Deathly Hallows, chapter 9

[anehan]

A Place to Hide

* Alas, it's Friday again, and I must read another chapter of DH. Luckily I have some oat biscuits in the oven. They may not compare to what Molly would whip up, but perhaps they'll make the reading of this chapter more palatable anyway, since I don't have any alcohol handy.

* The protective enchantments around The Burrow have broken. I still don't understand how this and the DE attack on the Ministry are in any way connected. If the Order can manage to ward houses so well that even Voldemort himself can't get in (and where were these enchantments when the Potters were attacked in 1981?), surely they can keep a few Death Eaters away without the Ministry's help.

* Hermione just side-along Apparated Harry and Ron with her. Wow! Isn't Apparating supposed to be difficult? (Or did that go down the drain with do many other things?) I would imagine side-along Apparating would be doubly difficult.

* I still find Hermione's mother act a little disturbing.

* Though maybe I shouldn't judge Hermione too harshly. Someone must prepare the Trio for their guest, and since the boys display an unforgivable lack of interest in it, I guess the duty falls on Hermione.

* Harry is about to say that he wants to get back to The Burrow to help everyone there (especially Ginny). Is this supposed to show Harry's caring nature? Because to me, it shows his lack of brains.

* Hermione says Voldemort's name, and lo and behold, here are some Death Eaters. Snape was right when he warned Harry against saying Voldemort's name. What bugs me is that there's never been any indication that saying someone's name would enable that someone to find them. It should be something that every wizarding child would know (that would be the reason why everyone calls Voldermort You-Know-Who), but the Muggle-born would be ignorant of it. But here's Ron, not reacting in any way to Hermione's saying Voldemort's name.

* The larger of the DE is quite huge. Remember, all the baddies are fat. Or ugly. Or fat and ugly. Or if they are neither, at least they'll look like a vicar in dress robes.

* This is something British, and I'm sure I've heard this before, but I can't remember it: what are the "building society savings" that Hermione had?

* Ron recognises the big DE as Thorfinn Rowle. The reader has never heard of Thorfinn Rowle and wonders where Ron has got his mad DE-recognising skillz.

* Hermione has never done a Memory Charm. She's only planted fake memories on her parents' minds, a feat that usually takes a powerful wizard to do. I am reminded of Hermione the Dark Lady.

* It's not Hermione's fault that your jeans are too tight, Ron. That's what you get when you expect mommy to do everything.

* You can't put the Trace on an adult wizard, says Ron. You can't, or you shouldn't since it's illegal?

* I wonder, how is the Trace put on wizarding babies? Do the Ministry send someone to visit every newborn baby? What about the Muggle-born? I can imagine Muggle parents going all googly eyes over the random stranger who came to visit them at the hospital to mutter pseudo-Latin over their baby's crib.

* "Harry felt contaminated, tainted: was that really how the Death Eaters had found them?" Oh my god, kill me now. Harry is emoting. The guy's capability of wallowing in self-pity is really quite astonishing. Where's that communal sick bucket? I need it.

* Even if Harry had the Trace on him, the DE couldn't have found them through it since none of them used magic. Oh, come one, Hermione, you should have figured that out.

* Yes, Harry, Snape's just one Death Eater, but as he, like every member of the Order, is now a Secret Keeper for 12 Grimmauld Place, he can have the place crawling with Death Eaters if he so wants.

* A Tongue-Tying Curse and a figure of Dumbledore. Is that all the famed Moody could come up with? I can just imagine Snape sniggering to himself over the patheticness of it all.

* Harry thinks of Ginny as family. *eyeroll*

* Voldemort uses the royal "we" to refer to himself. *giggles*

* Poor Draco, to be forced to use the Cruciatus Curse. He, unlike Harry, doesn't enjoy it.

* Harry calls Draco by his first name in his mind! Wheeeeee!

* Mmm, the biscuits taste lovely. Like fudge with oat flakes in it.



"Fruit Cart, Fruit Cart!":
Cappucino cup!

Informed Attributes:
The anti-Snape enchantments at 12 Grimmauld Place are soooo scary.

Ken and Andrew's Rule of Plot Holes:
Protective enchantments. Can they or can they not keep Death Eaters at bay? Alas, the answer depends on plot needs.

Nut o' Fun:
Draco! Wheeee! Though it wasn't so much fun for him, poor baby.

