Deathly Hallows, chapter 6
Aug. 8th, 2008 09:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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deathtocapslockThe Ghoul in Pyjamas
* Harry is feeling guilt and grief. Harry and Moody were so close that it'll probably take him a long time to get over his death, almost as long as it took him to get over Sirius's death. So, in two weeks he should be all right.
* Lupin and Mr Weasley drop their inquiries the moment they are told that Dumbledore didn't want them to know anything about Harry & co.'s quest. Frankly, I think less of them for it.
* Mrs Weasley, though, isn't giving up. The whole thing is portrayed as if Mrs Weasley is once again being overprotective, but IMO she's just being sensible. Wouldn't you be if three seventeen-year-olds were dropping out of school to go on a mysterious quest, refusing to tell anyone anything about it except that Dumbledore wanted them to do it? But of course, Mrs Weasley is questioning Saint Dumbledore. Can't have that, now can we?
* Why does Harry think he's got to be the one to find the Horcruxes? Mrs Weasley is right: Dumbledore had the whole Order at his command. A group of fully qualified witches and wizards, who'd probably be far more capable of finding the Horcruxes than Harry & co. All Harry has to do is die. The rest can be done by anyone.
* By the way, Mrs Weasley has a manger. So it's not possible to smooth clothes by magic.
* The manger is wringing out one of Mr Weasley's vests. I thought Mr Weasley wore robes.
* Terrible of Mrs Weasley to keep Harry, Ron and Hermione busy with wedding preparations. She should do all by herself, the bitch.
* Ah, so here we have a half-baked explanation as to why the Ministry hasn't prosecuted Harry for soing all the magic he did while escaping the Death Eaters. Scrimgeour doesn't want to admit Voldemort is as powerful as he is.
* So Scrimgeour is as bad as Fudge for trying to keep the truth from coming out. The Wizarding World just has a terrible luck in leaders. If only Mr Crouch would have been able to become Minister.
* "I must not tell lies." Harry Potter, the Tortured Hero™. *gags*
* Mrs Weasley wears reading spectacles!
* "'And are they getting married in my bedroom?' asked Ron furiously. 'No! So why in the name of Merlin's saggy left --'" testicle. JKR is fond of almost-sexual jokes. Remember the Probity Probe?
* Ha! So the wizards do you Merlin's name as a swear word.
* Mrs Weasley calls Fleur's parents Monsieur and Madame Delacour. No, no, and a thousand times no! When speaking English, they are called Mr and Mrs Delacour. I am reminded of the Hercule Poirot adaptations with David Suchet, where people keep calling Poirot Monsieur Poirot in a terrible French accent and where Poirot, in turn, litters his speech with French words and calls everyone mademoiselle or madame or monsieur. Just, no. One speaks the language one is speaking. Besides, why is it always French words one inserts into one's speech and not words in another language? In GoF, Mr Ollivander calls Fleur "Mademoiselle Delacour" but Krum "Mr Krum". (Sorry, I seem to have stumbled on a pet-peeve of mine.)
* Mr Weasley isn't telling his wife that he has Sirius's bike in the coop. It's probably supposed to be endearing how Mr Weasley has his little hobbies, but to me it sounds like a pretty miserable marriage if you can't tell your wife about your hobbies without fear of being scolded.
* What is Ron doing carrying a greasy handkerchief with him? Normal people put dirty handkerchiefs into the laundry.
* From Mad-Eye's death, Ron's learned not to trust Mundungus. Frankly, I think Mundungus did the only sensible things: get away when Death Eaters are attacking, even if Apparating from a broomstick requires advanced acrobatics.
* Hermione coolly tells that she has mind-raped her parents. But that's okay, they are mere Muggles. They have to be protected for their own good. She has truly assimilated well into the Wizarding World, down to adopting their attitudes towards Muggles.
* Hermione is crying over her parents. I guess that makes it all right.
* Ron knows what an uvula is. Is that normal knowledge among English people? The only reason I know what that piece of my anatomy is called is because I've studied phonetics.
* Harry needs Hermione to point out to him that Voldemort might be keeping watch on Godric's Hollow. And Harry is the Saviour of the Wizarding World. If I were a witch, I'd leave Britain as soon as possible, because clearly the Wizarding World has no hope.
