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deathtocapslock2014-04-18 07:45 pm
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HBP Chapter Twenty-Nine: "The Phoenix Lament"
* Somebody gently leads Harry back to the castle, and Harry realises it’s Ginny from “a trace of flowery scent in the air”. So does this mean that Ginny paused to put a bit of perfume on before she entered the battle, or does she just naturally smell that way?
* Actually, knowing how much of a Mary Sue Ginny is in this book, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that she sweats flower-scented perfume.
* “Incomprehensible voices battered him, sobs and shouts and wails stabbed the night,” which is surprising, considering how little the students ever actually interacted with Dumbledore. Maybe they’re just crying about how they’ll never have a proper House Cup this year now that the Death Eaters have smashed the hourglasses.
* TBH I’m surprised the students haven’t stolen all the leaking rubies by now. They must be pretty valuable.
* “‘Ginny, who else is dead?’ ‘Don’t worry, not one of us.’” Phew! It’s such a relief to know that only the expendable peons got bumped off.
* Given that you can do pretty much anything with magic, I seriously doubt that Bill is actually scarred for life. More likely he’s just keeping them there to make himself look more badass, kind of like the cult of duelling scars in nineteenth-century Germany.
* Maybe that’s why Bill will spend the next book at home with Fleur: he’s already got his cool scars, what other reason could there be for fighting?
* Alright, I know that making your teenagers survive because they drank a luck potion is better than making them survive due to plot-induced incompetence on the part of their opponents (hello, OOTP!), but it’s still kind of annoying. For one thing, it just drains the fighting of any sense of danger or excitement, since there’s essentially no way they can be killed; for another, it requires everybody to conveniently forget about the existence of Felix Felicis whenever using it wouldn’t be helpful to the plot.
* “‘Dumbledore might know something that’d work, though,’ Ron said. ‘Where is he? Bill fought those maniacs on Dumbledore’s orders, Dumbledore owes him, he can’t leave him in this state—’” Ordinarily, Ron, you’d be correct, however Dumbledore isn’t like most people, and feels no obligation to help those who help him. Loyalty to Dumbledore is very much a one-way street, and the best you can hope for is that Dumbledore decides helping you would advance his own interests as well. Then he might agree to give you a hand, unless somebody more useful comes to him in the meantime.
* “Harry had never seen Lupin lose control before; he felt as though he was intruding upon something private, indecent.” Get used to it, Harry, because Lupin’s going to spend most of DH telling you all about the private details of his unhappy marriage.
* Hermione seems so surprised that Malfoy tried to kill Dumbledore. I mean, that kid has just been so unremarkable and normal-seeming all year. Who could possibly have guessed that he was secretly working for the dark side?
* “Madam Pomfrey burst into tears. Nobody paid her any attention except Ginny, who whispered, ‘Shh! Listen!’” Those two sentences exemplify pretty much the entire Gryffindor ethos.
* Note that everybody’s reason for trusting Snape was “But Dumbledore always trusted him!” Yup, no wonder they’re all so upset Dumbledore died, because it’s patently obvious that he did all their thinking for them.
* “‘And [Snape] didn’t think my mother was worth a damn, either,’ said Harry, ‘because she was Muggle-born… Mudblood, he called her…’” Well, to be fair, Harry’s mother wasn’t worth a damn. Not because of her parents, but because she was just such a callous, obnoxious, self-centred bitch.
* Also, it’s hard to take “mudblood” seriously as an insult when as far as we can see muggle-borns never actually suffer due to racial prejudice. “Mudblood” is at about the same level as “damned Yankee” or “cheese-eating surrender monkey” on the harm scale.
* Also also, note how Harry never thinks that “James didn’t think Snape was worth a damn” because he hexed and publically humiliated him. Clearly lashing out at somebody with a rude word in the midst of an extremely humiliating and unpleasant situation is far worse than psychologically torturing a fellow student.