Selling Wood:
Harry emotes. Again.

Final score: 5.

Comments

[tdotm.livejournal.com]

Ron does eventually ask them not to say ‘Voldemort’ when JKR remembers. Maybe Ron was previously fed up of Hermione’s harsh reprimands whenever he reacts in a way that he’s been conditioned to from birth. Unlike the perfect and brave Harry and Hermione, who had the trauma of breaking a habit of saying ‘You Know Who’ that must have been what - three or four years old?

It‘d have been cool if we were told that the Taboo was a very rare piece of Darkest Magic that Pure Blood Parents knew was possible, if illegal. So they taught their kids not to use the name of the one Wizard alive depraved enough to infringe basic laws of free speech in such a foul and depraved way - just in case. Or something like that. Maybe then Harry would have remembered and Dobby wouldn’t be decomposing 6 feet under.

Is Hermione pretending that she’s never done a Memory Charm so as to hide her evil deed of stripping her parents of their free will? Wouldn’t want Ron to think she was a rabid monster now, would we? Except she openly confessed it to them, then ‘cried’ looking for sympathy. Still it worked - on Ron anyway. He might have had an ulterior motive, but she had the same one, and we know he cares. Harry - not so much.

Perhaps JKR is just incapable of keeping a story straight (remind me not to ask her to give me a false alibi). Sadly this book is far too full of fascinating titbits to discuss how it actually worked - a major pet peeve of mine. Did Hermione also modify the memory of all of the Grangers’ family, employees and neighbours? Did she know any of them seeing as she avoids living in her old world as much as possible? Did anyone declare them missing? Did she arrange to rent out their house in their name? Surely they couldn’t - wouldn’t they have to produce legal documents? Did she amend all of them? Did she forge their new passports?

What happened to their practice? What happened to their patients? British Dentists are like gold dust - they’d have been constantly trying to make appointments. When did she have the time to do all that, plus the laundry? When a sub plot of such staggering inadequacy is nowhere near the worst thing in the book, you know the book needs major editing/re-writing. Bloody DH, for every exploding owl, you get ten plot-holes like this.

The Trace is arse.

It’s unbelievable that JKR would show Draco hating having to do the Cruciatus (torture let’s not forget), while Harry has no trouble with it at all(and McGonagall is rightly grateful for his ‘gallantry'). Does JKR really have no idea how this makes him look? Is this indicative of her own nature? It’s as bad as showing someone favour their own mother over Harry and expect us to hate them for it (Marietta, Seamus). I can understand Percy and Zacharias, because I know what she was trying to do, however badly, but I truly don’t understand these cases. She comes across as a harsh, judgemental character since Book 5. (However much she was paying the early editor it wasn’t enough). This woman worked for Amnesty International - she seems like the sort of person who’d imprison people unfairly, not try to free them!

JKR should have said that if the Secret Keeper dies, than the Secret dies with them unless a successor had been arranged, in which case they‘d automatically become the new one. McGonagall/Remus could have been said 2nd in line Secret Keeper. After all, the Trio are only forced out of Grimauld Place by Hermione apparating Yaxley on to the door step, so what on earth was the POINT in messing up the rules? (Not one word about Bill and Shell Cottage….) I think the book would have survived without all the ‘protections’ Moody put in place. And if he was dead, wouldn’t they stop working anyway? Why would JKR deliberately link it to the dead Member of the Order, as opposed to one of the many still living ones? Someone please help me.

[blndpetrcruzatt.livejournal.com]

It‘d have been cool if we were told that the Taboo was a very rare piece of Darkest Magic that Pure Blood Parents knew was possible, if illegal. So they taught their kids not to use the name of the one Wizard alive depraved enough to infringe basic laws of free speech in such a foul and depraved way - just in case. Or something like that. Maybe then Harry would have remembered and Dobby wouldn’t be decomposing 6 feet under.

Yeah, but then Harry&Co. would have had to find the last Horcruxes on their own or something. Heck, maybe, just maybe, the author would have had to come up with something more interesting than "the bank" and "that room where everyone hides everything" for locations for the last two. Though I still maintain that Harry was wrong about Voldemort thinking it was safe in the Room of Requirement--I say that he figured no one would every find it among all the junk. Tree in a forest and all that. Excuse me while I attempt to cling to some semblance of an intelligent villain. :(

[montavilla.livejournal.com]

Frankly, the whole Voldemort hiding places thing makes no sense at all. Okay, I get the cave. That one makes sense. He knew about it as a kid. It was probably already full of magic--which is why he loved it. So far, so good.

