Deathly Hallows Chapter 32

[montavilla.livejournal.com]

The Elder Wand

This chapter starts with Harry still in shock because Fred is dead. How could people go on fighting? The world has ended… yadda yadda yadda.

I’m not going to cheer because the twins never pissed me off as badly as they’ve pissed off other readers, but I didn’t feel much of anything when Fred died, and, two years later, I still don’t.

You know what happened? I think I outgrew Fred. Weird because I’m in my forties, so you’d think I’d have started these books having outgrown him. But I sort of liked the twins back in PS/SS, when they carried Harry’s trunk onto the train. I liked them working on inventions (even if I didn’t like them testing them on firsties), and I liked them giving Harry the Marauders’ Map, and I liked them gambling all their money on an absurd bet.

So, I did like them. Until they started throwing parsnips at people and stuffing people into unstable magical cupboards. And being war profiteers. And pretty much doing nothing else during the Resistance. I really expected more from them.

Besides. George was always my favorite.

Percy refuses to let go of Fred’s body until giant spiders start crawling through the hole in the wall. Then he helps Harry place the body in a niche. It’s the best they can do for the moment, even though it isn’t a hand-shoveled grave.

Then they run around for a bit and Percy takes off to kill Rookwood, who is chasing after some students. Hermione pulls Ron behind a tapestry and Harry thinks for a moment that they are going to make out again, but she’s just trying to keep Ron from running after Percy.

Because they need to go kill Nagini now.

Harry understands how Ron feels though. He desperately wants to go kill Death Eaters, too. More than that, he wants to find Ginny and make sure that she’s not dead, either.

This is why you don’t keep pushing your girlfriend away during the big battle, Harry. If you’d told her to stay with you, you wouldn’t have to wonder. She’d be right here.

Hermione sobs out that they have to keep fighting by killing the snake. Then she turns to Harry and begs him to use his Voldie-mind powers to look inside Voldemort and see where the snake is.

Is this a deliberate contradiction to Hermione’s earlier stance on Harry’s connection to Voldemort? What the hell. It’s not like Hermione hasn’t reversed herself on elves and unauthorized spells.

So, Harry opens the connection and finds himself… in a familiar room. Which is the Shrieking Shack, but heaven forbid we should allow familiarity to give away information to the reader. Make ‘em guess.

Anyway, Voldemort is quietly gloating over how clever he was to find that room so many years ago and how his diadem must be safe, because no one—not even Dumbledore’s little meat puppet could have ever found it….

Then Voldemort is interrupted by Lucius, who is sitting in ragged clothing in the darkest corner of the room, sporting a black eye he got when Voldemort killed all other Death Eaters earlier in the day. Heh. So, did Lucius run into the door on his way out? That would be pretty funny.

And, let’s be sure to notice—without a wand, Lucius is incapable of dressing himself.

Lucius begs for Draco, but Voldemort tells him he’s SOL if Draco’s dead. Draco was supposed to join up like the “rest of the Slytherins.” If he didn’t, Voldemort suspects he may have befriended Harry. Because Voldemort ships Draco/Harry just like everyone else.

“No—never,” whispers Malfoy, since he’s strictly a Snarry shipper.

So…. that ambiguous phrase “rest of the Slytherins.” Some reader interpret this to mean that all the overage Slytherin students went out to join the Death Eaters. Some interpret it to mean that at least some of the students did. Others have interpreted it to mean that none of them did, and that Voldemort is just a big fat liar.

Lucius tries to suggest that Voldemort call off the battle and look for Potter personally, but Voldemort is confident that Harry will come to him. He’s more troubled about his wand.

He tells Lucius to fetch Snape. Lucius stumbles off on the errand and Voldemort whispers, “It is the only way, Nagini” to the snake, which is now suspended in a glittering transparent cage.

Harry snaps out of the connection and tells Ron and Hermione that Voldemort is in the Shrieking Shack. Hermione gets all pissed off that Voldemort isn’t even fighting.