* “‘This is all my fault,’ said Professor McGonagall suddenly […] ‘I sent Filius to fetch Snape tonight, I actually sent for him to come and help us! If I hadn’t alerted Snape to what was going on, he might never have joined forces with the Death Eaters.’” Maybe instead of feeling guilty for not seeing through the super-skilled double agent who nobody else saw through, she should feel guilty for stupidly sending away a champion duellist of advanced years and dwarfish stature to carry a message for her, when she could have sent one of the less-skilled but younger and faster students instead.
* Have we ever got any indication before this scene that Malfoy has the Hand of Glory? Because the last time I remember him appearing with it, he most definitely did not have it, and there seemed no prospect of him ever getting it.
* If Ron did talk to Fred and George about who they sell to, this doesn’t seem to have had any impact worth reporting.
* Is it just me, or have there been remarkably few casualties from all these spells flying around? Maybe wizards go to the same marksmanship school as the Imperial Stormtroopers.
* Fleur comes in to see her injured fiancé, and all the Weasleys act as if she has no business being there. Yeah, I can’t possibly imagine why she might dislike her new family…
* “No, Fleur,” says Mrs. Weasley, “I wasn’t worried Bill wouldn’t want to marry you anymore. I was worried you wouldn’t want to marry him because you’re such a shallow, vapid, looks-obsessed Gallic floozy.” Oh, well that’s alright, then.
* Fleur and Mrs. Weasley tearfully make up, much to Harry’s bewilderment. It must be some weird, irrational female emotion. Rowling’s a woman, she knows what they’re like.
* Way to go there, Tonks: instead of respecting Remus as an adult and accepting that he’s just not that into you, peer pressure him into marrying you and shackling both of you together in a life of domestic misery! That’ll work!
* I’m not sure why everybody else is joining in on Tonks’s side, though. I mean, sure, I can buy that she might be so in love with him that she can’t see how a marriage where one of the parties absolutely hates the idea is likely to end up, but the others have no such excuse.
* So, if Tonks and Lupin had survived DH, how long do you think it would be before they separated?
* “[A] new portrait had joined the ranks of dead Headmasters and Headmistresses of Hogwarts…” Oh, yeah, thanks for reminding us, Rowling. For a couple of chapters I’d forgotten that death in the Potter universe is not at all a big deal, and that any time Harry misses Dumbledore he can just talk to his portrait. You know, the one that has emotions and opinions on current events and talks just like a living person and is, in fact, all but indistinguishable from Dumbledore when he was still alive, right down to the constant micromanaging of everyone else’s lives.
* “Professor Dumbledore never told me to stop following his orders if he died.” Professor Dumbledore also told you that he had perfect trust in Snape, and look how that turned out. Still, nice to see Harry doing his best to uphold the Gryffindor Code of blind obedience to Dumbledore no matter what.
* “‘Snape!’ ejaculated Slughorn.” Too much information, Rowling, too much information…
* Still, as amusing as this sentence is to my inner ten-year-old, it still doesn’t beat Agatha Christie’s “As he read the letter, the Captain stiffened visibly, and when he reached the end he gave a loud ejaculation.”
* It’s interesting to note that Slughorn’s the only person who seems shocked about what happened because murder is out-of-character for Severus, rather than because Dumbledore trusted Snape and everybody else should blindly trust in Dumbledore.
* Slughorn’s certainly changed his mind about the safety of Hogwarts. Or maybe the danger he was worried about in going there was just the danger of his tiny, non-culpable and extremely minor rôle in Voldemort’s rise being discovered by Dumbledore.
* “‘No other headmaster or headmistress ever gave more to this school,’ growled Hagrid.” Darn right, Hagrid: corruption, favouritism, incompetence, bias, Dumbledore gave them all.
* Will the pupils want to say goodbye, or just good riddance?
* I quite like the image of Fawkes leaving the school, never to return. It makes no logical sense, of course, but it’s rather poignant nonetheless.
* Dumbledore “had left the school, had left the world… had left Harry,” in ascending order of importance, obviously.
* Actually, knowing how much of a Mary Sue Ginny is in this book, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that she sweats flower-scented perfume.
