GoF Chapter Twenty-Five

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

*Harry’s taking a bath. This requires a lot of planning and re-arranging of his schedule, obviously, being about as rare as a royal visit for Harry.

*This chapter makes me think of poor mike_smith, who was teased with the idea of this incredibly special bathroom in HBP yet never saw it.

*That said, this is another place where you begin to suspect a woman wrote this book. Check out this bathroom! As someone who is unable to take a bath in her apartment, I write a lot of bath porn myself. Not meaning sex in the bathtub, just characters tend to have really nice bathrooms and lots of creamy bubble baths.

*Yay Myrtle! I’ve said about as much as I can say about her in this scene here.

*I will allow myself a little time to imagine that Myrtle talked a lot to Draco in this bathroom. Come on, he must love taking baths here. He and Pansy maybe wash each other’s hair, and when he’s alone he can cry into the bubbles.

*That is, he would if he were a character and not just a chess piece whose ultimate goal is to be a passer of wands.

*Harry is indignant that Cedric has been spied on in the bathroom. And not at all interested in that idea himself. He knows well enough what Cedric looks like with his manly muscles and handsome grey eyes. He’s probably even more heroic naked. Like a Greek God.

*Myrtle likes bossing Harry around. What’s funnier about this is that Harry has to think of it as being bossed around when this egg thing has just been an exercise in his being reluctant to just do what people tell him even though he can’t figure it out himself.

*Nearly all the bubbles had gone by the time Cedric discovered the meaning of the egg. That must have just killed Myrtle.

*Btw, just to keep score here, Cedric has now apparently figured out one clue on his own and Harry has figured out none.

*Harry doesn’t want to think about Myrtle zooming down to the lake with the contents of the toilet. I’d rather not think about the contents of the toilet zooming down into the lake. Especially a lake where Harry’s going to have to swim and Dennis Creevey fell into earlier.

*I refuse to believe it took Cedric longer than Harry to come up with merpeople.

*LOL—I love that Harry is annoyed that the Dursleys never "bothered" to give him swimming lessons, as if this is a basic necessity every kid needs. And really, was it a good idea to have him swimming laps at the beginning of the scene if swimming is supposed to be a problem?

*Ten to one that if Dudley actually falls into water in the series, he will flail about unable to swim and Harry will have to haul his hilariously big arse out for him. And then Dudley will make Harry tea like a House Elf (though remember he never actually thanked him for saving his life!)

*Also, isn’t it great the way it seems to never occur to Harry when he has a problem that hey—-magic!

*I wonder if it’s significant that Myrtle cares about being dead when others don’t. Update: no, because nothing is really significant.

*Now we get to the actual cool part of the chapter—Bartemius Crouch in Snape’s office!

*Oh no! Harry’s tripped over the step of plot contrivance!

*Is Snape’s nightshirt supposed to be grey to suggest it’s badly washed, like the house elves skip the bleach on his stuff? Or is it just a grey nightshirt? Which would be kind of funny because during the day he always wears black.

*ETA: It is grey because it reflects his lame, never-to-be-truly pure soul.

*You know, I know to some this scene puts a damper on the Snape/Filch friendship, but they do kind of sound like allies to me. Snape’s snapping at him because he’s annoyed, but Filch still loves him.

*Update: Snape has no relationships. It's all about Lily. He's thinking about her right now in this scene.

*Pyjama party, is it? Hee. Go Barty.

*Barty really is good at this. He just loves talking to people about his own crimes. And Harry’s crimes—he’s stolen from Snape’s storeroom, hasn’t he?

*Spots that never come off—ooh, Barty is chilling when you know what he’s really talking about.

*Snape in this scene seems genuinely not happy to have his Dark Mark. *Chalks up one for DDM!Snape*

*I forget if it was pauraque or black_dog who first pointed out the beauty of Snape’s retort to Moody but: "I, the Half-Blood Prince, shall prowl around after dark as it is my will! And you are not the boss of me!"

*It's sad that this scene now turns out to not have the meaning I thought it would. Snape doesn't care about Dumbledore trusting him because he's a better man now. Lily Lily Lily.

*Putting two and two together as only Snape could. Meaning that when Snape puts two and two together it always equals Harry.

*And suddenly Moody’s the one nervous about his own plan not working, so he warns Snape Dumbledore wants to know who’s got it in for Harry. This scene is truly hilarious. One of the best in the series. If one of them has "got Potter’s best interests at heart," it sure isn’t Moody here. ETA: Unfortunately, neither is it really Snape.

*And poor Filch doesn’t even get his egg. I so hope he’s the person who does magic later in life. Hopefully hexing Harry back—doesn’t he do something to Filch’s tongue in HBP? Shades of ton tongue toffee Muggle baiting?

*ETA: Oops, that magic later in life storyline was cut after CoS.