The Trio starts arguing about who should go kill the snake, and then they get attacked by Death Eaters and Hermione naturally saves them with creative wand work. She turns their staircase into a slide, and, once they’ve slid down through a tapestry, she turns the tapestry into a wall, which the two Death Eaters fly into. So, Hermione gets a couple kills.

The Trio are almost trampled under a herd of stampeding desks. McGonagall is running behind them, crying out “CHARGE!” Very funny image. I notice that McGonagall, like any good Gryffindor, is now sporting a cut on her cheek.

That reminds me. When the wall expoded and killed Fred, Harry was “bleeding copiously” from some wound (probably a gash on his cheek). What happened? When did he stop bleeding? Or has that been going on all this while? Head wounds—even minor ones--tend to keep bleeding if not treated.

Anyway, they all get under the Cloak and they pass by dueling Death Eaters and students. Dean has gotten a wand and is dueling Dolohov. (This time Harry recognizes him.) Before the Trio can curse the Death Eaters, Peeves appears, dropping Snargaluff pods down onto the Death Eaters’ heads.

Naturally, one of the pods lands on Ron, providing some comic relief and yet also alerting the Death Eaters to the presence of invisible people in the room.

The Trio bravely run away and come upon Draco pleading with a Death Eater by claiming to be on his side. Harry stuns the Death Eater, and Ron punches Draco. Once again, Draco straddles that fine line between someone who deserves to be saved and someone who deserves to be punched in the mouth.

More running. More chaos. They pass the hourglass and this time (in contrast to the end of HBP), it’s the Slytherin emeralds spilled over the ground.

Two bodies fall from a balcony, and a grey streak flies across the hall to “sink its teeth into one of the fallen.” The blur is Fenrir Greyback and the fallen is Lavender Brown. Hermione blasts a curse and Greyback is thrown back. As he rises, a crystal ball hits him on the head and he crumples to the ground.

Hmm. Okay, so that sounds to me like Lavender was bitten by Fenrir. Was he human or was he werewolf? I’d guess that he was human, since Harry recognized him.

Professor Trelawney (who bonked Fenrir on the head), starts lobbying crystal balls over the bannisters. Then spiders start coming in again, causing everyone to scream and scatter.

Hagrid pushes past the Trio, trying to save his precious spiders. The precious spiders swarm him and carry him off into the forest.

Harry forgets about the whole Nagini thing and starts running after Hagrid. Maybe Harry suffers from A.D.D.? Or S.P.T. (Saving People Thing)

Harry’s new quest to rescue Hagrid from the spiders is interrupted by a giant Monty Python foot that nearly stomps him. Fortunately, Grawp appears and starts fighting with the giant attached to the foot. Which totally justifies the whole Grawp storyline. I no longer resent having to read through several tedious chapters of inter-tribal giant politics and watching Hagrid tie his little brother to trees.

The Trio runs off towards the forest again, and this time they are stopped by clouds of Dementors. Harry starts giving in to depressing thoughts: Fred is dead, Hagrid is being eaten by spiders, and what’s the use of anything? Ron and Hermione manage feeble Patroni, which soon fade, but Harry can’t get his wand up at all.

Here comes the cavalry! A silver hare, a fox, and a boar soar in to chase away the Dementors. Luna, Seamus, and Ernie come to stand beside them. Luna urges Harry to think of something happy and reminds him that they are still fighting. With that happy thought, Harry casts his stag and vanquishes the Dementors.

Then the giant returns and the Trio are separated from the other lowercase trio and run toward the Whomping Willlow. Harry tries to ignore all the dying and angst around him and focus on what Hermione said about killing the snake. If you don’t have Dumbledore around to tell you what to do, Hermione is the next best thing.

They arrive at the Whomping Willow out of breath, and Ron frets that Crookshanks isn’t around to push the stop button on the tree. “Crookshanks?” Hermione gasps out, “Are you a wizard or what?”

