deadlyhollow | CHAPTER 13: The Muggle-Born Registration Commission (Reply)

Actually, I'm stepping on oblivionhold 's turf here - no offence meant. But in the interest of keeping the sporkage going, I'm posting a spork of Chapter 13.

I'll be happy to take it down if oblivionhold comes by to drop his/her chapter off. :)

On with it, then.

In which "Plans" fail, Logic extends her vacation from the book, Ron Weasley proves himself an utter liability and JKR tries to put one over us too many times to count.

So the trio have made it into the Ministry. Now what?

Harry has been in charge of a Ministry break-in once before. At the time, he was thrown into the situation by that freak VoldieVision with no warning and no preparation. He was going out of his mind with worry for Sirius's life and sanity. But the hextet still managed to:

Use the tools at their disposal (Sirius's knife, a diversion by Ginny and the twins) to break into Umbridge's office
... for a good reason: to check if Sirius was home
Wriggle out from the clutches of their captors with an ingeniously concocted spur-of-the-moment plan
Travel to London
Break into the Ministry, find the place they were looking for
Evade the clutches of Death Eaters with the help of the training they've been doing all year.

However improbable it seems, once you make allowances for the fact that this is a children's adventure book after all, you have to admit the hextet were remarkably resourceful and together when it came to planning that trip to the Ministry. They managed to cover all the contingencies to the best of their ability, even on the spur of the moment, and they relied on their training when things went awry.

But now?

...the plan he had been carefully concocting with Ron and Hermione over the past four weeks seemed laughably childish. They had concentrated all their efforts on getting inside without being detected: They had not given a moment’s thought to what they would do if they were forced to separate.

Another classic instance of JKR openly admitting, ladies and gentlemen, that her book sucks and her heroes suck harder. For heaven's sake, Jo, if you find yourself apologising for your book in the book itself (Harry knows his plan to get the locket is crappy, the trio is fully aware they're spending waaaay too much time camping pointlessly, etc etc) don't you think you should, I don't know, change your story a little? Make it less boring, make your heroes less stupid? Fuck! JKR takes this book to record levels of FAIL.

Oh, and also? WTF is that colon doing there?

Anyway, having been separated from both Ron and Hermione, Harry hasn't a clue what to do so he decides to break into Umbridge's office. A bit slow on the uptake, this guy. The woman kept her Hogwarts office boobytrapped with security spells to keep away a bunch of *kids*. He thinks he can saunter in now and she'll never know?

It seemed most unlikely that Umbridge would keep her jewelry in her office, but on the other hand it seemed foolish not to search it to make sure.

No, Harry, it's downright prudent not to give yourself away at this moment. But that would mean cutting out some repetitive Dumbledore backstory, so in you go, I guess!

SNIP! for boring details of anti-muggle pamphlets being printed. Leave it to Rowling to make a completely pointless detour to slow down the pace of a chapter that's already going at a snail's crawl.

Somebody breaks Harry's reverie by mentioning magic eyes.

Harry looked too, and the rage reared in him like a snake.

WHOA! Stop right there, now. Why would the Voldemort part of Harry be reacting to the eye in this way? JKR is up to something very, very tricksy here: she's trying to claim that all of Harry's hotheaded rage, even the righteous indignation, comes from the bit of Voldemort in him. Disgusting. Now all the CAPSLOCKING and the Crucio on Amycus and everything else has a "innocent" excuse. Harry has been just achieved *plausible deniability*.

Excuse me while I puke a little.

Where there might have been a peephole on a Muggle front door, a large, round eye with a bright blue iris had been set into the wood – an eye that was shockingly familiar to anybody who had known Alastor Moody.

Ewwww.

Snip!

He wrenched the telescope out of the door, leaving a hole behind, pulled the magical eyeball out of it, and placed it in his pocket.

EWWWWW!

Snip! Because Harry looks through Umbridge's drawers. How exciting. Somebody kill me now.

Then he finds himself a nice distraction: Umbridge has a file on Arthur Weasley which says the whole Weasley family's movements are being tracked.

See, now I can't think why Rowling couldn't have included one or two of these tracking reports in the file at this point for Harry to read. Here's a wonderful built-in excuse to give Harry a moment of poignant emotional nostalgia of life with the Weasleys, and perhaps a couple of concrete examples of how the war is affecting the everyday lives of people who are NOT part of the trio... But of course we can't have that in this alien land where events of hyperbolic proportions are taking place in nice, neat, eminently ignorable general terms with nary a mention of a single specific person/story that would make us care about THAT instead of the dumb camping trip.

