Today's sporking is by

anitaray. She's on vacation until February 20th.

***

Chapter 30: The Sacking of Severus Snape

In which Harry runs about hither and tither watching other people do stuff, and Voldemort chills for a bit. A LONG bit.

… Harry's scar burned savagely, the starry room vanished from sight, and he was standing upon an outcrop of rock beneath a cliff, and the sea was washing around him and there was a triumph in his heart – They have the boy.

Holy run-on sentence, Batman!

Also, WTF are you still doing at the entrance of the cave, Voldie? Did someone put Impedimenta on this guy? Because seriously, let's track his movements, OK?

TRIO	VOLDIECAKES
Fallen off the dragon's back, relaxing on the island beach.	Chillin'.
Harry can haz vision?	Finds out trio stole the cup, goes postal on Bella's ass.
Harry shares vision; trio analyses vision.	Chillin'.
Apparate to Hogsmeade	Chillin'.
Set off the Caterwauling Charm, hide from DEs and fend off Dementors.	Chillin'.
Rescued by Aberforth. Eat large but simple dinner.	Chillin'.
Aberforth shares long sob story of Albus, Ariana and Grindelwald.	Chillin'.
Neville shows up.	Chillin'. 'Cause he doesn't fear Neville like he should, the retard!
Neville tells trio what's been happening at Hogwarts all year.	Chillin'.
Many happy reunions and more stories at the Room of Requirement.	Chillin'.
Harry can haz vision?	Apparates to Gaunt shack, finds ring missing, criez.
Arguments and conversations in RoR.	Cryin'.
Luna, Dean, Fred, George, Lee and Ginny show up.	Cryin'.
Happy reunions, arguments and pointless conversation.	Cryin'.
Luna mentions the Diadem, people scoff, Harry's inetersted.	Cryin'.
Harry can haz vision?	Flying to the cave.
Harry & Luna dodge teachers and corridor patrol to reach Ravenclaw Tower.	Flyin'.
Luna answers riddle, they enter the Ravenclaw common room.	Flyin'.
Alecto catches Harry and alerts Voldemort.	O HAI! I IZ FINALLY AT CAVE!

Anyway. Luna stuns Alecto, and expresses surprise at how noisy the spell is. Uh, no, Luna, you just suck at casting it.

Then the ceiling of the common room begins to tremble, because the contractor the Hogwarts founders hired ripped them off and used papier mache instead of stone to build Ravenclaw Tower. Luna's spell was so craptastically loud, it apparently woke every single Ravenclaw and brought them crowding into the common room.

Then one brave little first-year darted up to her and prodded her backside with his big toe.

"I think she might be dead!" he shouted with delight.

*huggles* I love dumb kids. I wish Alecto would come to and AK his ass. :) Just to show him what "dead" really is.

And now Harry can haz vision again! Anybody wanna guess how far from the entrance of the cave Voldycakes has gotten in the time it took for *ALL OF RAVENCLAW* to wake up, get out of bed, assemble in the common room and make darling remarks about Stunned Alecto?

Anybody?

He's flying again. Flying across the lake. Hasn't even reached the basin.

I think it's because he was distracted by the hot lesbian babes doing it in the totally secluded sweet spot right at the entrance of the cave, you know? But I shouldn't say that in this fandom, I guess? Let's make it hot gay dudes. OK, then.

Back in Ravenclaw Tower, Amycus shows up on the other side of the Ravenclaw door and tries to bully the door into letting him in with such profound observations as "Garn!" and "Shut it!" and "Open the door!". Once again, JKR shows all the subtlety of a troll in the characterisation of these DEs. Cowardly, bullying, dumb or inarticulate = evil. We get it, Jo!!!!!

McGonagall shows up, pwns the Ravendoor as well as Amycus, and enters the Ravenclaw common room. Ravenclaws flee at the sight of Amycus, who goes postal when he sees Alecto lying Stunned.

"What've they done, the little whelps?" he screamed. "I'll Cruciate the lot of 'em …

In which we are told the verb form of the Cruciatus Curse. Somehow, this just seems like bad grammar to me. Ugh.

Yadda yadda yadda... McGonagall and Amycus talking...

"Why would Harry Potter try to get inside Ravenclaw Tower! Potter belongs in my House!"

Beneath the disbelief and anger, Harry heard a little strain of pride in her voice and affection for Minerva McGonagall gushed up inside him.

Hold on to it, Harry. You'll need this pride to justify what you're going to do in 5... 4... 3... 2...

... aaaaand GO!

Harry pulled the Cloak off himself, raised his wand, and said, "You shouldn't have done that."

As Amycus spun around, Harry shouted, "Crucio!"

And here follows the most shattering line in the whole series this side of "We sort too soon":

"I see what Bellatrix meant," said Harry, the blood thundering through his brain, "you need to really mean it."

