Half-Blood Prince Uberwank: Chapter 12, Silver and Opals
This town
Is coming like a ghost town
All the clubs have been closed down
This place
Is coming like a ghost town
Bands won't play no more
(Too much fighting on the dance floor)
-The Specials, "Ghost Town"
So, yeah, it's October and therefore a visit to Hogsmeade, the nearby village, is on the cards. On the morning of said day trip, Harry wakes early to read that potions book he has, the one with all the annotation in it. Apparently Ron disapproves of this behaviour because who would ever want to read a textbook by choice? But from Harry's point of view, it's justified because a) the book is awesome and this Half-Blood Prince guy totally knows his shit, and b) he's actually looking at a porno mag tucked inside the book. (This, will, of course, lead to some awkward moments when it's revealed that the HBP is Snape, because Ron will catch Harry fapping with the book in his lap at least once and so he'll be left with the awkward dilemma of whether to tell Ron about the porn, which was furry porn, or let him believe he was fapping over Snape's textbook annotations.)
Of course, even the most reeking adolescent backne factory can't masturbate all the time, so Harry has occasionally been looking at the book itself. He's learned several "useful" spells, including one that makes toenails grow very fast, which he used on Crabbe for no apparent reason, which is an excellent example of how the Harry Potter I loved in earlier books has been removed and replaced with an utter jerkwad. There's also one that effectively glues your mouth shut (done "to general applause" on Filch; see my comment above regarding jerkwads), and one that "fill[s] the ears of anyone nearby with an unidentifiable buzzing", which strikes me as the kind of thing that they use at Guantanamo Bay after they defile your chosen holy book but before they start the waterboarding.
Anyway, on this fine morning, Harry's already rubbed a couple out and so turns to the margins of the book for entertainment. He spies, in the corner of a page, the note "Levicorpus (n-vbl)". It takes him a good three or four lines of text to figure out that means "non-verbal". He's shit at those kinds of spells (it actually says he doubts he'll be able to "bring off" the spell - *snrk*), but then again, the Prince (FFS, I hate capitalising that, so from now on, no capitals) the prince has, thus far, been a better teacher than Snape. This is like being smacked round the head with the irony iron (that's probably a real magical device, as well, a bit like a probity probe. I wonder what it does? Probably you iron your t-shirt with it and it magically inscribes an hilarious "ironic", in other words mildly sexist or xenophobic, slogan on the front).
Either way, Harry, what with being both a jerkass and a moron, decides to throw the spell and see what happens, which he does; next thing you know, Ron is hanging in midair, suspended by the ankle. Ron is screaming while everyone else laughs and Harry rather helpfully throws the book on the floor before picking it up again, finding the page, checking to see if there's a counter-jinx, and throwing the spell written there, even though he isn't sure if it really is the counter-jinx or the projectile vomiting curse. (It's "liberacorpus", so you or I could easily figure out that it is the counter-jinx, but Harry's a fucking idiot.) It works, so it doesn't matter anyway, but as we'll discuss in several months' time when I get around to uberwanking the Sectumsempra bathroom scene, throwing spells that you don't know what they do is a supremely bad idea and Harry is a dick for doing it ever, let alone several times.
By the time they get down to breakfast, Ron finds the whole episode hilarious and regales Hermione with it. She agrees with me on this one, and thinks Harry is a total fuckwit for using a spell with an unknown effect for no reason. Ron, in trying to convince her it was funny, reminds her that it's the sort of thing that Fred and George would do, which, frankly, isn't much of a recommendation. I mean, Fred and George also think things like drug rape and forced abortion and terrorist attacks are funny, don't they?
Harry then realises that he saw James use the spell too, in the pensieve, but rather than therefore realising that this is a spell for jerks, he merely latches on to the minute possibility that the Half-Blood Prince might have been James. It isn't until Hermione brings up the use of a levitation spell by the death eaters at the quidditch world cup that Harry is prepared to concede that this spell might not be all rainbows and unicorns, and even then, Ron proceeds to attempt to justify it by claiming said death eaters were "abusing" the spell. An argument then develops, seemingly based on the notion that the HBP couldn't possible be a death eater because death eaters don't boast about being half-blood. (There's that irony iron again.) Our trio launch into their own interpretation of the Monty Python Four Yorkshiremen sketch, only based around who's the least eligible to become a death eater.
