Instant Death
Jim was telling me about this thing where all these Snape fangirls started seeing Snape in their dreams or something, and started forming some sort of cult about it. Or something. I'm sure he tells it better than I do. The whole thing's on fandom_wank, which I don't read a whole lot because everyone talks like the Smurfs over there, and I have Jim and Brucha to fill me in when something truly ridiculous goes down. It saddens me that Tenchi Muyo! wank never makes it onto f_w, but I can't deny that the insane HP fans really do come up with some wild stuff. Nobody does it better. Makes me feel bad for the rest. Nobody does it half as good as you. Baby, you're the best.
If I were the President, dreaming would be illegal. Those whiny "Dumb-ocrats" and their "Smell-fare" programs would probably tell me that people need to dream so they can achieve R.E.M. sleep necessary for survival. Well, I say R.E.M. hasn't been any good since they swapped their drummer for a machine, so screw that. Still, as hypothetical President, I'd want to be a uniter, not a divider, so I'd compromise with a law that says you can dream, as long as you never speak of or act upon what you dreamed about. I mean, if someone dreams a cure for cancer, let's see it, but for the most part, people's dreams make no freaking sense, so I doubt this'll ever come up.
True story: I had a dream the other night where I was being hunted down by a man I eventually recognized as Z, the pine-tree haired heavy from the new Tenchi Muyo! DVD. He wants to kill me dead, but as long as I found the seven Dragon Balls, I'd turn into a Super Saiyan and kick his ass in two seconds, only for him to come back and force me to repeat the process over and over again. We were like in some hallway from Scooby-Doo, where you just run up and down the hall opening doors and hoping the other guy wasn't there to get the drop on you. The Dragon Balls were for some reason incomplete, lacking their glossy orange exterior, and instead being this mass of wicker basket material, not unlike what all the crap is made of on the tree planet from TM! Also, finding the Dragon Balls shouldn't make you transform into a Super Saiyan, but the whole thing was pretty surreal. Eventually, like a lot of my dreams, I realized the stalemate, and woke up.
Now, I consider myself a fairly rational individual. Upon waking up, I immediately realized that I just dreamt about a bunch of shitty cartoons I like to watch, and that my dream made absolutely no sense. There are no good DBZ/TM!R x-overs, TYVM, and I groggily cursed my subconscious for trying to come up with one. Apparently, what I should have done was treat this like a profound cathartic experience, and start searching the world for other people who've had a similar epiphany. Then we'd make a bunch of crappy photomanips of our dreams and pretend like it amounts to anything. Why don't people realize that when you make this, no matter how spiritual it may look to you, to the rest of the world it just kind of looks like this. Ah, could I love him more...?
Anyway, that's all I got to say about it for now. Let's put this puppy to sleep.
Chapter 22: Owl Post Again
(Original Japanese Title: "Permission Granted!! Harry's Purposes Are Served.")
All right, I've lost my patience with this thing, so let's get it over with.
Having assisted Black in escaping the authorities, all Harry and Hermione have to do now is get back to the hospital wing before they're missed. I'm not really interested in all the different characters they sneak past to do this. Frankly, this whole crappy book has been nothing but characters sneaking around trying to avoid other characters, and I'm flippin' sick of it. Long story short, they make it back to their beds, just in time to hear Snape freaking out about Black's escape.
"HE DIDN'T DISAPPARATE! YOU CAN'T APPARATE OR DISAPPARATE INSIDE THIS CASTLE! THIS--HAS--SOMETHING--TO--DO--WITH--POTTER!"
Yeah, he's screaming his head off. Didn't see that one coming. He bursts into the room, certain that Harry somehow facilitated Black's escape.
"OUT WITH IT, POTTER! WHAT DID YOU DO?" Geez, don't say hi.
Everyone tries to calm him down, but Snape's livid. There's even spit flying from his mouth.
"THEY HELPED HIM ESCAPE, I KNOW IT!" You know, surely he would be aware of Hermione's time-travel doohickey, right? I mean, it's like the bit about the kids being confunded, or Peter being an illegal Animagus. None of these explanations are impossible, or even improbable, and they're all easily proven. And yet, here's the authorities, trying to tell Snape it's impossible, and the situation can't be helped, just like they got done telling Harry in the last chapter. It's so friggin' arbitrary. I don't even know why they're worried about Black in the first place. No one can possibly escape Azkaban Prison, so he must still be there. And even if he could have escaped, no one could ever break into Hogwarts, so how could he pose a threat to anyone?
"YOU DON'T KNOW POTTER! HE DID IT, I KNOW HE DID IT--" Snape insists. Well, really, it was Dumbledore's idea, and Hermione who supplied the time machine, so I don't see how Harry's reputation has anything to do with it. Unless Snape regards him as being a boy who routinely gets mixed up in plans dreamed up by slightly smarter individuals.