Ah, Harry. *Hand over heart*. You've grown into such a gallant, chivalrous boy. Look at you, defending a defenceless woman's precious honour by horribly, deliberately torturing a retarded idiot (who says "garn" and "gorn") with an Unforgiveable Dark curse... for the egregious sin of defiling her sacrosanct robes with his vile sputum. Bravo! Bravo! *weeps*

And now McGonagall is going to kick the shit out of him for doing that...

"Potter, that was foolish!"

"He spat at you," said Harry.

"Potter, I -- that was very -- gallant of you – "

... or maybe not. WTF?! McGonagall is some simpering airhead female now?

Anyway, Harry warns McGonagall (though I think at this point she's a polyjuiced crossover parody character from South Park, just like all the rest of them) that Voldemort is on his way to Hogwarts.

Which, by the way, is a filthy lie. Because Harry can haz vision again:

In a distant part of Harry's brain, that part connected to the angry, burning scar, he could see Voldemort sailing fast over the dark lake in the ghostly green boat ... He had nearly reached the island where the stone basin stood ...

ALL THIS WHILE, people! He was just flying across the lake this whole time! He STILL hasn't reached the basin!

Maybe he's Inferi-sexual, too? I wish Harry could have some visions of *that* instead of all this pointless chillin', cryin' and flyin'.

Harry comes to again, and tells McGonagall he needs to find Ravenclaw's lost Diadem. McG is still a bit stunned, but not so stunned that she can't start casting Unforgiveable curses herself, following Our Brave Hero's excellent example – because, of course, she has forgotten how to use "Stupefy" or "Petrificus Totalus" or "Expelliarmus" or any of the million other NON-Dark NON-Unforgiveable spells she knows...

Before Harry or Luna could act, Professor McGonagall rose to her feet, pointed her wand at the groggy Death Eater, and said, "Imperio."

The sole purpose of the Unforgiveable, as far as I can see, is to make Amycus confiscate Alecto's wand and hand it over to McGonagall. Seriously, way to defang your most "dangerous" and "complicated" spells, Jo! First you use Patronuses for text messaging, and now Cruciatus as revenge for spitting, Imperius to disarm your opponents?

How about Avada Kedavra for zapping those pesky mosquitoes next?

Anyway, Harry suddenly haz vision again, and Voldemort has FINALLY reached the damn stone basin and found it bereft of Horcruxes and fake-Horcruxes alike. I wish Dumbledore and Harry had failed to get the fake-Horcrux out of there in the first place, just so I could see Voldiecakes's reaction when he figures out he was pwned by Regulus Black of all people. Damn. Now he'll just think Dumbledore and Harry did this one, too.

[/vision]

Pointless conversation. McGonagall is insisting that Harry should get out of the school, until Harry drops the D-word and suddenly McG is all impressed and shit that it's not really Harry rushing into danger by himself, he's doing it on Dumbledore's say-so. That settles it, then.

They plan to evacuate as many underage students as possible out from Aberforth's bar (really, if you can put a Caterwauling Charm over the whole village of Hogsmeade, why not put one INSIDE all the homes and shops, too? Did Voldemort think NOBODY inside of Hogsmeade would allow Harry into their homes? Not even Albus Dumbledore's own brother? Hell, so many of the shops are boarded up and empty – like Honeydukes and Zonko's – that Harry wouldn't even need anybody's help evading the Caterwauling Charm if he'd only just had some brains.

Wait, I think I answered my own question... Voldemort seems to be quite aware of just how dumb Harry & Co. are.

Anyway, they all get out of the Ravenclaw common room to start getting the castle's defences up, evacuating people, etc. But wait! There's somebody in the corridors! Who could it be? Surely not -

"It is I," said a low voice.

From behind a suit of armor stepped Severus Snape.

Hallelujah! At the tail-end of Chapter 30 comes the most enigmatic, engaging, elusive, erotic, ebullient (er... I just ran out of applicable e- adjectives, sorry) character in the series. He wants to know if McGonagall has seen Harry. Ooooooooh... this could get interesting...

And then he stays on screen for all of two pages. Granted, he fights something nifty with McGonagall, but as soon as Flitwick shows up, Snape flies away. (What is up with Flitwick and Snape anyway? In HBP, too, Flitwick miraculously lost consciousness while talking to Snape...)

With a tingle of horror, Harry saw in the distance a huge, bat-like shape flying through the darkness toward the perimeter wall.

And he has left a...

Snape-shaped hole in the window.

...

Really, Jo? You're going for cartoon humour when you've got your most enigmatic, engaging, elusive, erotic character FINALLY on the page, fleeing though he may be?

Ah, well, time to cut to Harry's vision, where he sees Voldemort flying back over the Inferi-infested lake water. And, inexplicably, Voldemort's BOAT bumps into the "shore" of the lake. Huh? Wasn't he flying this whole time?