Ginny makes herself useful by interrupting this farce of a scene, bringing Harry a note from Dumbledore with arrangements for their next date or lesson or whatever it is. Harry ignores Ginny in order to share its contents with Ron and Hermione, including her again in order to imply she's got nothing better to do than hang out with them in Hogsmeade. She's going with Dean, but cheers anyway.
(Seriously, for all I find Ginny to be kind of a Sue at times, Harry's really no better. Their relationship, on the page, seems to me to be terribly flawed - but a good part of that comes from the way Harry acts towards Ginny, dismissive and like she's simply not as important as his ~*friends*~, rather than anything Ginny does.)
Anyway, off to Hogsmeade. After a brief rectal examination each from Filch, our beloved triumvirate head off, through the icy wind, down the path to the village, where they see that the joke shop has been boarded up. I guess this detail is included in order to show how the war has affected everything and made the world a sadder place and whatever, but honestly, to me it just suggests that those ruthless capitalist pigdogs, Fred and George Weasley, have put the Zonko family out of business. Either way, the place is shut, so instead our trio make their way to the sweetshop, only to encounter Professor "Pedobear" Slughorn.
"Harry, m'boy!" he bellows. "Harry, that's three of my little suppers you've missed now! It won't do, m'boy, I'm determined to have you!" (That's an actual line from the book.) Harry's buttock and sphincter muscles clench in involuntary horror at this anticipated onslaught. (That isn't an actual line from the book, but it might as well be.)
However, Harry's romantic liaison with Dumbledore provides him with an excuse not to show up, which in turn provides JKR with an excuse to talk about how, when Hermione has no choice but to go to the parties (what, like she can't just say she's got other plans?), Harry, Ron and Ginny spend their evening laughing at her behind her back. These kids are such jerks sometimes. At the risk of being an utter wanker for a moment, I liked Harry Potter better when he was the nerdy kid who got picked on and everyone thought was a bit weird. I don't like him as this popular jock type. He's kind of obnoxious. And, anyway, as Morrissey once said, we hate it when our friends become successful.
Although I might be projecting a tad there.
Having taken care of their sugar cravings, our trio find themselves in need of a drink. By my reckoning it can't be later than about 11am now, but fuck it, it's gotta be five o'clock somewhere, and I know this is making me want to drink until my heart stops, so I don't blame the people who are actually having to live in the story for wanting to send themselves off into a happy oblivion. The street is virtually deserted, but just outside the pub they run into Mundungus Fletcher, a petty criminal and habitual glue sniffer Dumbledore keeps involved with the Order for reasons of whimsy. He sees Harry and promptly shits bricks; this is because, as it transpires, he has been helping himself to the contents of 12 Grimmauld Place and using it to fund his Bostik habit. Harry is furious, so furious that he tightens his hands around Mundungus's throat until his face starts going blue. Jesus H Christ, Harry, that's a bit... gratuitous? I mean, there's being pissed off and then there's, you know, actual strangulation.
Anyway, Mundungus manages to disapparate, and is immediately replaced by the all-new, rubbish version of Tonks, who seems to be present for the sole purpose of showing us again how rubbish and mopey she is. For fuck's sake, Tonks. I know, I know, you're pining for the love of a gay werewolf about twice your age who refuses to stick you one, but the answer to that is to listen to "Creep" by Radiohead a bunch of times, then go out with your friends and get arseholed on cheap cocktails, massacre "I Will Survive" at the karaoke, and - in your specific case - to explore your lesbian tendencies. Not to mope about being a bit rubbish. I'm not sure I buy the explanation that you're depressed, either, because depression isn't something that gets fixed by a single factor (in this case, the gay werewolf in question agreeing to stick you one). Oh, I will happily admit that a single factor, even a gay werewolf refusing to stick you one, can prove to be the thing that pushes someone over the edge. I've been depressed on and off for some ridiculous proportion of my life, and I'm not going to be the person who claims it's all in your head or it only counts if it comes about because of, IDK, bereavement or whatever. It's an illness and it isn't rational. But Tonks? Tonks, your unhappy state seems to evaporate as soon as Remus agrees to, indeed, stick you one, and by the time you attend Bill and Fleur's wedding mere weeks after that, you're described as "radiant". So, overall, I call bullshit and request that you harden the fuck up.
