Deathly Hallows, Chapter 3: The Dursleys Departing
The American editions of this book are graced with a strange picture: Dudley and Harry are smiling at each other and shaking hands. That’s not what got my attention, however. It was the depiction of Dudley as looking like a young Incredible Hulk with normal skin tones. Either that, or he’s contracted some weird disease that made his torso swell up like a balloon.
This chapter starts with Vernon yelling for Harry in a particularly demeaning manner. JKR insults her readers’ intelligence--or memory, or both--by telling us Harry didn’t respond at first because he was still looking at the mirror fragment in which he thought he’d seen Dumbledore’s eye. Since it’s only been half a page since we were told about this, we couldn’t possibly have forgotten it. I’m now wondering how much shorter DH would have been if it wasn’t crammed with redundant filler like this.
The filler continues as we’re reminded Dudley is “Harry’s large, blond, muscular cousin” because we might have forgotten Dudley had taken up bodybuilding since the last book. I guess if you think your readers are so mentally deficient they can’t recall what happened on the previous page, they sure can’t be counted on to remember anything about the last book.
Vernon tells Harry he, Petunia, and Dudley are not evacuating because he’s decided that Harry’s warning that DEs were coming after them is just a plot to get his dirty little wizard hands on the house. Harry retorts, “Are you actually as stupid as you look?” and adds, “I’ve already got a house...So why would I want this one? All the happy memories?” *sob* That--that sounded so much like Snape, it just brought a tear to my eye. I’m sorry Severus wasn’t there to see it. All these years, he’s thought Harry learned nothing from him when the boy was obviously imbibing Snape’s expertise in sarcasm.
Harry insists the Dursleys are in danger because Voldemort might come after them, either to torture them for information about Harry, or to take them hostage so Harry will have to rescue them. I wish! This book would have been so much more interesting if something like that had happened. Unfortunately, Harry was just as fooled as all of us were into thinking Voldy was a competent villain who could be trusted to do the sensibly ruthless thing.
Harry shows more evidence of Albus’s brainwashing when he insists his relatives are being offered,”...serious protection, the best there is.” Yeah, ‘cause that worked out so well for your parents, Harry.
After six books of trying to convince us Harry was horribly abused by the Dursleys, their relationship is tepidly described as “sixteen years’ solid dislike.” I thought they hated each others’ guts; I thought that was what we were supposed to believe. This book is just wimping out all over.
When Hestia Jones and Dedalus Diggle arrive to take away the Dursleys, Diggle displays typical magical contempt for nonmagicals by tactlessly addressing them as “Harry Potter’s relatives.” Even worse, he says this “happily,” as if there’s nothing wrong with talking to them that way. Yeah, Dedalus, just because you’re going to be living with these people indefinitely doesn’t mean you need to bother to learn their names. Basic courtesy isn’t necessary when dealing with dumb animals.
Vernon is understandably disconcerted to learn that not only does Dedalus not know how to drive a car; he also admits he’d be “utterly bamboozled by all those buttons and knobs.” Obviously, the Order’s not any more competent in 1997 than it was in 1981.
As they prepare to leave, Petunia asks, “Ready, Diddy?” Apparently she’s so upset she now thinks she’s the mother of rapper P. Diddy. I know Dudley has changed in the last few years, but he doesn’t look like a skinny black guy.
Dudley is distressed to learn Harry isn’t coming with them. Since this escape has been planned for at least a month (according to earlier in the chapter), hasn’t this been established before? I know Darling Dudders is supposed to be dazzlingly dense (no mean feat given his competition in this series), but he would have to have been either comatose or catatonic to not be aware of an argument that’s been going on in his own home for an entire month. Either that, or Rowling’s now so careless even her characters can’t remember things that occurred recently.
Vernon says to Hestia that Harry is leaving with “some of your lot,” which causes Jones to go ballistic. “Off with some of our lot?” she shrieks, outraged to find out Harry’s relatives don’t kiss his ass understand how wonderful and important Harry is, the way all right-thinking magicals (and readers) do.
Why the hell should they, you brain-dead twit? “Your lot” bends so far over backwards to keep “muggles” ignorant about your society that you end up kissing your own asses. Then you have the unmitigated gall to complain about the ignorance you do everything in your power to foster! “Your lot” doesn’t even have the courtesy to learn the names of the people you’re supposed to be guarding, information which is easily accessible, yet you expect them to know everything about a bratty kid who was literally dumped on them without their knowledge or consent, and whom they could never get rid of without suffering the wrath of Dumbledore, the only man so dangerous he even scares Voldemort!
I swear to God, these magicals remind me of pre-revolution French aristocrats: They expect the great unwashed peasantry to know all about them, including everything about their heroes and how to bow and scrape to them in just the right way, but they don’t think they even need to be able to tell the difference between the members of the rabble, let alone condescend to learn their names.
Where’s a good Reign of Terror when you need one? If this is the way magicals have always treated nonmagicals, I don’t blame the nonmagicals for going medieval on their asses and trying to wipe them all out. You can only take so much condescension and lack of consideration before you need payback.
This reminds me of the old song, “Indiana Wants Me,” about a man on the run from the law for murder. Part of it goes,
“If a man ever needed dying, he did.
No one had the right to say what he said about you.”
Let the burnings at the stake begin!
The chapter ends with Dudley making a verbal peace offering to Harry, and Harry accepting it. It was a pleasure to see both of them acting decent for once.