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deathtocapslock2017-04-24 12:23 pm
for-diddled.livejournal.com) wrote in deathtocapslock2017-04-24 12:23 pm
PS Chapter Seventeen: "The Man with Two Faces"
* The big reveal in this book is quite a good one, IMHO. Just like the reveal at the end of a good detective story, it seems completely out of the blue, but once you go back and reread the book you can see that the author scattered clues throughout the book as to the true identity of the villain. It’s interesting to compare this with the reveals in HBP (where it was painfully obvious Draco was up to something, and where the mystery surrounding the Half-Blood Prince’s identity had little interest and even less relevance to the wider story) and DH (where the whole Deathly Hallows idea was just pulled out of Rowling’s backside with no groundwork at all), to see how Rowling’s narrative powers declined as the series went on.
* So it turns out that Snape wasn’t trying to hurt Harry at all, but was actually saving his life. Not that this revelation ever causes Harry (or anybody else, for that matter) to re-evaluate their dislike of Snape.
* It’s a pity Quirrell’s tenure as Muggle Studies professor didn’t involve watching more muggle action moves, or he’d have known to kill Harry now rather than stand around monologuing.
* “The mirror is the key to finding the Stone.” Erm, how do you actually know that, Quirrell? If I was Dumbledore, I’d have the Mirror there as a kind of distraction, and then hide the Philosopher’s Stone underneath a floorboard or behind a loose brick in the wall or something. Maybe in one of the earlier rooms, because everybody’s just going to assume that the Stone would be hidden in the final room and press on to that without bothering to search the earlier chambers. Oh, and then I’d wire up the hiding place to a landmine or some other booby trap so that anybody who tries to tamper with it immediately gets blown up.
* The idea that Quirrell would manufacture some crisis in London to get Dumbledore out of the way sounds plausible until you remember that this is a world where people can teleport hundreds of miles using magic, and that Dumbledore could go to the Ministry, find out he’s not needed, and come back again within the space of five minutes.
* How exactly was Voldemort supposed to punish Quirrel? It seems like that would be pretty difficult to do when you’re a disembodied spirit and can’t use a wand or anything.
* “Harry was remembering his trip to Diagon Alley – how could he have been so stupid? He’d seen Quirrell there that very day, shaken hands with him in the Leakey Cauldron.” Well, I don’t know, the wizarding world is very small, Diagon Alley is one of its two main retail areas, and in the run-up to the new school year there’d probably be lots of people buying stuff. A good percentage of the wizarding world was probably there that day, so seeing Quirrell isn’t necessarily that suspicious.
* It must have been pretty unpleasant for Voldemort, spending all year hidden inside a turban. No wonder he’s so cranky.
* “[O]nce I have the Elixir of Life, I will be able to create a body of my own.” Erm, how? I was under the impression that the Elixir of Life was useful for keeping people from dying, not for making entirely new bodies.
* “Then kill him, fool, and be done!” Hmm, so Voldemort apparently hasn’t yet got that silly “Only I, personally, am allowed to kill Harry Potter” hang-up yet. I wonder what happened to change this?
* I note that Quirrell is described as raising his “hand”, not his wand, to kill Harry. So is he going to use a wandless Avarda Kedavra, then?
* Harry wakes up in the hospital wing to find his friends have all sent him sweets and presents, which is nice of them. Not that Harry every thinks to return the favour when they’re in hospital, usually for some misfortune that happened whilst they were helping out on one of Harry’s escapades.
* “What happened between you and Professor Quirrell down in the dungeons is a complete secret, so, naturally, the whole school knows” is a nice one-liner, but once you stop to think about it you realise that the only people who did know what happened were Harry, who was unconscious, Quirrell, who was dead, Voldemort, who’d fled, and Dumbledore himself. So Dumbledore must have been the one to tell everybody, for some reason.
* I don’t think we ever find out why Harry blacked out after his fight with Quirrell, but I assume that being too close to Voldemort is bad for him or something.
* Am I the only one who finds Dumbledore’s statement that “Nicholas and I have had a little chat and agreed [that destroying the Stone and let him die is] for the best” a little bit sinister?
