HBP Chapter Twenty-Four

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

*I was all excited to read this chapter because it had the bathroom scene, which is awesome, but in fact it’s one of the most bizarre chapters in the book.

*ETA: Sadly, this time around all I can think is that this is the chapter where this book started to give me all this confidence that the last book was going to be really good.

*Exhausted and delighted, Harry waits until Charms to tell Ron and Hermione everything that happened. So if he misses anything that Flitwick says while he’s chatting away, he pretty much deserves to die. Good little children never whisper in class. Those who do deserve what they get.

*Ron and Hermione are both satisfyingly impressed with how Harry wheedled the memory out of Slughorn, which I guess means they didn’t point out that the Felix Felicitas did it all.

*Ron’s causing it to snow, making them all look like they’ve got horrible dandruff. Which of course they don’t, really. Dandruff is the mark of the damned. ETA: Like receding hairlines.

*Ron reveals that Lavender’s crying because she broke up with him. Hermione gets the chance to be both superior by calling Ron a coward, and amused by knowing she’s been instrumental in breaking up yet another Trio relationship. Plus she gets to be all-knowing about Ginny and Dean. It's a good day to be Hermione.

*ETA: In case you're keeping score, of course Ron couldn't break up with Lavender himself because he's just that passive. He needs a strong woman's hand.

*ETA: Secret to a happy marriage there. It's up to Hermione to break it up if anyone's going to, and she's never going to!

*Btw, note that when Hermione had her own relationship it was naturally Harry that made the other guy jealous and not Ron.

*Dean looks unhappy too. But I’ll bet Ginny doesn’t. We’ve got to be clear who’s the loser in these sorts of relationships.

*They walk back to the common room, with Harry once again showing off his unique ability to think romantically about girls by thinking about a boy.

*ETA: Of course, Harry will prove to be totally interested in girls in the next book when he stares at Ginny's dot on the Marauders map while never being troubled by impure thoughts about the girl he's sharing a tent with for months. He's straight *and* loyal to his true love, girls!

*Katie’s back, having spent a couple of days at home with her parents before coming back to school. What? She didn’t come back straight from the hospital? What’s a wuss like that doing in Gryffindor?

*Harry mentions that now that Katie and Ron are back Gryffindor’s still in running for the cup. Because around this time of year Gryffindor always turns out to be in the running for the cup.

*Harry’s curiosity about Katie even drives Ginny from his brain. Which was really hard, honestly. She was so dominating it for those two minutes when he mostly thought about Ron.

*Curiosity’s driven Ginny from his mind, but he does take a moment to watch parades of prancing Crabbes and Goyles. That’s our boy.

*Harry says he’s going to have a go at the door to the RoR with FF and Hermione lets him know this would be a complete waste of the Potion. Because if you’ve been trying to hit upon the right random thing to say to open a door, how could luck possibly help?

*ETA: Sheesh, the next thing you know Harry's going to be wanting to use the luck potion to find hidden unknown objects all over Britain. Everybody knows the only way to do that is to randomly teleport to different forests and talk about how you don't know where they are.

*Harry still hasn’t gotten a chance to try Sectumsempra, because he hasn’t had a clear shot at MacLaggen without Hermione around. And it’s not like he could try the spell out on a pillow or something. Tests without human subjects other than yourself are for cowards.

*ETA: Honestly, why doesn't he just try it out on Neville? I know the definition of a good person is somebody who doesn't bully Neville, but if he asked him to let him try out a spell on him I'm sure Neville would say yes to Harry. Sad as that is.

*Dean and Seamus are muttering mutinously behind Harry’s back when he tells Dean Katie’s taking her place back. "Mutinous" totally fits here, I think, even though Harry only really has authority over Dean as Quidditch captain. Seamus is mutinous against Harry's general authority as the Chosen One or something.

