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.

Building Societies

[tdotm.livejournal.com]

Helka Maria - Building Societies are British, they're like banks, but owned by their customers, not by share holders. Both types of institutions will offer a full range of financial products, however tend to have higher shares of the markets they traditionally operate in. Current/Cheque accounts and Loans for Banks, and Mortgages and Savings accounts for Building Societies. All these institutions would throw their Granny to a dragon to attract new business, but Building Societies still have a small vestige left of their old policy of rewarding existing customers (their owners), and slightly better interest rates - if you shop around. Please let me know if you need more information - it’s all a damn sight more interesting than DH.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

* 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 think this, as well as quite a few other double-take moments in DH were written before the series got underway, along with the fabled epilogue. I used to think DH was Rowling trying to shove a run-away plot back into its insignificant box. Lately I've been thinking she didn't bother to update these previously written scenes to comply with the rest of canon.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

The Taboo is pants. I ended up inventing (or adopting) my own explanation. It's probably just as unnecessary, but I like it better.

Mind you, even in Rowling's version it does come across as fairly clear that the *Ministry* always had the power to impose something like that. But that the Ministry never would have done it. Why should they?

*HOWEVER* by the end of this silly book we know that the Dark mark was a communication device that went in both directions. Tom's followers can summon him as well as vice-versa, and any other DE in the vicinity can tell when they do it.

So by picking up some standard fantasy tropes, why not extrapolate that when someone mentions Tom's bogus title in the presence of someone wearing a Dark mark. he can listen in on what they are saying. This would explain why the DEs themselves refer to him as the Dark Lord (which is actually a real title, even if a presumptive one) which *doesn't* set off the connection.

Crouch Sr of course would have kept the existence of the Dark mark as classified information as long as he possibly could. (Fudge never heard of it anyway.) But if he did know about it, he may not have known that it was a communication device. And it seems likely that eventually people figured out that people who talked about "Voldemort" were getting attacked by DEs. And by the time this had leaked far enough for people to start overreacting, Tom would have probably upped the anxiety by making some kind of an announcement that; "Yes! I can HEAR you! Mwahhahahaha!"

Regardless of whether anyone could prove it or not it would have frightened them a bit.

Maybe he sent a letter to the editor of the Prophet.

[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).

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Let me belatedly share the summary of the poster of the spork for this chapter over on the Sporking Community last year:

"In which Suemione owns a TARDIS, the Trio abandons an innocent to her death, Rowling forgets something she told us three chapters ago, Grimmauld Place is rigged up like Disney's Haunted Mansion, and Harry envisions Draco's face while being spread-eagled on the floor."

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Ah, those ever-changing enchantments that can be totally unbreakable and then not on a whim. Along with wondering why the Potters weren't protected by them there's the question of why Harry wouldn't have been just as safe growing up with people like the Weasleys with enchantments. Oh right, then he would have been a pampered prince. Like Percy.

I love that Hermione not only has to do all the laundry and make all the arrangements and pack everything and figure everything out but she's got to finance the trip with her own damn money. Even though Harry's got a vault full of goal. Could it be more obvious that Hermione is their mom?

Seriously, Wizard life is so weirdly stunted. Imagine being Harry's age and not immediately wondering what you were going to do about money for a year.

Harry thinks of Ginny as family. Not a good idea to marry somebody you love like a sister, Harry. Or even your best friend's sister.

What on earth was the point of all that "saying Voldemort's name means you're brave!" Just to turn it into "saying Voldemort's name makes you stupid?" Two books ago I might have thought this was building up to an actual theme of too much braver=stupidity.

Was Moody expecting Snape to send Shaggy to break into Grimmauld Place? Because he and Scooby are about the only people who would run from that alarm system. It's like the SNEAK hex. It doesn't actually prevent anybody from coming in or capture them.

How is Draco doing a Crucio when he clearly doesn't want to do it? Is the other person faking it? Not only did we hear the "you have to mean it" in OotP, we hear it referenced again at the end of this book. I get that Harry is cooler than Draco for being able to torture (Draco's cowardly), but how does he do it at all? It's like there are two parallel storylines about this curse. One's about how Harry does them the best because he means them and Crabbe and Goyle are evil because they mean them. In the other Neville refuses gallantly to do one when pushed as if he could and Draco does one when commanded as if he can.