HBP, Chapter Fourteen - Felix Felicis
oppugno, v. (Latin): attack, assault, assail; do battle against.
The most important thing to remember about this chapter is that every single mention of Quidditch is a metaphor for sex.
Art by seviet.
Our action begins in Herbology, where Harry is finally able to tell Ron and Hermione about what he learned the night before about Riddle. Then, amidst a backdrop of snaking tendrils, arms plunged bravely into holes and the squeezing out of throbbing pods, the conversation turns to the previous night's party for the Slug Club, which Hermione attended. Hermione thought it was not that bad, to Ron's chagrin, and when she tells them there's going to be a Christmas party carefully scheduled so that Harry can't avoid it, the excluded Ron gets contemptuous indeed, wondering if Hermione and McLaggen will be the "King and Queen Slug."
But Hermione, who "for some reason turned a bright, boiling scarlet," tells Ron that although indeed only the Slug Club members are invited, they are allowed to bring guests and she had planned to ask him.
Christmas will of course make it two years since Hermione told Ron that the next time there was a Ball of some kind, he was to ask her before anyone else did -- and after two years, it seems she has grown tired of waiting for him to have either the opportunity or the courage.
Art by seviet.
And what is Harry's reaction to one of his friends asking the other out in front of him? It's rather reminiscient of something we've seen not too long ago, in fact. HBP, chapter 5:Mrs. Weasley nodded and turned the doorknob, but apparently Mr. Weasley was holding tight to it on the other side, because the door remained firmly shut.
"Molly! I've got to ask you your question first!"
"Arthur, really, this is just silly. . . ."
"What do you like me to call you when we're alone together?"
Even by the dim light of the lantern Harry could tell that Mrs. Weasley had turned bright red; he himself felt suddenly warm around the ears and neck, and hastily gulped soup, clattering his spoon as loudly as he could against the bowl.
HBP, Chapter 14:Harry suddenly wished the pod had flown a little farther, so that he need not have been sitting here with the pair of them. Unnoticed by either, he seized the bowl that contained the pod and began to try and open it by the noisiest and most energetic means he could think of; unfortunately, he could still hear every word of their conversation.
Harry's overriding reaction to romance of all sorts, it seems, is embarrassment. We are treated to a brief window on his actual thoughts on Ron and Hermione's relationship, which must have been collecting for years; he worries that they will break up and stop speaking, and he worries that they will stay together and it will be hugely embarrassing. Me, I'm thinking he'll have to endure both, the poor dear -- but at least it will be in that order.
Art by lberghol.
Meanwhile, though, serious business must be dealt with: Katie is still hurt and Harry needs to field a Quidditch team. He taps Dean to fill in at Chaser, not only to Seamus's chagrin, but apparently to Harry's own as well, as Dean runs off to share the news with Ginny that they'll be, um, playing together.
But Dean is not the problem at practice; Ron is a disaster, he starts to take it out on his teammates, and although his little sister seems cheerfully willing to fill in for his big brothers letting him know he's being an ass, nothing seems to help his nerves.
Maybe he would have found a way to settle down were fate not about to deal him and his ego an unkind blow. Walking back to the common room, he and Harry take a shortcut and abruptly come upon Ginny and Dean, practicing the "with tongue" version of the Wronski Feint:
Art by seviet.
Neither boy, sadly, seems in any position to appreciate our lovebirds' technique. Ron starts chastising his sister for snogging in public, despite the fact that the pair had been very much alone; and when she suggests he butt out, he only barely holds his tongue before he can finish accusing Ginny of behaving like a scarlet woman. As Dean flees, Ginny takes the hint all too well, and with laser-like precision hones in on Ron's weaknesses as only a sibling can.
It seems Ickle Ronniekins has never been kissed, unless you count the tender lips of Auntie Muriel, and is jus jellus of those who have been. But Ginny's cruelest salvo may well have been unintentional: as she enumerates how all Ron's friends are more experienced than he (though Harry's single "wet" experience with Cho hardly counts for much), she mentions, before storming away, that even Hermione has snogged Viktor Krum.
That doesn't go over very well.
Art by mudblood428 and reallycorking.
Harry, meanwhile, is experiencing a most unfamilar progression of sensations. Watching Ginny and Dean, it had felt like being struck by lightning, and with blood pounding in his head, he has the singularly novel experience of feeling a new inhabitant of his own chest cavity dropping in to let him know that this Dean person is really not all he's cracked up to be, and in fact maybe hexing the guy to within an inch of his life might not be a bad idea right about now, rooaaarr.