* “Incomprehensible voices battered him, sobs and shouts and wails stabbed the night,” which is surprising, considering how little the students ever actually interacted with Dumbledore. Maybe they’re just crying about how they’ll never have a proper House Cup this year now that the Death Eaters have smashed the hourglasses.
* TBH I’m surprised the students haven’t stolen all the leaking rubies by now. They must be pretty valuable.
* “‘Ginny, who else is dead?’ ‘Don’t worry, not one of us.’” Phew! It’s such a relief to know that only the expendable peons got bumped off.
* Given that you can do pretty much anything with magic, I seriously doubt that Bill is actually scarred for life. More likely he’s just keeping them there to make himself look more badass, kind of like the cult of duelling scars in nineteenth-century Germany.
* Maybe that’s why Bill will spend the next book at home with Fleur: he’s already got his cool scars, what other reason could there be for fighting?
* Alright, I know that making your teenagers survive because they drank a luck potion is better than making them survive due to plot-induced incompetence on the part of their opponents (hello, OOTP!), but it’s still kind of annoying. For one thing, it just drains the fighting of any sense of danger or excitement, since there’s essentially no way they can be killed; for another, it requires everybody to conveniently forget about the existence of Felix Felicis whenever using it wouldn’t be helpful to the plot.
* “‘Dumbledore might know something that’d work, though,’ Ron said. ‘Where is he? Bill fought those maniacs on Dumbledore’s orders, Dumbledore owes him, he can’t leave him in this state—’” Ordinarily, Ron, you’d be correct, however Dumbledore isn’t like most people, and feels no obligation to help those who help him. Loyalty to Dumbledore is very much a one-way street, and the best you can hope for is that Dumbledore decides helping you would advance his own interests as well. Then he might agree to give you a hand, unless somebody more useful comes to him in the meantime.
* “Harry had never seen Lupin lose control before; he felt as though he was intruding upon something private, indecent.” Get used to it, Harry, because Lupin’s going to spend most of DH telling you all about the private details of his unhappy marriage.
* Hermione seems so surprised that Malfoy tried to kill Dumbledore. I mean, that kid has just been so unremarkable and normal-seeming all year. Who could possibly have guessed that he was secretly working for the dark side?
* “Madam Pomfrey burst into tears. Nobody paid her any attention except Ginny, who whispered, ‘Shh! Listen!’” Those two sentences exemplify pretty much the entire Gryffindor ethos.
* Note that everybody’s reason for trusting Snape was “But Dumbledore always trusted him!” Yup, no wonder they’re all so upset Dumbledore died, because it’s patently obvious that he did all their thinking for them.
* “‘And [Snape] didn’t think my mother was worth a damn, either,’ said Harry, ‘because she was Muggle-born… Mudblood, he called her…’” Well, to be fair, Harry’s mother wasn’t worth a damn. Not because of her parents, but because she was just such a callous, obnoxious, self-centred bitch.
* Also, it’s hard to take “mudblood” seriously as an insult when as far as we can see muggle-borns never actually suffer due to racial prejudice. “Mudblood” is at about the same level as “damned Yankee” or “cheese-eating surrender monkey” on the harm scale.
* Also also, note how Harry never thinks that “James didn’t think Snape was worth a damn” because he hexed and publically humiliated him. Clearly lashing out at somebody with a rude word in the midst of an extremely humiliating and unpleasant situation is far worse than psychologically torturing a fellow student.
* “‘This is all my fault,’ said Professor McGonagall suddenly […] ‘I sent Filius to fetch Snape tonight, I actually sent for him to come and help us! If I hadn’t alerted Snape to what was going on, he might never have joined forces with the Death Eaters.’” Maybe instead of feeling guilty for not seeing through the super-skilled double agent who nobody else saw through, she should feel guilty for stupidly sending away a champion duellist of advanced years and dwarfish stature to carry a message for her, when she could have sent one of the less-skilled but younger and faster students instead.
* Have we ever got any indication before this scene that Malfoy has the Hand of Glory? Because the last time I remember him appearing with it, he most definitely did not have it, and there seemed no prospect of him ever getting it.
