Deathly Hallows Chapter 3

[montavilla.livejournal.com]

The Dursleys Depart

There’s just one word for this chapter. Awkward.

For one thing, Harry and the Dursleys actually have to converse. This is not something we’re used to, nor are they.

I think the main reason we even have this chapter is exposition for those who never read the first six books—or have forgotten the main storyline. I’m clued into this when Harry reminds us about seeing Dumbledore’s eye in the mirror the chapter before. Just in case we forgot that in the time it took to turn the page.

Vernon can’t make up his mind whether or not to accept the Order’s offer of protection. I can’t say I blame Vernon for being suspicious. Every encounter he’s had with wizards has involved them doing something nasty to him, his house, or his family.

Harry is torn between exasperation and amusement at Vernon’s dilemma. Those Muggles. So amusing when they are forced into relocation camps! Still, this is probably the most positive Harry’s ever been about his Muggle relatives. Even if Vernon’s eyes are still piggy and small and Aunt Petunia’s voice is shrill and squealing.

Harry’s favorite moment is when Vernon hurts his back trying to lift an unexpectedly heavy suitcase. Those Muggles! They are so amusing when they injure themselves!

There are plenty of timeline clues in this chapter and the one before. It’s four days before Harry’s birthday. Vernon has been changing his mind for the past four weeks, after Kingsley Shacklebolt and Arthur Weasley visited “a few days” after Harry arrived. This puts Dumbledore’s funeral about five weeks before July 31st. Shout out to timeline fans!

I’m still really curious why Harry bothered to come back to the Dursleys’ at all. I know Dumbledore asked them to let him, but I don’t see why that means he had to. Wouldn’t it have been simpler to move him to a safe house directly from Hogwarts? With all the people leaving the funeral, no one would have been able to track him if he portkeyed or side-Apparated.

The only thing I can think is that it took all this time to set up the protective wards. Which doesn’t make sense to me since it later takes Hermione about two minutes to do that sort of thing.

Also, I don’t really buy that Voldemort would go after the Dursleys. If he spent any time in Harry’s head (as he did in OotP), he’d know that Harry hates his relatives. Tom hated his relatives, too, so it’s something he could really understand. Plus, they’re Muggles. No one ever tells Muggles anything.

Harry tells Vernon that Voldemort tortured and killed Harry’s parents. Harry’s projecting a little here. Voldemort didn’t’ torture his parents. He only killed them. It’s a small distinction, I know.

Luckily, Dudley ends the argument by taking the offer for protection. Relieved, Harry goes back upstairs to remind us that Hedwig exists. She ignores him, reminding us that she hates Harry (it’s in the book!).

Now I’m wondering why Harry didn’t just let her go with Ron after the funeral—or send her to Ron at any time in the past five weeks. Surely that would be better than keeping her in a cage so she can stare at him resentfully?

Daedelus Diggle greets the Dursleys as “Harry Potter’s relatives.” Harry suspects that the Dursleys find this greeting annoying. I don’t blame them. Who would want to be addressed like that? “Hello, I’d like to introduce you to the new Secretary of State, Bill’s wife!” Yet again, the Dursleys are ridiculed for acting like normal human beings.

Daeleus Diggle tells us that they can’t use magic because the Ministry might think it was Harry doing it and arrest him. Just keep that in the back of your mind. It might come in handy later on when we take a look at the “Trace.” Then again, with this book, it might be utterly meaningless.

Vernon reacts with alarm when he learns that Daedelus can’t drive. Those Muggles! So amusing with their expectations of conventional skill sets!

Then we have a long and very awkward passage where Dudley must first realize (this takes a few paragraphs) that Harry isn’t coming with them, and then have Hestia realize that the Dursleys don’t realize that Harry is the Chosen One and then have Harry use the phrase “waste of space” so that Dudley can refute that. Man! That took forever, but we finally have the pay-off for Harry saving Dudley’s life back in OotP.

No pun intended, but this is one dud of a payoff. I guess it’s asking too much for something more, but “you’re not a waste of space” is more hmmm than ha! It’s like we just wandered into an episode of The Office. Maybe that’s it. JKR is channeling Ricky Gervais in this chapter.

I’m wondering… is Dudley actually mentally challenged? If so, that’s a pretty tricky twist by JKR. You know, she charmed us into laughing at Dudley for six books, only to reveal in the last one that Dudley is seriously handicapped and Harry just never realized it. That’s rather sad and touching now that I think about it.

It would also help explain why Petunia overreacts so whenever Dudley does anything at all.

The chapter ends with an odd moment between Petunia and Harry—a hint that maybe she’ll miss Harry? That she does feel something for him? Or that she wants to clear up that misunderstanding about who the “awful boy” was? We’ll never know, because she walks out the door and that’s the last we’ll ever see of the Dursleys.