* Voldemort “left Quirrell to die; he shows just as little mercy to his followers as his enemies.” To be fair, Voldemort was still just a face on the back of Quirrell’s head, so there’s not much he could have done besides hang around and look sympathetic.
* I can never read Dumbledore’s explanation about how Harry is protected by his mother’s love with thinking of that old “Harry Potter in five seconds” video.
* “You see, only one who wanted to find the Stone – find it, but not use it – would be able to get it, otherwise they’d just see themselves making gold or drinking the Elixir of Life.” Of course, Quirrell saw himself giving the Stone to Voldemort, so shouldn’t he have been able to get it? “I want the Stone so I can give it to someone else” hardly counts as wanting to “use” the Stone, at least no more than “I want the Stone so I can stop someone else getting it” does. Oh dear,maths continuity.
* Plus, how was Flamel meant to make more Elixir if he couldn’t get the Stone and nobody else could get it to give him? Had he already decided (/had Dumbledore already decided for him) that it was time to die, and he wasn’t going to need any more Elixir?
* Harry thinks that Dumbledore knew that he was going to face Voldemort alone and just sat back and let him, which for some reason doesn’t bother him in the slightest.
* It’s nice to see that Hagrid’s learnt his lesson from his screw-up earlier in the book, and somewhat less nice to realise that he’s going to completely forget everything he’s learnt by the time COS starts.
* Harry seems surprisingly sympathetic towards Hagrid when he bursts into tears. I think a real eleven-year-old would just feel kind of awkward and embarrassed and wouldn’t really know what to do.
* And now we come to many people’s least favourite scene in PS, when Dumbledore make it look like the Slytherins have won the house cup only to snatch their victory away at the last minute. There are multiple things wrong with this scene, so instead of wasting time I’ll just list the most egregious problems:
- Rowling’s trying to let her protagonist have his cake and eat it. Harry learns the valuable moral lesson that there are more important things than winning the house cup, only to win the house cup anyway. The ultimate effect is to both undermine the lesson Rowling’s trying to teach and make it look like she doesn’t really have the courage of her convictions.
- Letting Slytherin think they’ve won before snatching away their prize at the last minute is just going to completely humiliate them with no apparent justification.
- Harry, Ron, and Hermione all risked their lives to stop the return of the most dangerous dark wizard in a century. They deserve a better reward than a few points in an ultimately meaningless intramural house cup competition.
* One good thing about the ending is that Rowling doesn’t waste time. The last important thing happens and then boom, the book is finished within two pages.
* I wonder where the children go to change out of their wizarding clothes. We never hear of any changing carriages, I doubt they’d be comfortable just stripping off in the compartments, and there wouldn’t be enough toilets for everybody to change in.
* It’s a good idea to make the students leave Platform 9¾ in small groups to avoid attracting attention. It would be an even better idea to make the Hogwarts Express go to and from a smaller, quieter station, but I suppose that would require more common sense than the wizarding world seems to possess.
* So it turns out that Snape wasn’t trying to hurt Harry at all, but was actually saving his life. Not that this revelation ever causes Harry (or anybody else, for that matter) to re-evaluate their dislike of Snape.
* It’s a pity Quirrell’s tenure as Muggle Studies professor didn’t involve watching more muggle action moves, or he’d have known to kill Harry now rather than stand around monologuing.
* “The mirror is the key to finding the Stone.” Erm, how do you actually know that, Quirrell? If I was Dumbledore, I’d have the Mirror there as a kind of distraction, and then hide the Philosopher’s Stone underneath a floorboard or behind a loose brick in the wall or something. Maybe in one of the earlier rooms, because everybody’s just going to assume that the Stone would be hidden in the final room and press on to that without bothering to search the earlier chambers. Oh, and then I’d wire up the hiding place to a landmine or some other booby trap so that anybody who tries to tamper with it immediately gets blown up.
* The idea that Quirrell would manufacture some crisis in London to get Dumbledore out of the way sounds plausible until you remember that this is a world where people can teleport hundreds of miles using magic, and that Dumbledore could go to the Ministry, find out he’s not needed, and come back again within the space of five minutes.
