It is the Year Chapter Five...
This weekend I bought a greatest hits CD of Electric Light Orchestra. The guy at the store congratulated me on what he considered the greatest music purchase of that day. I really gotta stop shopping at the Sam Goody.
If you hadn't heard of ELO, they're the band that does "Don't Bring Me Down", which plays on the radio all the time. Brucha wanted to play it the last time we drove to Canada, and I was resistant to the idea, because frankly, "The band that does 'Don't Bring Me Down'" isn't such a ringing endorsement. But after I listened to the album, I started to realize that ELO did a lot of songs I always liked, but never knew who did 'em. Specifically "Sweet Talkin' Woman", which I think I heard at the car dealership the other day, which was inspired me to break down and buy this CD.
As I'm still reviewing Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince chapter by chapter, and since this segment sees the million-dollar debut of Fleur Delacour, we'll pretend she deserves it and make "Sweet Talkin' Woman" her official theme song. That way, when they make the movie version of this, and you see her in it, you'll think of me. Well, me and ELO, I guess.
Chapter 5: An Excess of Phlegm (Original Japanese Title: "Flower of the Heart! Of All Your Names, Mine is the Least Stupid!")
This chapter pretty much comes close to breaking me. I kind of figured that once Harry got back to his old stomping grounds, among the people he knows, things would start to pick up. Instead, this whole chapter reminds me of a lot of phone conversations I've had with my mother.
MOM: Oh, I was talking to [so-and-so] and do you remember [insert name here]? He used to go to high school with you?
ME: Uh, not really.
MOM: Well, [he's getting married/he's been deployed to Iraq/he died in a car wreck].
ME: Huh.
"Huh" is usually as close as I can come to feigning interest in these kinds of things. It's not that my mom is boring, mind you, but to get to the interesting stuff, you have to ask her how her kindergarten class is going, or what stupid thing my dad did this week, or how the dog is doing. Stuff like that. The reason I barely remember who I went to high school with is because it wasn't exactly fascinating information while I was there. Ten years later I'm kind of proud that I've replaced most of that knowledge in my brain with more important matters, like the price of having a Dippin' Strips pizza delivered from Pizza Hut ($11.65), or the entire roster of the Ministry of Darkness in the WWF (Undertaker, Paul Bearer, Farooq, Bradshaw, Edge, Christian, Gangrel, Viscera, Mideon). That's why I prefer to hear about my mom's kindergarten class, because they're more interesting than the one I graduated with. "Mithus Thmith, Mithus Thmith! There's a BUG in the boy's bathroom!" Hee hee hee.
But, no, this a dry spell. Dumbledore drops Harry at "The Burrow", which sounds like the name of a hideout some thinly-veiled Batman knockoff would use. The Burrow is the domain of the Weasleys and apparently everyone else, given the way this chapter reads.
For starters, you've got Tonks. I didn't know what a Tonks was before I started into this book, and now that I've read some of it, I still don't know. She's just moping there when Harry arrives, and quickly leaves about a minute after he shows up. Ma Weasley invites her to come back this weekend, when Remus and "Mad-Eye" will be over for dinner. It's like some sort of stupid name convention. If I'm reading it right, Tonks' first name is "Nymphadora," so I guess she'd be the guest of honor. Well, she would, except she declines.
After Tonks and D-Dore teleport away, Harry gets fed dinner. Reading about Molly Weasley using magic to serve a boy food, I find myself imagining one of those short films they used to make in the 50's, only instead of postwar technology helping a homemaker in a kitchen, it's frickin' magic. "And girls, you won't have to waste any more precious time reheating onion soup for guests who come in late. With the new Chevrolet Dual Action Wand, just give that pot a few good taps, and the rest of your evening will be free for you to put on makeup, or go to the store to buy that new apron you've always wanted! Why, the Chevy model even levitates the pot and makes it serve itself!" For some reason, the soup is too hot when Harry eats it. You'd think that a magic spell that reheats food would somehow figure out how to adjust temperature better than that. You know, if it gets too hot, it would cut the heat and allow the item to cool back down until it's just right. You know, like a STOVE would do? Despite possessing arcane supernatural powers, Molly Weasley manages to completely bore the crap out of me, talking all about how Horace Slughorn used to teach back in her day, how her husband got a promotion weeding out counterfeit defensive charms, and so on.
Speaking of this, Molly's old man is late getting home from work, so she checks the clock to see how he's doing. Yeah, you heard me right. Your feeble Muggle mind probably can't comprehend this, since you're used to living in your sheltered Muggle world of Muggle clocks that only have TWO hands, but the Weasleys clock has NINE hands, one for each family member, each hand calibrated to that family member's status. And since Voldemort's back and plotting ultimate doom for pretty much everyone, all nine hands now point to "mortal peril".
In other words, this clock sucks. It doesn't even tell time, so why call it a clock at all? It's more like a barometer, except it senses vulnerability instead of atmospheric pressure. Given that Rowling had to invent a word for zombies, why couldn't she just call this thing a "dangerometer" or something like that, only more British-sounding and insipid? As an analytical tool, it's in dire need of recalibration. Using one of these things to gauge your family's safety is like taking a meat locker thermometer to the Sahara to see how hot it is. Apparently Voldemort's mere presence is enough of a threat to redline this thing. That's extremely impractical, because for all Molly knows her husband is getting mugged in the parking lot or something, but she can't tell because of the baseline danger that Voldemort might kill him. Remember the beginning of "Ghostbusters" when Bill Murray is interviewing the librarian about the ghost she saw in the stacks, and he asks her if her family has any history of mental illness? There's a reason he's doing that, and that reason is that he's trying to eliminate phenomena he knows (hallucinations) to isolate the one he wants to study (a real ghost). Of course, Molly Weasley isn't a scientist, so she pretty much resolves herself to staring at the "clock" and wondering.
Suddenly, it switches to "traveling". Wait, so you can't be in mortal peril while you're traveling? What if he's teleporting home and Goku and Nightcrawler have been drinking and they have this sick three-way collision in hyperspace? I mean, Nightcrawler's a priest or something, and Goku's a health nut who never touches booze, but you can't depend on every guy with teleportation power to stay sober. Unless Arthur Weasley uses a broom, in which case he has to worry about drunken evil Superman from "Superman III". And hell, Iron Man. I forgot all about him. Drunk as a skunk, that guy.
So Art's back home, and before he'll come into the house, he insists on trading Security Questions with his wife. I guess it's a running gag now. Reluctantly, Molly asks him his lifelong ambition, to which Arthur replies, and I swear I'm not making this up: "To find out how airplanes stay up."
To find out. How airplanes. Stay up.
Now, to be sure, Arthur's question to Molly is supposed to be more embarrassing, and more personal (She calls him "Mollywobbles" when they're alone together.), but I want to explore this airplane B.S. for a minute. I've seen a few headlines on the major news websites claiming that Harry Potter inspires kids to take an interest in science. This bugs me, because frankly science should attract kids to learn about science. Also, I don't like the idea that science can only be interesting as an alternative to magic. They're not the same thing.
