Deathly Hallows, chapter 2

[anehan]

In Memoriam

* The Dursleys are leaving tea cups outside Harry's bedroom door. What are they, house elves?

*Harry has never learned to heal wounds and thinks it's a serious flaw in his magical education. Maybe he ought to have, you know, studied during the six years at Hogwarts instead of letting Hermione do all his work for him. Sorry, Harry, but you have no one else than yourself to blame. Normal people, if they had a lunatic after their blood, would have actually devoted some time for making sure they weren't completely unprepared.

* Harry has never cleaned his trunk before. Gross. Our Harry isn't much for hygiene.

* Finding a fragment of the mirror Sirius had given him, Harry feels a sudden upsurge of bitter memories, stabs of regret and longing. He suffers, I tell you.

* Harry is going to take his photograh album and a stack of letters with him. Good lord, what does he think he's going to do with them. The boy is an idiot.

* And we come to the sickening obituary by Elphias Doge. One more person whom Dumbledore managed to hoodwink into believing he was a noble person.

* Dumbledore never revealed the remotest anti-Muggle tendency. Except when he bullied the Dursleys. But that doesn't count, because the Dursleys totally deserved it.

* Dumbledore became the most brilliant student Hogwarts had ever seen and constantly outshone his friends. Bet he liked that. It would have done good for him to be second-best at something. Instead, everything confirmed him in his belief that he was superior to others and that it was his duty to manipulate others for the greater good.

* According to Doge, Dumbledore never had Ministerial ambitions. True enough. He just wanted to take over the world.

* "Albus Dumbledore was never proud or vain". Ahahahahahaa!

* Dumbledore's losses "endowed him with great humanity and sympathy". Bitch, please. The man is clearly incapable of empathy.

* Doge was right in one thing, though: Dumbledore always worked for the greater good. Too bad his methods and definition of "greater good" were rather questionable.

* Harry had thought he knew Dumbledore quite well. What made him think that? The great openness Dumbledore displayed in his dealings with Harry, perhaps?

* Harry thinks that the idea of a teen-aged Dumbledore was odd, like trying to imagine a stupid Hermione. Much as I love Hermione, I have no problem in imagining her stupid. She isn't half so clever as she likes to think. For example, what good did it do to the DA to brand the traitor's face? It didn't prevent Marietta from squealing.

* The only personal question Harry had asked Dumbledore was the only one he suspected Dumbledore hadn't answered honestly. That's too naïve even for Harry.

* Unpleasant Skeeter may be, but I at least would rather read her book than any more of Doge's pennings. There might ever be a shred of truth in what she writes, if you manage to discount the more lurid details.

* Skeeter calls the Potter-Dumbledore relationship unhealthy, even sinister. Brava! At least someone finally got it right.

* Another chapter in which nothing happens comes to an end. I really need that alcohol to get through this.



Informed Attributes:
Dumbledore is noble. No, really.

Misdirected Answering:
Did you hear what Dumbledore got up to as a teenager? What do you mean, you're not interested?

Nut o' Fun:
Desiccated beetle eyes.

Final score: 3. Nothing happens in this chapter.

Comments

[tdotm.livejournal.com]

I’ve just posted on the Ch.1 page that JKR shoots herself in the foot, by raising more questions than she answers. 'Misdirected Answering' is such a good way to put it, helkamaria. I found 6 important but unanswered questions in Ch.1 alone. If anyone wants to look at my replies to Ch. One, feel free - she works like an amateur.

In Ch. 2, she took a potentially interesting sub plot (Albus is actually dark, he doesn’t just seem that way because of my poor writing) and wrote far too much, making it dull. Harry looked silly over the healing charms thing. Solution - Harry cuts his hand, wishes that Healing Charms weren’t all NEWT level, remembers Lockhart’s attempt to mend his arm, shudders and is glad they are, is even more glad that reliable Hermione has read ahead as always, and determines to ask her. Point made and Harry, thinking ahead, looks sensible. Sadly, for some reason JKR insists on making her ’Hero’ look like an idiot all the time, so never bothers with this sort of damage control.

As for the Mirror- what did that ever achieve? When I saw it mentioned, my heart sank. I thought it’d have to be of major importance in this book to compensate for the nonsense in Book Five. Yeah right!

