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

[cressida0201.livejournal.com]

the point at which she burnt out is the point that the mega-media showed up with contracts

I'm pretty sure the contracts happened before the release of GoF, or at least were being negotiated before then. I remember because the "waiting for GoF" period was when I first read the books and started getting into online discussion, and I remember people mocking those who were worried that the movies would "ruin everything" by taking away our personal images of the characters.

My own theory is that once the franchise went multimedia, JKR was just stretched too thin. She was having unprecedented control over the movies, plus she was going on book tours, being interviewed, and general having to live the life of a celebrity. I think she spread herself too thin and became exhausted, and that's when she burned out.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

The movie deal was being discussed before GoF came out, yes. It wasn't settled yet. Rowling actually hadn't been all that keen on it when the subject first came up.

And yes, she was stretched too thin. No question about that. She was also living in a fishbowl, which even with the grandstanding for publicity that Bloomsbury had set up was nothing like what it turned into under Warners.

But the initial burnout was clearly in the course of the writing itself. I now look at everything Rowling ever told us in an interview with a somewhat jaundiced eye, since she's turned out to be such a liar, but the writing schedule she'd been set was a grueling one, and the series got away from her in GoF.

I'm no longer taking Rowliing's word for it that the plot hole she fell into was just that Mafalda Prewett was in no position to know the information that she was supposed to be passing on to the trio, so she had to rewrite about a third of the book to delete the character. Yes, I believe that it took a rrewrite of a third of the book to get rid of Mafalda, but I am not convinced that it was only Mafalda that was cut from the book, nor that it was only Mafalda which turned out to be a problem. The whole book is based on a ridiculous premise and nothing that comes up in it goes anywhere. GoF served as the terminus point for a number of threads that had been present through the first three books, but none of the threads that were introduced in it seem to have been of any use whatsoever (with the exception of the Pensieve).

(And why completely *delete* the Mafalda character, just because she didn't serve the purpose she thought she was going to? I's not like everyone else we've met has served all that much of a purpose to the plot.)

Burnout

[cressida0201.livejournal.com]

Well, maybe it's a little of both; maybe she experienced burnout during the writing of GoF--she certainly hit some snags, as she's admitted, but whether they equal actual burnout, I'm not sure--but could have recovered if she'd been able to take a year off and just concentrate. Instead, she was plunged into an ever-more-exhausting routine of movie consultations, publicity appearances, etc., and that prevented her from recovering from whatever GoF did to her. (Oh, and I don't mean to sound like I think poor widdle JKR was just forced to be a celebrity, either; I think she probably enjoyed it, at least up to a point.)

I also agree with you that there were probably more changes to GoF than just the elimination of Mafalda Prewitt, and that the given reason for eliminating Mafalda doesn't ring true. I don't know what sort of information she was supposed to provide, but goodness, it doesn't seem like it can have been that hard to come up with a reason for why she'd know it. I've always been kind of curious about Mafalda, actually, and how the books would have been different if she'd stayed in.

Re: Burnout

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Well, it would have given us another nasty Slytherin to provide comic turns if she'd stayed. I gather she was supposed to be very smart too. Smart enough to give Hermione a run for her money.

One wonders how much of an improvement this would have turned out to be in the long run. A bit of competition wouldn't have done Hermione any harm...

Re: Burnout

[cressida0201.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, Mafalda might have become Hermione's own personal antagonist who never actually wins or does anything that seriously threatens her. Maybe we got lucky with Pansy, who's only in two or three scenes in the whole series.

Re: Burnout

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Valid point. Silly me, thinking only of the possibilities that might have enhanced things.

[tabaquis.livejournal.com]

Yes!

Nothing in GoF serves ANY PURPOSE whatsoever except the very end confrontation with Voldemort... which, with Fake!Moody on scene, could have been done in what, the third chapter?
"Potter, come over here a moment." *waves Harry over in Hogsmead*
"Potter, what do you think of this?" *hands Harry a gewjaw that turns out to be a Portkey* *woosh*

Unfortunately, 90% of the book past the middle of PoA is like this. You go back through it, reading or listening to the audiobooks, and it's STAGGERING how much of what's introduced is... completely worthless. 90% of the fights use spells they learned in their second year!