* If Ron did talk to Fred and George about who they sell to, this doesn’t seem to have had any impact worth reporting.
* Is it just me, or have there been remarkably few casualties from all these spells flying around? Maybe wizards go to the same marksmanship school as the Imperial Stormtroopers.
* Fleur comes in to see her injured fiancé, and all the Weasleys act as if she has no business being there. Yeah, I can’t possibly imagine why she might dislike her new family…
* “No, Fleur,” says Mrs. Weasley, “I wasn’t worried Bill wouldn’t want to marry you anymore. I was worried you wouldn’t want to marry him because you’re such a shallow, vapid, looks-obsessed Gallic floozy.” Oh, well that’s alright, then.
* Fleur and Mrs. Weasley tearfully make up, much to Harry’s bewilderment. It must be some weird, irrational female emotion. Rowling’s a woman, she knows what they’re like.
* Way to go there, Tonks: instead of respecting Remus as an adult and accepting that he’s just not that into you, peer pressure him into marrying you and shackling both of you together in a life of domestic misery! That’ll work!
* I’m not sure why everybody else is joining in on Tonks’s side, though. I mean, sure, I can buy that she might be so in love with him that she can’t see how a marriage where one of the parties absolutely hates the idea is likely to end up, but the others have no such excuse.
* So, if Tonks and Lupin had survived DH, how long do you think it would be before they separated?
* “[A] new portrait had joined the ranks of dead Headmasters and Headmistresses of Hogwarts…” Oh, yeah, thanks for reminding us, Rowling. For a couple of chapters I’d forgotten that death in the Potter universe is not at all a big deal, and that any time Harry misses Dumbledore he can just talk to his portrait. You know, the one that has emotions and opinions on current events and talks just like a living person and is, in fact, all but indistinguishable from Dumbledore when he was still alive, right down to the constant micromanaging of everyone else’s lives.
* “Professor Dumbledore never told me to stop following his orders if he died.” Professor Dumbledore also told you that he had perfect trust in Snape, and look how that turned out. Still, nice to see Harry doing his best to uphold the Gryffindor Code of blind obedience to Dumbledore no matter what.
* “‘Snape!’ ejaculated Slughorn.” Too much information, Rowling, too much information…
* Still, as amusing as this sentence is to my inner ten-year-old, it still doesn’t beat Agatha Christie’s “As he read the letter, the Captain stiffened visibly, and when he reached the end he gave a loud ejaculation.”
* It’s interesting to note that Slughorn’s the only person who seems shocked about what happened because murder is out-of-character for Severus, rather than because Dumbledore trusted Snape and everybody else should blindly trust in Dumbledore.
* Slughorn’s certainly changed his mind about the safety of Hogwarts. Or maybe the danger he was worried about in going there was just the danger of his tiny, non-culpable and extremely minor rôle in Voldemort’s rise being discovered by Dumbledore.
* “‘No other headmaster or headmistress ever gave more to this school,’ growled Hagrid.” Darn right, Hagrid: corruption, favouritism, incompetence, bias, Dumbledore gave them all.
* Will the pupils want to say goodbye, or just good riddance?
* I quite like the image of Fawkes leaving the school, never to return. It makes no logical sense, of course, but it’s rather poignant nonetheless.
* Dumbledore “had left the school, had left the world… had left Harry,” in ascending order of importance, obviously.
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Yes, Bill is hurt, but not fatally. The only reason for the sobs and wails is if you're worried he might be a werewolf and surely these people who ARE friends of one would know he wouldn't have been turned since it isn't the full moon. As for Bill's scars, I can only assume that he is scarred for life because they are 'curse' scars and so 'dark magic'. Hence Molly's comment in the next book in regards to George's ear.
Snape could have probably been able to heal them, but the others are too 'noble' to dirty themselves dabbling in dark arts, just to learn how to heal such things. We saw Poppy's need for Snape when healing Katie, so apparently anything 'dark' is beyond her. You would think however, that someone from StMungo's ought to be able to do something. It is hard to believe that no one other than Snape bothered to learn ways to heal cursed wounds.
