Deathly Hallows uberwank: Chapter 16, Godric's Hollow
Sorry this took so long to arrive. This chapter is both boring and overly sentimental, two qualities I abhore. Also, I recently discovered the Heroes graphic novel, in which (unlike here) interesting things happen to interesting characters.
Oh well.
Harry starts the chapter by waking up and immediately checking his flist for an update from Ron, before remembering that Ron deleted his journal last night. He and Hermione are sad. I feel this sends out a bad message to young fangirls or fanboys who might be wanting to delete their journals and leave the fandom, i.e. that anyone will give a shit.
Over the next few days, although it seems like aeons, they barely speak; Harry is reduced to staring at Ginny's dot on the Marauder's Map, watching it wandering about and feeling emo and sorry for himself. Man, you know things are bad when you're reduced to fwapping over a splot of ink. Well, it doesn't actually say he's fwapping, but he is. It's not like he's got anything else to do (and "reparo" doesn't work on GameCube controllers, so he doesn't even get to play Mario Kart! Ron's a bastard). Hermione is being emo for her own reasons, and not talking to him, so each of them sits in their own lack-of-a-Weasley induced fug, angsting and emoing and turning hopefully around whenever they catch a glimpse of anything orange out of the corner of their eye, but then retreating back into a deep depression when they realise it was just an old plastic bag caught in a tree.
I'm no Harmonian but in some ways I wish Harry and Hermione would at least dabble in screwing each other in these scenes, because it would at least be interesting. I can't think of anything more dull to read about than a pair of angsty teenagers sulking because they've each temporarily lost the resident annoying ginger kid in their lives.
This goes on for approximately ninety trillion years.
Or maybe like a couple of months. Either way, far too long. Harry and Hermione spend ages not doing anything and not saying anything and apparating about the place and occasionally talking to Phineas Nigellus. Harry even contemplates going back to Hogwarts until he remembers that a) he is "Undesirable Number One" and b) that would make him the world's biggest t00b. It gets colder, they camp in a bunch of places, they see Christmas decorations in windows and angst over those.
The "action" (ha!) of the chapter begins one night, when they are sitting around eating spaghetti bolognese (what, not stew?), made from ingredients Hermione took from a supermarket, dropping money into a cash register as she left. I can't even believe I'm going to be picky about this when there are people dying in wars and stuff, but here goes - Hermione's such a n00b for doing that. Look, I worked retail for years, and hated every minute of it, and every tiny detail that made it so sucky is as fresh in my memory as if it happened yesterday. And here's the thing - if you're a cashier, when you cash up at the end of your shift, your till is supposed to be dead on. If it's down (there's money missing), the default assumption is that you stole it. If it's up (extra money that shouldn't be there), the default assumption is that you short-changed someone, either by mistake or on purpose. Either way you get a bollocking.
What I'm saying is, if Hermione really wanted to be scrupulous, she should have just stolen the food. (That would have the added advantage of making her feel like some kind of anticapitalist revolutionary, which is an essential rite of passage for many middle-class British teenagers.) Of course, I have no reason to believe that the employee on that till was necessarily bollocked for this. It's just that, well, Hermione's being n00bish, and n00bishness pisses me off. Look, I'm in a filthy mood, all right.
Anyway, having not robbed a supermarket, they eat spaghetti bolognese and, uh, tinned pears. Man, in their position I'd be stealing, like, gourmet pizza and tiramisu and stuff. Hermione shows Harry her Beedle the Bard book, which has the deathly hallows symbol in it. He tells her it's the mark of Dumbledore's ex, which he knows because Viktor Krum told him. She reckons Grindelwald didn't have a mark. I despair. Months have gone by and this is as far as they've got. I see absolutely no reason for this, except that in a minute they decide to go to Godric's Hollow and, presumably to make things that little bit more sentimental and heart-wrenching and whatever, JK Rowling decided they needed to be there on Christmas Eve.
So, funnily enough, Harry decides to suggest to Hermione that they should go to Godric's Hollow, and funnily enough she agrees, although she wants to use the trip to look for the Master Sword of Gryffindor. Also, it transpires that Harry didn't know that Godric's Hollow was named after Godric Gryffindor, which really illustrates how much of a dumb fuck he is. I mean, OK, perhaps there have been loads of wizards called Godric, and we just haven't heard about them because they've only been mentioned off-page, in History of Magic class, or whatever. But what really gets me is that Harry seems massively surprised - like the idea that there might be a connection between GODRIC Gryffindor and GODRIC's Hollow never even occurred to him until Hermione said it. He's so stupid. Hermione even says so. Still - dumb fuck.
