Deathly Hallows, Chapter 27: The Final Hiding Place

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

The dragon continues to fly all day. It’s in remarkably good shape for an animal who’s been chained up, probably for years. Don’t a dragon’s muscles atrophy with disuse?

Ron notices they’re losing height, and Harry suggests they jump as soon as the dragon flies low enough over a lake for it to be safe for them to leap off into the water. They do so and swim for the shore. The dragon lands on another shore of the same lake.

HRH are burned all over from the enchanted treasure, and Hermione breaks out the dittany to heal them. That must be one supergiant economy sized bottle to heal all their wounds. Of course, she’s also brought clean robes for all of them, as well as bottles of pumpkin juice. What, no sandwiches, chips, fruit, and dessert? You’re slipping, girl!

Harry takes the Horcrux out of his pocket and they all look at it, wondering how to destroy it, now that they have no sword. There’s an unintentionally funny bit when Ron condemns Griphook as a “double-crossing little scab.” Hah! You’re just PO’d he screwed you over before you got to screw him over, Ron.

HRH are laughing hysterically over their narrow escape when Harry suddenly gets an exceptionally violent and vivid Voldie-vision. A Gringotts goblin is very reluctantly informing the Dull Lord about the break-in and theft of the cup. Voldy becomes so enraged he AKs the goblin, then starts killing everybody within cursing distance. Bella and Lucius show their good sense cowardice by throwing others behind them as they charge frantically out of the room.

Wow. I knew Voldy was a poor villain, but only someone as dumb as--well, actually, dumber than--Harry would slaughter his own followers. Whom does Voldy think is going to fight for him if he kills everybody? How is he going to recruit new minions once this story gets out? Magical people are dumb, but they’re not that dumb. On the plus side, this is undoubtedly one of the few times in his life Snape will be happy to have been stuck at Hogwarts dealing with dunderheaded students.

Conveniently, it seems the Voldie-visions are strictly one-way, despite Dumbledore and Hermione’s worrying. That’s unfortunate. This whole series would have been far more interesting if the connection were two-way. Imagine Voldy knowing when Harry went to the mall and going there to kill him. He could take out some filthy muggles at the same time! Come to think of it, since Harry is so weak-minded, surely Voldy could have not just spied on him, but also taken over his mind, at least some of the time. Think of Voldy controlling Harry in Hogwarts and at the Burrow, forcing him to curse out all the teachers and alienate his friends. Or Harry could kill a few people and end up in Azkaban. Sure, he might be telling the truth when he says Voldemort possessed him, but could the authorities really take the chance of allowing him to roam free? These and other lovely possibilities will never see the light of day because Rowling was too lazy and incompetent to write something that logical and imaginative.

Voldy goes on and on about his Horcruces and how great he is. He even rewrites history, casting himself as the killer of Dumbledore. Maybe he’s codependent and sees all his DEs as extensions of himself, so when Snape killed Dumbledore, it was like Voldy was doing it. (Does that mean when Voldy later kills Snape, it's like committing suicide?) Regarding the Horcruces, he wonders how “the boy” knows about them. Does Harry know what and where they are? Does he know how to destroy them? Surely someone as “important and precious” as Voldy himself would know if pieces of his soul had been destroyed. In a true divine intervention version of deus ex machina, Voldy mentally goes through his list of hiding places one by one, so Harry can check them off and know where to go for the last one.

You couldn’t have done this, oh, I don’t know, 300 pages ago, Ms. Rowling? Sure, the story wouldn’t have happened in accordance with the school year, but so what? It would have been vastly preferable to have a tight story rather than a bloated one. Or you could have done what va32h did in DH Redux and have Harry fall into a coma for three months. Sure, he sat on his can obsessing over the Booby Prizes for the same length of time, but that arouses contempt rather than sympathy in the reader.

After Harry comes out of his trance, he tells his friends what he saw and insists on going to Hogsmeade right away. Hermione protests they need a plan, as if she were some duffer Hufflepuff, air-headed Ravenclaw, or sneaky Slytherin. How did the Hat ever allow this girl to be put in Gryffindor, the House of suicidal jocks with poor impulse control?

They all hide under the cloak--I swear, that stupid thing is the ultimate deus ex machina in these books--and Apparate away. Actually, the text says, “[T]hey turned together on the spot into the crushing darkness.” I’m now imagining a new art form called Invisibility Cloak Dancing, in which people dance together under a cloak. There could be competitions, like ballroom dancing, and even a TV series called Invisibility Cloak Dancing with the Stars. However, someone would have to come up with a way to see under or through the cloaks to know what the competitors were doing. Maybe they could use the magical equivalent of 3D glasses.

This was a blessedly short chapter, only 10 pages. We’re all long past needing a break--especially me!

Next time: a diagnosis for Ariana Dumbledore

Comments

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

Wow. I knew Voldy was a poor villain, but only someone as dumb as--well, actually, dumber than--Harry would slaughter his own followers. Whom does Voldy think is going to fight for him if he kills everybody? How is he going to recruit new minions once this story gets out? Magical people are dumb, but they’re not that dumb.

Maybe the effects of the Horcrux hunt have started to catch up to him. There's already been a lot of speculation that Tom's mental acuity and stability decreased from making so many Horcruxes and/or being discorporated. However, the very function of a Horcrux means that although forcibly torn from their natural position, they are still somehow connected with Tom. At this point, three of them are gone. Whatever stabilizing they affect they'd had, no matter how minimal, was lost with them. I think this reading is supported by the fact that when Tom learned the diary Horcrux had been not merely lost, but destroyed, he still had enough self-control to not slaughter everyone in wand-reach however terrible his anger. Instead he opted for a very calculated, targeted revenge, while continuing to squeeze every last drop of use he could out of Lucius and his family.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

That's a very clever idea.

And in fact, Tom even waits to set up his revenge until Lucius is of no further immediate use to him. Further evidence that at that point he was still able to subjugate his passions to his self-interest. Indeed, if the memory Harry saw of his visit to Godric's Hollow was accurate, back when ALL of his Horcruces were intact, he had enough self-control not to pause to indulge in a harmless little spot of child-murder on the way to eradicate the Prophecied One--business before pleasure, and all that.

Too bad we have no reports on Tom's actions during HBP--we'd have expected an intermediate stage.

[oryx_leucoryx]

There is still the question if the difference comes from the magical effect of almost half the Horcruxes being destroyed or the knowledge that there is an active campaign to hunt them down. When he learned of the diary's destruction he knew the reason had to do with the other functions of the diary, and even the Old Fool wouldn't realize just how many such items were around.

How much do we know of Tom's actions between the destruction of the locket and receiving the news of the theft of the cup? What can we learn of his dealings with Gellert in the prison cell, Dumbles' tomb and the residents of Malfoy Manor during the past month?