1. Harry loved Sirius like a father, apparently. So when he gave him a gift, he threw it in the bottom of his trunk? OK, he didn't want to use it , but wouldn't he want to keep it close - or even look at it? Apparently not. More proof (if needed) that Harry's an idiot. Sirius isn't too bright either - why did he never want to do a run-through with Harry to ensure it was working/ explain how it worked? Can it summon the owner of the other mirror, if they‘re not peering into it at the time? Does it beep?

2. (Oh God!) Convinced that Sirius is being tortured to death, Harry storms about determined to go on a kamikaze mission. Hermione manages to restrain him enough to convince him to contact Grimauld Place. Oh, how to contact Sirius in an emergency? I know, Umbridge’s fireplace. Sigh. He is then fooled by the House Elf WHO HATES HIM. He gets everyone captured. They escape from their school in the Highlands of Scotland and take the slow Thestral to London. 8 hours later (if they fly as fast as a train) they arrive. The DEs would have given up and Sirius would be dead and decomposing by now, if it wasn’t a TRAP)

3. Sirius is dead. Sob. Harry finds the mirror. Oh no, I don’t want to remember him, it hurts - throw it away. I wonder what it did anyway?

What the Mirror achieved, therefore, was to make him look like an idiot, then a dangerous reckless idiot, then a gibbering idiot with amnesia. Hero? Not so much. He suffered so much over Cedric’s death, for which he was blameless. Then fails to feel guilty over Sirius where he certainly created the opportunity, while not actually committing the crime. If he’d felt bad, I’d have felt bad for him. He didn’t so I wanted to slap him. JKR’s planning is the only thing to come off worse than Harry‘s reputation. Solution?

Scrap the Mirror from the entire series. Nice idea, but it actually damaged the story and its credibility. If Harry and Ron find themselves trapped in a dungeon later on in Deathly Hallows, Harry can shout ‘Dobby’ and the story can continue. They could still be rescued by Aberforth Dumbledore, if they apparate like fools into Hogsmeade and sensationally find it under curfew. He, like everyone will know Harry‘s on a quest, and they can find other things to talk about. Part 47 of 'Albus Dumbledore was a lot deeper than a kindly old man (and a lot more tiresome)' for a start.

However, this version might draw attention to another massive unanswered question. Why on EARTH did they not call for Dobby, or their new best friend Kreacher, while they were starving in the forest for what felt like 245,000 years? We know Harry is retarded, but Hermione? Also, Ron didn’t take the absence of his home comforts at all well - I refuse to believe he’d forget that Shepherd’s Pie he loved so much. I can’t remember if the House Elves were mentioned and dismissed (I’m not going through all that rubbish again in a hurry), but I doubt it. Why? Why did JKR mess this all up so badly? Sob.

Sorry, jumping ahead, but nothing happened in Ch2!

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Why didn't they call Kreachur to find out if Yaxley had gotten into the house? To find out whether he was all right? Anything?

Instead he drops completely out of the story until he is suddenly leading the Hogwarts elves against the DEs in the name of "Brave Regulus". WTF?

The DA is hiding out in the RoR getting food from Aberforth at the Hogs Head because the Room won't provide it.

Aberforth sent Dobby to help Harry at Malfoy Manor. Why couldn't he have asked him to feed Neville and Co. right there in the castle? No the *Room* couldn't provide food, but they could have called Dobby and he could have brought it from the kitchen.

For that matter, why didn't Harry call Kreachur and have him go and keep his ears open at Hogwarts and bring *them* food from the kitchen?

It's like the silly woman forgot that there were House Elves in this world.

Until she needed one on stage to die tragicly and teach Harry the "loss of innocence".

Er, wasn't that what Hedwig's death was all about? Does it grow back?

[tdotm.livejournal.com]

In House Elves, JKR had a 'get out of jail' card (literally!) that she had established brilliantly, and maintained consistently throughout the series. They can override wizards magic/ignore wards/supply food/travel unmonitored etc etc. I found Kreacher's conversion a load of baloney, but Dobby could have done all sorts for them and we'd have lapped it all up unquestioningly.

So why, WHY, in DH does she ignore them? She creates piles of useless new things to get out of trouble/advance the 'plot' which nobody could swallow unless on their 7th glass of wine. (Bad news for the kiddies.) Dobby dies, and it was sad. But if he'd been involved throughout the book, it'd have been sadder.

Hedwig. Heh. I'll save that for the Seven Potters, winging its way to us shortly (no pun intended)

[(Anonymous)]

In House Elves, JKR had a 'get out of jail' card (literally!) that she had established brilliantly, and maintained consistently throughout the series. They can override wizards magic/ignore wards/supply food/travel unmonitored etc etc.