* How exactly was Voldemort supposed to punish Quirrel? It seems like that would be pretty difficult to do when you’re a disembodied spirit and can’t use a wand or anything.
* “Harry was remembering his trip to Diagon Alley – how could he have been so stupid? He’d seen Quirrell there that very day, shaken hands with him in the Leakey Cauldron.” Well, I don’t know, the wizarding world is very small, Diagon Alley is one of its two main retail areas, and in the run-up to the new school year there’d probably be lots of people buying stuff. A good percentage of the wizarding world was probably there that day, so seeing Quirrell isn’t necessarily that suspicious.
* It must have been pretty unpleasant for Voldemort, spending all year hidden inside a turban. No wonder he’s so cranky.
* “[O]nce I have the Elixir of Life, I will be able to create a body of my own.” Erm, how? I was under the impression that the Elixir of Life was useful for keeping people from dying, not for making entirely new bodies.
* “Then kill him, fool, and be done!” Hmm, so Voldemort apparently hasn’t yet got that silly “Only I, personally, am allowed to kill Harry Potter” hang-up yet. I wonder what happened to change this?
* I note that Quirrell is described as raising his “hand”, not his wand, to kill Harry. So is he going to use a wandless Avarda Kedavra, then?
* Harry wakes up in the hospital wing to find his friends have all sent him sweets and presents, which is nice of them. Not that Harry every thinks to return the favour when they’re in hospital, usually for some misfortune that happened whilst they were helping out on one of Harry’s escapades.
* “What happened between you and Professor Quirrell down in the dungeons is a complete secret, so, naturally, the whole school knows” is a nice one-liner, but once you stop to think about it you realise that the only people who did know what happened were Harry, who was unconscious, Quirrell, who was dead, Voldemort, who’d fled, and Dumbledore himself. So Dumbledore must have been the one to tell everybody, for some reason.
* I don’t think we ever find out why Harry blacked out after his fight with Quirrell, but I assume that being too close to Voldemort is bad for him or something.
* Am I the only one who finds Dumbledore’s statement that “Nicholas and I have had a little chat and agreed [that destroying the Stone and let him die is] for the best” a little bit sinister?
* Voldemort “left Quirrell to die; he shows just as little mercy to his followers as his enemies.” To be fair, Voldemort was still just a face on the back of Quirrell’s head, so there’s not much he could have done besides hang around and look sympathetic.
* I can never read Dumbledore’s explanation about how Harry is protected by his mother’s love with thinking of that old “Harry Potter in five seconds” video.
* “You see, only one who wanted to find the Stone – find it, but not use it – would be able to get it, otherwise they’d just see themselves making gold or drinking the Elixir of Life.” Of course, Quirrell saw himself giving the Stone to Voldemort, so shouldn’t he have been able to get it? “I want the Stone so I can give it to someone else” hardly counts as wanting to “use” the Stone, at least no more than “I want the Stone so I can stop someone else getting it” does. Oh dear,
* Plus, how was Flamel meant to make more Elixir if he couldn’t get the Stone and nobody else could get it to give him? Had he already decided (/had Dumbledore already decided for him) that it was time to die, and he wasn’t going to need any more Elixir?
* Harry thinks that Dumbledore knew that he was going to face Voldemort alone and just sat back and let him, which for some reason doesn’t bother him in the slightest.
* It’s nice to see that Hagrid’s learnt his lesson from his screw-up earlier in the book, and somewhat less nice to realise that he’s going to completely forget everything he’s learnt by the time COS starts.
* Harry seems surprisingly sympathetic towards Hagrid when he bursts into tears. I think a real eleven-year-old would just feel kind of awkward and embarrassed and wouldn’t really know what to do.
* And now we come to many people’s least favourite scene in PS, when Dumbledore make it look like the Slytherins have won the house cup only to snatch their victory away at the last minute. There are multiple things wrong with this scene, so instead of wasting time I’ll just list the most egregious problems:
- Rowling’s trying to let her protagonist have his cake and eat it. Harry learns the valuable moral lesson that there are more important things than winning the house cup, only to win the house cup anyway. The ultimate effect is to both undermine the lesson Rowling’s trying to teach and make it look like she doesn’t really have the courage of her convictions.
