OotP Chapter Thirty-Three

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

*I’m not sure if the "fight" in this chapter refers to the early physical battles or the later tedious bickering. ETA: Foreshadowing of DH?

*Umbridge is breathing raggedly, like an obscene phone call behind Harry. Unfortunately, after all the mentions of how squat etc. she is, I feel like it’s a dig at her weight.

*If Harry went to an American high school he’d sign everyone’s yearbook:

I can’t believe we made it through Transfig and Charms! Isn’t weird how all year I was going through horror and despair while you and everyone else didn’t have a care in the world not 20 feet away from me?—Harry.
p.s. Umbridge sucks!!!!

*Seriously, Harry is amazed that not 20 feet away hundreds of people are eating dinner. Meanwhile I'm amazed they don't appeal to any of these people for help instead of isolating themselves in the forest. Run into the dining room, ya'll! The other students will be far more help than centaurs you may or may not run into and might kill you if you do!

*I wonder what exactly gets Umbridge so excited—is she hoping to turn the weapon over to Fudge so he can use it, to show him how she’s stopped Dumbledore’s plans for him by discovering it, or to use it herself against someone? Or is it just a power thing?

*Umbridge is scared of the forest—she must really be evil. Harry says going into the FF without a wand is the most foolhardy thing they’ve done yet. Yet when he walked into the Forest with Hagrid earlier he and Hermione asked Hagrid why he was armed, pointing out he wasn’t when he showed them the Thestrals. I can’t remember first year, but did the kids go into the forest with their wands out? I guess he's just trying to scare her. Which he can totally do because she's a bad guy and therefore a coward.

*Hermione thinks her plan with the centaurs worked. You can tell because of her triumphant smile. Would one good hoof print on her face be too much to ask for Marietta’s sake?

*It’s rather odd that Umbridge calls the centaurs half-breeds since, uh, they’re not. They are full-blooded centaurs. It’s not like you become a centaur because you had one parent who was human and another who was a horse…do you? ::shudders::

*I guess even when it goes along with her plans, Hermione can’t help but instinctively make a show of offense on the centaur’s behalf when Umbridge calls them filthy half-breeds and animals. She's totally on your side, guys!

*Interestingly, she has no such reaction when Hagrid calls them mules, which are animal half-breeds. Interesting, but somehow not surprising.

*Harry is nearing manhood, according to a centaur who apparently hasn’t been keeping track of his behavior all year. ETA: I guess the centaur recognizes Wizarding Manhood.

*And here’s where Hermione does something really dumb, but in a Hermione way. She tries to defend herself to the centaurs by telling them she doesn’t think like Umbridge (iow, she’s a good liberal so as minorities they should love her) and then says they came there so the centaurs would do her dirty work, rather than, you know, saying that Umbridge brought them to the forest at wand-point and Hermione had no choice but to keep walking or be killed. The text acknowledges she was dumb to say this, but it seems like we’re supposed to blame the centaurs for their bad reaction instead of acknowledging the arrogance. Hermione couldn’t help letting people know about her brilliant plan.

*The grey centaur is absolutely right that they would have left the forest boasting about getting the centaurs to do their work for them. The fact that the centaurs didn’t do what they did because the kids wanted them to (as Harry claims they know) is what makes it such a boast—centaurs are stupid and easily manipulated. If the centaurs had done them a favor they’d have to be grateful.

*"You said you didn’t hurt the innocent!" Hermione cries. Again with this focus on this nebulous concept of "the innocent"--from somebody currently controlling somebody via blackmail, no less. (And it implies she did expect Umbridge to be hurt while she would be spared because she doesn't deserve to be hurt.)

*Luckily, at this point Hagrid’s brother appears. May I ask why Grawp is so stupid? "Hagrid’s Tale" (if we can bear to remember it) told the story of a violent and primitive tribe, but one that was perfectly capable of normal adult communication. Grawp is acting like someone with severe mental disabilities, stumbling around looking for "Hagger" like he’s in need of affection and surprising Hermione by being able to remember he’s met her before. Scooby-doo falls far further up the human scale than Grawp.

*I do think it’s funny, btw, that when Hermione’s plan doesn’t work the author steps in and uses the same plan successfully: Hermione leads everyone into the forest so the centaurs will, according to their nature, get rid of the bad guy adult while naturally protecting the innocent children. JKR gets the kids into the forest so Grawp will, according to his nature, get rid of the bad guy adults while naturally protecting the innocent children. The only flaw in Hermione’s plan was that Grawp was a good Forrest-Gump-type animal while the centaurs are too smart to be good.

*Surely we should expect Grawp is loyal to Hermione and Harry for life now, having bonded with them when he found them with a group of others who shot arrows into his face while Harry and Hermione ran away.

*Wait, wasn’t that cowardly of Hermione and Harry to run off leaving Grawp being attacked? *checks house patch on their school robes* Nope, not cowardly.

*If there were ever an HP drinking game (which would admittedly be hard to get drunk in given how long it takes to read all these pages) I think you should take a drink every time Hermione makes some vague allusion to worrying about others being hurt or killed so she gets points for compassion before Harry and Ron can dismiss the need. In this one Hermione says Grawp might kill all the centaurs and Harry says he’s not that bothered by that idea.

*Hermione is for some reason not worried that the centaurs might kill Grawp. Personally, I’d bet on the centaurs in this kind of battle. Hundreds of intelligent, deadly hunters with weapons vs. one large, wounded animal? ETA: Bad flashbacks to Hagrid NOT being killed by those damn spiders in DH! Damn you, spiders!