Yes, very brilliantly. It made the DEs - most of whom possess house-elves, look even dumber and less dangerous than their other capers. Honestly, if nothing can stop house-elves, then all those pure-blood Dark Wizards from old families should have slaughtered the opposition long since. Or vice-versa DD should have gotten all DEs with his army of Hogwarts house-elves. I prefer to imagine that Dobby could get in because part of his tie with the Malfoy family/ manor remained and so little is known about the exceedingly rare freed elves that Lucius was unaware of it. As to Kreacher going to Hogwarts, DD clearly planned for it and made it possible. Or at least that's what I prefer to think.

[tdotm.livejournal.com]

When I said 'brilliantly', I simply meant that anyone who'd read the previous books would totally accept it if Dobby started saving the day. His ability to do so had been well established early on in the series and constantly re-affirmed throughout. It'd have made sense to use him where possible, rather than coming up with things we'd never seen before.

I wasn't commenting on the fact that these all-powerful House Elves, who don't even need wands, weren't used by Dumbledore or especially the DEs. As you've pointed out, this possiblity wasn't sufficiently closed down by JKR (or at all). But there's a lot of that going on, especially later in the series.

Also, what if wizards can side-along apparate with elves (was that mentioned as impossible? It should have been) into otherwise protected locations. Then Draco could have given Winky a couple of bottles of firewhiskey, claimed that her late master Barty Crouch wanted her to help him (true) and Half-Blood Prince would have been a much shorter book. Still, the DEs follow the lead of their master. Taking Kreacher to the cave, knowing he could apparate and then walking away happy was a perhaps a bit of a mistake....

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

As to that. Lucius never freed Dobby. You have to give an Elf clothes that are for *him*. Lucius didn't *give* Dobby a sock. Lucius threw a sock *away*. Dobby caught it before it landed and declaimed; "Master has given Dobby a sock!" Lucius was so rattled that instead of firing back; "I did nothing of the sort. Now go iron your hands!" he turned on Harry with; "See what you made me do!" and Dobby escaped.

Dobby was a *runaway* slave. Of course he could get back into the Manor. The Malfoys were still his masters (and you will notice that after he was "freed" he still wasn't telling anyone any of their secrets).

[anehan]

That makes sense. I've always wondered how Lucius could have freed Dobby. If taking a piece of clothing would be all it took, the elves masters would have to keep all their clothing under lock and key. Besides, I'm pretty sure the Malfoys for example don't wash their own clothes, and so far we haven't seen any indication that they have human servants for that.

[tdotm.livejournal.com]

Helkamaria, you're right, it can't be taking clothing, though House Elves are more likely to refuse to do the laundry for fear of being free, than steal in order to free themselves.

Maybe it's the intent behind the giving, rather than the action instead? If you hand an item of clothing expecting it back, it's a 'loan' or a 'job of work' not a gift. If you're happy for them to keep and own the item, then it's a gift and they're free. If you're tricked into handing over the item, the fact that you don't want it back (and you accept you've given it to them) takes precedence and they're free.

Heh. Look at us desperately trying to establish House Elf rules that'll fit all known relevant events. We know JKR never made as much effort!

[anehan]

Also, in GoF, Mr Crouch doesn't actually present Winky with clothes, just tells her he is going to do so. Did he actually give Winky clothes? We don't know because Harry leaves the scene at that point.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

When we next see Winky she is wearing a nice little blue suit which was obviously intended just for her. It's filthy, since she is taking no care of it or herself, but she was clearly given clothes of her own.

[tabaquis.livejournal.com]

Do you think he had that thing sitting around to threaten her with? LOL

[anehan]

The Mirror really is completely superfluous. You're perfectly right that everything could have worked perfectly without it.

[tdotm.livejournal.com]

What if Remus gave Harry a brightly wrapped package soon after Sirius' death? What if the attached note said something along the lines of:-

Dear Harry,
It's hard being apart most of the time - especially in our mutual prisons! I've asked Remus to pass this on to you as I won't see you before your birthday. Enclosed is a mirror - I hold its twin. If you look in it and say 'Nicky Nacky Noo', it'll activate mine. Then just shout till I hear you and we'll be able to talk whenever we want, however far apart we are. I'll always keep it close.
Your loving godfather
Sirius

If I'd have read that after Sirius' death, I'd have been really upset. Surely most readers would really feel for Harry at that point instead of thinking "Our Hero is a Moron!"? Then, as we wiped our tears, Remus could hand Harry the other mirror which Harry gives to Ron and they arrange to talk on a regular basis over the holidays.

