Deathly Hallows, Chapter 29: The Lost Diadem

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Neville hugs the Trio and rather high-handedly tells Aberforth reinforcements are coming, and they should be sent along through the portrait hole, too. It’s no wonder Aberforth’s quarters look so shabby, with all those people running through them day and night.

As Neville and the Trio walk through the tunnel into Hogwarts, they update each other on what’s been happening in their lives. Fortunately for our sanity, short shrift is given to HRH’s activities. We’ve already had to suffer through them; we shouldn’t have to reread them, too.

Neville talks about the torture-loving Carrow siblings. He tells them how Alecto said in the now-required Muggle Studies class that Muggles were filthy and mean. Neville then asked how much Muggle blood she and her brother had and got a slash across the face for his trouble. *sob* This is so touching. It took seven years, but Neville has finally absorbed the Gryffindor ethos: Act first, and worry about the consequences later. And judging by his peremptory behavior towards Aberforth, he's also absorbed that house's arrogant, presumptuous exploitation of others. Hmmm. I wonder if Harry isn't the only Prophecy Boy Albus has been having tête-à-têtes with?

Ron, on the other hand, makes me wonder whether he, like Snape, was “sorted too soon,” when he says, “Blimey, Neville, there’s a time and a place for getting a smart mouth.” Yeah, like when a Gryffindor-adoring Headmaster is in charge, and you’re mouthing off to a teacher he doesn’t like. Then, have at it!

Neville continues with his Tales of the Resistance, adding that things have gotten quieter lately because the consequences of defiance became too severe, including torture. He concludes with the news his grandmother is on the run and finally approves of him. She even called him his parents’ son, which makes me wonder what Frank and Alice were like before they became insane. Were they as unpleasant and MWPP and Lily? Sure, Neville has plenty of reason to be abrasive with the current school administration, but the fact remains, Grandma never approved of him until he became rude, defiant, and disrespectful of authority. Is this really what it means to be a Gryffindor? Do we have any examples of polite, respectful, well-behaved Gryffindors? Or kind, compassionate Gryffindors, for that matter.

When the group arrives in the school, they go to the Room of Requirement, where all the refugees and resistance fighters are living. There are no Slytherins, of course, because we might not have gotten the message during the previous 4,000 pages that they’re bigoted, untrustworthy snobs.

HRH learn the Room gives them everything they need except food, which Aberforth supplies. He must use multiplying charms, since suddenly ordering a lot more food for his pub would raise suspicions, not to mention drain his business’s bank account.

Interestingly enough, the Room didn’t give them a bathroom until girls started staying there and wanting to wash. So apparently Harry isn’t the only wizard with an aversion to cleanliness. This society really is stuck in the Middle Ages. Tell me again why Snape gets ridiculed for having greasy hair? Surely that should be common, especially among teenagers, if wizards don’t bathe often.

Let’s not even think about what else a bathroom is used for. Is this evidence of JKR’s gross insistence that magical people just Vanish their body waste? If so, why do they have toilets? Sometimes, you just need to know when to quit, Ms. Rowling. Learn the meaning of the phrase, too much information.

Another logic fail occurs when the resistance says they’ve been following the Trio’s activities on Potterwatch. Since the Room is deep inside a stone castle with several walls, each of which must be several feet thick, separating it from the outside air, how do the radio waves get in? I’m not buying that there are such things as “magical radio waves” that are different from non-magical ones.

While in the Room, Harry gets another Voldie-vision, this one of Voldy finding his ring Horcrux gone. Realizing Voldy will be heading for Hogwarts soon, Harry says they have to go. Seamus provides an unintentional moment of comedy by assuming Harry means all of them and asking Harry what his plan is for them. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Poor Seamus! If either Harry or his creator had had a plan, we wouldn’t all have been bored out of our minds for the last 400 pages.

Harry proves he has completely surrendered his will to Big Brother Dumbledore (who really is a big brother, in all senses of the phrase, come to think of it) when he refuses the help of the other fighters, insisting he, Hermione, and Ron have to accomplish their secret mission alone “because Dumbledore said so.” Granted, Harry doesn’t actually use those words, but that’s clearly what he means.

“You don’t understand.” He seemed to have said that a lot in the last few hours. Here’s a clue, Harry: If perfectly sane, reasonable people don’t understand what you’re doing or why, maybe what you’re doing is not sane or reasonable!

Speaking of sanity, one could make a cogent argument for Albus Dumbledore’s being insane. I mean, really. Would a sane man expect a dimwitted, barely-trained child to face down and (at least ostensibly) defeat a brilliant, super-powerful adult who had decades of experience on him? Would he string that child along for years, cutting him off from knowledgeable adults who could help him defeat the bad guy, encouraging him to depend only on his equally immature, inexperienced friends? Would he send that child and his friends on a wild Horcrux chase without even telling them what they were looking for, suggesting where they might find it, or how to destroy it once they did find it? Are these the actions of a sane, reasonable person? I think not!

The others argue with Harry, pointing out they can obviously be trusted because they wouldn’t be in the Room if they hadn’t been driven to take refuge in there by fighting the bad guys. Harry starts to panic as they argue. Here’s another clue, Harry: That “panic” is your instincts again, telling you, This is BS, Harry! Listen to your friends! They haven’t been brainwashed by Dumbledore. They can still think clearly and independently. What they’re saying makes sense. Accept their help. You need all the help you can get!

