The Harry Potter Reread has plans to start a jug band, and could use a spoon player. Or a spoon bender. That wouldn’t be useful for music, but it would look really cool.
We’ve reached the end of Book 5. It’s time for chapters 37 and 38 of The Order of the Phoenix—The Lost Prophecy and The Second War Begins.
Index to the reread can be located here! Other Harry Potter and Potter-related pieces can be found under theirappropriate tag. And of course, since we know this is a reread, all posts might contain spoilers for the entire series. If you haven’t read all the Potter books, be warned.
Chapter 37—The Lost Prophecy
Summary
Harry arrives at Dumbledore’s office feeling wretched and ashamed. Phineas’ portrait wakes and he asks Harry if Dumbledore is coming back. Harry cannot bear to talk to any of the portraits. Finally, Dumbledore arrives, letting Harry know that everyone else is safe and will make a full recovery. Albus looks Harry in the eyes and tell him he knows how he feels, which sets off Harry’s temper. He begins to destroy items in the office, a table as well. Dumbledore apologizes, insisting that it was his fault that Sirius died. Phineas doesn’t believe that Sirius is gone, and goes to his other portrait at Grimmauld Place. Dumbledore begins to explain his actions during the year, telling Harry that he worried that Voldemort was going to use the connection between them to spy on him and then encourage Harry to destroy himself. So, Albus made himself remote so that Voldemort would not know that they had a closer relationship.
He then explains how events unfolded: Kreacher left the Black house on Christmas and went to Narcissa Malfoy. Though he could not divulge the secrets Sirius instructed him to keep, he was capable of giving her valuable information—specifically, that Harry cared deeply for Sirius. He was instructed to mislead Harry after he had the vision of Sirius being tortured, so he injured Buckbeak to get Sirius out of the way, and then lied about his whereabouts when Harry called. Snape had already contacted Order headquarters to make certain Sirius was still around, but when Harry didn’t come back from the forest sojourn with Umbridge, he figured that Harry was heading to the Ministry and told the Order members at HQ. (He also gave Umbridge fake Veritaserum when she tried to interrogate Harry before.) Sirius was instructed to stay put, but he was not willing to sit by if Harry needed him and came with the group. Harry gets angry when Dumbledore insists that Sirius should have respected Kreacher more, unwilling to hear a bad word against his godfather.
Dumbledore decides it’s time to really lay out his plan to Harry, to give him the details that he’s been harboring all along. He explains that the reason why he left Harry in the care of his aunt in because he used the blood protection Harry’s mother provided in sacrificing herself for him, and extended it to Petunia. As long as Harry lived with his aunt, he would be safe from Voldemort there, and she would be afforded some protection as well. (At this point, Harry recognizes that he was the one who sent the Howler to Privet Drive that summer.) Dumbledore reveals that flaw in his plan to Harry by recounting the trials Harry underwent each year at Hogwarts. He should have told Harry why Voldemort had marked him, why he came after him as a baby, but he didn’t because he couldn’t bear to cause Harry any more pain, particularly after how well he was acquitting himself, fighting battles that grown wizards would have balked at when he was only the child. Dumbledore admits that he cares for Harry too much, and so he did not tell him what he most needed to hear—the prophecy that linked him and Voldemort.
The prophecy was given to Dumbledore when he was interviewing Sybil Trelawney for the Divination position at Hogwarts. (It was one of her only true Seer moments. Dumbledore hired her following that to keep her safe, even though he was considering dropping Divination as a course altogether.) Dumbledore retrieves the Pensieve and shows the prophecy to Harry. It says that the one with the power to vanquish Voldemort will be born at the end of July that year, to parents who defied Voldemort three times. That this child will have power that Voldemort does not understand. And that one of them will have to kill the other because they cannot survive while the other does. Dumbledore gives Harry another interesting piece of info: It could have been Neville instead. His parent defied Voldemort three times, and he was also born at the end of July. But Voldemort marked Harry by choosing him, by trying to murder him—he picked Harry because he though there was a similarity between them, both being halfblooded wizards. And by coming to kill Harry, he created the blood protection Lily left on her son, giving him the power that Voldemort doesn’t understand. That power was also behind the locked door at the Ministry, the same power that prevented Voldemort from possessing Harry entirely. That power is love.
The reason why Voldemort was trying to learn the entire prophecy is because he only heard the first half of it before Harry was born, learned of it from someone else who was sitting in the Hog’s Head when Albus interviewed Sybil. That person was thrown out halfway into the prophecy, so Voldemort believed he needed the rest of it to figure out how to beat Harry. It occurs to Harry that the wording of the prophecy indicates that one of them has to die, but it’s hard for him to care very much in the middle of such grief. Dumbledore also admits that he didn’t make Harry a prefect this year as he felt that he had enough to deal with—Harry looks up to see the headmaster crying.
Commentary
There are increases in severity to the grief that Harry feels with each new death he encounters. With Cedric, Harry felt responsible in a way, but eventually rationality probably won out—he couldn’t have known that the Triwizard Cup was a Portkey that would transport Cedric to his death. Here, there is no possible way that he won’t feel at fault. He fell right into a trap, and that trap caused Sirius’ death. In these final two chapters, Rowling does an excellent job of capturing a more intense mourning than before. In Goblet of Fire and at the start of this book, Harry is dealing with a sort of numbing depression. Now it’s a fitful state; he goes from raging and violent to debilitatingly sad to wishing for comfort to wishing he could disappear. And this sort of see-saw isn’t exclusive to grieving—anyone who has ever been in too much pain knows exactly what this feels like. (The desire to throw and break things resonates particularly hard with me.)
Dumbledore finally enters and insists that he knows how Harry feels, which is the exact wrong thing to say. But, in point of fact, Albus knows exactly how Harry feels because this is quite close to the way that his sister Ariana died. It’s a smart touch here, a hint that will be expanded upon in the last two books.