Honestly, the only surprising part is that it took Harry until sixteen to experience this particular feeling.
And just in case the implications aren't clear enough, as he and Ron walk back to Gryffindor tower, both totally gobsmacked for different reasons, Harry's new monster seems much more pleased when his thoughts return to the scene he's just witnessed, but substituting himself in Dean's place. That night trying to sleep, Harry has to remind himself again and again: She's Ron's sister. She's out-of-bounds. We'll just see about that.
In the coming days Ron becomes angry and resentful not just towards Ginny, but also towards a bewildered Hermione; Harry understands perfectly well that her offense was having kissed a boy who wasn't Ron, but finds no way to tell her that. Ron's performance with the team deteriorates as well, and when Harry breaks through the anger he finds only a defeated spirit underneath.
Close to hopelessness with Ron's state, Harry finally seizes on a cunning plan which he puts into effect the morning of the match with Slytherin, as Hermione sees him appear to pour something into Ron's pumpkin juice. Ron drinks the juice just to spite her, but after learning the fortuitous news that the weather is perfect and Slytherin's best Chaser is off the game, Ron suspects he really has been doped. Harry, meanwhile, is more interested in the fact that Malfoy is not playing either; but Slytherin, far more intellegently than Gryffindor had been in Harry's younger days, actually has a backup-up Seeker, and seven on seven it still shall be.
The game goes swimmingly, as Gryffindor scores goal after goal with Ginny doing more than her share, and Ron makes one brilliant save after another. The only slight downside is the new commentator, Zacharias Smith, who obviously has little love lost for Harry; but after the Snitch settles into Harry's hand as it always does, Ginny lets Smith know exactly what it's like to be on the receiving end of a high-speed broom, and everyone seems delighted.
Almost everyone, that is: Hermione is indignant that Harry cheated by slipping Ron Felix Felicis, and comes to tell them so. Only then does Harry reveal the extent to which his plan was cunning: he never broke the seal on the lucky potion, never poured it in Ron's juice, but only made Ron think he had -- a nifty psychological cure for a psychological problem.
And Ron, in an all-too-believable episode of transference, instantly berates Hermione for having doubted that he could play Keeper without a lucky potion's help -- even though those are the exact same doubts he himself had had for weeks. Hermione is at wit's end, not realizing how despite all her attentions and her secret support, her nagging has only made Ron feel bad about himself; and drunk on victory, Ron marches off to find someone who will make him feel good about himself instead -- someone who won't imply he needs outside help in order to perform.
Harry walks back to the party in the Common Room alone, but by the time he's managed to extricate himself from Romilda Vane and her fawning ilk, it's too late to talk to Ron: as Ginny points out, the "filthy hypocrite" has attached himself at the lips to Lavender Brown, maybe permanently, right there in the party, for everybody to see.
And everybody does indeed see.
Art by lberghol.
Harry follows the swish of Hermione's retreating form back out the portrait hole. I feel the need at this point to applaud him for being a friend to her, for thinking of what he knows all too well she must be feeling. Much as it embarrasses him, he has finally acknowledged that he knows what's going on between Ron and Hermione as well as we do, and he's finally treating Hermione as someone whose feelings need to be taken care of. He's still a teenager, but he's come a long, long way in a year.
Harry finds Hermione in the first classroom he tries, sitting alone, a conjured flock of canaries -- the very manifestation of her singular talent and ability -- orbiting around her in her heartbreak.
Art by bluestraggler.
Harry isn't much for words in situations like this, but Hermione gets right to the point, bitterly bringing up Ron's display and how he couldn't even be bothered to hide it. But before she can confess any more, the door opens and Ron and Lav themselves come in -- presumably having had the very same thought and decided to find somewhere a little more private. Ron can't meet Hermione's eye as she stares at him; that he knows he has violated a tacit understanding is obvious, and just as obvious is the fact that he's not about to admit it -- for now, not even to himself.
Art by lberghol.
Hermione gets up and walks to the door, and at first it seems she'll make it out of the room with nothing more said than an icy command not to keep Lavender waiting. But then she turns in the doorway and lowers her wand, and at her command the canaries swarm at Ron; and they drive home six years worth of hope and frustration with their beaks and their claws, as with a sob Hermione turns and runs from the room.