* I don't get how Harry & co. haven't realised who R.A.B. is. If I were one of them, I'd start going through wizarding surnames to find out who he is. From that, it's a small leap to Regulus Black. All of the readers probably got it in five minutes.
* I know that as a Headmaster of Hogwarts Dumbledore has a right to remove books from the library, but I still don't like his decision to remove the books on Horcruxes. Almost all forms of magic can be used for harmful purposes, but I don't see him removing books that tell you how to enlarge Muggles' tongues from the library.
* Hermione is feeling guilty for stealing the books on Horcruxes. I say that having entrusted Harry & co. with the task of destroying the Horcruxes, Dumbledore had no right to keep the books from them. Is it only me, or do you think that Dumbledore is deliberately making it as difficult as possible to destroy the Horcruxes? Ordering Harry not to tell anyone but Ron and Hermione about them, not telling Harry how to destroy them, and hiding the books on them. One could almost think that he didn't want them to be destroyed.
* Hermione the exposition machine at work. Topic: Horcruxes.
* Splitting your soul makes it unstable, so Hermione can't believe Voldemort has made six Horcruxes. Um, Hermione, have you ever heard from Harry about what kind of person Voldemort is? Because I think "unstable" describes him quite well.
* Harry wonders why he never asked Dumbledore how to destroy a Horcrux. Just your natural stupidity, Harry.
* The Ministry has placed security enchantments upon The Burrow. So the Weasleys are so important that they deserve special protection, while the likes of Madam Bones can be cheerfully left to their deaths. Also, does this mean the Ministry know Harry's at The Burrow? Oh dear,
* Oh, I love the Delacours.
* Tell me, why aren't the Death Eaters keeping a watch on The Burrow and attacking Mr Weasley and the Delacours when they are outside the protective spells?
* In my private universe, Gabrielle marries Percy. (Let's forget that Gabrielle is only eleven years old.) None of Percy's family can understand how Percy could have got such a lovely wife and they'll be very rude about it to Percy. (I love it when Percy's family behaves badly against him, because then I can hate the Weasleys in peace.) *ships Percy/Gabrielle*
* The Delacour's are helpful, pleasant guests. I'm sure that if it were the Weasleys visiting the Delacours, the Weasleys wouldn't be nearly as charming. (Like I said, I love it when the Weasleys behave badly.)
* Mrs Weasley says it complicates organising a wedding, having all the security spells in place. Well, who on Earth organises a large wedding in the middle of a terrorist war? Such a gathering is like a come-hither look for a Death Eater attack.
IITS:
Why won't the Ministry prosecute Harry for doing underaged magic? IITS!
Idiot Picture:
No one except Mrs Weasley will try to stop Harry & co. Why? Because Harry says Dumbledore told them to go on a suicide mission!
Informed Attributes:
Only Harry can find and destroy the Horcruxes.
Ken and Andrew's Rule of Plotholes:
Why has The Burrow been warded by the Ministry?
Light Bulb Moment:
Harry realises he never asked Dumbledore how to destroy Horcruxes.
Nut o' Fun:
The Delacours!
Final score: 6.
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-08 08:11 pm (UTC)Wizards only started to use Merlin as a curse , because of all the fan-fics that JKR read and emulated in order to come up with this book. We have no idea if magic in this world is physical or mystical or related to a religion, so what do we know? Does JKR say “In the name of Enid Blyton!” when cross in real life?
JKR shouldn’t have added R.A.B. She should have added a crest or something to the bottom of the note, that the Trio then recognise when they go to Grimauld Place. Then a) there would have been some suspense as opposed to everyone (apart from the Trio) working out R.A.B. immediately, and b) The trio wouldn’t have seemed so slow and stupid. She gave too much away at the end of Book 6, so there were very little surprises in this. Apart from the brand new rules introduced that directly contradicted what we’d already been told….
When I read that Hermione had just ‘accioed’ the books out of Dumbledore’s office, it was the first time I was actually shocked. Lots of what had gone before was nonsense, but this was so ridiculous I realised JKR had really lost it. In fact, no matter what came after, I knew that it couldn’t make up for the first part of the book. Once Hermione had really worked for her knowledge and ability. In this book, everything just fell in her lap - she had vast amounts of new knowledge we weren’t aware of at the end of the last book (about a month earlier!). Either that or nothing occured to her when it should have been obvious - eg calling a house elf when they were hungry in the forest. Hermione is no longer a character in this book - she’s just a plot device. Shame.
