Picture This
Chapter 18: Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs
(Original Japanese Title: Shining Exposition Fist! Scabbers' Alibi Begins to Crumble.)
So this chapter is like eight pages long. Really, seven, since the top half of the first page is the title and illustration, and the text stops halfway onto the last. That's probably not all that short, but since Rowling tends to average 15 to 20 pages a chapter in my experience, this one seemed to end abruptly. Honestly, I prefer chapters to be ten pages or less, because I'm a lazy reader, and I like to break books up into bite-size chunks. Occasionally, I'll get a book that I dig so much that I'll finish it all in one or two sittings, like that new Darth Bane novel I got a couple weeks ago, or the Foundation Trilogy, but even with those, I still find myself checking how many chapters there are, and trying to calculate what fraction of the book I've read so far. This is why no matter how much I bash Rowling, I'll always praise her for including a table of contents in each of her novels. In fact, if you're a novelist, and you wanted to impress me, the best thing you could do is put at the end of each chapter a small note saying "You have now completed x% of this book," where x is the page number divided by the page count. That's absurd, of course, but maybe one day that'll be the big fad in American literature, when our society becomes so lazy that it demands to be complimented for even the simplest behaviors.
Where was I? Oh, right, the bear. Yeah, this being a short chapter and all, it's a perfect opportunity to add some filler, which is a term anime fans use when an animation studio adapts a comic book and pads out certain episodes with additional content. This is typically done when the studio has to produce a certain volume of shows, but can't wait for the manga artist to draw enough source material for them to adapt. Obviously, you can take the easy route and recycle old material (i.e. flashbacks), or extend existing scenes to the limit of credibility (like the time on Dragon Ball Z when Vegeta offered to distract the bad guy for "one minute", which ended up taking eleven or twelve minutes across two episodes of the show). But sometimes the animators go the extra mile, and invent an all new subplot or story arc to keep the show fresh while the artist catches up.
This isn't unheard of in American media. From what I understand, the Da Vinci Code movie adaptation involved a lot of montages intended to illustrate the concepts Tom Hanks' character was talking about. The book, of course, would have just been two or three guys having conversations the whole time, which works for books but falls flat on a movie screen. "Bicentennial Man" was based on a short story by Isaac Asimov, so naturally the film version needed a lot of extra material to stretch the story to two hours, including a romance between Robin Williams' robot character and the great grandaughter of the man who originally purchased him. Now, of course, these Harry Potter books are so friggin' long and tedious that the movie versions have to cut stuff out. I'm betting stuff like that second Quidditch match and finals week probably got shaved down to a few minutes apiece, if even that. But if they made a serial of Harry Potter, and it came time to use this chapter here, notably shorter than usual... Well, who's to say we wouldn't be treated to a few embellishments? For example...
[Lupin's office. May, 1994. Or June, some know-it-all will probably correct me.]
SNAPE: So, if it isn't Dark Art, the bear after which we named this course. I haven't seen you since that business with MI6 on the dark side of the moon. The official reports said that you were vaproized in that laser cannon explosion, but I scarcely believed you could be killed so easily. So, then you've somehow returned to Earth, and you've been disguised as Hawkeye all year, just so you could infiltrate the Hogwarts faculty and kill Professor Lupin, I expect.
BEAR: Don't act so surprised, Snape! I spent months wandering the airless void of the lunar surface, with only my thirst for revenge to keep me alive! If I could build a crude spaceship out of rocks and motorized American flags, fooling that twit headmaster would be less than child's play for my genius! To think that anyone would believe Hawkeye would come to this school and teach classes! He's been dead for years! But you pompous fools were all too eager to believe, and all that remained was to buddy up to that disheveled freak Lupin, and then ambush him when he least suspected it.
SNAPE: A shame he couldn't be here for the culmination of your brilliant scheme. And on the last day of the term, at that. Well, you can try again in September I suppose, passing yourself off as some other Grade-B superhero.
BEAR: Screw that noise! I've invested too much to turn back now! Lupin may have eluded me for the moment, Snape, but you're his substitute, and so you can fill his grave in his place!
SNAPE: Very well, we'll settle this the old fashioned way. One shall stand, one shall-- Say, is that a pot of honey over there?
BEAR: What? Honey? Where!
Then Snape hits him in the face while he's not looking, and the battle is joined. The bear starts swatting at him with his powerful forelimbs, while Snape relies on the martial arts skills taught to him by Pai Mei from "Kill Bill 2". For example, if the bear had a swortd, Snape would totally jump to evade his thrust, and land on the outstretched blade, standing on it calmly, then kicking the bear in the face as he leaps off. But the bear doesn't have a sword, so Snape just has to punch him and kick him a lot. But if he did have a sword, aw man, watch out.