Dumbledore finally demands he calm down and see reason, since there's no way Harry and Hermione could have possibly left their locked room, freed Black, and returned without anyone seeing them. Snape shoots him a look that says "I am soooo going to kill you on page 606," and leaves.
As for Fudge, he's disappointed with Black's escape, but he decides they'll have to remove the dementors from the school, since their attempt on Harry's life proves they can't be trusted around the student body. Ron wakes up, and Hermione starts to explain the whole thing to him. I'm relieved we're skipping this conversation.
For some reason, even though the school year's over, everyone's still loitering around the castle anyway. You'd think they'd call in the police or something. From Hagrid, the nWo learns that Snape "accidentally" outed Lupin as a werewolf over breakfast, and so he's resigned from the faculty. So they rush over to Lupin's place to get the low-down.
According to Remus, while D-Dore managed to convince the Ministry that he wasn't in league with Black, the mere fact that he's a werewolf is damning enough, and he sees no point in sticking around for the public outcry when the parents learn there's been a werewolf teaching at the school all year. And really, he sees their point, since he could have easily bitten any of them the night before, because of his foolish misstep. Gotta give Lupin credit, at least when he screws up royal, he admits it.
Lupin says that he heard Harry saved a lot of lives last night. Let's see, Hermione, Sirius, and Buckbeak. So, three lives, basically. Not that I'm inclined to count Buckbeak, but we'll go with that. After Harry tells him the story of how he used the Patronus Charm, Lupin explains that the stag he saw was what his pappy used to turn into, back when the Marauders used to go out on their sissy-mary animal dress-up parties. He returns Harry's Invisibility Cloak, as well as the Marauder's Map. Yeah, he chewed Harry out for using it before, but now that he's not a teacher anymore, he doesn't see any conflict of interest in giving it back to him. Forget what I said, Lupin's a damn fool.
Following Lupin's exit, Dumbledore tries to console Harry over last night's events. Harry feels kind of down that Peter Pettigrew escaped, so everything he did that night amounted to nothing. Hey, at least he's owning up to it. No, wait, Dumbledore's actually going to try to convince us that Harry accomplished something. This oughta be good.
"It made all the difference in the world, Harry. You helped uncover the truth. You saved an innocent man from a terrible fate."
OK, I call bullcrap. First of all, Harry didn't help uncover anything. The only reason he was even there was because Black abducted Ron, and Harry followed them. And really, if he'd stayed behind, Pettigrew would be dead right now and that'd be the end of it. By interfering, Harry only made it possible for Black to be captured, since Harry's pursuit lured Lupin into the fray, and Lupin's werewolfism was what enabled Pettigrew to escape. Granted, Harry being there forced Black to explain the whole story, which no one believes, so I don't see how Harry uncovered the truth, since now only seven people know Black is innocent, as opposed to two.
And yes, Harry did save Black from the dementors, but Black never would have ended up in that situation if not for Harry. After all, the only reason he bothered going to Hogwarts was to kill Pettigrew before he could harm Harry. Harry saved him from the dementor's kiss, but that only means Black's right back where he started: a wanted fugitive, with no way to prove his innocence. If Black had stayed clear of Hogwarts from the beginning, he'd be no better or worse off. Yeah, Peter might have eventually killed Harry someday, but given his deteriorating health, I rather doubt this. As it stands, Harry may have saved Black from the living death of the dementor's kiss, but the dementors are still after him, and they could still eat his soul anyway. But that's just the hypothetical. The reality is that Black'll be dead in two years anyway.
Anyway, Harry is suddenly reminded of Professor Trelawny's prediction from several chapters back, about the "servant of Lord Voldemort" returning before midnight, eventually helping him return to power. Dumbledore takes this in a stride, saying that just because Harry spared Pettigrew's life doesn't mean it'll be his fault if Voldemort should come back. Uh... so whose fault would it be, then? Dumbledore points out that no matter what happens, Pettigrew now owes Harry his life, and that could end up making all the difference in the future. Well, it hasn't so far, so this had better amount to something come that last book.
Anyway, blah blah blah, Harry loves his dad or something, blah-diddy-blah, Percy Weasley exists, blah blah blah, the nWo passed their exams, blah blah blah, Hermione's decided to scale back her classwork to the confines of classical mechanics.
On the train ride back, Ron suggests Harry stay with him for the holiday, pointing out that the Quidditch World Cup is going down this summer. Harry considers that the Durselys would probably be eager to let him go, after what he did to Aunt Marge. Uh-huh, so the only thing he's learned is that he can use his prior outbursts to get his way. That's nice.