Fan Service:
Dursleys go into hiding! Imagine the hijinks and hilarity to follow!
Dudley finally thanks Harry for saving his life two years later.

Fan Slappage:
The Dursleys are not eaten by dragons for abusing Harry all these years.

DVD Extras:
INT. DAY – THE DURSLEYS’ CAR

The DURSLEYS, HESTIA, and DAEDELUS are all scrunched into the rear seat of the car. Behind them, bluescreen footage shows a seaside road that they are currently driving on. CHEERFUL, BOUNCY MUSIC plays. Vernon, brow furrowed, glances from Daedelus to the driver of the car—a grey tabby cat.

VERNON
Explain to me again why a cat is driving the car?

DAEDELUS
That is Professor McGonagall. She kindly volunteered to chauffeur.

VERNON
But she’s a cat!

HESTIA
Actually, she’s an animagus—

VERNON
I don’t care if she’s an Anabaptist! I don’t want a cat driving my car!

DUDLEY
(pointing) Ha ha. Kitty!

PETUNIA
Perhaps we shouldn’t complain, Vernon. She’s doing very well.

VERNON
But she’s a cat!

PETUNIA
I know, but you’re making her nervous.

VERNON
How can you tell?

PETUNIA
Her tail is twitching.

The car suddenly starts swerving.

HESTIA
Professor! Keep your eyes on the roooooooooaaaaaa---

EXT. DAY –WHITE CLIFFS OF DOVER

As the passengers SCREAM, the car drives off the road and over the cliff. It falls down onto the beach and bursts into flames.

The music swells as a chorus brightly sings:

CHORUS
MCGONAGALL, THE DRIVING CAT!

Comments

[tdotm.livejournal.com]

"If Harry had Apparated to a safe house right after the funeral, we could have started this book with the actual story. Imagine."

- the *actual* story !?!? Four less chapters to wait before we get to the camping?

Seriously though, I agree with your post, I just think it would work best if the rest of the book had been re-written. If he went to a safe house after 6th year, (or Grimmauld Place, once Moody had set up his excellent anti-Snape measures!) then JKR just spewed out her usual rubbish, it would still be a crap book. And I wouldn't get my exploding owl. Pout. Still, I'd make that sacrifice to get a 7th book of the quality of the first three.

I really, really agree that the Weasleys were an obvious target, in fact it drives me mad. If it was possible, why did the DEs not attack the Burrow years before, when people were more relaxed? Why did the Ministry have to fall before they were able to? Did they use Ministry approved spanners and hammers to get in or something? I don't remember Arthur granting them access as his new leaders, they just burst in. Why not do that the summer after 5th year, or the summer before 4th year, thus sparing Barty Crouch Junior a *lot* of hassle. Instead of sending them in to the World Cup, do something practical.

I can understand that The Burrow would be surrounded by protection - Bill was a curse breaker for crying out loud, he must have known some good ones, but why was it suddenly possible in the Summer before 7th year? It should have been accepted that The Burrow was too difficult, also explaining why Ron and Ginny were safe when on holiday, and the Ministry should have fallen later. The patronus warning could arrive when they were at Grimmauld Place.

"Why aren't there consequences for anything these kids do?"

Too right! The lack of consequences for the actions of *only* the 'good guys' is a characteristic of poor fan-fiction. I rest my case.

[sunnyskywalker]

Well, we'd get to where the actual story should be quicker, anyway. And if that were cut down by about 85%, it wouldn't feel quite as pointless, being just a short side trip showing how ill-prepared they are before they buckle down and figure out what they really have to do. But yes, massive rewrites are needed.

But failing the time to fix major plot holes, her editors could at least have done us the favor of making the pointless sections shorter. Like so:

Harry stared at the front page of the Daily Prophet, unable to focus on the eulogy of Dumbledore by someone called Elphias Doge. "Brilliant... always ready to help other students... corresponded with the best minds of the day... tragic death of his mother... famous defeat of the dark wizard Grindlewald." Harry crumpled the paper and hurled it toward the bin. Dumbledore had known how to fight dark wizards, but he was gone, murdered before he'd had a chance to finish teaching Harry what had to be done.

Goodbye, most of chapter two! (I was tempted to throw in a "he, Harry," for that authentic Rowling style, but bleh.) Of course, if everything had been suitably snipped, there wouldn't be much book left.