Where were we? Oh yeah, in the pub. Hermione is doing her usual routine of patting Harry on the arm and saying "Calm... calm... healing thoughts" while he rages. Turns out he had forgotten the stuff Mundungus was stealing was even his - he was more worried about the disrespect to Sirius inherent in the act of selling it. I can't decide if that makes me think more of Harry, because he's more concerned about the disservice being done to Sirius's memory - or less of him, because he's privileged enough to have forgotten that he owns a house.
Meanwhile, Ron is trying to make eye contact with the "curvy and attractive" barmaid, Madam Rosmerta. Because he fancies her, obviously. Incidentally, Rosmerta (as we learn in PoA) remembers the Marauders as customers of her pub, so she's got to be, what, at least in her forties right now? So I guess Ron has some kind of MILF thing going on. Fair play to him, I suppose. What seems less reasonable is that Hermione genuinely seems to be jealous, going by the catty remarks she makes and the way she keeps glancing over at the bar. Assuming I'm correct about Rosmerta's age (which I think I must be - even if she was a child when MWPP used to drink there, and was the then barmaid's daughter or something, she'd still be well into her thirties now, right?) then Hermione's jealousy seems kind of unfounded. I mean, this is a subjective one, so I'd welcome alternative accounts, but - why be jealous of someone who isn't a threat? Ron would never have a chance with Madam Rosmerta anyway, no more of a chance that he'd have with Angelina Jolie or Professor McGonagall. As I say, this one probably varies, but I know that at my most viciously jealous moments, the ones I don't like to examine due to shame, the ones that have caused the most awful arguments - I've felt genuinely threatened. And Hermione - well, again this is an interpretation, and again I'd be interested in alternative ones, but she's always seemed a little too level-headed to be worried about things in the abstract like that. I can entirely buy her being jealous of Lavender when that all kicks off in a few chapters, but this is a bit pasted on, is what I'm getting at.
Anyway, after a single drink even the pub is a bad place, so they head back to school. On the way, Harry's mind strays in the direction of Ginny, who (he presumes) is at the village's hideous, chintzy tea shop with Dean. Apparently it's the hangout for teenage couples, probably because there's nowhere else to go, because what self-respecting teenager would go somewhere like that out of choice? (Although I'm not saying I don't believe they'd go there; when I was on the summer camp in Pennsylvania, we used to get taxis into town every evening and hang out at the laundromat and pizza shop for precisely the same reason: there was bugger all else to do. The pizza at that place was bloody good, too.)
As they trudge back up towards the school, Harry becomes aware of an argument going on between his quidditch teammate Katie Bell and her friend Leanne, who are walking a little way in front of them. Leanne grabs at a package Katie is holding; Katie grabs it back and is immediately hit by some kind of curse. She rises into the air (JKR mentions that the way it happens is both graceful and eerie and not comically, i.e. not like what happened to Ron, I guess to show us... what, exactly? I mean, to show us that it isn't the same spell, but then why is that earlier spell even in this chapter? It's not like it's enormously important later). Then, suspended above the ground, she begins to scream. Her friend, plus our intrepid trio, manage to tug her back down to earth and effectively sit on her to stop her thrashing around. I'm not entirely sure that's going to help much, but YMMV.
Harry runs for help and luckily (huh) meets Hagrid right away. Hagrid's verbal diarrhoea concerning his tedious, pointless brother Grawp is thankfully stemmed by the emergency situation; he follows Harry back to where Katie is still screaming and proves that for all he can be an annoyingly talkative lump of fail at times, he is still perfectly capable of carrying out his role as an enormous hairy truck. He lifts Katie up and immediately runs with her in his arms towards the school.