Meanwhile, notice how the response of "sobs and shouts and wails stabbed the night" is deemed appropriate to Bill being clawed (not bitten) by a werewolf (when it wasn't even at full strength) and yet there are folks out there still who seem to believe that Sirius didn't intend for Snape to die while meeting a fully transformed werewolf on a full moon night. I mean REALLY - apparently they ARE believed to be dangerous on more than one night a month after all?
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This is why a lot of people have theorized that Snape was under a binding oath or something. However, that doesn’t explain how Snape was able to tell the Slytherins in third year about Lupin. Why didn’t he tell anybody back then?
And if the Marauders didn’t know that he was under a binding oath or had made a promise to keep silent, then, once again, their spontaneous decision to humiliate him makes them look even worse. Because now they’re putting Lupin’s safety in jeopardy twice. Sirius did it when he goaded Snape to visit the Shrieking Shack and now he and James were doing it when they were humiliating Snape because, for all they knew, Snape very well could have yelled out Lupin’s secret to everyone.
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Or maybe the idea that you could have been wrong and apologize to the person you wronged is way too foreign a concept for Harry. Thankfully Ginny never has to make amends with Fleur and instead Harry insults her to appease Ginny. What a prick.
* Way to go there, Tonks: instead of respecting Remus as an adult and accepting that he’s just not that into you, peer pressure him into marrying you and shackling both of you together in a life of domestic misery! That’ll work!
* I’m not sure why everybody else is joining in on Tonks’s side, though. I mean, sure, I can buy that she might be so in love with him that she can’t see how a marriage where one of the parties absolutely hates the idea is likely to end up, but the others have no such excuse.
Ugh, I hated that scene. Not only is Tonks' behavior really inappropriate considering the situation (they just found out that Dumbledore is dead, Bill is injured and you're only concerned about your love life?), but as you said, Remus clearly doesn't like her that way (and I don't care whatever bullshit Rowling claimed on Pottermore). You don't even have to read him as being gay, but rather that he's simply not into her.
As for the others it comes off as if Remus should be grateful for anybody being romantically interested in him since he is a werewolf. His actual feelings don't matter, he just be glad that Tonks wants him in the first place, never mind that they have no connection or similar interests. Heck, we have no idea why Tonks is so hung up on Remus in the first place.
* So, if Tonks and Lupin had survived DH, how long do you think it would be before they separated?
Sadly, probably never since divorce doesn't seem to exist in this world. The only time we hear about people having new spouses (and not having the previous one die), is when they just run off and live with someone else (one story from Fantastic Beasts and one from Pottermore about the floo network).
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I prefer to imagine him as gay, but only so that I can imagine him and Tonks as being like Lindsey and Tobias from Arrested Development
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/...when she could have sent one of the less-skilled but younger and faster students instead./
Oh, not really, wasn't there a secret OotP method to send verbal messages that is faster than an owl, homes onto the recipient all by itself and cannot be forged by an enemy...?
Da stoopid, it burns.
/* “‘Snape!’ ejaculated Slughorn.” Too much information, Rowling, too much information…
* Still, as amusing as this sentence is to my inner ten-year-old, it still doesn’t beat Agatha Christie’s “As he read the letter, the Captain stiffened visibly, and when he reached the end he gave a loud ejaculation.”/
Have anyone of you watched the wonderful BBC panel show called QI? In Season J Episode 'Jargon', Stephen Fry (the host) presented the question: "According to canon, what did Watson do twice the times Holmes did?" The answer was...of course...
It's an archaic meaning that has since faded, right? Much like "knowing a woman" used to mean "having carnal knowledge of a woman". In S02E03 of "Hannibal", Will Graham expressed his thoughts on a yet unseen killer who killed a judge to try to exhonerate him (he was innocent in e first place, only Hannibal framed him to be a murderer): "I think...he wants to know me."
And I heard that Twitter then exploded with variations of "...Bibically?" :)
/* I quite like the image of Fawkes leaving the school, never to return. It makes no logical sense, of course, but it’s rather poignant nonetheless./
F@&$ you, Fawkes! You should have secretly popped back to save Severus! Oh well, that's my headcanon.
