibility for his actions.
/People getting murdered? Not now, I’ve got a rival to discredit!/
Everyone’s priorities are so skewed in this book. Hermione cares more about Harry outshining her than of her love interest nearly dying, the students care more about Harry’s love life than the fact that he nearly killed Draco, Ron is more upset by Hermione having kissed Viktor Krum than he is about Hermione sending him to the hospital wing, and Harry cares more about the fact that he got detention than killing Draco. No wonder Draco become more popular and interesting in this book – he’s the only one who’s got his priorities straight. Who cares about baiting Potter anymore when his life and loved ones are in danger and he has to kill his own headmaster in order to protect them?
/It’s OK what happened with Malfoy, says Ron, because he was alright/
This is a case of telling and not showing, to the story’s detriment. We HEAR that Draco’s all patched up, but we don’t SEE it. We don’t see his reaction to Harry when they have class together. And how much more interesting that would have been! In fact, instead of all of this romance filler nonsense, why not just focus on the relationship between Harry and Draco in this book? You could still have the Horcruxes and Tom Riddle’s memories subplot as a parallel. As Harry’s seeing how Tom Riddle became more and more corrupted, he could grow concerned by how Draco too seems to be degenerating as the year goes on (in fact the HBP movie hinted at this parallel by Dumbledore telling Draco that he “knew a boy who made all the wrong choices.”). The bathroom scene could have been a pivotal moment where Harry is horrified by what he’s done and questions whether it’s really Draco who’s emulating Voldemort or himself.
But instead, the only reaction that we get from Harry on that matter is that his “conscience squirms slightly.” That’s it. Which, again, makes me wonder what the whole point of the Sectumsempra scene was.
/Sorry, Professor, I was just thrown by the fact that you routinely permit incompetents with no common sense to teach children dangerous magic, have hired Death Eaters as staff members, and are currently doing bugger all to stop a string of attempted murders which have almost claimed two lives already/
Professor, I was also thrown by the fact that you allowed an obviously disturbed and violent boy to go to school with other children, despite hearing reports of his appalling behavior towards his peers and hearing from the boy himself how dangerous he was. Also, the fact that, despite knowing all of this, you never told the headmaster and the other professors and you neglected to bring up this boy as a potential suspect when students were attacked and one actually died.
Oh, and by the fact that when another student was nearly killed decades later, instead of punishing the students responsible, you allowed them to escape scot-free. Yes, you really do take the safety of your students seriously, all right.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-29 11:27 pm (UTC)I'm not sure how much he could have done against Umbridge, given that it was the Ministry who foisted her on the school against his wishes, but I still don't think he did enough to counter her abuses of power either.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-31 01:49 am (UTC)After all, torture by Umbridge, however painful, was unlikely to prove fatal ... and likely to 'sharpen' the fighting/spying/sneaking skills that would prove handy in the fight against Voldemort.
And ... maybe, possibly ... a convenient means to get the Weasley twins, of their own will, out of school?
Whatever else you may say of them, Fred and George are not stupid. If anyone was likely to inconveniently notice something that might spoil Dumbledore's future plans --- say, like noticing Draco Malfoy sneaking off to repair a certain cabinet, perhaps? --- and investigate, it would be Fred and George.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-31 02:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-02 12:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-31 04:02 am (UTC)Did Dumbledore do what he did before, cover up the seriousness of the incident?
After the werewolf "prank" Lily knew something had happened, James even bragged about saving Severus. But she (and the rest of the school presumably) seem to just think Sirus was pranking Severus as usual, and Severus come off the worse. Nothing new there. Dumbledore was able to silence Severus about Remus being a werewolf.
So when Draco is hurt Dumbledore could have silenced Draco about how bad "the chosen one" had hurt him. So the other students just think - there go Harry and Draco at each other again, nothing new there.
