deathtocapslock | Deathly Hallows, Chapter 32: The Elder Wand (Reply)

The beginning of this chapter reminded me of a song that was popular when I was little. This is Skeeter Davis, singing her signature song, “The End of the World,” from the year of JKR’s birth, 1965.

(Written by Rob Crosby and Joanna Smith)

Why does the sun go on shining?

Why does the sea rush to shore?

Don’t they know it’s the end of the world

‘Cause you don’t love me any more?

Why do the birds go on singing?

Why do the stars glow above?

Don’t they know it’s the end of the world?

It ended when I lost your love.

I wake up in the morning, and I wonder

Why everything’s the same as it was.

I can’t understand, no, I can’t understand

How life goes on the way it does.

(Spoken)

Why does my heart go on beating?

Why do these eyes of mine cry?

(Sung)

Don’t they know it’s the end of the world?

It ended when you said, “Goodbye.”

“The world had ended, so why had the battle not ceased, the castle fallen silent in horror, and every combatant laid down their arms? Harry’s mind was in free fall, spinning out of control, unable to grasp the impossibility, because Fred Weasley could not be dead, the evidence of all his senses must be lying--”

OH, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!

Look, Ms. Rowling, you have no right to complain about readers insisting your characters are gay when you write stuff like this. I can understand Harry’s being upset, even appalled, that Fred is dead. He was a good friend and a young man Harry knew and loved. But according to you, Fred wasn’t the love of Harry’s life, so don’t write as if he were. Instead of readers sympathizing with Harry, we’re just annoyed at his histrionic emoting--and wondering if Ginny is really The One for Harry, or if his True Love lies buried under the wall.

Percy acts almost as ridiculously as Harry, putting himself at risk to lie across Fred’s corpse to protect it from further harm. He only leaves when Harry and Ron grab Fred’s body and help Percy carry it to an alcove for safety. Again, where are the levitation charms? I’m not surprised Harry and Ron have forgotten them, since they have trouble remembering their own names, but what’s 12-NEWT Percy’s excuse? (It just now occurs to me that Hermione and Percy would make a great couple. They’re both smart, hardworking, love studying, and are hung up on both obeying and making excuses for authority figures.)

A cluster of giant spiders starts climbing through the hole in the castle wall; they are repelled by Harry and Ron’s Stunners. I can just imagine what the spiders are thinking: At last, we can escape our imprisonment in the forest, throw off the oppression of that lout, Hagrid, and live indoors the way such civilized creatures as we are destined to do.

Percy spies Rookwood and takes off after him. Ron tries to follow, yelling he wants to kill Death Eaters. I’m glad to hear that! It’s long past time the “good guys” quit fooling around and started making the Death Eaters live up to their name. Unfortunately, Ron is restrained by the Hs, who insist finding and killing Nagini is more important than anything else. I don’t understand why all three of them are needed for that project. Why can’t Ron deal death to DEs while the Hs go after the snake? Rowling’s been marginalizing Ron all through this book. Why stop now? Besides, having the Hs kill Nagini together would be a nice parallelism with chapter 17, when Nagini tried to kill them.

Hermione says Voldemort will have Nagini with him, and Rowling breaks one of her last rules as her self-insert, Hermione, orders Harry to enter the Dull Lord’s mind to find out where he is. Harry sees Voldy in the Shrieking Shack, with a beaten Lucius on the ground asking about Draco. We’re reminded again by Voldy that all the Slytherins sided with him because we might not have remembered that from the previous 5,000 times we were told, most recently at the beginning of the last chapter. Lucius wants to call a time out in the battle, ostensibly to make sure Harry’s not killed by someone other than his “master.” Voldy makes one of the few sensible remarks in this book when he calls Lucius’s bluff, saying Lucius just wants to make sure his son is all right. Besides, Voldy doesn’t need to seek Harry because the boy will come to him.

Voldy orders Lucius to find and bring Snape to him. Just then, Harry sees Nagini in her giant floating cage, and he pulls out of the vision. We get another Three Stooges moment as the Trio argues with each other about who should go under the cloak to kill the snake. The decision is made for them by attacking DEs. They escape together, hide under the cloak, and head out of the castle. On the way, they pass McGonagall herding animated desks into battle and Draco trying to convince another DE he’s on their side. Ron rescues Draco from his attacker, then punches him and reminds him that’s the second time they’ve saved his life that night. As they run, they pass the house hourglasses; of course, only the Slytherin one gets broken and spills its jewels onto the floor. No doubt this is Rowling’s Idea of clever symbolism, an illustration of how everything is the result of Slytherin’s brokenness. It’s also a parallelism with HBP, which has the Gryffindor hourglass broken by the DE invasion near the end of that book. Of course, the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw hourglasses are unmentioned and presumably untouched, further proof those houses just exist as set dressing and do not otherwise matter.

