deadlyhollow | Chapter Thirty-Two -- The Elder Wand

Current Mood: bitchy

Chapter Thirty-Two -- The Elder Wand

Today's spork is by

quinby.

***

Chapter Thirty-Two -- The Elder Wand

Welcome, Ladies and Gentlemen to Final Fantasy Harry Potter. This entire chapter reads, to my eyes at least, like the end of a Final Fantasy or Kingdom Hearts video game. You have to fight everyone you've already fought again, almost ad nauseum. So, here we go, the remind of everything and everyone who's annoyed us at school before. Or, well, almost everything. *cough*

When we join our ~~anti~~hero, Fred has just been killed. Damnit. Now, this has probably been said by the previous sporker, but, it bears repeating. Why, Jo? Why did you have to kill just one of the twins? It makes no frelling story sense. They're a set. You can't just have one or the other of them. In fact, if you kill one of them, the remaining one is going to hurt worse, because such a large part of him is gone. George shouldn't have to suffer than much. It's not fair to him. I wouldn't be surprised if he drinks himself to death or something. They should have gone out with a bang. Together.

Dead!Fred is dead, but his death is quickly drowned out by ~~Aragorn's~~ Aragog's spider bebes, who have somehow inexplicably joined in the fight. Now, I haven't been reading the rest of the chapters very carefully, but, um, what? Why do we all of a sudden have spiders attacking Hogwarts? If I remember Book Two right, the spiders said that they'd eat anyone who came within eyeshot. If the Death Eaters had penetrated the ~~Pointless~~ Forbidden Forest, they would have been eaten. Not to mention that you can't exactly -convince- man-eating spiders to do anything. If they don't want to go fight, they won't. They'll just eat the food that stupidly wandered in. I would berate Jo for her lack of logic, but I think that's beyond useful now.

After leaving Dead!Fred where a suit of armour used to be, Percy runs off in a cloud of rage, leaving Hermione to pull Ron behind a tapestry. And, in a lovely display of teenage hormone, Harry thinks she's attempting to snog Ron. Huh? I haven't been in a scary lethal battle, but I do know the difference between holding someone back and embracing. After a bit of Hermione and Ron arguing, Harry's brain turns back to his hormones, and he's yet again pining for Ginny. *sigh* Worrying is alright, but sheesh.

Hermione then gives an impassioned, desperate plea to the boys, saying that they're the only ones who can end it. Lovely conceit there, Hermione. You're getting a case of Petra Syndrome. (For the un-initiated, Petra is a character from Ender's Game, who started as one of the few girls in a military environment (and an amazing badass to boot), but changed in subsequent books to a whiny baby-factory.) You think you're the only one who can do anything, but that's the illogic of the wizards for you.

To continue the Ender's Game metaphor, let's look at Harry's connection to Moldy Shorts. In the Enderverse, the more connected two people are, the more connected their souls. Everyone has lauded the connection between Harry and Voldy almost ad nauseum, so it's not a surprise that Harry finds it simple to find Voldy. Here's something else, though. If one logically looks at the connection, Harry should have been able to find the Horcruxes just by looking for the bits of Voldy's soul in them. He has a connection to Voldy thus he has a connection to Voldy's soul. Interesting thought.

Moving on, Harry sees Darth Moldy in the Shack meditating on his wickedness and talking to ~~Alice~~ Lucius Malfoy. It seems that the Git has lost his son. (Oh, la, what a loss.) Malfoy thinks that Voldy should go find Potter himself. Nope. Bad idea. Voldy "knows" that Potter will find him. Instead, Voldy asks Malfoy to go find Snape. Malfoy flees, frightened (Malfoy? Scared? That doesn't exactly fit. He's stared down more. But then again, it's good to see him as an actual human being. Poor boo.)