Did occur to Dumbledore that in HBP when he makes the offer to help Draco, that nothing in the past 5/6 years at the school he had done would given Draco any reason to believe he cared about Draco (or any other Slytherin) at all and most of his actions would have only driven Slytherin house away from his side.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-31 03:37 pm (UTC)There were four witnesses--Draco, Harry, Myrtle, and Severus. Severus healed Draco before he took him to the Hospital Wing, so any witnesses afterwards could have testifited that Draco was bloodstained but ambulatory....
Went back and reread parts of the S. chapter to doublecheck.
First thing that caught my eye that I'd never noticed befroe, Harry had been planning to try out that spell on an exploratory basis. On McLaggen. If he could come up on him from behind.
Yes, he siad that, or rather thought it. From behind. At least we have confirmation that that's what he's been doing to Filch and the Slytherins all book....
Back to Draco. Text says that Myrtle spread the news through every loo in the castle that afternoon. However, your idea still works. Myrtle's not popular, she's focused on death, Harry's probably not the only one she's invited to die to join her. If Myrtle is going around saying Potter almost killed poor Draco, well, that's the kind of exaggerated thing she WOULD say, right? Draco was just fine, a little bloody but Madam Pomfrey fixed him right up....
Wonder what Dumbles said to Severus in the "ten minutes" Snape was gone escorting Draco to hospital?
no subject
Date: 2014-02-01 11:09 pm (UTC)Definitely his father's son. If he had three like minded friends, do you think he'd attack face to face?
Love your drabble, too. Very plausible.
(I guess actually looking something up would be too much like Hermoine. Two minutes with a Latin dictionary would give you a pretty good clue as to what this is likely to do.)
WRT Dumbledore burying the story - I think you guys are onto something here. It makes the lack of reaction from the rest of the school less jarring.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-02 12:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-02 11:46 am (UTC)It's not like Hermoine would be too squeamish about using a 'for enemies' spell on an actual enemy. That can't be what worries Harry. She was perfectly fine with secretly hexing Cormac, too, to get Ron a place on the team, so it's not the choice of target or the ambush plan. So what's he worried about? Is he in denial about there being something wrong with hexing people 'just because you can'? Or is he worried that she'll call him on the culpable negligence of using an unknown spell on a human target? He's been doing it all year, though, and his luck hasn't run out yet ...
no subject
Date: 2014-02-03 01:12 am (UTC)I'm under the impression (but could always be wrong) that Rictusempra only ended once a finite was cast. That would seem likely with the use of 'sempra' as part of the spell. Altho' I think the use of 'Rictus' implies much more than a mere tickling. It always reminds me os a specific form of 'grin' that has nothing to do with happiness. Either way - Harry should at the least realize that this new spell has 'something' to do with 'always'
no subject
Date: 2014-02-08 08:36 pm (UTC)This is something she would have faced a lot sooner if she had been sorted into Ravenclaw.
We are told how smart she is, but what we are shown is a reasonable intelligent girl who is very driven and works really hard. She finds it easy to out do the Ron and Harry. She can dismiss Luna as "looney". The Weasly twins may be very inventive but the focus is on jokes, so it isn't like they are good at any thing that Hermione thinks matters.
But in Ravenclaw she may have been at the top her first year, however by the second or third year she would have found herself quickly being passed up.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-08 10:32 pm (UTC)Even in an intellectual environment she might have been just as isolated as in Gryffindor, if not more. From the little we saw of Ravenclaw I got the impression it could be quite bitchy and cliquey ... or am I just projecting there? Without the ability to be useful to a couple of slackers, and seeming so uptight and awkward, she might have found it even harder to make friends. Luna? She'd need to learn her serenity if she didn't fit in.
Your point stands. She got into Gryffindor because she wanted to be the best, so if she failed that would hurt.
OTOH, she might have managed it. There were only a handful of Ravenclaws to compete with, after all. If she could develop creative problem-solving, and as driven as she was, who knows?
no subject
Date: 2014-02-09 01:47 am (UTC)