Hermione comforts Leanne, and then our trio get straight down to their usual amateur-sleuth business. Leanne reveals that Katie's mishap happened when the parcel they were fighting over tore open and Katie touched its contents: a glittery silver and opal necklace. Leanne reveals that Katie came back from the toilet holding the package and said she had to deliver it, but wouldn't say who gave it to her. This is one of those bits where I don't even know how to react - it's not like I love or hate the fact that Katie Bell picked up a cursed necklace in a pub toilet, it's that it makes me go "WTF". It's just such a random way of hurting someone - because, of course, although this hasn't been revealed yet, we know that Draco imperiused Madam Rosmerta and got her to hand over the package. But why the toilets? Why go through Madam Rosmerta when he could just polyjuice into a girl himself (as Crabbe and Goyle do later in the book)? Why Katie? It's just a bit nonsensical and "Whu?"-inducing. I don't know, maybe that's the point, but so much of this book feels like that...
Anyway, so they head back up to the school, after Harry wraps the necklace in his scarf so it can be analysed or whatever. On the way, he blurts out that he recognises it as one previously for sale in the wizarding world's foremost goth shop, Borgin and Burkes; it is cursed and has killed various people. By making them fly into the air and scream, apparently. And Malfoy went to Borgin and Burkes this one time, so he must have bought it. Again, I am struck by an attack of the WTFs; Harry is right, of course, but everyone else - including JK Rowling - seem to think he's paranoid and jumping to conclusions. I guess my point with all this is - what are we supposed to think? Whose side are we meant to be on?
Actually, that's one of my biggest beefs with this book in general - I never know what I'm supposed to take from it. And it doesn't seem to be deliberate, is the most annoying part; I can handle deliberately being misled by an author, in fact I love that feeling and I adore those wonderful twists you get that feel like a punch to the stomach - but this doesn't feel like that at all. It feels like an author waffling a bit in order to pad out her story, or... well, I don't even know. That's what I'm getting at here - I'd like to ask JKR what story she is trying to tell here, because I can't tell.
So, anyway, they get back to school (Harry busily ranting about Malfoy all the while) where they are met by Professor McGonagall. Our intrepid trio, plus newly converted homie Leanne, are ushered into her office, where Leanne manages to explain what just happened with the necklace and the screaming and everything. She has some kind of nervous breakdown and is sent to the hospital wing for a calm-down potion - or some temazepam or, or valium or whatever, I don't even know - and Harry picks up where she left off, providing a very brief and sketchy summary of events before moving on to his current favourite activity: accusing Draco. Ron and Hermione pile in and they argue about the likelihood of Draco having bought the necklace for a couple of pages, until McGonagall snaps and tells Harry that if he likes Draco so much then maybe he should just ask him out and give everyone a break. No, of course she doesn't, although she really should. Instead she brings a smackdown on Harry, pointing out that
a) Draco having looked at the necklace at some point =/= he bought it on this occasion;
b) it wouldn't have got past the security measures; and
c) Draco was in detention with her today, because he hadn't done his homework.
She dismisses our irritating trio, and they trudge back in the direction of Gryffindor Crib.
On the way, they discuss who the necklace could have been meant for. Dumbledore, perhaps? He's an important man, one aligned against the death eaters. Slughorn? He's refused their attempts to recruit him, and is close to Dumbledore too. Harry himself? (The possibility that the ornate necklace might have been intended for a woman is never advanced, which I suspect says something about the importance of women - or at least the gender of important characters - in the series, but I don't have the energy to unpack it.) Harry continues to come up with ludicrously implausible ways in which Draco could have got the necklace to Katie, most of which turn out to be pretty accurate. I headdesk.
Back in the common room, Ron points out that all in all, it was a really crappy and half-arsed attempt at an attack; Hermione agrees, whilst Harry, once again, uses it as an opportunity to talk about Draco (specifically, arguing that because Draco is stupid, it is inevitable that an attack he planned would be rubbish). Hermione replies: "Harry, would you shut the great fuckety up about Malfoy? No-one cares, and anyway, it's like McGonagall said -" but no. In fact, she says nothing at all, nor does Ron. And the chapter, somewhat abruptly and yet not a second too soon, ends.