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Where in the book does it say Flitwick is of advanced years? I'm not talking about Pottermore garbage or the films, but the actual books. Flitwick's age is never mentioned that I can remember. From now on my headcanon is going to be that Flitwick is forty-five at the end of Book Six. Why not?
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She's an Order member. So is Severus.
WTF HAPPENED TO PATRONUS-TEXTING?!
*ahem*, you may continue now.
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Why not indeed, though 55 is probaboy closer.
For what it's worth, his second movie image is much younger than the first one.
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*head-desk* Because it’s not like Harry was trying to warn her about Draco all year.
/“Madam Pomfrey burst into tears. Nobody paid her any attention except Ginny, who whispered, ‘Shh! Listen!’”/
Jeez, I didn’t even notice that when I was reading it. Not only has Madam Pomfrey been mind-controlled by Draco, but now nobody cares that she’s crying. :(
/Note that everybody’s reason for trusting Snape was “But Dumbledore always trusted him!”/
And they never bothered to ask why. Or, if they did ask and Dumbledore refused to tell them, they never bothered to insist that he tell them why.
/note how Harry never thinks that “James didn’t think Snape was worth a damn” because he hexed and publically humiliated him/
Nope, Sirius and Remus told him that James ‘got better,’ so that was the end of the matter in Harry's mind.
/Clearly lashing out at somebody with a rude word in the midst of an extremely humiliating and unpleasant situation is far worse than psychologically torturing a fellow student./
Or flouncing out on that student and leaving him to be humiliated and assaulted.
/Fleur comes in to see her injured fiancé, and all the Weasleys act as if she has no business being there./
And yet if she didn’t come to see him, they’d probably all denounce her as a shallow and fickle harpy.
/instead of respecting Remus as an adult and accepting that he’s just not that into you/
Or, even if he is into you, accepting that he has legitimate reasons for not wanting to enter into a relationship with you right now.
/I’m not sure why everybody else is joining in on Tonks’s side, though/
They’re all playing matchmaker for some reason? Or maybe they’re just tired of seeing her all drab and mopey? I don’t know.
/It’s interesting to note that Slughorn’s the only person who seems shocked about what happened because murder is out-of-character for Severus, rather than because Dumbledore trusted Snape and everybody else should blindly trust in Dumbledore./
He was in Slytherin, not Gryffindor. Of course he doesn’t take Dumbledore’s word for everything.
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Or calling him “Snivellus”—not a generic insult but a name especially intended to insult him—and mocking his poverty. Anyone can sling around an ethnic slur when in a state of rage and panic, but it takes a friend to know exactly where to stick in the dagger and how far to twist it for maximum pain.
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I think you mean Madam Rosemerta for the mind-control - not Poppy
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a) She was as dependent on Dumbledore as the rest of them, in a way she interpreted as fondness, and is devastated by his death,
b) She believes that Dumbledore was the only wizard who could fend off Voldemort, and is now terrified that they're all doomed,
c) She thinks that without such a reckless headmaster making sure students get injured frequently, she might get a pay cut,
d) She was friendly with Snape (common cause treating student injuries and all), and she's mainly upset over his apparent betrayal,
e) She's been horrified at Dumbledore's disregard for student safety all these years, only staying out of concern for the students who have hardly anyone else to protect them, and is just so emotionally overwhelmed at the thought that maybe the ordeal is finally over,
f) Some combination of the above?
Lupin is upsetting the social order by remaining unmarried, obviously, and he's enough of an outsider without that extra problem. And he keeps being visibly unhappy in public. Obviously he needs a bright, cheery wife to make him happy and (almost) normal so his friends can stop worrying about him. And gosh, she likes him and is nice enough by wizarding standards (and technically a Black, even if one from a disowned branch!), so why shouldn't he want to marry her? If having gotten along in school is enough for most couples, what more could he possibly want? He and Tonks can obviously talk occasionally, and were friendly enough that he could tease her about her name, which is as good as true love! Clearly he can have no real objections, and anything he says is just insecurity which they can firmly help him get over. (The idea that he might love her and still have logical reasons not to marry her would be utterly beyond them, if that's the situation. Logic and wizards, like oil and water.)