As for Lupin, he's back in the Shrieking Shack, which makes me think of that annoying song they play on the "Good Times Oldies" stations on the radio. "Sugar Shack", that's the one. Well, there's no cute little girlie a'workin' there, wearing a black leotard and her feet are bare, and they sure ain't serving expresso, I'll tell ya that. Anyway, as of last chapter, Lupin and Sirius have revealed that Peter Pettigrew IS Ron's pet rat Scabbers. The nWo can't believe this, since Peter Pettigrew was supposedly murdered twelve years ago by Sirius Black. Black says he didn't, but he promises to finish the job, until Lupin insists that they explain the whole story to the kids first.
Despite Ron's infallible logic ("HE'S NOT PETER, HE'S SCABBERS!"), Lupin and BLack insist that the witnesses who saw him die were fooled. Even Lupin believed Black had killed him until tonight, when he saw Peter's name on the Marauder's Map, which can't be fooled by faking your death. Since this whole chapter is basically a question-and-answer session, I'll present the information that way.
Q: OK, let's assume Peter Pettigrew IS alive. How could he disguise himself as a rat all this time? If he had that ability, he'd be an Animagus, and all Animagi are required to register with the Ministry of Magic. There's only been seven recorded Animagi in the 20th Century, and Pete's not on the list.
A: Because Peter never registered with with Ministry. Nor did the Animagi who taught him.
Around this point the door inexplicably opens by itself, but no one seems terribly concerned about this, since the house is supposed to be haunted and all.
Q: Why would he learn to turn into a rat in secret?
A: Out of sympathy for Lupin, who is himself a werewolf. Bitten as a small boy, Lupin was cursed to a life as an outcast. His only hope for a normal life was twofold. First, a potion called Gay Fuel had been discovered in recent years that allows a werewolf to retain control over his mind during the transformations. That's how Lupin's been able to work for Hogwarts this year, because as long as Snape provides him with the Gay Fuel on the week of the full moon, he'll simply turn into a wolf with a human mind, so he can lie down and sleep in his office until the moon wanes again.
Q: That kind of sucks, doesn't it? I mean, what's the point of having a werewolf in this book if he's just the lame kind that only turns into a regular, albeit ferocious wolf? Why not go the movie route and have your werewolf be a humanoid half-man/half-wolf type of monster, who can talk and stuff? Those werewolves are better, because they have all the powers of a wolf (biting, smelling stuff, appearing on tacky mousepads and Trapper Keepers) and all the powers of a human, (speech, right to vote, dialing rotary phones). Seriously, wouldn't that be better?
A: Rowling has a billion dollar house in New Jersey. What do you think?
Back in Hogwarts, Snape and the bear are still duking out, and their fight has spilled out into the hallways. Having already recognized Snape's fighting style, the bear pulls a pair of nunchucks off the wall and starts doing all that cool show-offy stuff guys always do with nunchucks. There's like a bunch of kids standing around watching, all scared and stuff, but Snape's all "bitch, please," and he produces a pair of his own nunchucks from his cloak. You'd think he'd do all the show-offy stuff with his nunchucks, too. But Snape don't play that way. He just holds them at his sides, letting them dangle as he stands in a ready position, his head lowered as if he doesn't even care what the bear is doing. It's totally badass, like in Super Smash Bros. where all the characters have flashy taunts, but Luigi's taunt is just him kicking lightly at the dust on the ground. Furious, the bear charges, and they both start swinging their nunchucks at each other, like some kind of hurricane, only made of nunchucks. That's gonna be the title of my autobiography. The f***ed up thing about it is that these two guys are o good with nunchucks that they're able to block each other's strikes with them, so the whole time it's just this sound of wood knocking against itself dozens of times per second. Frustrated by Snape's prowess, the bear ups the ante by grabbing a THIRD set of nunchucks with his left rear paw, and now he's swinging all of them while he stands there on one leg, like General Greivous from Clone Wars. But Snape keeps fighting him anyway, unfazed.
Q: Wait, if the Gay Fuel was a recent discovery, how did Lupin manage before then?
A: That's the second thing going for him. See, Dumbledore was sympathetic to young Lupin's plight, so he arranged it so that Lupin could attend classes at Hogwarts. First, they kept Lupin's condition a closely guarded secret, then they built the house that would eventually become known as the Shrieking Shack, and dug the tunnel leading from it to the school. The idea being that whenever the full moon was due, Lupin could leave the school through the tunnel, and ride out his transformation in the shack. Finally, Dumbledore had the Whomping Willow planted over the tunnel, so that no one would discover the secret, or risk running afoul Lupin in wolf mode.