They talk about it a little more and then Hermione uses her jump-to-conclusions mat to decide that Bathilda Bagshot has the Lightsaber of Gryffindor and therefore they need to go and hang with her. Harry has the cheek to think she's being a bit stupid now, but doesn't say anything, not when going to Godric's Hollow is his "dearest wish" (well, right after boning Ginny, becoming a famous rapper, and killing Snape in a drive-by). They plan it all out, deciding to use both polyjuice and the cloaking device (that, right there, that's like the definition of "belt and braces"). Harry gets all sentimental and kind of nostalgic about going to Godric's Hollow, dribbling on about going "home", even though he has no memory of ever having been there. He goes on for a bit about how he should have grown up there and had brothers and sisters (including one sister, Ravenessa Starwitch, who has purple hair, marries Draco Malfoy and also has an affair with Legolas, and ends up saving the world), and had a birthday cake and stuff.
Anyway, having decided to go, they spend a week getting ready. This involves obtaining hairs from muggles in order to polyjuice up. Yes, you read that right - it takes them a week to find some hairs - oh, and for Hermione to stop being so paranoid as well. Eventually, off they go, apparating to the outskirts and walking in through the snow. (Hermione wants to walk under the cloak and magically hide their footprints. Harry reckons it isn't worth it, as they're in disguise and he wants to do ths properly, so they take off the cloak and walk normally. However, surely they are still leaving a trail of footprints that start in the middle of a patch of snow? Oh, whatever.)
In the village, there's a church and a pub and a war memorial. At least, it looks like a war memorial, but when you get close it's a statue of James and Lily and baby Harry. It's like one of those pictures of Jesus my grandfather had, where as you walk around the room the sacred heart looks like it's beating. You get the same kind of things in cereal sometimes, only there it's more likely to be a picture of Tony the Tiger doing something Stu-ish like slam-dunking a football while skateboarding.
Right, on with this. Seriously, you have no idea of the effort I'm having to put into this chapter. It's just so bloody boring and tedious and long - and this isn't even the most uneventful chapter in the book. Christ almighty. Right, come on. Harry and Hermione walk right past the pub, headed for the churchyard. (They are such total goths, it's unreal.) Coming from the church, they hear some carols. They figure out it must be Chriiiiiistmaaaaas. They look at graves. And OMG, it's Dumbledore's mum and sister. There's a quotation - well, it says it's a quotation, but it's really a bible verse (google offers, variously, Matthew 6:21, Luke 12:34 and something called the "Seven Steps To Financial Freedom". Hmm). It says, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also". I don't really understand what that's getting at, so here's one of my favourite quotations, in lieu of an explanation:
HAN SOLO: Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.
- Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Naturally, the grave sets Harry off wangsting about Dumbledore, and how - me and Dumbledore, we're the same, you know, dude? - and all the same old bollocks. While he does this, Hermione continues to wander about; after a while, she finds a grave with the funny rune symbol/mark of Dumbledore's ex/deathly hallows symbol/cheapo triforce thing on it. (Remember that, it'll be on the exam.)
More searching, and eventually Hermione finds Lily and James. The bible quote on their grave is "You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine". No, wait, I read that wrong. Really it's "the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death"; Hermione explains that it's to do with the afterlife. Look, I'm an atheist, all right. I have no energy to pull this apart, not least because that would be going way off topic. Whacking in multiple references to Star Wars and Zelda and Heroes is one thing, but segue-ing off into a debate over the very existence of God is so not what the Uberwank is for. So I'm just going to let you know that my lip is thoroughly curled at all this afterlife stuff, and I might re-read The God Delusion soon.
Harry takes little comfort in this, anyway, and has a good old cry. In a strange way I'm quite proud of him, for having believeable human emotions for once. Once he sorts himself out, he feels stupid for not bringing anything for the grave; Hermione conjures a wreath, they lay it on the grave. Harry's grief is such that he can't stay, and, arms around each other, they go. In many ways, it's really quite moving.
(On the other hand, while he hasn't done much crying specifically, Harry has been utterly rinsing the fact that his parents are dead for years. "Who wants the last cookie?" "Me! My parents are dead." "Whose turn is it to wash up?" "Not mine, my parents are dead." And so on. So, in conclusion, I am more or less indifferent to Harry's tears. Sorry. I do have a heart of ice, you know.)