Their discussion of Kreacher is interesting to me. On the one hand, Dumbledore nails it right on the head: Sirius made the mistake of not treating Kreacher well, and he did it not because of a hatred or dismissal of house-elves, but because Kreacher was a reminder of everything about his home and family that he hated. Kreacher should have been handled better, and unsurprisingly gave over his loyalty to a member of the family who would be kind to him. Dumbledore talks of the Ministry fountain and basically aligns himself with what Hermione has been moving toward these past few years. There is an imbalance in wizard culture that has to be addressed. Other the other hand, Dumbledore used Legilimens to extract the information that he required from Kreacher, so… how is he any better here? More to the point, if Kreacher was such a liability in the first place, the best thing they could have done was have Sirius banish Kreacher to another homestead and forbid him to talk about anything having to do with their work or him or whatever.
But then, Dumbledore made some grave errors in dealing with both Sirius and Snape that he only barely acknowledges. He admits to Harry that he had assumed that Snape could get over his hatred of James to teach Occlumency and that he was incorrect on that front. He also admits that knew keeping Sirius locked away was bound to cause problems because Sirius was never going to stay behind when Harry was in danger. But one place where he still fails to realize his mistake is here:
“Snape — Snape g-goaded Sirius about staying in the house — he made out Sirius was a coward — “
“Sirius was much too old and clever to have allowed such feeble taunts to hurt him,” said Dumbledore.
Oh. Oh, Albus. No. Sirius was not. Sirius hated Snape enough that on his worst day he thought trying to get him killed was fine. Being on the receiving end of taunts from that man was never going to work out well. Being active and useful was the thing that Sirius valued most—which you should get as a fellow Gryffindor. And Sirius was by no means too old because, as I feel I must constantly repeat, the years that Sirius spent in Azkaban cannot be counted as time and experience. They were a hellish limbo. So if we add a couple years for this time out, that brings Sirius to… 23 years old? 24? For all intents and purposes, that is as much as we can allow him. Those twelve years he was out of commission would have made a huge difference to his maturity level, absolutely. But those were years he did not live, and Dumbledore makes a huge mistake in not recognizing that.
On a side note, I love how Phineas reacts to the news of Sirius’ death. I don’t think he cared much for Sirius personally, but his shock is welcome, given everything that’s just happened.
Dumbledore finally lays everything out for Harry in terms of the prophecy. And it’s funny because you see where Voldemort might have been right had Albus cared for Harry less; the smarter move would have been to tell Harry about the prophecy, but give it to him vaguely. That would have prevented Harry from having to know about the murder aspect until he was old enough to consider it properly, but then Dumbledore would have had to paraphrase, and Harry might have actually want to hear the full version just as Voldemort predicted. In essence, Voldemort doesn’t factor love into the equation again. He believes that Albus sees Harry only as a means to an end. It’s strange because I feel like I bought this less the first time I read the book, but it almost works better for me this time around? Again, all the mistakes are stupid ones, but they’re stupid ones that play into serious character flaws that Rowling set from the start. It’s not surprising to hear the Dumbledore cares for Harry, only to hear that he’s been allowing that care to cloud his judgement for such a long time. I’d make the argument that the same is true where Snape and Sirius are concerned; Albus makes the mistake of believing that Sirius and Snape are both the best versions of themselves rather than taking them as they are.
We’re getting a lot of flip-flopped ways of looking at behavior by the end of this book, and it’s something that I always appreciate about the Potter series; Rowling rarely makes characters “purely” good or evil, and in the process of making sure that good and bad traits are balanced for more well-rounded characters, she also points out the ways in which behavior can be interpreted under different lenses. Last week, I mentioned that Harry’s thought that his godfather would never keep him waiting was a flip-side to Sirius’ recklessness. In this chapter, Harry’s tendency to “play the hero” is reframed by Dumbledore; sure, Harry does have knack for running to the rescue of others, but he does this because love is the guiding factor for all of his actions. He cares for people, and so he has to help them. So while he leaps without looking more often than he should, it comes from a meaningful place.
The acknowledgement that the locked room in the DoM is basically a “love room” is an interesting idea that I sort of wish had been brought back around. Obviously you don’t want that room to house anything so obvious as a “love weapon” that can defeat Voldemort. But Dumbledore mentions that the DoM has been doing studies on what lies in that room for years now, and it just seems like a big missed opportunity not to talk to some “love scientist” before the series is over. Still, this is the point where the theme of the entire series is essentially stated out loud. Love is what will save them. Love is what Harry possesses that Voldemort does not.
We find out about the other key piece of the prophecy; the fact that it could have just as easily been about Neville and that it became Harry by virtue of his selection by Voldemort. And it’s not surprising that Voldemort picks Harry for being a half-blood like himself, and of course, it’s poetically fitting—Voldemort creates that manner of his destruction through all of his own choices. He chooses to try and kill Harry as an infant, he chooses him over Neville for his heritage, he chooses to use Harry’s blood to revive himself. It’s ultimate hubris, a very classic form of tragedy.
But the other side to this is marking Neville as a much more important player than we were previously led to believe. The fact that Neville also meets all of the prophecy criteria means something. Voldemort selects Harry, essentially builds himself a nemesis, but the fact that there were two possibilities to start cannot be overlooked. It means that Neville is tied up in all of this whether he’d like to be or not. The fact that he’s been shoving his way in to Harry’s inner circle is all the proof you really need. He knows he needs to be here, even if no one else does. And Neville’s understanding in that regard will come to be one of Harry’s most valuable assets going forward.
