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

[aasaylva.livejournal.com]

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.
I imagine there is something like an access code involved in those wards and you had to have access to these files in order to break it (something like the ENIGMA code - I know, it's preposterous in the face of what we know about the ww, but one can always dream).

Hermione just side-along Apparated Harry and Ron with her. Wow!
Wow indeed! In one of the earlier posts I was whining about the impossibility of spinning around your own axis while holding onto someone who has to do the same himself. A commenter came up with the clever idea that both had to spin around the person in control of the disapparition which made sense. Only - in this case, if that IS what they did, you really have to admire Hermione's physical strength, spinning around her own axis while holding onto two boys, both of whom are taller than she is - I'd be hard put to do this with two toddlers.

I still find Hermione's mother act a little disturbing.
To date, Hermione has
- accioed the Horcrux books and read them
- memory charmed her parents
- packed everything they need including money for the next year for the whole trio including things like Harry's cloak for which really HE should have been in charge).
Note, that she didn't even think of talking about this with the two boys (like, e.g. "Harry, we might need money, do you think you could get into your vault at Gringotts?").
Ron has come up with the Ghoul-as-Ron idea (if it WAS his idea and not Arthur#s).
Harry has cleaned out his school trunk and messed up his room.
It's easy to see who is the hero of the story.

Hermione says Voldemort's name, and lo and behold, here are some Death Eaters.
The irritating thing about the whole changing of rules on a whim in these books is, that it makes it objectively impossible for the trio to reason for themselves in order to navigate their way through this world. You don't have anything to go by: Does such a taboo exist? If yes, why was it never mentioned before? If no, why would everybody be scared of using the name like some kindergarteners afraid of the bogeyman? Do you have to be near a person to cast that underage Trace? If yes, does a wizard appear at every newborn muggleborn's crib to do it (and if so, why would Neville's family be so worried about Neville being magical?)? If no, why would Ron think Harry couldn't have been Traced from afar? (Oops, just read further down and saw you argued the same..)
The height of idiocy, of course, is Ron thinking Voldy couldn't do it, because it is illegal, OMG...

It's not Hermione's fault that your jeans are too tight, Ron.
You are right - that's Fleur's fault (drags her mind out of the gutter).

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.
The awful thing is, in these books you can't even argue along those lines, because it might turn out that the New Trace was cued to go off whenever muggle drinks are consumed next to the Chosen one or something.

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.
Another idiocy of Rowling contradicting herself WITHIN the same book (How? How?!?!?). Here, it seems as if Snape can't take anyone with him who hasn't been told the secret himself. But with Hermione and Yaxley, that suddenly changes.

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.
Word.

Harry thinks of Ginny as family. *eyeroll*
Well, did you expect him to think of her as a girl? Especially now that he is on a first name basis with Draco all of a sudden (I still wonder what made Rowling do that).

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

(I still wonder what made Rowling do that).

I still say this and other snippets, scenes not entire chapters, were written, along with the epilogue, before the series got off the ground.

[blndpetrcruzatt.livejournal.com]

Heck, that seems like a good explanation for how she wrote the last couple of books. I don't necessarily mean writing before the series got off the ground, but rather that she had bits and pieces of scenes in her mind when she sat down to write the books. The problem became how to force her characters into that kind of situation. I think that's why her plots turn out so convoluted. The worst part is that the bits and pieces she had in mind weren't good enough to justify the twisted means she uses to bring them about. Combine that with the fact that her meddling is so incredibly heavy-handed and, well, you get DH and its ilk.

Actually, her style of writing kind of reminds me of a formulaic Simpsons episode. You've got your main plot, but you've also got to get the family there, which usually involves a lesser plot line at the beginning of the episode. The audience can practically trace the lines in a poorly-written episode.

A lot of DH, HBP, and even OotP and GoF are like a poorly-written Simpsons episode. The author's hand should not be so visible. Sometimes, you've got to let your characters be themselves, even if it means cutting one of the scenes you were looking forward to writing.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

I don't necessarily mean writing before the series got off the ground, but rather that she had bits and pieces of scenes in her mind when she sat down to write the books.

Yes! Exactly. As you mention below, Teleportation is a staple in sci-fi and fantasy books. So there's a scene where a lowlife belonging to the Good Guys vanishes off a broom in mid-flight, causing the death of a previous generation's hero. As far as we know, wizards don't sit side-saddle on brooms (even though it might make sense since they all wear robes). How would this lowlife Disapparate by turning around his own axis if he's straddling a flying broom? If there is yet no explanation developed for how Apparation works, then he just vanishes and people who know, understand that he Disapparated.

