Deathly Hallows, Chapter 29: The Lost Diadem

[oneandthetruth]

Neville hugs the Trio and rather high-handedly tells Aberforth reinforcements are coming, and they should be sent along through the portrait hole, too. It’s no wonder Aberforth’s quarters look so shabby, with all those people running through them day and night.

As Neville and the Trio walk through the tunnel into Hogwarts, they update each other on

Comments

[maidofkent]

Re wizards and their bodily functions, I think the bathroom problem is a UK thing. 'Bathroom' is usually used to mean 'a room containing a bath'. Yes, it's not uncommon for the bathroom to also contain a toilet, but it's also pretty common for the toilet to be separate. Very few Brits say 'I'm going to the bathroom', unless they're actually going to have a bath or shower, and even then it would probably be 'I'm going to have a bath'. If it's something else, it's going to the toilet, loo or whatever name they use, regardless of whether that appliance is in the bathroom or not. So, I think that probably there were toilet facilities, and the actual bathing facilities were added when those girly girls came along and wanted to be clean. (I'm a woman, you know what we're like

[annoni_no]

Re wizards and their bodily functions, I think the bathroom problem is a UK thing. 'Bathroom' is usually used to mean 'a room containing a bath'.

Yes. Using 'bathroom' as a synonym or euphemism for lavatory is primarily a US/Canadian quirk of language.

Personally, I'm amused by the thought that the boys were so enamored with the idea of being La Resistance -The danger! The excitement! The noble sacrifice of personal comfort in the pursuit of Justice! - that it took the girls coming in with a figurative slap upside the head and an incredulous "Do you have magic or not?!" to bring them back to Earth

[oryx_leucoryx]

Well-behaved Gryffs - I think the leading candidate would be Percy (who only ever fights with his oppressive family, and still looks out for them). But how many do we see often enough to know? Is Lavender ever shown to be behaving badly? What about Seamus?

BTW why does Harry need to get out from underneath the cloak to examine the statue? The whole point of it is that it is one-way see-through. I know, how else would he be caught?

[jana_ch]

Percy was Sorted too soon. He would have been much happier in another House, away from the horrible Twins--not to mention Ginny

[aikaterini]

/his grandmother is on the run and finally approves of him./

Yes, she doesn’t appreciate him when he’s his quiet, Herbology-loving self. No, it’s only when he puts himself in harm’s way that she finally condescends to appreciate her own grandson. How wonderful.

/There are no Slytherins, of course, because we might not have gotten the message during the previous 4,000 pages that they’re bigoted, untrustworthy snobs./

Yep, so much for the Houses uniting. Once again, the question of why Slytherin House even still exists at this point, except to serve as a punching bag, remains unsolved.

/when he refuses the help of the other fighters, insisting he, Hermione, and Ron have to accomplish their secret mission alone/

So, it wasn’t only in HBP that Harry neglected the DA. Here, when their help would be a great advantage, he still puts them off. Here’s a hint, Harry, maybe if the DA had known about the Horcruxes from the beginning, they could have helped you find them and it would’ve taken much less time for you, Ron, and Hermione to

[terri_testing]

/Yes, she doesn’t appreciate him when he’s his quiet, Herbology-loving self. No, it’s only when he puts himself in harm’s way that she finally condescends to appreciate her own grandson. How wonderful

[oryx_leucoryx]

Neville can see thestrals - he saw his grandfather (which one?) die. Still, flying cross-country is a big deal.

[terri_testing]

It's a measure of this book that Jo manages even to tarnish Neville and Luna. Yes, after six books stubbornly trying to figure out what is right and to do it in despite of his own fears and weaknesses, Neville here abandons independent thought to model himself on Harry. Indeed, on Harry's worst traits.

And he succeeds, at least temporarily.

He tells us that he esteems insulting a hated authoriy figure exactly equally with rescuing children from torture.

Yep, jeering that Alecto must be part-Muggle (what worse could a Pureblood like Neville say of her!) is exactly as brave and virtuous, as risking the Cruciatus to save an eleven-year-old from the same.

[sunnyskywalker]

It's tragic. This blew past me the first time I read DH, because I was so happy to see that Neville was willing to reach out to a bunch of kids who'd mocked him for 6 years and help them anyway, that one of the main goals was hiding kids to keep them safe (how un-Gryffindor!), and that he was promoting inter-house cooperation (well, between 3 of the houses) for something more important than a study club--and we know Harry and his friends really didn't consider the DA to be more than a study club or they wouldn't have cancelled it in 6th year.

But he does brag about mouthing off pointlessly, in a particularly nasty way, like it's a lark and no more or less important than protecting little kids from torture.

Since the books are over and JKR can't really prove me wrong, I'm going to say that Neville did some regrettable things during a difficult time, but eventually grew out of it and realized where he'd gone wrong. (Maybe some Muggleborn student snaps at him after the war and says s/he didn't much care that Neville was on the winning

[oneandthetruth]

I think you've hit on why the Harry Potter books are not classic literature and never will be: In classic books that purport to promote good, the more closely and more frequently you read the books, the more good you see in them. (I can't think of classic lit that promotes evil, except maybe The Prince. Come to think of it, I wonder if JKR was referring to that when she had Severus call himself the Half-Blood Prince?)

But in HP, the more closely you read these books that ostensibly promote good, the more evil you see in them. A good example is how terri_testing, a normally very astute analyst of the series, completely missed that Xeno Lovegood had been TORTURED--yes, I said it, Brad! Here's another T-word for you: tough luck--in chapter 24, even though she'd read it several times. There's so much bad stuff--writing, editing, behavior, morals, double standards, etc--that it overwhelms the reader and becomes impossible to process. This is the third sporking of DH that I know of. All three are thorough; all three cover mostly different

[oryx_leucoryx]

There were so many theories about the supposed connection between Severus Snape, Machiavelli and Lucius Septimus Severus - the Roman emperor that served as the model of the Prince (he killed Albinus! and died in York!). Oh well...

[for_diddled]

"Tell me again why Snape gets ridiculed for having greasy hair? Surely that should be common, especially among teenagers, if wizards don’t bathe often."Actually the reason people get greasy hair if they stop bathing is that by shampooing their hair normally they wash off all the natural oils, and your scalp overcompensates and produces too much. If you stop shampooing the scalp will stop producing so many oils and your hair will go back to normal. (Apparently -- I've never tried it, because it's supposed to take three to six months for this to happen, and in the meantime you'll be all greasy and horrible. In a world where people don't bathe often, though, their hair should be fine -- and indeed people from non-Western countries where they don't shampoo themselves regularly don't generally have noticeably greasy hair