Then an owl shows up at the window to their booth. Turns out it's carrying a letter from Sirius Black, so they check it out together. Basically, he's in hiding with the damn hippogriff, confident that the dementors will never find him, and planning to reveal himself to some Muggles, if only to ensure that the Ministry won't be searching for him anywhere near Hogwarts from here on. He also explains that he was the one who sent Harry the Firebolt, which frankly I'd about forgotten by this point in the book, so I'm really wondering what the point was in introducing the Firebolt to begin with. Also, enclosed in the envelope is a parchment which basically serves as a permission slip for any future outings to Hogsmeade next year. Of course, only Dumbledore would recognize Sirius' claim as Harry's godfather, but I guess that's all you need. Well, that's dandy. So 400+ pages and the only thing that really gets settled is where [EXPLETIVE DELETED] can go to [EXPLETIVE DELETED] Hogsmeade on weekends. This book has been such a rewarding experience all around.
The book closes with Vernon Dursely waiting to pick Harry up from the train station, and when he notices the letter Harry's got, Harry explains that it's from his newly discovered godfather, who's a convicted murderer on the run, but checks in on him every so often to make sure Harry's... happy. Oh ho ho, he's strongarming his relatives! What a delightful little scamp!
RATING: BAD
To summarize:
1: Owl Post Harry does his homework, and reads his mail. RATING: BAD
2: Aunt Marge's Big Mistake A done-to-death "obnoxious relative" episode, except for the twist where Harry nearly kills her and leaves the house as a fugitive. RATING: BAD
3: The Knight Bus Harry rides around on a stupid bus all night, then the Minister of Magic rewards him for his criminal recklessness. RATING: BAD
4: The Leaky Cauldron Our first actual plot point, as escaped convict Sirius Black is revealed to be a servant of Voldemort, and plans to hunt down and kill Harry Potter. Harry eats ice cream sundaes and watches his friend buy a cat. RATING: BAD
5: The Dementor Harry rides the train to school, only to pass out when a horde of soul-eating ghouls board the train in search of Sirius Black. Some homless guy named Remus Lupin fights them off with magic and chocolate. RATING: GOOD
6: Talons and Tea Leaves First day of classes. Hermione time travels. Sybil Trelawny acts like a total kook. Draco Malfoy is savagely attacked by some sort of bird-horse thing. RATING: GOOD
7: The Boggart in the Wardrobe Snape treats Neville Longbottom like gum on his shoe, while Remus Lupin builds up his confidence by using his fear of Snape to defeat a shape-shifting monster. RATING: GOOD
8: Flight of the Fat Lady Sirius Black infiltrates the school and attacks the G-Tower paining, putting the whole school on Red Alert. But the chapter is mostly about Harry sitting around watching Lupin drink stuff. RATING: BAD
9: Grim Defeat An exhaustive search for Black turns up nothing. Snape fills in for Lupin while he's sick. Dementors storm the Quidditch field during play, putting Harry in the hospital and losing the game to Hufflepuff. RATING: BAD
10: The Marauder's Map Fred and George offer Harry a magic map that allows him to sneak out of the school and join his friends on the field trip to Hogsmeade. There, he overhears the teachers discussing Sirius Black, and how he betrayed Harry's parents to Voldemort in spite of their close friendship. This story takes for friggin' ever the way they tell it. RATING: BAD
11: The Firebolt Harry swears revenge, but in a sort of open-ended sort of way. Hagrid's dumb monster has to appear in Dumb Monster Court. Harry gets a new broomstick for Christmas, but it may be a trap laid by Sirius Black. RATING: BAD
12: The Patronus Lupin teaches Harry to protect himself against the dementors. RATING: GOOD
13: Griffindor Versus Ravenclaw You know what? I forget. And I ain't going back to look it up. You do it. RATING: GOOD
14: Snape's Grudge Alan Rickman IS Severus Snape as Frank Burns. RATING: BAD
15: The Quidditch Final G-Tower wins the pennant. Or whatever it is. Also, Slytherin sucks at cheating. RATING: BAD
16: Professor Trelawny's Prediction Finals Week. Nothing to see here. RATING: BAD
17: Cat, Rat, and Dog The dog and the cat kidnap Ron so they can get his rat. Turns out the dog is Sirius Black, and the rat is the real murderer. Or at least, that's what they'd try to explain if not for all the interruptions. RATING: BAD
18: Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs Lupin's a werewolf, and everyone bent over backwards for him in high school. RATING: GOOD
19: The Servant of Lord Voldemort Peter Pettigrew begs for mercy, in a fairly compelling bit of story. RATING: GOOD
20: The Dementor's Kiss Dusty Finish. RATING: BAD
21: Hermione's Secret Hermione can travel through time, but since that just means we have to relive the last five chapters all over again, I don't see the upside to that. RATING: BAD
22: Owl Post Again Harry gets permission to visit Hogsmeade over the weekend. RATING: BAD
So that's seven good chapters out of twenty-two, meaning that, from a purely mathematical standpoint, I somehow enjoyed Half-Blood Prince better than this book. Barely, anyway.