But anyway, Harry, that self centered bastard, doesn't give two hoots that his favourite family in the whole world is in such grave danger. No, all he cares about is that little mention of HIMSELF in the file:

“Undesirable Number One,” Harry muttered under his breath... Angrier than ever, he proceeded to grope in the bottoms of the vases and baskets of dried flowers

But then he spots ALBUS! Albus Dumbledore! Mentor, friend, Harry's one true love! So of course he drops everything and grabs the boo with the picture of Dumbledore on it...

his heart skipped a beat.

See? Harry/Albus OTP. It's canon, people.

Anyway, Harry's wet himself in excitement as he flips through the book and comes across the page with the picture of Dumbledore and Grindelwald - aka the golden haired Adonis with a wild, gleeful look - and Harry drools over both of them, but then the door of Umbridge's office opens. DUM DUM DUM DAAAAM!

If Thicknesse had not been looking over his shoulder as he entered, Harry would not have had time to pull the Invisibility Cloak over himself. ... Harry ... hastily replaced [the book] upon the shelf.

I call bullshit. Thicknesse, unless he is exceptionally slow - and by that I mean he walks and talks literally in superslow motion as if stuck in an atrsy- farsty movie, or perhaps an impedimenta - cannot POSSIBLY take so long to turn his freakin' head that Harry has time to slip the Invisibility cloak over the extremely tall body of Runcorn, as well as replace the book on its shelf without being caught. Seriously. No way, not buying it. How gullible does this woman think I am?! If I'd started reading the book at this chapter, this is the point where I would have thrown it across the room and given up on it.

Sigh. The spork must go on. More than two-thirds of the chapter yet to go, I must speed up.

Speeding back toward the lifts, Harry reviewed his options. It had never been likely that the locket was here at the Ministry,

Wait, WHAT? Are you telling me you sat around making a moronic Ministry-break-in plan for FOUR WEEKS when you didn't even think the locket would BE there?! Don't get me wrong, it makes *all kinds* of sense not to look for the locket at the Ministry. (Ever since we found out Umbridge has the locket, I've thought the trio should send Umbridge an owl posing as a new kitty-themed home decor shop in the back streets of Diagon Alley or something, wait for her to show up salivating to spend her galleons on the pink cat-shaped gazebo, and ambush her. It's not like she is capable of defending herself - her stint at Hogwarts left us with no doubt that she can't perform the most basic spells, right?) But JKR, *for the second time in the same chapter*, has openly admitted that her heroes are stupid, their plan is stupid and this whole story is stupid. Another apology-by-admission. I don't know about you, but I'm NOT in a forgiving mood.

But Harry has even lower depths of utter stupidity to plumb...

Their priority now had to be to leave the Ministry before they were exposed, and try again another day.

When I read that, let me tell you, I was tearing my hair out in frustration and chanting "please, please, please" in a desperate sort of way. Please don't let this whole fucking *chapter* be such a fucking waste of time...

To [Harry's] enormous relief, when [the lift] rattled to a halt at level two, a soaking-wet and wild-eyed Ron got in.

“M-morning,” he stammered to Harry as the lift set off again.

“Ron, it’s me, Harry!”

Harry! Blimey, I forgot what you looked like – ”

In JKR's world we can always be certain of at least one thing: no task is so urgent that we cannot take a moment to mock Ronald Weasley's lack of brains.

Just after Harry finishes telling Ron where Hermione is, Arthur Weasley gets into the lift, and asks Rom why he's so wet. Ron moans about not knowing how to make it stop raining.

“Yes, a lot of offices have been raining lately,” said Mr. Weasley. “Did you try Meterolojinx Recanto? It worked for Bletchley.”

“Meteolojinx Recanto?” whispered Ron. “No, I didn’t. Thanks, D – I mean, thanks, Arthur.”

The lift doors opened; ... and Ron darted ... out of sight.

WHUT. So Harry had this incredible stroke of luck where he managed to find Ron, but RON RUNS AWAY?! What, he takes his responsibility to make it stop raining in that guy's office seriously now? Has he completely forgotten why the trio is in the Ministry? And Harry LETS HIM GET AWAY??

SNIP! Harry gives Ron up as a bad job and goes off to find Hermione. And then he runs into some Dementors on the way. You've got to be kidding me. This is like, JKR is simply throwing things in Harry's way to drag the chapter out and kill some time so she doesn't have to face writing that interminable camping trip. ..... I almost don't blame her.