*If there’s one thing Crouch hates, it’s a Death Eater who walked free—that should really be in neon over his head. Or maybe sung out by a chorus line of ferrets with receding hairlines.

*And Harry happily hands over a great weapon to the Death Eater. Yay! I hope in years to come Harry always remembers to tell people that a Death Eater told him to become an Auror, and that’s how he got his career. ETA: Along with all the other things DEs taught him, like how awesome it is to cast Crucio!

*Btw, what is Barty looking for in Snape’s office? Is he stealing Potions ingredients for Polyjuice? That seems like poor-planning on his part. ETA: Too bad he didn't have that Polyjuice Hermione uses that lasts far longer than an hour.

*This chapter is actually quite good, I think mostly because it’s one in which Harry is just seeking out a clue, following instructions on how to find the answer, and then watching characters who actually know what’s going on talk.





Designated Hero
In fact, I’m beginning to notice that any scene where Harry is immobilized and invisible and forced to just watch tends to be one I like. (Except for a certain Prince's Tale...)

IITS
Or on the staircase—we just need Harry to get stuck here, okay?

Informed Attributes
Yeah, Harry would make a great Auror. As long as an Auror he’d be assigned a whole team of helpers to give him the answers to clues, and the bad guys can be counted on to have important conversations right where he happened to get stuck in something.

Ken and Andrew’s Rule of Plot Holes
Keep your eye on that map, the one the Death Eater just walked off with. It will magically return to Harry’s hands in the next book.

Light Bulb Moment
Harry’s flickers a bit here, though it doesn’t actually go on. This is Harry, after all.

Final score: 5

Comments

[baeraad.livejournal.com]

Aw, look at all those disappointed ETAs... :) This sort of strengthens my theory that the reason for Rowling's reputation for complex characterisation is that her characters keep doing and saying things that could be interpreted in any number of different ways, and the reader invariably puts a meaning to it that's much more interesting than what it eventually turns out that she had in mind.

[flyingskull.livejournal.com]

Preach it, man! I've been thinking that for years now.

Still, hats off and forelock touchings to JKR for using and perfectly exploiting her fandom. Despicable, but clever.

[courtaud.livejournal.com]

*It's sad that this scene now turns out to not have the meaning I thought it would. Snape doesn't care about Dumbledore trusting him because he's a better man now. Lily Lily Lily.

Where do tou get that Snape doesn't care about Dumbledore trusting him? He kept asking Dumbledore to be trusted until the very last and never was, only used. (I believe that Dumbledore gave false!Moody permission to search Snape's office as soon as he was asked.)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Where do tou get that Snape doesn't care about Dumbledore trusting him?

From the last book where I found out my impression of what Snape's mindset was was nothing like I read it in this scene. It was about Lily.

[(Anonymous)]

In this scene, when an ex-auror was menacing him and Dumbledore had allowed his office to be searched?

He was furious and humiliated and having Lily's portrait in his nighshirt's breastpocket wouldn't have changed that.

The only difference I see is that once we could believe that Dumbledore trusted Snape and wanted him to be spared humiliation, and now we know he never cared.

Or it's his life as a whole that was 'all about Lily'?

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

His whole life. When I first read this scene I thought that the importance of Dumbledore's trust went far beyond what it seems to really be about here.

[courtaud.livejournal.com]

Looking backward, for Snape founding his life on gaining - or deserving - Dumbledore's trust would have been as chimeric as founding it on Lily. (If I understood what you are saying here.)

[flyingskull.livejournal.com]

Snape, apparently, is NOT allowed to have a life to found things on. He's only got a childish crush that makes up his whole personality. *sigh*

sistermagpie you are one of the best. I'm sorry if I'm projecting onto you, but I keep reading all the ETAs as deep sad sighs. We deluded ourselves there was at least one character in the series who was layered and complex, but no, it was not to be.

[courtaud.livejournal.com]

Still waiting to know why living for Dumbledore's trust is better than living for Lily's memory. Expecially since Dumbledore's trust clearly isn't worth a damn.

And after seven books I'd say that Snape had a multifaceted personality. Do you really think that he was all in the memories he chose to show to Lily's son in order to make Harry trust him? (Yes, he loved Lily all his life with little reason and no encouragement. So?)

[flyingskull.livejournal.com]

Sorry, didn't mean to offend anyone.

Anyway, why live for Dumbledore's trust? Up until book six Snape could have several complex reasons for his choices, both the choice to become a DE and the choice to become a fifth columns. A three-dimensional character doesn't have one and only one motive for her/his actions, after all.

Do you really think that he was all in the memories he chose to show to Lily's son in order to make Harry trust him?

