OotP Chapter Twenty-Six

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

*Seamus behaves very guiltily for not believing Harry. Luckily, Harry himself never feels guilty for insulting Seamus’ family, nor does he remember that he’s finally actually answered the reasonable question Seamus asked him four hundred pages ago and that's why Seamus believes him now. Funny how he didn’t just give a Quibbler interview about what a dumb bitch Seamus’ mam is.

*Hermione: "Oh, I forgot to ask because it’s so totally unimportant and would never amount to anything even though I was all over it weeks ago, but what happened to your date with Cho, Harry? How come you came back so early thus making it clear you had no fun? Oh my, don’t tell me your little old meeting with little old me was to blame! Harry you are very immature and tactless. You should have said how awful it was you had to meet me, even though I know perfectly well you would never have put it like that because in this book I know exactly how everyone is going to act all the time because the author shares her detailed character breakdowns and notes with me. And of course I know I'm not ugly. I'm just cool enough to be okay with you saying I am without meaning it." Hermione: 12,098,123,097 Rest of the school: 0.

*Hermione’s right about all things one thing, Cho was trying to find out how much Harry liked her, and she found out: he really couldn’t care less about her and doesn’t fancy her much at all, so what’s the big loss? Cho sounds pretty sensible to me. In fact, she seems more sensible than Ms. "I Can’t Believe You All Haven’t Guessed Yet Who Hermione Likes When She Tells Him To Shut Up All The Time" Author-Insert.

*If other girls always seem stupider after your friend who’s a girl has explained them to you, that may have been her intention.

*Going a bit overboard with Harry’s cluelessness for Hermione’s sake, aren’t we? "Why didn’t she just ask me how much I liked her?" Yeah, Harry would have loved that. Nothing awkward there. "I don’t know how much I like you! Everyone’s so demanding! Wah! My scar hurts!"

*Ron and Ginny went off for baths after dinner. Just had to mention this momentous use of the word baths, even if they did wait until after dinner. I guess if fanon is to be believed it's hard to find a free shower in the locker room, what with all the wanking and angry sports-rival sex.

*LOL—when the twins come in and say, "Ron and Ginny not here?" my mind immediately jumps to Weasleycest. How long have they been in that bath?

*But while Ginny’s gone, that’ll give us a chance to slip in some back story about how she got so good at Quidditch even though Fred and George never let her play with them—-because she’s always really liked Quidditch really, just not enough to mention it at the QWC.

*They only refused to let her play with them because then she could be spunky, feminist, and awesome at Quidditch.

*This also happily gives Hermione a chance to tell us details about another girl’s life. Hermione could probably tell us how Angelina got so good at Quidditch as well, since she knows everything about everyone.

*Btw, nice try on the, "Ginny’s not that bad," George. It’s almost like Ginny’s not going to effortlessly beat all the other Seekers because she’s just that cool and about 26 games away from being a professional star somehow.

*Third mention of Murtlap in the book. Is this important for future or is it just hard to come up with different herbal essences that sound funny? ETA: It's the latter.

*Everybody still hates Zacharias Smith for some reason. Oh right, he doesn’t prostrate himself before the mighty lion at every opportunity. It’s tough to be the red herring, especially when the real snitch is already so obvious.

*Hermione says she hates Quidditch because it creates tension between the other houses. Actually, Quidditch is usually the only thing bringing students together. Without that sport I doubt Harry would even remember the existence of other houses at Hogwarts.

*Besides, doesn’t everybody all get together to cheer Gryffindor on anyway, except Slytherin who bring everyone together by being a common enemy?

* Btw, in case anybody’s worried that Hermione really doesn’t understand the importance of sport, remember that when actually watching a Gryffindor/Slytherin game she cheers for blood, and she got pretty het up at the QWC as well. Hermione really only likes Quidditch when it’s all about that tension between people.

*ETA: Not that any of the games she's followed perfectly well will matter when Ginny smacks her down about it in the next book.

*Let’s please note that while everyone, including the regular Gryffindor players, are supposed to suck incredibly badly, Ginny steals the snitch from under the other Seeker’s nose. If you smelled something rose-like as the defeated team went by, that would be Ginny. She doesn’t need a bath after this game.

*"It was a lucky catch," she reports Harry, showing she already knows the standard super-cool athlete response to praise. "But I’ll do it again next game." (And remember kids, she’s being modest—Harry thought it was impressive and he’s the best Seeker ever!).

*Isn’t it great how Slytherin is favored to win the Quidditch cup for two minutes for no real reason? Not that I’m complaining when they get knocked out early—reading the book the first time I was sure we were going to be treated to a scene of Ginny beating Malfoy to the Snitch and probably pantsing him as she did it.

