CHAPDISC: DH 23, Malfoy Manor

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 183535

Jerri wrote:
>
(Quoting Zara's summary) 
> >Hermione silently points her wand at Harry and casts a hex that
makes his face swollen and painful.

Jerri: 
> For a moment I thought that this was a betrayal.

Carol responds:

So did I. Only for a moment, but still, it was a shock.

Jerry wrote: 

> What a coincidence!  In fantasy worlds like Tolkien's where the 
characters acknowledge some supernatural force helping the side of 
good, when things would seem to be coincidence, reference to this 
supernatural force allows this reader to accept the coincidence for 
the sake of the story.  I miss that in the Harry Potter books.  <snip>
In today's world I suppose that JKR felt she had to keep the books
secular, but the loss of involvement of "God" or "god" or "gods" or
"angels" or whatever makes it a bit more difficult for me to swallow
the number of coincidences needed to make things work out.  And this
chapter is full of them.  <snip examples>

Carol responds:

I hadn't thought about the absence of a supernatural explanation, but
I also noticed the number of coincidences, starting with, if Harry
hadn'e insisted on saying Voldemort (against Ron's advice and all
common sense) and in so doing summoned the Snatchers, HRH wouldn't
have found out that Bellatrix had a Horcrux hidden in her vault. But
it isn't just coincidences, it's deus ex machina-style contrivances (I
want to say dei ex machinae, but I'm not sure of the plural. Geoff?),
from the mirror that Aberforth just happens to be looking into
bringing Dobby at just the right moment to the escape by dragon
(conveniently almost blind and impervious to HRH's presence a few
chapters later). I'm not even going to talk about wand loyalties,
which isn't exactly a deus ex machina, but how convenient that
snatching a wand from Draco not only makes Harry master of the
hawthorn wand (Draco's) but the infamous Elder Wand as well! (Not
harping, Lynda. I just noticed an extraordinary number of coincidences
in this book, more so than in other books in the series.) 

Jerri wrote:
<snip>
> I do think that by DH JKR had decided to not have V allow werewolves
to be full members of the Death Eaters, and this was one of the ways 
she chose to try to show this.  I am not sure if she had reached this
conclusion in HBP, when Greyback is able to get onto the spell blocked
tower, which supposedly required a Dark Mark to get past the barrier,
at that point in time. <snip>

Carol responds:

IIRC, the spell blocking the stairway was cast when the DEs and
Greyback were already on the stairs, blocking it behind them. The only
DE (or at any rate, seeming DE with a Dark Mark) who actually ran
through it was Snape. Thorfinn Rowle had destroyed the archway with a
badly aimed spell, breaking the barrier, before the DEs, Draco, and
Harry came down the stairs. Had he not done so, Harry would not have
been able to get through. (I may have a few details wrong; my point is
that Fenrir never passed through the barrier.) And note, as I
mentioned in my response to Zara's questions, that he can't just pass
through the Malfoys' gate by holding up his Dark Mark as Yaxley and
Snape do in the first chapter of DH. The gate assumes a very
threatening appearance and he has to state his reason for being there.
)All this is from memory, so again, I may be wrong on a few points.)

> > 4) What did you think of Draco in the scene where he is asked to
identify Harry?
> 
> I think it was actually pretty brave of Draco.  If Lord V ever 
suspected that he had refused to identify Harry on purpose he (and
probably his family) would be toast.  Since Harry's appearance was 
messed up a bit, Draco apparently felt he could get away with not 
being sure.  I think that Draco hadn't liked watching the things that
had been happening at Malfoy Manor.  I imagine that the death of the
Muggle Studies teacher wasn't the only nasty thing Draco had 
experienced during the time this book takes.  Draco didn't want to see
people he knew die horribly in front of his eyes, even HRH.  He either
didn't know what he could do to help, or wasn't willing to go as far
as to help, but he wasn't going to work against them either, if it was
avoidable.