Mrs Weasley trying to stop them going was in character at least. The others being so easy going wasn’t. No-one with a brain would think that Harry was the only one who could destroy the Horcruxes. However I was happy with Dumbledore telling him he was - not the same thing at all.
If you presume (and hope!) that Dumbledore had endlessly looked into ways of destroying the not-a-horcrux in Harry, he’d have accepted his death as the last and only option. If Harry told the rest of the Order about the Horcruxes, how long before they’d have realised that Harry had his own piece of V’s soul in him, that he had to die? Moody or Kingsley might have understood, but they’d at least have wanted to tell the rest of the Order.
Would they have accepted it? Would Remus watch his friends’ son sacrifice himself, after their efforts to keep him alive? (We know Sirius would!) Could McGonagall let a pupil go to his death? We can all imagine Mrs Weasley’s reaction. How many months/years would they have spent trying to come up with another solution and doubling Dumbledore’s work? At Kings Cross, Dd could have explained that that’s why he didn’t want these experienced Wizards/Witches including Aurors/ex DADA teachers etc involved. Not because they couldn’t help - obviously they could, but because they might interfere with the final step in his master plan, and he couldn’t take that risk.
Cold, but then so was Dumbles. However, JKR decided that she’d not address this, and let Dumbles talk about wand-lore and himself and how great Harry is. Yawn.
If in Book 6, Dd had told Harry that he'd discuss how to deal with Horcruxes when he came of age, then Harry wouldn't look like such a retard now. Though I don't know how long he had before the curse on his hand killed him. Alternatively, he could have said he'd show him once they got back to the castle and they'd destroy the locket together. Just anything where Harry was thwarted by fate, not his own Grawp-level lack of wit.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-09 02:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-09 02:02 pm (UTC)"Oh foolish faker," I said to myself as I wiped away tears, "what a ridiculous proposition. How can anyone believe that Rowling wrote this?
Oh me. Will I ever get over the bitterness? Anyway, the "Accio Books" thing is in the lead for Laziest Thing Rowling Did in DH. It was as if she just couldn't be bothered to come up with an interesting way for them to acquire the knowledge. It reminds me of those slash fics that never explain why two characters that loathe each other are suddenly naked and alone together. "Who cares how it happened, just get to the good parts."
Assuming of course that you think there are any good parts.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-09 03:33 pm (UTC)Agreed. In the post-DH aftermath with all the big things to complain about, I completely forgot these crappy shortcuts that were just randomly inserted into the books. If it was so easy to get hold of forbidden books, why didn't Tom Riddle do this years ago?
Can we have a Laziest Thing Rowling Did in DH. poll once the recaps get over? That would be a contest to witness!
no subject
Date: 2008-08-09 06:57 pm (UTC)Oh yes, please! Do you think, we might put a post (or whatever you call the single instalments here on DTC) with a date in the future on top of the board and everybody can post their suggestions there as we go along, because otherwise I'm afraid one Oh No! will be cancelled out by the next (and there are MANY of them!!!)?
no subject
Date: 2008-08-11 11:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-12 01:57 am (UTC)However, if you a need a list of things to vote for, would the Deluminator stand a chance as an option? Giving it a posh new name - and I think put-outer was rather sweet - is no explanation for its ridiculously contrived way of bring Ron back just in time to save Harry's life. (That alone is reason to resent it).
It also contributed to JKR not having to do the relatively small reworking necessary to cut out 200 pages of Tolkien cribbing/brain rotting/character wrecking/page filling nonsense.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-09 06:37 pm (UTC)For people like yourself, who were really counting down to the release of DH it must have been such a shock. Her writing needed serious editing from Goblet, but she was never so boring and lazy as in DH - what happened?
'Good Parts' Hah - that's a good one! The owl's blown up - it's downhill from here....
I've read and enjoyed your retake of DH. However one thing I noticed, was that Harry was constantly having to rethink or regret his previous behaviour. Just about every chapter had him regretting the error of his ways - proving that Harry had been a self absorbed foolish, petulant jerk long before July '07.