They pass Fenrir attacking a fallen student, and Hermione uses a spell to throw him backwards. Trelawney then knocks him out with a crystal ball. Silly as that is, I like the idea of the usually fraudulent psychic using one of the tokens of her trade as a weapon.

The spiders come bursting in the front door, and Hagrid charges down the hall bellowing at everybody not to hurt them. The spiders thank him for his consideration by overwhelming him and carrying him off to the Forbidden Forest. Unfortunately, they don’t kill and eat him. It would be no more than he deserved if they did.

Hagrid does some monumentally stupid things in this series, but I think this is the dumbest of all. If he’s supposed to be a magical Steve Irwin, he’s an insult to Irwin’s memory. Irwin had the same great love and appreciation for uncuddly, misunderstood animals that Hagrid has, but he also realized they could be dangerous and should be approached with caution and respect. Hagrid has all of Irwin’s attraction to “creepy” animals with none of his good sense, charm, or charisma.

As the Trio runs out onto the school grounds, the dementors show up again, an arrival heralded by one of Rowling’s silliest sentences: “The air around them had frozen: Harry’s breath caught and solidified in his chest.” First of all, it is not possible for air to freeze on Earth outside of laboratory conditions, since it has to be well below -300 degrees F/-185 degrees C for that to happen. Second, if the air had really solidified in Harry’s chest, he’d be dead. Granted, that would be a very innovative way for JKR to kill her protagonist, but that’s not what she means, so she shouldn’t say it. What she means is something like, “He froze with horror and dismay,” but she’s trying to be artsy-fartsy, so she can’t write something straightforward like that.

Anyway, HRH try to cast Patronuses, but they’re so freaked out, they can’t. They have to be rescued by Luna, Ernie, and Seamus--y’know, three of those people they didn’t want to work with “because Dumbledore said so.” Then they streak off for the Whomping Willow, but the boys are too dumb to get past it. Hermione has to question Ron’s wizardhood before he remembers Wingardium Leviosa and levitates a stick to stop the tree’s thrashing.

They enter the tunnel, which has somehow developed a lower ceiling than it had in third year (which can’t be accounted for by the growth of HRH), and head for the Shrieking Shack. When they reach the end of the tunnel, Harry crawls up to the hole in the wall that opens into the Shack and witnesses the final confrontation between Voldemort and Snape. Voldy is disappointed that his hot new wand doesn’t work the way he thinks it should and asks Snape why that is. Snape has no idea what’s going on and keeps trying to get permission to fetch Harry. They have essentially the same conversation several times. This is another example of Rowling using dumbness to drag out a scene and create phony suspense. Voldy has already tortured the wand experts Gregorovitch and Ollivander. They didn’t have an explanation for his wand problems; why would Voldy think a Potions expert would?

After about four pages of this nonsense, Voldy finally gets to the point and sics Nagini on Snape. She rips his throat out, and as he lies dying, Harry goes all slack-jawed yokel again and stands there staring at the memories leaking out of the man he hates above all others. If Auntie Muriel could see this, she would change her mind about Harry’s gormlessness. Hermione saves the day by conjuring a flask for Harry to capture Snape’s memories in. Snape looks into Harry’s eyes and dies.

OR DOES HE?

I think the best dissection of this nonsense was written by our own madderbrad on 12/15/09. I can do no better than to quote his remarks in full:

One of the most STUPID and CONTRIVED scenes in the entire book. In EVERY OTHER PASSAGE where Riddle has killed someone it's been via a “flash of green light.” The housekeeper and her children--green light. Grindlewald--green light. The goblin--green light.

But here? Why, Voldemort not only DOESN'T use the instantly-kills-him-dead curse, he also gets Nagini to do the deed!!!

Why, oh why, after just explaining his reasons for killing Snape--so that he, Voldemort, will personally become the Master of the Elder Wand--would the dark lord then turn around and use Nagini, or ANY proxy, to do the deed for him? Risking mastery of that wand?

And why not a curse that kills Snape instantly? Like *every other murder* that has preceded this scene in the book?

