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deathtocapslock* 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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Date: 2014-04-20 07:37 am (UTC)In a world where people are afraid of [condition], you have such a [condition] and nearly killed a student when you had an episode. This student might scream your [condition] out when he's being treated like an ant under a magnifying glass in sunlight, and the other students might as well lynch you on the spot for being so dangerous to them.
And you just frown. Without your eyes even leaving the book.
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Date: 2014-04-20 04:07 pm (UTC)