Chapter 38—The Second War Begins
Summary
The Daily Prophet runs an article on the front page detailing the return of Voldemort (and the abandonment of Azkaban by the dementors), with a statement from Fudge. Hermione notes that they are far more complimentary toward Harry now, reading the article aloud as they all recover in the hospital wing. Luna’s father sold his interview with Harry to the paper, and they’ve rerun it. Hermione is taking a variety of potions to heal from the curse that hit her, but she’s bored and asking about what’s going on in school. Ginny tells her that Flitwick cleared up Fred and George’s swamp, but left a patch and roped it off as a kind of memorial. Dumbledore retrieved Umbridge from the forest, and she’s in a daze in the hospital wing with them, only showing signs of cognizance when Ron makes clopping hoof noises. Harry gets up and tells everyone he’s going to visit Hagrid, not exactly keen to tell them about the full prophecy.
Harry isn’t actually sure that he wants company, but on his way out to the grounds he comes across Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle. Draco is furious because Harry’s words have landed his father in Azkaban. He means to start a fight, but Harry has his wand out first. Snape catches him and stops him, planning to take ten points from Gryffindor, but there are no points to take away. In that moment Professor McGonagall arrives back from St. Mungo’s, looking well. She awards everyone who participated in the Department of Mysteries battle fifty points, then takes away the ten Snape wanted, and tells Malfoy and Harry to scram. Harry heads to Hagrid’s cabin and sits down to have a glass of juice, but the instant Hagrid brings up Sirius, Harry bolts. He sits on the edge of the lake, feeling separate from everyone, thinking about the prophecy and how it ends. Then he thinks about Sirius. He doesn’t leave until the sun sets.
The end of the year feast comes, Umbridge has been chased off the grounds, Ron and Hermione are better, and Harry tells them to go off without him so he can pack. The truth is that he doesn’t want to go to the feast. When he goes through his trunk, he finds Sirius’ Christmas present and finally unwraps it; it turns out to be a two-way mirror that Sirius and James used to use when they were in separate detentions. Harry tries to call Sirius with it and receives no reply. He throw it back into his trunk, breaking it. A thought occurs to him and he rushes through the castle seeking a ghost. He comes upon Nearly Headless Nick and asks about how people come back. Nick explains that most people don’t do what he did, chose this shade of their former life. He cannot tell Harry what lies beyond, but he’s sure Sirius isn’t coming back as a ghost. As Harry walks back to the common room more depressed than ever, he comes across Luna. She’s hanging up signs to get her things back—students take and hide them during the year. Harry finally feels a different emotion, pity. She mentions that Ginny told her Sirius was his godfather and apologizes for his loss. Harry asks who she lost, and she explains that her mother died when she was nine, after a spell that she experimented with went wrong. She decides to head down to the feast, and the conversation leaves Harry feeling a little lighter.
During the train ride home, Malfoy and his cronies try to attack Harry on the train, but do it next to a compartment of D.A. members and get hexed horribly for their trouble. Harry spends most of the ride playing chess with Ron. Cho walks by, and Hermione mentions that she’s dating someone else, which doesn’t bother Harry in the slightest. It turns out that she’s dating Michael Corner; Ginny dumped him when he got all sulky about Gryffindor beating Ravenclaw at Quidditch. Ron is happy to hear this news until Ginny tell him that she’s currently dating Dean Thomas. They arrive back at King’s Cross, and Harry finds Moody, Tonks, and Lupin waiting for him. Arthur and Molly are also there, and the twins too, decked out in dragon skin jackets. Molly asks how Harry is, and he lies that he’s fine. Lupin tells him that they’re here to have a chat with his aunt and uncle. Harry isn’t sure it’s a good idea, but the whole lot of them walk straight up to the Dursleys and tells them that if Harry is mistreated or prevented from contacting them this summer, they will hear about it and come to the house. The Dursleys are mortified, and have no choice but to let Harry lead the way out of the station.
Commentary
I’d like to place a content warning for this section: there will be a brief discussion of rape (not at all graphic) as it pertains to Umbridge and the centaurs. Just to make sure no one is caught off-guard.
One of my favorite bits from this chapter is about Ron’s wounds:
There were still deep welts on his forearms where the brain’s tentacles has wrapped around him. According to Madam Pomfrey, thoughts could leave deeper scarring than almost anything else, though since she started applying copious amounts of Dr. Ubbly’s Oblivious Unction, there seemed to be some improvement.
So Ron was literally attacked by thoughts. I want so much more information on that. What did he learn? Was it horrible? Did he return from the Ministry spouting strange factoids?
So there’s a bit about Umbridge in the hospital wing. The narrative states that she hasn’t spoken since Dumbledore retrieved her from the forest. She appears undamaged aside from some twigs and leaves in her hair, and she isn’t doing much talking. The only time she shows signs of life is when Ron makes horse noises, and she looks around, startled, and then settles and says she likely imagined it. One of the fan theories was that the centaurs essentially gang-raped her. This plays into a great deal of Greek myth, where that’s essentially what centaurs spend their time doing. Rowling knew her classics, so there’s no doubt that the implication could easily be that.
So I’m gonna talk some history and stuff here…
Here’s my thought. Could Rowling have put that little nudge in the narrative as a sort of wink to people who knew their mythology? Absolutely. Do I actually think that the centaurs raped Dolores Umbridge? No, I don’t. And I say this due to how centaurs myths are commonly lumped in with other myths in ancient Greek culture, then comparing that to how Rowling handles the centaurs in her narrative.
Yes, centaurs were depicted in Greek myth as scary half-men half-beasts who raped women a lot. There were other groups that the Greeks tended to depict in a similarly unflattering fashion, and they show up in a lot of artwork together under the banner of peoples who the Greeks conquered/successfully beat back in myths and history; centaurs, Amazons, Scythians, and Persians are some of the usual suspects. All of these groups were thought of as barbarians to the Greeks, and defeating them was a badge of superiority. It proved how mighty the Greeks were next to other “lesser” peoples.