*Harry was impressed by Ginny’s Seeking, even if he assures us he would have been better. Wait. Harry? Impressed with another Seeker at Hogwarts? Another Quidditch player? How could this be? Oh wait, it’s Ginny. He has to be impressed by her. Remember everyone, Ginny almost won the game all by herself despite the fact that the rest of the team (most of which has won the cup before) absolutely sucks. She and Harry are going to make such a cute couple.

*ETA: Remember Harry could have been a professional Quidditch star too. He would have been a little better than Ginny, as it should be.

*Granted it’s difficult to "empty your mind" of all thought (even if you’re Harry) and Snape would have been better to tell Harry to focus on something neutral, but isn’t it great how Harry doesn’t just fall asleep without emptying his mind, but falls asleep to thoughts of loathing? It’s like the perfect ad for this book as a kid’s series: Read Harry Potter to your little tyke. Waves of loathing, wafting off the text, will lull him to sweet, angry sleep!

*Is there significance that Harry’s dream begins with McGonagall, Neville and Sprout?

*Harry’s angry all day at Hermione for her "let me pounce on the information from your dream and once I’ve enjoyed it scold you for having it at all," but it seems to make no impression on Hermione at all. Yeah, these are so believably three friends in high school.

*As an aside, I get how Hermione is useful when she functions this way, by running with something and then turning around and being against it, and I see how personality-wise it works, but it’s beginning to really distract me the way she does it so often in this book. It’s just something you can count on as a device and it doesn’t seem so much that it starts to seem less like Hermione being Hermione so much as the author explaining how the plot works. So it’s, "let me explain everything that Harry’s dream means but remember that it’s Very Bad that he’s having the dream." Or, "I’ve put together a secret army for X, Y and Z reasons, but don’t forget to be worried about Sirius and the theme of recklessness I established earlier." I can't really call it a flaw since Hermione's character believably does this, but it's done so much I'm noticing it as too useful to the plot.

*Harry’s sure Dumbledore was watching him when he gets his Quibbler but he looks away when Harry looks up. Anybody else get the impression that all is proceeding according to Dumbledore’s creepy plan?

*ETA: What isn't proceeding according to Dumbledore's creepy plan? Very little.

*As usual, Hermione is the only person smart enough to come to the obvious conclusion that Umbridge’s banning the Quibbler will make everyone want to read it.

*Hermione’s eyes beam as she explains how the girls in the bathroom asked her questions. I’ll bet. One of these days Hermione should just Imperius Harry for his own good so she can come out from behind that throne.

*Btw, either boys never talk in the bathroom, or Harry and Ron never ever use one. Hermione is, like, always in the bathroom or saying something about what happens in the bathroom, ever since Book I. I guess because she doesn't just have girlfriends.

*ETA: Ah, this is cleared up in HBP. Girls go to the bathroom to talk to other girls. Boys use the bathrooms to cry.

*So Theodore Nott is the weedy boy Hermione can naturally identify when neither Harry nor Ron can. I’ve always assumed he’s also the "stringy" boy from CoMC who could see Thestrels.

*Harry says the Slytherins are "acting like this" (Goyle’s cracking his knuckles...doesn’t he always do that?) because he named their fathers as Death Eaters but are they surprised that Voldemort challenged Harry to a duel and lost like an idiot? Have they been wondering all year what happened? Did they have any hint? For the first time in the entire series, there seems to actually be something interesting happening in Slytherin.

*While Goyle isn’t acting any differently than usual, Malfoy whispers something "undoubtedly malevolent" to Crabbe instead of doing what Malfoy usually does which is to say something in a “sneering voice." He’s not even making fun of the tearful Potter reunion in the graveyard.

*Perversely, I like to imagine that every single one of the "obviously awful" things Harry could tell Malfoy was whispering at different times were totally unremarkable. Like here he's whispering, "I like soup."

*Hermione says the best part is they can’t contradict Harry because they’d have to admit they read the article. So is she saying she thinks the boys would tell everyone Harry's wrong and their fathers are not DEs? This is Malfoy, who three years ago was crowing, "You’re next, Mudbloods!" so should he not be proud that his father’s a DE? Would they be giving their own father's versions of events, cleaned up to make them look less like the idiots they actually were?

*"I have wasted months on fruitless schemes," says Harry/Voldemort. Amazingly he’s not referring to the plot of GoF. He's referring to his whole new year of fruitless schemes.

*Speaking of fruitless schemes, I still don’t get it. Why does Voldemort need to eventually get Harry to the DoM to get the prophecy? ETA: Nope, it won't make any more sense at the end of the book either. They should have titled this book: Harry Potter and the Fruitless Scheme. Though I guess they could have titled most of the books that.

*Why does one become a DE again? Because okay, apparently Avery and Rookwood are quivering masses of jelly but what’s Lucius Malfoy getting out of this? It seems like they’d all be ambitious Slytherins, so isn’t it interesting they’re all so cowering after they saw their boss get his arse kicked by a fourteen year old and a baby?

