OOTP Chapter Thirty: "Grawp"
* AKA “The Most Pointless Chapter Ever”.
* Seriously, even “Hagrid’s Tale” could possibly be justified as a way of telling us what Hagrid had been getting up to, but this... does Grawp serve any purpose other than chasing those centaurs away when Hermione’s leading Umbridge off to her raping?
* “Harry was certain that the other teachers could have removed the swamp” = “JKR wants us to think that the other teachers could have removed the swamp, but can’t tell us directly due to her choice of narrative voice”.
* Fred and George have left “two large broom-shaped holes in Umbridge’s office door”, foreshadowing the Snape-shaped hole in DH.
* That security troll guarding Harry’s broom is just so hilariously over-the-top, it’s hard to know what to make of it.
* Bubble Charms are now common knowledge, even though in the last book they were so rare that Harry, Ron and Hermione never found any mention of them despite searching for days (weeks?) in the library.
* The Inquisitorial Squad members are constantly being sent to hospital, but we don’t hear of them doing the same thing to any of the students. Don’t think that this means the IS are better than the other students, though. They’re Slytherin, and therefore evil. Behaviour has nothing to do with it.
* Sprouting antlers sounds kind of cool, actually. You could run around pretending to be a Celtic deity.
* You’d have thought that Umbridge would be able to find out about the Skiving Snackboxes some way. Did none of the Slytherins ever hear about them?
* When I first read about the Snackboxes, my main thought was “But education is important! You shouldn’t just be skipping classes like that!” which I suppose just goes to show that I’m not cool enough for these novels.
* Montague is still in the hospital after... how long is it now? Days? Weeks? The Trio still don’t tell Madam Pomfrey what happened to him, though. Heaven forbid that they should do anything to help a Slytherin!
* Besides, he deserves potentially permanent brain damage for trying to take points off Gryffindor. Erm... OK.
* Also, note how Hermione backs down on this. I’m not sure why, since it would seem more in-character for her to go and tell anyway. Maybe she doesn’t actually care about Montague, but feels like she ought to at least make a gesture in the direction of helping him. Sort of like seeing a third-world crisis on the news, saying “Oh dear, we really ought to do something”, and then not actually getting round to doing anything.
* “If you want to worry about anyone, Hermione, worry about me!” Here we have Ron’s entire personality summed up in one line.
* Harry’s care about the Twins getting into trouble is quite touching. A pity his care doesn’t extend to other people - like, say, Montague.
* Wait, no, I see my mistake. I said “people like Montague”, when we all know that Montague isn’t a person, he’s a Slytherin. So totally different, then.
* Sadist!Harry alert - he’s feeling “a kind of vindictive pleasure” at reminding Ron of how incompetent he is at Quidditch.
* Slytherin “had been narrowly defeated by Hufflepuff in their last match”. Whenever any teams looks like they’ll beat Gryffindor, you can count on them to obligingly start playing worse to compensate.
* Hermione’s right that Fred and George weren’t good for Ron’s confidence, and that he might do better now that they’re now constantly belittling him. Funnily enough, she doesn’t seem to use this line of thought on her own behaviour.
* Hagrid comes and takes Harry and Hermione to talk with him, conveniently allowing JKR to get away with not writing this Quidditch match.
* So how big is the Forbidden Forest? It would have to be pretty large to accommodate all those giant animals, but I don’t think that there are any forests big enough in that part of the world. Maybe it’s under some magical concealment too.
* I’m surprised Umbridge hasn’t given Hagrid the sack earlier, to be honest. It’s not like she has no excuse to - she was sent to improve Hogwarts standards, he’s incompetent, so firing him would be perfectly justifiable.
* Hagrid guilt-trips Harry and Hermione into helping him without telling them what it is they’ll be helping with. What a good friend that man is.
* Hermione’s horrified at what Hagrid’s done. I suppose it’s too much to hope for that she’s upset at the suffering this will cause Grawp, as opposed to the possibility that she might get in trouble somehow.