*ETA: Still, when all is said and done Dean and Seamus are two characters who come out really well in canon, almost like two boys who value their own lives and friendships above Harry. (I say almost because I wouldn't want to imply they were potentially evil.)

*The Quidditch team, meanwhile, is happier than ever to have Katie back, to have lost MacLaggen—-aw, who are we kidding? They’re just happy to have Ginny as their heart and soul! She’s a fucking miracle!

*And everyone’s highly amused by her imitations of Harry yelling at MacLaggen before he got knocked out...wait, wouldn’t those be Dean’s imitations? The ones that made her fight with him before? Well, that’s the way it is when you’re the wife of the Chosen One. It’s funny when you poke fun at him because he needs it, but if anyone else shows something less than respect it’s, well, it’s mutinous is what it is, and must be quashed.

*Seriously, I've no doubt that this is yet another joke about how true love behaves. And to be fair, in a different universe, one without such unrelenting hostility, it might be cute.

*Harry receives several more Bludger injuries during practice because he’s looking at Ginny and not the Snitch. Although having his eye on the Snitch would not keep him from being hit by Bludgers. It’s the Bludgers he needs to keep his eye on. You'd think he'd know that after this many years of Quidditch being a natural Quidditch prodigy.

*The battle still rages in Harry’s head: Ginny or Ron? Ron’s the one he cares about, but society pressures him to have a union with Ginny.

*This makes Harry’s conscience ache. Hot conscience-aching passion!

*And if he doesn’t do it soon someone else will ask Ginny out. Someone who doesn’t seem to think he can’t ask a girl out unless the moon and stars align just so, and they’re both invited to a dinner party together while Ron’s kept at a distance. Maybe Prince William will come to Hogwarts and ask her out. Who on earth wouldn’t want Ginny?

*ETA: It's so sad that Harry hasn't yet realized that Ginny would dump anyone in a hot minute if Harry did ask her out.

*OMG, if I hear one more thing about the fabulous Ginny I will shut the damn book. Even knowing Malfoy’s due to be sliced and diced in this chapter isn’t enough to get me through this like it was the first time.

*Interest is running extremely high in the Gryffindor-Ravenclaw game. Yeah, right.

*Apparently Slytherin is the one house not in the running in this, the year that Malfoy stopped playing. If he bought his way onto the team, it was the best investment that team ever made.

*"The run-up to the match had all the usual features." So that would be: totally unbelievable suspense, pleas of sympathy for Harry for having to worry about losing, bizarre circumstances that place Gryffindor squarely between coming in first place and losing more completely than any team in the last century, painfully complicated attempts to make it seem like there’s any chance Gryffindor won’t win...those usual features.

*Despite Slytherin not being in the running, everyone is acting like Slytherins in the run-up to the game. Only somehow it’s endearing and funny when non-Slytherins make up chants about individual players to sing in the hallway instead of evil.

*ETA: It's the perfect scansion in the Slytherin chants that make them evil, obviously. All those poetry slams, you know.

*In Harry’s mind, the result of the Quidditch match has somehow become linked to his success or failure with Ginny. Probably because it’s a lot easier to write about Harry caring about Quidditch. God knows Harry would rather think about that. Given the choice, I’m sure we’d all rather hear about Quidditch. Never thought I’d say that about anything in this series, but it’s true.

*ETA: Also Quidditch does make a depressingly perfect metaphor for love in these books, doesn't it? Being the best player really does guarantee you the girl. Now I know you're saying "But Ron is a bad player and he gets Hermione over Viktor Krum!" But, see, the whole joke of Ron's marriage is that he's undeserving, so it just proves the point.

*Harry still hasn’t forgotten Malfoy. Thank god! He hasn’t forgotten the actual story some of us would like to get back to ASAP.

*Magical physics moment: So if someone’s in the RoR and you ask for a different room, the room won’t appear at all. You can’t get alternate universe rooms at the same time. Nor can Harry walk by the room thinking, "I need a room in which to talk to Draco Malfoy," and have the room do double duty.

