OotP Chapter Eighteen

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

*Recently I remember somebody saying something about even how when Harry is upset he's still so kind that he's sweet to animals. In fact Harry is as careless about animals in his anger as he is about people. He's obnoxious to Hedwig and apologizes, and here he squeezes a bullfrog violently, much like he squeezed the bowtruckle. No, I'm not accusing him of animal abuse, but he's no Francis of Assisi either, as I remember him being described. He's nice to animals when the text is making a point about how awful people are mean to animals, and then the text forgets about it.

*Speaking of animals, the class is practicing charms on animals that are quite annoyed at them for doing it, but that doesn't count as being mean to animals.

*Hermione is practicing her silencio charm, which will later completely disarm DEs, the idea being that clever underdogs with less power can outwit far more sophisticated enemies, though what comes across is more that DEs fight so kids can beat them.

*Are we honestly supposed to believe nobody ever thought of silencing somebody so they couldn't do a spell? I'm surprised this isn't a common Wizarding Punishment for crimes. How exactly do adults fight if not by doing stuff like this? There's not that much stuff that's required in fighting, after all.

*Of course, if you go down that road you start wondering why anybody fights using anything but AK, expelliarimus and stupefy.

*Harry is only especially gifted in cool magic, while Hermione continues to surpass him in all things banal. To review: the twins do flashy things that are of no use to anyone (except they really are), Hermione does non-flashy stuff that's very useful, Harry does everything connected to angst and evil. Ron's just generally useless. Oh, and Ginny does the bat-bogey hex which is more awesome than everyone else except Harry's stuff combined.

*Angelina says she thinks McGonogall went to Dumbledore, who then forced Umbridge let Gryffindor reform the Quidditch team, as if that's a great thing for Dumbledore to do, proving his awesomeness. You know, as headmaster shouldn't Dumbledore being looking out for these kinds of things anyway? Should somebody really have to go to him and demand this? You'd think the whole school would be petitioning him.

*What to make of Hermione's sudden misgivings about the DA? As a character trait for Hermione that works--she's always thinking and insecure underneath so questions herself (unless somebody challenges her, in which case she's stubborn and won't listen). But in this book it feels to me like another handy way to use Hermione to herd thought processes. She makes up the club, but then must also be the person to question the club while everybody else just reacts to her, because Harry and Ron are too dull-witted to think at all.

*So checking off Hermione's "Expositional To Do" list, now she's got the DA established she can start dropping hints that Something's Coming with Sirius, etc.

*If Hermione more often questioned along the same lines I am, I'd probably find this more satisfying.

*Hermione sounds like Ron's mother, according to Ron. ::shudder::

*We're not in fanon anymore. The kids can't just do an umbrella spell so they don't get rained on.

*Seriously, Wizards came up with spell to make people dance or turn their legs to jelly, but nobody's come up with an umbrella spell. The Wizarding World in a nutshell.

*Last year Harry could feel when Voldemort was feeling hatred; now he can feel his joy too. Are they just more connected now or is that significant? Like, is there something to the fact that Harry can feel Voldemort's joy, like that they're becoming more alike? ETA: Yes, they did become more alike, but I don't think I was supposed to notice.

*I hope Voldemort's feeling Harry's feelings too. Imagine being stuck with a teenager's mood swings: "He's feeling pleased…somebody likes him." "He's in a snit. Nobody understands him." No wonder he wants Harry dead. It's like being mentally linked to Pitt the Younger from Blackadder.

* "The Weapon" is back, taunting us with a far more interesting plan that the one Voldemort is actually using. Damn that weapon!

* I kind of keep wishing the elves would rebel—but only to tell Hermione to stop intentionally cluttering up the Common Room that they have to clean. ETA: Rebel? Nonsense! Happy masters make happy slaves make happy children!

*This was also where in my first reading I thought we'd find out Sirius or Harry or Neville was being befuddled. Is that information about befuddlement there for future developments, or just so Harry can drift off to sleep thinking about Sirius being reckless? ETA: Guess we got that answer--it's the latter.

