Deathly Hallows, Chapter 7: The Will of Albus Dumbledore
Author’s note: It’s not a good idea to eat or drink while reading this installment. There’s some Snapish sarcasm at the end that may make you spray your computer. He’s not in the chapter, but I imagined what might happen if he were.
This chapter begins with Harry experiencing a Voldie-vision in his dreams. Ron wakes him up, and Harry asks if Ron knows who Gregorovitch is, since Harry thinks Voldy is looking for this man.
Ron gives Harry his birthday present, How to Pick Up Girls Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches. He includes a free sexual pun, saying the book is “not all about wandwork.” They go downstairs, where Harry is greeted by more presents. Harry has a moment of honest emotion when he hugs Molly after finding out her gift is the watch of one of her brothers who was killed by DEs. I wouldn’t get too worked up, Harry. It’s still dented from his fatal fight. She didn’t care enough to get it repaired for you.
After breakfast, Ginny diverts Harry into her room and kisses him passionately. This has me thinking about Harry’s insistence they break up to keep her safe. I know this is going to sound redundant in view of everything we’ve read so far but--that doesn’t make sense. Surely any halfway intelligent person would look at the breakup and say, “This is contrived. He’s just leaving her because he’s going to war, and he doesn’t want her to be a target for the DEs.” At the very least, they’d say, “Just because he broke up with her doesn’t mean he doesn’t still have feelings for her. Better take her hostage and torture her just to be safe.” But nobody thinks that because the only reasonably intelligent and competent DEs are Snape and the Malfoys, and they’re trying to undermine Voldemort, not assist him.
Ron and Hermione barge in on this tender scene, and Harry leaves with them. I thought it was sweet when Ron acted the protective older brother and demanded Harry stop jerking his sister around. However, his brief flash of intelligence is gone, and he’s now just as taken in by the phony breakup as the DEs are.
The Weasleys hold a big, outdoor birthday party for Harry, complete with purple and gold streamers and gold crabapple tree leaves courtesy of Hermione. As if the gold Polyjuice potion and gold spurts from his wand weren’t enough, we have to be reminded again that Harry is magical royalty. (Especially since purple is also the color of royalty.)
The party is crashed when Arthur arrives with Minister of Magic Rufus Scrimgeour. The latter takes the Trio aside to tell them about their bequests in Dumbledore’s will. Hermione the All-Knowing tells the boys it took over a month for them to get their inheritance because the Ministry had confiscated the items to inspect them. After she spouts some legal mumbo jumbo, Scrimgeour asks her if she plans a career in magical law. She retorts, “No, I’m not. I’m hoping to do some good in the world!”
Let’s check her record so far, shall we?: (1) Repeated assaults on a teacher, including setting him on fire and a group assault that resulted in a serious head injury to him. (2) Permanently disfiguring another girl for breaking an agreement with a school club, with consequences she didn’t know in advance. (3) Possibly causing permanent brain damage to her own parents “for their own [greater] good.” Doin’ great so far, Hermione! Keep up the good work!
Ron receives the Deluminator, which is apparently the same thing that was called a Put-Outer in the first book. It has “the power to suck all light from a place, and restore it.” So it’s a kind of portable black hole and supernova in one? A black hole is the only thing I know of that can suck light into itself because of its irresistible gravitational pull. But if that’s what it is, why doesn’t it suck everything else into itself as well?
Imagine the final confrontation: Harry and Voldemort are facing off. They are taunting each other the way adversaries usually do in adventure fiction. Ron comes up, clicks on his Deluminator, and poof! Voldemort is sucked into it! Victory is Ron’s! Take that, golden boy Harry!
Hermione is given the already-sporked Tales of Beedle the Bard, and Harry is given the snitch he caught in his first Quidditch game and the Sacred Sword of Gryffindor. Scrimgeour refuses to hand the sword over for the perfectly good reason that it’s a priceless historical artifact that belongs to Hogwarts and is not Dumbledore’s to give. Harry has an entitlement fit and insists he does so have a right to the sword because he pulled it out of the Sorting Hat to defeat the basilisk! So obviously, the sword itself wants him to have it. So there, you old meanie!
Later that night, the Trio gets together to discuss their bequests. Harry remembers he caught the snitch in his mouth in his first game and deduces that putting his mouth on it might make it reveal its purpose when just handling it did not. When he kisses it, it reveals the sekrit message Dumbledore wrote on it: “I open at the close.” The Trio vainly tries to figure out what that means.
I’m so sorry Snape wasn’t there to interpret it for them. He would say, “Surely you are familiar, Potter, with the saying, ‘You have one mouth and two ears so you can listen twice as much as you talk.’ This is a pithier way of saying the same thing. If you were to close your mouth occasionally and open your ears to what those who know more than you have to say, you would learn much to your benefit. You and Granger are both insufferable know-it-alls, just of different types. She tries to overwhelm her listeners with an endless stream of memorized trivia, and you try to intimidate them with shouting and anger. Neither behavior is conducive to acquiring the knowledge both of you claim to want and need. There is a reason the words listen and silent are spelled with the same letters.”
I know, I know. We find out at the end that’s not what the message means. But I like my version much better.
Since Hermione and Harry are not familiar with the Beedle book, Ron explains it contains traditional magical fairy tales. I have to say that my immediate thought upon reading the title, “The Wizard and the Hopping Pot” was that the story was about making beer. I thought the phrase “hopping pot” referred to brewing hops in the pot, since hops are an ingredient of beer. I didn’t think that could be right since this is ostensibly a children’s story, but given what we’ve seen so far, I couldn’t be certain.
After talking out their concerns some more, the three go to bed.