Zoom out to the Trio in the thick of the battle. Harry explains it all, Hermione's outraged that Voldy's sitting on his ass, and then each of them in turn throw caution to the winds and say they'll go. Two Death Eaters break up the moment, and Hermione comes up with an amazing spell. The battle rages on as the Trio run around under the Cloak. McGonagall has a herd of rampaging desks, Draco gets his ass saved, but gets a bloody nose. Neville comes by with plants, and Professor Trelawney starts doing one of the most useful things shes ever done by throwing crystal balls at Death Eaters. All in all, as battles go, it's rather a lovely description.

However, as things go, it just gets worse. The Spider Swarm is still coming, but Hagrid, oddly true to form runs out to keep people from hurting the spiders. *sigh* Hagrid, seriously. For once, can you -not- be scarily attached to strange animals? The spiders, true to their form, jump on the Large Food Source they're greeted with, and, well, we all know what will likely come of that. To add to the Old Friends Gone Wrong tour, a quite grown-up Grawp comes out of the woods and attacks anything hurting Hagrid. Harry still wants to save Hagrid, everyone realizes that Grawp is actually a giant, and the monster attacking the castle now attacks the giant.

And then, what else would appear, but a pack of Dementors. The trio show their impotence in the face of despair, and are now saved by Luna, Ernie and Seamus. Harry is so caught up in himself that he has to be reminded by Luna how to make a Patronus. Dangit, Harry. Quit feeling sorry for yourself and get the damned thing done. You've been training for basically seven years for this moment. Get going. And Jo? Enough with the Trail of Enemies Past. This is starting to feel like a Final Fantasy boss battle where you have to fight everyone you've fought before on your way to the end. (Or, perhaps that's just because I've been playing too much Kingdom Hearts.)

In a sadly misplaced reversal of a previous moment, Ron forgets his magic and longs for Crookshanks. Hermione reminds him that he's a wizard, and Ron floats a twig to stop the tree. Harry hesitates, but is pushed through the (now even smaller!) tunnel by Ron, who comes behind him with Hermione. Scurrying through the tunnel, he emerges out the other end covered in the cloak and eavesdropping.

Snape and Voldy are talking, Snape pleading to find Potter and bring him to the Dark Lord. Then, however, we get to the meat of the matter. Voldy asks Snape why the wand isn't working, and pontificates about how very good he is at magic, and how the wand just isn't doing it for him. *cough* Poor Voldy. He's wand impotent. I really don't want to know what he's like in the sack. Anyway, Voldy goes on and on, in true Dark Lord style wondering what will happen when he meets Potter. Can he kill Potter? Will he be able to perform well... oh, wait. Sorry. Got carried away.

Anyway, Voldy keeps pressing Snape on why the wand isn't doing it for him. He reveals, though, that the wand isn't working because it is actually Snape who should be wielding the wand. Oh. Maybe that's why Dumbles was so insistent that it was Snape who kill him. Snape wasn't going to use the wand. Or, perhaps Dumbles wanted Snape to use the wand. At the very least, Dumbles had to realize that making Snape the master of the wand would be signing the man's death warrant. Lovely man. *disgusted face*

Voldy waves the wand at Nagini's enchanted cage, and she obeys her master, biting Snape. Lacking remorse, (well, duh. The man doesn't know the meaning of the -word-), he puts Nagini back in her cage, and goes off into the battle with a wand that "would now do his full bidding". Wait. If Harry and Voldy are so connected (and Voldy has sensed Harry before), why didn't he know that Harry was around? How could he just walk by and not do anything. A couple possibilities here. First, that he wanted a larger scene when he killed Harry, or second, that he didn't know. I'm putting my money on third: Rowling didn't want it to end here. It would be a bad end, so, well, logic goes out the window again.

After Voldy's gone, Harry and the Trio approach the dying!Snape and in true Video Game style, something's happening to the dying man. A silver memory appears, and Harry catches it in a bottle Hermione conjured. After asking Harry to look at him, he dies.

... anti-climactic if you ask me. The battle being over we go on to ~~the cut scene~~ whatever is in the memory.

That, though, is for other minds than mine.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Luna and her friends PWN the Trio"

Yes. Yes they do.

