Deathly Hallows, chapter 10

[anehan]

Kreacher's Tale

* "The gried that had possessed him since Dumbledore's death..." What is this? Grief? From Harry?

* Oh, Harry, of course you were just a tool to Dumbledore. I'm surprised it's taken you this long to realise.

* Phineas Nigellus' portrait is empty because he's spending the night at Hogwarts. Does this mean that, however many portraits of a person there are, only one of them can house the actual person? Does this also apply to things like Chocolate Frog cards?

* Sirius has pictures of sanctily clad women on his bedroom walls. He isn't gay. Definitely not. Being gay is only reserved to old, asexual headmasters.

* In the picture of the Marauders, Pettigrew is plump and watery-eyed. How could the Potters not have realised that Pettigrew was evil with all the evidence of his appearance?

* Lupin looks shabby even as a teenager. Is the guy constitutionally incapable of looking neat?

* Lupin also has "the same air of delighted surprise at finding himself liked and included". "The same air"? When else has he had that air? I don't like this, making Lupin look so pathetic. But I guess it's on par with the rest of the book.

* Sirius has used the Permanent Sticking Charm to keep his posters and the photograph on the walls. I would have thought he'd have wanted to take his things with him once he left his home, but I guess a teenaged rebel like him just had to leave them all there to annoy his parents.

* Aww, wee Harry on a toy broomstick. *is ded from cute*

* "Wormy." *sporfle*

* From Lily's letter, it looks like the Potters were already under the Fidelius Charm when Harry turned one, yet Pettigrew didn't betray them until Halloween. What's up with that? Or am I supposed to believe Voldemort waited three months to attack them on Halloween? Perhaps it was a magically auspicious time.

* Ooh, all these tantalising hints about Dumbledore, making it all since like some grand mystery.

* Lily writes her g's the same way as Harry. I didn't realise handwriting was hereditary.

* BTW, why did Dumbledore take James's Invisibility Cloak? Didn't he trust James to stay put if he had it? That was probably wise.

* Snape really is obsessed with Lily, to go to the trouble of ransacking Sirius's room to get her signature and a picture of her. Pathetic.

* So all of Moody's anti-Snape enchantments were for nothing. Snape managed to get into the house anyway.

* I wonder, why didn't the Order take the Fidelius Charm off and do it again with someone else as the Secret Keeper?

* Harry wants to know the truth about Dumbledore. Tell me, Harry, how exactly does that help you defeat Voldemort? You know, the main task you have?

* OMG, why is Rowling so determined to make Harry emote? It seems to me that Rowling is really bad at writing intense emotions convinvingly. That's why she has to resort to things like chest monsters.

* And R.A.B. is found. Harry only needed to be beaten upside the head with anvils to realise who it was. If Hermione had known Regulus was a DE who got cold feet, she would have guessed R.A.B.'s identity right away. I guess we can't expect higher brain function from Harry.

* Sirius and Regulus both seem to have been rebels. Sirius rebelled against his family; Regulus rebelled against Sirius.

* Regulus tried so hard to be everything Sirius wasn't, I wouldn't be surprised if he joined the Death Eaters just to spite Sirius.

* Regulus was rather less handsome than Sirius was. And Harry would notice this why, exactly?

* Ahahahaa, now your "cleaning" of the house comes to bite you in your arse.

* Kreacher is "the house-elf Harry had so reluctantly inherited from Sirius". Don't worry, Harry. Before long you'll come to appreciate the benefits of having your own slave.

* Sometimes I wonder what Mundungus Fletcher did in the Order. I understand why the Order would have him, but what was in it for him, apart from the Black family treasures?

* Ron is knowledgeable about elf magic. I love it when Ron comes across as the pureblood that he is. It reminds me that there is this wide cultural gulf between Ron, and Harry and Hermione. They quite literally aren't from the same world. I know this aspect isn't usually emphasised, but there's bound to be all kinds of cultural clashes in marriages between the purebloods and the Muggle-born.