And then we have that Ministry fountain. And it features a house-elf, a goblin, a centaur, and a witch, all looking up deferentially at a wizard. All considered inferior (particularly the non-human subjects) to wizard magic and might. Just like the classical art that depicted centaurs and Amazons and any culture that the Greeks fought against and won. Conquerers get to write the history books. And I’d wager that the same Greek myths about centaurs exist in the Potterverse, and that they were subject to the same bias we have in our universe (though they are real rather than fiction). So, the idea of centaurs being actual rapists in Potter canon? Yeah, I’m gonna write that one off. It smacks too much of “things the magic community wanted Muggles and wizards to believe to further imply that they were better and more civilized than any other magic species.” Does that make sense to everyone?
Harry runs into Draco on his way out, and the way that we just sort of casually find out that Lucius is in prison really strikes me. I mean, it makes sense, but you’re suddenly reminded that the world believes Harry now. And that means they believe everything he said. Which means that all the Death Eaters are exposed. No surprise that Draco can’t handle having his family shoved out into the spotlight for this; their status has always been so contingent on their continued ability to keep their name out of the fight.
Yay to McGonagall’s stellar return. (Snape can’t even summon up the gall to be rude because he’s so impressed. You know he is.) Double yay to Ginny dumping Michael for being a whiny baby, and then moving straight on to Dean. (Girl knows what she wants. Respect.) Triple yay to the D.A. members coming to Harry’s defense when he’s about to get jumped. (That’s what friends are for?)
Harry’s back-and-forth here brings us full-circle with this book—at the start, Harry was desperate for the reassurance of his friends and family; now he simply wants to be away from them. Even Hagrid can’t help (and he’s doing his very best to have a conversation that will help, even if Harry can’t manage it in return). But Harry starts healing in ways that he’s not anticipating; he runs into Luna, and feeling something for her plights returns him to himself, in a manner of speaking. It makes sense; Harry’s power is love, and it’s a surge of sympathy for a friend that starts shipping away at the ice. (People stealing Luna’s possessions always breaks my heart, but her ability to be so serene about the outcome is a teaching moment that I don’t feel up to as a person even now. So people are jerks, but Luna has a zen that practically no adults have achieved. She’s a star.)
At the end of the book, Harry gets what needs… though he never asks for it. After thoroughly botching last summer, the important people in his life take matters into their own hands. Harry doesn’t need to talk to them about Sirius individually, or be told that everything is going to be alright. He needs to feel secure. He needs to know how many people love him, and that they will fight for him. The final talk with the Dursleys at King’s Cross is the metaphorical equivalent to encircling him, banding around him and refusing to let go. It’s a great way to help someone battling depression. Don’t push them, just be there. And for the first time, Harry gets to walk out of the station with his head high, and not feel terrified about what the summer might bring.
Final Thoughts
I’m trying to remember how I felt when I finished reading this book the first time. I want to say that I was kind of with Harry; Sirius was so near and dear to my heart that I set this book down with this itching, horrified sensation in the pit of my stomach. I was numb, but also sobbing. That death hit me so close that it nearly felt like the real thing. My best friend actually went into mourning—she was depressed for days afterward.
This time around, I was being far more analytical than the first time, so it didn’t land in quite the same way. My overall feeling by the end this time around was–whoa, this book was busy. Too busy. I don’t really feel like I read a book, I feel like I read a lot of rising action all in one go. And I think that may be why people are so hard on the last three books. Because they all feel that way, like part of a very long whole instead of separate adventures the way the first four were.
On the other hand, we learn so much that I don’t feel I could do without. And this is where the strength of Rowling’s world just shines through. No, the world building isn’t perfect, yes, it sometimes goes on for a bit too long, but I’d rather have all this information than not have it. I care too much about these people. I’m interested to move on to book six because I actually have good memories of that one, as the calm before the mega-storm. We’ll see how it fares this time around.
But first… the movie.
Emmet Asher-Perrin is gonna miss Sirius for the rest of this reread. You can bug her on Twitter and Tumblr, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.
Yes. Yes she is.
Sadly, I guess, I never liked Sirius much and never understood why Harry became so attached to him. I totally get why Harry would be so upset: even if he didn’t know Sirius at all, it was Harry’s own fault which led to Sirius’ death. But the death of Sirius the character didn’t affect me at all, so I never got the emotional resonance out of OOTP that some obviously did.
I distinctly remember being a bit let down by the big revelation of the prophecy being what was in the Department of Mysteries all this time. I suppose I just didn’t find the prophecy all that interesting (aside from maybe the bit about Neville and Voldemort marking Harry) and I suppose I find the plot device of the prophecy itself to be kind of clunky…even if Voldemort HAD gotten a hold of it, what exactly would it have told him, aside from the fact that he is the one responsible for ‘marking’ Harry, which I assume he now already knows anyway? Also, doesnt it just say that neither can live will the other survives? Why does that mean that one of them has to actually KILL the other? What if Voldemort gets hit by a train? I don’t know, it just didn’t click with me.
(ETA: I just went back and re-read the prophecy and it does say that one must die at the hand of the other. But…I still feel that from a story perspective it’s mostly unnecessary. We already know V wants to kill Harry, and it was always fairly likely that at one point Harry would have to face him on his own. We don’t need all this prophecy business for that.)
Sophist – I had pretty much the same reaction regarding Sirius. I could empathize with Harry’s grief, but I didn’t really feel it myself, since I had been fairly soured on Sirius myself after reading the book.
This is one of Luna’s great moments :)
Love your thoughts on the centaurs – I’d never quite gone with that theory either but I never thought about in the sense of it being a ‘real world’ stereotype in the Potterverse that they would be propogating.
I love how book 6 subverts the prophecy angle anyway – Harry would face Voldemort, prophecy or no prophecy, because Voldemort killed so many people.