Anyway. The Dementors are guarding some prisoners - Muggleborns, Harry guesses. But - Hallelujah - instead of casting a Patronus to drive the Dementors away and give himself away in the process, Harry just ignores the plight of the poor Muggleborns and sets off to find Umbridge. Remarkable focus, this young man shows. Quite a breath of fresh air after the blubbering Ron Weasley. Gah. How that kid managed to play good chess in Book 1, I'll never know.

SNIP! SNIP! SNIP! Big chunks of this are just godawful, pointless exposition. Harry finds the dumgeon in which Umbridge is located, and Mary Catermole is being tried in an incredibly cartoonish "evil" way. So Harry sneaks up to Hermione to say boo.

“I’m behind you,” he whispered into Hermione’s ear.

As he had expected, she jumped so violently she nearly overturned the bottle of ink with which she was supposed to be recording the interview, but both Umbridge and Yaxley were concentrating upon Mrs. Cattermole, and this went unnoticed.

So he EXPECTED her to jump? And he still sneaked up on her anyway? And I'm totally not buying that in that deathly silent courtroom subdued by the presence of Dementors, where only source of sound is two people speaking, Hermione jumping so violently and upsetting an inkbottle would just go unnoticed. NOT BUYING IT, JO!!

“Could you please tell us from which witch or wizard you took that wand?”

See, now this is midly interesting, though on the face of it, completely retarded, but we can't stop to hear HOW exactly the Ministry thinks Muggleborns steal their magic. Because that would just show how little thought JKR has given to this whole thing. At least the Nazis had a pseudosceintific rationalisation for their racial superiority, a pseudoeconomic justification for accusing the Jews of taking jobs belonging to the Aryans. But this is beyond insane. Did the Ministry win the entire wizarding population over by telling them Muggles stole our wands and that's why they have magic? WTF?

SNIP! Mundane questioning continues, Umbridge leans forward at some point, and Slytherin's lcoket hangs out of her robes. Umbridge says this is a family heirloom of her own, which for some reason really, really enrages Harry. So he finally whips his wand out and Stuns both Yaxley and Umbridge. FINALLY. Some action. So the Dementors start swarming around, and Harry casts his Patronus, which works way better than Umbridge's feeble one.

Really, JKR, which is it? All through OotP Umbridge was totally incompetent t magic, and now she's casting Patronuses, albeit feeble ones? Or isn't a Patronus charm that difficult to master? But then again, HERMIONE tries to conjure a Patronus here, and she can't... since when was Umbridge more competent than Hermione!Sue at magic? Or is it that Hermione can't be allowed to do the Patronus charm because that's supposed to be *Harry's* spell?... but when it came to Umbridge, all logic just went out of the window, all previous books just got negated, and she was able to do the charm? My head hurts.

So on we go. To Harry doing something incredibly stupid...

“You?” [Mrs. Cattermole] whispered, gazing into [Runcorn-Harry's] face. “But – but Reg said you were the one who submitted my name for questioning!”

“Did I?” muttered Harry, tugging at the chains binding her arms, “Well, I’ve had a change of heart."

DUMB! What if she sees Runcorn tomorrow and he's just as evil as ever of course, but now she TRUSTS him, Harry? Ever thought of that?

But Hermione-Sue is doing something smart -

“I know that, Harry, but if she wakes up and the locket’s gone – I need to duplicate it – Geminio! There… That should fool her….”

Good thinking, girl. But also - how fucking idiotic is a charm called "Geminio"? JKR's really scraping the bottom of the barrel here.

But then, after she can't make a Patronus to fight off the Dementors, Harry FINALLY comes back to his old self as he devises a spur-of-the-moment plan to get all the muggle-borns out of the Ministry to safety. He uses his disguise as a baddie to allow the Muggleborns to leave -

“Their blood is pure,” said Harry, and his deep voice echoed impressively through the hall. “Purer than many of yours, I daresay. Off you go,” he boomed to the Muggle-borns, who scurried forward into the fireplaces and began to vanish in pairs.

But of course, Ronald Weasley's around to ruin the day, intentionally or otherwise...

Mrs. Cattermole looked over her shoulder. The real Reg Cattermole, no longer vomiting but pale and wan, had just come running out of a lift.

“R- Reg?”

She looked from her husband to Ron, who swore loudly.

Ah, well. It was too good to last. In the ensuing confusion, the trio manage to apparate away...

And then he saw the door to number twelve, Grimmauld Place, with its serpent door knocker, but before he could draw breath, there was a scream and a flash of purple light: Hermione’s hand was suddenly vicelike upon his and everything went dark again.

Yep. We've lost the good Harry again, because it's back on Hermione's shoulders to save the trio - a sorry state of affairs that will continue for the next, oh, 300 pages of this goddamned book.