*I guess that's why Harry never actually accepts the fact that his own mistakes led to Sirius' death since as usual the real answer is right here for us. It wasn't Snape's fault, but it wasn't Harry's either. It was Sirius' fault because he's very very reckless.

*Dobby the Free Elf has so much more dignity than Kreacher the rebellious slave, the way he looks up at Harry with "positive admiration" and bows so that his nose touches the floor. See, Hermione knows the score here. Forcing someone into slavery isn't that great. Much better to have someone who bows and scrapes and does your bidding just because they adore you because you made them free. ETA: Or gave them a cheap necklace. Kreacher, you're still dead to me.

*Props to Harry here for being smart enough not to run off to see the RoR the second he hears about it, even if he has to hear Hermione's voice to do it.

*I can sort of understand Hermione/Snape when you see the kind of relationship she has to authority. Hermione feels mostly confident about something when a Good Adult (usually Dumbledore) is attached to it, which is more about emotion than logic. Which is good, because if you're really relying only on your brains, you're probably evil. The heart does much better thinking.

*However, this quality also makes her seem younger than 16, because it seems like the same impulse she had at 11. ETA: On second thought, it just makes her seem like a Wizard. The end of this journey is the same as the beginning: look up to Dumbledore. And then look up to Harry.

*Does the map show where everybody in the school is? I'm surprised you can find anybody with the hundreds of dots that must be moving around. ETA: After HBP I guess we know that it does show everybody. I'm surprised you can read anything on it.

*There's no mention of a solitary Draco practicing piano somewhere, so apparently it doesn't pick up fanon characters.

*Nice that all the books in the room are careful to imply these books are for people being attacked by others. I'm surprised there wasn't one called, "Cursing for Good Guys" of "Everything is Self-Defense If I'm Doing It."

*What is a dark wizard, exactly? Dark detectors are supposed to be able to tell—would it go off if one of the Slytherins walked in? Is anyone ever surprised to set one off? (Harry's used an Unforgivable, for instance—and what about Snape? He's described as a Dark Wizard.) ETA: Well, that won't ever be answered. Dark Magic? It's what those other people do!

*Harry mentions how the detectors can be fooled, because like so much else it's all-powerful but also totally useless as the plot demands.

*Hermione insists on giving Harry authority, because Gryffs love authority when they're the ones possessing it. Hermione also wants to name the group for "team spirit." You know, that thing that's so useful in singling out traitors and pressuring people to go along with the crowd.

*Note nobody says, "Wtf do we need a leader and team spirit for? We're not a team, we're here to learn DADA. Piss off with your team spirit."

*Can you imagine the way the Gryffindors would have reacted if the group had elected somebody else? As if any of them would bow to Terry Boot.

*Ginny comes up with the name Dumbledore's Army and everybody laughs cause she so rebellious and cool and witty. Not to mention right. Defense Association is far too neutral. This is an army for Dumbledore.

*At the next meeting perhaps they'll hand out the uniforms. Hufflepuffs? You get the red shirts.

*Hermione pins the damn paper with that title to the wall, for easy reference once they get caught. I'm sure whoever finds it will know it's meant to be sarcastic.

*Harry shuts up Zach Smith by revealing expelliarimus helped him against Voldemort. Yes, Zach just opens his mouth "stupidly" after claiming that charm wouldn't help against Voldemort. What else can he say? Harry Potter pwns all!

*But again, WHY would anyone think that Expelliarimus wouldn't work? What are all these other spells the DEs are supposed to be using? Wouldn't that spell either be something everybody used or the DEs had a good defense against? It's like if this was a Muggle class and Harry said, "Let's work on punching," and Zach said, "THAT won't be much good in a fight! Bad guys don't merely HIT people!" just so Harry could say he hitting does indeed help against bad guys.

*I have this image, when Zach opens his mouth stupidly, of him thinking, "Why do I always have to feed lines to challenge Harry, only to be shocked into silence by Harry's easily anticipated response?" And people think once thought Zacharias Smith was Canon's answer to Fanon!Draco, Ice King of the bon mots?

* Usually Neville can't even perform a charm, much less focus it on something as small as a wand. Harry's mere presence fills him with that elusive confidence he needed. Only bad kids truly lack skill.