*You know, I just realized I had originally assumed that bathrooms were the place everybody went to cry, and that’s why Draco cried in this one. But given he was already in a secret room, the fact that he comes here to cry does rather suggest he comes to talk to Myrtle. Awwwww!

*Malfoy’s tears are streaming down his face into the grimy basin. Does no one ever scrub the bathrooms in this place? No wonder the Prefect’s bathroom is so coveted. It’s like choosing between the Taj Mahal and the men’s room in Washington Square Park.

*"Malfoy gasped and gulped and then, with a great shudder, looked up into the cracked mirror and saw Harry staring at him over his shoulder." And then ten thousand H/D shippers did drop the book and die collectively of squee.

*Malfoy wheeled around, drawing his wand—-so apparently in canon this sort of thing doesn’t lead to a rough and tender blow job. Give me a second to rewire my brain. Okay, going on.

*ETA: I'm sure the author's just dragging it out. It will lead to a blow-job in the next book, right? Right? Dammit!

*Luckily after the battle at the MoM I am no longer surprised that hexes that go awry blow things up during a fight. I still don't buy it, but I'm not surprised.

*Challenge for whoever directs HBP: how do you get Harry to say "Sectumsempra" in the time it would take Malfoy to say "—o"

*Totally kidding on that last one. As if Steve Kloves is going to leave this scene in any way intact! Harry will probably walk into the bathroom, find Malfoy with his pants down and save him from a basilisk before Hermione appears and kicks him into a toilet.

*And then Harry kills Malfoy. Best. Scene. Ever. You do not want to know how many of my self-indulgent fanfic daydreams this moment fulfilled. Only I have to give it to Rowling—she made it even more bloody than I did!

*Of course, in my fanfic dreams the scene actually meant something beyond LOOK HOW BLOODY AND BADASS HARRY AND I CAN BE WITHOUT ANY CONSEQUENCES!

*"He fell to his knees beside Malfoy, who was shaking uncontrollably in a pool of his own blood." Awesome. Especially when Myrtle starts screaming MURDER! MURDER IN THE BATHROOM!

*Can you imagine Snape’s face when he heard that, btw? I wonder if he doubted for a second Draco was the murderee?

*We pause our H/D epic fanfic now for a touch of Snape/Draco hurt/comfort, now with I-Croon-For-You!Snape.

*ETA: Did I say hurt/comfort? Nah, it's not emotional. Snape's just showing off that this is his spell and all or something. Draco doesn't even have some body part that looks like Lily's for him to focus on.

*Harry’s barely aware that he, too, is soaked in blood and water. He’s barely aware, but ladies in the audience can take note of how brave he is about it.

*You know one of the weirdest things about HBP? The way that Harry and Draco have this intense storyline without ever making eye contact if JKR can avoid it. Draco ceases to be a character the minute Snape appears. Harry just nearly killed him, yet he’s led out of the room without sharing a look with Harry. Nor will they look at each other EVER. AGAIN. FOR. THE. ENTIRE. BOOK. WTF?

*ETA: And she'll pretty much stick to that lack of contact until the end of the story. It's like the Harry/Draco arc actually did end with Harry just killing him (and hurray for that, because Harry's awesome), but like the basilisk he only did it symbolically. They don't even share any non-verbal communication in the Malfoy Manor scene that I recall.

*ETA: So I guess the moral here for dealing with those awful kids you don't like is that they'll probably still be getting under your skin when you're in your 50s since you won't have gotten the satisfaction of kind of killing them.

*It does not occur to Harry for a second to disobey Snape when he tells him to wait there. It might not have occurred to him for a second, but it occurred to the narrator long enough to tell us he’s not going to do it. Which means it's significant somehow of how seriously Harry is taking this.

*Snape returns, having basically forgotten about Malfoy the person too. From now on it’s all about Harry and Snape fighting over their special book. Two peas in a pod, these two.