Q: They built a haunted house? And put Lupin in it once a month?
A: Actually, the house was never haunted at all. It only earned that reputation during Lupin's time as a student, when his howling and screaming in a supposedly uninhabited house convinced the townsfolk that the shack was haunted. Dumbledore encouraged the rumor to help preserve the secret, and now, even years after Lupin stopped using it, no one dares go near the Shrieking Shack, for its reputation alone.
Q: Wait, so what was to stop Lupin from going back through the tunnel after he'd transformed? And for that matter, what if he managed to escape the shack and got loose in Hogsmeade?
A: Uh...
Q: So why didn't they demolish the Shack and the tunnel after Lupin graduated? The Whomping Willow alone is a hazard to everyone on the grounds, and it hasn't served any useful purpose in almost twenty years.
A: Um, anyway, it wasn't long before Lupin made friends at Hogwarts, including Harry's dad James Potter, future convict Sirius Black, and possible rat Peter Pettigrew. It didn't take long for them to notice he disappeared once a month, and Lupin used every excuse he could think of to throw them off the trail. My mother's sick, I'm undergoing ponn farr, I'm one of the X-Men, what have you. But eventually they figured out the truth. It's interesting that Lupin only disappeared once a month, and his friends launched a full-scale investigation, while Hermione's been disappearing mysteriously every weekday, and Harry and Ron barely seem to care.
Now outside of Hogwarts, Snape and the bear continue fighting with nunchucks. Art seems convinced he has the upper hand, as Snape continually backs away, as if overwhelmed by his superior bear offense. But suddenly Green Lantern flies overhead. And I mean the original Green Lantern, the one who wears a purple cape and jockey pants, not those peckers from the interstellar police force. Alan Scott's been kicking ass since World War II, but he needs money as much as the next guy, so back in the 60's Earth-2 Hogwarts hired him to mow their lawn every week. After the Crisis, that deal's still in place on the composite Post-Crisis Earth. It's a pretty easy job for Green Lantern, since all he has to do is hover in the air about a hundred feet up and fire a blast of destructive green energy from his power ring. The onslaught wipes out all life one inch above the ground, which ensures that the grass is cut to precision height all over the property. Of course, if anyone happens to be out wandering around when this happens, there'll be nothing left but the bottom halves of their feet, but hey, the grass ain't gonna cut itself.
So GL starts sweeping the grounds from one side to the other, which means both Snape and the bear will be killed in a matter of minutes. Even as they flee the destructive beam, they continue to fight. Both combatants know there's only one place they can go to find refuge from the Green Lantern. You see, this being the Golden Age Green Lantern, the only thing that can resist the power of his ring is wood. And so their only chance of survival is to risk taking shelter under the Whomping Willow.
Q: So they became Animagi, but what good did that do?
A: Since werewolves only attack humans, they could accompany Lupin to the Shack in their animal forms and keep him company in wolf form. Eventually, they even started to leave the Shack and spent the night roaming the school grounds and the villiage--
Q: Wait, Dumbledore goes to all this trouble to keep Lupin's secret and protect the student body from his curse, and these four idiots just decide to blow the whole thing so they can go on some furry sightseeing tour?
A: Right. So they explored the school in animal form, and since James and Black were large enough animals to keep Lupin under control, no one managed to get hurt. Then they used this knowledge to create the Marauder's Map, and signed it with their lame nicknames. Lupin was Moony, Jimmy was Prongs, Peter was Wormtail, and Black was Padfoot. Despite betraying Dumbledore's trust and flagrantly violating the laws about Animagus registration, Lupin continued to hang out with his buddies this way until they graduated. Even though he suspected that Black might have been using his dog power to enter the school, he never revealed the secret, for fear that it would wreck his newfound career. Ironically, Lupin's sense of self-preservation not only frustrated the authorities and endangered Harry, but it also helped cover up Black's innocence. If he had only bothered to tell someone that Black and Pettigrew could transform, then Peter might have been found alive, and Black could have been exonerated.
Under the shade of the Willow, surrounded by deadly green light in all directions, Snape and the bear continue to fight, not only against each other, but to protect themselves from the wildly flailing branches as well. The battle has turned into a war of attrition, with neither side able to gain an avantage, but hoping to fight long enough for the other to succumb to the constant barrage of the tree. In the last possible second, Snape leaps clear of the Willow and onto the open field, in the exact moment that Green Lantern shuts off his power ring and flies away. The bear follows close behind, using his three nunchucks to tangle the branches just long enough to get escape the Willow's deadly reach. Unarmed, the bear falls back on instinct, and lunges for Snape trapping him in a colossal bearhug. With a surge of mighty bear strength, the bear squeezes Snape hard enough to break his ribs, and in moments, it seems that all Snape can do is make a few labored gasps.