*WTF is with all the hostility toward Zach? I hate to think what might happen if, as in fanfic, Slytherins showed up to this thing. They'd have to wash them off the walls.

*Not that I can't see the twins doing this, but you'd think Zach would, uh, notice. His needing Harry to figure out the twins are hexing him and put a stop to it is a little emasculating, wouldn't you say?

*Btw, no, it's not bad of the twins to be hexing him from behind at all. They can obviously tell he's the kind of person who'll push tiny children out of the way in his cowardly race away from the bad guys. Can't you just tell how cowardly Zach is in this scene?

*If I were Marietta I'd look sour too, dragged along to this meeting so I could watch Harry and Cho butter each other up. I wonder just what their relationship is that she's willing to do this for Cho. Cho seems like a very high-maintenance friend. Marietta's probably already sat up with her nights, slipped her in after curfew and accompanied her to a free clinic for a pregnancy test by now. No wonder Cho feels guilty enough to defend her—she probably was privy to the stress Marietta was under all year. Cho here tells Harry flat-out that Marietta is getting pressured by her parents to have nothing to do with stuff like this (Cho's family don't seem to work for the Ministry).

*Not that this makes any impression on Harry. I think when Cho talks about Marietta and her problems and her family Harry just hears, "blah blah blah blah blah. You make me nervous."

I seemed to have forgotten Jabootu for this one. Go figure.

Comments

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

It's like it says in one of the wonderful HP essays on ferretbrain: "When Harry Met Buffy":

"It's the To Kill a Mockingbird school of children's fiction: the child gradually learns about the complexities of the real world, progressing from a nave worldview to a sophisticated one over the course of the story. His Dark Materials follows a similar formula. The problem with Potter is that the "real world" of the Potterverse is so utterly childish. Harry is growing up into a world where everybody is still obsessed with school, where the only person that He Who Must Not Be Named is afraid of is his old teacher, where three fifteen year old kids competing in a school sporting event is international news.

So Harry's journey is that of a child growing up and learning about the world, but what he learns is that there is no world outside of Hogwarts."

Read the whole essay here:

http://www.ferretbrain.com/articles/article-128.html

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

I had read that essay. Some time ago. But the penny never dropped as to *why* Harry was getting stupider and stupider as the series went on. Evidently, in the Potterverse, you peak at about the age of 10. Once you go off to school and get Sorted it's all downhill from there.

I mean, really. Knowing hardly any magic doesn't seem to slow Harry down a bit in books 1&2. And it's believable back then. As the series progresses Rowling seems to end up doing backbends trying to keep convincing us over and over that Harry doesn't really know any magic.

Well, of course not. He's getting close to being an adult. Adults are worthless by definition.

Journey into Adulthood

[cressida0201.livejournal.com]

You know, if the fact that Harry really should have left the Stone alone in PS was the sort of thing he had learned as the series became more "adult" and "complex," that would have been awesome. It acknowledges that things aren't as simple as they sometimes seem, but without really detracting from all the bravery and ingenuity that Harry and his friends had to expend to (as they thought) protect the Stone in PS/SS. JKR even seems to have been groping toward this sort of point with what happens to Sirius later in OotP, but it doesn't come through with any sort of clarity or elegance.

Again about the transition from children's books to (young) adult books I really liked a point in another of Hemmens' articles ("When Harry Met Enid" (http://www.ferretbrain.com/articles/article-44.html)):

Snape in the first book is complex in precisely the right way for a children's book. We start out thinking that he is Bad, but it turns out that he is Good. This is a nice twist, and children are smart enough to appreciate the moral complexity of it. Snape is horrible, but he is a good person. Snape in the later books is "complex" in precisely the wrong way for a children's book. He is a tangle of conflicting motivations, which may or may not actually make very much sense. He's probably going to wind up having been in love with Lily Potter, and blame himself for her death and blah blah blah.