Slughorn is just about the only staff member who's near Dumbledore's age and was never his student. They got hired about the same time, and if anyone is Dumbledore's peer rather than follower, Slughorn is... well, he still isn't quite there, but he's closer than just about anyone else to that level. He's also been away from Hogwarts and Dumbledore's influence for fifteen years, which might be a major factor. All those years of not relying on Dumbledore's judgment have got to create some different habits than, say, Minerva has. Plus, he's used to being at the center of his own network, run for his own purposes rather than Dumbledore's, where he makes his own judgments about people and what they're like and what they're good for. Really, he's lucky in a way that he is as weak as he is, or Dumbledore might have seen him as a threat.
I imagine Fawkes's lament is actually the phoenix equivalent of "Ding Dong, the Wicked
WitchWizard is Dead." Then he clicked his ruby feathers together and said, "There's no place like home..."no subject
Or maybe (g): She had figured out some time ago that Dumbledore was dying, and had also figured out from Snape's hints and general stressed-out behavior during their pillow talk (who says she's of advanced years?) that Dumbles was demanding that he do something he really didn't want to do, so as soon as she heard the news she thought, "That old coward couldn't let himself die without destroying my Sev's life first. I should have AK's him myself and claimed it as medically necessary euthanasia."
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Good grief. I don't think you're being fair at all. :-)
She was a prefect, everyone loved her, she criticised James in SWM, she gave her life for her son ... your assessment is a few million light years away from that.
It's horrible that she was part of the suicide cheer squad but I can't go from there to your description.
it requires everybody to conveniently forget about the existence of Felix Felicis whenever using it wouldn’t be helpful to the plot.
Ah yes, the abomination known as Felix Felicis. Perhaps the very worst of Rowling's innumerable plot mcguffins that materialised when needed but were dropped when inconvenient (to the author).
No, make the super-powered house elves the worst. Felix is second.
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I wouldn't say, however, that Lily wasn't worth a damn just because she was callous and self-centered in her dealings with Severus. I'd say she was a perfectly ordinary, unremarkable, commonplace girl who was in an awkward social situation and handled it badly. When I'm in full Snape fangirl mode (which involves letting my inner thirteen-year-old full play) I can rant at Heartless Gold-digger Lily with the best of them, but when I turn on my adult brain I recognize that I might have dumped Severus myself in a similar situation. I cannot, however, imagine liking James for a moment, even if I somehow didn't know about his bullying. I've always hated pushy guys.
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Couple of things--Harry's first year DADA class learned different methods of treating werewolf bites. So are we to assume that Poppy is simply utterly incompetent at treating any damage due to Dark Magic/Dark Creatures (since 1981, she's always turned such cases over to Severus immediately), or that Albus has been permitting his DADA teachers to get away with teaching arrant nonsense, and such wounds, like lycanthropy itself, really can't be treated effectively? (Or, I suppose, we can be nice and split the difference--Bill was scarred, but he didn't go around like Arthur spouting blood for days and days. So maybe Poppy's treatment(s) helped, but just couldn't prevent the scarring. Sigh. I liked the idea of Quirrel teaching the kids, in effect, defenses that didn't work, and Albus letting him get away with it.... )
Also, I looked to see when, precisely, Poppy burst into tears. And unlike Remus, but like Minerva, it's not when she heard the news that The Great Albus was dead. It's when Harry affirmed that he himself had directly witnessed Severus cast the Avada Kedavra that killed him.
And, like Luna, Poppy stayed entirely mute during the whole subsequent discussion of Snape's exact actions and probable motivations while Harry, who wanted every detail of Snape's duplicity and infamy, feverishly collect[ed]... more resaons to hate him, to swear vengeance.
Seems to me that the Snomfrey shippers could make a lot out of that!
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Thanks! :D
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Dead silence.
She's there throughout, and Miss Xeno's-Daughter-Conspiracy-Theorist says not one word.