2 books later, if Ron should be influenced by Dark Magic and get separated from Harry, he can perhaps overhear his location via this mirror in the same way as Phinneas, and arrive in time to save his worthless hide from drowning. Surely far better to use an established means of communication than using that appalling, unbelievable contrivance, the deluminator with sudden inexplicable 'best friends sensor and transporter' skills.

That's how someone who can't write at all would use the Mirror. Still, JKR is the professional writer, who are we to argue.........

[montavilla.livejournal.com]

You know, I think what happens with JKR is that she writes backwards. We have that famous statement about her writing the epilogue in the beginning. Which, I think is an interesting technique. (And Hey, she did get through the seven books, so it wasn't a bad idea at all.)

But, as Magpie put it once, she doesn't do the Chekhov thing of putting a gun over the mantlepiece and then using it in the third act. Instead, she decides she needs a gun in the third act and plants it in the first. Which, okay, is a lot better than not planting it.

But what happens is that she plants the gun in the first act, for that moment she wants in the third act. Then, in the second act something happens where a gun would come in really handy--but she didn't plan to use it for that and so the audience feels like shouting out, "Use the gun, you idiot!"

Whew. That's about the most involved analogy I've ever used.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

I'd have had them all get separated avoiding snatchers early on, and have Ron discover the "homing" purpose of the Deluminator *then*.

And then have him in and out of their camp getting information, and bringing it back in dribs and drabs *on purpose*. It might have given them at least some motivation for chasing wild geese at least. And *appear* to be giving us a story.

The stupidity of the pond rescue could have been due to a fortuitous early return, since he wasn't expected back until the next day or something (and all the more reason for Snape to plant the Sword when there were only two kids milling about rather than three).

[tdotm.livejournal.com]

That'd have been a big improvment, but it's just like Neville The Man at Hogwarts - we'd never see it, only hear about it. Yet more to be frustrated about! (Unless you meant Harry did some of the work?) We'd need Harry to be in the thick of the action (for a change).

I'd have had Scrimageour hang on till Christmas. Then while they're hanging around doing nothing for months, they're doing it at school where all the action was at. The action would be limited, because there'd be no Death Eaters, but you could still have the DA and school life and other characters, all sorely missed in this book. Better than whining in a tent.

Plus, seeing as there was apparently NO TRIAL after Dumbledore's murder and Harry wasn't even INTERVIEWED (WTH?), I'm sure she could wangle some way for Snape and Draco to be back. As I said elsewhere, can't Snape falsify a memory?

All three could go to Godric's Hollow before term started. Luna could tell them about the Deathly Hallows. The train is attacked on the way home at Xmas, they escape and camp. 2 days later the doe is sent and the story resumes.

Both our versions are better than the original!

[va32h.livejournal.com]

At the risk of making myself look like an even bigger dork, I actually did write my own version of book 7, because like you all, I kept thinking of way better ways to do...oh everything.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4072698/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Deathly_Hallows_Do_Over

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Yes, and I heartily enjoyed it. If Rowling had given us something more like that I'd probably still have had some quibbles, but I wouldn't have had a quarter of the problems I ended up with.

[va32h.livejournal.com]

Hey thanks! I was a big fan of your essays, so that really means a lot to me. And you know, unlike JKR I am totally willing to acknowledge that there are things I could have done better.

[montavilla.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed it as well, especially the scene between Snape and Harry. That was a lot more satisfying than what happened in the original DH.

[tdotm.livejournal.com]

I've bookmarked it and will read it as soon as I get the chance. However I already know that it'll be an improvement. Because you cared enough to re-write it. JKR hasn't seemed to care for the past 5 years.

Nicky Nacky Noo

[cressida0201.livejournal.com]

*sits up, surprised*

That wouldn't be a Goon Show reference, would it??

Re: Nicky Nacky Noo

[tdotm.livejournal.com]

I often use it, but don't know why. I haven't heard too much of The Goons, but I'm a massive Spike Milligan fan, and the chances that he didn't use it in his various 'Q' sketch shows in the 60's are small!

I used it because my 'A' in Latin was a long long time ago.....