Pacing, she must learn pacing.

And has Harry managed to do anything in this book. Anything at all? Anywhere?
*sob*
Couldn't we have had Luna and Neville as the heroes?

He's angsted a lot and walked into traps!
...Wait. You meant something productive, didn't you? I'm sorry, but your hero is in another book.

*sigh*
Harry may win the "most useless hero" award. If he even qualifies as a hero by now. Old Dumbles really did turn him into a sheep for the slaughter, didn't he.

I think that he lost all right to be called a hero when he Crucio'd Amycus. He'd been annoyingly passive up till then, but...the way I figure it, a grey character or an anti-hero could develop noble qualities or feel remorse for his/her actions and become heroic. By the same token, if the traditional heroic character does something vicious or wrong that the villains have been condemned for doing, does it with all the enthusiasm of the bad guys and feels no remorse, regret, horror, etc. afterwards...

...then, to my way of thinking, the heroic character is not a hero anymore, and isn't going to be ever again.

Harry has had so many "not a hero" moments that I can't count them. Trying to Crucio Bellatrix. Using the mourning of a supposed friend to get Slughorn's memory--now that was completely vile. Intimidating Sluggy into giving him that memory after Hagrid passed out drunk. Attacking Snape with a fatal spell when he knew there were a thousand other spells that would be more likely to capture the man. Trying to kill Snape with Avada Kedavra. His inability to think or act. This scene. I'm sure people can think of others.

Harry isn't a hero, save in the eyes of his creator. It's a shame that she doesn't realize it. I don't like the fact that a generation is now thinking that passivity, lack of thought and casual cruelty are heroic traits.

passivity, lack of thought and casual cruelty are heroic traits.

And this runs in the whole series. Why, you have just described Lily and the Marauders, and by now I don´t even have to mention our dear old Dumbledore.

Why, are you a SLYTHERIN at heart??? SHAME!!! Any Gryffindor would instantly recognize these as the heart of heroism.

Pacing and tone. Two chapters ago it was Looney Tunes, with the Snape-shaped hole in the window, then we have some epic battle, and now Harry has found Snape's Easter Egg by pushing Triangle-Circle-R1-Up-Up.

I cheered when Luna, Seamus and Ernie saved the trio's bacon. (Hooray for a significant action by a Hufflepuff! More!)

Then I melted when Luna and Harry had their moment immediately afterward, when she gave him hope by reminding her that they were still there, and still fighting.

And then I got really, really pissed off. We have these flashes of wonderful character interaction that hint at how good it could have been, but that's all they are - flashes and moments, fleeting and ephemeral.

I could go off on several other rants about the way romance has been treated in the latter books of this series, but let me just say this. If Ginny was to be his One Twu Wuv, would it have killed JKR to give the above scene to Ginny instead of Luna? Mind you, I love that it was Luna, because I adore the little nutball, but why not have it be the Hero's Twu Wuv that has this touching moment with him in the middle of the chaos?

Then again, I've seen touching moments with Harry and Luna for a while now. There was their talk at the end of OOTP, their Just Friends date in HBP, and the twin Rushes Of Affection he had upon seeing her at Dumbles's funeral and seeing the, um, inside of her bedroom.

I would list all the Touching Moments he has had over the years with Hermione as well, but I don't have that long.

Where were the Touching Moments with Ginny? With the rearing of the scaly thing? With the feelings like firewhiskey? With the hours spent staring at her dot on the Marauders' Map? With the years that he more or less ignored her?

What a waste.

I agree - Luna and Neville were the heroes of this book. Wish they could have been in it a little more.

Edited 2008-02-09 07:24 (UTC)

I think just about every character is assassinated in this book - it's almost like she was doing it deliberately. I want this to be the END of it, and I shall leave you all hating everyone. In my case she succeeded, except for Luna and Neville (and Abe) of course. So much potential wasted - look at Percy, for another example - what was the POINT of "Prefects who gained power" (and you are trying to tell me that Riddle wasn't in there? and Percy going over to the Ministry if he was going to be completely wasted and just turn up and say "Oh Hai, I'm sorry."

grrrrr.