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Is coming like a ghost town
All the clubs have been closed down
This place
Is coming like a ghost town
Bands won't play no more
(Too much fighting on the dance floor)
-The Specials, "Ghost Town"
So, yeah, it's October and therefore a visit to Hogsmeade, the nearby village, is on the cards. On the morning of said day trip, Harry wakes early to read that potions book he has, the one with all the annotation in it. Apparently Ron disapproves of this behaviour because who would ever want to read a textbook by choice? But from Harry's point of view, it's justified because a) the book is awesome and this Half-Blood Prince guy totally knows his shit, and b) he's actually looking at a porno mag tucked inside the book. (This, will, of course, lead to some awkward moments when it's revealed that the HBP is Snape, because Ron will catch Harry fapping with the book in his lap at least once and so he'll be left with the awkward dilemma of whether to tell Ron about the porn, which was furry porn, or let him believe he was fapping over Snape's textbook annotations.)
Of course, even the most reeking adolescent backne factory can't masturbate all the time, so Harry has occasionally been looking at the book itself. He's learned several "useful" spells, including one that makes toenails grow very fast, which he used on Crabbe for no apparent reason, which is an excellent example of how the Harry Potter I loved in earlier books has been removed and replaced with an utter jerkwad. There's also one that effectively glues your mouth shut (done "to general applause" on Filch; see my comment above regarding jerkwads), and one that "fill[s] the ears of anyone nearby with an unidentifiable buzzing", which strikes me as the kind of thing that they use at Guantanamo Bay after they defile your chosen holy book but before they start the waterboarding.
Anyway, on this fine morning, Harry's already rubbed a couple out and so turns to the margins of the book for entertainment. He spies, in the corner of a page, the note "Levicorpus (n-vbl)". It takes him a good three or four lines of text to figure out that means "non-verbal". He's shit at those kinds of spells (it actually says he doubts he'll be able to "bring off" the spell - *snrk*), but then again, the Prince (FFS, I hate capitalising that, so from now on, no capitals) the prince has, thus far, been a better teacher than Snape. This is like being smacked round the head with the irony iron (that's probably a real magical device, as well, a bit like a probity probe. I wonder what it does? Probably you iron your t-shirt with it and it magically inscribes an hilarious "ironic", in other words mildly sexist or xenophobic, slogan on the front).
Either way, Harry, what with being both a jerkass and a moron, decides to throw the spell and see what happens, which he does; next thing you know, Ron is hanging in midair, suspended by the ankle. Ron is screaming while everyone else laughs and Harry rather helpfully throws the book on the floor before picking it up again, finding the page, checking to see if there's a counter-jinx, and throwing the spell written there, even though he isn't sure if it really is the counter-jinx or the projectile vomiting curse. (It's "liberacorpus", so you or I could easily figure out that it is the counter-jinx, but Harry's a fucking idiot.) It works, so it doesn't matter anyway, but as we'll discuss in several months' time when I get around to uberwanking the Sectumsempra bathroom scene, throwing spells that you don't know what they do is a supremely bad idea and Harry is a dick for doing it ever, let alone several times.
By the time they get down to breakfast, Ron finds the whole episode hilarious and regales Hermione with it. She agrees with me on this one, and thinks Harry is a total fuckwit for using a spell with an unknown effect for no reason. Ron, in trying to convince her it was funny, reminds her that it's the sort of thing that Fred and George would do, which, frankly, isn't much of a recommendation. I mean, Fred and George also think things like drug rape and forced abortion and terrorist attacks are funny, don't they?
Harry then realises that he saw James use the spell too, in the pensieve, but rather than therefore realising that this is a spell for jerks, he merely latches on to the minute possibility that the Half-Blood Prince might have been James. It isn't until Hermione brings up the use of a levitation spell by the death eaters at the quidditch world cup that Harry is prepared to concede that this spell might not be all rainbows and unicorns, and even then, Ron proceeds to attempt to justify it by claiming said death eaters were "abusing" the spell. An argument then develops, seemingly based on the notion that the HBP couldn't possible be a death eater because death eaters don't boast about being half-blood. (There's that irony iron again.) Our trio launch into their own interpretation of the Monty Python Four Yorkshiremen sketch, only based around who's the least eligible to become a death eater.