For example, I'm a chemist. Typically, my job has me working among nonchemists, which means I often have to explain things to my coworkers. A while back we changed started treating our water supply with ozone gas to sanitize it. Naturally, this sparked some interest into what ozone is, what exactly it's doing, and why we're using it now instead of bleach. And so I do my best to cover all the important stuff. Ozone is a toxic form of oxygen that kills germs. In high concentrations, it's dangerous, but the levels we use in the water are much too low to be harmful to humans. More importantly, ozone is highly unstable, and must be constantly replenished in the water supply to maintain that sanitization effect. This is a powerful advantage over bleach, because ozone can easily be removed from water by destroying it with ultraviolet light. The UV light changes ozone back to normal oxygen, and the water is now both usable and germ free in a matter of seconds. When you go outside after a thunderstorm, that fresh smell in the air is ozone that was generated by the lightning. And so, parts of the building where the ozone is generated sometimes have the same smell.
Now, notice I'm avoiding technical jargon. I never once used the word "allotrope" or "LD50" or "oxidizer". That's because I don't need to use them to explain how ozone works. That's part of what science is all about: accessibility. It's all well and good to say that science is about turning red liquid blue, but the key is understanding why red liquid can be turned blue, and making that knowledge available for other people. If I say "allotrope", then I run the risk of confusing whoever I'm talking to, and I don't want to do that. I want them to know that ozone can be dangerous, but it's mostly harmless the way we use it. I have to communicate this because we'll all be working with it from now on, chemist and nonchemist alike.
Now, in Rowling's world, or at least in what little of it I've been exposed to, the opposite approach seems to be the rule of the day. "Oh, don't worry your pretty little head about ozone, Tony Blair! It's just a matter of snishenshash that diffletwibs such as yourself can't possibly relexicate. No, that's for responsible men of superior learning to handle! Men with names like 'Cornelius Fudge'!" Then give him a pat on the head and tell him to look pretty.
Granted, of course, this serves a useful dramatic purpose, of. Magic has to be a mysterious thing, able to be mastered by only a select few who have a talent for it. But this runs counter to the principles of science. If Christian Friedrich Schoenbein had fancied himself a wizard in 1840, then the discovery of ozone would have ended with him, and its applications in industry and the environment would have never been realized. Thankfully, Schoenbein was a chemist, and so his knowledge could be freely distributed and built upon by others. Also, someone could write the Wikipedia article that allowed me to learn the name of the guy who discovered ozone. Ah, the joys of full disclosure.
This is why I have a hard time swallowing the idea that Potter promotes science. Literacy, maybe. Science? Well, I think Spider-Man has him beat, but what do I know? If it gets kids to pay attention in class, great, but I'm not convinced, and Arthur Wesley's ignorance of aerodynamics isn't helping. It's not that he doesn't know how airplanes stay up. Lots of people don't know that. The problem is that he doesn't seem to realize how easy it would be to find that out.
In a nutshell, the wings of an airplane are shaped in such a way that a stream of air passing across them is channeled at a downward angle. You can see this phenomenon in action by holding the back of a spoon very close to a stream of water running from your sink faucet. The water runs along the curvature of the spoon and continues to be deflected at an angle away from the perpendicular. Well, airplane wings have the same effect on air, and because of Newton's Third Law of Motion, the action that forces the airstream DOWN is accompanied by an equal an opposite reaction: the force that moves the airplane wings UP, known as lift. Provided the airplane itself is sturdily fastened to its wings, and the vehicle has enough forward motion (thrust) to keep air flowing past the wings, the plane can stay airborne indefinitely. Once again, I picked that up on Wikipedia while I was checking to see who discovered ozone. I'm doubting the Burrow has a DSL connection like I do, but I'm positive that any library in the British Empire has a plethora of books on the subject. Given that wizards seem to have little compunction about barging into private property, he could even go there after hours.
But no. Just like his wife with the useless clock, Arthur Weasley seems to consider the secret of flight to be some far-flung, unattainable mystery of Muggle engineering, and that's what gets my goat. It's one thing when a magician shies away from answering questions, but I find it a little disheartening if they don't know how to ask questions either. Perhaps this is one of the underlying themes of the series, that the magic in Harry's world--like technology in our own--is a double-edged sword, making people's lives easier, but also robbing them of their natural human drives. We invent the car and people stop walking, and suddenly people start getting flabby and out of shape. Given that Apparition requires even less effort than handling a steering wheel, maybe this explains Horace Slughorn's appearance.
Or maybe, Arthur's answer was facetious, a deliberate lie he uses to be extra-careful. That way if a Death Eater interrogates him about his security question, he can divulge his honest ambition (Say, to become the King of England) without compromising his family's safety or arousing suspicion. But somehow I can't imagine Arthur being this clever, and even if he were, he'd probably brag about it just to establish his ruse. I still had to get this whole "science rant" off my chest anyway, so better to do it here than sixteen chapters later.
Back to business. Now that Arthur's actually in the house, he elucidates on his work weeding out counterfeit charms. His latest case involved Metamorph-Medals, which would normally grant you shape-shifting powers, except these knockoff versions just turn you orange and give you tentacle warts or something. I don't know, that would be a pretty good disguise, especially if a hundred other people fell victim to the same effect. Dull as it is to read Arthur talking shop, I like the premise here that Voldemort isn't the only evil afoot. Like any looming danger, he precipitates any number of smaller evils that plague society by playing off people's fears. Bootleg Metamorph-Medals are Rowling's answer to panaceas, backyard bomb shelters, and that whole duct tape thing from a few years back.
Being the middle of the night, it's high time Harry went to bed, so Molly sends him to Fred and George's room. Of course, Harry has to ask where they are, leading to a whole discussion of how they moved out to run some joke shop somewhere. "I was talking to Mrs. Weasley and you remember Fred and George, right? They went to high school with you? Well, they're running a joke shop now over on Daigon Alley, across from the Methodist Church." "Huh." I'm just guessing here, but Fred and George are twins, right? Because they seem to share a bedroom, and the writer has conveniently arranged for them to continue living together and run the same business together. The effort that went into these two characters would probably just blow me away, I'm sure.
The next morning, Harry's greeted by his running crew of Ron and Hermione. I don't know why Hermione's here, too. It's like this place is just a hostel for major characters or something. Maybe it is, but then it might have been nice to have that explained. Could've slipped it in during one of those five times I was reminded that Amelia Bones was murdered. I screwed up referring to the Death Eaters by the name of professional wrestling supergroup "the nWo". I should have saved that moniker for these three, because I've got twenty-five more chapters to go, and I'm gonna get real sick of typing "Harry, Ron, and Hermione." I'm already sick of it. So unless there's a collective name for them, they're the nWo now. Geez, I used to love the nWo, too. Back in 1996 this would have been unthinkable for me to do. It'd be like taking one of those cool T-shirts and burying it in the backyard and peeing on the mound of dirt. Still, it's appropriate, because this whole scene is all about the two lesser characters kissing up to the main guy, and it never seems to end. As a collorary, I'll probably be referring to the subset of Ron and Hermione as "The Outsiders", the overrated tag-team combination of Scott "Alky" Hall and Kevin "The Silver Fox" Nash. I haven't sorted out who's who, although Nash and Hermione probably use the same brand of conditioner.