Honestly, what was the secret ingredient that made everyone act like this one is somehow better than the others? It's the same bullcrap from VI, except without the cool Voldemort backup feature. Honestly, I started Half-Blood Prince because it was topical in 2005, and the novelty of me reading one of these books seemed to make for a good bit. But every so often, someone would miss the whole point and tell me that what I really needed to do was to try Azkaban, because it was the strongest volume in the series. Actually, looking back, the sentiment is summed up in a single endorsement, from the comments to my review of Chapter 30.
The writing is tight, the action is there, there's continuity, suspense, characters that aren't as annoying, Harry hasn't gotten some sort of disease that makes him progressively stupider, Ron is hysterically funny, and Hermoine punches Draco, which is fantastic. -- mayhemwench
And since III won the poll this year, I assume most of you agreed with that assessment. Or disagreed, and deliberately voted for a crap book expecting better reactions from me. Given how angry this book has made me, I'm sorry to disappoint. But let's assume this was the majority opinion. Now that I've read III, how well does the above statement hold up?
--The writing is tight
OK, I'll grant this one. With fewer prequels to rely on, the story was a lot more self-contained than HBP, and stuff that happened towards the beginning seemed to end up mattering towards the end. But tight plotting isn't everything, and if the events themselves are dull, it doesn't amount to much when they start to tie into each other. Just because Scabbers was the murderer and Crookshanks was in league with Black doesn't change the fact that all those Crookshanks vs. Scabbers scenes were tedious and repetitive. The Hogsmeade and Quidditch stuff was relevant to the heightened security measures, but the book could have moved quicker without them. And while I understand that Trelawny was needed to provide foreshadowing for the next book, did we really need scenes of her teaching classes of her bullcrap? And just because the time travel wrapped up the loose ends doesn't make it OK.
--the action is there
Where? Harry meets a dementor... and passes out. Harry's team plays Hufflepuff, and Rowling refuses to describe it because of the inclement weather. The other two Quidditch matches were better, but that's not much for a book this big. That leaves Harry's showdown with Black, which even the book acknowledges as being "stupid" (exact quote), Snape's showdown with Black, which left Snape somewhere on Don Knotts' level of dignity, and Harry's showdown with the dementors, which he blew so badly he had to go back in time and do it over again.
In other words, it's the same action formula for Book VI, where characters would face off against each other, and then one or both of them would totally choke. Action my ass. I read comic books, for goodness sake. Don't ever promise me action unless you're damn sure your fandom can deliver. I don't go around telling people Dragon Ball Z has tons of social commentary.
--there's continuity
Well, yeah, but that's like saying a car has wheels. People bitch about continuity too much. Ed Wood movies lack continuity. Just because there's a few plot holes in HBP doesn't mean it's some sort of retconned, revamped, rebooted mess. And even if we're judging by that standard, I've already pointed out the flaws in Azkaban. Sirius Black turns into a dog to break out of prison, yet at the last minute they fail to prevent his recapture? Hermione rescues Black with her time machine, yet no one considers using it to prove his innocence? Black spends the whole year waiting for an opening to save Harry from Scabbers, but couldn't he have just explained the whole thing to Harry that night in the alley in Chapter 3? It does NOT make sense. If Chewbacca is from Endor, you must acquit.
--suspense
I could sort of buy into this, except why tell me about the suspense in Book III knowing I've already finished VI? Sirius turns out to be a good guy, and I already knew that because Harry was mourning his death in the latest book. So sixty percent of the story was me knowing full well that Harry was in no danger because the "villain" wasn't even trying to kill him. And the thing is, by revealing Sirius as a good guy, Pettigrew as a coward, and the dementors as mindless, you end up with no strong antagonist for Harry to play off of. Where's the suspense in that?
--characters that aren't as annoying
It's the EXACT SAME CAST. Hell, Snape's at least TWICE as annoying as he was in HBP. Dumbledore's a little more tolerable, but that's just because he's not appearing as much. Lupin's got a bigger role, but as it turns out, this only ended up showing me that he's just as irresponsible and foolhardy as everyone else. That leaves Black and Pettigrew, really, and they were annoying me all throughout the book, albeit in animal form.
Honestly, in my heart of hearts, I found myself missing Horace Slughorn.
--Harry hasn't gotten some sort of disease that makes him progressively stupider,
Suuurrre he doesn't. Don't take my word for it. Arthur Weasley, Ron, Hermione, and Lupin all point out when Harry's either doing something, or about to do something stupid. Everyone acts like it's my fault when Harry turns into a Super Dumbass, but it's Harry who's the idiot. I just put a glowy blonde wig on him so everyone notices.
--Ron is hysterically funny
LOOK! SCABBERS! LOOK! SCABBERS! AND DO YOU KNOW WHAT WAS THERE?! What's sad is that Ron treating Hermione like crap in VI was supposed to be unusual, yet he gave her the same treatment three years earlier, and for what? A broom and a freaking RAT? Don't get me wrong, I always get big laughs from Ron, but I'm usually laughing AT him, not WITH him.