Ginny makes herself useful by interrupting this farce of a scene, bringing Harry a note from Dumbledore with arrangements for their next date or lesson or whatever it is. Harry ignores Ginny in order to share its contents with Ron and Hermione, including her again in order to imply she's got nothing better to do than hang out with them in Hogsmeade. She's going with Dean, but cheers anyway.
(Seriously, for all I find Ginny to be kind of a Sue at times, Harry's really no better. Their relationship, on the page, seems to me to be terribly flawed - but a good part of that comes from the way Harry acts towards Ginny, dismissive and like she's simply not as important as his ~*friends*~, rather than anything Ginny does.)
Anyway, off to Hogsmeade. After a brief rectal examination each from Filch, our beloved triumvirate head off, through the icy wind, down the path to the village, where they see that the joke shop has been boarded up. I guess this detail is included in order to show how the war has affected everything and made the world a sadder place and whatever, but honestly, to me it just suggests that those ruthless capitalist pigdogs, Fred and George Weasley, have put the Zonko family out of business. Either way, the place is shut, so instead our trio make their way to the sweetshop, only to encounter Professor "Pedobear" Slughorn.
"Harry, m'boy!" he bellows. "Harry, that's three of my little suppers you've missed now! It won't do, m'boy, I'm determined to have you!" (That's an actual line from the book.) Harry's buttock and sphincter muscles clench in involuntary horror at this anticipated onslaught. (That isn't an actual line from the book, but it might as well be.)
However, Harry's romantic liaison with Dumbledore provides him with an excuse not to show up, which in turn provides JKR with an excuse to talk about how, when Hermione has no choice but to go to the parties (what, like she can't just say she's got other plans?), Harry, Ron and Ginny spend their evening laughing at her behind her back. These kids are such jerks sometimes. At the risk of being an utter wanker for a moment, I liked Harry Potter better when he was the nerdy kid who got picked on and everyone thought was a bit weird. I don't like him as this popular jock type. He's kind of obnoxious. And, anyway, as Morrissey once said, we hate it when our friends become successful.
Although I might be projecting a tad there.
Having taken care of their sugar cravings, our trio find themselves in need of a drink. By my reckoning it can't be later than about 11am now, but fuck it, it's gotta be five o'clock somewhere, and I know this is making me want to drink until my heart stops, so I don't blame the people who are actually having to live in the story for wanting to send themselves off into a happy oblivion. The street is virtually deserted, but just outside the pub they run into Mundungus Fletcher, a petty criminal and habitual glue sniffer Dumbledore keeps involved with the Order for reasons of whimsy. He sees Harry and promptly shits bricks; this is because, as it transpires, he has been helping himself to the contents of 12 Grimmauld Place and using it to fund his Bostik habit. Harry is furious, so furious that he tightens his hands around Mundungus's throat until his face starts going blue. Jesus H Christ, Harry, that's a bit... gratuitous? I mean, there's being pissed off and then there's, you know, actual strangulation.
Anyway, Mundungus manages to disapparate, and is immediately replaced by the all-new, rubbish version of Tonks, who seems to be present for the sole purpose of showing us again how rubbish and mopey she is. For fuck's sake, Tonks. I know, I know, you're pining for the love of a gay werewolf about twice your age who refuses to stick you one, but the answer to that is to listen to "Creep" by Radiohead a bunch of times, then go out with your friends and get arseholed on cheap cocktails, massacre "I Will Survive" at the karaoke, and - in your specific case - to explore your lesbian tendencies. Not to mope about being a bit rubbish. I'm not sure I buy the explanation that you're depressed, either, because depression isn't something that gets fixed by a single factor (in this case, the gay werewolf in question agreeing to stick you one). Oh, I will happily admit that a single factor, even a gay werewolf refusing to stick you one, can prove to be the thing that pushes someone over the edge. I've been depressed on and off for some ridiculous proportion of my life, and I'm not going to be the person who claims it's all in your head or it only counts if it comes about because of, IDK, bereavement or whatever. It's an illness and it isn't rational. But Tonks? Tonks, your unhappy state seems to evaporate as soon as Remus agrees to, indeed, stick you one, and by the time you attend Bill and Fleur's wedding mere weeks after that, you're described as "radiant". So, overall, I call bullshit and request that you harden the fuck up.
