deathtocapslock | Deathly Hallows Chapter 17 (Reply)

Bathilda’s Secret

As Hermione and Harry pass by the grave of the unknown Abbott, they hear a sound. The phrase unknown Abbott resonants with the tomb of the unknown soldier, and reminds me again of that annoying Potter statue.

Annoying Potter statue. Everything about the Potters is annoying me as I channel my inner Snape.

Oh, but meanwhile, Harry and Hermione are being menaced by an evil cat or something in the bushes. That’s a jabootu thing, right?

Hermione is scared, but Harry points out that they “look like Muggles.” So they should be totally safe, right? Okay… what do Muggles look like, specifically? (I feel like Stanley on The Office: What is that supposed to mean?) I mean, they look like Muggles because they aren’t dressed in robes? Do wizards go around dressed in robes in a mixed community? Or do they look like Muggles because they are impersonating the Muggles whose identities they stole? Like… the wizards know the faces of every single Muggle in existence?

Or is it because they are middle-aged and Harry is balding? Does that mean that Draco has Muggle blood, because he’s starting to bald at the end of the book?

What is this distinguishing factor that Harry is relying on here?

Never mind. Moving on, Harry remembers that the graveyard is supposed to be haunted: what if—? I think Harry’s jumping onto the hope that his parents are ghosts, but it’s kind of subtle, mainly because the thing dislodges some snow and proves that it can’t be a ghost.

So, the thing in the bushes is maybe a cat or a bird, Harry decides. He and Hermione then proceed to make a bunch of tactical errors.

1. They put on the Invisibility Cloak. If anyone is following them, they totally know now that that’s Harry Potter. And they can easily follow him by tracking the footprints.
2. They bypass the crowded pub where they could probably blend in with the crowd, in order to walk down dark and deserted streets.
3. They talk, allowing anyone to follow the sound of their voices.
4. They call each other by name.
5. They head for unfamiliar territory by going in the opposite direction from where they entered the town.

In their defense, I think they are still looking for Bathilda Bagshot. Otherwise the most sensible thing they could have done was to Apparate back to their tent. Since no one can, you know, follow a person who Apparates.

In any case, they end up passing by a cottage that is in ruins. It can be nothing else but Harry’s childhood home.

A touch on the rusted gate causes a sign to magically appear. The sign commemorates the deaths of James and Lily Potter. Because no one else ever died in the First Voldemort War. More to the point, no one but Harry ever survived. So, rather than a memorial to the dead, this is a memorial to the living: Harry.

You know…. In the early books, it was considered silly that people revered Harry just for living. Now it’s considered right, just, and emotionally moving.

The sign is covered with graffiti, all of it positive. I guess Snape’s never visited this shrine, then. Otherwise Harry would see You’re not that special, you little brat! written in a cramped, girly hand.

But as it is, the sign kind of reminds me of the way people blanketed Buckingham Palace with flowers and cards when Princess Diana died. Only then, of course, it was because she was dead and people were mourning. Harry is alive, so this is just fanboydom. The sort of thing that used to embarrass Harry. But, perhaps because it doesn’t require dealing with actual human beings, Harry is delighted. Or maybe this is a sign that he’s growing up.

At that moment, they are interrupted by the most obviously disturbing thing in the world. A shuffling, stooped figure of a woman who stops in the road to stare at them. Underneath their Invisibility Cloak.

Harry begins to suspect that this is Bathilda Bagshot and that perhaps Dumbledore has instructed her to wait for Harry to show up. He figures that she must have some kind of Dumbledore-ish (JKR’s word, not mine) power in order to identify him and Hermione underneath an Invisibility Cloak and Polyjuice disguises.

Close, Harry, but you’re a little off. It is Bathilda, sort of. And she was told to wait, but not by Dumbledore. And her Dumbledore-ish power is actually the very mundane power of scent. But it’s pretty keen that a snake can understand English. At least, I assume that Harry’s talking English, since Hermione never asks him why he’s hissing so much.

Now, here’s what I don’t understand. This is, of course, the corpse of Bathilda Bagshot being controlled by Nagini. But she is described doing a lot of things with her hands and fingers. She unlocks the front door of her cottage with a key, and she attempts clumsily to light the candles. How the heck can a snake do that from inside a corpse? Shuffling I could buy. Large arm movements, such as beckoning, I can understand. But turning keys and striking matches? That’s a bit more strained credulity than I like with my dinner.

But, I have to give JKR some credit in this chapter. It is, as most people have noticed, truly creepy. And, although Harry and Hermione are colossally stupid in this chapter, I can see how they would fall for this on the hope that they’ve found where Dumbledore hid the sword.

And let’s just go ahead and blame Dumbledore for what’s going on here, since it’s basically his fault. He deliberately left Harry with no real instructions, vague hints, tantalizing puzzles in his will, and forbade him from seeking help from anyone but Ron and Hermione. It’s all part of his plan. He’s hoping that by the time Harry meets up with Snape, he’ll be so frustrated and exhausted that he’ll gladly sacrifice himself just to get it over with.