Stupidly, Ron asks Harry what's he's been up to all summer, when obviously the answer to that is that he's been cooped up with the Damn Dursley's the whole time, doing butt-nothin'. "You've been off with Dumbledore!" Ron counters. Yeah, for like two hours, stupid. Trust me, you didn't miss anything. They pursued that flighty temptress, adventure, for a little bit, then gave up and chatted with a fat guy for a while. Oh yeah, and you know that badass injury on his arm? Well, Dumbledore made sure to NOT tell us all about how it happened. Real exciting guy, Dumbledore.
For her part, Hermione just keeps staring at him, like someone drew a Hitler mustache on his face while he was asleep. This isn't really resolved, because in comes Ron's sister Ginny to complain about... her. Ginny hates her much more than The Late Professor Umbridge. "What's she done now?" Hermione asks, referring to her. Ginny complains that her--wait, I mean she talks down to her like she's three, and Hermione says she's so full of herself. Ron attempts to defend her, prompting the girls to accuse him of being all into her. Both Harry and I assume this is in reference to Ron's mom, which is kind of creepy when you consider their comments in that context. Instead, speak of the devil, in comes her, bringing in a breakfast tray for Harry. The book describes her as a beautiful young woman, tall, willowy, no less than "a vision of perfection". Uh-huh. Well, maybe if the illustrator hadn't drawn her like a ten-year-old at the top of the chapter, I could buy into that. In short, this is Fleur Delacour, an honest-to-God real-live woman in a Harry Potter book. I had sort of assumed that any female in this series was either underage or somebody's mom, or a million years old (I'm betting Umbridge wasn't exactly charming those centaurs with her youthful good looks). At first I was skeptical, but according to Fleur, she's engaged to Ron's older brother Bill, which would just about have to mean that she's over 18.
Naturally, since Fleur appears to be, at least superficially, a token attempt to appeal to my demographic, all the other girl characters hate her guts. I guess Mrs. Weasley is no different from any mother-in-law, and Ginny and Hermione probably just resent her for having bigger boobs or something. I don't normally accuse women of being this petty, but scans_daily has really opened my eyes to that sort of thing. Every once in a while, someone will post pages from a Power Girl comic, and the comments will be all "OMG her boobs are too big wotta colossal whore!" This wouldn't bother me so much if the rest of scans_daily's activity wasn't devoted to posting yaoi manga, where pairs of gay emo men with washboard abs play grabass in their underwear. I'm thinking that if Orlando Bloom and Johnny Depp were brining Harry Breakfast, and they were blowing kissies to each other the whole time, suddenly Hermione and Ginny and Molly would be totally cool with the idea of them pitching in around the house. But it's Fleur, so she's a total domineering succubus bitch from hell, even if she does something helpful like bring Harry food so someone else won't have to. Again, Jeri Ryan is bad, but Captain Picard wearing flimsy blue lingerie to bed every night is good. Don't ask me why, it just somehow is.
So then, we've got this (supposedly) attractive female character, one whom I could drive across state lines with and not go to jail for it, and half the cast of Harry Potter hates her guts. Perfect woman, right? Well, maybe she could have been, except just like how Godzilla '97 utterly failed to live up to the hype, Fleur ruins her introduction the second she opens her mouth: "'Arry. 'Eet 'as been too long!"
This is about the part of the book where I just stare at the page, dumbstruck. "Oh good," I say to myself in the thickest, most sarcastic New Jersey accent possible. Yeah, that's just what this book needed. The FRENCH. And not just the French, but phonetically spelled out French accents, too. Since I already compared Fleur to DC's mammary-enhanced superhero Power Girl, let me balance the scales by also comparing her to third-tier Marvel Comics supervillain Batroc the Leaper. If I remember right, Batroc is a master of savate. That or some other form of martial arts that involves jumping around a lot. Batroc's actually a damn fine fighter for a guy with no super powers, and he often runs afoul of Captain America. Only trouble is, Batroc's never taken seriously by anyone, and that's because he talks just like Fleur here. "Oh ho ho! Eet ees moi, Batroc ze Lepair!" That sort of thing. His silly mustache and garish costume don't help either, but it's mainly the accent. I hate phonetic accents in fiction, because they generally only serve to denigrate whatever character they're applied to. Southerners are made to sound backward and stupid, Frenchmen are made to sound prissy and foppish, and Australians made to sound like the crazy guy from the old Energizer Battery ads. I especially hate it with the Irish, because for some reason Irish accents are spelled out to be completely illegible, using nonwords like "dinnae". The only purpose it serves to have Fleur talk like this is to remind me she's French, but I think I would have remembered that based on WHAT she says, rather than HOW. Her name's kind of a dead giveaway, too.
After she leaves, everyone starts dissing on Fleur. Ma Weasley thinks that Bill rushed into this engagement because of the whole Voldemort Gearing Up to Destroy Us All thing. Ginny clings to the hypothesis that Fleur is a cow, and then refers to her as "Phlegm". So that explains the title, I guess. Further, Ginny explains that her mom's gonna nip this marriage thing in the bud, by having Tonks come over all the time. The theory, I guess, is that Bill's supposed to fall madly in love with Tonks if she comes over often enough. So I guess shipping isn't confined to the readers, then.
Hermione and Ginny constantly refer to her as Phlegm, and really, that isn't THAT funny. I'm thinking there's much better nicknames for someone named "Fleur Delacour". "Fleur" alone is silly enough if you pronounce it all goofy. "Flooo-er". You've also got "Fleur Delasewer," "Floozy Delacour," "Flirt Delacour," and of course "Bitch Whorebitch Hosebeast From Hell Die Die Die You Bitch I Hate You."
And while I'm on the subject, I don't think anyone named "Hermione" or "Weasley" has any business making fun of people's names. I came up with "Whore-mione" and "Her-whiney" a lot quicker than all those variants on Fluer's name. And Ginny's either short for gin the liquor, gin rummy the card game, or the word "vagina". Any seventh grader could and would be playing each of those possibilities to their fullest.
The conversation soon turns to what's got Tonks so depressed. It has something to do with Sirius Black's death, and the Iron Law of Mike Reading This Book is that I don't give two craps about Sirius Black's death in the last one. Ginny gets called downstairs, leaving the nWo to discuss more pressing matters, like how that stupid joke shop is doing. Arrrgh.