--and Hermoine punches Draco, which is fantastic.
Well, yeah, but way too short-lived. The whole novel should have been about Hermione punching Draco.
I don't know what else to say about this turkey. So I'll leave you with this picture of Snape looking down on us from heaven.
Dude, I totally hate fandom_wank.
If I were the President, dreaming would be illegal. Those whiny "Dumb-ocrats" and their "Smell-fare" programs would probably tell me that people need to dream so they can achieve R.E.M. sleep necessary for survival. Well, I say R.E.M. hasn't been any good since they swapped their drummer for a machine, so screw that. Still, as hypothetical President, I'd want to be a uniter, not a divider, so I'd compromise with a law that says you can dream, as long as you never speak of or act upon what you dreamed about. I mean, if someone dreams a cure for cancer, let's see it, but for the most part, people's dreams make no freaking sense, so I doubt this'll ever come up.
True story: I had a dream the other night where I was being hunted down by a man I eventually recognized as Z, the pine-tree haired heavy from the new Tenchi Muyo! DVD. He wants to kill me dead, but as long as I found the seven Dragon Balls, I'd turn into a Super Saiyan and kick his ass in two seconds, only for him to come back and force me to repeat the process over and over again. We were like in some hallway from Scooby-Doo, where you just run up and down the hall opening doors and hoping the other guy wasn't there to get the drop on you. The Dragon Balls were for some reason incomplete, lacking their glossy orange exterior, and instead being this mass of wicker basket material, not unlike what all the crap is made of on the tree planet from TM! Also, finding the Dragon Balls shouldn't make you transform into a Super Saiyan, but the whole thing was pretty surreal. Eventually, like a lot of my dreams, I realized the stalemate, and woke up.
Now, I consider myself a fairly rational individual. Upon waking up, I immediately realized that I just dreamt about a bunch of shitty cartoons I like to watch, and that my dream made absolutely no sense. There are no good DBZ/TM!R x-overs, TYVM, and I groggily cursed my subconscious for trying to come up with one. Apparently, what I should have done was treat this like a profound cathartic experience, and start searching the world for other people who've had a similar epiphany. Then we'd make a bunch of crappy photomanips of our dreams and pretend like it amounts to anything. Why don't people realize that when you make this, no matter how spiritual it may look to you, to the rest of the world it just kind of looks like this. Ah, could I love him more...?
Anyway, that's all I got to say about it for now. Let's put this puppy to sleep.
Chapter 22: Owl Post Again
(Original Japanese Title: "Permission Granted!! Harry's Purposes Are Served.")
All right, I've lost my patience with this thing, so let's get it over with.
Having assisted Black in escaping the authorities, all Harry and Hermione have to do now is get back to the hospital wing before they're missed. I'm not really interested in all the different characters they sneak past to do this. Frankly, this whole crappy book has been nothing but characters sneaking around trying to avoid other characters, and I'm flippin' sick of it. Long story short, they make it back to their beds, just in time to hear Snape freaking out about Black's escape.
"HE DIDN'T DISAPPARATE! YOU CAN'T APPARATE OR DISAPPARATE INSIDE THIS CASTLE! THIS--HAS--SOMETHING--TO--DO--WITH--POTTER!"
Yeah, he's screaming his head off. Didn't see that one coming. He bursts into the room, certain that Harry somehow facilitated Black's escape.
"OUT WITH IT, POTTER! WHAT DID YOU DO?" Geez, don't say hi.
Everyone tries to calm him down, but Snape's livid. There's even spit flying from his mouth.
"THEY HELPED HIM ESCAPE, I KNOW IT!" You know, surely he would be aware of Hermione's time-travel doohickey, right? I mean, it's like the bit about the kids being confunded, or Peter being an illegal Animagus. None of these explanations are impossible, or even improbable, and they're all easily proven. And yet, here's the authorities, trying to tell Snape it's impossible, and the situation can't be helped, just like they got done telling Harry in the last chapter. It's so friggin' arbitrary. I don't even know why they're worried about Black in the first place. No one can possibly escape Azkaban Prison, so he must still be there. And even if he could have escaped, no one could ever break into Hogwarts, so how could he pose a threat to anyone?
"YOU DON'T KNOW POTTER! HE DID IT, I KNOW HE DID IT--" Snape insists. Well, really, it was Dumbledore's idea, and Hermione who supplied the time machine, so I don't see how Harry's reputation has anything to do with it. Unless Snape regards him as being a boy who routinely gets mixed up in plans dreamed up by slightly smarter individuals.
Dumbledore finally demands he calm down and see reason, since there's no way Harry and Hermione could have possibly left their locked room, freed Black, and returned without anyone seeing them. Snape shoots him a look that says "I am soooo going to kill you on page 606," and leaves.