* Grawp’s a good guy, so when he attacks Hagrid it’s because he “don’ know his own strength,” rather than because he doesn’t actually like Hagrid and is trying to make him to go away.
* Also because Grawp’s a good guy, the other giants who bully him are nasty and cruel, not righteous avengers of injustice like the Marauders or the Trio are.
* Grawp’s intelligence level here seems like that of a dog, or some other sort of animal. Assuming that this is normal for a giant, then it’s no wonder Hagrid’s ashamed of his parentage. It’d be like admitting that your dad had a liking for bestiality.
* So Grawp kept trying to return home, and is now tied to the ground with ropes. Yeah, Hagrid’s good with animals, alright. *rolls eyes*
* Hagrid calls Grawp a “big buffoon”. Note how there’s never any suggestion that he deserves to get his chest cut open for insulting an animal like this.
* At least Hagrid’s efforts are portrayed as ridiculous and quixotic, which is more than we can say for most of the good guys’ flaws in these books.
* Hagrid defends Firenze by saying that he was just helping Dumbledore, as if helping Dumbledore is always right and the only defence anybody could ever need for their actions. Oh wait, it is.
* Why does Hermione have to back down, again? Come on, Granger, you’re right, Hagrid does deserve to get the sack. You’re so pig-headed about that SPEW thing, but you cave in when you’re actually on the right side?
* Ron yells that they won, as if he knows they’ve been away. Surely it would be more natural for him to assume that they had been at the match, and therefore knew the result? Even if he knew that they’d be absent, wouldn’t we expect him to be annoyed at them for missing his moment of glory?
* Normally I’d wonder why we didn’t get to see the Quidditch match, when it clearly represents the resolution of a fairly major subplot. In this case, however, it isn’t the resolution of the subplot: Ron will go back to being insecure again in the next book, as if this whole thing never happened.
* And I’m not sure why everybody’s cheering Ron in particular, given that Keeper is quite a minor role. Wouldn’t it be more natural for them all to be cheering the Seeker? Or would that make Ginny too much of an obvious Mary Sue even for JK Rowling?
* Seriously, even “Hagrid’s Tale” could possibly be justified as a way of telling us what Hagrid had been getting up to, but this... does Grawp serve any purpose other than chasing those centaurs away when Hermione’s leading Umbridge off to her raping?
* “Harry was certain that the other teachers could have removed the swamp” = “JKR wants us to think that the other teachers could have removed the swamp, but can’t tell us directly due to her choice of narrative voice”.
* Fred and George have left “two large broom-shaped holes in Umbridge’s office door”, foreshadowing the Snape-shaped hole in DH.
* That security troll guarding Harry’s broom is just so hilariously over-the-top, it’s hard to know what to make of it.
* Bubble Charms are now common knowledge, even though in the last book they were so rare that Harry, Ron and Hermione never found any mention of them despite searching for days (weeks?) in the library.
* The Inquisitorial Squad members are constantly being sent to hospital, but we don’t hear of them doing the same thing to any of the students. Don’t think that this means the IS are better than the other students, though. They’re Slytherin, and therefore evil. Behaviour has nothing to do with it.
* Sprouting antlers sounds kind of cool, actually. You could run around pretending to be a Celtic deity.
* You’d have thought that Umbridge would be able to find out about the Skiving Snackboxes some way. Did none of the Slytherins ever hear about them?
* When I first read about the Snackboxes, my main thought was “But education is important! You shouldn’t just be skipping classes like that!” which I suppose just goes to show that I’m not cool enough for these novels.
* Montague is still in the hospital after... how long is it now? Days? Weeks? The Trio still don’t tell Madam Pomfrey what happened to him, though. Heaven forbid that they should do anything to help a Slytherin!
* Besides, he deserves potentially permanent brain damage for trying to take points off Gryffindor. Erm... OK.
* Also, note how Hermione backs down on this. I’m not sure why, since it would seem more in-character for her to go and tell anyway. Maybe she doesn’t actually care about Montague, but feels like she ought to at least make a gesture in the direction of helping him. Sort of like seeing a third-world crisis on the news, saying “Oh dear, we really ought to do something”, and then not actually getting round to doing anything.
