Chapter Thirty-Four
The Department of MysteriesStill behind, and sadly going to become more so: I'm away for the next two weeks/months. (I'll still be here commenting, though.) Still, I'll be back pre-OotP, and owing about twelve chapters, so perhaps I can manage a kind of countdown every day, if that's okay with Mira
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How on earth does Luna stay on? Sticking charm?
So I presume security are absent because then Harry et al would have to turn in their wands and JKR couldn’t come up with a reason why they might be absent, other than whatever it is, it’s ominous? Good plotting, there! Not.
It's really bad, this bit. No security at all in a place that's been built up as the place where the most important things in the WW are kept? This place makes Hogwarts look like Fort Knox!
Gratitude! From Harry! Sure it’s to an animal, but still! *marks down*
Oh, but this is just a sign of Harry's great compassion that gives him so much pain. He's always kind to animals. Except when he's in a pissy mood...
Hee! Harry does have rather a utilitarian approach to friendship at times.
Ack! That link! Not for the link itself but because it contains the birth of the most annoying lj-er Harry-fan ever! That chick who rants on and on about her fanfic-version of Harry and pulls stuff out of her arse whenever somebody points out one of the many flaws in her arguments. You know, the one who's studying psychology (in high school maybe? Or freshman year at a bad college?) and has decided that Harry is suffering from post-traumatic stress and depression because he has to share a world with all those awful people and besides he's kept up at night worrying about bigotry and Neville.
Why is Hermione so frightened by the veil? Does she just instinctively sense that it will kill you to pass through it, or what?
I like the idea of it being because Hermione is practical and mundane and so scared of death--though probably it's also supposed to show us that she's instinctively right that the veil is something awesome and terrible. Surprised she hasn't read about it, really. You'd think that Death reduced to a literal cliche would appeal to her.
Third time that descriptions been used in this book. Bizaarely.
It does jump out at you, doesn't it?
You might think that Harry would be a little…oh, I don’t know, relieved? He thought Sirius was being tortured and possibly killed, and it turns out that perhaps he isn’t (even if it does have the side effect of Harry having to be wrong, which is almost worse) and they don’t have to face up to Voldemort, almost certainly with fatalities/serious injuries. But WOE. They don’t get their exciting adventure, and he, Harry, is embarrassed.
It is kind of hilarious. In a way I really do wish the DEs hadn't shown up, not just to save them the embarssment of being forced to act like idiots, but just so Harry would have to go home with egg on his face and get detention.
Why not? Because you know that when somebody took an object from the Ministry previously, ‘his brain (went) all funny and he couldn’t talk’ and had to be sent to St. Mungoes, because there were ‘defensive spells on it…to stop people touching it’, maybe? Mind you, I bet that would be pretty ‘exciting’. Ask Montague.
Even more so if Harry had told, say, Hermione to hand it to him. Maybe he could have knocked out two friends in one day.
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Oh, surely not?! (There should be some kind of competition...) Seriously, I fear that person (oddly enough, she emailed me today, after about a year... *looks into blocking users*)
If I had the vast experience of a high school psych class, I'd say she was a classic delusional, but sadly I just don't know as much about mental disorders as she obviously does (so ironic that's her chosen field...)
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http://www.livejournal.com/users/furiosity/116144.html?thread=1684656#t1684656
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Not that this essay isn't possibly completely accurate. But never does the moral framework of HP appear more fatuous, self-congratulatory and cruel than when somebody lays it out so you can fully appreciate it.
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I wasn't irked by Harry not asking for help or being clueless over girls, personally, and I'm very easily irritated. I was irked by him being a nasty, meanspirited jerk. I guess because...I'm a fangirl? I must have been too busy gazing at my Tom Felton/insert HP guy who is Teh Sexxor!111 here poster, and missed the part where Rowling expected me to find nasty meanspirited characters likeable and sympathetic. (I can like jerks, as my taste indicates very well, but as psychic_serpent has so insightfully worked out, I can't really reconcile what's being presented: Harry's a great guy, for example, although there's dozens of HP characters with similiar issues portrayal-wise; with what I'm reading.
Oh shit. I mean DRACO IS TEH HAWT!11 COME JOIN MY FANGIRL LEGION, WE WER LEATHER PANTZ!11
And what's with that odd Cho paragraphs? I mean, really, if we want to talk fangirls, the whole 'OMG, Cho is so evil, her horrible vagina forced Harry to put aside Quidditch and she's so awful, especially next to manly men like Cedric and Harry who is mine!1111' is afar stronger argument, ironically. Not to mention 'Even though Hermione is so very kind in giving the evil Cho so much credit by assuming she's a normal human being with complex emotions rather than a fame-crazed slut harpy, she is still not sensitive enough in realising that Harry is the most important person in this, and indeed, any situation.
Mind you, at least she and Cho redeemed themselves from the carnal sin of being goodlooking (bitches!) by showing that they thought well of Harry and Ron, which is the most 'moral' act you can make, apparently.
I see straussmonster liked it, of course. Perhaps they could go read each other pages on high school ethics classes and leave the sane alone.
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I mean, Cho's a regular teenaged girl, not perfect, not evil. Harry's a teenaged boy who thinks she's pretty, is irritated by the fact that she's things besides pretty, is insensitive. She gets mad at him, he gets mad at her.
Everything Harry does does not have to reveal his superior moral compass. I still fail to see any examples of Harry ever choosing what's right over what's easy, just because a) he rarely wants to do the easy thing when it comes to heroics (as opposed to when it comes to homework--and there he picks easy without a second thought); and b) what he wants to do almost always goes along with the "right" thing anyway. It's not like he made the hard choice in dumping Cho--she annoyed him and disagreed with him and he snapped at her. Easy.
Well, it goes back to the whole, "Harry makes a moral choice by turning down Slytherin!" idea.
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Somebody needs to write a fic where this happens, stat. A fic wherein Harry trots off, breaking all the rules and not a few of his classmates, believing that he's going to fight evil and save the world--and discovers that he's been well and truly hoaxed, and has to come back to Hogwarts with his tail between his legs and disembowel toads for Professor Snape.
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It would have been hilarious. But then Rowling would have spent several hundred pages setting up a flop of a climax, and I wouldn't have just lost track of what was going on; I would have thrown the book out the window.
It's a bit of a no-win situation, though - they don't know how to get out, they're there illegally, he's gotten his friends into a horrible mess... yet it looks more like he's upset at being wrong. Danger doesn't matter; rashness doesn't matter; Harry being wrong does. Because as long as Harry's right when he sprints off sans head on a hunch, there's not much of a problem. Even Harry realizes that he can't get away with that anymore - but then Dumbledore piles all the blame on himself, Harry transfers all his anger to him and Snape, and the message goes up in flames. Again.
I highly doubt that Rowling is purposely making Harry squirm back and forth on his way to enlightenment. It's really like Rowling's lost track of what she's saying. No surprise, with such a bloody long book, and an obsessive focus on the plot. I feel bad for her, because long books are really difficult to write. Still.
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