Sigh. See, that sort of shoutout to PS/SS is a lot better in a film than in a book. When you’re watching a film, half the time you don’t really care about logic or continuity or anything. It’s cute and funny--that’s all you need. But in a book, that line is beyond stupid. Why does Hermione have to remind Ron that he’s a wizard? She’s got a wand. Why doesn’t she use her remaining breath to say, “Buttonus Pushus!” and be done with it?

We get a second shout out when Ron uses Wingardium Leviosa to levitate a twig to push the button and OMG I can’t stand the lame right now as I picture an itty-bitty twiggy thingy having enough force to push a bump of bark. Oh, and isn’t it a miracle Ron finally mastered that first year spell?

Harry has a momentary qualm as he wonders if Voldemort is leading him into a trap, but Ron pushes him into the tunnel. The tunnel is now relatively smaller and they must actually crawl through it. How did they manage to float Snape’s upright body through it, four years earlier? This tunnel never really made much sense.

As they approach the end of the tunnel, Harry sees a sliver of light and Hermione reminds him to put on the Cloak. He does this with difficulty and proceeds, half-expecting to hear Voldemort’s voice casting an AK on him. Voldemort seemed a bit preoccupied last time you saw him, Harry. I don’t know why you’re so worried. Maybe to distract us readers from what is obviously going to happen in a few minutes?

Now Harry reaches the end of the tunnel to find the opening into the shack blocked by an old crate. This allows him to see into the room without being detected by the people inside—who wouldn’t see him anyway, since he’s currently under an Invisibility Cloak.

Harry sees the snake floating around in her little air bubble cage and Voldemort’s hand at the edge of a table. Then he hears Snape and realizes the man is only inches from him.

Snape tells Voldemort that the Resistance is crumbling and pleads with him to go looking for Harry. He promises to bring “the boy” back for Voldemort.

But Voldemort isn’t interested in Harry right now. He explains to Snape that he has a problem with his wand. Snape seems confused. He’s probably wondering if this is about magic or if it’s just another dick joke.

Harry can’t see Snape and wonders if Snape realizes the danger he’s in. When he does finally manage to catch Snape in profile, he sees that the man is staring at Nagini.

Once again, Snape asks to go find Potter.

Voldemort dismisses the request. Snape and Lucius, he says, do not understand Harry Potter. Voldemort knows that Harry’s flaw is that he won’t like people dying for him. Because of that, he will come seek Voldemort.

Hmm. I would have agreed with that a few years ago. But I’ve spent thirty-one chapters following Harry as he obsessed about Dumbledore and wasted time staring at ceilings while other people were suffering and dying, so I’m not sure Voldemort is all that keyed into Harry’s psyche.

Snape, having studied Harry’s dueling, argues that Harry might well be killed accidentally by one of the Death Eaters. Or, he might step on a teacup and bleed to death because he lacks basic first aid skills. You never know with Harry.

Voldemort again deflects Snape’s request and starts meandering toward his reason for summoning Snape. It takes a long time. Time in which Snape can only stammer that he doesn’t know why Voldemort is having such a hard time with his wands or stare fixedly at the floating snake.

I really wonder how much Snape might possibly know at this point. Canonically speaking, he doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t know about the Elder Wand and he doesn’t know that Nagini is a Horcrux. But it seems like Snape would have enough knowledge in Dark Arts, Voldemort, and Dumbledore method’s to put a few things together. That ring in Dumbledore’s office, and the diary—wouldn’t he be able to tell that they were former Horcruxes? I can’t help wanking that he’s considering casting Sectumsempra on Nagini at this moment in time. I think that spell’s Dark enough and permanent enough to destroy the Horcrux.

Although, I never could figure out why Voldemort would ever voluntarily put a Horcrux into a living being. She could always get hit by a car, you know. Or die of old age. I just checked. Boa constrictors normally live only about 25-30 years.

Finally, Voldemort starts getting to the point when he says that he took the Elder Wand from Dumbledore’s cold, dead hands.

As this point, Snape turns to look at Voldemort. Harry, looking through Voldemort’s eyes, see Snape’s face as a death mask, still and marble-white. It’s a nice, strong image, and once again, I wonder what’s going through Snape’s head at this point.

