What JKR Finds Important

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 116036


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "delwynmarch" 
<delwynmarch at y...> wrote:

> About OoP. Antosha, you explain very clearly why Harry should 
indeed be disturbed. My only problem is that Harry *starts the 
book* already disturbed ! He was NOT disturbed at the end of 
GoF, we had no sig that he was going to change so dramatically. 
And then we start OoP barely a month later, and suddenly Harry 
is being unfair to his friends, he's bullying Dudley, and he's 
being generally extremely moody and bad-tempered. <

Pippin:

Actually, JKR does warn us that Harry is not okay at the end of 
GoF. The last chapter begins --

--When he looked back, even a month later, Harry found he had 
few memories of the following days. It was as though he had 
been through too much to take in any more. The recollections he 
did have were very painful. --

That tells us that a month later, ie at the start of OOP, he was 
looking back on painful memories.

 Hagrid tells us too.

--"You all righ'?" he said gruffly.
"Yeah," said Harry. 
"No, yeh're not," said Hagrid. "Course yeh're not. But yeh will be."
Harry said nothing.--

and a little farther down the page
--Harry smiled back at him. It was the first time he'd smiled in 
days. --

In the last chapter he's  described as  "didn't care very much", 
having a "heavy heart", a "hot, sick swoop of anger in his 
stomach", "no pleasure at all", "spirits couldn't help but lift 
slightly","less painful" and feeling "a kind of ringing in his ears". 
He and his friends attack Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle five against 
three, and kick them when they're down,  which foreshadows his 
bullying of Dudley. 

It's true he's at peace with Ron and Hermione, but  he felt that 
"each of them was waiting for some sign, some word of what 
was going on outside Hogwarts". His feelings about Ron and 
Hermione at the start of OOP, when he thinks they have 
information that's being kept from him, are understandably 
different.

Although we're told the last leg of the journey to King's Cross 
passed "pleasantly enough", Harry is aware that "time will not 
slow down when something unpleasant lies ahead." 

JKR is playing her usual game of leading us into false 
assumptions. Harry has been changed forever at the end of GoF, 
but he doesn't realize it yet, just as he can't see the thestrals
yet. 
The reader is allowed to experience that denial right along with 
him, yet the signs that all is not well, though hardly obvious,  are 
clearly in evidence.

Pippin