Several more people arrive as they argue, including the twins and--hold your breath, Brad--the awesomest girl in all of fiction! Ginny! Yay! While Ron starts out supporting Harry, he finally says they should let the others help, and Hermione agrees. Overwhelmed and confused, Harry surrenders (some Gryffindor he is!) and asks about the Ravenclaw diadem. Cho says there’s a statue of Rowena wearing the crown in their common room and offers to take Harry. Ginny has an attack of jealousy and vetoes that, substituting Luna. Um, Ginny, you need to read more fanfic. HP/LL is a pairing many writers have used.

Harry and Luna hide again under the security cloak and head for Ravenclaw Tower. To get in, you have to answer a question, which of course confuses poor Harry no end. The question is asked by an eagle-shaped door knocker that talks, which sounds really cool. Some of these magical touches are very nice.

They get into the room, and Harry comes out from under the cloak to look at Rowena’s statue. Just then Alecto Carrow arrives and calls Voldy with her Dark Mark.

I think Rowling didn’t let us see what was happening at school while Harry was wandering in the wilderness because she knew Harry and his activities were boring, and she didn’t want us to see more interesting characters and activities to emphasize that. Also, because the Hs are two of her self-inserts, she can't take the focus off them for more than a short time, or her narcissistic discomfort becomes too great.

Comments

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

It's a measure of this book that Jo manages even to tarnish Neville and Luna. Yes, after six books stubbornly trying to figure out what is right and to do it in despite of his own fears and weaknesses, Neville here abandons independent thought to model himself on Harry. Indeed, on Harry's worst traits.

And he succeeds, at least temporarily.

He tells us that he esteems insulting a hated authoriy figure exactly equally with rescuing children from torture.

Yep, jeering that Alecto must be part-Muggle (what worse could a Pureblood like Neville say of her!) is exactly as brave and virtuous, as risking the Cruciatus to save an eleven-year-old from the same.

[sunnyskywalker]

It's tragic. This blew past me the first time I read DH, because I was so happy to see that Neville was willing to reach out to a bunch of kids who'd mocked him for 6 years and help them anyway, that one of the main goals was hiding kids to keep them safe (how un-Gryffindor!), and that he was promoting inter-house cooperation (well, between 3 of the houses) for something more important than a study club--and we know Harry and his friends really didn't consider the DA to be more than a study club or they wouldn't have cancelled it in 6th year.

But he does brag about mouthing off pointlessly, in a particularly nasty way, like it's a lark and no more or less important than protecting little kids from torture.

Since the books are over and JKR can't really prove me wrong, I'm going to say that Neville did some regrettable things during a difficult time, but eventually grew out of it and realized where he'd gone wrong. (Maybe some Muggleborn student snaps at him after the war and says s/he didn't much care that Neville was on the winning Pureblood side, or something similarly hyperbolic but which got him thinking.) And he became a teacher in part to try to prevent other students from making his mistakes and trying to be like the "cool" kids, plus putting a stop to some of the more outrageous bullying when he could. I'm not optimistic enough to think he could do more than that at Hogwarts, but it's something.

Though probably this is still asking too much from JKR's characters and I'll be proven wrong by a later close reading.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

I think you've hit on why the Harry Potter books are not classic literature and never will be: In classic books that purport to promote good, the more closely and more frequently you read the books, the more good you see in them. (I can't think of classic lit that promotes evil, except maybe The Prince. Come to think of it, I wonder if JKR was referring to that when she had Severus call himself the Half-Blood Prince?)

But in HP, the more closely you read these books that ostensibly promote good, the more evil you see in them. A good example is how terri_testing, a normally very astute analyst of the series, completely missed that Xeno Lovegood had been TORTURED--yes, I said it, Brad! Here's another T-word for you: tough luck--in chapter 24, even though she'd read it several times. There's so much bad stuff--writing, editing, behavior, morals, double standards, etc--that it overwhelms the reader and becomes impossible to process. This is the third sporking of DH that I know of. All three are thorough; all three cover mostly different aspects of the book; but even the combined sporkings still leave a lot of bad stuff on the page because there's just so much that even three 200+-page sporkings are not enough to cover every way in which DH sucks. HP is the Energizer Bunny of kid lit: the suckiness just keeps going and going and going.

[oryx_leucoryx]

There were so many theories about the supposed connection between Severus Snape, Machiavelli and Lucius Septimus Severus - the Roman emperor that served as the model of the Prince (he killed Albinus! and died in York!). Oh well...

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

And before killing Albinus, he killed another rival named Niger (Black), something that our Severus could only dream about.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Aww, I'm so flattered, oneandthetruth, that you could use me as an examplar of how even a dedicated--for-six-years analyst of the series could utterly miss for all that time one of Jo's flagrant mis-presentations of Evil-as-Good (or at least, as-Acceptable).

That may sound sarcastic, but I mean it most sincerely.

But, courage! Even the Energizer Bunny may eventually be worn down, and replaced with a glum Eeyore, adhering to reality....

Not nearly as bouncy, or happy, or self-righteous, or oblivious of correction. But with the advantage of noticing the fewmets in its path.... and the pellets it's emitting.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you're not offended. What I meant was, there's so much bad stuff in this book that even the very best analyst can be overwhelmed by it and miss something, even something that seems obvious, even after several readings. The awfulness of DH is rather like the national debt: There are 17 trillion things wrong, so nobody can catch all of them, no matter how good they are. :D

[sunnyskywalker]

Who was it that called the series fractally stupid? I think fractal evil deserves a nod as well. You think you see the pattern, and then you look smaller, and lo! more evil! No matter how small you go, there it is! And no matter how much you think you've reduced it to its smallest components, you're wrong; there's always another layer.