*Harry’s kicking trees in fury—yup, almost reached manhood, this one!

*Now is the perfect time to bring up the question of exactly how they’re supposed to get to London. All of us who were asking that three chapters ago just don’t have Hermione’s brilliant, strategic mind.

*Hey guys, Umbridge is gone now. You can fire talk with anybody you want and ask them for help. No? Okay.

*"How did you ever get away from the evil Slytherins?" Hermione asks Ron. "Funny thing," Ron says. "Once you all left the Slytherins just let us go and said we were supposed to hex them."

*Oops, I mean they all threw those fabulous hexes the kids learned in the DA. Because while the Slytherins took the trouble to gag them all (why?) they didn’t take anybody’s wands. Don’t ask how they did all this gagged, though, since they don't know wandless magic yet. It was Ginny! With the bat bogey hex! And Neville had this big swell of confidence and his gag popped right off!

*Ron asks what Harry found out in the fire and Harry says he found out Voldemort had Sirius. If I were the other kids and I knew Harry I’d want to know exactly what Harry saw in the fire. How would he know Voldemort had him? Did Sirius leave the fire equivalent of an answering machine: "Hi, this is Sirius. I can’t come to the fire right now, because I’m in the clutches of the dark lord…"

*Ginny resembles Fred and George—well, we know she’s super cool now! And naturally she cares about Sirius as much as Ron does. She cares about everyone as much as the Trio! Go Sextet! *vomits*

*You know, I did not share Harry’s impatience to get on with it until these extra DA members showed up to whine about all the things they’ve done and why they should come with Harry. I know you idiots have to come too for plot and theme purposes; must I be subjected to the lecture?

*Why on earth would Harry not have picked Ginny as one of the DA members he’d want with him? Haven’t we been incessantly told how excellent she is? ('Course, Neville too seemed to be one of the best DA members but whatever.)

*I love the way Neville is all about how this it the "first time [the DA] gets to do something real," and rebukes Harry by asking if it was "all a game or something" when asking that question really does make it a game: They have to save Sirius so they can do something real like they were promised. Getting help from an adult would mess up the fantasy.

*Why must Luna drag out her revelation of how they’re going to fly?

*Boy, those Thestrels sure are tame. You can just get on them and ride. And only Hagrid is able to tame them. Which naturally means that if the wrong person tried to climb on board it would bite his/her leg off. Hagrid’s trained them to be puppy dogs to the right people, so that getting hurt by one is merely a sign that you deserved it.

*Thestrels are drawn to the scent of blood, like sharks. Only if a shark shows up and discovers you’re not really injured, it doesn’t offer you a lift to London.

*Still, here’s the payoff for all the Thestrel talk throughout the book, kids. They can fly you somewhere. Even though they really shouldn't be able to do that at all.

*Hey...errr...CoMC is a yearly class. Presumably each year is supposed to be doing different stuff, right? I mean, it doesn’t make sense for Hagrid to just teach the same thing to every year—not that he’s got a problem inflicting advanced, dangerous animals on first years, but if he teaches the same animals to everyone then the younger years would miss everything the older years have already done. What this is leading up to is, how does Ginny know about how Hagrid lured Thestrels when she’s in fourth year? Hagrid specifically said he was saving the trip into the forest until the kids were in fifth year (unless you get detention, in which case you get a frightened dog and some bread to leave a trail of crumbs and take your chances). You weren’t in that scene, Ginny. But aren't you clever and practical. (I'm beginning to notice this is a girl!power.)

*So now we’re up, up and away with our six heroes who at this point all annoy me immensely. Seriously, I’d rather just go back to Ravenclaw and see what Cho’s up to.



The Avoid the Limbs Rule (n):
The centaurs go for Grawp’s face, though this does seem like it would slow him down.

IITS
Hey! Umbridge is gone! Now they can call for help—maybe they can even get in touch with Arthur at the Ministry and he can nip downstairs and...wait, where are they going?

Informed Attributes
Yes, we know you were previously informed Thestrels were dangerous and usually untamable, but now they’re not. And it was very good of Hagrid to teach them!

Ken and Andrew’s Rule of Plot Holes
So I guess first Neville chewed through his gag, and then chewed through Ron’s, without anyone noticing. Or maybe the Slytherins got bored and started playing parcheesi...

Misdirected Answering
I so do not care why Neville, Luna and Ginny deserve to go to the MoM. Does Harry really hold their abilities in such little regard we have to spend a big exchange on it?

Monster Death Trap Proviso
Although it’s not about trapping a monster, clearly the attempt to get into Umbridge’s office and use the fire follows this rule: it was stopped the first time, so now we must go to the MoM ourselves instead of trying to use it again.

The Stealth Monster Rule
Um, hi Grawp, you gigantic, clumsy oaf moving through a forest. Where did you come from so suddenly?

Final score: 6.5

Comments

Where do baby centaurs come from?

[cressida0201.livejournal.com]

...in this context it does make you wonder how they're supposed to reproduce if they're actual races and all. Do they breed with each other?

Good heavens, have we just discovered canonical mpreg?

Re: Where do baby centaurs come from?

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I really hope so!

Re: Where do baby centaurs come from?

[cressida0201.livejournal.com]

In this case, I think mpreg is the least disturbing option.