As for Fudge, he's disappointed with Black's escape, but he decides they'll have to remove the dementors from the school, since their attempt on Harry's life proves they can't be trusted around the student body. Ron wakes up, and Hermione starts to explain the whole thing to him. I'm relieved we're skipping this conversation.
For some reason, even though the school year's over, everyone's still loitering around the castle anyway. You'd think they'd call in the police or something. From Hagrid, the nWo learns that Snape "accidentally" outed Lupin as a werewolf over breakfast, and so he's resigned from the faculty. So they rush over to Lupin's place to get the low-down.
According to Remus, while D-Dore managed to convince the Ministry that he wasn't in league with Black, the mere fact that he's a werewolf is damning enough, and he sees no point in sticking around for the public outcry when the parents learn there's been a werewolf teaching at the school all year. And really, he sees their point, since he could have easily bitten any of them the night before, because of his foolish misstep. Gotta give Lupin credit, at least when he screws up royal, he admits it.
Lupin says that he heard Harry saved a lot of lives last night. Let's see, Hermione, Sirius, and Buckbeak. So, three lives, basically. Not that I'm inclined to count Buckbeak, but we'll go with that. After Harry tells him the story of how he used the Patronus Charm, Lupin explains that the stag he saw was what his pappy used to turn into, back when the Marauders used to go out on their sissy-mary animal dress-up parties. He returns Harry's Invisibility Cloak, as well as the Marauder's Map. Yeah, he chewed Harry out for using it before, but now that he's not a teacher anymore, he doesn't see any conflict of interest in giving it back to him. Forget what I said, Lupin's a damn fool.
Following Lupin's exit, Dumbledore tries to console Harry over last night's events. Harry feels kind of down that Peter Pettigrew escaped, so everything he did that night amounted to nothing. Hey, at least he's owning up to it. No, wait, Dumbledore's actually going to try to convince us that Harry accomplished something. This oughta be good.
"It made all the difference in the world, Harry. You helped uncover the truth. You saved an innocent man from a terrible fate."
OK, I call bullcrap. First of all, Harry didn't help uncover anything. The only reason he was even there was because Black abducted Ron, and Harry followed them. And really, if he'd stayed behind, Pettigrew would be dead right now and that'd be the end of it. By interfering, Harry only made it possible for Black to be captured, since Harry's pursuit lured Lupin into the fray, and Lupin's werewolfism was what enabled Pettigrew to escape. Granted, Harry being there forced Black to explain the whole story, which no one believes, so I don't see how Harry uncovered the truth, since now only seven people know Black is innocent, as opposed to two.
And yes, Harry did save Black from the dementors, but Black never would have ended up in that situation if not for Harry. After all, the only reason he bothered going to Hogwarts was to kill Pettigrew before he could harm Harry. Harry saved him from the dementor's kiss, but that only means Black's right back where he started: a wanted fugitive, with no way to prove his innocence. If Black had stayed clear of Hogwarts from the beginning, he'd be no better or worse off. Yeah, Peter might have eventually killed Harry someday, but given his deteriorating health, I rather doubt this. As it stands, Harry may have saved Black from the living death of the dementor's kiss, but the dementors are still after him, and they could still eat his soul anyway. But that's just the hypothetical. The reality is that Black'll be dead in two years anyway.
Anyway, Harry is suddenly reminded of Professor Trelawny's prediction from several chapters back, about the "servant of Lord Voldemort" returning before midnight, eventually helping him return to power. Dumbledore takes this in a stride, saying that just because Harry spared Pettigrew's life doesn't mean it'll be his fault if Voldemort should come back. Uh... so whose fault would it be, then? Dumbledore points out that no matter what happens, Pettigrew now owes Harry his life, and that could end up making all the difference in the future. Well, it hasn't so far, so this had better amount to something come that last book.
Anyway, blah blah blah, Harry loves his dad or something, blah-diddy-blah, Percy Weasley exists, blah blah blah, the nWo passed their exams, blah blah blah, Hermione's decided to scale back her classwork to the confines of classical mechanics.
On the train ride back, Ron suggests Harry stay with him for the holiday, pointing out that the Quidditch World Cup is going down this summer. Harry considers that the Durselys would probably be eager to let him go, after what he did to Aunt Marge. Uh-huh, so the only thing he's learned is that he can use his prior outbursts to get his way. That's nice.
Then an owl shows up at the window to their booth. Turns out it's carrying a letter from Sirius Black, so they check it out together. Basically, he's in hiding with the damn hippogriff, confident that the dementors will never find him, and planning to reveal himself to some Muggles, if only to ensure that the Ministry won't be searching for him anywhere near Hogwarts from here on. He also explains that he was the one who sent Harry the Firebolt, which frankly I'd about forgotten by this point in the book, so I'm really wondering what the point was in introducing the Firebolt to begin with. Also, enclosed in the envelope is a parchment which basically serves as a permission slip for any future outings to Hogsmeade next year. Of course, only Dumbledore would recognize Sirius' claim as Harry's godfather, but I guess that's all you need. Well, that's dandy. So 400+ pages and the only thing that really gets settled is where [EXPLETIVE DELETED] can go to [EXPLETIVE DELETED] Hogsmeade on weekends. This book has been such a rewarding experience all around.