The most important thing to remember about this chapter is that every single mention of Quidditch is a metaphor for sex.
Art by seviet.
Our action begins in Herbology, where Harry is finally able to tell Ron and Hermione about what he learned the night before about Riddle. Then, amidst a backdrop of snaking tendrils, arms plunged bravely into holes and the squeezing out of throbbing pods, the conversation turns to the previous night's party for the Slug Club, which Hermione attended. Hermione thought it was not that bad, to Ron's chagrin, and when she tells them there's going to be a Christmas party carefully scheduled so that Harry can't avoid it, the excluded Ron gets contemptuous indeed, wondering if Hermione and McLaggen will be the "King and Queen Slug."
But Hermione, who "for some reason turned a bright, boiling scarlet," tells Ron that although indeed only the Slug Club members are invited, they are allowed to bring guests and she had planned to ask him.
Christmas will of course make it two years since Hermione told Ron that the next time there was a Ball of some kind, he was to ask her before anyone else did -- and after two years, it seems she has grown tired of waiting for him to have either the opportunity or the courage.
Art by seviet.
And what is Harry's reaction to one of his friends asking the other out in front of him? It's rather reminiscient of something we've seen not too long ago, in fact. HBP, chapter 5:Mrs. Weasley nodded and turned the doorknob, but apparently Mr. Weasley was holding tight to it on the other side, because the door remained firmly shut.
"Molly! I've got to ask you your question first!"
"Arthur, really, this is just silly. . . ."
"What do you like me to call you when we're alone together?"
Even by the dim light of the lantern Harry could tell that Mrs. Weasley had turned bright red; he himself felt suddenly warm around the ears and neck, and hastily gulped soup, clattering his spoon as loudly as he could against the bowl.
HBP, Chapter 14:Harry suddenly wished the pod had flown a little farther, so that he need not have been sitting here with the pair of them. Unnoticed by either, he seized the bowl that contained the pod and began to try and open it by the noisiest and most energetic means he could think of; unfortunately, he could still hear every word of their conversation.
Harry's overriding reaction to romance of all sorts, it seems, is embarrassment. We are treated to a brief window on his actual thoughts on Ron and Hermione's relationship, which must have been collecting for years; he worries that they will break up and stop speaking, and he worries that they will stay together and it will be hugely embarrassing. Me, I'm thinking he'll have to endure both, the poor dear -- but at least it will be in that order.
Art by lberghol.
Meanwhile, though, serious business must be dealt with: Katie is still hurt and Harry needs to field a Quidditch team. He taps Dean to fill in at Chaser, not only to Seamus's chagrin, but apparently to Harry's own as well, as Dean runs off to share the news with Ginny that they'll be, um, playing together.
But Dean is not the problem at practice; Ron is a disaster, he starts to take it out on his teammates, and although his little sister seems cheerfully willing to fill in for his big brothers letting him know he's being an ass, nothing seems to help his nerves.
Maybe he would have found a way to settle down were fate not about to deal him and his ego an unkind blow. Walking back to the common room, he and Harry take a shortcut and abruptly come upon Ginny and Dean, practicing the "with tongue" version of the Wronski Feint:
Art by seviet.
Neither boy, sadly, seems in any position to appreciate our lovebirds' technique. Ron starts chastising his sister for snogging in public, despite the fact that the pair had been very much alone; and when she suggests he butt out, he only barely holds his tongue before he can finish accusing Ginny of behaving like a scarlet woman. As Dean flees, Ginny takes the hint all too well, and with laser-like precision hones in on Ron's weaknesses as only a sibling can.
It seems Ickle Ronniekins has never been kissed, unless you count the tender lips of Auntie Muriel, and is jus jellus of those who have been. But Ginny's cruelest salvo may well have been unintentional: as she enumerates how all Ron's friends are more experienced than he (though Harry's single "wet" experience with Cho hardly counts for much), she mentions, before storming away, that even Hermione has snogged Viktor Krum.
That doesn't go over very well.
Art by mudblood428 and reallycorking.
Harry, meanwhile, is experiencing a most unfamilar progression of sensations. Watching Ginny and Dean, it had felt like being struck by lightning, and with blood pounding in his head, he has the singularly novel experience of feeling a new inhabitant of his own chest cavity dropping in to let him know that this Dean person is really not all he's cracked up to be, and in fact maybe hexing the guy to within an inch of his life might not be a bad idea right about now, rooaaarr.
