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]

But why? Why did she want that? Why did it have to follow the school year if they weren’t AT school. Why all the juicy hints of upheaval and guerilla warfare at Hogwarts, when we were stuck in the Tent from Hell?

Why try to fit things around Teddy? What was the point of Teddy? He went from being a photo of a baby, to snogging Victoire. We never met him. There was no meaningful discussion about war ripping families apart. Or Harry's destiny played out again, but peacefully. Harry and Ginny were school aged kids, it wasn't feasible for them to bring him up. It'd be years before they were ready (about the time that James was born perhaps!). Surely his Grandmother must have done it. Plus, how did Tonks (Auror) and Lupin (experienced fighter and werewolf) die, whereas all the (important) school kids survived? Totally unbelievable!

Why didn’t 90% of the plot happen in August? Why wasn’t Luna taken off the train on the way to school in September? Why didn’t the final battle take place on All HALLOWS Eve?

She shot through her credibility to create a plot that was worthless anyway. Arrrggghhh!

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I've been amused for a few books with the way people's behavior blatantly follows a schedule rather than logic. It started to be really obvious in HBP, I think, because she was filling time through most of the year, since the real plot was happening in Slytherin and Harry couldn't see it. So he just hung out until everything happened around June or so.

Dudley's tea is a great example too. Harry saved him way back at the beginning of OotP. Okay, he doesn't think about it right then so he hasn't yet changed. But there's no sign of it in HBP either. Sure Harry was all deep in grief at the time (sure he was!) but wouldn't Dudley have started stuff like the tea back then? Instead it's only obvious in DH--sort of like how Harry can suddenly see Thestrels not at the end of GoF, but in OotP.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Swythyv's come up with a lovely explanation for why Harry didn't see the Thestrals at the end of GoF. She just posted a new essay on Thestrals over in HP_essays.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I'll check that out. That one really doesn't bother me, actually. I can accept JKR's explanation that it hadn't "sunk in yet" even if I don't really think that's the reason. But they so are obviously following a schedule. Like in this book I swear there's parts where people can't get a chance to talk for weeks even though they're all cooped up in a small house. Or Harry and Hermione have to practice apparition for a *month* so that they can hit GH at Christmas.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

The whole problem seems to be that she's run out of plausible excuses for why her characters *don't* do things. She seems to *want* them to just sit like lumps and emote until she tells them to do something.

That's no way to tell a story.

[va32h.livejournal.com]

The strange thing is that she really didn't used to be like that.

Compare Harry and Ron's quick minds and resourcefulness in PS with the way they behave in DH; as you say, "sitting like lumps" until Hermione does everything for them. Harry has gotten progressively stupider from OoTP on.

What the hell happened?

It's as if Rowling found some new religion or philosophy between GoF and OotP which preaches that the only path to salvation is through utter passivity.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Yes. Suddenly *everyone* is sitting about like lumps. Even retroactively. Albus and Tom in particular.

(I guess that's why Sirius *had* to die in OotP. It would have been impossible to make him sit still.)

[aasaylva.livejournal.com]

Another example is Harry's crush on Ginny. She gets her personality transplantation between GoF and OotP, but he needs more than a year to actually react to it. Maybe this delay is due to Evans genes...

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

And iirc, even after he's noticed it it never comes up for the weeks he's living with her at her house for Christmas.

[aasaylva.livejournal.com]

Well, the monster needs incubation time!

[go-back-chief.livejournal.com]

EXACTLY! That's why it feels so especially unrealistic; he noticed her personality transplant in OotP and even comments on it, but he doesn't fall in love with her until a year later! It doesn't make sense in any way, shape or form.