TBAY: HP and the Superfluous Scene

[dicentra63]

No: HPFGUIDX 40082

Dicentra, having spent a few long weeks in the hold of the Big Bang,
draining bilgewater and scrubbing the inner hull with her trusty
toothbrush (Captain's orders), emerges on the deck of the destroyer
and squints in the bright sunlight.  Before her eyes adjust, she hears
a commotion on the beach.  She jumps off the deck into Theory Bay's
cool waters and swims ashore.  

She sees a crowd of people surrounding what looks like a metal
appliance, about 24" wide and deep, maybe 3 feet tall. Someone opens
the bottom-hinged door and pulls out upper and lower wire racks.
Someone else loads a bunch of dingy-looking can(n)ons onto the racks,
shoves the racks back inside, and closes the door.  A moment later,
the machine begins to rumble and the crowd backs away.  After a bright
flash of light, the machine opens and the racks slide out, displaying
shiny new can(n)ons, some in designs Dicentra has never seen.  A few
in the crowd buy the can(n)ons, others refuse.  Someone who looks like
a lobo pardo is passing out pamphlets titled "MAGIC DISHWASHER: The
Summary."

Dicentra takes a pamphlet and reads it, impressed by the LOONacy
involved, but she has nothing to add or detract.  Further up the
beach, a youngish man with greying hair is handing out candy in one
hand and drinking from a faintly smoking goblet with the other.  "Not
too bad-looking for a LYCANTHROPE," she thinks, but notices that he's
already got a girlfriend: Pippin.  She's tossing a hedgehog into the
air and catching it.

Ahead, there's another crowd standing around a kiosk in which someone
is expounding another theory. It's Pip, and she's created a small
diorama of the Graveyard Scene in GoF in exquisite detail.  She's
using it as a visual aid to present her argument.  Dicentra stops to
listen, and is even more impressed than with MAGIC DISHWASHER. 

But something is bothering Dicentra. These theories, and many that
have come before, rely on a premise that is challenged only
occasionally by David: everything JKR writes Means Something.  Pippin
argues, for example, that nothing is insignificant:

"It's not as though there's a video of everything that happens in the
Potterverse, and all Rowling does to create her novels is mentally
play it back and write everything down just as it happened. Even if
that's an imaginary exercise that Rowling performs as her first step,
what ends up on the page is what Rowling means to tell us. Every
sentence serves a purpose,
whether it's to entertain, inform, persuade or confuse." (39968)

Indeed, the complexities and "subversiveness" of MAGIC DISHWASHER and
its as-yet-unnamed successor, LYCANTHROPE, and other theories are born
when a reader focuses on details that seem insignificant and imbues
them with significance.  It's especially fun and impressive if the
reader can connect these dots into a picture no one expected, one that
contradicts utterly the common interpretation (as LYCANTHROPE does) or
that adds levels of complexity not previously perceived (as does MAGIC
DISHWASHER).

But days before, as she huddled in the hold of the Big Bang, reading
PoA by faint candlelight during her OSHA-mandated breaks, Dicentra
came across a scene that struck her as useless.  It doesn't appear to
contribute anything to the rest of the story, either as a
clue-pointer-outer, a character definer, a mood-setter, or even a red
herring.  

The scene is in the middle of "Grim Defeat," right after Snape
substitutes for Lupin and right before the Hufflepuff/Gryffindor
Quidditch match where Harry sees the Grim and the Dementors knock him
off his broom (page 173, Scholastic edition).

Harry wakes up before dawn, thinking that the howling wind of the
storm awoke him. But no, Peeves was floating above him, "blowing hard
in his ear."  He asks Peeves what the sam hill he was doing that for,
but Peeves just cackles and blows himself out of the room.  It's
4:30am, and Harry tries to go back to sleep, but the howling of the
storm and probably game nerves prevent it.  He gets up, gets dressed,
and goes into the common room. On his way out, he stops Crooshanks
from getting into the bedroom.  He scolds the cat, saying there are
other mice to chase, why doesn't he just leave Scabbers alone.  He
thinks that the Quidditch match won't be cancelled on account of the
storm, and that Cedric Diggory is heavier than he is and will be less
likely to be blown off course.  He whiles away the hours before dawn,
rising occasionally to stop Crookshanks, and when it seems like it's
time for breakfast, goes down to get some grub.  Sir Cadogan
challenges him as he leaves and he tells him to shut up.  In the main
hall, he has some oatmeal, and the team shows up and talks about the
day's game.

OK.  What in that scene was essential to the story?  

That there was a howling storm?  It had been storming for days, so
that much was already established.  

That Crookshanks is not after rodents in general but Scabbers in
particular?  That has also been established, not to mention the fact
that a cat would rather go after known prey than find new stuff. There
isn't anything unusual about Crookshanks trying to get Scabbers in
that context.  

That the game won't be cancelled and he has to watch out for Diggory?
 That could easily have been covered in the following scene when the
rest of the team shows up.  

Sir Cadogan's challenge?   It's mildly entertaining but hardly
essential.  

Does it tell us anything about Harry?  Nope.  We don't even know how
he whiled away the hours before dawn.  

Is it really necessary for Harry to be up at that hour?  Doesn't
appear so, and he could have just as easily been awakened by nerves or
the storm as by Peeves, who, it seems, is a purely superfluous element
in this scene.

The scene isn't even particularly evocative of any mood or sensation.
It fails utterly to "entertain, inform, persuade, or confuse."  So why
is it there?

Unless JKR is being paid by the word (and she isn't), there is no
reason for this page and a half. She could just as easily have said,
"Harry woke up and got to breakfast before the rest of the team the
next morning.  The wind was still howling as before, but Harry knew
that Quidditch matches weren't cancelled on account of a storm."  Then
the team shows up and Wood tells Harry to watch for Diggory, along
with the other stuff he said.  

Dicentra is tempted to take a black magic marker to the scene, but
thinks better of it.  Maybe there's someone else in the Bay who can
show that it HAD to be there.  She wanders off to see if Stoned!Harry
wants to play hedgehog croquet in the meantime.

--Dicentra, who wonders if there are more scenes like that in the
series and what the implications are