Getting back on topic, Harry mentions he's taking private lessons with Big Al this year, which causes Ron to exclaim "Blimey." I swear I'm not making this up. "Blimey" is one of those words I use to make fun of these characters, and here he is, actually using it in a sentence. Let me make my intentions clear: I fully intend to finish this book, but if Ron says "'ere now, govner!" then all bets are off, and I'm Audi 5000. To explain why he's taking private lessons, Harry comes clean about the whole prophecy, confirming what little the Outsiders had figured out from the newspapers. The prophecy petty much states that Harry's and Voldemort cannot coexist, and neither could live while the other survives. Put in much more awesome wording: One shall stand, one shall fall.
...
"Why throw away your life so recklessly?"
"That's a question you should ask yourself, Megatron."
Sorry, I got sidetracked there for a second. Since this is a kid's book instead of a kid's movie about giant robots, the tension is lifted when Hermione triggers one of the stupid prank supplies in Fred and George's room. Apparently, a little mechanical fist punched her in the face, hard enough to give her a black eye. You know, I'm not much on practical jokes, but that's pretty hardcore, if you ask me. I was hoping before that Fred and George wouldn't put in an appearance in this book, but now I want to see their shop just long enough for Hermione to barge in and beat their asses.
Anywho, the discussion then turns to how Harry must stand a chance if Dumbledore would devote this sort of attention to training him. This is encouraging to Harry, who's just relieved that he's not being looked upon as some kind of freak. Maybe he's just insecure, but I don't know why he'd feel stigmatized by any of this. Even if this Chosen One business meant Harry was marked for death, Ron and Hermione sure as hell aren't gonna be rooting for the other guy. Well, maybe Hermione if Voldemort looks enough like Johnny Depp. Maybe Ron too, since Johnny Depp vaguely resembles a woman most of the time. Still, as Sifl and Olly taught us, rock 'n' roll friends check each other's books back in, even when they may be destroyed in some impending battle with an unspeakable evil.
Suddenly, everyone starts flipping out because it's report card day. Especially Hermione. Really, it's kind of pathetic watching her fret over this stuff. Finally, Ron tells her to shut up, because she's not the only one nervous about all this. See, this is the sort of subtle interplay that makes me wonder how oblivious that Pumpkin Pie crap is. All I've heard for some time now is how Ron and Hermione are totally gonna hook up, based on the interplay between them in the last five books, while your Harry/Hermione shippers deny that any of this bore any significance. And these are actual Harry Potter fans who read all the books and cared what happens to the characters, and insist that dirt flavored candy is actually a good idea. Me, I'm just some jerk who picked up this one volume purely for heckling purposes, and it's patently obvious to me that there's infinitely more chemistry between Ron and Hermione than there is between Harry and Hermione. If there's something both sides of the shipping wars can take from this, it's that the Harmony people really have no clue, and the Her-Ron-Mione-Whatever-They're Called people shouldn't be that proud of themselves for figuring it out. Yeah, you called it, but that's like calling that milk goes in last when you're making cereal. I suppose the idea of Ron snapping at his One True Love is hard to take for some, but that's how guys have to talk to Type A's like Hermione. Same way Han Solo wouldn't back down from Princess Leia. If this were someone less high-strung... say, I don't know, Counselor Troi from Star Trek, he'd take a softer approach, but it isn't, so he's not.
So then the owls come, bearing the damn report cards. This leads to one of the stupidest exchanges I've ever read, and I've read Rob Liefeld's entire run on X-Force, people.
RON: They're definitely owls.
HARRY: And there are three of them.
HERMIONE: One for each of us.
Yeah, real gifted students there. Before anyone can ask how the owls stay up in the air, they land and drop off their wares. I barely remember what grades I got my sophomore year, so I'm not that interested in how these three did. For some reason, Harry's grades are tabulated in full, yet Rowling still feels the need to list them in the prose as well. "Well, we're N.E.W.T. students now!" Ron announces. Super.
The chapter finally closes with Harry's slight disappointment that his grades aren't quite good enough to qualify him as an Auror. For some reason, he just figured that was a fitting job for him, since the Aurors are the guys whose job it is to go find Voldemort and stomp a mudhole in him. I'm not sure I follow the logic here. Harry's either gonna beat Voldemort or die trying (You hear that, Potter? DIE trying.), so what's it matter if it matches his career description or not? Besides, if he does beat the guy, then he'll have succeeded where the Aurors have obviously failed, so I don't see why he'd want to be involved with them in the first place. Then again, he seemed to think being the Chosen One would make him unpopular at school, so this kid's clearly got issues.
RATING: BAD. Let's see, a whole chapter about the following:
1) The thrilling new developments for Harry...'s friend...'s brothers and sisters.
2) Report card results, which are kind of a formality at this point, since the next 498 pages sort of hinge on Harry moving on to the next grade.
3) Dissing on Fleur, who really doesn't seem to be that bad a person. If Fleur isn't a Death Eater in disguise or something, her entire appearance here is probably a colossal waste of space.
It's almost going somewhere, but this is more like a plot cul-de-sac than anything else. Voldemort's STILL out there, Harry STILL hasn't started classes, and Snape STILL hasn't done anything to justify his whole "I'm still evil" speech in Chapter Two. The bright side is that Rowling at least managed to go without a whole chapter without digging up Amelia Bones' corpse. I find myself feeling less and less guilty about paying half-price for this book, because I'm getting the impression that half of it is just filler anyway. Like Crow suggested once, there's a story here, but it's packed in foam peanuts, and this chapter here is one of the foam peanuts. Everyone talks about how great it is that J.K. Rowling is out there writing 600+ page books for kids to read, but the implication everyone seems to take for granted is that there's supposed to be 600 pages of story, as well. I'm 104 pages in, and I feel like I'm somewhere on page fifty of a much shorter novel.
One of the most recent things I've read was Robert E. Howard's novella A Witch Shall Be Born. If I recall correctly, the entire story was about as long as the first five chapters of Half-Blood Prince. What irks me is that there's probably someone out there (this is no knock on HP fans, but on literary elitists in general) who probably thinks reading HBP is a more worthwhile endeavor simply because it's longer. It's an interesting contrast, now that I think about it, because Robert E. Howard was writing short stories to submit to fantasy magazines in the 30's, an environment where you were paid by the word, and editors appreciated a writer's ability to tell an exciting, entertaining story as succinctly (read: inexpensively) as possible. While clearly possessing a talent for storytelling, it's very apparent to me that Rowling's in no hurry here, and her editor is hardly worried about the readers getting bored or frightened off by a 652 page book. The result is this lackadaisical pace, where we literally follow Harry Potter's every action from 11:00 P.M. onward, skipping ahead only when he falls asleep, and sometimes not even then, as we see in Chapter 3.
So yeah, the way I figure it, there's about three hundred pages of actual story here, evenly dispersed throughout a volume of six hundred fifty-two. Not evenly enough, I'm afraid, since Chapter Five doesn't seem to have much at all.