Now I'm not saying that children are incapable of understanding characters with complex motivations. I'm saying that children won't gain anything by being asked to understand characters with complex motivations (particularly when said motivations are spurious and rather cliched). When you hear children talk about the Potter books, they always talk about how much they love the wizards and the broomsticks, you hear remarkably few people saying "well I'm really interested in the formative childhood experiences of Severus Snape."

Re: Journey into Adulthood

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

::sigh:: One of the disappointments with the series for me was how I had all these assumptions about how the fact that these were kids--and so were new people--would play out. Specifically I thought that was a big, good part of the Draco storyline in HBP. Because here was this kid who everybody was manipulating because he was a kid-and not that exceptional a kid. He wasn't really taken seriously by anybody except Harry who was a peer.

But then Draco screws up Dumbledore's precisely because he's a kid. Because a) it's his being a kid that gave him access to the information about the cabinet, access that adults didn't have because they weren't involved in the student squabbles and didn't pay close attention to them and b) because it turns out kids can have creative ideas and more courage than you'd expect. So for one moment at the end of HBP you have Draco as an actual wild card representing the next generation.

And then in DH Rowling shoves him back into the kid role. Even more so than he's ever been before, because now he's mother's taking center stage. It was the total opposite of a growing up story, because just at the moment when Narcissa should have been saved by her son because he's a man--and hello? Because he just went through this whole maturing experience where he learned something and saw the bad side for what it truly was--that's when Rowling re-asserts her "nothing is stronger than Mom" idea again. Draco spent all of HBP trying to grow out of mother's protection, and it just leads to him learning that he shouldn't ever leave it again because mother knows best.

As much as I love both Malfoy men recognizing that Narcissa is sometimes the best judge of what to do and respecting her woman's judgment on these things, Rowling could have done it by making them more equals. I honestly think she may have enjoyed setting Draco firmly in the baby chair in the end rather than suggesting that he would take Lucius' place and grow up to be his mother's son.

And that's just the same for everybody, really. None of the kids really grows up. They're all still following Dumbledore. They're not better adults because they deal with things better than the last generation. They're no different than the Marauders in that they grow up never really thinking they have any mistakes to learn from. They can't grow out of their school rivalries any more than the Marauders could. They're better because they are more obedient to Dumbledore. No secret switching of Secret Keepers or Animagi studies for the Trio!

The only student who seems to go through an actual maturation is Neville Longbottom, who's been snugly characterized as looking up to Harry and getting all his inspiration practically from watching him. Neville's the best they've got but even he is leading a low-level rebellion at school, which Harry already did in OotP.

Re: Journey into Adulthood

[cressida0201.livejournal.com]

You make good points. I almost envy you your fondness for Draco, because clearly it enabled you to find HBP enjoyable on at least some level. For me, it's a tough choice whether I like it or DH less.

Re: Journey into Adulthood

[(Anonymous)]

You know, if the fact that Harry really should have left the Stone alone in PS was the sort of thing he had learned as the series became more "adult" and "complex," that would have been awesome.

Ditto. That's what I expected, honestly, what with the kids actually growing up and coming of age. Becoming aware of complexities, learning to think before jumping. Maturing and evolving. It even seemed that the things were moving in that direction starting with PoA, even if it was a step forward, two steps back shuffling. But then with HBP and DH came the complete turn-about, with kids returning to the level of maturity of PS or even lower.

Regarding the Stone - the kids still could have been brave and inventive if the obstacles were partly demolished by Quirrelmort and helpful clues for the intact ones were also from him working out the puzzles, rather than provided by the people who set up the protections (honestly!). That would have avoided the whole "idiot adults" trope, while still giving the kids opportunity to shine.
CoS is rather hopeless in this sense, of cause.

I'm saying that children won't gain anything by being asked to understand characters with complex motivations

Couldn't disagree more. This is an essential part of growing up and writers in the past weren't afraid to include such aspects (i.e. in original "Bambi", in Andersen's fairy tales, etc.). What is more, the HP kids grow up. If Rowling intended the books to be for young children, then she shouldn't have let her characters come of age.

Re: Journey into Adulthood

[cressida0201.livejournal.com]

I think there's a difference between complex motivations and muddled motivations. Also, that comment was written before DH came out; Snape has become a lot simpler since then.