I also don't know why Harry wasn't accused of Cedric's murder in OotP.Fred and George, who financially profited from it, could have been tried too. Fun times for all! A genuine threat of going to Azkaban (which we might reasonably suspect would lead to plot developments if it did happen, being full of both DEs and the wrongly accused). And Harry as a liability to the Weasley family could have made for some interesting drama. It would have made Percy's mistrust of Harry a genuine point of contention in the family rather than a one-off joke in a letter. (I thought he had some good points - Harry is a bit unstable - but nothing ever came of it.) But then the Weasley family rift couldn't be healed by authorial fiat so easily, and we can't have that. One side has to be shown as Wrong In Every Way.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Oh but instead Dolores waited a few weeks and sent the Dementors after him instead so we could have that stupid hearing. Heaven forfend that Harry could be brought under question for something he *didn't* do...

That would have been far too exciting.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Actually, now that I think of it, the death of Cedric Diggory (with no witnesses) was handing Dolores a gift from heaven, since neutralizing Harry seems to have been what was behind the Dementor attack in the first place.

I'll bet that Rowling just plain forgot that normal suspicious human beings might have thought that there was something off about two boys disappearing and one of them later returning with the other's dead body.

Instead all we do is paint the kid a liar and an attention seeker, rather than a dangerously unstable nutcase, who needs to be locked up for his own, and possibly other peoples' protection. WTF?

[tdotm.livejournal.com]

JKR dropped the ball on this one. Strange, when you consider the fine tooth-comb with which she made the Aurors investigate Dumbledore's death....Pah.

I mean, whatever we think of him, Dumbledore was as famous as Harry, held in as much awe as Voldemort and perhaps more respected than any other living Wizard. 6 to 8 weeks (?) between his death and the fall of the Ministry and they did nothing. Not in a lazy, incompetent investigation way, but literally nothing.

I know Harry's inert, but he didn't even mention that he knew what happened. JKR could have written that he didn't dare, because an investigation would have compromised the Order's work.(!) She could have briefly said that the Aurors had immediately accepted Dumbles as a high profile victim of the invading Death Eaters and closed the case. Nothing. PAH.

As for Cedric, I'm sure Dumbledore told Harry that when the Ministry inspected Harry's wand (and Cedric's, if it was still grasped in his cold dead hand) which they *obviously* did, they knew that neither had performed anything stronger than 'expelliamus'. Seeing as Cedric had been killed by a Killing Curse, Fudge knew someone else had been involved. He knew that a trial would lead to Harry blabbing endlessly in front of the press about Voldemort being back and ordered the case closed to protect his reputation and avoid panic. A line he would stick to until the end of Book 5. I'm *sure* that's what Dumbles carefully explained. (All this fan w*nking is giving me a headache.)

95% of Harry Potter plotholes could be easily filled with any old rubbish, so why didn't JKR bother?

[sunnyskywalker]

Wizards just don't know what to do with suspicious deaths, do they? Or even suspicious disappearances - sorry, Bertha Jorkins, sorry, Ludo Who? Bagman. (Did the goblins hunt him down? Was he a DE trying to flee, like Karkaroff? Who the hell knows?) And then there was that little incident once where a student almost got eaten by a werewolf, and that other time a student got killed by an unknown monster in the bathroom, and the time the Chosen One nearly exsanguinated his Quidditch rival in the bathroom... but of course, near-death experiences are just a normal day at Hogwarts. Toughens them up.

Muggles, on the other hand, at least try, even if they can't solve the case because they don't know about killing curses. The Riddles probably got a better investigation after their deaths than anyone else in the series.

ETA: Wait, I take that back. Dumbledore did think to ask what happened to Crouch Sr., so at least one death in the ww got solved. Although since Veritaserum testimony isn't necessarily reliable, maybe it doesn't count as far as the courts are concerned. At least this Tuesday.

[eir-de-scania.livejournal.com]

The only thing her editors did was a quick check to see nothing overtly rude was in the books to affront the little kiddies. Or their parents, more likely.

If JKR hadn't talked about being surprised they didn't veto Ron's "Uranus" joke I would never have guessed the editors even read the MS. They certainly didn't do any common editing job.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

And the Uranus joke was back in PoA, iirc, when the books were still being at least lightly edited. I swear that nothing after GoF was more than proofread.

[eri1980b.livejournal.com]

The point re Cerdic's mysterious death is an excellent one. Normal people would ask questions. Cedrics grieving parents would ask for certain. If we hadn't seen in through Harrys eyes, *we* would have asked questions!! Its a big plot hole for sure, but with so many in the last three books its one many have forgotten about.

On the other hand, we are talking about wizards here, a bunch of people who are by and large illogical and irrational at the best of times. Ho hum...

[sunnyskywalker]

Hermione was right back in book one about wizards and logic. Pity it seems to be contagious and all the Muggle-raised kids are no better after a few years.

Seriously, even if they weren't rivals in a competition people would ask questions. And it's so easy to check their wands for the last spells cast, too! Why not do it, or at least mention it's been done later?

I still want to know what happened to Ludo Bagman, too, speaking of plotholes. I guess no one in the WW cares what happens to a washed-up Quidditch star.