CHAPDISC: DH2, In Memoriam

[va32h]

No: HPFGUIDX 176675

I must admit I found this chapter deeply boring.  As such, many of 
the questions asked by our discussion leader simply did not occur to 
me, because I simply did not care! But I will do my best. 

> Questions:
>    
> 1. Harry believes the teacup in the hall is a prank.  What was your 
> reaction the first time you read this?

No reaction.  Harry is frequently locked in his room with food and 
drink left for him outside his door (he has a cat flap in the door 
for just this purpose).  Did not think anything special of it. 

> 2. Harry ruminates on Hogwarts' inattention to teaching healing 
> charms.  Is this a flaw in the curriculum?  Do you suspect that it 
> might be taught at NEWT level?  Is this a post-Hogwarts curriculum 
as 
> Auror training is?  

It's probably post-Hogwarts training.  Students are only supposed to 
be doing magic at school, where they have access to a nurse, so they 
don't have a particular need to learn Healing spells.  For parchment 
cuts and the like, surely there is a wizarding object like a 
bandaid?  Hagrid uses bandages on injured animals in the forest, 
after all. 

> 3. On a related note, why does Harry think Hermione will know 
healing 
> charms?  Is he right?

Because that is Hermione's function in this book.  To know everything 
so JKR doesn't have to invest the effort in coming up with a more 
creative/plausible reason for...oh anything, really. Accio Books 
About Healing Spells!

> 4. When Harry discovers the mirror shard, it brings back the old 
> memories and feelings, but he suppresses them quickly.  How does 
this 
> demonstrate the progress has Harry made in controlling his 
feelings?  
> Has he made much progress?

If by control, you mean "shove into a deep recess and pretend it's 
not there" -  yes, Harry has made progress. I am not sure why JKR 
feels this is commendable.  She has her hero feel contempt for the 
tears of others and be reluctant to cry himself. 

> 5. Apart from the books, JKR is quite specific about what Harry 
> packs.  Why do you think she wanted to name each item?  Several 
> reappear, but not all.

To show us all that she really did mean to tie everything together. 
See? I remember the Potter Stinks badges! See! All those details 
really were important!  Except not.  I imagine JKR scouring the 
Lexicon, desperately searching for stuff that Harry is still supposed 
to have at this point. 

> 6. Already as a child, Dumbledore seems to be inclined to withhold 
> information, as we find in Doge's tribute. He is referred to 
as "more 
> reserved" when Doge returns from his travels.   Do we attribute 
this 
> to personality or to "family secrets?"  In other words, is he 
trained 
> to be secretive or would he have been anyway?  (All speculation 
> welcome!)
> 
> 7. We see Dumbledore writing as a Hogwarts student to luminaries 
such 
> as Flamel, Bathilda Bagshot and Waffling.  We know Bathilda has a 
> role later in Rita Skeeter's expose; any speculation on how much of 
> early Dumbledore's correspondence she shared?
> 
> 8. Doge just happens to be gone when Dumbledore and Grindelwald 
> become friends.  How much did/didn't Doge know about their 
friendship?
> 
> 9. Doge mentions the Grindelwald/Dumbledore duel, but clearly is 
> reporting from second-hand (at best) sources.  Are we looking at a 
> duel that grew in legend?  Is Rita Skeeter right?
> 
> 10. Following his perusal of Doge's tribute, Harry realizes he was 
> very bad at asking questions.  Is this a JKR sop to readers' 
> frustration with his lack of curiosity, or do you think she had 
> always planned for Harry to have this realization?
> 11. Harry suspects that Dumbledore didn't answer frankly the one 
> personal question he asked.  What's the likelihood Dumbledore would 
> have answered any of Harry's personal questions frankly?
> 
> 12. Rita Skeeter clearly lies in her interview, calling her 
> relationship with Harry Potter "close."  Did this mislead you on 
the 
> first read, or did you suspect some of what she found was true?
> 
> 13. The uses of dragon's blood is mentioned more than once in this 
> chapter and has been known since book 1, yet it never figures into 
> the denouement. Any speculation?  
> 
> 14. Rita refers to Dumbledore's relationship with Harry 
> as "unhealthy."  While she is mining for sensation, how much of 
this 
> do you think has a ring of truth?
> 
> 15. Doge's tribute is glowing, and Rita Skeeter's report insinuates 
> sensational scandal.  Which one is more honest?  Do both withhold 
> certain truths?  

Yeah, all this stuff falls into that category of "deeply boring".  
The articles from Doge and Skeeter were too long.  I really didn't 
care.  I wanted a story about Harry, not the moldy old past of Dead 
Dumbledore.  For a dead man, he sure does get a lot of ink in this 
book. 

Yes, I thought Harry commenting on his own failure to ask questions 
was a nod to the reader, in the same way that Snape's conversation 
with Bella in the Spinner's End chapter of HBP was a way to answer 
reader questions about Snape's double-agent role. 

The problem for me was that even though Harry admits he has failed to 
ask the right questions in the past - he does not do one thing to 
correct that problem!  He does not ask Arthur, Hagrid, Lupin - or 
anyone else who might have known Dumbledore just a hair better than 
Harry himself ANYTHING about Dumbledore.  He talks to Doge - whose 
opinion of Dumbledore is already known to Harry, since he read the 
article. 

And despite realizing that he knew nothing about his mentor, that 
Dumbledore lied to him and kept things from him, despite mentally 
questioning Dumbledore repeatedly, Harry just plods on, dutifully 
obeying Dumbledore's orders, never wavering, paying lip service to 
his doubts but never letting those doubts actually affect the way he 
does anything...

Okay, I've gone beyond the scope of this chapter, so I'll stop. But 
suffice to say - it was lame of JKR to introduce this "questioning 
Dumbledore" motif when it went nowhere. 


> 16. What was your reaction to the flash of blue in the mirror the 
> first time you read the book?


Figured it was Aberforth, since he had purchased something from Dung 
in HBP. Guessed at this point that it was the mirror, not the locket. 

 va32h