A reader can often tell when an author gets so sick of a book they are writing when they dash off the ending and just tie up the ends in a slap dash fashion and she does this in SPADES.

Excellent and beautifully vicious spork

xxx

So much potential wasted - look at Percy, for another example - what was the POINT of "Prefects who gained power" (and you are trying to tell me that Riddle wasn't in there? and Percy going over to the Ministry if he was going to be completely wasted and just turn up and say "Oh Hai, I'm sorry."

Yeah, I don't get this subplot either. What was the point of ostracizing Percy from his family? If JKR didn't want to write more of him, simply have him move to London and be done with it. I suspect this ties in with the whole "Arthur was supposed to die in OotP". But since she chickened out and didn't kill him after all, this went nowhere and she simply decided to keep Percy's story as it was.

(deleted comment)

Hm...actually, I wouldn't trust Harry to know the difference between unconscious (or faking it) and dead. Perhaps Snape waited until the Trio was safely away, swigged some antidote, and departed for a South Seas island.

I wouldn't trust Harry to know the difference between unconscious (or faking it) and dead.

"Or faking it" -- indeed. The most damning bit seems to be:

something in the depths of the dark pair seemed to vanish, leaving them fixed, blank, and empty

but three pages prior there is something almost the same, where Snape is clearly still alive:

Snape’s face was like a death mask. It was marble white and so still that when he spoke, it was a shock to see that anyone lived behind the blank eyes.

So hey, it could happen.

So we are supposed to believe that the Potions Master would have no antidotes or tricks up his sleeve to combat snakebite?

No. We are supposed to believe that the Potions Master, DADA expert, and Head of Slytherin, who had been leading a double life for decades, devoted to bringing down a dark wizard with a notorious affinity for snakes, would have no tricks up his sleeve to combat snakebite. Snarl, I think, doesn't quite cut it. If I was Rowling, I'd call it a Snape-shaped plot hole, but I can't sink that low without lots of booze.

I always thought that he BLED to death. You know, two HUGE puncture wounds in the neck... possibly one through an artery...

Please don't tell me JKR intended it to be death by poison. Please.

Even that doesn't really make sense in a magical world. Oh, sure, Harry couldn't be arsed to learn magic, but this Snape, the Half Blood Prince. Surely he learned a healing spell or two...or twelve. (Or invented one...or two...or twelve.)

Also, in this case, where the special property of the venom is that it keeps wounds open, there is a known specific antidote for it, already in existence. Unless St. Mungo's, you know, destroyed all they made and burned the recipe, then Severus has over two years in which to get himself some one way or another, a year and some months of which he was still a member of the Order, as far as I can tell.

I think it was an attempt of 'humor' on her side. She must've been tired of questions like 'is Snape a vampire', so she had him *bitten in the neck* and die.

Did I tell you that I loathe her sense of humor as much as I loathe her ethics and her ideas about love, nobility, virtue and oh, just about anything?

Please. Tell us how you really feel. Express yourself fully. Please.

Well, if you insist.. (BG!)

I loathe, loathe, *loathe* JKR.
I wouldn't mind her so much if she was clever enough to have written a series where the mindset of terrorists (join a secret society led by mystic beardy guy who turned out have, let us say, questionable motives but follow him nevertheless because beardy fuhrer type is 'all that stands between Us and Evuhl. Believe that a quarter of the population is Evuhl. Train a sekrit army to fight against Teh Evuhl. Find out that beardy Glorious Leader wants you to die in Glorious Fight Against Evuhl and mindlessly do so because the Glorious Beardy Guy said so and besides, you will be awarded with 72 virgins in the afterlife. Uh, okay, no 72 virgins for Harry - he wouldn't know what to do with *one* virgin anyway. Perhaps release his chestmonster at her? - but he *does* get cheered on by his 'beloved dead' on the way to his Revenge/Doom.)