*Though Snape is of course the smarter pod, being able to make the connection to the HBP book. It never occurs to Harry to wonder how Snape knows about the book and whether he’s got any connection to it, it having been in his classroom.

*ETA: As I said, this is the section of the book that starts getting really disappointing after DH. Because there really isn't much connection between Snape and Harry like there seems to be here. Just the vague "lost boys who love Hogwarts" idea that doesn't actually apply to Snape. The "friendship" between Harry and the Prince doesn't indicate any real rapport between them, it just echoes the end of the Lily/Snape friendship when she, too, was shocked when her beloved pet turned vicious.

*Funny Snape doesn’t march Harry to Gryffindor Tower himself and watch him take out his schoolbooks. He knows who he’s dealing with. Why give him a chance to pull a switch?

*Then again, that road leads to asking why Snape doesn’t just say, "Accio Potions Textbook" from the bathroom, so forget I asked.

*Harry felt stunned. He’d almost killed Malfoy, whom he’d known since he was 11 and yet never really spoken to, he had...oh wait, sorry, my mistake. He can’t believe that Half-Blood Prince! Why’d he put a spell like that in the book? Didn’t he know that would get Harry in trouble? What if Slughorn lowers his Potions grade? What if they take away Harry’s book?

*ETA: Seriously, this is what he's thinking. And he's apparently not wrong for doing so, or just not able to think about almost killing somebody because it's too big. It really is just not important.

*There’s a heavy, blood-stained axe in the RoR. I wonder if that’s in any way connected to the Bloody Baron? ETA: I can't remember if the tedious saga of the Bloody Baron and the Grey Lady includes it.

*Whoever that axe belonged to he’s got a soul-mate in blood-stained Harry, who’s also come to the room to hide the weapon.

*Harry runs past the broken Vanishing Cabinet where Montague had gotten lost the past year. Gotten lost? Sounds like an unhappy accident, doesn’t it? Montague’s so stupid he must have just accidentally wandered into it or lost his way while exploring. It’s not like two people violently trapped him into it against his will and that it's impossible to get out of the thing on your own.

*All right, got lost. Montague got lost there last year. Stop looking at me that way, UK Edition.

*Oh look, an animal somebody hid in here and left to die. Hagrid? Is this one of your five-legged friends?

*ETA: Looking back it's funny Harry's keeping the book never goes anywhere. He never goes back to retrieve it, right? So he doesn't actually have it the rest of the year, nor does he really want to use it since it did a bad thing. He really only hides it so we can go into the RoR.

*ETA: Oh and btw, tiara. Which Harry somehow manages to remember a year later when he can't remember Grindelwald's face from the end of one chapter to the beginning of the next.

*Harry hands over his bag to Snape panting, a searing pain in his chest. But not quite the same kind of searing pain in his chest as Malfoy presumably had earlier. This is much worse.

*Harry does not agree that he is a liar and a cheat who deserves detention with Snape. Funny, whenever someone points out Harry’s lack of remorse in this chapter others in fandom insist he does agree he deserves detention. He totally doesn't.

*And again, Harry deserves detention for being a liar and a cheat. Not, you know, for hurting anybody using a spell that promised to take care of his enemies.

*ETA: Not that Harry isn't a liar and a cheat too--and never admits it even to himself. Our hero, ladies and gentleman.

*ETA: I wonder if people have written stories about corrupt!auror Harry who takes credit for the collars of other aurors etc. while telling himself it's for the greater good or he has no choice.

*Well, as hard as it is, I suppose not winning the Quidditch cup every single year of his school career is the heavy, heavy price Harry will have to pay for almost killing what’s-his-name using the book he's used to lie and cheat all year. (Don't worry kids, I'm just kidding. He won't really have to pay anything!)

*Can you believe that Pansy Parkinson, vilifying Harry? I wonder what terrible lies she’s made up to make Harry sound bad.