The prophecy has always been one of my favorite parts of HP. I know it’s a direct shout-out to Macbeth and Greek tragedy, so it’s not like Rowling invented the concept, but I love that this whole thing is happening because Voldemort couldn’t leave well enough alone. No destiny, no fate, no midichlorians, just Voldemort’s actions creating the very situation he was trying to avoid.
When I first read about Neville being the possible subject of the prophecy, I started hoping that in the end he would actually turn out to be the one killing Voldemort.
When Dumbledore is speaking about how he started to care about Harry too much, I don’t think he was talking only about the prophecy, I think he was also talking about Harry being an Horcrux, so, basically, needing to eventually sacrifise himself.
I don’t blame Albus for caring. He held Harry as baby, he saw him grow up between the age of 11 and nearly 17, all along knowing, or at least suspecting, that Harry would have to die. And before Voldemort took his blood, he thought Harry would stay dead. I can’t even imagine what that would be like – like raising your own child to die.
This was a turning point for me when it comes to Dumbledore. Until this, Dumbledore was a rock in the world of Harry Potter, the guy with all the answers, a beacon of hope, a guide for Harry. But in this book, we see him shutting Harry off (when I first read this book, I resented that almost as much as Harry, especially after he had been such a confort for Harry after the events in the graveyeard), making mistakes that get Sirius killed, displaying vulnerability when Harry complains about being left with the Dursleys. And this is just the begining – in Deathly Hallows, the humanization of Dumbledore is taken to a whole different level!
Look, nobody wants to believe that Rowling was crass enough to make a rape joke. It throws a whole nasty light on the series, and that judgement has only got harsher with time as more and more rape culture stuff has oozed up out of the gutter, but she is also the person that made at least one bestiality joke totally so I gotta say, balance of probability here, she totally made a rape joke there with Umbridge we just got to accept it. Just because it was a highbrow rape joke, which only people who read classics would get does not excuse it and just because we love the rest of the series, the world it is in, the main characters, and we hate Umbridge with a burning fiery passion, does not excuse it. Better writers than Rowling have fallen into the trap of implied rape as a way of punishing their female villains. We just have to live with it, until she releases a “special edition” of the book and retcons it or something similarly Lucasian.
I’m not ruling out that she also made a tentacle-rape joke about Ron my least favorite, non-dead through his own stupid impetuousness, character of the series too.
And another book of the HP ReRead comes to an end…. will be delighted to read thoughts about the movie!
Rowling was very specific in saying Umbridge was unhurt outside of the twigs and leaves in her hair, so I don’t buy the rape theory either. When I think of Centaurs, I prefer to think of the group of “good natured” beings of Rick Riordan’s universe, as in the “party animals” (literally). Yes, there are less than good Centaurs in the Riordan books, but there is Chiron and his cousins, the party dudes, and the revelry of drinking Root Beer.
I’ve been rereading the HP books on my Kindle, “borrowing” one each month using my Amazon Prime membership. I have the feeling I’m reading the “English” version, because there are phrases I simply don’t recall reading the other half dozen or so times I’ve read the books. The language seems to be different, not always understandable (to me as an American), which leads me to think there is an original version of the books versus the “Americanized Version”, which I didn’t realize until I started to read the Kindle eBooks.
Will have to make sure to watch “Order of the Phoenix” for at least the 200th time before next week’s ReRead!
I never understood why a centaur would ever want to do that.
I liked book!Sirius better than movie!Sirius. The crazed Wanted poster, the tattoos (prison tats in Azkaban?), don’t match up for me. Plus Gary Oldman was too old. Azkaban never seemed to age the Death Eaters.
I used to ship Harry and Luna, and I can’t be the only one.
I love Ginny, but I’d have been perfectly happy to see the H/L pairing.
Discussing Harry and Luna, you wrote…
Nice typo!
The thing is, had Sirius been in perfect mental health and had the Order’s HQ been a Caribbean Island where he was spending his time between the love of his life and sipping pina coladas on the beach and had the message come through that Harry was in danger, Sirius would have still taken off to rescue him. That’s who Sirius was. Harry’s aiming his anger at Snape because he needs to aim it at someone. Dumbledore was his target earlier the same evening until he explained why he did what he did. If Harry didn’t blame someone, he would probably drown in guilt recognizing the part his own decisions played in this (which is just as unfair as his blaming Snape. Personally, I blame Voldemort and Bellatrix).
“When I first read about Neville being the possible subject of the prophecy, I started hoping that in the end he would actually turn out to be the one killing Voldemort.”
If you think about it, he’s the one who killed the last Horcrux, thereby making it possible to kill Voldemort. So he gets the penultimate blow, as it were.
HPverse centaurs won’t have anything to do with humans. I don’t believe they raped Umbridge. In various conflicts around the world, rape is a means of dehumanizing or “othering” the other side. To centaurs, humans are already beneath them, and they deliberately act as if the human world has no impact on them one way or another. There would be nothing gained by such an attack.
Sophist @1. Harry became so attached to Sirius because Sirius was the closest person Harry had to a parent. Harry’s parents died shortly after his first birthday. He was raised by a family who treated him not as a person but something like most Wizards & Witches treat house elves. He had adults who cared for him (Hagrid, Molly & Dumbledore). Yet these adults also had their own children or cared for other children in the same way they cared for Harry (a teacher student relationship). Harry finally meets somebody who is willing to act as the parent that Harry never had — a parent who is only a parent to Harry and not anybody else.
Thanks for reading my musings.
Andrew HB
@14: I get the logic. What I never got from the books was the emotion. I had 2 major problems with that part of the story:
1. Harry’s switch from believing that Sirius killed his parents to wanting to live with Sirius came too suddenly for me. Harry didn’t even know him; there was no time for affection to develop. It felt as if Harry tried to make something happen out of desperation rather true feelings.