NEXT: Draco does stuff. I probably won't spend as much time discussing it as I did this time around.
If you hadn't heard of ELO, they're the band that does "Don't Bring Me Down", which plays on the radio all the time. Brucha wanted to play it the last time we drove to Canada, and I was resistant to the idea, because frankly, "The band that does 'Don't Bring Me Down'" isn't such a ringing endorsement. But after I listened to the album, I started to realize that ELO did a lot of songs I always liked, but never knew who did 'em. Specifically "Sweet Talkin' Woman", which I think I heard at the car dealership the other day, which was inspired me to break down and buy this CD.
As I'm still reviewing Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince chapter by chapter, and since this segment sees the million-dollar debut of Fleur Delacour, we'll pretend she deserves it and make "Sweet Talkin' Woman" her official theme song. That way, when they make the movie version of this, and you see her in it, you'll think of me. Well, me and ELO, I guess.
Chapter 5: An Excess of Phlegm (Original Japanese Title: "Flower of the Heart! Of All Your Names, Mine is the Least Stupid!")
This chapter pretty much comes close to breaking me. I kind of figured that once Harry got back to his old stomping grounds, among the people he knows, things would start to pick up. Instead, this whole chapter reminds me of a lot of phone conversations I've had with my mother.
MOM: Oh, I was talking to [so-and-so] and do you remember [insert name here]? He used to go to high school with you?
ME: Uh, not really.
MOM: Well, [he's getting married/he's been deployed to Iraq/he died in a car wreck].
ME: Huh.
"Huh" is usually as close as I can come to feigning interest in these kinds of things. It's not that my mom is boring, mind you, but to get to the interesting stuff, you have to ask her how her kindergarten class is going, or what stupid thing my dad did this week, or how the dog is doing. Stuff like that. The reason I barely remember who I went to high school with is because it wasn't exactly fascinating information while I was there. Ten years later I'm kind of proud that I've replaced most of that knowledge in my brain with more important matters, like the price of having a Dippin' Strips pizza delivered from Pizza Hut ($11.65), or the entire roster of the Ministry of Darkness in the WWF (Undertaker, Paul Bearer, Farooq, Bradshaw, Edge, Christian, Gangrel, Viscera, Mideon). That's why I prefer to hear about my mom's kindergarten class, because they're more interesting than the one I graduated with. "Mithus Thmith, Mithus Thmith! There's a BUG in the boy's bathroom!" Hee hee hee.
But, no, this a dry spell. Dumbledore drops Harry at "The Burrow", which sounds like the name of a hideout some thinly-veiled Batman knockoff would use. The Burrow is the domain of the Weasleys and apparently everyone else, given the way this chapter reads.
For starters, you've got Tonks. I didn't know what a Tonks was before I started into this book, and now that I've read some of it, I still don't know. She's just moping there when Harry arrives, and quickly leaves about a minute after he shows up. Ma Weasley invites her to come back this weekend, when Remus and "Mad-Eye" will be over for dinner. It's like some sort of stupid name convention. If I'm reading it right, Tonks' first name is "Nymphadora," so I guess she'd be the guest of honor. Well, she would, except she declines.
After Tonks and D-Dore teleport away, Harry gets fed dinner. Reading about Molly Weasley using magic to serve a boy food, I find myself imagining one of those short films they used to make in the 50's, only instead of postwar technology helping a homemaker in a kitchen, it's frickin' magic. "And girls, you won't have to waste any more precious time reheating onion soup for guests who come in late. With the new Chevrolet Dual Action Wand, just give that pot a few good taps, and the rest of your evening will be free for you to put on makeup, or go to the store to buy that new apron you've always wanted! Why, the Chevy model even levitates the pot and makes it serve itself!" For some reason, the soup is too hot when Harry eats it. You'd think that a magic spell that reheats food would somehow figure out how to adjust temperature better than that. You know, if it gets too hot, it would cut the heat and allow the item to cool back down until it's just right. You know, like a STOVE would do? Despite possessing arcane supernatural powers, Molly Weasley manages to completely bore the crap out of me, talking all about how Horace Slughorn used to teach back in her day, how her husband got a promotion weeding out counterfeit defensive charms, and so on.
Speaking of this, Molly's old man is late getting home from work, so she checks the clock to see how he's doing. Yeah, you heard me right. Your feeble Muggle mind probably can't comprehend this, since you're used to living in your sheltered Muggle world of Muggle clocks that only have TWO hands, but the Weasleys clock has NINE hands, one for each family member, each hand calibrated to that family member's status. And since Voldemort's back and plotting ultimate doom for pretty much everyone, all nine hands now point to "mortal peril".
In other words, this clock sucks. It doesn't even tell time, so why call it a clock at all? It's more like a barometer, except it senses vulnerability instead of atmospheric pressure. Given that Rowling had to invent a word for zombies, why couldn't she just call this thing a "dangerometer" or something like that, only more British-sounding and insipid? As an analytical tool, it's in dire need of recalibration. Using one of these things to gauge your family's safety is like taking a meat locker thermometer to the Sahara to see how hot it is. Apparently Voldemort's mere presence is enough of a threat to redline this thing. That's extremely impractical, because for all Molly knows her husband is getting mugged in the parking lot or something, but she can't tell because of the baseline danger that Voldemort might kill him. Remember the beginning of "Ghostbusters" when Bill Murray is interviewing the librarian about the ghost she saw in the stacks, and he asks her if her family has any history of mental illness? There's a reason he's doing that, and that reason is that he's trying to eliminate phenomena he knows (hallucinations) to isolate the one he wants to study (a real ghost). Of course, Molly Weasley isn't a scientist, so she pretty much resolves herself to staring at the "clock" and wondering.
Suddenly, it switches to "traveling". Wait, so you can't be in mortal peril while you're traveling? What if he's teleporting home and Goku and Nightcrawler have been drinking and they have this sick three-way collision in hyperspace? I mean, Nightcrawler's a priest or something, and Goku's a health nut who never touches booze, but you can't depend on every guy with teleportation power to stay sober. Unless Arthur Weasley uses a broom, in which case he has to worry about drunken evil Superman from "Superman III". And hell, Iron Man. I forgot all about him. Drunk as a skunk, that guy.
So Art's back home, and before he'll come into the house, he insists on trading Security Questions with his wife. I guess it's a running gag now. Reluctantly, Molly asks him his lifelong ambition, to which Arthur replies, and I swear I'm not making this up: "To find out how airplanes stay up."
To find out. How airplanes. Stay up.
Now, to be sure, Arthur's question to Molly is supposed to be more embarrassing, and more personal (She calls him "Mollywobbles" when they're alone together.), but I want to explore this airplane B.S. for a minute. I've seen a few headlines on the major news websites claiming that Harry Potter inspires kids to take an interest in science. This bugs me, because frankly science should attract kids to learn about science. Also, I don't like the idea that science can only be interesting as an alternative to magic. They're not the same thing.