As I said, if JKR had *wanted* to write a handbook on How to become a Mindless Soldier/Suicide Bomber againt Teh Evuh Fill In The Blank Space, then I would've admired her. I would've hated her ethics, but I would've admired her balls. But she doesn't even understand what she has wrote. She honestly thinks that an obnoxious, self-obsessed teenager who sits on his effing ass the whole time, emoting about how sorry he feels for himself is a hero. A teenager who for seven years never learned an effing thing about his world, about the people in it nor about himself. A teenager who wouldn't know selfreflection if it fell unto his pointed head.
JKR seems to think that 'love' is nagging and fighting (Lily and the Weasleys) and that 'justice' means permanently disfiguring the face of teenagers. She actually seems to think that there are people who are 'tainted' by 'bad blood' and who will therefore never be any good, no matter what they do, but there are also people who are born 'good', no matter how churlish, cruel, thoughtless, thoughtlessly brutal, stupid and lazy they behave.

The whole series reads like a giant parody. It stamps on every moral and ethic I've been brought up with and turns it on its head. And again, if she had *meant* it to be a parody, I would've admired her cleverness, but the scary thing is that this.. this.. *travesty* is actually how the woman sees the world. And we made her a multi-millionaire. How sick is *that*?

What you wrote made me think that about the Solzhenitsyn quote about the line between good and evil running through one's own heart, and that JKR's true moral failing is that she tries to create a world in which it's external--which is what we all want to think anyhow. Then I actually looked up the quote, and it's even more a propos than I had realized.

Solzhenitsyn (from Gulag Archipelago)
“In the intoxication of youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer and an oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments…. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties, [nor between Houses, Jo!] but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts.”

Jo succeeds in convincing herself, if not us, that evil can be externalized. Everyone in her world (possibly excepting Severus and some of the other Slytherins, but definitely INCLUDING Albus—which explains a lot about Albus’s treatment of Severus and his House) insists that the line is not in the heart, but separating off a despised group.

When the Death Eaters took over the MoM, they drew their line between Muggles/Muggleborns and people with a Wizarding ancestor. The hardcore Purebloods draw their line between Purebloods and everyone else. The Marauders drew theirs, apparently, between themselves and everyone else. Most of the Gryffindors de facto draw it between Gryffindor and the other houses. Jo draws it between the three houses and Slytherin. It’s all the same line: what my group does is good or at worst justified, what yours does is evil or at best for the wrong motives. And as the storyteller she ultimately twisted the plot to make it so in DH, even in those story arcs (like Draco's, Severus's and Peter's) that could most satisfyingly have gone a different way.

The terrible thing is, Harry does grow morally through the series. Negatively. So does Hermione; the first year girl would never have maimed a fellow student for life. And in retrospect we can see it starts almost as soon as children are exposed to Hogwarts. When Harry meets Draco in Madame Malkin’s, Draco’s attempts to impress and befriend Harry backfire. Why? Because Draco says he wants to bend the first-year rules to have his own broom and play Quidditch, and this assertion of special privilege reminds Harry of his bullying cousin. A month later, the “fair” McGonnagall gives Harry his own broom and position on the Quidditch team, and he accepts the undue privilege with alacrity. Hermione learns to purchase friendship with lying by Halloween—having discovered that hard work, intelligence, and insisting on fair play make her a “horror” to her Gryffindor peers.

Very young children have both empathy and a sense of fair play. So, according to recent studies, do chimpanzees. But systematic training can destroy both qualities, and Hogwarts under Dumbledore does an excellent job of doing so. Kudos to Albus for making children into clones of himself.

Oh God, her humour is so tired. The first three books kinda worked because those were the silly sort of jokes kids *would* find funny. But the kids grew up and SHE didn't. Nobody did! GUH!

Why, Jo? Why did you have to kill just one of the twins?