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

You know, in retrospect, the red flag ought to have gone up with the "confession" of Barty Crouch Jr. Maybe Sirius Black's return and his account of the decline and fall of Crouch Sr and the hints at the Snape backstory, in which he gives us a half dozen names for Jr DEs some of which acto the stupid tapestry couldn't have still even been in the school when the Marauder cohort and Snape arives, and yet somehow failed to even mention Malfoy or "Mulciber" (who I am convinced was *supposed* to have been Evan Rossier, except that Rowling cannot be bothered to read her own notes).

Barty's confession is completely implausible and does not even account for the events we watched take place in the book. But it is perfectly in keeping with the sort of "explanations" we were handed over the *following* 3 books.

Now I've heard rumors that the whole Imposter!Moody bombshell was a last minute paste-on which she used to roof over the plotholes she was trying deal with from her original outline. And frankly, I'm not at all sure that I believe it. She's lied to us too many times in interviews, and the imposter plot seems too well-integrated for her skills if it was a late insertion (admittedly she still had an editor in GoF).

Chapter 1: we eavesdrop on Peter and Tom discussing their plan to spring Barty after the Word Cup. We are later told that Moody was captured the evening of August 31, and remember that Polyjuice takes 3 weeks to brew. So we know that there was nothing random about any of those.

The whole point of the business of the missing wand and the Dark mark over the campgrounds seems to have been to goad Barty Sr into sacking his Elf, since they couldn't have overmastered him if the Elf had been there to help him. In fact from the timing above Crouch barely had tie to get his party home and send Winky packing before he found himself under attack. (Tom and Peter were probably lurking outside waiting to hear the *pop* of Winky's departure.) So there *ought* to have been nothing accidental about the broohaha at the Cup.

And yet, even though Peter could have snuck into the house as a rat the night before the Crouches and Winky left for World Cup, lifted the Imperius and given Barty his instructions, nooooooo the rigamarole that Crouch gives us -- under veritiserum *doesn't explain how the "cunning plan" worked*. Instead everything is suddenly all down to sheer *coincidence*. And I for one do not believe a word of it.

[tdotm.livejournal.com]

'She just needed to set some limits on the time-turners.' cressida 0201, that's exactly what I think is the main problem of the whole series, far worse than the shoddy writing, maybe even worse than the nonsense that is the plot. She didn't think through the implications of anything. When inventing Time Turners, or Pensieves or those wonderful ideas that help to make this world so rich, she really should have though about how they would be (and more importantly could be used). If there was the potential for a clash, there was no need for her to get rid of the idea (except for Sirius’ stupid mirror). She could just have added a rule or limitation that would get round it. Her forward planning was awful.

In Goblet, as tabaquis points out the obvious thing was a portkey. 'Moody' earned Harry‘s trust early on, it would have been easy. But no, he was hanging around all year, imitating someone who was a close friend of Dumbledore (the observant). He also had a magical eye (Did Crouch remove his own in order to wear Moody’s false one? Ew.) and a limp. Now this was necessary for her plot, but why on earth didn’t realise the flaw and write in a reason for why it took a year?

How about that the Ceremony had to take place on the Summer Solstice? (That’s why they waited all year long). Moody had to be there 10 months earlier to put Harry's name in the Goblet. Or maybe it could have taken place on either Solstice, but in December there was an exciting kidnap plan that went wrong. Not Tolstoy, obviously, but then I’m not getting paid for this. It’s almost offensive how she wasted the opportunity she had to create an excellent series that would stand the test of time. Laziness.

[va32h.livejournal.com]

It was laziness, plain and simple. She just didn't make the effort - or didn't think her readers deserved the effort.

One of the things that I realized when writing my fanfic was that for every nifty device or bit of magic that JKR invented, I had to come up with some obstacle to keep them from using it all the time, or the story would be boring (and about 12 pages long!)

But it wasn't that hard - you came up with two perfectly good explanations off the top of your head!