For example, I'm a chemist. Typically, my job has me working among nonchemists, which means I often have to explain things to my coworkers. A while back we changed started treating our water supply with ozone gas to sanitize it. Naturally, this sparked some interest into what ozone is, what exactly it's doing, and why we're using it now instead of bleach. And so I do my best to cover all the important stuff. Ozone is a toxic form of oxygen that kills germs. In high concentrations, it's dangerous, but the levels we use in the water are much too low to be harmful to humans. More importantly, ozone is highly unstable, and must be constantly replenished in the water supply to maintain that sanitization effect. This is a powerful advantage over bleach, because ozone can easily be removed from water by destroying it with ultraviolet light. The UV light changes ozone back to normal oxygen, and the water is now both usable and germ free in a matter of seconds. When you go outside after a thunderstorm, that fresh smell in the air is ozone that was generated by the lightning. And so, parts of the building where the ozone is generated sometimes have the same smell.
Now, notice I'm avoiding technical jargon. I never once used the word "allotrope" or "LD50" or "oxidizer". That's because I don't need to use them to explain how ozone works. That's part of what science is all about: accessibility. It's all well and good to say that science is about turning red liquid blue, but the key is understanding why red liquid can be turned blue, and making that knowledge available for other people. If I say "allotrope", then I run the risk of confusing whoever I'm talking to, and I don't want to do that. I want them to know that ozone can be dangerous, but it's mostly harmless the way we use it. I have to communicate this because we'll all be working with it from now on, chemist and nonchemist alike.
Now, in Rowling's world, or at least in what little of it I've been exposed to, the opposite approach seems to be the rule of the day. "Oh, don't worry your pretty little head about ozone, Tony Blair! It's just a matter of snishenshash that diffletwibs such as yourself can't possibly relexicate. No, that's for responsible men of superior learning to handle! Men with names like 'Cornelius Fudge'!" Then give him a pat on the head and tell him to look pretty.
Granted, of course, this serves a useful dramatic purpose, of. Magic has to be a mysterious thing, able to be mastered by only a select few who have a talent for it. But this runs counter to the principles of science. If Christian Friedrich Schoenbein had fancied himself a wizard in 1840, then the discovery of ozone would have ended with him, and its applications in industry and the environment would have never been realized. Thankfully, Schoenbein was a chemist, and so his knowledge could be freely distributed and built upon by others. Also, someone could write the Wikipedia article that allowed me to learn the name of the guy who discovered ozone. Ah, the joys of full disclosure.
This is why I have a hard time swallowing the idea that Potter promotes science. Literacy, maybe. Science? Well, I think Spider-Man has him beat, but what do I know? If it gets kids to pay attention in class, great, but I'm not convinced, and Arthur Wesley's ignorance of aerodynamics isn't helping. It's not that he doesn't know how airplanes stay up. Lots of people don't know that. The problem is that he doesn't seem to realize how easy it would be to find that out.
In a nutshell, the wings of an airplane are shaped in such a way that a stream of air passing across them is channeled at a downward angle. You can see this phenomenon in action by holding the back of a spoon very close to a stream of water running from your sink faucet. The water runs along the curvature of the spoon and continues to be deflected at an angle away from the perpendicular. Well, airplane wings have the same effect on air, and because of Newton's Third Law of Motion, the action that forces the airstream DOWN is accompanied by an equal an opposite reaction: the force that moves the airplane wings UP, known as lift. Provided the airplane itself is sturdily fastened to its wings, and the vehicle has enough forward motion (thrust) to keep air flowing past the wings, the plane can stay airborne indefinitely. Once again, I picked that up on Wikipedia while I was checking to see who discovered ozone. I'm doubting the Burrow has a DSL connection like I do, but I'm positive that any library in the British Empire has a plethora of books on the subject. Given that wizards seem to have little compunction about barging into private property, he could even go there after hours.
But no. Just like his wife with the useless clock, Arthur Weasley seems to consider the secret of flight to be some far-flung, unattainable mystery of Muggle engineering, and that's what gets my goat. It's one thing when a magician shies away from answering questions, but I find it a little disheartening if they don't know how to ask questions either. Perhaps this is one of the underlying themes of the series, that the magic in Harry's world--like technology in our own--is a double-edged sword, making people's lives easier, but also robbing them of their natural human drives. We invent the car and people stop walking, and suddenly people start getting flabby and out of shape. Given that Apparition requires even less effort than handling a steering wheel, maybe this explains Horace Slughorn's appearance.
Or maybe, Arthur's answer was facetious, a deliberate lie he uses to be extra-careful. That way if a Death Eater interrogates him about his security question, he can divulge his honest ambition (Say, to become the King of England) without compromising his family's safety or arousing suspicion. But somehow I can't imagine Arthur being this clever, and even if he were, he'd probably brag about it just to establish his ruse. I still had to get this whole "science rant" off my chest anyway, so better to do it here than sixteen chapters later.
Back to business. Now that Arthur's actually in the house, he elucidates on his work weeding out counterfeit charms. His latest case involved Metamorph-Medals, which would normally grant you shape-shifting powers, except these knockoff versions just turn you orange and give you tentacle warts or something. I don't know, that would be a pretty good disguise, especially if a hundred other people fell victim to the same effect. Dull as it is to read Arthur talking shop, I like the premise here that Voldemort isn't the only evil afoot. Like any looming danger, he precipitates any number of smaller evils that plague society by playing off people's fears. Bootleg Metamorph-Medals are Rowling's answer to panaceas, backyard bomb shelters, and that whole duct tape thing from a few years back.
Being the middle of the night, it's high time Harry went to bed, so Molly sends him to Fred and George's room. Of course, Harry has to ask where they are, leading to a whole discussion of how they moved out to run some joke shop somewhere. "I was talking to Mrs. Weasley and you remember Fred and George, right? They went to high school with you? Well, they're running a joke shop now over on Daigon Alley, across from the Methodist Church." "Huh." I'm just guessing here, but Fred and George are twins, right? Because they seem to share a bedroom, and the writer has conveniently arranged for them to continue living together and run the same business together. The effort that went into these two characters would probably just blow me away, I'm sure.
The next morning, Harry's greeted by his running crew of Ron and Hermione. I don't know why Hermione's here, too. It's like this place is just a hostel for major characters or something. Maybe it is, but then it might have been nice to have that explained. Could've slipped it in during one of those five times I was reminded that Amelia Bones was murdered. I screwed up referring to the Death Eaters by the name of professional wrestling supergroup "the nWo". I should have saved that moniker for these three, because I've got twenty-five more chapters to go, and I'm gonna get real sick of typing "Harry, Ron, and Hermione." I'm already sick of it. So unless there's a collective name for them, they're the nWo now. Geez, I used to love the nWo, too. Back in 1996 this would have been unthinkable for me to do. It'd be like taking one of those cool T-shirts and burying it in the backyard and peeing on the mound of dirt. Still, it's appropriate, because this whole scene is all about the two lesser characters kissing up to the main guy, and it never seems to end. As a collorary, I'll probably be referring to the subset of Ron and Hermione as "The Outsiders", the overrated tag-team combination of Scott "Alky" Hall and Kevin "The Silver Fox" Nash. I haven't sorted out who's who, although Nash and Hermione probably use the same brand of conditioner.