But, he hides the ring he took from his Gaunt grandfather in the very same place he murdered the guy? And it's a cruddy old shack? How does this jibe with the whole grandiose theme for hiding places? Then he just hands out two of the Horcruxes to his followers--even though he trusts no one. And then he sticks the tiara in a spot filled with junk. Plus, he put no safeguards on that tiara. How smart was that, when there were two ghosts who could identify it as Ravenclaw's?

Wouldn't it have been more grand to hide a Horcrux in the Chamber of Secrets? Or to, as I guessed he might have--transfigured one of them to look like his old school trophy.

And I still can't figure out why anyone in their right mind would horcrux a snake. Snakes aren't known for their longevity. It doesn't make sense to put a horcrux in any living organism, with the possible exception of a tree.

[aasaylva.livejournal.com]

I am sorry, but the tree-among-the-forest idea doesn't tie in with this:
"As for the school: he alone knew where in Hogwarts he had stowed the Horcrux, because he alone had plumbed the deepest secrets of that place..." (page 444 of the British edition). I don't see how that could mean anything but voldy thinking of the secret of the RoR itself - which of course is beyond idiotic as he saw all the junk hidden there and must have realized someone else had put it there.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

...which of course is beyond idiotic as he saw all the junk hidden there and must have realized someone else had put it there.

House elves. They don't qualify as "real people." Maybe he learned about it the same way Harry did - a house elf told him.

[tdotm.livejournal.com]

JKR messed up the Horcxruxes. Like everything else.

After Harry destroyed the diary, the chamber was sealed. We should have discovered that before it was, Dumbles went down there, checked it out, and discovered the ring on the finger of a statue of Slytherin. While the basilisk was there, and no-one knew where the entrance was, that'd be an excellent hiding place.

Dumbles could also have said that he believed Voldemort prized the horcruxes in Slytherin Artifacts the most (she fan-wanked desperately), so took the most care over them. The others were seen as second tier - after all, didn't someone say that nobody'd ever made so many before? Three key soul pieces - locket, ring, in Voldie himself, and 4 back-up ones which in his arrogance he was more casual with. A crap explanation, but for the 1,000th time, it's better than none at all.

I was fine with hiding the tiara in the RoR. Though that was probably my brain fanwanking merrily away, which it does of its own accord when reading Harry Potter.

If I was trying to hide a book, I wouldn't hide it in an empty room, I'd hide it in a library of 10,000 books. In the unlikely chance that someone would find the room, it would be far less likely to be discovered.

Equally, If I was trying to hide a Tiara, I wouldn't hide it in an empty room. However, if I hid it in a room filled with a thousand tiaras, and some Mundungus Fletcher type *did* find it, they'd be in sacks and down Diagon Alley before you could say 'spiv'.

It's be safer to hide something precious under a pile of junk. I always presumed that Voldemort mistakenly saw the junk as part of the disguise for his Horcrux, that the RoR had specifically provided for him - *not* as items belonging to other people.

However, I seem to be part of a very small minority, so maybe she could have written it more clearly. (If that was her intention, and it wasn't just another plot hole.)

[blndpetrcruzatt.livejournal.com]

I am sorry, but the tree-among-the-forest idea doesn't tie in with this:
"As for the school: he alone knew where in Hogwarts he had stowed the Horcrux, because he alone had plumbed the deepest secrets of that place..." (page 444 of the British edition).

Ack! Is that Voldy-vision? I remembered that explanation, but I thought it was something that Harry had given to Ron and Hermione.

I suppose it's just another case of Rowling shooting herself in the foot--without that little gem, we could still explain away the idiocy.

which of course is beyond idiotic as he saw all the junk hidden there and must have realized someone else had put it there.

Heck, even Harry realized that other people were responsible for all the junk.

[anehan]

When you start to question how everything works in this book, you are in for an endless task. The Grangers subplot is a case in point. There are so many things JKR just hasn't thought through. If the book was at least entertaining, I could forgive sloppy planning, but since DH is dull as hell, all we have to do is to pick it apart.