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

[maidofkent.livejournal.com]

Re wizards and their bodily functions, I think the bathroom problem is a UK thing. 'Bathroom' is usually used to mean 'a room containing a bath'. Yes, it's not uncommon for the bathroom to also contain a toilet, but it's also pretty common for the toilet to be separate. Very few Brits say 'I'm going to the bathroom', unless they're actually going to have a bath or shower, and even then it would probably be 'I'm going to have a bath'. If it's something else, it's going to the toilet, loo or whatever name they use, regardless of whether that appliance is in the bathroom or not. So, I think that probably there were toilet facilities, and the actual bathing facilities were added when those girly girls came along and wanted to be clean. (I'm a woman, you know what we're like).

You're right that it seems pretty hypocritical to joke about Snape running away from shampoo, when the male Hogwarts students seem so uninterested in cleaniness. (Perhaps the Slytherins, being under the female influence of water, are namby-pamby types who do bathe regularly and Severus was indeed sorted too soon :))

I'm not even sure this lack of interest in cleaniness is old-fashioned. Public school tradition favoured the cold shower, partly to damp down untoward feelings, but also as part of the healthy mind in healthy body ideal. The general slovenliness of Ron, Harry etc, doesn't follow this pattern.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Well-behaved Gryffs - I think the leading candidate would be Percy (who only ever fights with his oppressive family, and still looks out for them). But how many do we see often enough to know? Is Lavender ever shown to be behaving badly? What about Seamus?

BTW why does Harry need to get out from underneath the cloak to examine the statue? The whole point of it is that it is one-way see-through. I know, how else would he be caught?

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/his grandmother is on the run and finally approves of him./

Yes, she doesn’t appreciate him when he’s his quiet, Herbology-loving self. No, it’s only when he puts himself in harm’s way that she finally condescends to appreciate her own grandson. How wonderful.

/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./

Yep, so much for the Houses uniting. Once again, the question of why Slytherin House even still exists at this point, except to serve as a punching bag, remains unsolved.

/when he refuses the help of the other fighters, insisting he, Hermione, and Ron have to accomplish their secret mission alone/

So, it wasn’t only in HBP that Harry neglected the DA. Here, when their help would be a great advantage, he still puts them off. Here’s a hint, Harry, maybe if the DA had known about the Horcruxes from the beginning, they could have helped you find them and it would’ve taken much less time for you, Ron, and Hermione to destroy them.

/Accept their help./

And yet Voldemort is the one who acts alone and doesn’t value true friendship. Jeez, at least he takes advantage of help when it’s offered to him. He didn’t turn down Barty or Peter’s help because they “didn’t understand.”

/the awesomest girl in all of fiction! Ginny!/

Wow, you mean that the hero’s One True Love has finally showed up again after dozens of chapters and is finally going to do something, especially since this is the last book? Hooray! I can’t wait to see how she’ll help Harry out –

/Ginny has an attack of jealousy/

…Oh.

/vetoes that, substituting Luna. Um, Ginny, you need to read more fanfic. HP/LL is a pairing many writers have used./

To be fair to Ginny, Cho is Harry’s ex-girlfriend and Luna isn’t. But still, Harry hasn’t interacted with Cho at all since they broke up in the fifth book. So, why is Ginny so paranoid, insecure, and jealous here? Is this supposed to be funny? Considering that the situation is supposed to be tense and building up to the final showdown, I don’t think that this is the time to be worrying about romance. Nice priorities, Ginny.

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

Percy was Sorted too soon. He would have been much happier in another House, away from the horrible Twins--not to mention Ginny.

I often think he should have been a Slytherin for his ambition, or a Ravenclaw for his studiousness. But most likely he insisted on Gryffindor for the sake of family tradition, which (as I think you told me on another occasion) would indicate Hufflepuff. The twins would have humiliated him constantly for Sorting into the duffers' House, but better that than the House of Evil. They would have simply tortured him for being a Slytherin. At least he would have been able to escape into his own common room, whether Slyth, Claw, or Puff.

The parallel with Severus is surprisingly exact. The only place Severus could escape from his bullies and their magic map was inside his own House. He was literally at their mercy everywhere else in the entire school. He couldn't have avoided his Evil Housemates™ even if he had wanted to, since there was nowhere else for him to go. If he had Sorted Gryff, he might well have committed suicide before he finished school. Bullied kids sometimes do.

[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.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

/Yes, she doesn’t appreciate him when he’s his quiet, Herbology-loving self. No, it’s only when he puts himself in harm’s way that she finally condescends to appreciate her own grandson. How wonderful. /

Actually, it's worse than that. Neville put himself in harm's way when he volunteered for the Sirius-rescue mission in Book 5. He flew from Scotland to London on an invisible creature (when he's had a phobia about flying/falling ever since Uncle Algernon). He fought bravely, saved Harry's life by jabbing his wand in a DE's eye when his broken nose prevented him from articulating clearly enough to cast spells, defied Bellatrix herself, ordered Harry not to give up the prophecy orb for his sake, and continued fighting bravely after he'd suffered the Cruciatus from Bellatrix.