"Professor, we've got to barricade the school, he's coming now!"

No, I think you have a couple of hours still before he can get here, Harry, judging by his general speed...

So all the head teachers get together and decide on plans of action, going over how Voldie's just about to show up, how the school is in danger, how they need to protect it, AGAIN. Sprout goes off listing all the OMG!scary plants she can use against the Death Eaters. Yeah, Sprout, but they're all PLANTS, ok? And the most dangerous of them, Devil's Snare, was defeated in minutes by three first-year kids in the first book of the series. Hagrid siccing monsters on the DEs would be slightly impressive, this certainly is not.

Flitwick goes and starts chanting "enormously complex spells" through a window, "harnessing the power of the wind" against Voldemort and the DEs. Again, this would have been so much more impressive if only Jo'd taken the time to SHOW, not TELL. We never hear of this horrible wind power again, so I'm just going to assume Flitwick's spellwork is shoddy.

McGonagall is off animating the suits of armour. This is so corny.

Noticeably, Slughorn is the only head teacher without a plan or even determination to kick Voldie's ass.

"My word," he puffed, pale and sweaty, his walrus moustache aquiver.

All right, the Slytherins are all cowardly custards who shake in their moustaches like jelly. We get it, JO!!!!

Harry and Luna run back to the Room of Requirement. There are a whole new bunch of people there: Kingsley and Lupin and all his old Quidditch buddies and the Weasleys. Everybody's asking him, "What's going on?" so Harry has to explain ALL OVER AGAIN everything we've just seen, heard, read, and had explained to other characters repeatedly throughout this chapter. Voldemort is coming. People are getting ready to fight. Ba dum bum bish.

Everybody rushes off to fight, except for the Weasleys, who have Family Issues to settle.

"You're under-age!" Mrs. Weasley shouted at her daughter as Harry approached. "I won't permit it! The boys, yes, but you, you've got to go home!"

And this is why I cannot stand Molly Weasleys's stinking, hypocritical guts. Most everyone else in the family (except for Fred, bless him) chimes in and agrees with Molly. Ginny pleads and begs and stamps her feet instead of giving them all the finger and stalking out of the room with her wand held high. By the end, she's reduced to tears, and she looks at Harry:

She looked at him beseechingly, but he shook his head and she turned away bitterly.

"Fine," she said

Ginny, darling, repeat after me: "MY EX-BOYFRIEND IS NOT THE BOSS OF ME. I WILL RESIST MY AUTHOR-PRESCRIBED STEREOTYPE. FOREVER AND EVER, AMEN."

The farce of Ginny's life is interrupted when Percy finally shows up and apologises to his scummy family. Fred, darling boy that he is, is the first to speak to Percy and he moves to embrace him, but–

[Molly] ran forwards, pushed Fred aside, and pulled Percy into a strangling hug.

The paragon of motherhood, ladies and gentlemen.

While the Weasleys reconcile, Lupin and Fleur are shouting about, weirdly, over a photograph of baby Teddy Lupin. I honestly don't get the point of this sequence. Couldn't they have simply left the room if it was making them uncomfortable to be around the Weasleys' very private moment? There IS a battle going on outside, and they're needed.

But whatever. Reconciliation is done. Ginny gets to stay in the RoR. And Harry has another vision. Voldemort has finally reached Hogwarts. Just to recap:

HARRY	VOLDYCAKES
Watched teachers talk about the battle situation.	Chillin' outside the caves.
Watched Flitwick do spells.	Chillin' outside the caves.
Watched Sprout hatch her diabolical plant plans.	Chillin' outside the caves.
Watched Slughorn sputter.	Chillin' outside the caves.
Watched McGonagall animate the suits of armour.	Chillin' outside the caves.
Watched people in the RoR rush off to battle.	Chillin' outside the caves.
Watched the Weasleys argue, reconcile, make out, whatever.	Chillin' outside the caves.
Watched Lupin brandish his son's photograph.	Chillin' outside the caves.
Haz vision.	Apparated to Hogwarts.

[Voldemort] was looking through the high wrought-iron gates with winged boars on pillars at either side, looking through the dark grounds toward the castle, which was ablaze with lights.

Eh? Voldemort had winged boars with pillars on either side of him? He was looking THROUGH the dark grounds? And if the castle is ABLAZE with light, wouldn't at least some of it, I don't know, spill onto the dark grounds??

Dammit, Jo!

And so ends the saga of the "Sacking" of Severus Snape. Where the eponymous character, muchly awaited by fans, was on screen for a total of, oh, two minutes, and the rest of the chapter was spent pointlessly, repeatedly "analyzing the situation" where Voldemort is "about to show up" at Hogwarts, which he only does after taking 8 hours to check that he's missing two Horcruxes.

Next: More pointless stories, more muchly beloved characters skewered, STILL NO SNAPE OR VOLDEMORT ON SCREEN.