Interpretation (was Re: Dumbledore's "“peaceful expression�?

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 142165

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, juli17 at a... wrote:
>
>  
> Neri:
> <Snip>...the inconsistency is 
> only with Dumbledore's  very vague and hole-riddled explanations that 
> everybody acted "at once".  Only if everybody acted at once, how come 
> Harry is having a public collapse,  breaks into Umbridge's office, 
> reports a mind attack by Voldemort, taken at  wand point to the 
> Forbidden Forest, closely saved from a herd of rampaging  centaurs by 
> a rampaging giant, takes a flight all the way from Scotland to  London 
> on invisible horses, enters a breached and deserted Ministry, tours  
> the wonders of the Department of Mystery and has a chat with a bunch 
> of  Death Eaters, and he still beats the Order to the mark? Calling 
> this a  "math-based inconsistency" is a bit of an understatement.
> 

> Julie:
> Okay, how about general inconsistencies ;-) One thing to  remember is
> that JKR has stated she wrote the end of OotP in a hurry, to  get it out
> for publication on time. So this would be one place where  inconsistencies
> might logically pop up, especially as *so much* was going  on. It's not the
> least inconceivable to me that JKR would have lost track of  the timing,
> or that the editors, considering the size and complexity of  OotP, would
> not have done the math here (they were under time  restraints, while we
> have plenty of time to fine-tooth comb through the books).


Pippin:
This seems to be another bit of confusion turning itself into canon. AFAIK, it was
GoF that had a publication deadline and had to be written hurriedly.  No publication date 
was announced for OOP until it had been turned in, IIRC. JKR did say she wrote it while 
very pregnant, but I don't recall her saying that she was in a hurry. Can you point me to 
the interview?

Dumbledore doesn't say everyone acted at once. He says Snape acted at once when he 
grew worried that Harry hadn't come back from the forest and the Order acted at once 
when they got Snape's message.  Snape doesn't get worried at once and that, I agree, is 
the source of the ambiguity. But I can imagine him confidently expecting Harry to turn up 
sans Umbridge, and then getting worried after an hour or so. It doesn't fit your 
hypothetical timeline, but that's what I imagine Snape was doing once he'd finished 
patching up his hexed Slytherins and trying to get a coherent story out of them. Knowing 
he was now anti-Umbridge would they tell him that she'd admitted to sending dementors 
after Harry or tried to use an unforgivable? I don't think so. 

It's obvious to us that this has to be a trap and Voldemort's plans must be near completion 
because there are so few pages left -- but Snape can't glance out and see how much is 
sitting in the reader's right hand. From Snape's pov, there's nothing to indicate that this 
vision more than any of the dozens of others is a trap. Harry has had other visions by 
daylight, he's had others that Snape knows weren't true, (though Harry never seems really 
to have grasped that Voldemort wasn't actually in the DoM when he dreamed of it.)  It's 
true that occlumency lessons have failed, but this does not leave Harry any *more* 
vulnerable than he was when they began.

Neri (140297):
She can also ask her editors to supply her with the numbers. It's
their job, and I suspect they know how to use Google even if she
doesn't.

Pippin:
I don't think editors of fiction do that kind of fact-checking these days. They might notice 
if your character has green eyes in chapter one and blue eyes in chapter seven, but that's 
about it. They don't seem to mind the way September 1 falls on a Sunday in successive 
years. JKR might ask anyone to look it up for her, but why would she if it wasn't important?


Neri :
 Can you now explain to me the metaphoric value of "the
sun was falling towards the top of the trees in the Forbidden Forest"
in words that are almost identical to those in PoA, *except* for the
difference in the sun's position showing an earlier hour, which is
corroborated by the different relation to dinnertime, also noted in
close proximity in both books?

Pippin:
The general idea is that night is falling, and that's why Buckbeak's execution is at sunset in 
PoA, but in OOP there had to be light enough when Harry and Hermione took Umbridge 
into the forest that Ron et al could have seen which path they took. "We saw you heading 
into the forest out of the window and followed."

Neri:
Another example: you'll note that the second time Snape contacted HQ,
Dumbledore specifically notes that there were several Order members
there, but the *first* time he contacted HQ only Sirius is mentioned.
Was Sirius alone in HQ then? It would indeed be logical for Voldy to
start the operation only after Kreahcher reports that he and Sirius
are alone in the house. This would enable Kreacher to safely lie to
Harry in the fire while Sirius is upstairs tending to Buckbeak. And
conveniently Dumbledore never had a chance to talk with Sirius before
Sirius was killed. This means that Dumbledore might be depending only
on Snape's testimony that he indeed contacted to find if Sirius is in
HQ. Maybe Snape never did, but Sirius is conveniently unable to tell
us that.

Pippin:
Er, then how did Dumbledore know that Snape had contacted the Order at all? Snape 
hasn't had a chance to report but the Order members at the Ministry have. Or is this 
another hypothetical conversation between Snape and Dumbledore by means of the 
hypothetical instant communications device that would cause all sorts of plot holes if it 
existed? <g> (The thing needs an acronym. But in the glory days of TBAY, it would have 
earned its inventor a yellow flag for being  non-canonical magic.)

You've said it would be incomprehensibly bad generalship for Dumbledore to go off 
without any means of communicating with the rest of the Order yet we saw him do just 
that in HBP. I guess he's just a bad general then, or rather, his success is due to his 
uncompromising stand against Voldemort and his ability to unite highly disparate people 
in a common cause, rather than his knowledge of military procedures. 

Anyway, Snape would have to know that Sirius was going to be killed and be certain that 
he hadn't talked to any other order members before he died.

Pippin