The book closes with Vernon Dursely waiting to pick Harry up from the train station, and when he notices the letter Harry's got, Harry explains that it's from his newly discovered godfather, who's a convicted murderer on the run, but checks in on him every so often to make sure Harry's... happy. Oh ho ho, he's strongarming his relatives! What a delightful little scamp!
RATING: BAD
To summarize:
1: Owl Post Harry does his homework, and reads his mail. RATING: BAD
2: Aunt Marge's Big Mistake A done-to-death "obnoxious relative" episode, except for the twist where Harry nearly kills her and leaves the house as a fugitive. RATING: BAD
3: The Knight Bus Harry rides around on a stupid bus all night, then the Minister of Magic rewards him for his criminal recklessness. RATING: BAD
4: The Leaky Cauldron Our first actual plot point, as escaped convict Sirius Black is revealed to be a servant of Voldemort, and plans to hunt down and kill Harry Potter. Harry eats ice cream sundaes and watches his friend buy a cat. RATING: BAD
5: The Dementor Harry rides the train to school, only to pass out when a horde of soul-eating ghouls board the train in search of Sirius Black. Some homless guy named Remus Lupin fights them off with magic and chocolate. RATING: GOOD
6: Talons and Tea Leaves First day of classes. Hermione time travels. Sybil Trelawny acts like a total kook. Draco Malfoy is savagely attacked by some sort of bird-horse thing. RATING: GOOD
7: The Boggart in the Wardrobe Snape treats Neville Longbottom like gum on his shoe, while Remus Lupin builds up his confidence by using his fear of Snape to defeat a shape-shifting monster. RATING: GOOD
8: Flight of the Fat Lady Sirius Black infiltrates the school and attacks the G-Tower paining, putting the whole school on Red Alert. But the chapter is mostly about Harry sitting around watching Lupin drink stuff. RATING: BAD
9: Grim Defeat An exhaustive search for Black turns up nothing. Snape fills in for Lupin while he's sick. Dementors storm the Quidditch field during play, putting Harry in the hospital and losing the game to Hufflepuff. RATING: BAD
10: The Marauder's Map Fred and George offer Harry a magic map that allows him to sneak out of the school and join his friends on the field trip to Hogsmeade. There, he overhears the teachers discussing Sirius Black, and how he betrayed Harry's parents to Voldemort in spite of their close friendship. This story takes for friggin' ever the way they tell it. RATING: BAD
11: The Firebolt Harry swears revenge, but in a sort of open-ended sort of way. Hagrid's dumb monster has to appear in Dumb Monster Court. Harry gets a new broomstick for Christmas, but it may be a trap laid by Sirius Black. RATING: BAD
12: The Patronus Lupin teaches Harry to protect himself against the dementors. RATING: GOOD
13: Griffindor Versus Ravenclaw You know what? I forget. And I ain't going back to look it up. You do it. RATING: GOOD
14: Snape's Grudge Alan Rickman IS Severus Snape as Frank Burns. RATING: BAD
15: The Quidditch Final G-Tower wins the pennant. Or whatever it is. Also, Slytherin sucks at cheating. RATING: BAD
16: Professor Trelawny's Prediction Finals Week. Nothing to see here. RATING: BAD
17: Cat, Rat, and Dog The dog and the cat kidnap Ron so they can get his rat. Turns out the dog is Sirius Black, and the rat is the real murderer. Or at least, that's what they'd try to explain if not for all the interruptions. RATING: BAD
18: Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs Lupin's a werewolf, and everyone bent over backwards for him in high school. RATING: GOOD
19: The Servant of Lord Voldemort Peter Pettigrew begs for mercy, in a fairly compelling bit of story. RATING: GOOD
20: The Dementor's Kiss Dusty Finish. RATING: BAD
21: Hermione's Secret Hermione can travel through time, but since that just means we have to relive the last five chapters all over again, I don't see the upside to that. RATING: BAD
22: Owl Post Again Harry gets permission to visit Hogsmeade over the weekend. RATING: BAD
So that's seven good chapters out of twenty-two, meaning that, from a purely mathematical standpoint, I somehow enjoyed Half-Blood Prince better than this book. Barely, anyway.
Honestly, what was the secret ingredient that made everyone act like this one is somehow better than the others? It's the same bullcrap from VI, except without the cool Voldemort backup feature. Honestly, I started Half-Blood Prince because it was topical in 2005, and the novelty of me reading one of these books seemed to make for a good bit. But every so often, someone would miss the whole point and tell me that what I really needed to do was to try Azkaban, because it was the strongest volume in the series. Actually, looking back, the sentiment is summed up in a single endorsement, from the comments to my review of Chapter 30.