Does the name “Elder Wand” mean anything to him? Is he appalled to realize that Voldemort desecrated Dumbledore’s tomb? (I always wonder if Voldemort tidied up afterward.)

Three or four paragraphs later, Voldemort explains that Snape, having killed Dumbledore, is the master of the Elder Wand. Voldemort will not truly own it while Snape is alive. Of course, Voldemort encountered not one, but two living people who had lost the mastery of the Elder Wand—but somehow he still thinks it’s necessary to kill his most trusted Death Eater in order to gain it? I guess that’s just Voldemort’s solution to every thing. Idiot.

At this point Snape raises his wand, protesting, “My Lord!”

Voldemort must not feel very threatened because he keeps monologuing another few seconds before slashing his wand through the air. This starts the cage rolling toward Snape and encasing his head and shoulders before he can react. Voldemort orders Nagini in parseltongue to “kill” and she bites Snape in the neck.

Voldemort coldly levitates the cage away from Snape, who falls to the floor, bleeding from his wounds. He leaves the room with the snake floating after him.

Harry, breaking the connection, can see only Snape’s boot trembling on the floor. I do like that image. I like it a lot more than Snape with his head in the cage. I don’t know. Maybe that’ll look better on film.

Hermione whispers Harry’s name, and Harry moves the crate out of the way. He crawls into the room and approaches Snape, not knowing why—not knowing how to feel. Snape doesn’t seem to have that problem, since he’s desperately trying to keep from bleeding to death. He seems know what he’s feeling—a strong desire to live.

Harry takes off the Invisibility Cloak and Snape’s eyes widen at the sight of him. He grabs Harry’s robes and pulls him down, saying, “Take… it... Take… it.” Then he somehow manages to make his memories flow out of his head and into the air.

Harry, as usual, is clueless about how to handle this situation. Hermione is not and conjures a flask to catch the memories in. She does this instead of other things she might have done—like stop the bleeding or treat his snake bites. Things we know she did at other times in the story.

Then, when Snape is drained of his memories and most of his blood, he says, “Look… at… me…” and dies staring at Harry’s green eyes.

I know that many people found this death unworthy of Snape, but I don’t mind it. It’s a strong scene, even if Voldemort does take a long time getting to the point—and Snape can’t really say anything interesting because it would give away the reveal in the next chapter. True, the cage thing sounds pretty stupid, and yes, Hermione should have at least tried to do something. But I still don’t mind it.

Snape in this scene is the best of what I imagine him to be. He’s focused on the one task he’s been given to do to help save the world, and against all odds, he manages to do it. It’s an undignified way to die, yet Snape does die with dignity. He faces death bravely and quietly, and all he ever asks for is a tiny bit of recognition. Not praise. Just recognition.

That’s my Snape.

Fan Service:
Snape’s death is grisly enough to satisfy even the most rabid Snape hater.
We get all kinds of Patroni! Ernie the boar and Seamus the fox!

Fan Slappage:
It’s not enough to kill Snape off. He must be made to look ridiculous in the process.


DVD Extras:
(Because I am just this self-indulgent….)

EXT. NIGHT – OUTSIDE THE SHRIEKING SHACK

Voldemort glides out of the shack’s door, followed by Nagini in her floating sphere. He clambers up onto a nearby boulder and places the Elder Wand to his throat.

VOLDEMORT
You have fought valiantly. Lord Voldemort knows how to value bravery….

In the shadows by the door, Lucius Malfoy slips inside.

CUT TO:

INT. SHRIEKING SHACK

Lucius presses against the wall of the entrance as he watches Harry step backwards away from Snape’s body and then turn to go into the tunnel.

As soon as Harry is gone, Lucius rushes to Snape’s side. He picks up Snape’s wand and murmurs a healing spelling. Then he presses his ear to Snape’s chest.

As if by magic, Narcissa appears behind him.

NARCISSA
(whispering) What are you doing?