* “If you want to worry about anyone, Hermione, worry about me!” Here we have Ron’s entire personality summed up in one line.
* Harry’s care about the Twins getting into trouble is quite touching. A pity his care doesn’t extend to other people - like, say, Montague.
* Wait, no, I see my mistake. I said “people like Montague”, when we all know that Montague isn’t a person, he’s a Slytherin. So totally different, then.
* Sadist!Harry alert - he’s feeling “a kind of vindictive pleasure” at reminding Ron of how incompetent he is at Quidditch.
* Slytherin “had been narrowly defeated by Hufflepuff in their last match”. Whenever any teams looks like they’ll beat Gryffindor, you can count on them to obligingly start playing worse to compensate.
* Hermione’s right that Fred and George weren’t good for Ron’s confidence, and that he might do better now that they’re now constantly belittling him. Funnily enough, she doesn’t seem to use this line of thought on her own behaviour.
* Hagrid comes and takes Harry and Hermione to talk with him, conveniently allowing JKR to get away with not writing this Quidditch match.
* So how big is the Forbidden Forest? It would have to be pretty large to accommodate all those giant animals, but I don’t think that there are any forests big enough in that part of the world. Maybe it’s under some magical concealment too.
* I’m surprised Umbridge hasn’t given Hagrid the sack earlier, to be honest. It’s not like she has no excuse to - she was sent to improve Hogwarts standards, he’s incompetent, so firing him would be perfectly justifiable.
* Hagrid guilt-trips Harry and Hermione into helping him without telling them what it is they’ll be helping with. What a good friend that man is.
* Hermione’s horrified at what Hagrid’s done. I suppose it’s too much to hope for that she’s upset at the suffering this will cause Grawp, as opposed to the possibility that she might get in trouble somehow.
* Grawp’s a good guy, so when he attacks Hagrid it’s because he “don’ know his own strength,” rather than because he doesn’t actually like Hagrid and is trying to make him to go away.
* Also because Grawp’s a good guy, the other giants who bully him are nasty and cruel, not righteous avengers of injustice like the Marauders or the Trio are.
* Grawp’s intelligence level here seems like that of a dog, or some other sort of animal. Assuming that this is normal for a giant, then it’s no wonder Hagrid’s ashamed of his parentage. It’d be like admitting that your dad had a liking for bestiality.
* So Grawp kept trying to return home, and is now tied to the ground with ropes. Yeah, Hagrid’s good with animals, alright. *rolls eyes*
* Hagrid calls Grawp a “big buffoon”. Note how there’s never any suggestion that he deserves to get his chest cut open for insulting an animal like this.
* At least Hagrid’s efforts are portrayed as ridiculous and quixotic, which is more than we can say for most of the good guys’ flaws in these books.
* Hagrid defends Firenze by saying that he was just helping Dumbledore, as if helping Dumbledore is always right and the only defence anybody could ever need for their actions. Oh wait, it is.
* Why does Hermione have to back down, again? Come on, Granger, you’re right, Hagrid does deserve to get the sack. You’re so pig-headed about that SPEW thing, but you cave in when you’re actually on the right side?
* Ron yells that they won, as if he knows they’ve been away. Surely it would be more natural for him to assume that they had been at the match, and therefore knew the result? Even if he knew that they’d be absent, wouldn’t we expect him to be annoyed at them for missing his moment of glory?
* Normally I’d wonder why we didn’t get to see the Quidditch match, when it clearly represents the resolution of a fairly major subplot. In this case, however, it isn’t the resolution of the subplot: Ron will go back to being insecure again in the next book, as if this whole thing never happened.
* And I’m not sure why everybody’s cheering Ron in particular, given that Keeper is quite a minor role. Wouldn’t it be more natural for them all to be cheering the Seeker? Or would that make Ginny too much of an obvious Mary Sue even for JK Rowling?