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

[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.