2. Sirius was real jerk as a student and had some very unsympathetic flaws as an adult. He was terrible to Kreacher after lecturing Harry that the way to judge someone is by how they treat their subordinates. He was reckless and encouraged Harry to make bad decisions. Other stuff too.
Anyway, I just never got any sense of affection for Sirius, so I couldn’t feel too badly when he died.
How sad were the Greeks, that they had to make up a fictitious race of beings that they “defeated”?
I’m reminded of the brilliant Kiwi movie, The Navigator, where the epic adventure ends up being a tall tale told around the fireplace.
Could you imagine any modern nation erecting statues to their many defeats of the Alien invaders?
I don’t think centaurs raped Umbridge. She was always scared of them, maybe that’s the reason she’s traumatized. I would act the same way if I had to spend some time with Aragog, even if he doesn’t hurt me. I don’t think centaurs in pottr world would rape anybody. (Sorry for my bad english, its not my mother tongue)
Given how the centaurs see humans I think most of them would that disgusting.
Having said that given that Umbridge is based on a real person who made Rowling’s life difficult it may be that Umbridge’s fate is not an accident.
I was totally convinced that Luna and Harry were going to end up together, and this scene was one of the big pieces of evidence.
Emily, I’m not sure I buy the explanation you use about Umbridge not buying raped, although I personally don’t think she was. I think it is fairly likely that rape was used as a weapon of war between centaurs and humans, probably more centaurs against humans than vice-versa. This doesn’t mean that the centaurs would have gone out of the way to rape human women, or that they enjoyed it. This parallels a lot of inter-human conflicts in real life; for example, it was a consistent feature of Nazi propaganda that Soviet soldiers were bestial monsters who were out to rape and kill German women and children. During the last months of the Second World War, Soviet troops did indeed commit a horrific number of rapes, as well as ethnic cleansing when they moved into eastern Germany. However, as is probable with the centaur-human wars, the fact that the Red Army committed atrocities against German civilians does NOT validate Nazi propaganda because these atrocities were never as extreme or numerous as the Nazi propaganda predicted. And the Nazis committed similar but even more extreme atrocities against basically everyone. There are numerous other examples of conquerors taking atrocities that their opponents genuinely committed and inflating their numbers or taking them out of context. (See neck-lacing in 1980s South Africa.)
At the same time, I don’t think Umbridge was raped for the simple reason it doesn’t seem possible for even a witch to survive being raped by multiple centaurs, assuming they have similar proportions to a horse. In fact the effects of such treatment were probably why centaurs used rape in their wars against humans. The fact Umbridge is apparently unharmed is all the more reason in my opinion to think she couldn’t have been raped, plus the flippant way the whole issue is dealt with. It seems more likely to me that the centaurs did something less extreme such as tarring and feathering (or their version of), while making a lot of noise and not letting her go until Dumbledore turns up. For Umbridge, someone who is terrified of centaurs, that would probably be enough to be extremely traumatic.
I have to agree with Emily regarding Umbridge being raped, potentially, by the centaurs.
As the narrative states, she is unharmed outside of her hair being messy. Dumbledore would not have appeared so calm when he arrived back with Umbridge after extricating her from the centaurs.
Her reactions to Ron’s needling of her are perfectly natural; here is Umbridge at the height of her power & influence. She has taken over Hogwarts & has the full backing of the Ministry. She has an utter disregard, contempt, and loathing of all ‘half-breeds.’ She gets carried off by these ‘half-breed’ centaurs despite her demands & threats.
The bully gets her nose bloodied, figuratively if not literally. All her power & influence do not save her in the end. I’m sure they scared the daylights out of her but that’s it.
Rowling’s centaurs are not C.S. Lewis’ centaurs for sure, but that doesn’t mean they’re taken directly from Greek mythology either. Consider how they treated Firenze; not the actions of a simplistic or two dimensional culture.
Finally, despite how much more ‘mature’ this book is compared to the first one, this is still a children’s series and I cannot see Rowling bringing rape into the story; especially if it is to be played off, possibly, for laughs.
Kato
I am in the camp that believes Umbridge probably didn’t get raped… First it just seems like too much to include in a Children’s book series even in a very, very subtle way. Second, if it had occurred I think we would have seen more repercussions in the book. Dumbledore would have had to arrest/put on trial some of the centaurs or maybe kick them out of the forbidden forest, and when Umbridge regained power, I think she would have gone out of her way to punish/get revenge on the centaurs.
The end of this book answered so many questions… I especially loved the explanation of ghosts. I had been waiting for that for a long time. My only complaint now after reading the series so many times is that Dumbledore doesn’t go one step further at the end in his discussion with Harry and bring up Voldemort’s horcruxes. I guess the explanation is that Dumbledore isn’t sure about the theory yet, but he strongly suspected that Harry was a horcrux and should have said something here IMHO.
oh I just remembered my other nit pick with this book… sorry in advance for the double post. The Death Eaters gain access to the MoM’s DoM and focus on getting a prophesy… really?!?! Dark Lord should have said… step one, everybody grab a time turner.
Going through this reread, it really hit me – why isn’t Harry more angry at Kreacher? Kreacher deliberately betrayed Sirius and Harry, going as far as injuring Buckbeak so that he could lie to Harry’s face about where Sirius was. It wasn’t an accident – oh, Sirius is around but I’ll just lie about it – he deliberately hurt Buckbeak to make sure Sirius wasn’t there. Harry might see Snape as a convenient target, but his anger should have eventually landed on Kreacher for being instrumental to why the whole trip to the Department of Mysteries happened. This, combined with Kreacher’s whole change of personality in Book 7, is why Kreacher as a character never made any sense to me.