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Oh well.
Click to viewHarry starts the chapter by waking up and immediately checking his flist for an update from Ron, before remembering that Ron deleted his journal last night. He and Hermione are sad. I feel this sends out a bad message to young fangirls or fanboys who might be wanting to delete their journals and leave the fandom, i.e. that anyone will give a shit.
Over the next few days, although it seems like aeons, they barely speak; Harry is reduced to staring at Ginny's dot on the Marauder's Map, watching it wandering about and feeling emo and sorry for himself. Man, you know things are bad when you're reduced to fwapping over a splot of ink. Well, it doesn't actually say he's fwapping, but he is. It's not like he's got anything else to do (and "reparo" doesn't work on GameCube controllers, so he doesn't even get to play Mario Kart! Ron's a bastard). Hermione is being emo for her own reasons, and not talking to him, so each of them sits in their own lack-of-a-Weasley induced fug, angsting and emoing and turning hopefully around whenever they catch a glimpse of anything orange out of the corner of their eye, but then retreating back into a deep depression when they realise it was just an old plastic bag caught in a tree.
I'm no Harmonian but in some ways I wish Harry and Hermione would at least dabble in screwing each other in these scenes, because it would at least be interesting. I can't think of anything more dull to read about than a pair of angsty teenagers sulking because they've each temporarily lost the resident annoying ginger kid in their lives.
This goes on for approximately ninety trillion years.
Or maybe like a couple of months. Either way, far too long. Harry and Hermione spend ages not doing anything and not saying anything and apparating about the place and occasionally talking to Phineas Nigellus. Harry even contemplates going back to Hogwarts until he remembers that a) he is "Undesirable Number One" and b) that would make him the world's biggest t00b. It gets colder, they camp in a bunch of places, they see Christmas decorations in windows and angst over those.
The "action" (ha!) of the chapter begins one night, when they are sitting around eating spaghetti bolognese (what, not stew?), made from ingredients Hermione took from a supermarket, dropping money into a cash register as she left. I can't even believe I'm going to be picky about this when there are people dying in wars and stuff, but here goes - Hermione's such a n00b for doing that. Look, I worked retail for years, and hated every minute of it, and every tiny detail that made it so sucky is as fresh in my memory as if it happened yesterday. And here's the thing - if you're a cashier, when you cash up at the end of your shift, your till is supposed to be dead on. If it's down (there's money missing), the default assumption is that you stole it. If it's up (extra money that shouldn't be there), the default assumption is that you short-changed someone, either by mistake or on purpose. Either way you get a bollocking.
What I'm saying is, if Hermione really wanted to be scrupulous, she should have just stolen the food. (That would have the added advantage of making her feel like some kind of anticapitalist revolutionary, which is an essential rite of passage for many middle-class British teenagers.) Of course, I have no reason to believe that the employee on that till was necessarily bollocked for this. It's just that, well, Hermione's being n00bish, and n00bishness pisses me off. Look, I'm in a filthy mood, all right.
Anyway, having not robbed a supermarket, they eat spaghetti bolognese and, uh, tinned pears. Man, in their position I'd be stealing, like, gourmet pizza and tiramisu and stuff. Hermione shows Harry her Beedle the Bard book, which has the deathly hallows symbol in it. He tells her it's the mark of Dumbledore's ex, which he knows because Viktor Krum told him. She reckons Grindelwald didn't have a mark. I despair. Months have gone by and this is as far as they've got. I see absolutely no reason for this, except that in a minute they decide to go to Godric's Hollow and, presumably to make things that little bit more sentimental and heart-wrenching and whatever, JK Rowling decided they needed to be there on Christmas Eve.
So, funnily enough, Harry decides to suggest to Hermione that they should go to Godric's Hollow, and funnily enough she agrees, although she wants to use the trip to look for the Master Sword of Gryffindor. Also, it transpires that Harry didn't know that Godric's Hollow was named after Godric Gryffindor, which really illustrates how much of a dumb fuck he is. I mean, OK, perhaps there have been loads of wizards called Godric, and we just haven't heard about them because they've only been mentioned off-page, in History of Magic class, or whatever. But what really gets me is that Harry seems massively surprised - like the idea that there might be a connection between GODRIC Gryffindor and GODRIC's Hollow never even occurred to him until Hermione said it. He's so stupid. Hermione even says so. Still - dumb fuck.