LUCIUS
His heart is still beating. What did you do with those potions?

NARCISSA
They’re at home. In the curio cupboard.

Lucius pulls Snape up over one shoulder. Staggering, he rises to his feet.

NARCISSA (cont’d)
Are you mad? What if he notices you missing?

LUCIUS
I’ll be back soon.

He Apparates.

CUT TO:

INT. MALFOY MANOR, FRONT PARLOR.

The impact of landing brings Lucius to his kneels. He lowers Snape down tol the carpet and places the wand on Snape’s chest.

LUCIUS
Suspirus.

Snape draws a single painful breath.

LUCIUS (cont’d)
Drabble! Bring me the bottles from the cupboard.

He places one arm under Snape’s neck and pulls him up a little. An elf presses a blue bottle into his hand and he pours the contents into Snape’s mouth.

LUCIUS (cont’d)
Drinkdrinkdrinkdrinkdrinkdrink….

Snape swallows and draws in another breath.

LUCIUS
That’s it. Now the red one.

He pours a red bottle into Snape’s mouth. Snape coughs, his eyes fluttering open.

SNAPE
(hoarsely) What… is that?

LUCIUS
Blood replenishing. You were right when you said they’d come in handy.

SNAPE
(muttering) Bitter. I’ll try… licorice root... next batch…

He closes his eyes, but there’s color in his face and he’s breathing steadily now. Lucius sighs in relief.

LUCIUS
That you will. (soothingly) Now, Drabble is going to make you a nice bed in our secret room and you’re going to go rest there until you’re better.

He smooths a lock of Snape’s hair back.

LUCIUS (cont’d)
(a lullaby:) Because that sweet little wand of his isn’t going to work, is it? Not as long as you stay alive.

He smiles as we

FADE OUT

Comments

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

>Sirius went nowhere. The entire Order went nowhere. The Inferi went nowhere. Werewolves went nowhere. The Half Blood Prince went nowhere. The Deathly Hallows went nowhere.<

Yup, yup, yup, yup, and yup. Nowhere, man.

On the other hand, the Horcurxes really did slot in like the last missing piece of a puzzle when we finally heard about them. And in retrospect, it's clear that she always intended the final showdown to hinge upon a wand that would choose Harry rather than Tom.

She just clearly had no idea of why it ought to, and did a piss-poor job of making a reason up.

All of which tells me that she no more had a detailed idea of how this story arc fit together than I am the Queen of the May. She had a vague idea, really thought about the first half -- until she got thrown out of her own story when the infamous "plot hole" opened up mid-way, and she never got properly back into it. It never became any less vague than it had in the beginning, and she was desperately padding to make the action stretch to cover a school year. In a genre that she claims not to read and doesn't much admire.

Let's hope she's developed such an aversion to it that she leaves it strictly alone in the future.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

And in retrospect, it's clear that she always intended the final showdown to hinge upon a wand that would choose Harry rather than Tom.

Oooh! How can you say that? Nothing's more certain in my mind than that Rowing didn't have a clue how she was going to get Harry over the finish line until she sat down to start writing DH.

Just like you say yourself:

All of which tells me that she no more had a detailed idea of how this story arc fit together than I am the Queen of the May. She had a vague idea, really thought about the first half ...

I agree totally.

So I'm curious where (in the first 4-5 books?) you find it clearly shown that she'd "always intended the final showdown to hinge upon a wand that would choose Harry rather than Tom".

She had a vague idea, really thought about the first half -- until she got thrown out of her own story when the infamous "plot hole" opened up mid-way, and she never got properly back into it.

Do you have any details about that "infamous plot hole"? I'd read of it - one of her interviews, yes? - but nothing about the actual 'hole' itself, what it actually was. Just that she'd written herself into a corner or something, and had a bit of a panic, when writing GoF (I think).

If even *Rowling* picked up on that plot hole - she who missed all the others - well, it must have been a doozy!! I'd love to know what it was.

It never became any less vague than it had in the beginning ...

