No mystery guest in OOP?

[Amy Z]

No: HPFGUIDX 90467

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, IAmLordCassandra at a... wrote:
> Ok.  For some reason this has been bothering me, so I thought I'd 
bring it to 
> the table.  
> 
> In every book thusfar (other than OOP, unless I'm missing 
something) there 
> has been a revealing at the end where we learn one of the 
characters is evil. 
> 
> PS/SS: Quirrell
> CoS: Tom Riddle/Voldemort 
> PoA: Scabbers/Wormtail 
> GoF: Mood/Crouch JR 
> 
> Where is the mystery and the unveiling in OOP?    

In terms of a single character, none (other than the significant one 
Geoff & Pippin pointed out, that Umbridge proves to have been behind 
the Dementor attack, but I can see that that isn't the good- or 
neutral-character-revealed-to-be-Ever-So-Evil unveiling you're 
talking about).  However, if one broadens your question a bit, there 
is certainly a mystery and unveiling.

Another way of phrasing your question is "there is always a big, 
Poirot-lays-it-all-for-you explication where the central mystery of 
the plot is explained:  Lupin & Black give it in PoA (and Hermione, 
if the Time-Turner counts as a central mystery for you), and 
Quirrell, Riddle, and Crouch Jr. give it in the others.  Where is it 
this time?"

To that phrasing of the question I would answer that it's in 
Dumbledore's office, delivered by Dumbledore, with the teaser JKR 
gave us when the publication date was announced in January '03:  "I 
am now going to tell you everything."  The "everything" being "the 
question you asked me at the end of PS."  It isn't the villain-
revealed moment you're talking about, but it is much bigger than any 
of those revelations, because it's about the mystery of the whole 
series.

Now, IMO, it is peculiarly anticlimactic, but that feeling also seems 
right.  Harry isn't hanging on every word; he barely cares or hears, 
because he's in shock (and speaking for many of us:  so are we.  We 
really want Dumbledore to just shut up so we can absorb the fact that 
she's just gone and killed Sirius--though we don't want it badly 
enough to close the book and sit in reflective silence for awhile 
<g>).  And it's answering a question that we almost knew the answer 
to already--"why did Voldemort try to kill baby Harry?"  "Because 
baby Harry had the power to overthrow him."  We didn't know the 
details (and still don't), but since we've known since Book One, 
Chapter One that V *did* try to kill him, his having a reason to do 
so is QED.

The only real mystery the Big Explanatory Scene solves is why 
Dumbledore has left Harry so dangerously ignorant--and the answer to 
that doesn't pack a big plot punch, but does pack an emotional one:  
because he loves him.  (The other half of the answer, that 
VoldemortChannelling!Harry is actually dangerous to Dumbledore, we've 
known since the portkey out of AD's office at Christmas.)

How's that, Lord Cassandra?  Any help?
Amy Z