This plot turn ticked me off to no end. Dead Hedwig. Dead Dobby. Dead Fred. Three never-harmed-no-one faves killed by JKR. I think she killed Fred as Fred rhymes with Dead, and this way she could recall who she offed during interviews. It was a very poor "resolution of the twin" choice which is one of the tenets of alchemy...oh, why bother with any interesting pre-b7 theories....nevermind, back to despondency.

Malfoy? Scared? That doesn't exactly fit

Just saying: Jo seems rather obsessed with neutering the males on page.

The Spider Swarm is still coming, but Hagrid, oddly true to form runs out to keep people from hurting the spiders. *sigh* Hagrid, seriously

Friggin' Hagrid. Maybe he has been emblamatic of Jo's potential illogical plot choices all along. *faceslap*

After Voldy's gone, Harry and the Trio approach the dying!Snape and in true Video Game style, something's happening to the dying man. A silver memory appears, and Harry catches it in a bottle Hermione conjured. After asking Harry to look at him, he dies.

And the most interesting character in the whole series dies passively, bleeding on the floor in front of Sir Harry the Dense. Cue soaring music as we ponder the waste. B7 killed my passion for the entire series, and this last scene is Exhibit A, your Honor.

Hagrid should be dead by now. In my opinion he should have died in book 5. When he did not die in book 5 I though for sure he would in book 6. Why is he still here? Shouldn't he have been killed off along with Sirius and Dumbledore as part of the heroes journey. Why does being a half-giant ensure immortality when being a giant does not?

It's as illogical as Remus and Tonks having to die just because Mr. Weasley lived. As illogical as Snape supposedly shuffling off the mortal coil from a snake bite. WTF?

Personally I think Jo had a Wheel O' Death! and just spun it for random victims to kill.

Not to mention that you can't exactly -convince- man-eating spiders to do anything. If they don't want to go fight, they won't.

Imperius?

McGonagall has a herd of rampaging desks [...] throwing crystal balls at Death Eaters

I *loved* these two bits, the desks especially. One of the spots where the slapstick actually worked. It was like old times.

At the very least, Dumbles had to realize that making Snape the master of the wand would be signing the man's death warrant. Lovely man. *disgusted face*

*nods* I mean, I dunno, maybe there wasn't any other way at that point. I'm dubious, but that's a separate debate. What really raises my hackles is that all Dumbles has to say about this later is "yeah, that didn't work out so well. Poor Severus." Poor Severus. YARGH!

The spiders make no sense at all. Even if I *try* the best I can come up with is that the DEs managed to take them by surprise and drive them into the castle as a diversion. (You will notice that none of the DEs who had managed to get into the castle already seem to act like the spiders are on their side.) And that Hagrid managed to lead them back out into the forest, and they followed him, because they *knew* him.

Still doesn't explain him being tied to the tree in the clearing and no spiders in sight when Harry finally kept his appointment. But since apparantly his whole purpose in the last three books was to be on hand to carry Harry's apparantly dead body back to the castle, it doesn't need to make sense...

"Dead!Fred is dead, but his death is quickly drowned out by Aragorn's Aragog's spider bebes, who have somehow inexplicably joined in the fight. Now, I haven't been reading the rest of the chapters very carefully, but, um, what? Why do we all of a sudden have spiders attacking Hogwarts? If I remember Book Two right, the spiders said that they'd eat anyone who came within eyeshot."

Not to mention that in Chamber of secrets Aragog told that all spiders, including Acromantulas, fear the basilisk above all other living things. So, in DH we should believe that when Voldy (who represent serpents and basilisk, and who has had basilisk running amok twice) calls they come?

Harry hesitates, but is pushed through the (now even smaller!) tunnel by Ron, who comes behind him with Hermione.

Doesn't that describe just about everything Harry related? "Harry hesitates, but is pushed..."

Gah.

Funny spork! Thank you.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Chapter Thirty-Two -- The Elder Wand

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Passivity, lack of thought, and casual cruelty as heroic traits

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Honesty re JKR

Major ranting against JKR - if you like the woman, don't read

Re: Major ranting against JKR - if you like the woman, don't read

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject