DH:32 - The Elder Wand (Bloomsbury 2007)
Fandom Big News of the Day: We have an official birth year for Dumbledore, who is the new Wizard of the Month on Jo's website. He was born in 1881, much later than we were previously told.
Italics are impressions from my first read, when I did not yet know what was going to happen.
1) Harry's reaction to Fred's death. It's the end of the world! I can kind of see where he's coming from; the twins have always been just so full of life that it seems impossible. Don't worry, Harry; Fred's just bringing much-needed laughs to the afterlife now. Percy's reaction, though ... I bet he's missed the twins' antics more than he would ever admit. Poor guy.
2) Big F***ing Spiders! As if things weren't chaotic enough. Can we please, please, PLEASE not have these in the film? Thank you. Ron, for once, is too busy to be especially freaked out.
3) Harry keeps his head. Ron wants to kill Death Eaters to avenge his brother, and Harry understands this impulse, but he also knows that the only way to end it is by finding Voldemort and the snake, even if it's not as satisfying as blasting people.
4) Hogwarts is falling to pieces. This made me very sad until I remembered that they have magic and can probably put it right again without too much trouble. Duh.
5) Hermione tells Harry to find Voldemort using their connection. Well, that's a first! Smart, though.
6) Voldemort is in the Shrieking Shack. And he's still inexplicably gloating over the fact that only he ever found the room where thousands of students have hidden things over the years, and where one of his Junior Death Eaters spent most of the previous year. Moron. Does anyone else want to just set Fiendfyre to the Shack? OK, so the stuff is hard to control, but the Shack is pretty solitary.
7) Lucius Malfoy is in bad shape. He's a broken man, but he still begs Voldemort to let him find his son. Voldemort confirms that the rest of the Slytherins have joined him. For some reason I figured that when everyone was confined to Malfoy Manor after the trio escaped, that meant Draco had not returned to school, but I guess he did, rather than arriving with the other DEs in time for the battle. That also means he was probably in the Great Hall when Pansy made her statement, but we didn't hear about him being there or standing with her.
8) The Elder Wand troubles Voldemort for some reason. And he needs Snape to sort it out. But Harry doesn't "hear" where that particular train of thought leads. Voldemort tells Nagini "it is the only way" almost as though he is trying to convince himself. He sends Lucius to find Snape, and Lucius leaves the room to do so. Have they opened a door in the Shack? Or are they still using the secret passage to the Whomping Willow? I guess they're not, since the trio hide in the passageway and Voldemort leaves by some other means later in the chapter.
9) Nagini is in a protective magical bubble. Oh, that's not handy .... On the other hand, if Harry hadn't already known what the snake was, the extra protection sort of hangs a big "My Giant Penis Phallically-Shaped Pet Snake is a Horcrux" sign on it. Smooth, Voldie.
10) The trio argue about which of them should go to the Shack. None of them has any illusions about the fact that it's basically a suicide mission, but they are all ready to volunteer for it to keep the other two in the relative safety of the castle.
11) Dean is fighting Dolohov. Is there any chance Dean is a better dueler than Remus was? On a side note, Parvati is fighting Travers, which must mean that he wasn't killed with the others by Voldemort following the Gringotts break-in. Dean ends up stunning Travers and Parvati Body-Binds Dolohov, and suddenly I'm wanting to 'ship Dean/Parvati. They seem to make a good team.
12) The trio save Draco *again*. And then Ron punches him out and calls him a two-faced bastard. Awesome. I hope they keep that moment for the film.
13) Symbolic shattering of the Slytherin hourglass. Ooh! Mirror! During the action at the end of HBP, the Gryffindor hourglass was shattered, and we all know what a bad night that was for a certain elderly top-dog Gryffindor. Maybe this is foreshadowing for what will be happening to the top-dog Slytherin?
14) Lavender Brown. Fenrir bit her and Hermione moved to save her first. I hope Lavender survives. I think it would be interesting to explore the changes this night made to her character. She'll probably have some lasting effects from the bite, even if, like Bill, she has not become a full werewolf. And now I'm wanting to pair her with Draco who was a big non-fan of Fenrir.
15) Trelawney joins the fray! Finally, she does something useful. She's hurling crystal balls right and left! Hooray! Well, I suppose Lavender was one of her favourite students. She knocks out Fenrir, but I doubt a single blow to the head like this is going to kill a tough old beast like him.
16) Hogwartians. Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a new word ....
17) Hagrid tries to save his spiders. Priorities, Hagrid, PLEASE! He vanishes in the midst of them. For the second time this book, we are convinced that he's dead. It would have been so ironic for Hagrid to go like this. Harry tries to follow and save him, disregarding his own safety. Come on, Harry! Isn't there something you need to be getting on with?
18) Harry cannot summon a Patronus. His friends are dying around him and more may already be dead. He despairs. Luna, Ernie and Seamus to the rescue! Hooray! Symbolically, we have representatives from each house here (apart from Slytherin). Did we know Ernie and Seamus's Patronuses before now? My Ernie/Luna 'shippy brain is overjoyed to see them working together. Luna provides her trademark optimism, and Harry is at last able to cast the stag.
19) Hermione: "Are you a wizard, or what?" I spy another mirror! In PS, Hermione can't think how to destroy the Devil's Snare without the means of making a fire. And Ron says? "Are you a witch or not?" In both instances, they use spells learned in their first year to solve the problem.
20) They are now too big to do anything but crawl through the passage. So remind me how Remus, Peter and Ron got through it chained together, and how Sirius floated Snape upright down it?
21) Snape asks to go and find Harry. Ambiguous to the last, isn't he? Masterfully done, Jo, but I think most of us figured it out anyway.
22) The Elder Wand does not work for Voldemort. It only works like an ordinary wand. Did Snape switch wands in Dumbledore's tomb? Because that would have been clever. But no; this is where the wandlore becomes significant.
23) Voldemort still considers Harry's love of others to be his "one great flaw". Voldemort is right that, for this reason, Harry will come to him, but it's also for this reason that Harry must be victorious in the end.
24) "Snape's face was like a deathmask." There it is. The moment when I knew he wasn't going to make it out of this book alive.
25) The Death of Severus Snape. This really bothered me on the first reading. It is not a heroic death indicative of Snape's character. He deserved better than this. However, I now understand that this scene is meant to show us Voldemort's character, not Snape's. Voldemort believes that the pervious owner of the wand must be killed to attain mastery over it, despite the fact that he knows Dumbledore did not kill Grindelwald. Despite the fact that he values Snape's service, he has not considered any option apart from killing him. Even his most loyal servants can expect no better treatment when their usefulness runs out. "I regret it," Voldemort says, but he feels no remorse; only inconvenience at losing a useful tool.
26) Snape's leaking memories. "I'm dying, Harry, but here are a few carefully selected memories for your perusal. You'll find Dumbledore's pensieve in the Headmaster's office. Take a few moments out from everyone dying to go collect a steaming heap of backstory exposition." *dies* I don't know; this seems like sort of a lame way for this to happen. I would be more willing to buy Snape's last words as something like, "Headmaster's office ... Pensieve ... memories ... go!" Harry could find the memories there waiting for him. Not Evil.
27) Snape: "Look ... at ... me ..." Snape wanted his last sight to be those green eyes, and there's only one good reason for that, unless you're a die-hard Snarry 'shipper. Turns out they were important after all. *sniff*
28) The "Snape is not Dead" theory. Arthur Weasley was attacked every bit as viciously as Snape is here, and yet after that attack, there was time to fetch McGonagall, get Harry to Dumbledore's office, send out the portraits to find where Arthur was, send people to rescue him and get him to St Mungo's. Severus Snape proved to us last year that he knows spells to close up heavily-bleeding wounds in a hurry, and as for poison, he seems like a man who would carry a bezoar in his pocket. Part of me wants to believe that he "played dead" until Harry was gone, swallowed a bezoar, and is now safely in hiding somewhere. Jo will tell us that yes, he is dead, but fic writers are left with a way around that.