I find all the stuff Dumbledore reveals here exceptionally annoying because:
a) Harry never once, that I’ve been able to find, thinks of or refers to 4 Privet Drive as his home. The Dursleys are never even his “family”, they’re always his “relations” or “relatives”. So the whole blood ward thing just shouldn’t work if it’s supposed to operate as stated.
b) The Prophecy. Leaving aside the fact that I hate the whole prophecy storyline as it shows that Dumbledore employed a woman for a decade a half to teach children the art of cold reading, and badly at that, the guarding of the prophecy is stupid. If Dumbledore was that worried about Voldemort hearing it he could have just smashed the thing in situ, or if that wouldn’t have worked (though I don’t see why it wouldn’t), smuggled Harry in and got him to pick it up and break it without listening to it. It’s not like Dumbledore needed it preserved, because he already knew what it said. All that prophecy does is provide make-work for the Order for the better part of a year. And then when we do hear what the whole thing says, it makes no difference. Voldemort, not having heard the whole thing, tries to kill Harry on more than one occasion. If he heard the whole thing, he would want to… kill Harry.
I don’t like this book much as a whole, I think it suffered badly from JKR’s fame and a resulting reluctance on the part of her editors to actually edit anything, and the whole prophecy thing just exemplifies to me why. I also have issues with Dumbledore’s apparent affection for Harry and Harry’s confusion at Dumbledore’s ignoring of him in the year – in the earlier books, they’ve tended to speak to each other directly about twice a year. Dumbledore was unavailable to Harry at key moments in both the first two books. Does Harry have no memory?
The Sirius relationship also irritates me because of how sudden and extreme it is, and how it immediately sidelines Remus, who based on his characterisation in the third and fifth books would have been an okay father-figure for Harry, albeit one with known flaws. If it wasn’t for that sidelining JKR might have had something to do with Remus other than the totally pointless assignment to the werewolves and the character assassination that came with it.
I like the last two books even less than this one (a year of Hermione not knowing the difference between finding a valuable resource and cheating, followed by the world’s longest, worst-planned DoE expedition weirdly lacking in Mars bars) so this could be the last of my comments you have to slog through…
@23 Harry already dislikes Snape, and with the reveal about Snape and James, Harry might have been feeling a bit conflicted over that. Snape being an asshole is suddenly not quite enough for Harry, but hey, now he has a fresh new reason. Plus, Kreacher the down trodden and mistreated servant enacts a revenge fantasy? For all that the target was one of Harry’s family, it might be hard for harry not to empathize. You can’t tell me he never thought, even once, of doing something nasty to Vernon or Petunia. Especially when he has to be pretty aware of just how much an asshole Sirius was to Kreacher. But there is Snape, the nice safe and familiar target of Harry’s rage. Harry can hate on Snape and it is easy.
Now none of that is a conscious choice, in fact I don’t think Harry is even close to being self aware enough to think that all through. he’s just angry and needs a target, and all that stuff in the back of his brain is making him angrier. Plus we’ve seen how impulsive Sirius is, Harry is probably angry a little about Sirius himself for being so impulsive (and I personally think that is his house trait, not courage or bravery, but impulsiveness) and unable to keep his shit together and do the smart thing and stay put. Fortunately, Snape and Sirius fought a lot so there is Snape as a target for the anger again. It is all a tsunami of teen anger and angst that bubbles up and heads towards a familiar and less personally hurtful target.
Not to worry Harry, Snape can take it. You can’t hate Snape more than Snape hates Snape.
This is a somewhat minor point, but, IIRC, it is the non-humans who are looking up adoringly/deferentially at the Wizard/Witch. I’m not sure if the assumption of misogyny in the statues is correct. There have been numerous witch Ministers of Magic and Headmistresses throughout the invented history of HP, so I’m just not seeing it.
On to Dumbledore though. I remember on first read through I remember giving him a pass on this given how he is so sympathetic and understanding of Harry, not to mention the wise Gandalf-esque mentor figure. While it is important that JKR shows him not without flaws, the whole “caring too much” is really rings false. He waxes on and on about how this was the unavoidable ‘trap’ he fell into and he defies anyone to avoid a similar trap in his situation while we all node sagely and look soulful and empathetic. Okay, you care too much and want to save Harry the ‘bad news’ (never mind how much this is the appropriate action for someone who cares too much), that does not mean you have to keep him isolated and in the dark. You know by this point what he is like. All you have to do is forewarn Harry and explain a little that Voldemort would try to read his mind and later lure him to the Department of Mysteries. This would have alleviated so many problems and Dumbledore could have still kept his distance.
The thing that kills me the most about this final chapter is the discovery of the mirror and the knowledge that had Harry thought to open his Christmas present from his godfather, then he would have been able to contact him when he felt his scar burning and would have known both that Sirius was okay and Voldemort had access to his mind. Sirius’s death could have been prevented and that has to sting the worst.
As someone now sliding deeper into depression, I can confirm that (one’s own) thoughts can be extraordinarily damaging
Muswell @24: Actually, it’s Petunia’s attitude that matters, not Harry’s. From the chapter:
Note in particular “in doing so, she sealed the charm” and (in two different variations) “as long as you can still call it home”. It’s Petunia’s choice to let him live there that matters, not Harry’s.
Emily: gadget @26 is correct; here’s the description of the fountain:
So it’s just saying the wizard is taller than the witch; it’s only the non-humans who are gazing adoringly.
@29 – I think Petunia took him in and made the scenario theoretically possible, and that gets the charm going, but I would say with that phrasing that the house had to be a place he could call home, and we never see him do so and the atmosphere in the house is such that I would say he can’t call it home. As soon as Harry becomes self-aware enough to realise that other kids have homes where he has a cupboard, it should fail. Not that Harry’s the most self-aware of kids, but it might have happened at some point. If the whole of the charm lay with Petunia, you’d want to word it more like “as long as you are welcome to call it your home”, which would leave whether he does so or whether he feels able to out of the equation.
