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| Saturday, October 3, 2009 04:34 PM |
| Re-Potterizing: Progress Report 3 |
 by Fëanor |
I finished Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and I've just read the first couple chapters of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Lots of spoilers below.
- A couple of the most interesting and moving scenes in Order of the Phoenix didn't make it to the movie version: the sequence in which it's revealed that Harry's Aunt has more connections to and knowledge of the wizarding world than she has previously let on, and the scene where Mrs. Weasley attempts to evict a boggart from a desk in Sirius' house and finds herself overwhelmed. Petunia has been in the books from the very beginning - she's one of the first people you meet - so it's interesting to suddenly learn in the fifth book that there's much more to her than you realized. She's not just a one dimensional character; she has more depth. And there's history between her and Dumbledore. "Remember my last," he tells her. It's thanks to her, and the blood in her veins, that Harry is safe and protected each summer.
The scene where Mrs. Weasley confronts the boggart and it becomes in turn the dead body of each of the people she loves most is deeply moving, heartbreaking, and extremely illuminating. We see all at once into her most secret heart, and know what's been eating at her all summer.
- It's fascinating how childish Sirius Black can be. When Harry and Hermione warn him not to try to come visit them, because they fear he will be putting himself in real danger, he becomes petulant and angry, saying spitefully that Harry isn't as much like his father as he thought, and going off in a huff.
- I love Luna Lovegood's ridiculous roaring lion hat, which she wears to support the Gryffindor Quidditch team.
- The scene at Mungo's, when Harry and friends meet Neville and his grandmother by chance, is quite powerfully done. The way Neville protests that he is not ashamed of his parents, and the way he quietly slips the candy wrapper his mother has given him into his pocket to keep, despite being told by his grandmother to just throw it away, is really heartbreaking.
- I already loved the Weasley twins from the previous books, but they really come into their own in this book. I really cracked up when they blew up a picture of Harry and enchanted it to say "Umbridge stinks," and other similar things. It only got funnier as the enchantment wore off and the picture started blurting out random words at a very high volume. Also fantastic are the Weasleys' big anti-Umbridge pranks: the multiplying fireworks, and the swamp they dump in one of the hallways. Best of all is the incredibly bad-ass way they flip off Umbridge and fly right out from under her nose, their brooms still trailing the chains she tried to lock them down with. And then there's the wonderful way all the professors quietly support the Weasleys, making Umbridge come personally to round up the fireworks (because they're not sure they have the authority to do it themselves), and not helping to clear up the swamp. (In the end, Flitwick even keeps a small piece of the swamp and ropes it off, because it was such a good bit of magic.) Harry realizes almost immediately that the Weasleys will go down in Hogwarts legend, and there's something really wonderful about that. Also wonderful is how a bunch of the other students begin vying for position of chief Hogwarts troublemaker as soon as the Weasleys are gone, and the way Peeves doffs his hat to the Weasleys and becomes even more of a nuisance in deference to them.
- We see more of Dumbledore than ever before in this book, and he becomes both more impressive, and more human. When Dumbledore realizes he can take the blame for "Dumbledore's Army," and thus keep Harry safely in school, he does so immediately. But he also refuses to come quietly, and easily dispatches, without even getting winded, the four grown wizards who are attempting to apprehend him before vanishing in a flash of fire. Later he arrives in a towering fury at the Ministry, takes out some Death Eaters, and then personally engages in a very impressive full-on duel with Lord Voldemort himself.
But he's not perfect. He can't save Sirius. And later he opens up to Harry, puts his head in his hands, and admits he's made some terrible mistakes in how he handled all of this. When he tells Harry he didn't make him a prefect because he thought he had quite enough to deal with, and a tear runs down his face, it's quite moving.
- The Department of Mysteries is an amazing place, with a room for each of the mysteries of human existence: time, love (this room is locked), thought, death, the future. One of the more powerful metaphors in the book is the crumbling archway, from which whispering voices emanate, and from which there is no return. Rowling uses this as a powerful symbol of the inscrutability of death. Death and dealing with loss are further examined when Harry seeks out Nick and asks him desperately about the possibility of Sirius returning as a ghost. We learn what ghosts are - just a magical shadow of a person too afraid to move on. Harry's subsequent talk with Luna is even more moving and well done, as she assures him he'll see Sirius again - "Didn't you hear the voices?"
- Harry gets pretty irritating in this book, but I can't fault Rowling for that; after all, she's trying to write a teenager who's angry and feeling misunderstood all the time. Of course he's annoying!
- One of the more fascinating and unexpected moments in the series is when you learn that Harry's parents weren't saints - that his father was actually kind of a bully and an arrogant ass. It's unsettling, but it also makes Harry's parents seem more human and more real, and it helps you finally understand why Snape is so unrelentingly horrible to Harry.
- The revelation that either Harry or Neville could have been the subject of the prophecy, and that it was Voldemort's decision that ultimately made Harry the Chosen One, is a really fascinating one. I like the idea that Voldemort's act sort of finalized fate and solidified the prophecy. I also like the idea that Neville could just as easily have been the Chosen One. We've seen the two of them grow up side by side, with Neville almost always getting thrown into the middle of Harry's adventures, seemingly by chance. But maybe it wasn't chance after all. Neville really comes forward as a character in this book, too. He really develops a great deal, and becomes stronger, more confident, and more interesting.
- All in all I feel like Order of the Phoenix is one of the stronger entries in the series. It's clever, smartly plotted, entertaining, funny, and deeply moving. Even though I'd already read the book once, I found once I got into the last hundred pages or so that I simply couldn't put it down and had to stay up late to finish it.
- The scene near the opening of Half-Blood Prince when Snape makes the Unbreakable Vow is really powerful, especially when it's read with the knowledge of what's to come later in this book and the seventh book. The way Snape's face goes blank, and his hand twitches once, but doesn't pull away... But I'm glad I'm reading these all again, because I'm still trying to work through in my head why Snape kills Dumbledore in the end. My best guess is it's because both he and Dumbledore believed that if Snape killed Dumbledore, it would seal the trust that Voldemort and his followers had for Snape, thus putting him in the perfect position to destroy Voldemort, or at least assist in his destruction by passing on information from the inside. But we'll see if I have a stronger feeling about it when I get to the end again.
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