CHAPDISC: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 15, The Goblin

[Dana King]

No: HPFGUIDX 181844

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CHAPTER DISCUSSIONS: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,
Chapter 15, The Goblin's Revenge


"The sword of Gryffindor was hidden they knew not where, and
they were three teenagers in a tent whose only achievement was
not, yet, to be dead."

So succinctly does this quote from The Goblin's Revenge sum
up the dreary, hopeless mood of this chapter that I had to
lead with it. Chapter 15 opens with Harry's burial of Mad Eye
Moody's magical eye. Safety precautions and Ron's need for a
bacon sandwich motivate their move to the outskirts of a small
town. It turns out to be infested with dementors, however, and
Harry finds himself unable to produce a Patronus to defend
himself. Ron's hunger has made him quite ornery, and it is
Hermione who realizes that Harry is handicapped because he
is wearing the Horcrux. They decide to wear it in shifts and
move on to a farm where they procure food. They learn over the
subsequent days and weeks that Harry (thanks to the helpful
preparation the Dursleys provided) is best able to cope with
hunger and discomfort, and Ron's mood is most vulnerable to
these challenges.

Ron becomes ever more demoralized as Harry and Hermione
struggle to generate ideas without any new information.
Harry keeps insisting the next likely place to look for
a Horcrux is Hogwarts, but Ron and Hermione doubt his
logic. So instead they go to London to search the orphanage
where Riddle spent his childhood, but Harry's instincts
are validated, because the orphanage has long since been
demolished.

During the agonizingly fruitless daily moves, Harry keeps
seeing flashes of the merry face of the blond thief whenever
his scar flares up – a sign that Voldemort is obsessed with
learning the identity of this person. Harry is now developing
a sense that Ron and Hermione are talking about him behind his
back and losing faith in him, and he keeps these flashes and
his thoughts about them to himself. He suspects they regret
joining him on this mission.

During a spat between Ron and Hermione (where we learn some
interesting laws about the Transfiguration of food), Harry
hears something outside the tent. With the aid of the
extendable ears, they discover that a party settled at
the nearby riverbank consists of Griphook and Gornuk the
Goblins, Ted Tonks, Dean Thomas and Dirk. The men are
fugitives because of their blood status. The goblins, who
consider themselves outside of Voldwar II, have removed
themselves from wizarding society after being put upon by
Death Eaters. They reveal that Griphook (before leaving
Gringotts) had stored for Snape a mock up of the sword
of Gryffindor, and he is deeply tickled at the fact that
he left Snape in the dark about this fake artifact. Snape
had ostensibly brought it to Gringotts for safe keeping
after Ginny and some other students tried to liberate it
from the headmaster's office. Snape allegedly had the
students cruelly punished.

The conversation then turns to speculation about Harry Potter,
his being defamed by the Daily Prophet, and Dean's insistence
that The Quibbler is the only source of reliable information.
Dean also points out that Harry's ability to avoid capture is
reason enough to keep faith in him.

As soon as this band of fugitives moves out of extendable
earshot, the trio consults the portrait of Phineas Nigellus
Black about Gryffindor's sword. He reveals that Neville and
Luna were Ginny's accomplices, that their punishment was a
Forbidden Forest assignment with Hagrid, and that the last
time he witnessed the sword being removed from its case was
when Dumbledore used it to destroy the ring Horcrux. Harry
and Hermione quickly put all the pieces together to surmise
that the fake sword in the vault at Gringotts had been
purposefully left in the case by Dumbledore so that they
could use the real sword (put away for Harry somewhere)
to destroy the remaining Horcruxes. Ron doesn't share in
their excitement over the new information, which he judges
to be not at all useful. His smoldering bad mood – worsened
by wearing the Horcrux – erupts into a bitter tirade about
the futility of their wanderings and Harry's failure to lead
them toward any progress or accomplishment. He is infuriated
by his friends' apparent lack of concern about the welfare
of the Weasleys. Harry's ire is raised by Ron's mutinous
criticism of him and Hermione, and he invites Ron to go home
to his Mummy.

Hermione casts Protego to create a barrier between them before
they can attack each other, but their connection has already
been severed. Harry commands Ron to leave the Horcrux. Ron
expects Hermione to leave with him, and he interprets her
loyalty to the mission as a rejection of him. Ron storms
out and disapparates; Hermione falls apart. Harry covers
her with Ron's blankets and broods in his bunk as rain pounds
the tent.

Questions for Discussion:

1. The chapter opens with the burial of Moody's eye. Might this
be viewed as foreshadowing of the death of the trust among the
trio at the close of the chapter?

2. Hermione's suggestion that it is too dangerous to wear the
Horcrux is overruled by Harry who insists it must be worn in
shifts for security. Would the evil influence of the locket
have been lessened or avoided if Hermione's instinct had not
been summarily rejected and the Horcrux had been stored on
their persons in her beaded bag or Harry's moleskin bag?

3. Harry's belief about the importance of identifying the
thief and his hypothesis about Hogwarts being a likely place
to locate a Horcrux are also rejected. Were the weeks of
wandering and wondering worse for the trio than the risks
of following these leads?

4. Ron's intuition about the danger of speaking "Voldemort"
is repeatedly met with skepticism and derision as well. What
themes about faith, trust and open-mindedness can be articulated
based on these scenarios in the chapter?

5. What – besides the corrosive effects of the Horcrux – could
account for the paralysis created by Harry, Ron and Hermione
not taking each other's instincts seriously?

6. If food is the first of five principal exemptions to Gamp's
Law of Elemental Transfiguration, what could the other four
exemptions be? And what could be the basis for these exemptions
– the direct interaction between the element and the physical
body of a human?

7. Can the Weasley's ability to provide ample food while still
living in relative Wizarding poverty point to possibilities for
the other four exemptions?  (Ever so much more intriguing than
questions about the uses for dragons blood)

8. Did you, at Phineas Nigellus Black's revelation that
Snape "punished" Ginny, Neville and Luna by sending them
on a field trip with Hagrid, marvel at Harry still not
grasping Snape's possible (probable? obvious?) loyalty
towards Dumbledore's cause??? Why or why not?

9. The characterization of the Goblins as a separatist, self-
interested race is very reminiscent of the dwarf races in both
Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia.
Do any other fictional or real-world equivalents or parallels
come to mind?

10. The brief mention of the exploits of my beloved "other
trio" made me wish Rowling could have found a way to depart
a bit more often from her Harry-centric narrative. Are there
any other "off-camera" scenes you would wish you could have
read?

~Dananotdayna

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Next Chapter Discussion, Chapter 16, Godric's Hollow, March 17