- Letting Slytherin think they’ve won before snatching away their prize at the last minute is just going to completely humiliate them with no apparent justification.
- Harry, Ron, and Hermione all risked their lives to stop the return of the most dangerous dark wizard in a century. They deserve a better reward than a few points in an ultimately meaningless intramural house cup competition.
* One good thing about the ending is that Rowling doesn’t waste time. The last important thing happens and then boom, the book is finished within two pages.
* I wonder where the children go to change out of their wizarding clothes. We never hear of any changing carriages, I doubt they’d be comfortable just stripping off in the compartments, and there wouldn’t be enough toilets for everybody to change in.
* It’s a good idea to make the students leave Platform 9¾ in small groups to avoid attracting attention. It would be an even better idea to make the Hogwarts Express go to and from a smaller, quieter station, but I suppose that would require more common sense than the wizarding world seems to possess.
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/where it was painfully obvious Draco was up to something/
True, but I think that the question was supposed to be exactly *what* he was up to.
/So it turns out that Snape wasn’t trying to hurt Harry at all, but was actually saving his life. Not that this revelation ever causes Harry (or anybody else, for that matter) to re-evaluate their dislike of Snape./
And before Harry can start to re-evaluate his opinion of Snape, Dumbledore helpfully adds that the only reason Snape did it was because of a life-debt. Not because it was the right thing to do. Not because, as a teacher, it is his responsibility to keep his students safe. The lesson of the book, that just because someone is mean and unpleasant doesn't mean that they're an evil person who wants to kill you, eventually comes to nothing, because Harry doesn't learn from it. He never apologizes to Snape or even talks to him about what happened. Dumbledore's told him everything he needs to know, so there's no need to seek out Snape after class and talk to him.
/How exactly was Voldemort supposed to punish Quirrel? It seems like that would be pretty difficult to do when you’re a disembodied spirit and can’t use a wand or anything./
Since he's in Quirrell's head, I could see him inflicting mental migraines on Quirrell. He messed around with Harry's head in OotP, after all.
/“Then kill him, fool, and be done!” Hmm, so Voldemort apparently hasn’t yet got that silly “Only I, personally, am allowed to kill Harry Potter” hang-up yet./
Nice catch!
/the only people who did know what happened were Harry, who was unconscious, Quirrell, who was dead, Voldemort, who’d fled, and Dumbledore himself./
Just like the only people who would've known what happened at Godric's Hollow were James and Lily, both dead, Harry, an infant, and Voldemort, who'd also fled.
/Harry is protected by his mother’s love/
But not his father's. Even though James also died trying to protect both of them (and if sacrificing your life for another was enough, shouldn't that also have protected Lily?).
/he’s going to completely forget everything he’s learnt by the time COS starts/
As does Harry. COS starts and Snape's back to "the evil teacher."
/Letting Slytherin think they’ve won before snatching away their prize at the last minute is just going to completely humiliate them with no apparent justification./
Slytherin has been established as the House of bullies and mean kids, so this is supposed to feel good for the reader because it feels like Draco and the others have gotten their just desserts. But if Dumbledore is supposed to be the wise and fair adult, then, no, he shouldn't have done this. There is no reason why he had to pull this bait and switch. If JKR still wanted it to be a surprise, then Harry could've just walked into the Great Hall once he'd recovered and then, to his surprise, seen that it was decorated in Gryffindor colors. Then someone could've told him, "Oh, didn't you know? Gryffindor's won the House Cup!" And then he could've found out how.
/They deserve a better reward than a few points in an ultimately meaningless intramural house cup competition./
Like Tom Riddle's award for special services to the school? ;)
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//But not his father's. Even though James also died trying to protect both of them (and if sacrificing your life for another was enough, shouldn't that also have protected Lily?).//
It only seems to work if they're offered the choice to step aside and live which is the only main difference between the ways that Voldemort killed James and Lily, though I don't remember that ever being properly clarified in the books.
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I think this is one of the times where the whole idea of "The series grows up as Harry does" causes problems. In a children's book, the wise old headmaster putting the house of bullies in its rightful place would work as an idea, but if the series is going to end up including adult books too then the whole series needs to make sense from an adult perspective, otherwise it just doesn't work. Ideally the first few Potter books should have read a bit like To Kill A Mockingbird: clearly written from a child's perspective, but in such a way that they work as adult literature too.
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//* The idea that Quirrell would manufacture some crisis in London to get Dumbledore out of the way sounds plausible until you remember that this is a world where people can teleport hundreds of miles using magic, and that Dumbledore could go to the Ministry, find out he’s not needed, and come back again within the space of five minutes.//
I've always thought that the walk from the castle to the edge of the expansive Hogwarts grounds and back so that he could apparate would be what stalled him (even though in book 6 he just used a broom).
//* “[O]nce I have the Elixir of Life, I will be able to create a body of my own.” Erm, how? I was under the impression that the Elixir of Life was useful for keeping people from dying, not for making entirely new bodies.//
I assume he was going to use it for some kind of resurrection ritual like he did in book 4, using the Elixir to somehow restore him more fully.
//* “Then kill him, fool, and be done!” Hmm, so Voldemort apparently hasn’t yet got that silly “Only I, personally, am allowed to kill Harry Potter” hang-up yet. I wonder what happened to change this?//
I like the theory that each time he created a Horcrux (I think it was after book 1 that he created Nagini), or used extremely dark magic to survive (the ritual), and then each time one was destroyed (the diary) he became less and less of what he'd been. So by the time we properly see him again in book 4 he's completely insane and rather incompetent.
//* And now we come to many people’s least favourite scene in PS, when Dumbledore make it look like the Slytherins have won the house cup only to snatch their victory away at the last minute.//
Reading it you're clearly meant to celebrate with Harry but this was just straight up cruel of Dumbledore. At least it makes some sense that the other houses celebrate since it's breaking Slytherin's winning streak.
//- Harry, Ron, and Hermione all risked their lives to stop the return of the most dangerous dark wizard in a century. They deserve a better reward than a few points in an ultimately meaningless intramural house cup competition.//
Honestly rewarding them points for this is strange for several reasons, it's a non school activity and totally reckless behaviour to reward, and Harry being there only made the stone vulnerable to Voldemort. If the Trio hadn't gone down there and instead waited for Dumbledore to get McGonagall's message and return then he would have found Voldemort still in that room unable to extract the stone (which could have potentially avoided his return). The only thing the Trio going down there accomplished was in making the stone vulnerable, killing Quirrell and letting Voldemort get away. It seems like Dumbledore is really only rewarding Harry in order to reinforce his reckless behaviour about facing Voldemort.
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In one of the later books (GOF?) it's established that the headmaster can suspend the anti-apparition spells if he wants, so I don't think that would be a problem. Even if it was, McGonagall tells Harry that Dumbledore's left sometime during the day, and he doesn't show up again until Harry's already gone down the trap door late at night. Expansive as the Hogwarts grounds are, I don't think they're big enough that it would take hours to walk to the nearest edge and back.
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Just the thought of Voldemort 'hanging around and looking sympathetic' made me chuckle.
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That is something we see over and over again. Whenever Harry learns a lesson, she quickly cancels it out.
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Rowling didn't invent Apparition until book 2
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And sadly, Rowling didn't make use of the potential for Harry to revisit this in DH with a new perspective... "Wait, if his plan was for me to die all along, did he only let me face Voldemort because he hoped I'd die and take a Horcrux with me? In my first year, did he think I was the only Horcrux, and my death would be the end of it?" That could have been interesting.
That "little chat" sounds extremely sinister. How often does anyone say "we had a little chat" and it's perfectly harmless?
Never mind a smaller Muggle station; why can't they build their own? If they can hide an entire railway line cutting across two countries plus a hospital, the ministry offices, assorted houses, and a whole neighborhood in London, surely they can find a way to hide a train station somewhere.
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Wizards seem to like their traditions so I'm not surprised they haven't built a new station somewhere more convenient, it's possible that they can't and simply originally re-purposed a muggle train & railway then made the muggles forget about it.