Carol responds:
Again, I agree with you. He probably had to witness horrible things
and he certainly knew that Ollivander and Luna, an innocent old man
and a fellow student from Hogwarts, were prisoners in his family's
secret room (surely the same one that he mentioned in CoS), he
actually was forced by Voldemort to Crucio Ollivander himself while
HRH were at 12 GP. Contrast this suffering Draco, the unwilling but
helpless instrument of Voldemort, with the bullying braggart of the
earlier books, the one who was sure that he was on the winning side
and was happy that "Mud-Bloods" and "blood traitors" were going to be
killed off. That Draco Petrified Harry and stomped on his fingers and
nose, covered him with his own Invisibility Cloak and left him on the
train to be returned to Platform 9 3/4 (admittedly Harry had been
spying on him and had previously hexed him and his friends beyond
recognition, not to mention helping to send his father to prison, but,
still, the revenge is a bit extreme). That Draco had openly expressed
the hope that Hermione would be killed by the Basilisk and told his
mother that the (imaginary) stench she was smelling came from a
"Mud-Blood" (Hermione). I could cite other examples, but I think the
"progress" from Pure-Blood supremacist bully to eager young Death
Eater honored to carry out the mission that LV has entrusted to him
(killing DD) is sufficiently clear and that Draco, especially
early!HBP Draco with the Draco of DH is marked. Even in the
Sectumsempra scene, where Draco has been crying from terror and
despair, he still fights Harry and views him as a deadly enemy; he
still sees killing Dumbledore as a duty; and he still cheers when he
succeeds against all hope and all odds at repairing the Vanishing
Cabinet. Only on the tower with Dumbledore, faced with killing a sick
and helpless old man and listening to that old man talk of mercy do we
see a change. Draco has come to see, with DD's help, that he is not a
killer. From that time on, he's a reluctant Death Eater. All he wants
is what he can't have, to get out without being killed and betraying
his family to their deaths. Whether his views on Pure-Blood
superiority ever change, I don't know, but his views on torture and
murder and extortion certainly have. He will never be Harry's friend,
but as an adult, he acknowledges him with a nod. (Whether Harry
returns it is irrelevant here.) That's a marked contrast to the
behavior of his father and Mr. Weasley in Flourish and Blott's in CoS.
It may not be much, not the complete volte face that some readers were
expecting. But for Draco Malfoy, so sure that he and his father were
superior beings on the winning side, it's a lot, IMO.

Jerri:

> Up until this chapter I wasn't sure how much Bellatrix knew about
the horcrux's.  I assume from this chapter that she at least knew
about the Cup, having been given the job of keeping it safe in her
Gringotts vault.  She may or may not have known that there were others
as well. I would guess that she thought the Cup was the only horcurx,
or at least the only one she knew about. <snip>

Carol responds:

I don't think that she knew it was a Horcrux, only that it was (as she
thought) "his most precious [possession]." (She wouldn't have known
that it was one of, at the time, five such possessions.) She would
have known that the cup, as Helga Hufflepuff's sole remaining relic,
was immensely valuable, not to mention that it was valuable in itself
as a superbly crafted goblin-made gold artifact, no doubt invested
with magical powers (Hepzibah Smith said so, anyway). That he would
entrust her to hide and protect such an object was an honor she was
sure he would bestow on no one but herself, his most loyal and trusted
follower. But just as he didn't tell Lucius Malfoy that the valuable
Dark magical artifact entrusted to him was more than the means of
opening the Chamber of Secrets and releasing the basilisk, he would
not, i think, have told even Bellatrix that the cup was even more
valuable than it appeared, encasing a precious piece of her master's soul.

Jerri:
> The fact that Snape was the most important DE that we know about,
who wasn't entrusted by V with the secret of a horcrux might show that
V thought that Snape was the one who would be the biggest potential 
danger if Snape were to turn against V?  Or was putting Snape in as 
Headmaster V's way to have Snape guard the Diadem? <snip>

Carol responds:

When LV entrusted the cup to Bellatrix (who had a strongly protected
Gringotts vault) and the diary (which was supposed, at some point
chosen by LV, to be placed in the hands of a Hogwarts student) to
Lucius, having hidden the others himself, Snape was quite young, only
about twenty-one, and had probably just been sent to Hogwarts to spy
on Dumbledore. LV chose other, somewhat older followers to guard his
precious Horcruxes. As for making Snape headmaster of Hogwarts (where
he had been for years), I don't think it had anything to do with the
Horcrux (which Snape knew nothing about, in any case), I think he was
rewarding Snape for killing Dumbledore by giving him the position he
requested in the new government. And, of course, LV would have seen
the advantages to himself of placing Snape in that position
(advantages that were, of course, delusory since Snape was working
against him). 

Carol, still struggling to get caught up on posting!