Stupidly, Ron asks Harry what's he's been up to all summer, when obviously the answer to that is that he's been cooped up with the Damn Dursley's the whole time, doing butt-nothin'. "You've been off with Dumbledore!" Ron counters. Yeah, for like two hours, stupid. Trust me, you didn't miss anything. They pursued that flighty temptress, adventure, for a little bit, then gave up and chatted with a fat guy for a while. Oh yeah, and you know that badass injury on his arm? Well, Dumbledore made sure to NOT tell us all about how it happened. Real exciting guy, Dumbledore.
For her part, Hermione just keeps staring at him, like someone drew a Hitler mustache on his face while he was asleep. This isn't really resolved, because in comes Ron's sister Ginny to complain about... her. Ginny hates her much more than The Late Professor Umbridge. "What's she done now?" Hermione asks, referring to her. Ginny complains that her--wait, I mean she talks down to her like she's three, and Hermione says she's so full of herself. Ron attempts to defend her, prompting the girls to accuse him of being all into her. Both Harry and I assume this is in reference to Ron's mom, which is kind of creepy when you consider their comments in that context. Instead, speak of the devil, in comes her, bringing in a breakfast tray for Harry. The book describes her as a beautiful young woman, tall, willowy, no less than "a vision of perfection". Uh-huh. Well, maybe if the illustrator hadn't drawn her like a ten-year-old at the top of the chapter, I could buy into that. In short, this is Fleur Delacour, an honest-to-God real-live woman in a Harry Potter book. I had sort of assumed that any female in this series was either underage or somebody's mom, or a million years old (I'm betting Umbridge wasn't exactly charming those centaurs with her youthful good looks). At first I was skeptical, but according to Fleur, she's engaged to Ron's older brother Bill, which would just about have to mean that she's over 18.
Naturally, since Fleur appears to be, at least superficially, a token attempt to appeal to my demographic, all the other girl characters hate her guts. I guess Mrs. Weasley is no different from any mother-in-law, and Ginny and Hermione probably just resent her for having bigger boobs or something. I don't normally accuse women of being this petty, but scans_daily has really opened my eyes to that sort of thing. Every once in a while, someone will post pages from a Power Girl comic, and the comments will be all "OMG her boobs are too big wotta colossal whore!" This wouldn't bother me so much if the rest of scans_daily's activity wasn't devoted to posting yaoi manga, where pairs of gay emo men with washboard abs play grabass in their underwear. I'm thinking that if Orlando Bloom and Johnny Depp were brining Harry Breakfast, and they were blowing kissies to each other the whole time, suddenly Hermione and Ginny and Molly would be totally cool with the idea of them pitching in around the house. But it's Fleur, so she's a total domineering succubus bitch from hell, even if she does something helpful like bring Harry food so someone else won't have to. Again, Jeri Ryan is bad, but Captain Picard wearing flimsy blue lingerie to bed every night is good. Don't ask me why, it just somehow is.
So then, we've got this (supposedly) attractive female character, one whom I could drive across state lines with and not go to jail for it, and half the cast of Harry Potter hates her guts. Perfect woman, right? Well, maybe she could have been, except just like how Godzilla '97 utterly failed to live up to the hype, Fleur ruins her introduction the second she opens her mouth: "'Arry. 'Eet 'as been too long!"
This is about the part of the book where I just stare at the page, dumbstruck. "Oh good," I say to myself in the thickest, most sarcastic New Jersey accent possible. Yeah, that's just what this book needed. The FRENCH. And not just the French, but phonetically spelled out French accents, too. Since I already compared Fleur to DC's mammary-enhanced superhero Power Girl, let me balance the scales by also comparing her to third-tier Marvel Comics supervillain Batroc the Leaper. If I remember right, Batroc is a master of savate. That or some other form of martial arts that involves jumping around a lot. Batroc's actually a damn fine fighter for a guy with no super powers, and he often runs afoul of Captain America. Only trouble is, Batroc's never taken seriously by anyone, and that's because he talks just like Fleur here. "Oh ho ho! Eet ees moi, Batroc ze Lepair!" That sort of thing. His silly mustache and garish costume don't help either, but it's mainly the accent. I hate phonetic accents in fiction, because they generally only serve to denigrate whatever character they're applied to. Southerners are made to sound backward and stupid, Frenchmen are made to sound prissy and foppish, and Australians made to sound like the crazy guy from the old Energizer Battery ads. I especially hate it with the Irish, because for some reason Irish accents are spelled out to be completely illegible, using nonwords like "dinnae". The only purpose it serves to have Fleur talk like this is to remind me she's French, but I think I would have remembered that based on WHAT she says, rather than HOW. Her name's kind of a dead giveaway, too.
After she leaves, everyone starts dissing on Fleur. Ma Weasley thinks that Bill rushed into this engagement because of the whole Voldemort Gearing Up to Destroy Us All thing. Ginny clings to the hypothesis that Fleur is a cow, and then refers to her as "Phlegm". So that explains the title, I guess. Further, Ginny explains that her mom's gonna nip this marriage thing in the bud, by having Tonks come over all the time. The theory, I guess, is that Bill's supposed to fall madly in love with Tonks if she comes over often enough. So I guess shipping isn't confined to the readers, then.
Hermione and Ginny constantly refer to her as Phlegm, and really, that isn't THAT funny. I'm thinking there's much better nicknames for someone named "Fleur Delacour". "Fleur" alone is silly enough if you pronounce it all goofy. "Flooo-er". You've also got "Fleur Delasewer," "Floozy Delacour," "Flirt Delacour," and of course "Bitch Whorebitch Hosebeast From Hell Die Die Die You Bitch I Hate You."
And while I'm on the subject, I don't think anyone named "Hermione" or "Weasley" has any business making fun of people's names. I came up with "Whore-mione" and "Her-whiney" a lot quicker than all those variants on Fluer's name. And Ginny's either short for gin the liquor, gin rummy the card game, or the word "vagina". Any seventh grader could and would be playing each of those possibilities to their fullest.
The conversation soon turns to what's got Tonks so depressed. It has something to do with Sirius Black's death, and the Iron Law of Mike Reading This Book is that I don't give two craps about Sirius Black's death in the last one. Ginny gets called downstairs, leaving the nWo to discuss more pressing matters, like how that stupid joke shop is doing. Arrrgh.