*Btw, isn’t Azkaban supposed to drive you mad unless you’re innocent like Sirius was? Or has that idea served its purpose so now no longer true? Because Rookwood looks pretty good.

*"Got to be the weapon." Oh, poor Harry. If only he knew what it really was he could just sigh with relief that Voldemort’s not after anything important and go back to sleep.

*Harry opts to angst and manfully chew his pillow rather then tell "them" about his dream. By "them" he means Dumbledore and somehow this seems appropriate. He's learning from the master.

*Do we ultimately know why Bode "went funny" because he tried to get the "weapon?"

*Lucius Malfoy appears to be acting rather cleverly and reasonably so far, what with Imperiusing various people to get the prophecy. Why does he later waltz into the DoM and start uselessly yelling until he’s arrested? Is he under the Imperius Curse? The ultimate author-kind?

*"Ron, be quiet." We don’t even have to know Ron’s saying anything now to get Hermione telling him to be quiet.

*You know, I’m beginning to see Steve Klove’s point. I think we should just give up and make Hermione the heroine, if only because it will save a lot of paper: Voldemort came up with a plot to rule the world. Hermione was really smart, figured everything out, understood everything, foiled the plot and then explained to everyone how she did it. The end.

*We’ll pause here to again list all the reasons why Harry has the worst life ever: not doing well in Potions, on tenterhooks Hagrid might be forced into more appropriate employment, other people who live in his house did badly at Quidditch yadda yadda yadda. Also, people are discussing the escaped DEs in the hallway, which he wanted them to do the other day, but apparently is really bugging him now.

*This book really rips the face off the innocent escapist Harry-locked-in-the-cupboard-is-a-wizard fantasy of the other books. Now it’s all, "I remember every single humiliation and will make the bastards pay tenfold for each and every one." Yet this is the book here he grows beyond the whiny bully for higher things.

*Snape still deals with Harry’s humiliating memories by not mentioning them to further humiliate him-wise choice. He’s only interested in the Rookwood memory. Surprising people would not then understand why Harry’s allegedly sensitive reaction to the humiliating memory of Snape’s he sees isn’t received well by Snape.

*Love Snape’s suggestion that Harry doesn’t tell anybody about his dreams of Voldemort because it makes him feel special and important, because while on the surface it seems so TOTALLY NOT TRUE OMG YOU JERK!!11 it’s totally true. Harry’s not sharing important information out of pride and spite or because he doesn’t want people thinking badly of him. He just doesn’t recognize this as arrogance or being difficult.

*Love the satisfied expression on Snape’s face when Harry tells him it’s [Snape’] job to find out what’s going on with the DEs. Since it’s a drawn-out moment I guess it’s important. Does Harry think he’s gone too far because he assumes everyone should be ashamed to be a spy? Or that Snape should be ashamed of his connections? Why does Snape look satisfied? Does it remind him he’s important? Or is it a sign that Snape in Book VII will be revealed to be…not Alan Rickman. Sorry girls!

*ETA: I guess he's thinking about how he's totally revenging himself on Voldemort for Lily by doing that, even though the only information he passes that's ever worth anything is that which is directly about Harry and that therefore gets broadcasted directly into Harry's head anyway.

*Trelawney loses her job, gets drunk. Dumbledore appears to do the one thing he does well, which is remind everybody that Hogwarts is about personal friends of the Big D’s (the more dependent the better) and not a bunch of professionals doing a job.

*Then he brings in a centaur to teach the class, validating my earlier impression that the reason Umbridge is at the school is that he wanted her as DADA teacher.

*Harry pushes through a crowd of "tall" Slytherins to see what’s going on. Tall? Just tall? Not weedy or gaunt or ugly or malevolently gigantic or sinisterly stretched or menacingly looming? Are we sure they’re Slytherins?

*Was this chapter really as long as it seemed? Because there was a second there, before Trelawney was fired, where I thought it was never going to end.



Designated Hero
The boy who loathed.

Exploitation Filmmakers’ Credo
How many times do we have to hear that Harry ought not to be having these dreams, and it would really be better if he didn’t?

IITS
Why do the DEs work for Voldemort? Why does Voldemort need the prophesy? Why doesn't he just go get it?

Idiot World
There’s nothing sadder than watching this world swing one way and then the next according to a magazine article. It’s literally like nobody can have any other thought or opinion besides whether or not they agree with what Harry Potter did or said last week.

Informed Attributes
If we keep being told Ginny’s "not too bad" at Quidditch maybe we won’t notice nobody stands a chance against her and think she’s an underdog.

McGuffin
You know, the more we hear about this weapon, the more disappointed we’ll be with that prophesy.

Misdirected Answering
Doesn’t really count, but I’d really rather know exactly what the position of the Slytherin boys is supposed to be because I have no clue. I know if I just accepted that their Slytherin-ness and their overall evilness was enough explanation I’d be happier.

POV Shots
This time in Voldemort!Vision.

Final score: 7.5