Of course, this is all a win-win for Dumbledore here. If Harry freaks out and kills Bathilda, that’s the snake taken care of. If Voldemort shows up and Harry gets killed, that’s his Horcrux taken care of. That would have been bad luck for Hermione, though. But I’m sure Voldemort would have killed her quickly and at least she’d be spared the torture at Malfoy Manor.

Hehe. Two pages ago, Harry thought Bathilda must have Dumbledore-ish powers! Now he thinks she must have forgotten how to do magic at all, because she’s lighting the candles with matches. And then he helpfully offers to light the candles and does it with the matches. So, he’s apparently forgotten how to do magic as well. Tool.

Then he surreptitiously uses the Tergeo spell to clean the dust off of Bathilda’s photographs. Wow. Harry Potter cleaning something? This has to be first!

This reveals a photograph of the young Grindelwald and Harry goes into full Dumbledore obsession mode. Even the locket is getting excited as he questions Bathilda about who the man in the picture is.

Mind you. This is the guy Harry has been seeing in his head for weeks now. And he only now remembers that he saw him in a photograph owned by Bathilda Bagshot. Even though he’s spent all the rest of his time thinking about Bathilda and what she might know about Dumbledore and his extremely mysterious backstory.

Bathilda doesn’t seem to know who the fellow is, which Harry attributes to the wizarding equivalent of Alzheimers’s, but when she gestures to him to go upstairs, he agrees.

As he starts up the stairs, he slips the photograph into his jacket. So, now Harry has moved on from stealing from Muggles to stealing from senile grandmothers. Charming.

JKR is really loading up the sensory details in this chapter. Harry is tempted to put his hands on Bathilda’s backside, which is, wow the most physical he’s gotten with a woman since that Quidditch match last year. The room he enters smells horrible. The room is pitch-dark. A sort of light pitch dark, since he can see a chamberpot protruding from under the bed, but it gets darker when Bathilda closes the door.

As Harry confirms to her that he is, indeed, Harry Potter, the locket is going nuts. It’s beating faster than his own heart and it jumps when Harry’s scar signals an emotional spike from Voldemort.

Again, we can fault Harry in retrospect for not realizing the obvious, but I’m sure this is going faster for him than it is for nit-picky me, so I’m not going to blame him for not immediately jumping out the window. After all, he still thinks that damn sword is around there, buried under the dirty laundry.

Actually, this stuff is pretty good. Harry is suddenly being beaten to crap by a giant snake. It’s maybe not as fun as having Lupin beat him up in Chapter 11, but I’ll take what I can get.

Of course, Hermione ruins it all by coming in and saving the day. Darn her!

On the other hand, Harry is the one with the sense to get away from the snake. Hermione just keeps knocking it into things. She’s casting Confringo, which apparently blows things up real good. But her aim is terrible and so the spell is ricocheting around the room, which is going to look super-exciting in the film!

As Harry and Hermione jump out the window, Voldemort shows up, screaming with rage. His emotions are so intense that Harry gets an extra special vision that takes him back to October 31st, 1981.

The vision of Voldemort watching the kids trick-or-treat reminds me so much of the E.T.-centric POV in similar circumstances that it sort of takes me out of the book a little. I gather that’s not uncommon, since I’ve read other people remark on it.

Voldemort briefly thinks about randomly murdering a child, but decides it’s too much bother. We get it, Voldie. You’re badass. Move on.

We get a charming glimpse of James playing with Harry before Lily comes in with her hair in her face (I guess they forgot to pack a brush?) and takes the toddler off to bed.

Voldemort creeps oh-so-silently up to the door and then…. Blasts it open! Hehe. Way to be stealthy, Snake Face.

The exploding door alerts James to the possibility of danger. He sprints into the hall without bothering to pick up the wand six inches from his hand as he was lying on the couch.

Voldemort takes a moment to laugh about how stupid James is, twice noting that James wasn’t even holding his wand. How foolish! Yet brave.

Now, I’m not one of the people who felt their world fall apart as it turns out that James never fired off a shot. But I think it’s curious how much JKR emphasizes the point here. I’ve heard various explanations: That she couldn’t bear to have James lose the fight, that she’s trying to make Voldemort seem even more evil… but I don’t know. None of it seems that plausible to me. This is just another one of those places where JKR baffles me as a reader.

Having dispatched James, Voldemort continues up the stairs, remarking to himself for a third time how stupid both James and Lily are for not carrying their wands about. For relying on friends to keep them safe.

Don’t worry, Voldemort. Harry won’t be making that mistake. He won’t trust anybody he can’t watch twenty-four hours a day.

Lily, instead of Apparating away with her baby, has barricaded the nursery door with a chair and boxes. Okay, I can understand about the wands. This was just plain dopey. You’re going to barricade the door against a wizard, when wizards routinely levitate and move objects about? You know, Lily, you should try some of that magic yourself. Like Accio Wand.