Honestly, the only surprising part is that it took Harry until sixteen to experience this particular feeling.
And just in case the implications aren't clear enough, as he and Ron walk back to Gryffindor tower, both totally gobsmacked for different reasons, Harry's new monster seems much more pleased when his thoughts return to the scene he's just witnessed, but substituting himself in Dean's place. That night trying to sleep, Harry has to remind himself again and again: She's Ron's sister. She's out-of-bounds. We'll just see about that.
In the coming days Ron becomes angry and resentful not just towards Ginny, but also towards a bewildered Hermione; Harry understands perfectly well that her offense was having kissed a boy who wasn't Ron, but finds no way to tell her that. Ron's performance with the team deteriorates as well, and when Harry breaks through the anger he finds only a defeated spirit underneath.
Close to hopelessness with Ron's state, Harry finally seizes on a cunning plan which he puts into effect the morning of the match with Slytherin, as Hermione sees him appear to pour something into Ron's pumpkin juice. Ron drinks the juice just to spite her, but after learning the fortuitous news that the weather is perfect and Slytherin's best Chaser is off the game, Ron suspects he really has been doped. Harry, meanwhile, is more interested in the fact that Malfoy is not playing either; but Slytherin, far more intellegently than Gryffindor had been in Harry's younger days, actually has a backup-up Seeker, and seven on seven it still shall be.
The game goes swimmingly, as Gryffindor scores goal after goal with Ginny doing more than her share, and Ron makes one brilliant save after another. The only slight downside is the new commentator, Zacharias Smith, who obviously has little love lost for Harry; but after the Snitch settles into Harry's hand as it always does, Ginny lets Smith know exactly what it's like to be on the receiving end of a high-speed broom, and everyone seems delighted.
Almost everyone, that is: Hermione is indignant that Harry cheated by slipping Ron Felix Felicis, and comes to tell them so. Only then does Harry reveal the extent to which his plan was cunning: he never broke the seal on the lucky potion, never poured it in Ron's juice, but only made Ron think he had -- a nifty psychological cure for a psychological problem.
And Ron, in an all-too-believable episode of transference, instantly berates Hermione for having doubted that he could play Keeper without a lucky potion's help -- even though those are the exact same doubts he himself had had for weeks. Hermione is at wit's end, not realizing how despite all her attentions and her secret support, her nagging has only made Ron feel bad about himself; and drunk on victory, Ron marches off to find someone who will make him feel good about himself instead -- someone who won't imply he needs outside help in order to perform.
Harry walks back to the party in the Common Room alone, but by the time he's managed to extricate himself from Romilda Vane and her fawning ilk, it's too late to talk to Ron: as Ginny points out, the "filthy hypocrite" has attached himself at the lips to Lavender Brown, maybe permanently, right there in the party, for everybody to see.
And everybody does indeed see.
Art by lberghol.
Harry follows the swish of Hermione's retreating form back out the portrait hole. I feel the need at this point to applaud him for being a friend to her, for thinking of what he knows all too well she must be feeling. Much as it embarrasses him, he has finally acknowledged that he knows what's going on between Ron and Hermione as well as we do, and he's finally treating Hermione as someone whose feelings need to be taken care of. He's still a teenager, but he's come a long, long way in a year.
Harry finds Hermione in the first classroom he tries, sitting alone, a conjured flock of canaries -- the very manifestation of her singular talent and ability -- orbiting around her in her heartbreak.
Art by bluestraggler.
Harry isn't much for words in situations like this, but Hermione gets right to the point, bitterly bringing up Ron's display and how he couldn't even be bothered to hide it. But before she can confess any more, the door opens and Ron and Lav themselves come in -- presumably having had the very same thought and decided to find somewhere a little more private. Ron can't meet Hermione's eye as she stares at him; that he knows he has violated a tacit understanding is obvious, and just as obvious is the fact that he's not about to admit it -- for now, not even to himself.
Art by lberghol.
Hermione gets up and walks to the door, and at first it seems she'll make it out of the room with nothing more said than an icy command not to keep Lavender waiting. But then she turns in the doorway and lowers her wand, and at her command the canaries swarm at Ron; and they drive home six years worth of hope and frustration with their beaks and their claws, as with a sob Hermione turns and runs from the room.