All that, and Augusta is still ragging him to prove himself to her by taking a class he doesn't like and isn't particularly good at, at the beginning of book 6.

Courage to face one's deepest fears? Putting oneself in danger to help others? Resource? Determination? Refusal to give up, in the face of being disarmed, outnumbered, and in overwhelming pain?

All worth little or nothing, in Augusta's eyes.

But start mouthing off and indulging in vandalism--NOW Neville's a True Gryff and her son's worthy heir.

Makes you wonder, really it does, what Augusta and her son thought of Barty Senior's innovative policies....

[oryx_leucoryx]

Neville can see thestrals - he saw his grandfather (which one?) die. Still, flying cross-country is a big deal.

[sunnyskywalker]

Who was it who said the seventh book might as well have been called Harry Potter and the Snape-Shaped Hole? Because it does read like that. We're stuck in a tent with Harry the Maguffin, trying to piece together little scraps to figure out the real plot back at Hogwarts.

[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

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

...the real story is actually about Neville and Severus...

In dramatic terms, the protagonist of a story is the one who undergoes change. If there's no change, you don't have a story; you just have an incident or a series of incidents. Severus and Neville are the only characters in the Potterverse who undergo positive change. Everyone else either stays the same or gets worse. Harry at seventeen is not much different from Harry at eleven--which counts as negative change, since he should have been spending those seven books growing up.

As you say, Book Seven should have been about the interactions of the Primary Protagonist (Severus) and the Secondary Protagonist (Neville). Instead we're forced to drag around after Harry, who's not a Protagonist but merely a Hero, and a singularly un-appealing one.

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

Re wizards and their bodily functions, I think the bathroom problem is a UK thing. 'Bathroom' is usually used to mean 'a room containing a bath'.

Yes. Using 'bathroom' as a synonym or euphemism for lavatory is primarily a US/Canadian quirk of language.

Personally, I'm amused by the thought that the boys were so enamored with the idea of being La Resistance -The danger! The excitement! The noble sacrifice of personal comfort in the pursuit of Justice! - that it took the girls coming in with a figurative slap upside the head and an incredulous "Do you have magic or not?!" to bring them back to Earth.

Not that I think the boys were just rebelling for personal gratification or glory. I believe they were genuinely concerned about their fellow students and were doing they best they could under difficult circumstances. It's just common for kids of that age to romanticize the causes they take up and take their cues for how to proceed from the (likewise romanticized) stories they're familiar with.

There's no excuse for Harry and Ron though. I wonder if Harry's refusal to clean e.g. his trunk is a subconscious form of rebellion against Petunia's exacting house cleaning standards and the unfair distribution of chores between himself and Dudley.

*Also, would wizards/witches, even pureblooded ones, really be expected to know personal cleaning charms as a matter of course? Hogwarts has designated bathing facilities and lavatories, as does the Burrow IIRC. We have Scourgify from canon, but I don't think we were ever told that it was safe to use on humans. A lot of common household cleaners aren't. Which would, of course, make the Marauders using it to waterboard Severus even worse.

[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.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

You know, the first time I read that phrase I just took it as a vicious-and-merited commentary on the cartoonish-nature of Jo's last book.

In children's cartoons, the coyote leaving a coyote-shaped hole in the glass when he hurtled himself upon his inevitable destruction....

But you've transfigured it (or, at least transfigured my understanding of it).

The Snape-shaped hole.

What SHOULD have been there. The absence that warps what WAS present around it.

Everything organizes itself around making sense of the hole.

[oryx_leucoryx]

In COS, when Ron receives Molly's Howler, Harry doesn't realize what it is until Ron says so, and the Howler starts yelling. But Neville manages to mention that Gran had once sent him one, and that trying to ignore it made the outcome worse. Under what circumstances was that Howler sent that Harry did not witness the event? Well, it is possible that Neville received it while camping with Great Uncle Algie. Or he received it at Hogwarts, on a day Harry wasn't present at breakfast, when the mail usually arrives. When did Harry miss breakfast in first year? I think the only times were the three days he was incapacitated after his encounter with Quirrellmort. Is it possible Gran berated Neville for trying to stop Heroic Harry from breaking rules? (I'm assuming she heard of the events from Neville. Or possibly her old classmate Minerva.)

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

"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."

Actually the reason people get greasy hair if they stop bathing is that by shampooing their hair normally they wash off all the natural oils, and your scalp overcompensates and produces too much. If you stop shampooing the scalp will stop producing so many oils and your hair will go back to normal. (Apparently -- I've never tried it, because it's supposed to take three to six months for this to happen, and in the meantime you'll be all greasy and horrible. In a world where people don't bathe often, though, their hair should be fine -- and indeed people from non-Western countries where they don't shampoo themselves regularly don't generally have noticeably greasy hair.)

Also, even if spells like Scourgify would be unsafe for use on humans, there would seem no reason why they couldn't just Vanish the dirt on their bodies. So maybe showers in the wizarding world are there primarily for the nice relaxing feeling you get from having a warm shower, rather than for reasons of hygiene.