He was dying/dead when he coughed up those memories, so I'd think Harry's trust was kind of pointless at that point (sorry, ugly pun). But that's by the way. It's what the author clearly states. My irritation is born of the fact that what appeared to be a complex and interesting character is reduced ad absurdum to a one-note song in the last book.

[courtaud.livejournal.com]

I wasn't offended, I'm sorry if it looked to be so.

Harry still had to trust him, he had to listen to him on the little matter of getting himself killed by Voldemort.

[flyingskull.livejournal.com]

'S alright, I was uncertain. The perils of the internetz and all that jazz...

I'll have to re-read that part, I see. I hadn't got the impression that Snape's memories were so crucial to Harry's final decision, but that's always possible at a first reading, especially when one is rather nauseated by sentimentality - a defect of mine, I apologise for it, but can't help it.

[courtaud.livejournal.com]

Harry only had Snape's memories to know that he had to die, Dumbledore deserted his portrait.

I didn't get the tale in Snape's memory as sentimental. There was such a mess of misunderstanding, a girl who had overgrown her need for her imbarrassing first wizard friend, a boy who couldn't ever understand that because whatever he got from her was more than he could get from anyone else, and after that Dumbledore's cold blooded cruelty and mistrust, that it was only painful.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Dumbledore's trust *wasn't* the thing Snape was founding his life on in my mind. It was important to him and symbolized something in this scene, I thought, but I never imagined him just trying to live for Dumbledore or for Dumbledore's trust. But this is describing Snape's story as I imagined it before it was revealed.

[courtaud.livejournal.com]

I understood that you imagined Snape having a moral development of his own, not just a blind deferring to Lily's supposedly higher worth or senseless self-punishment.

I think this is still standing. He chose to live a life I wouldn't curse on my worst enemy in order to repair what he did. We have seen him protecting children and facing dangers and fighting his war without any reward and now we can also see that he didn't ever had Dumbledore as a friend, let alone as an example (and neither Lily, whom I dislike very much more than I ever believed possible).

Whatever moral evolution he had from the confused young man who joined the DE to the man we _did_ see in the books, he did it on his own strenght. Maybe he had to keep telling himself he was doing it for Lily in order not to poison himself, but he did, to quote someone, what was right and not what was easy.

(I don't think, for one, that he conjured a stretcher in order to take Sirius up to Hogwarts 'for Lily'; he did it because he loathed Sirius but he wouldn't drag his worst enemy the way Sirius dragged him when he was unconscious.)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

but he did, to quote someone, what was right and not what was easy.

Well, yeah. My point isn't that he didn't do what was right, it was that the character is a lot less interesting to me than I thought he was going to be. So I no longer think about what he might only be telling hismelf to cover up his greater moral development.

[montavilla.livejournal.com]

*Is Snape’s nightshirt supposed to be grey to suggest it’s badly washed, like the house elves skip the bleach on his stuff? Or is it just a grey nightshirt? Which would be kind of funny because during the day he always wears black.

That bugs me about SWM, too. What--the elves just refuse to wash Snape's underwear, while doing it invisibly for every other student in the school?

Or is washing extra at Hogwarts (like in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland), and Snape's parents won't pay it? Apparently the Dursleys will, or we'd hear Harry complain about it.

My theory is that Snape's underwear was grey because of a tragic laundry mistake. Before attending school that year, he tried mixing his whites with his junior Death Eater robes and they bled.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

LOL! I could totally believe it too! Honestly, we never hear about the financially-challenged Weasleys having grey underwear!

[courtaud.livejournal.com]

They had a perfect mum!

[aasaylva.livejournal.com]

I thought Snape's greying underwear and nightshirt were meant to signify he didn't change them often enough because he generally didn't and still doesn't care about personal hygiene - thence his greasy hair as well.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I think you're right--just like he just lets himself look the way he does because he thinks he looks great.

[flyingskull.livejournal.com]

Exactly like Harry who only has a bath every four years -a nd for Reasons of Competition - and cleans his trunk once every seven years.

Dirt, in Potterverse, is the new black... errr... grey.

[indongcho.livejournal.com]

Maybe he just doesn't shop for new clothes often, and has a bad habit of mixing the whites and blacks?

I've just realized that not once, in all of the books, were bathing arrangements mentioned. Where are the baths? If I were in charge I'd have a bathroom attached to each dormitory room. Actually, if I were in charge each student would have his or her own bathroom to use- I hate sharing them ;)

[aasaylva.livejournal.com]

Giggles. The weird thing about hygiene in Potterverse is, that it is sometimes hard to see how it COULD simply be soemthing the author just didn't mention. For example in GoF, when Harry returns from the graveyard, we are practically led by the hand to accompany his every step from Crouch/Moody's office to Dumbledore's office and then to the hospital wing. We are even told explicitly that Hermione looked away while he got into his pyjamas, but there isn't one drop of water splashed upon his heroic body in between. I mean, he had been bleeding, had been dragged around by a giant spider, had been rolling around the maze and then on the graveyard - there is no way in hell, he would not be covered in blood, gravel, grass, moss and sweat. But no - he just changes clothes. Brrr...