They talk about it a little more and then Hermione uses her jump-to-conclusions mat to decide that Bathilda Bagshot has the Lightsaber of Gryffindor and therefore they need to go and hang with her. Harry has the cheek to think she's being a bit stupid now, but doesn't say anything, not when going to Godric's Hollow is his "dearest wish" (well, right after boning Ginny, becoming a famous rapper, and killing Snape in a drive-by). They plan it all out, deciding to use both polyjuice and the cloaking device (that, right there, that's like the definition of "belt and braces"). Harry gets all sentimental and kind of nostalgic about going to Godric's Hollow, dribbling on about going "home", even though he has no memory of ever having been there. He goes on for a bit about how he should have grown up there and had brothers and sisters (including one sister, Ravenessa Starwitch, who has purple hair, marries Draco Malfoy and also has an affair with Legolas, and ends up saving the world), and had a birthday cake and stuff.
Anyway, having decided to go, they spend a week getting ready. This involves obtaining hairs from muggles in order to polyjuice up. Yes, you read that right - it takes them a week to find some hairs - oh, and for Hermione to stop being so paranoid as well. Eventually, off they go, apparating to the outskirts and walking in through the snow. (Hermione wants to walk under the cloak and magically hide their footprints. Harry reckons it isn't worth it, as they're in disguise and he wants to do ths properly, so they take off the cloak and walk normally. However, surely they are still leaving a trail of footprints that start in the middle of a patch of snow? Oh, whatever.)
In the village, there's a church and a pub and a war memorial. At least, it looks like a war memorial, but when you get close it's a statue of James and Lily and baby Harry. It's like one of those pictures of Jesus my grandfather had, where as you walk around the room the sacred heart looks like it's beating. You get the same kind of things in cereal sometimes, only there it's more likely to be a picture of Tony the Tiger doing something Stu-ish like slam-dunking a football while skateboarding.
Right, on with this. Seriously, you have no idea of the effort I'm having to put into this chapter. It's just so bloody boring and tedious and long - and this isn't even the most uneventful chapter in the book. Christ almighty. Right, come on. Harry and Hermione walk right past the pub, headed for the churchyard. (They are such total goths, it's unreal.) Coming from the church, they hear some carols. They figure out it must be Chriiiiiistmaaaaas. They look at graves. And OMG, it's Dumbledore's mum and sister. There's a quotation - well, it says it's a quotation, but it's really a bible verse (google offers, variously, Matthew 6:21, Luke 12:34 and something called the "Seven Steps To Financial Freedom". Hmm). It says, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also". I don't really understand what that's getting at, so here's one of my favourite quotations, in lieu of an explanation:
HAN SOLO: Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.
- Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Naturally, the grave sets Harry off wangsting about Dumbledore, and how - me and Dumbledore, we're the same, you know, dude? - and all the same old bollocks. While he does this, Hermione continues to wander about; after a while, she finds a grave with the funny rune symbol/mark of Dumbledore's ex/deathly hallows symbol/cheapo triforce thing on it. (Remember that, it'll be on the exam.)
More searching, and eventually Hermione finds Lily and James. The bible quote on their grave is "You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine". No, wait, I read that wrong. Really it's "the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death"; Hermione explains that it's to do with the afterlife. Look, I'm an atheist, all right. I have no energy to pull this apart, not least because that would be going way off topic. Whacking in multiple references to Star Wars and Zelda and Heroes is one thing, but segue-ing off into a debate over the very existence of God is so not what the Uberwank is for. So I'm just going to let you know that my lip is thoroughly curled at all this afterlife stuff, and I might re-read The God Delusion soon.
Harry takes little comfort in this, anyway, and has a good old cry. In a strange way I'm quite proud of him, for having believeable human emotions for once. Once he sorts himself out, he feels stupid for not bringing anything for the grave; Hermione conjures a wreath, they lay it on the grave. Harry's grief is such that he can't stay, and, arms around each other, they go. In many ways, it's really quite moving.
(On the other hand, while he hasn't done much crying specifically, Harry has been utterly rinsing the fact that his parents are dead for years. "Who wants the last cookie?" "Me! My parents are dead." "Whose turn is it to wash up?" "Not mine, my parents are dead." And so on. So, in conclusion, I am more or less indifferent to Harry's tears. Sorry. I do have a heart of ice, you know.)
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