TBAY: Buckbeak is Dead - Hypothetically Speaking

[Kia]

No: HPFGUIDX 79114

Buckbeak is Dead - Hypothetically Speaking



Seeing someone walking on water is a rare sight everywhere, so 
a few people in Theory Bay do a double-take when they see a girl 
pulling that stunt. A closer look however reveals that the person 
is question was no walking on water at all, but rather was on 
board of the smallest ship possible to set a small toe in - a 
walnut shell. 

Upon reach the safe haven of Theory Bay Kia let out a sigh of 
pure relief. "Not a sailor, nope."

She steps upon the first available rock and holds up the walnut 
shell while looking expectantly at the passers-by. "This is B.I.D. 
Take a good look at it, because it is the smallest possible ship 
ever to sail the waters of Theory Bay. And although it is rather 
small, it can not only transport small toes, but grown people and 
quite a few of them. I even consider it possible of it to host whole 
parties - with a buffet to boot."

Kia stops to catch her breath, but continues with even more 
enthusiasm: "B.I.D. stands for "Buckbeak Is Dead" - not the 
catchiest of all phrases and the ship is open for any re-naming 
schemes -  but currently it's celebrating Buckbeak's death.

But isn't Buckbeak all breathing and happily munching away at 
dead rats or something in the middle of somewhere, you might 
ask? Yes, he is. He is as alive as you can be, but that was not 
always the case.

Remember the time when you, the reader thought along with 
Harry that Beaky was "pushing up the daisies"? When Harry 
thought Beaky had "joined the choir invisible"? When he was an 
ex-hippogriff? Don't you remember the heartache, the pain, the 
bone-crushing despair? Well, then I obviously have to remind 
you."

The speaker takes her nutshell and pulls a copy of Prisoner of 
Azkaban out of it.

"Ah... here it is. Chapter Sixteen/Seventeen. I will remove the 
unnecessary pieces of dialogue to not bore you too much: 
'Slowly, in a kind of horrified trance, Harry, Ron, and Hermione 
set off
silently around Hagrid's house. As they reached the other side, 
the front door closed with a sharp snap.
...
They heard a door open behind them and men's voices.

"Oh, Ron, please let's move, they're going to do it!" Hermione 
breathed....

They walked forward; Harry, like Hermione, was trying not to 
listen to the rumble of voices behind them...

The rat was squealing wildly, but not loudly enough to cover up 
the sounds drifting from Hagrid's garden. There was a jumble of 
indistinct male voices, a silence, and then, without warning, the 
unmistakable swish and thud of an axe.

Hermione swayed on the spot.

"They did it!" she whispered to Harry. "I d -- don't believe it -- they 
did it!"

Harry's mind had gone blank with shock. The three of them 
stood transfixed with horror under the Invisibility Cloak. The very 
last rays of the setting sun were casting a bloody light over the 
long- shadowed grounds. Then, behind them, they heard a wild 
howling.

"Hagrid," Harry muttered.' 

Beaky is dead. Dead, dead, dead. Why? Because Harry hears 
his murder. He hears doors slamming, the men's voices, the 
axe and Hagrid's wailing. The information those noises tell him 
is simple enough - Buckbeak is dead as a doornail. Deceased. 
As I said before - dead, dead, dead.

But no - surprise - he is not. Alive, breathing, healthy, he lives on. 
The information Harry's ears gave his brains were correct, but 
his brain was lacking crucial information to put them into context 
and draw the right conclusions. If Harry had another source of 
information in that moment - like his eyes - he would have come 
not to the false, false, false conclusion he came to. Buckbeak 
would never be thought of as dead. But no. All is complicated in 
PoA.

What makes Buckbeak's death interesting is not his possible 
impact on philosophy and physics - if the narrator thinks you're 
dead, does it mean you *are* dead? - but rather something in 
the background, something weird and strange and too 
coincidental.

The problem is that there is another murder Harry hears - and 
only hears - in PoA. The murder of his parents:

'At least a hundred dementors, their hidden faces pointing up at 
him, were standing beneath him. It was as though freezing water 
were rising in his chest, cutting at his insides. And then he heard 
it again.... Someone was screaming, screaming inside his 
head... a woman...

"Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!"

"Stand aside, you silly girl... stand aside, now...."

"Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead --"

Numbing, swirling white mist was filling Harry's brain.... What 
was he doing? Why was he flying? He needed to help her... She 
was going to die.... She was going to be murdered....
--------
He was falling, falling through the icy mist.

"Not Harry! Please... have mercy... have mercy....

A shrill voice was laughing, the woman was screaming, and 
Harry knew no more.
--------
Harry was failing again through thick white fog, and his mother's 
voice was louder than
ever, echoing inside his head -- "Not Harry! Not Harry! please -- 
I'll do anything!"