As Voldemort approaches her, Lily throws herself in front of Harry, spreading her arms wide to protect him. In other words, she acts exactly the same as every other mother in the series, with the possible exceptions of Merope and Tonks.

Voldemort then explains why he didn’t just stun Lily and keep his promise to Snape, by deciding that it seems prudent to finish off the whole family. Really? Why? The prophecy was about the baby—unless it was about some other baby, or about somebody else entirely. It wasn’t about the kid’s mother. All he really had to do was to stun her.

Nevertheless, he kills Lily. Baby Harry, completely in character, takes several minutes to notice. It’s not until Voldemort is actually pointing the wand straight between Harry’s eyes that the lad realizes that it’s not James. Well, we can’t say that Harry isn’t consistent about not noticing other people or recognizing faces easily.

Buried in all this reminiscence is a clue about Harry being a Horcrux: The snake rustled on the filthy, cluttered floor, and he had killed the boy and yet he was the boy.

Then Voldemort looks down to see the photograph that Harry stole and recognizes the face as the thief he’s seeking. So, the moral is: Stealing is bad and will only help your nemesis on his quest to find a piece of wood.

And, having gleaned all the backstory and necessary clues, Harry wakes up from his close encounter with Voldemort’s psyche to find Hermione daubing his forehead with a small sponge. Because she packed a small sponge, but didn’t pack food.

Heh. Not to be indelicate, but maybe she was hoping to get a little action with Ron on the trip? I’d say he’s sponge-worthy.

Hermione explains to Harry everything that happened since they Apparated back to the tent, including the detail that she used a Hover charm to get him into his bunk. Because, if she hadn’t explained that, we’d be arguing over whether or not it was a plot hole.

Not to be outdone in the dull department, Harry recaps the last ten pages for us, and we are told how the snake was able to talk to Harry, even though it’s a snake. Which is by never speaking while in the same room with Hermione. That totally explains it.

Then Harry asks for his wand and Hermione is forced to break the bad news to him that she blew it up. It’s rather sweet how helpless Harry gets without his wand. He asks Hermione to mend it, and he even says, “Please.”

And, when she can’t fix it, he chivalrously refrains from hitting her or raising his voice. He just confiscates her wand and goes to keep watch, because he can’t stand to be near her. That’s not me making that up. It’s in the book.

Fan Service:
Finally! We learn exactly what happened on the night that Harry survived the AK!
Harry got to fight another snake and it whupped his ass!

Fan Slappage:
James’s fight with Voldemort was totally bogus!
Far from being in love with Hermione, Harry can't stand to be in the same room as her.

DVD Extras:
INT: DAY – POTTER HOME IN THE AFTER LIFE
James sits on the sofa. Lily brings him a butterbeer. There is a knock on the door.

James opens the door to reveal Sirius, looking as sexy as ever and carrying a backpack.

SIRIUS
James! I just got in!

JAMES
About time! Come have a drink!

Sirius puts his backpack near the door and glances at Lily, who brings him a butterbeer in icy silence.

SIRIUS
No firewhiskey? Come on, man. I just died. I need some sustenance.

JAMES
So, what have you been up to?

SIRIUS
Prison, mostly.

LILY
For the criminally stupid?

JAMES
(apologetically)
She’s still a bit miffed at the whole secret keeper thing.

LILY
He had a dark mark! What more proof did we need?

JAMES
I thought it was a tattoo. Wormy was always trying to increase his street cred.

Lily rolls her eyes and notices the backpack.

LILY
Let me guess. You’re crashing?

SIRIUS
I haven’t figured out the living—well, dying—arrangements yet.

JAMES
That’s cool. So…. how’d you die?

SIRIUS
In a duel, man. It was great, but Bellatrix got the jump on me when I was laughing.

JAMES
Oh, that sucks.

SIRIUS
I’ll bet you had a badass duel with Voldemort, eh?

Lily snorts loudly.

LILY
Mr. Genius left his wand on the sofa.

JAMES
At least it was in my proximity. I didn’t leave mine in the bathroom!

LILY
Let’s hear it again…

JAMES
If you’d had your damn wand, you could have gotten away, okay? I wouldn’t have died in complete, utter, uselessness--

LILY
I was changing his diaper! Do you know how awkward it is to change a diaper with a stick in your hand? If you’d ever changed him, you’d know--

SIRIUS
Why didn’t you just use Muto Induco?

LILY
What?

SIRIUS
The diaper changing spell—you didn’t know about that one? It’s a pretty standard household spell.

LILY
(with a furious look at James)
No. I did not know about that one.

SIRIUS
(obliviously)
Or just have Torpy do it.

LILY
Torpy?

SIRIUS
James’s House… um….Elf?

He glances between the stone faces of James and Lily and picks up his backpack.

SIRIUS (cont’d)
I’ll just, uh, put this in the guest room?

He shuffles away as Lily starts tapping one foot.

LILY
We. Had. A. House-ELF!?

JAMES
Did I forget to tell you that?