Where were we? Oh yeah, in the pub. Hermione is doing her usual routine of patting Harry on the arm and saying "Calm... calm... healing thoughts" while he rages. Turns out he had forgotten the stuff Mundungus was stealing was even his - he was more worried about the disrespect to Sirius inherent in the act of selling it. I can't decide if that makes me think more of Harry, because he's more concerned about the disservice being done to Sirius's memory - or less of him, because he's privileged enough to have forgotten that he owns a house.
Meanwhile, Ron is trying to make eye contact with the "curvy and attractive" barmaid, Madam Rosmerta. Because he fancies her, obviously. Incidentally, Rosmerta (as we learn in PoA) remembers the Marauders as customers of her pub, so she's got to be, what, at least in her forties right now? So I guess Ron has some kind of MILF thing going on. Fair play to him, I suppose. What seems less reasonable is that Hermione genuinely seems to be jealous, going by the catty remarks she makes and the way she keeps glancing over at the bar. Assuming I'm correct about Rosmerta's age (which I think I must be - even if she was a child when MWPP used to drink there, and was the then barmaid's daughter or something, she'd still be well into her thirties now, right?) then Hermione's jealousy seems kind of unfounded. I mean, this is a subjective one, so I'd welcome alternative accounts, but - why be jealous of someone who isn't a threat? Ron would never have a chance with Madam Rosmerta anyway, no more of a chance that he'd have with Angelina Jolie or Professor McGonagall. As I say, this one probably varies, but I know that at my most viciously jealous moments, the ones I don't like to examine due to shame, the ones that have caused the most awful arguments - I've felt genuinely threatened. And Hermione - well, again this is an interpretation, and again I'd be interested in alternative ones, but she's always seemed a little too level-headed to be worried about things in the abstract like that. I can entirely buy her being jealous of Lavender when that all kicks off in a few chapters, but this is a bit pasted on, is what I'm getting at.
Anyway, after a single drink even the pub is a bad place, so they head back to school. On the way, Harry's mind strays in the direction of Ginny, who (he presumes) is at the village's hideous, chintzy tea shop with Dean. Apparently it's the hangout for teenage couples, probably because there's nowhere else to go, because what self-respecting teenager would go somewhere like that out of choice? (Although I'm not saying I don't believe they'd go there; when I was on the summer camp in Pennsylvania, we used to get taxis into town every evening and hang out at the laundromat and pizza shop for precisely the same reason: there was bugger all else to do. The pizza at that place was bloody good, too.)
As they trudge back up towards the school, Harry becomes aware of an argument going on between his quidditch teammate Katie Bell and her friend Leanne, who are walking a little way in front of them. Leanne grabs at a package Katie is holding; Katie grabs it back and is immediately hit by some kind of curse. She rises into the air (JKR mentions that the way it happens is both graceful and eerie and not comically, i.e. not like what happened to Ron, I guess to show us... what, exactly? I mean, to show us that it isn't the same spell, but then why is that earlier spell even in this chapter? It's not like it's enormously important later). Then, suspended above the ground, she begins to scream. Her friend, plus our intrepid trio, manage to tug her back down to earth and effectively sit on her to stop her thrashing around. I'm not entirely sure that's going to help much, but YMMV.
Harry runs for help and luckily (huh) meets Hagrid right away. Hagrid's verbal diarrhoea concerning his tedious, pointless brother Grawp is thankfully stemmed by the emergency situation; he follows Harry back to where Katie is still screaming and proves that for all he can be an annoyingly talkative lump of fail at times, he is still perfectly capable of carrying out his role as an enormous hairy truck. He lifts Katie up and immediately runs with her in his arms towards the school.