Getting back on topic, Harry mentions he's taking private lessons with Big Al this year, which causes Ron to exclaim "Blimey." I swear I'm not making this up. "Blimey" is one of those words I use to make fun of these characters, and here he is, actually using it in a sentence. Let me make my intentions clear: I fully intend to finish this book, but if Ron says "'ere now, govner!" then all bets are off, and I'm Audi 5000. To explain why he's taking private lessons, Harry comes clean about the whole prophecy, confirming what little the Outsiders had figured out from the newspapers. The prophecy petty much states that Harry's and Voldemort cannot coexist, and neither could live while the other survives. Put in much more awesome wording: One shall stand, one shall fall.
...
"Why throw away your life so recklessly?"
"That's a question you should ask yourself, Megatron."
Sorry, I got sidetracked there for a second. Since this is a kid's book instead of a kid's movie about giant robots, the tension is lifted when Hermione triggers one of the stupid prank supplies in Fred and George's room. Apparently, a little mechanical fist punched her in the face, hard enough to give her a black eye. You know, I'm not much on practical jokes, but that's pretty hardcore, if you ask me. I was hoping before that Fred and George wouldn't put in an appearance in this book, but now I want to see their shop just long enough for Hermione to barge in and beat their asses.
Anywho, the discussion then turns to how Harry must stand a chance if Dumbledore would devote this sort of attention to training him. This is encouraging to Harry, who's just relieved that he's not being looked upon as some kind of freak. Maybe he's just insecure, but I don't know why he'd feel stigmatized by any of this. Even if this Chosen One business meant Harry was marked for death, Ron and Hermione sure as hell aren't gonna be rooting for the other guy. Well, maybe Hermione if Voldemort looks enough like Johnny Depp. Maybe Ron too, since Johnny Depp vaguely resembles a woman most of the time. Still, as Sifl and Olly taught us, rock 'n' roll friends check each other's books back in, even when they may be destroyed in some impending battle with an unspeakable evil.
Suddenly, everyone starts flipping out because it's report card day. Especially Hermione. Really, it's kind of pathetic watching her fret over this stuff. Finally, Ron tells her to shut up, because she's not the only one nervous about all this. See, this is the sort of subtle interplay that makes me wonder how oblivious that Pumpkin Pie crap is. All I've heard for some time now is how Ron and Hermione are totally gonna hook up, based on the interplay between them in the last five books, while your Harry/Hermione shippers deny that any of this bore any significance. And these are actual Harry Potter fans who read all the books and cared what happens to the characters, and insist that dirt flavored candy is actually a good idea. Me, I'm just some jerk who picked up this one volume purely for heckling purposes, and it's patently obvious to me that there's infinitely more chemistry between Ron and Hermione than there is between Harry and Hermione. If there's something both sides of the shipping wars can take from this, it's that the Harmony people really have no clue, and the Her-Ron-Mione-Whatever-They're Called people shouldn't be that proud of themselves for figuring it out. Yeah, you called it, but that's like calling that milk goes in last when you're making cereal. I suppose the idea of Ron snapping at his One True Love is hard to take for some, but that's how guys have to talk to Type A's like Hermione. Same way Han Solo wouldn't back down from Princess Leia. If this were someone less high-strung... say, I don't know, Counselor Troi from Star Trek, he'd take a softer approach, but it isn't, so he's not.
So then the owls come, bearing the damn report cards. This leads to one of the stupidest exchanges I've ever read, and I've read Rob Liefeld's entire run on X-Force, people.
RON: They're definitely owls.
HARRY: And there are three of them.
HERMIONE: One for each of us.
Yeah, real gifted students there. Before anyone can ask how the owls stay up in the air, they land and drop off their wares. I barely remember what grades I got my sophomore year, so I'm not that interested in how these three did. For some reason, Harry's grades are tabulated in full, yet Rowling still feels the need to list them in the prose as well. "Well, we're N.E.W.T. students now!" Ron announces. Super.
The chapter finally closes with Harry's slight disappointment that his grades aren't quite good enough to qualify him as an Auror. For some reason, he just figured that was a fitting job for him, since the Aurors are the guys whose job it is to go find Voldemort and stomp a mudhole in him. I'm not sure I follow the logic here. Harry's either gonna beat Voldemort or die trying (You hear that, Potter? DIE trying.), so what's it matter if it matches his career description or not? Besides, if he does beat the guy, then he'll have succeeded where the Aurors have obviously failed, so I don't see why he'd want to be involved with them in the first place. Then again, he seemed to think being the Chosen One would make him unpopular at school, so this kid's clearly got issues.
RATING: BAD. Let's see, a whole chapter about the following:
1) The thrilling new developments for Harry...'s friend...'s brothers and sisters.
2) Report card results, which are kind of a formality at this point, since the next 498 pages sort of hinge on Harry moving on to the next grade.
3) Dissing on Fleur, who really doesn't seem to be that bad a person. If Fleur isn't a Death Eater in disguise or something, her entire appearance here is probably a colossal waste of space.
It's almost going somewhere, but this is more like a plot cul-de-sac than anything else. Voldemort's STILL out there, Harry STILL hasn't started classes, and Snape STILL hasn't done anything to justify his whole "I'm still evil" speech in Chapter Two. The bright side is that Rowling at least managed to go without a whole chapter without digging up Amelia Bones' corpse. I find myself feeling less and less guilty about paying half-price for this book, because I'm getting the impression that half of it is just filler anyway. Like Crow suggested once, there's a story here, but it's packed in foam peanuts, and this chapter here is one of the foam peanuts. Everyone talks about how great it is that J.K. Rowling is out there writing 600+ page books for kids to read, but the implication everyone seems to take for granted is that there's supposed to be 600 pages of story, as well. I'm 104 pages in, and I feel like I'm somewhere on page fifty of a much shorter novel.
One of the most recent things I've read was Robert E. Howard's novella A Witch Shall Be Born. If I recall correctly, the entire story was about as long as the first five chapters of Half-Blood Prince. What irks me is that there's probably someone out there (this is no knock on HP fans, but on literary elitists in general) who probably thinks reading HBP is a more worthwhile endeavor simply because it's longer. It's an interesting contrast, now that I think about it, because Robert E. Howard was writing short stories to submit to fantasy magazines in the 30's, an environment where you were paid by the word, and editors appreciated a writer's ability to tell an exciting, entertaining story as succinctly (read: inexpensively) as possible. While clearly possessing a talent for storytelling, it's very apparent to me that Rowling's in no hurry here, and her editor is hardly worried about the readers getting bored or frightened off by a 652 page book. The result is this lackadaisical pace, where we literally follow Harry Potter's every action from 11:00 P.M. onward, skipping ahead only when he falls asleep, and sometimes not even then, as we see in Chapter 3.
So yeah, the way I figure it, there's about three hundred pages of actual story here, evenly dispersed throughout a volume of six hundred fifty-two. Not evenly enough, I'm afraid, since Chapter Five doesn't seem to have much at all.
NEXT: Draco does stuff. I probably won't spend as much time discussing it as I did this time around.