*At least Harry’s still defending the Prince, mostly because at this point the Prince is just an extension of Harry himself. Don't worry, once he finds out he isn't he'll judge him accordingly.

*Harry doesn’t need Hermione yelling at him, because he feels badly enough for letting the team down by not being able to play Quidditch. I’m sorry, did I dream the scene where Harry almost killed someone in a sea of blood and water? I know killing somebody with an inferior soul isn't the same as killing a real person, but surely a normal person would be feeling more badly about that than letting down the team? Or at least link the two things together somehow, if only for appearances' sake?

*Oh, sorry. Harry makes clear he wish he hadn’t done what he did and not ONLY because he’s gotten all these detentions. No, he also regrets losing trust in his book and having Snape find out about it, thank you very much!

*Well, at least they’re not asking Harry to do something crazy like, I don’t know, anything to do with Malfoy. He's said all he needs to say to him.

*Ginny rips open her shirt to reveal the tattoo saying HARRY’S IDEAL GIRL across her chest. Or she might as well do that. What she does is defend Harry’s use of a deadly spells when he sees fit to use them. And then adds an unnecessary remark about Hermione making a fool of herself talking about Quidditch--wtf? Naturally, the one time I might get some satisfaction out of Hermione attacking another student, she doesn’t.

*After all, it’s not like Hermione can actually argue the true danger or ethics involved in this incident with Ginny, since nobody in the room really finds anything wrong in the exsanguination aspect. It all pretty much comes down to: what’s in it for us? How can we avoid losing the most house points?

*ETA: Ginny's "It sounds like he was going to use an Unforgivable!" sounds even better after Harry's badass use of Crucio in DH.

*ETA: Also that moment is for me the moment that really solidifies my impression of Ginny and Hermione as sisters-in-law. These two will no doubt have plenty of silly fights like this in future when Hermione crosses the line and seems to suggest Ginny's husband could be wrong about something. Or when Ginny crosses the line and criticizes Ron in a way that undermines the way Hermione's criticizing it or something. I'm a woman. I know what we're like.

*The Gryffindor mind works in mysterious ways. Faced with Harry finding Draco Malfoy in the bathroom CRYING over VOLDEMORT and then almost KILLING HIM, they’re arguing about Quidditch. Not even a "Yeah, what's up with that?" about the revelation that Voldemort's leaning on a student inside the school to do something. What relevance could that have to anyone?

*And Harry finishes up the evening feeling...unbelievably cheerful. Which is not a strange way to end a chapter with that bathroom incident at all. Guess Harry won’t be getting any unsightly shadows under his eyes!

*Oh no, Harry’s lightheartedness is short lived. Let me guess: Harry just now realized that Malfoy got blood all over his favorite shirt and the House-Elves won’t be able to get it clean before Saturday?

*Oh, just as bad. He’s upset at having to suffer his teammates angry at him for getting himself banned from the last game for something as unimportant as Malfoy’s life and the Slytherins are taunting him.

*Care to tell us just what the Slytherins are saying? Calling him Potty again, are they? Calling his Quidditch skills into question? What could they possibly have to taunt him about? And how does Harry put them in their place? (My girlfriend says it’s lucky I had something good up my sleeve!)

*It was almost unbearable to turn away from everyone going to the Quidditch Pitch to head down to detention. He’s Harry Potter, the sensitive near-killer.

*Luckily, almost killing Malfoy seems to have finally sated Harry’s interest in him. It’s not like the image of his torn body and bloodied face rises up before Harry at odd moments or anything. Why would it?

*To review, you can’t knock out a troll with someone without becoming friends. But you can soak yourself in another’s blood without giving them a second thought.

