Spinners End - changing views of Narcissa

[wickywackywoo2001]

No: HPFGUIDX 134436

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "zgirnius" <zgirnius at y...> wrote:
> 
> 2) Cissy. We see a different, and surprisingly attractive, side to 
> her. If Draco turns out not-so-bad by the end of Book 7, (by the end 
> of Book 6 this seems entirely possible) in this chapter JKR shows us 
> a possible reason for this. Nothing we have seen of Lucius suggests 
> his son would turn out better...but Cissy seems truly to love her son.
> 
I quite agree.  And this chapter had an unexpected effect for me, in
that it changed how I would normally have reacted to the
Harry/Draco/Narcissa scene in Diagon Alley later on.  When I last saw
Narcissa, she was desperately trying to protect her son in a
near-hopeless situation.  She was alone, vulnerable, and distraught. 
When Harry mocks her in the robe shop, in front of her son, for the
first time I don't feel like applauding his defiance.  He comes off as
caddish.  Here again, we see him thinking he knows everything and has
nothing to learn about a situation, but THIS time, we know something
that he doesn't.  This has always been his tendency, to think that he
knows it all, or at least enough to launch into action, and he
doesn't.  This is why I can't follow the folks who say that the end of
HBP proves that Harry was right all along about Snape, and Book 7 is
going to be the story of him giving free rein to instincts in order to
triumph.  I don't think that's his strong suit, and he's all too ready
to judge others - Dumbledore even has to tell him explicitly not to
judge Merope harshly when he's ready to write her off as a bad mother,
because he doesn't know how much suffering she went through before the
end.

Wanda