Two-way Mirror and other frustrations! (OotP Spoilers!)

[Grey Wolf]

No: HPFGUIDX 62926

FalconGK wrote:
> > Ok, was anyone else extremely frustrated that Harry didn't remember 
> > the package that Sirius had given him so that they could 
> > communicate?  <SNIP> Sirius had openly told him "Here is a way for 
> > us to communicate."  ARGH!  I was so frustrated.
> > FalconGK
> 
> 
> This seemed to me to be one of the largest plot holes / most 
> distressing lapses in JKR's concentration 

Harry did not want to remember the mirror - when he received it he was 
angry at Sirius, so he simply put it in a trunk and forgot about it. 
Harry has forgotten guifts often enough: the knive (he could've used it 
in task 2, GoF) and the sneakoscope jump to mind.

> (#2: in Snape's Pensieve, 
> Snape's memory containing events of which he had no knowledge, 
> essentially a POV shift.)

We have been told that Snape used to trail them constantly (by Sirius, 
who is in doubt, but nonetheless). Besides, all the extra information 
can be added by the person's imagination. In fact, most of our memories 
are invented anyway - everyone unconsciously changes his memories to 
remember them in the light that suits him or her best. That's at the 
heart of the expression "100 people watching the same event will have 
100 different descriptions of it". Whatever Harry read wasn't 
necesarily what was really written there - not even in Snape's paper, 
which he might remember as better filled just because *he* is 
remembering it. Pensieve scenes are always suspect, because human 
memory is not as computer memory: it's fallible and has a tendency to 
distort the facts, and fill the wholes as needed.

In a word, we remember what we want to remember.

> This lapse could have easily been rectified with a few additional 
> lines (and what's a few more?) stating that Harry tried using the 
> mirror but Sirius didn't answer. (I'm away from my cell phone and 
> miss calls quite often, and my phone is a whole lot smaller and rings 
> louder than that mirror.) Perhaps Sirius even could have found 
> Harry's message when he next saw the mirror, like voice mail, and 
> thus knew that HP had gone to the MoM to "rescue" him, thus Sirius 
> called in the OotP cavalry, rather than Snape sitting on the 
> information that Sirius was fine and not bothering to tell HP that. 
> That almost smacks of Snape *wanting* HP to go to the MoM, or by 
> negligence, putting him in danger. 

It would've been easier to simply not put the mirror at all. But 
forgetting presents is well within Harry's character, as I said above.

> And what was with Snape discontinuing those Occlumency lessons, 
> anyway? DD should be pissed. 

And he was, in a way: pissed *at himself* by not taking the burden 
himself, pissed at not trusting Harry, at fearing Harry's abilities at 
resisting Voldemort's intrusion. And he says as much.

> It seems to me that JKR needs a good beta reader. Many of our 
> quibblings on these boards (and Flint-like oopsies) could probably be 
> cleared up if she had a few, perhaps several, folks who read her mss. 
> before she FedEx'd it to her editor, perhaps someone who could 
> control her abuse of ellipses (. . .) and em-dashes (--). I figure, 
> really, I could have cut around 100 pages from OotP, which translates 
> into something like 30,000 trees for the American printing alone, by 
> correcting the punctuation and paragraphing, without removing a word. 
> 
> TK -- recently delurked.

My edition (British) is made with recycled paper, so no trees lost. I 
understand that the Canadian is recycled too. So I'm not sure reducing 
the length of the book would save trees. Beyond that, that sounded very 
cocky - if you're a better writer, maybe you should try writing the 
books yourself. But I doubt you'll have as much success, if you allow 
me to say so. Also, I've yet to see major flints in the books - 
everything can be explained, and what cannot has been corrected or is 
minor (number of students, wand order).

Hope that helps,

Grey Wolf