"Stand aside. Stand aside, girl!"

"Harry!"

Harry jerked back to life. 
--------
White fog obscured his senses... big, blurred shapes were 
moving around him... then came a new voice, a man's voice, 
shouting, panicking --

"Lily, take Harry and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off --"

The sounds of someone stumbling from a room -- a door 
bursting open -- a cackle of high- pitched laughter --'

See - it's all audio and no video. No images, just sound. You 
know normally I would let it go, despite the cuteness of this 
walnut of a vessel here, but..."

Kia looks thoughtful at the nutshell "Beaky, Biddy, Beaky" she 
mumbles before continuing:

"This is the installment of the series where our beloved 
authoress hits us over the head with the fact that Harry can't trust 
his ears when it comes to witnessing murder. I mean, what's the 
purpose of Beaky's pseudo-death, if not to bring this point 
home? I mean what's the purpose of Beaky's storyline besides 
that? Illustrating MacNair's nastiness, showing corrupting justice 
system in the Wizarding World, adding a bit of tension and 
making the plot a bit more intricate? Okay, yes, but was it really 
necessary to let Harry *hear* the death?

So what's up with B.I.D., the beloved walnut shell here? Beaky - 
as I affectionaly call it - is all about the obvious and the 
not-so-obvious. B.I.D. stands for the idea that if one 
audio-murder is totally and utterly fake and not-happening, 
something must be wrong the second audio murder as well. I 
am not saying, that Lily and James are off and healthy, I am just 
saying, something went down there Harry (and everyone else 
obviously) has no idea of. Something happened Rowling has not 
told us yet. And we are in for a surprise. So any bids for B.I.D. 
here? It's cool and beautiful and now for a bargain - you can get 
even a second ship here."

With a a big grin Kia magicks an even smaller smaller 
something out of the walnut shell. Its origins are unknown, it has 
no name and doesn't look like it would float in a bathtub.

"This so far unnamed ship might be of microscopic size, but it 
holds a lot of ideas. It's mothership surely is B.I.D. but this one 
goes out into rougher seas... uhm not really, but you get the idea. 

Anyway - when the information Harry's ears received about the 
events are not all that exact and there is some crucial 
information missing - what could it possibly be?

I don't think that James and Lily are still alive - the Priori 
Incantatem in GoF took care of that - so it must be something 
else, something we have heard and yet along with Harry 
completely misinterpreted.

"Stand aside, you silly girl... stand aside, now...."

"Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead --"

Who says that this silly girl is Lily? The text doesn't. Yes, I 
propose that there was fourth person in the house along with 
Lily, James and Harry. Why?

The Priori Incatatem. A spell was missing. The spell directed at 
Harry that crippled Voldemort. That famous, famous spell didn't 
show up at all.

Voldemort's wand. Who fished that out of the rubble and kept it 
for years and gave it back before Voldemort's resurrection? But 
maybe there was no need to fish it out of the rubble after all, 
because it 'vanished' before.

The Priori Incatatem again. Or better the Wand Order mistake. 
It's crucial for our perception of the HP story that it was Lily's and 
not James' sacrifice that protected Harry. Therefore it's crucial 
knowledge that Lily was the last line of defense, that Lily was to 
die after James. But Rowling who tends to do an impeccable job 
with continuity and the like just slips here - majorly. Which might 
lead to the speculation that Rowling's perception of the night and 
the importance of "who died first" differs from ours. What if it 
doesn't matter who died first for Rowling? What if she doesn't 
caught the mistake because the 'silly girl' in Harry's bedroom is 
not Lily?"

The girl on the rock clears her throat: "Naturally I have no idea 
who this could be and the possibilities are endless, but I will not 
cover up the huge, sheer gaping hole in this theory here either. 
The reason why those ships are so ridiculously small is not their 
sheer idiocy, but rather a problem with the point of view. We have 
no way of witnessing the event in question visually.  

We know Buckbeak is alive because Harry saw it with his eyes. 
With James, Lily and possibly the the unknown girl dead we 
have no one to give us nice dive into a pensieve. Voldemort won't 
volunteer and if Baby!Harry was able to witness enough to make 
a wonderfully three-dimensional Pensive memory out of it, then 
why was this not attempted before? Okay, don't answer the last 
one - witnessing your parents' death is not a fun thing to do on a 
Saturday evening.  

But I have enough of pensieves for the time being. Thank you 
very much. Don't like them enough even if they could inflate my 
pitiful attempts on a ship.... 

My wonderful, great, beautiful, perfect ships here that you can buy 
now for a bargain price. Two for the price of one and the price 
ain't high. They're hot, they're cool, they're all-temperature ships. 
Wanna walk on water too? Buy now or the opportunity will be lost 
forever! Bargain! Bargain! BARGAIN!