*Harry is forced to copy out lists of punishments for students for the past thousand years. It being Harry, he doesn’t question exactly why Hogwarts needs records of every punishment for the past thousand years. I’ve heard of permanent records, but who keeps files like this? When someone applies for a job in the WW does the employer get told about that time he pantsed someone in Arithmancy? (Which would probably get you the job in this world.)

*ETA: Who actually thinks they'll be detention cards with Harry's non-heroic transgressions on them? Yeah, me either.

*Harry then has to suffer through copying out detention cards from his father’s day. It’s a terrible feeling. Much worse than the feeling that one is bleeding to death on a bathroom floor from the large gashes in one’s face and chest.

*ETA: Malfoy's lucky. He only came close to bleeding to death from the blood loss of it. Remember how Harry felt he was going to bleed to death from pain in the last book? Much worse. (I'll just never stop being confused by that line.)

*And then Harry wins the Quidditch match anyway and he gets the girl. Guess he’s cheerful again. Hurray! Rewards for Harry!

*Ginny runs up to Harry and he kisses her. The entire room goes quiet. Because it’s just that amazing a sight for every teenager in the room. Harry and Ginny kiss so much better than everyone else. It’s like they invented it.

*On the other hand, maybe they’re just all scared of the hard, blazing look on Ginny’s face. Is that supposed to be attractive? It always makes me picture the look on Linda Blair’s face in The Exorcist when she does the head spin.

*ETA: Well, now we know it is attractive. It's like Bellatrix LeStrange's crazy-obsession-with-Voldemort look she gives before getting killed by Molly.

*ETA: Which is like somebody watching a tape of one of Charles Manson's followers talking about killing Sharon Tate on his orders and saying, "That's what my girlfriend looks like when she does something for me. Because we're in love and she's awesome!"

*Harry checks over Ginny’s head to make sure everyone’s reacting properly. Romilda Vane properly disappointed for daring to consider herself worthy of Harry? Check. Dean feeling properly inadequate and inferior to Harry in Ginny’s eyes? Check. Hermione showing us underneath she’s got the proper loyalties by beaming at the couple? Check. Ron looking properly foolish and yet respectful of Harry’s obvious rightful place with Ginny? Check.

*I had such good memories of this chapter because of the bathroom scene, but in fact it contains all the worst elements of HBP.

*ETA: And now foreshadows many of the worst elements of DH as well.





Designated Hero
Our heroes are all in serious top form in this chapter, showing no compassion for Lavender, Dean or Malfoy. You wonder why Tom Riddle ever had to lie about anything at school to hide his total lack of morals. That is, before you remember he was in Slytherin.

IITS
Luck potions can’t help with random guessing. It’s in the script.

Idiot World
After reading this chapter, it’s really not hard to see why the WW is always one step away from being taken over by an evil super villain, is it? They all seem to have a touch of Tom Riddle’s sociopathy.

Informed Attributes
Harry’s the victim here, really. Nobly suffering through his detentions and not being able to play Quidditch because of that thing he did I can’t remember because it was so unimportant. Even being rewarded romantically and with a Quidditch cup doesn’t make up for it.

Hero’s Battle Death Exemption
Harry and Draco are four feet apart in a bathroom, yet still can’t seem to aim well enough to hit each other.

Misdirected Answering
I probably really shouldn’t count this one. But surely there's somebody else besides me wondering what happened to that blond kid from the bathroom who was cracking under pressure?

Final score: 6

H/D Cliché Alert: Pretty much every second Harry and Draco are together on the page in this one. ETA: Except for the part where none of it matters to Harry at all.

Slytherin Liquid Count: Charms class teaches turning vinegar into wine. Harry keeps finding reasons to use Luck Potion. Myrtle’s bathroom has exploding toilets, water everywhere, tears, and Draco and Harry both end the chapter soaked in blood. Pools of blood and pools of water. Blood floating in pools of water. More crying. Gurgle gurgle. (All of which rightly dried up with one blazing look from red-headed Gryffindor Quidditch champ Ginny Weasley!)