The writing is tight, the action is there, there's continuity, suspense, characters that aren't as annoying, Harry hasn't gotten some sort of disease that makes him progressively stupider, Ron is hysterically funny, and Hermoine punches Draco, which is fantastic. -- mayhemwench
And since III won the poll this year, I assume most of you agreed with that assessment. Or disagreed, and deliberately voted for a crap book expecting better reactions from me. Given how angry this book has made me, I'm sorry to disappoint. But let's assume this was the majority opinion. Now that I've read III, how well does the above statement hold up?
--The writing is tight
OK, I'll grant this one. With fewer prequels to rely on, the story was a lot more self-contained than HBP, and stuff that happened towards the beginning seemed to end up mattering towards the end. But tight plotting isn't everything, and if the events themselves are dull, it doesn't amount to much when they start to tie into each other. Just because Scabbers was the murderer and Crookshanks was in league with Black doesn't change the fact that all those Crookshanks vs. Scabbers scenes were tedious and repetitive. The Hogsmeade and Quidditch stuff was relevant to the heightened security measures, but the book could have moved quicker without them. And while I understand that Trelawny was needed to provide foreshadowing for the next book, did we really need scenes of her teaching classes of her bullcrap? And just because the time travel wrapped up the loose ends doesn't make it OK.
--the action is there
Where? Harry meets a dementor... and passes out. Harry's team plays Hufflepuff, and Rowling refuses to describe it because of the inclement weather. The other two Quidditch matches were better, but that's not much for a book this big. That leaves Harry's showdown with Black, which even the book acknowledges as being "stupid" (exact quote), Snape's showdown with Black, which left Snape somewhere on Don Knotts' level of dignity, and Harry's showdown with the dementors, which he blew so badly he had to go back in time and do it over again.
In other words, it's the same action formula for Book VI, where characters would face off against each other, and then one or both of them would totally choke. Action my ass. I read comic books, for goodness sake. Don't ever promise me action unless you're damn sure your fandom can deliver. I don't go around telling people Dragon Ball Z has tons of social commentary.
--there's continuity
Well, yeah, but that's like saying a car has wheels. People bitch about continuity too much. Ed Wood movies lack continuity. Just because there's a few plot holes in HBP doesn't mean it's some sort of retconned, revamped, rebooted mess. And even if we're judging by that standard, I've already pointed out the flaws in Azkaban. Sirius Black turns into a dog to break out of prison, yet at the last minute they fail to prevent his recapture? Hermione rescues Black with her time machine, yet no one considers using it to prove his innocence? Black spends the whole year waiting for an opening to save Harry from Scabbers, but couldn't he have just explained the whole thing to Harry that night in the alley in Chapter 3? It does NOT make sense. If Chewbacca is from Endor, you must acquit.
--suspense
I could sort of buy into this, except why tell me about the suspense in Book III knowing I've already finished VI? Sirius turns out to be a good guy, and I already knew that because Harry was mourning his death in the latest book. So sixty percent of the story was me knowing full well that Harry was in no danger because the "villain" wasn't even trying to kill him. And the thing is, by revealing Sirius as a good guy, Pettigrew as a coward, and the dementors as mindless, you end up with no strong antagonist for Harry to play off of. Where's the suspense in that?
--characters that aren't as annoying
It's the EXACT SAME CAST. Hell, Snape's at least TWICE as annoying as he was in HBP. Dumbledore's a little more tolerable, but that's just because he's not appearing as much. Lupin's got a bigger role, but as it turns out, this only ended up showing me that he's just as irresponsible and foolhardy as everyone else. That leaves Black and Pettigrew, really, and they were annoying me all throughout the book, albeit in animal form.
Honestly, in my heart of hearts, I found myself missing Horace Slughorn.
--Harry hasn't gotten some sort of disease that makes him progressively stupider,
Suuurrre he doesn't. Don't take my word for it. Arthur Weasley, Ron, Hermione, and Lupin all point out when Harry's either doing something, or about to do something stupid. Everyone acts like it's my fault when Harry turns into a Super Dumbass, but it's Harry who's the idiot. I just put a glowy blonde wig on him so everyone notices.
--Ron is hysterically funny
LOOK! SCABBERS! LOOK! SCABBERS! AND DO YOU KNOW WHAT WAS THERE?! What's sad is that Ron treating Hermione like crap in VI was supposed to be unusual, yet he gave her the same treatment three years earlier, and for what? A broom and a freaking RAT? Don't get me wrong, I always get big laughs from Ron, but I'm usually laughing AT him, not WITH him.
--and Hermoine punches Draco, which is fantastic.
Well, yeah, but way too short-lived. The whole novel should have been about Hermione punching Draco.
I don't know what else to say about this turkey. So I'll leave you with this picture of Snape looking down on us from heaven.
Dude, I totally hate fandom_wank.