[aasaylva.livejournal.com]

Harry’s taking a bath. This requires a lot of planning and re-arranging of his schedule, obviously, being about as rare as a royal visit for Harry.
You know, before DH I would have taken this as pure snark. But since Harry's school trunk of doom - well...

and when he’s alone he can cry into the bubbles.
Where is the artist to draw this picture? Where???

ETA: It is grey because it reflects his lame, never-to-be-truly pure soul.
Worse. It shows that even his love for Lily didn't prompt him to take her advice concerning washing his garments!

*ETA: Oops, that magic later in life storyline was cut after CoS.
Like about three quarters of the story lines that had been set up during the first six books.

*If there’s one thing Crouch hates, it’s a Death Eater who walked free—that should really be in neon over his head. Or maybe sung out by a chorus line of ferrets with receding hairlines.
You win! And that should be an icon. (nods)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Worse. It shows that even his love for Lily didn't prompt him to take her advice concerning washing his garments!

And thus his fate was sealed.

Like about three quarters of the story lines that had been set up during the first six books.

And think of all the other ones she wanted to put in. Wow.

[cressida0201.livejournal.com]

Isn't this the chapter where Barty!Moody sees through Harry's invisibility cloak? The sooper speshul extra fancy cloak that not even Death itself can see through?

[flyingskull.livejournal.com]

Well, Death may not be able to see through it, but Dumbledore, Moody and Barty easily can. Make of that what you will. Clearly Death is not such a powerful entity in this 'verse. After all, Harry keeps raspberrying in his face all the time.

That's like Draco Wand of DoomTM which is invincible, but he had it since year one and was defeated every time... or what?

[flyingskull.livejournal.com]

That is, he would if he were a character and not just a chess piece whose ultimate goal is to be a passer of wands.

Sad, innit? I still can't understand the Draco-Wand thing. I'm obviously terminally stupid - or reading Carpet!Book ruined my brain as well as my eyes - but I still can't see the need of the Wand of DoomTM to be Draco's wand. Or a wand that Draco got feck knows where or when. Or a wand that Draco just happened to find seconds before Harry the Hero needed to steal a wand. Or whatever.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I got the basic jist of it, or at least where it was supposed to end up. It was just like replacing what I thought was something interesting with a technical equation that wasn't too exciting.

[flyingskull.livejournal.com]

It was just like replacing what I thought was something interesting with a technical equation that wasn't too exciting.

I couldn't in a millions years have found better phrasing. That's exactly my reaction. Thank you.

[(Anonymous)]

ah, this goes back to half-blood prince doesn't it?

i'm not sure because i just read HBP once, and it was a skim, but

dumbledore was the rightful owner for a while
and draco disarmed dumbledore when he was about to kill him, and then ran away. so it technically belonged to draco, was buried with dumbledore, stolen by voldemort, but at some point harry disarmed draco and stole his wand, and apparently when you disarm someone you become in possession of ALL the wands they own, so dumbledores wand sittin in his grave is harry's now as well, when voldemort stole it, it wasn't rightfully owned by him, so harry nicked it from voldemort, and..since he was the rightful owner, it worked?

[flyingskull.livejournal.com]

Harry never disarmed Draco, Harry stole Draco's wand.

It'll never compute, you know? Why should Draco have the SUPAHWANDYAY? Draco has had his own wand since he was eleven. Dumbledore stole the wand from Grindewald anyway because the SUPAHWAND can't be won in a duel, it can't be beaten. So Draco couldn't have expelliarmused it because it can't be done. Snape stole the wand from Dumbledore's coffin and took it to Voldemort who wanted the SUPAHWAND. So how come Draco is holding it laxly in his hand when Harry grabs it and runs away? Yes, and later tells it as if it had been a duel, but that's impossible because the SUPAHWAND can't be beaten, besides, Harry always lies to himself and hence others.

Giant Monster Plothole is what it is. Immense galaxy-wide plothole. Black hole conmsuming every appearance of reason and logic in a plot.

As for owning ALL the wands a person owes when you expelliarmus said person... well, Snape and Dumbledore would own all the wands in existence when alive, then, wouldn't they? Not to mention the chaos ensuing the expelliarmus lessons in the D.A. Nope, sorry, it's like the Fidelius or the Polyjuice not to mention the Invisibility Cloak. Authors, no matter what they think, aren't allowed to change every law of the world they've built if they want to be called 'decent authors' or better. 'S not that hard. Take notes and refer to them when writing. Fanfic writers do it. Good authors do it. Hacks who make more money than it's good for their writing skills do not do it. Simple as that.