Before HBP, IIRC, we weren't shown wizards turning before they disappear with a pop. We aren't shown them finishing a turn when they appear. If several scenes, not whole chapters but just snippets, were written as the series was begun because they sounded interesting, then these mechanics were not thought out yet when the scene was written. Six books later, a method for Apparation is developed which involves turning around one's own axis. The previously written scenes were not retrofitted at that point to reflect the newly devised method. It may even have slipped the author's mind that there might be something to retrofit such as turning on one's axis while straddling a thin piece of wood.

That's all I meant by thinking that some scenes were written beforehand. The basics, such as wizards vanishing into thin air, are there, but the development of the magic involved is lacking. I also agree that she had to find ways to fit the characters to the scenes she fell in love with, and the forcing shows. By doing that, both scenes and characters are diminished, IMO.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

>>>Here, it seems as if Snape can't take anyone with him who hasn't been told the secret himself. But with Hermione and Yaxley, that suddenly changes. <<<

To say nothing of the Ministry supposedly being able to trace Apparations in Chapter 4 which is why we got that *stupid* 7 Potters business, and yet in Chapter 11 Lupin tells us that the only way to trace an Apparation is to grab the person apparating.

This isn't the only issue on which Rowling decided she was entitled to have it both ways in this book, either. But yeah the whole concept of magical tracking is one that she has repeatedly fallen flat on her face over. Usually by trying to have things both ways.

The taboo is bad enough. But at least it comes across that the technology was always there -- just no one had any reason to try to use it for anything.

The Trace is complete rubbish. The only way that it could work is that it was something like a magical macro that activated when the Hogwarts Quill recorded a magical birth. And if that were the case where were the Ministry boffins who were supposed to be putting right the accidental magic that Harry (or any underage wizard) was doing for 10 years out among Muggles before they *got* to Hogwarts? No one ever seems to have seen hide nor hair of any of them.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

And even at that the bloody Trace *ought* to be registering whether the *child* is the one doing the magic it's registering. WHat is the point of it if 3/4 of the magical children in Britain have at least one magical parent if the Trace only registers magic performed in the child's *vicinity*.

I mean, it might make some sense if it were Tracing *wandless* magic, since that's the kind the Ministry has to go and undo. And that would have let Dobby's hover spell register as Harry's, but if wandless, then why is the kid being blamed for it, instead of it being assumed that it was accidental?

[anehan]

if that IS what they did, you really have to admire Hermione's physical strength, spinning around her own axis while holding onto two boys

Super!Hermione: not only brains but brawns as well.

It's not Hermione's fault that your jeans are too tight, Ron.
You are right - that's Fleur's fault (drags her mind out of the gutter).

Hehe, does this mean Hermione is unable to cause Ron's jeans to tighten?

[aasaylva.livejournal.com]

Super!Hermione: not only brains but brawns as well.
It#s like that moment in the PoA movie, where Hermione grabs Harry's T-shirt with one hand, lifts him up and throws him down the tunnel under the Whomping Willow while being herself swirled around by said Willow. I thought it ridiculous at the time and sighed "Hollywood!". Little did I know what was in stock for me...


Hehe, does this mean Hermione is unable to cause Ron's jeans to tighten?
(grins sheepishly). IMHO, yes. we are TOLD how every boy in Hogwarts who doesn't have the hots for Ginny does so for Hermione, but to me, it never was convincing and not just because of the Harry-filter. She may be pretty and intelligent and strong-willed, but to me she always came across essentially humourless, spinsterish, priggish, very prim, self-righteous, bossy and in mother-hen mode - not the essence of sexy.

[blndpetrcruzatt.livejournal.com]

In one of the earlier posts I was whining about the impossibility of spinning around your own axis while holding onto someone who has to do the same himself.

Teleportation is such a staple of sci-fi/fantasy, as is the idea that if you grab onto someone who is teleporting, you'll go as well. Frankly, I liked Apparation better in the first book, before Rowling tried to explain how it was done. At the time, it seemed like highly advanced magic that only a certain few could do.

That's why I was so surprised in HBP when we saw that Harry's class was actually going to learn how to do it (I know the twins did the year before, but I never reread between novels, nor was I in the "fandom"). Of course, Rowling's always had a hard time keeping track of difficulty, numbers, how much money is a lot, how much money the Weaslys have (no galleons in their account in CoS, yet enough that Ron could possibly buy 40 galleon binoculars in GoF if he hadn't bought the Krum doll?), how magic works, etc.

Blegh. This series is a lot more fun if you wait a few months or years between books. That way, you forget as much as the author did . . .