Italics are impressions from my first read, when I did not yet know what was going to happen.
1) Harry's reaction to Fred's death. It's the end of the world! I can kind of see where he's coming from; the twins have always been just so full of life that it seems impossible. Don't worry, Harry; Fred's just bringing much-needed laughs to the afterlife now. Percy's reaction, though ... I bet he's missed the twins' antics more than he would ever admit. Poor guy.
2) Big F***ing Spiders! As if things weren't chaotic enough. Can we please, please, PLEASE not have these in the film? Thank you. Ron, for once, is too busy to be especially freaked out.
3) Harry keeps his head. Ron wants to kill Death Eaters to avenge his brother, and Harry understands this impulse, but he also knows that the only way to end it is by finding Voldemort and the snake, even if it's not as satisfying as blasting people.
4) Hogwarts is falling to pieces. This made me very sad until I remembered that they have magic and can probably put it right again without too much trouble. Duh.
5) Hermione tells Harry to find Voldemort using their connection. Well, that's a first! Smart, though.
6) Voldemort is in the Shrieking Shack. And he's still inexplicably gloating over the fact that only he ever found the room where thousands of students have hidden things over the years, and where one of his Junior Death Eaters spent most of the previous year. Moron. Does anyone else want to just set Fiendfyre to the Shack? OK, so the stuff is hard to control, but the Shack is pretty solitary.
7) Lucius Malfoy is in bad shape. He's a broken man, but he still begs Voldemort to let him find his son. Voldemort confirms that the rest of the Slytherins have joined him. For some reason I figured that when everyone was confined to Malfoy Manor after the trio escaped, that meant Draco had not returned to school, but I guess he did, rather than arriving with the other DEs in time for the battle. That also means he was probably in the Great Hall when Pansy made her statement, but we didn't hear about him being there or standing with her.
8) The Elder Wand troubles Voldemort for some reason. And he needs Snape to sort it out. But Harry doesn't "hear" where that particular train of thought leads. Voldemort tells Nagini "it is the only way" almost as though he is trying to convince himself. He sends Lucius to find Snape, and Lucius leaves the room to do so. Have they opened a door in the Shack? Or are they still using the secret passage to the Whomping Willow? I guess they're not, since the trio hide in the passageway and Voldemort leaves by some other means later in the chapter.
9) Nagini is in a protective magical bubble. Oh, that's not handy .... On the other hand, if Harry hadn't already known what the snake was, the extra protection sort of hangs a big "My Giant Penis Phallically-Shaped Pet Snake is a Horcrux" sign on it. Smooth, Voldie.
10) The trio argue about which of them should go to the Shack. None of them has any illusions about the fact that it's basically a suicide mission, but they are all ready to volunteer for it to keep the other two in the relative safety of the castle.
11) Dean is fighting Dolohov. Is there any chance Dean is a better dueler than Remus was? On a side note, Parvati is fighting Travers, which must mean that he wasn't killed with the others by Voldemort following the Gringotts break-in. Dean ends up stunning Travers and Parvati Body-Binds Dolohov, and suddenly I'm wanting to 'ship Dean/Parvati. They seem to make a good team.
12) The trio save Draco *again*. And then Ron punches him out and calls him a two-faced bastard. Awesome. I hope they keep that moment for the film.
13) Symbolic shattering of the Slytherin hourglass. Ooh! Mirror! During the action at the end of HBP, the Gryffindor hourglass was shattered, and we all know what a bad night that was for a certain elderly top-dog Gryffindor. Maybe this is foreshadowing for what will be happening to the top-dog Slytherin?
14) Lavender Brown. Fenrir bit her and Hermione moved to save her first. I hope Lavender survives. I think it would be interesting to explore the changes this night made to her character. She'll probably have some lasting effects from the bite, even if, like Bill, she has not become a full werewolf. And now I'm wanting to pair her with Draco who was a big non-fan of Fenrir.
