Not enough casualties - frustration with OoP

Echa Schneider echa_schneider at mac.com
Sun Jul 13 20:18:12 UTC 2003


No: HPFGUIDX 69951

After crying so much about the demise of my beloved Sirius, I feel kind 
of bad saying this. But I have to admit that I am very frustrated by 
the lack of deaths in this book. It might even be my number one 
complaint. Voldemort is finally back with a full body, yet more people 
died in GoF. In fact, weren't Sirius and Bode the ONLY casualties this 
book?

First, I was looking forward to the MoM denial about Voldemort's 
return. I'm incredibly relieved that Fudge didn't turn out to be a 
secret DE or something like that. But I also wanted JKR to show series 
consequences for Fudges decision to ignore the hard truths and continue 
blindly pretending to be safe. And I just don't think she did. Let's 
look at the consequences of Fudge's ignorance:

1. Hogwarts was a really miserable place to be. Yeah, that really 
sucked for Harry and co., but now Dumbledore will be back and everyone 
can forget about that horrible Umbridge woman ever existing.
2. Percy had a big fight with his family and made his mother cry. Also, 
a shame. But it will now be fixed.
3. Voldemort's most loyal supporters got released from Azkaban. Yowza! 
That's pretty hardcore. But then they apparently just went back to sit 
with him at his headquarters and play trivial pursuit or something 
until Harry got the prophecy. Come on! Couldn't they just do a few 
random Muggle killings in their spare time? Exact some revenge on 
whoever put them away?

I do realize that they didn't want to call attention to themselves, 
given the advantage Fudge was giving them, but I really felt like there 
should at least be some unexplained deaths, mysterious occurences, and 
so on. It just didn't feel very...well, scary. Voldemort seemed to be 
doing more damage before he came back. Now all he does is send dreams 
to a teenager. Big whoop. This is who I've been afraid of for four 
books? Not. Impressed. Go kill someone already.

Am I sick? Does anyone else feel this way?

Echa







More information about the HPforGrownups archive