OT, I'm not into Twilight at all - never read any of it, but I'm aware of the lynch mobs being formed/riots currently taking place. Apparently the new book is even more of a let-down than DH was. If that's true it must be a real pile of crap!
no subject
Date: 2008-08-10 05:56 am (UTC)I agree that in retrospect, Harry has been a jerk for some time. Someone suggested that to "Do over" the series properly, you'd have to rewrite not just DH, but Phoenix and HBP too. I don't know why I missed Harry's jerkiness before, except that I had a tendency to substitute way I knew we were supposed to feel about Harry (and James and Sirius and Hagrid) for the way they often came across on the actual page.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-10 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-11 09:09 am (UTC)Of course that's part of the wider problem with Rowling's "It does exactly what I need it to" magic system. You're always saying either "but couldn't they just..." or "but if they could just..." and it makes no sense.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-09 04:54 pm (UTC)I am sorry, but this is a rather unrealistic approach, IMHO. Harry is not a little kid anymore, but of an age of countless young soldiers who died in the many RL wars. And they are in a state of war. McGonnagal already had lots of former pupils who went to their deaths. Etc.
And the fact that DD couldn't find a solution to Harrycrux would have convinced all those rabid supporters of his that it is indeed impossible.
It seems to me that this analysis falls into the trap of being hypnotized by Harry's speshulness. All these people cared about him, sincerely, but they weren't obsessed enough to let the whole world burn because of him. To ensure their quick acquiescence DD could have also suggested that Harrycrux might take control of Harry at some point, etc.
At Kings Cross, Dd could have explained that that’s why he didn’t want these experienced Wizards/Witches including Aurors/ex DADA teachers etc involved. Not because they couldn’t help - obviously they could, but because they might interfere with the final step in his master plan, and he couldn’t take that risk.
And instead he took an infinitely greater risk of the Horcruxes not being found/destroyed at all?
And "master plan"? What master plan? Leave everything to Harry, trust Harry, he'll swing it? And let's give this mediocre boy zero pertinent information /training and distract him with some completely unrelated item puzzles for additional fun.
Also, lest we forget the "final step", if we can call it such in the absence of any coherent plan, was only necessary to give Harry a chance of survival, nothing else.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-09 06:21 pm (UTC)The whole point is that JKR “herself” constantly emphasises Harry’s “speshulness”, from his golden polyjuice potion, to Diggle’s disbelief that the Dursleys did not appreciate him the way that everyone in the Wizarding World did - and that‘s just in the first few chapters. I was simply trying to say that to use the excuse that DD was worried about the others trying to stop him sacrificing himself when time was of the essence, would be far more acceptable than that DD genuinely thought that Harry Potter was the best and only person to deal with the horcruxes. Even with his friends on board. Bright though Hermione was, I’m not convinced that Remus and McGonagall couldn’t at least equal her. With my suggestion, Dumbledore comes across as sly, which would fit in with everything JKR reveals about him in Book 7. To leave it as it is, he comes across as stupid, which I can’t believe JKR intended.
You’re picking on phrases like ‘Masterplan’ and ’final step’ with no apparent sense of irony. I’d hope it was obvious that I’m not trying to defend her plot at all. It’s just that an attempt to explain Dumbledores actions would be better than leaving the whole thing unexplained and exposed. You don’t have to agree with the reasoning, my point is that there should have been some.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-11 11:30 am (UTC)She's always been an exposition machine, but really, in DH it becomes unbearable.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-23 05:54 am (UTC)Wizards only started to use Merlin as a curse , because of all the fan-fics that JKR read and emulated in order to come up with this book.
I think I remember reading an interview where JKR mentioned that she saw Ron as the type of character who would swear a lot, but she didn't want to put a lot of swearing into the books. This must be the solution she came up with, but I do have to wonder whether it came from fandom.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-23 08:30 pm (UTC)I agree that Ron would have sworn a lot. 5 elder brothers - of course he did!
Anyway, by Book 7, she'd managed to overcome her principles enough for the enhancement of her story. After all, think how the plot would have suffered if she'd not used 'Bastard' and 'Bitch'.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-12 02:12 am (UTC)For me it was the HBP broomstick conversation. Harry says, "I want to kill as many Death Eaters as possible!" DD weeps at seeing such Love.