15) Trelawney joins the fray! Finally, she does something useful. She's hurling crystal balls right and left! Hooray! Well, I suppose Lavender was one of her favourite students. She knocks out Fenrir, but I doubt a single blow to the head like this is going to kill a tough old beast like him.
16) Hogwartians. Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a new word ....
17) Hagrid tries to save his spiders. Priorities, Hagrid, PLEASE! He vanishes in the midst of them. For the second time this book, we are convinced that he's dead. It would have been so ironic for Hagrid to go like this. Harry tries to follow and save him, disregarding his own safety. Come on, Harry! Isn't there something you need to be getting on with?
18) Harry cannot summon a Patronus. His friends are dying around him and more may already be dead. He despairs. Luna, Ernie and Seamus to the rescue! Hooray! Symbolically, we have representatives from each house here (apart from Slytherin). Did we know Ernie and Seamus's Patronuses before now? My Ernie/Luna 'shippy brain is overjoyed to see them working together. Luna provides her trademark optimism, and Harry is at last able to cast the stag.
19) Hermione: "Are you a wizard, or what?" I spy another mirror! In PS, Hermione can't think how to destroy the Devil's Snare without the means of making a fire. And Ron says? "Are you a witch or not?" In both instances, they use spells learned in their first year to solve the problem.
20) They are now too big to do anything but crawl through the passage. So remind me how Remus, Peter and Ron got through it chained together, and how Sirius floated Snape upright down it?
21) Snape asks to go and find Harry. Ambiguous to the last, isn't he? Masterfully done, Jo, but I think most of us figured it out anyway.
22) The Elder Wand does not work for Voldemort. It only works like an ordinary wand. Did Snape switch wands in Dumbledore's tomb? Because that would have been clever. But no; this is where the wandlore becomes significant.
23) Voldemort still considers Harry's love of others to be his "one great flaw". Voldemort is right that, for this reason, Harry will come to him, but it's also for this reason that Harry must be victorious in the end.
24) "Snape's face was like a deathmask." There it is. The moment when I knew he wasn't going to make it out of this book alive.
25) The Death of Severus Snape. This really bothered me on the first reading. It is not a heroic death indicative of Snape's character. He deserved better than this. However, I now understand that this scene is meant to show us Voldemort's character, not Snape's. Voldemort believes that the pervious owner of the wand must be killed to attain mastery over it, despite the fact that he knows Dumbledore did not kill Grindelwald. Despite the fact that he values Snape's service, he has not considered any option apart from killing him. Even his most loyal servants can expect no better treatment when their usefulness runs out. "I regret it," Voldemort says, but he feels no remorse; only inconvenience at losing a useful tool.
26) Snape's leaking memories. "I'm dying, Harry, but here are a few carefully selected memories for your perusal. You'll find Dumbledore's pensieve in the Headmaster's office. Take a few moments out from everyone dying to go collect a steaming heap of backstory exposition." *dies* I don't know; this seems like sort of a lame way for this to happen. I would be more willing to buy Snape's last words as something like, "Headmaster's office ... Pensieve ... memories ... go!" Harry could find the memories there waiting for him. Not Evil.
27) Snape: "Look ... at ... me ..." Snape wanted his last sight to be those green eyes, and there's only one good reason for that, unless you're a die-hard Snarry 'shipper. Turns out they were important after all. *sniff*
28) The "Snape is not Dead" theory. Arthur Weasley was attacked every bit as viciously as Snape is here, and yet after that attack, there was time to fetch McGonagall, get Harry to Dumbledore's office, send out the portraits to find where Arthur was, send people to rescue him and get him to St Mungo's. Severus Snape proved to us last year that he knows spells to close up heavily-bleeding wounds in a hurry, and as for poison, he seems like a man who would carry a bezoar in his pocket. Part of me wants to believe that he "played dead" until Harry was gone, swallowed a bezoar, and is now safely in hiding somewhere. Jo will tell us that yes, he is dead, but fic writers are left with a way around that.