* Harry wonders how Voldemort could have made the mistake of forgetting that house-elves have different magic from humans. Hermione provides her view: "Of course, Voldemort would have considered the ways of house-elves far beneath his notice, just like all the pure-bloods who treat them like animals." Now you're just being stupid, Hermione. Ron just demonstrated that it's the pure-bloods who know about house-elf magic, not Muggle-borns. And Voldemort was practically a Muggle-born.

* I wonder, did Regulus really change his mind about everything Voldemort represented? The turning point for him seems to have been the way Voldemort treated Kreacher. First he was all about what an honour it would be to serve the Dark Lord, and he eve volunteered Kreacher for the work. But then it was only a little while after the business with Kreacher that he decided to go against Voldemort. Was he already disillusioned when he volunteered Kreacher, doing that merely to garner more information on what Voldemort was doing? Or did he really decide to die just because Voldemort left Kreacher to die?

* Oh, poor Regulus. What a horrible way to die. I wonder why he chose to die there, when he didn't have to. Was he so convinced that Voldemort would get him that he chose this way as the lesser of two evils?

* Wasn't there a body of a man in the water when Harry and Dumbledore went to the cave? Or do I remember incorrectly?

* I love how Kreacher tries to bow to Hermione but can't quite manage it.




Box Picture:
Kreacher is The Sacrifice. Voldemort is The Evil Dark Lord. (He has red eyes, by the way.)

Informed Attributes:
The anti-Snape enchantments work. Really.

Light Bulb Moment:
R.A.B.! I know who he is!

McGuffin:
I must know the truth about Albus McGuffin Dumbledore!

Selling Wood:
Harry emotes. (This seems to become a permanent feature.)

Final score: 5.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I've been wrong before, but I honestly don't think those girlie posters were a hit at slashers. I think as usual JKR just reached for the first cliché that came to mind -- Quick, how would a rebellious pureblood teenager go about annoying his parents? With Muggle porn! She probably assumes that she already sank Remus/Sirius in canon by introducing the ever so romantic and believable Remus/Tonks. (For me, it was DH that finally convinced me that Remus and Sirius and Snape were gayer than a three-dollar monkey, or a treeful of bills on nitrous oxide.)

RAB was a Death Eater, sporting wood over the master wizard race. So why take pity on a creature such as Kreacher, and sacrifice your life for them?

I'm gonna fanwank this part because I liked some of it. Even if Regulus only thought of Kreacher as the family pet, he'd be understandably angry that Voldemort mistreated him. But it doesn't follow that that was his only motive for turning against Voldemort. After Kreacher's return, some time passed before Regulus asked to see the cave. He seemed "disturbed in his mind". We don't know what happened in the interim, but I'd guess he'd been doing belated in-depth research on his Lord and finding out some very unsavory things. Whether or not he'd been prepared for genocide, Horcruxes are apparently worse. A Black scion would know about Horcruxes if anyone would, though admittedly that's not the same as figuring out that Voldemort had made one. I was going to suggest that maybe his deformed face would clue in those in the know, but the heck with it, it's a plothole. And I can't make any sense of Regulus' insanely optimistic notion that Kreacher would be able to destroy the Horcrux.

-L

[tdotm.livejournal.com]

What if he found out somehow that Voldemort was a Half-Blood? That'd be a good reason to hate him and want to bring about his downfall.

Maybe he didn't dare reveal this to the other DEs for fear Voldemort would get to him first. Maybe because he worried that some of them knew but were riding his coat tails to power and would get rid of him for rocking the boat. They're Slytherins after all! Crappy reasons, but then really I have no idea why Dumbles kept this knowledge to himself, so maybe the reasons why Regulus doesn't spill the beans can remain undiscussed as well....

If he'd told Kreacher to go to Dumbledore, that'd make sense, but Kreacher, er, didn't because of things and stuff. Sorry, I'm a fan-wanker of some renown, but some holes are too big even for my pathetic excuse making mind.