Hermione comforts Leanne, and then our trio get straight down to their usual amateur-sleuth business. Leanne reveals that Katie's mishap happened when the parcel they were fighting over tore open and Katie touched its contents: a glittery silver and opal necklace. Leanne reveals that Katie came back from the toilet holding the package and said she had to deliver it, but wouldn't say who gave it to her. This is one of those bits where I don't even know how to react - it's not like I love or hate the fact that Katie Bell picked up a cursed necklace in a pub toilet, it's that it makes me go "WTF". It's just such a random way of hurting someone - because, of course, although this hasn't been revealed yet, we know that Draco imperiused Madam Rosmerta and got her to hand over the package. But why the toilets? Why go through Madam Rosmerta when he could just polyjuice into a girl himself (as Crabbe and Goyle do later in the book)? Why Katie? It's just a bit nonsensical and "Whu?"-inducing. I don't know, maybe that's the point, but so much of this book feels like that...
Anyway, so they head back up to the school, after Harry wraps the necklace in his scarf so it can be analysed or whatever. On the way, he blurts out that he recognises it as one previously for sale in the wizarding world's foremost goth shop, Borgin and Burkes; it is cursed and has killed various people. By making them fly into the air and scream, apparently. And Malfoy went to Borgin and Burkes this one time, so he must have bought it. Again, I am struck by an attack of the WTFs; Harry is right, of course, but everyone else - including JK Rowling - seem to think he's paranoid and jumping to conclusions. I guess my point with all this is - what are we supposed to think? Whose side are we meant to be on?
Actually, that's one of my biggest beefs with this book in general - I never know what I'm supposed to take from it. And it doesn't seem to be deliberate, is the most annoying part; I can handle deliberately being misled by an author, in fact I love that feeling and I adore those wonderful twists you get that feel like a punch to the stomach - but this doesn't feel like that at all. It feels like an author waffling a bit in order to pad out her story, or... well, I don't even know. That's what I'm getting at here - I'd like to ask JKR what story she is trying to tell here, because I can't tell.
So, anyway, they get back to school (Harry busily ranting about Malfoy all the while) where they are met by Professor McGonagall. Our intrepid trio, plus newly converted homie Leanne, are ushered into her office, where Leanne manages to explain what just happened with the necklace and the screaming and everything. She has some kind of nervous breakdown and is sent to the hospital wing for a calm-down potion - or some temazepam or, or valium or whatever, I don't even know - and Harry picks up where she left off, providing a very brief and sketchy summary of events before moving on to his current favourite activity: accusing Draco. Ron and Hermione pile in and they argue about the likelihood of Draco having bought the necklace for a couple of pages, until McGonagall snaps and tells Harry that if he likes Draco so much then maybe he should just ask him out and give everyone a break. No, of course she doesn't, although she really should. Instead she brings a smackdown on Harry, pointing out that
a) Draco having looked at the necklace at some point =/= he bought it on this occasion;
b) it wouldn't have got past the security measures; and
c) Draco was in detention with her today, because he hadn't done his homework.
She dismisses our irritating trio, and they trudge back in the direction of Gryffindor Crib.
On the way, they discuss who the necklace could have been meant for. Dumbledore, perhaps? He's an important man, one aligned against the death eaters. Slughorn? He's refused their attempts to recruit him, and is close to Dumbledore too. Harry himself? (The possibility that the ornate necklace might have been intended for a woman is never advanced, which I suspect says something about the importance of women - or at least the gender of important characters - in the series, but I don't have the energy to unpack it.) Harry continues to come up with ludicrously implausible ways in which Draco could have got the necklace to Katie, most of which turn out to be pretty accurate. I headdesk.
Back in the common room, Ron points out that all in all, it was a really crappy and half-arsed attempt at an attack; Hermione agrees, whilst Harry, once again, uses it as an opportunity to talk about Draco (specifically, arguing that because Draco is stupid, it is inevitable that an attack he planned would be rubbish). Hermione replies: "Harry, would you shut the great fuckety up about Malfoy? No-one cares, and anyway, it's like McGonagall said -" but no. In fact, she says nothing at all, nor does Ron. And the chapter, somewhat abruptly and yet not a second too soon, ends.
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