And never vague than in DH, where she HAD to be deliberately fuzzy in order for her story not to collapse completely. Ollivander being quite imprecise about the new slab of wand lore (a wand will 'generally' change owners, and so forth). Her cheats with the 'shower of sparks' when Riddle steals the Elder Wand. The unfocused musing about their Quest (capital 'Q', thanks) for the horcruxes/Hallows. The complete lack of definition of the title of 'Master of Death'. And so forth.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

As to the final factor being due to the choice of a wand, she planted that one rather carefully, for her. There was Olivander, right at the beginning, with his sales pitch of the wand choosing the wizard. Then we had all that folderol over the course of Book 2 with Ron trying to work with a badly cracked wand -- although the fact that it had been his brother's and was in bad condition by the time he got it ought to have been made a little more of, or at least have his practical work show some noticable improvement once he got one of his own. Then in Book 4 we had Ollivander back again giving us another demonstration of wandlore, and the clashing of spells when two wands go off simultaneously, and the "brother wand" business the first time Tom and Harry took a shot at each other.

After that point the series had run off the rails, but she still finally dropped the other shoe that Neville had spent the first five books of the series trying to work with a wand that had *not* chosen *him* early in HBP. So I was pretty confident that we could expect *something* about a wand to turn up in DHs.

Which it did, but it was so badly handled it just made everything more screwed up than start pointing us in the direction of any solution. The amazing auto-wand? Phu-leeze. And then Harry lost his wand and we got all of that nonsense of trying to use the blackthorn wand that Ron had captured. (Which in retrospect was what *exactly* Neville had been trying to work against all through the whole series up through the raid on the Ministry. And was laughed at for it.)

And when it came down to the wire, she just threw something together and cried "Ta-DAH!" and expected us all to accept it, because it was Canon. But all I can see is that she felt that she *had* to make a wand choose Harry rather than Tom -- and couldn't think of any earthly reason why one would. But that she clearly went into this book with the assurance that she was going to do so. She just didn't know how, and when no idea occurred to her she shamelessly cheated.

As to the "plot hole", the thing to keep in mind is that Rowling clearly lies like a rug in interviews. She pops out with either anything off the top of her head, regardless of whether or not it even fits into her story, or she deliberately feeds us something that she has decided to throw out to the public to distract them from something else. The hole she admits to was a sudden realization that the Weasley cousin that she had been dropping hints about in interviews for months, was simply not in any position to know the information that her purpose was to pass on to us.

You know what? I don't believe it. Not that the cousin didn't exist in the original version of the story, or that Rowling didn't eventually realize that the kid was in no position to pass the information that she was there to deliver. What I don't believe is that *that* was the plot hole that forced her to have to rewrite a third of the book. That's just the one she admits to. I have no idea what the real plot hole was. But I suspect that it must have been a whopper.

I suspect that when she wrote around it, she may have broken all kinds of links to clues and points that she had needed to place in the next book or two. And that from that point she was basically writing without a script. She also claimed to have spent three months before starting OotP going over her "Plan" with a fine tooth comb to see whether there were any more such holes waiting for her. I'm more inclined to think that by that time she knew the original Plan was toast, and had to come up with a new Plan and didn't have one.

[oryx_leucoryx]

I agree with you on the significance and mishandling of wandlore. (In my canon only the Elder Wand changes allegiance based on its owner's defeat, because we never saw anything like that all the previous books regarding regular wands. Harry's wand problems are the result of individual magical compatibility - the Snatcher's magic was very different from his own, Hermione's closer and more familiar, and Draco's the closest match. Of course all Draco's wands were actually Narcissa's originally - she was the one who bought him his wand in PS. And I still wonder of the significance of Bellatrix's wand feeling 'wrong' to Hermione in the morning but being quite serviceable later that day and the following night.)

Regarding the plothole, there's a piece of one of her notebooks that was floating around that indicated she may have intended for Pettigrew to have been the one impersonating the DADA teacher in GOF. Which couldn't have worked because of the Marauders' Map. So she had to invent the whole Two Crouches story. I don't know if this is true.