Because Petunia took him in and lets him stay there he “may” (is theoretically allowed to) call it home. Because of the atmosphere in that place I would argue that he “can” not (is not emotionally capable of doing so).
With that distinction, you’ve got another example of Dumbledore fundamentally misunderstanding the realities of human interaction despite basing all him plans around “love”, which I think is central to his character (and something that would probably make him a bit sympathetic to him were it not for a fact that a man who freely admits to being fallible should realise that he needs to share some bloody information from time to time in case it turns out that a five-year-old could poke massive holes in his plans).
I think the charm is more about Lily’s love than anything else. Lily and Petunia did love each other at one point, and probably still did on some level when Lily died. Lily loves Harry and Petunia, Lily sacrificed herself for Harry, Petunia and Lily share blood, Petunia’s home protects Harry. It’s all a bizarre use of the transitive property.
Muswell @30:
Harry refers to it as home in the last line of the first book. (“They don’t know we’re not allowed to use magic at home.”) That may very well be the last time (I found a few other places where he says “Privet drive” or “the Dursley’s”), but there’s at least once.
It seems to me you’re putting an awful lot of weight on the word “can”, which in normal speech is frequently used interchangeably with “may” (no matter how technically wrong it might be to do so). Two more excerpts that further emphasize Petnuia’s role:
Note “she sealed the charm” and “allowing you houseroom”. Taking the passage as a whole, it all paints the picture that it’s Petunia’s attitude, not Harry’s, that matters.
@Fiddler: you could make an argument that Neville did, since he destroyed the last Horcrux.
I’d put it this way – Do I think Dolores Umbridge was raped by the centaurs? No.
They’re intelligent beings, with access to a fairly reliable method of foretelling, and a certain amount of access to information about the outside world. They would know full well that raping any female wizard (particularly one high up the Ministry of Magic hierarchy like Dolores Umbridge) would result in a full-on crusade to remove their species from Britain… and they know how well this worked with the Giants. They have the ability and the willingness to reason in a cause-and-effect fashion and let that reasoning influence their behaviour. So I sincerely doubt they raped her.
Do I think they kept her captive for a while and let her fear she would be raped? Hells yes!
It would be the ideal “punishment” for her foolishness in pursuing the children into their territory, and it has the added pluses of not leaving any marks or physical damage. She didn’t get hurt, she didn’t get assaulted, they haven’t damaged her in any way. The only thing to hurt her was her own fear.
It’s not only very cruel, and very intelligent, but also a sort of poetic justice – and we should never forget the centaurs are capable of all of these.
I think Rowling does a marvelous job of depicting Harry’s grief in these chapters. In much the same way that “all caps” Harry is an accurate (if occasionally grating) portrayal of an angsty teen, all else aside, she really nails that feeling of being with people but apart from them at the same time.
The confrontation with Malfoy in the entryway is another of my favorite fist-pumping moments in the series, even before McGonagall enters. I love how nonchalant Harry is now about facing off against Malfoy. Like, he just got done kicking Malfoy’s dad’s butt (with help, granted), so he’s not exactly sweating taking on Malfoy himself. Again, it’s a great little way to show just how much Harry’s perspectives on things are starting to shift; these little school-based feuds, House points and all that, are becoming less and less important.
I’m a bit late to this, but I was re-reading DH and noticed this as Harry is walking to confront Voldemort: “But he was home. Hogwarts was the first and best home he had known. He and Voldemort and Snape, the abandoned boys, had all found home here…”
Omg, NEVILLE’S WAND. His grandmother really should be ashamed. It seems like common knowledge that using someone else’s wand doesn’t provide good results. I know Neville uses the constant feeling of inferiority to become stronger, but I can’t even imagine what he would be like if he were raised properly.
Oh and as an exercise for your imagination, pretend my comment was on the previous week’s entry. Totally meant to do that!
If Augusta Longbottom should be ashamed, than so should Molly and Arthur for giving Ron Charlie’s old wand.
If the centaurs didn’t rape her, why is she acting the way she is? There’s no obvious physical harm, yet she’s essentially staring into nothing and freaking out at the mere sound of a horse hoof. I don’t like the idea, but unfortunately I’m unclear on what else the centaurs could have done to Umbridge that would have her acting like she does while leaving no marks at all. And frankly, the way this group of centaurs acts to everyone else, it doesn’t seem likely they’d just scare her a little and let her go.
On this reread, I hated Umbridge even more, and I really hate that she gets no real comeuppance. By Book 6 she’s back at the Ministry with no penalty at all and nobody cares.
@KLitke, 40, I think a better question is, if the centaurs DID rape her then why is there no physical harm?
Adding to an old discussion but…
I fully agree with Emily on the centaur thing – I think the centaurs themselves may have known the old myths and stereotypes and played on them for Umbridge to punish her with fear. If she wasn’t so bigoted concerning them, she wouldn’t have been so terrified. It’s literally her own prejudices that form her punishment and it’s kind of beautiful?
1. Your thought process about the “Centaur Rape” does not seem to depend on how physically hurt Umbridge is after she comes back from the forest. Even if she was badly hurt, you can argue that, just because they were centaurs, rape is a possibility, along with the physical abuse. Keep in mind that Umbridge is not shown to have much magical talent – she is unable to deal with any of the twin’s pranks, while the other teachers are able to deal with it in seconds. She gets carried away by creatures she detests. We dont know what kind of place centaurs live in, and if they can induce mental torture without doing physical harm. What is show is that Umbridge has suffered emotional scarring that has permanently affected her, that is all.
2. Malfoy was found in the room with the veil, and that is why he is sent to Azkhaban, not because Harry incriminated him in his interview.
3. Harry was moved by what Sirius was willing to do after he escaped prison – avenge his parents if it is the last thing he does. Would that not make him feel affectionate towards Sirius?