Answer--because Harry needed to sneak up and grab Snape's memories. So Rowling just needed to write it this way. No character-based reasons. No plot-based reasons. Just “because otherwise the plot wouldn't go where I need it to go” reasons.

Horrible. Just a horrible, horrible book.

THANK! YOU!

This is not even to mention the fact that, when Arthur and Harry were bitten by Nagini, they managed to live because, as mongooses Gryffindors, they’re obviously immune to snake venom, at least immune enough for treatment to be successful. Only a fellow snake dies at the teeth of another snake.

Wait a minute. I thought Dumbledore implied Snape had been “sorted too soon”? Doesn’t that mean he’s an honorary Gryffindor? Shouldn’t that therefore make him immune to snake venom, too, at least enough for him to live long enough to get treatment? So we can hope somebody came along with more sense and/or compassion than the Fool’s Gold Trio and gave him that treatment.

The first time I read this scene, I thought Snape behaved very strangely. He just stands there, barely moving, saying little, and what he does say does not resemble his usual smart, incisive speech patterns. Look at this typical sentence from Snape’s dialogue in chapter 1: “The Order is eschewing any form of transport that is controlled or regulated by the Ministry; they mistrust everything to do with the place.” In “The Prince’s Tale,” he speaks both cogently and sarcastically even when very angry about Dumbledore’s demand that Snape kill him: “You refuse to tell me everything, yet you expect that small service of me!” But standing here confronting Voldy, knowing he might be facing his death, the best he can come up with is, “You--you have performed extraordinary magic with that wand.” Usually he just repeats,“Let me find Potter. Let me bring him to you.” Why the difference? It can’t be because he knows Voldemort might kill him; he’s known that was a possibility ever since he turned double agent, particularly since the Dull Lord’s return three years earlier. Yet before this he’s had no trouble crafting long, complex sentences while talking to the DL.

Even more weird, Snape does not attempt to either escape or fight back when attacked by Nagini. This man is an expert duelist, as we saw in chapter 30: “Professor McGonagall moved faster than Harry could have believed: Her wand slashed through the air and for a split second Harry thought that Snape must crumple, unconscious, but the swiftness of his Shield Charm was such that McGonagall was thrown off balance.” But just two chapters and not more than a couple of hours later, he just stands there literally waiting to die: “And Voldemort swiped the air with the Elder Wand. It did nothing to Snape, who for a split second seemed to think he had been reprieved: But then Voldemort’s intention became clear. The snake’s cage was rolling through the air, and before Snape could do anything more than yell, it had encased him, head and shoulders, and Voldemort spoke in Parseltongue.”

So in the first case, Snape is attacked without warning and responds, not just instantaneously, but also so powerfully that his attacker is thrown off balance. In the second case, he is given ample warning through Voldemort’s behavior that he is in danger, yet when he thinks he’s been attacked in the same way, he just stands there. Then the snakeball rolls toward him, and he still just stands there. He doesn’t try to duck, run away, put up a Shield Charm, or take any other kind of evasive or defensive action.

Now, I ask you, does that make sense? It does not. As Judge Judy Sheindlin says, “It doesn’t make sense. And if it doesn’t make sense, it’s probably not true.”

There is another possibility.

As Luna Lovegood said, with the smartest Slytherins, you have to consider that what happened is what they meant to happen.

I’ve toyed with the idea of writing a fanfic in which Snape outsmarts both his “masters” and survives to escape Britain and live happily elsewhere. This is the way it would go:

Realizing he’d been screwed over by Dumbledore and would likely suffer the same fate with Voldemort, Snape makes plans to survive the final battle and establish a new life afterwards. He constructs a simulacrum of himself and hides it on the grounds of Hogwarts. He spells it to say Dull Lord-flattering remarks, as well as stereotypical things such as “Yes, my Lord,” “Let me go for the boy,” “My Lord knows I only seek to serve him,” and the like. He also fills it with the memories it will need to convince Harry they’re on the same side, and that Harry can trust him as a conduit for Dumbledore’s orders. When Voldy sends for Snape during the final battle, Snape realizes it’s time to put his plan into action. He activates his double, sends it to Voldy, Disillusions himself, and escapes to a new life of freedom and happiness. The double stands in front of Voldy, taking no action on its own, just responding to its “master.” Nagini kills the double, leaving Snape the true master of the Elder Wand, which is why it won’t work for Voldemort. Everything happens afterwards as it does in Rowling’s book.

Now that’s Slytherin cunning!