I agree the problem went beyond the storyline of GOF itself. At least part of the matter may have been that she never worked out the history of the first war - she kept giving us tidbits which fail to account for what she seems to think she has written previously.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

There is some indication somewhere (I never went hunting it myself) that up to practically the end of the writing of GoF, Professor Moody was supposed to actually be Alestor Moody. That the whole business of his being an imposter was a last minute retrofit.

Now, I don't know whether this is true, but if it is, then Rowling deserves a great deal of credit for it. Even if it ended up blowing holes in her original layout of the story. Because this is the turn that really made people sit up and take notice. The grand reveal in PoA was beautifully handled, but is *much* more conventional than the unveiling of Imposter!Moody.

But it seems also to have been her high point. She never came close to matching it.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

... So I was pretty confident that we could expect *something* about a wand to turn up in DHs.

Oh, I see. Yes, okay, there was plenty about wands leading up to DH. Just nothing suggesting the about-face on the 'mastery' rules, and the core of it - "the wand chooses the wizard" - contradicting what she ended up writing in her last novel.

But all I can see is that she felt that she *had* to make a wand choose Harry rather than Tom -- and couldn't think of any earthly reason why one would. But that she clearly went into this book with the assurance that she was going to do so.

Ah, I think we're of the same mind here. I've been saying that Rowling didn't have a clue how Harry was going to get over the finish line until she sat down to write DH. You're saying that, when she *did* sit down and finally started thinking about it, she 'went into it' determined to do something funky with the wands ... come hell or high water or contradiction with everything she'd written before? Yep, I certainly agree with that.

... the thing to keep in mind is that Rowling clearly lies like a rug in interviews.

Heh. I hadn't thought of her interviews in quite those damning terms ...

She pops out with either anything off the top of her head, regardless of whether or not it even fits into her story, or she deliberately feeds us something that she has decided to throw out to the public to distract them from something else.

I certainly agree, two hundred per cent, with the "top of her head" thing; those interview nuggets have been great fun, in how funny they've been, how the fans have seized on them so quickly and focused on all the contradictions, and also on how ignorant they've shown Rowling to be of her own work (truly proving that she *wasn't* lying when she'd said that she'd never re-read her own books).

And some of her other interview snippets, with her desperately backpeddling, feverishly trying to find *anything* to say to prop up, to explain, some of her canon flaws, are wonderfully entertaining.

I never heard about the cousin; I wonder what the information was that he/she was there to deliver, and who ended up doing it?

She also claimed to have spent three months before starting OotP going over her "Plan" with a fine tooth comb to see whether there were any more such holes waiting for her.

Ha!! If she really did try and revise her 'plan', well, that just rams home how desperately she needed some assistance or 'editing', rather than keep everything locked up tight as the sooper seekrit Just Jo Show.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

The cousin was Mafalda Prewett, the daughter of Molly's Squib 2nd cousin (the accountant) and his muggle wife.

From what Rowling has said about her the kid would have been fun for her to write. She was sorted into Slytherin and about as smart as Hermione, but rather nasty with it. Rowling always has enjoyed writing her nasty characters. Particularly the smart ones. And little Mafalda evidently rather enjoyed scoring off the trio (who were 3 years older).

Only how *would* a muggle-raised 1st year be expected to know sensitive information? Even a sneaky one who snooped on her housemates. Of course I may be mislead by the backpeddaling. This is what Rowling has claimed *after* saying that the aforementioned plot hole is what burnt her out while writing GoF. Once again, Im not at all sure how much of it is true, since she said that she gave some of the information to Rita to deliver, and I can't see any way that an 11-year-old was supposed to know anything that Rita told us.

I'm not a bit convinced that Rowling is aware of when she reverses herself in her statements. She certainly doesn't seem aware when she flat out contradicts herself in her writing. It almost seems like we need to establish some kind of "What I tell you 3 times is true," rule. Only not a lot of what came out of the last three books would survive.