Q: So how did Snape find out about all this?
A: Already resentful of James back then, Snape was determined to find out where the four of them were going every month, hoping to use their secret against them. It was Sirius who decided to turn Snape's curiosity against him, and so he told Snape how to freeze the Whomping Willow and enter the tunnel to follow Lupin. Naturally, this would have led to Snape being injured by the tree, or mauled by Lupin, or both, and so when James found out about the prank, he pulled Snape out of the tunnel before it was too late. Snape saw Lupin on the other end, and naturally assumed he was in on the scheme. After that episode, Snape knew about Lupin's lycanthropy, but was sworn to secrecy by Dumbledore.
Q: So that's why Snape hates these guys so much? Because he thinks they were all in on Black's prank?
A: Exactly. In fact, here's Snape right now to answer that for us. Turns out when that door opened before, that was him, joining the party under the guise of the Invisibility Cloak Harry and Hermione had left behind earlier. Dunh dunh DUNNNHH!
Back at Hogwarts, the bear is crushing Snape to a slow and painful death. And then suddenly, his keen bear hearing picks up the sound of a timer beeping. He hadn't noticed it earlier, during the din of the fight, but now that he's got Snape up close, without the clash of weapons to distract him, he notices the cuts where the Willow had scratched Snape's face, and sees... circuitry?
Before the implications of his discovery can register, the man in his arms suddenly looks him in the eye and smiles. "Get ready for a surprise!" he teases, wide-eyed and crazy-looking, like that explodey head in "Total Recall". And just as the bear realizes that Snape had expected him all along, and sent a decoy Snape Robot as a diversion, Dark Art the Bear is engulf in the firey heart of a massive explosion. Then the Hogwarts Fire Supression Bikini Team rushes out to hose down the flaming robot carcass left behind. From the safety of the school, the headmaster and assistant headmaster survey the carnage.
McGONNAGAL: I have to admit, Albus, when you told me you had hired a team of girls in bikinis to put out fires, in case Hawkeye turned out to be a bear and Snape used an exploding ninja robot doppleganger of himself to kill it, I thought you'd gone senile. How in blazes did you know this would happen?
DUMBLEDORE: Yes, those lovely girls certainly are wearing bikinis. Wait, what happened?
I appreciate all the explanations Rowling provides in this chapter, but I'm with Sirius when he keeps demanding that Lupin get to the bloody point. Here's the thing, I'm all set to sing Rowling's praises on this Pettigrew/Scabbers revalation. As a plot twist, I think it's great, but it's taking forever to explain the truth behind it. This is partly because Lupin has to explain his history as a werewolf, of course, but the secret of how he kept his curse under wraps isn't nearly as interesting as how Peter could have faked his own death. And of course, there's still the matter of how Black managed to escape from Azkaban.
I was talking to Jim about this book the other day, and I think he hit the nail on the head: These books always start out really slow, hit a handful of interesting points to set up the plot, then go on autopilot for a while until everything falls into place at the end. It's like a wrestling match where the wrestlers get lazy halfway in and use a resthold to pad out their match without putting in any effort. Chapter 16 was a resthold, because in ten pages very little at all actually happened. Same could be said for Chapter 4, which mostly follows Harry's three weeks in Diagon Alley doing nothing at all. It's on and off like this the whole time, never really building any momentum, until SUDDENLY, the nWo all winds up in Black's clutches, and the book finally starts to pay off all the plotlines at once. I don't really see the point in that, since Hermione knew Lupin was a werewolf as early as Chapter 10, and she could have revealed it at any time. In doing that, the revelations that Peter's alive and Black's innocent could have been made and explained without a lot of backstory on Lupin to muddy things up. Instead, everything has to get revealed all at once, meaning that the middle two-thirds of the book is just this holding pattern where no one knows what's going on. You could skip it and not really miss anything.
Again I ask, how was this an improvement over Book 6? Because it's the same problem all over again. Just as the plot against Dumbledore overshadowed the Half-Blood Prince, so too does the Secret History of the Animagus Pals get in the way of the truth about what happened that day when Black was arrested. Aside from being a shorter book, I'm not seeing the advantage.
Nevertheless, I won't look a moving plot in the mouth, so we'll give this one a pass and move on.
RATING: GOOD
NEXT: LOOK! SCABBERS! LOOK! LOOK! SCABBERS! AND DO YOU KNOW WHAT WAS THERE?