CHAPDISC: DH31, The Battle of Hogwarts

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 184627

CHAPTER DISCUSSIONS: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 31,
The Battle of Hogwarts

Carol:

I want to comment on aspects of this chapter before I answer the
questions. No reflection on the fine summary, but I have many quibbles
with the chapter itself.

Summary:
<snip> The Great Hall then cheers loudly at the news that the
headmaster, Severus Snape, has done a bunk! <snip>

Carol responds:
Well, three of the four tables cheer, anyway. The Slytherins don't.
(If only Snape had revealed his true colors instead of juping through
the window and flying away! "Done a bunk," my eye. He could have
killed them all if he'd wanted to. Sorry. I just dislike the idea that
he wouldn't have returned to his post with honor once LV was dead and
the facts were known. If LV hadn't murdered him for the wrong reasons,
that is.)

Summary resumed:
In fact, Professor Mcgonagall has to ensure no underage wizards,
including Colin Creevey, remain in the Hall. <snip>

Carol responds:
I still wonder why she would think that Colin Creevey, who would have
been a sixth-year if he weren't a Muggle-born, is necessarily
underage. (Ginny, as we know from JKR's website, has an August
birthday, but most sixth-years would be seventeen by May.) I doubt
that she knows all the Gryffindors' birthdays. Could she be referring
to Dennis rather than Colin here? ( can't remember whether Dennis
shows up with the other DA members--sorry, no time to reread the
chapter.) Maybe she's judging Colin by his size? Anyway, just one
point among many that annoys me about this chapter.

Summary:
> Fred & George volunteer to defend the various entrances of the
passageways. <snip>

Carol:

But the entrances are blocked. Does Kingsley think that Snape has
unblocked them and informed the Death Eaters where they are? wormtail
would know where they are; I guess the Order doesn't know that he's
dead. Anyway, it seems to me that Fred and George wouldn't have much
to do. Maybe they figure that out, which is why Fred, at least, joins
the fight, teaming up with Percy, of all people, instead of George.

Summary:
> <snip> That thought fires Harry into action and he heads off in
search of Nearly Headless Nick to enquire after the identity of the
Ravenclaw ghost. <snip>

Carol:
Six years at Hogwarts and he still doesn't know the identity of the
Ravenclaw Ghost when he learned the other three on his first day of
school? Either Harry is even less observant as he seems or the
Ravenclaw Ghost, unlike the other three, doesn't associate with her
own House at feasts and so forth! (Again, no reflection on your
accurate summary. I think that JKR has withheld this information from
from Harry, the pov character, to spring it on the reader in
DH--surprise at the expense of realism.)

Summary:
 The diadem remained at this site, hidden by Helena in a hollow tree
on hearing the Baron approaching. The site – a forest in Albania ! <snip>

Carol responds:
And the hollow tree is still there a thousand years later? Either it's
a long-lived tree or Helena must have cast a spell on it to keep it
alive after her own death, which seems highly unlikely under the
circumstances.

Summary:
> The realisation of where the diadem resides strikes Harry - a
location model pupils such as Dumbledore and Flitwick would never have
found. <snip>

Carol:
Not that they, or at least DD, wouldn't have found the RoR in some
other manifestation (not counting chamberpots). DD certainly knew that
it was there before Harry used it for the DA or Draco to repair the
Vanishing Cabinet. But they wouldn't have needed to hide contraband
artifacts or potions. Still, wouldn't DD have guessed that students
used it for this purpose and had done so throughout Hogwarts history?
He just wouldn't have done so himself (Harry thinks) or suspected that
LV had hid a Horcrux there on his way to the job interview.

> 1.    Is it believable that there are no good Slytherins? Wouldn't
> one or two of them remain to fight? Are they all totally
unredeemable? Or is it just herd mentality i.e. one leaves they all leave?

Carol responds:

It's not believable that there are no good Slytherins. However, the
underage students from all Houses, not just Slytherin, are ordered to
leave, so it's only the seventh-years and of-age sixth-years who would
be allowed to stay and fight, and given Pansy's remark and
McGonagall's response, any Slytherins who volunteer to stay will be
suspected of being on the wrong side. We see *all* the Gryffindors,
Hufflepuffs, and Ravenclaws pointing their wands at *all* the
Slytherins, assuming, as McGonagall has done earlier, that they're all
Death Eaters in the making. (Their loyalty to Headmaster Snape, the
supposed murderer of Dumbledore, no doubt reinforces that impression.)
So the Blaise Zabinis who support Pure-Blood supremacy but turn up
their noses at Death Eaters, the Theo Notts who know the consequences
of being a Death Eater and never join Draco's gang of three, the
junior Slughorns whom we never see, the Snapes and Reguluses of
Harry's generation never get a chance to show their moral courage or
loyalty to Hogwarts. We have to rely on the previous generation
(Severus and Regulus) or a Slytherin from about the class of 1918
(Slughorn--I'm guessing his age, but it's up there) for our good
Slytherins. And throw in the portrait of Phineas Nigellus for good
measure. Surely, some of the seventeen- and eighteen-year-old
Slytherins would have fought for their beloved Hogwarts, especially if
Snape had been there to lead and inspire them, but they never had the
chance. (Unless, as JKR seems to have intended, they were among the
people that Slughorn led into battle and Harry, focusing on his own
urgent needs and priorities and perhaps blinded by his preconceptions
and his notable tendency not to know his own classmates outside a
narrow circle and almost no one below his own year, didn't recognize
them.) Anyway, seeing the other three Houses judge the entire fourth
House guilty until proven innocent was just one more thing that irked
me about this chapter.
> 
> 2.    I would have thought that rumours of the ghosts pasts would
definitely have been well known by all students. Bearing in mind that
Harry and co. learn plenty about Nick, wouldn't someone from Ravenclaw
have figured out about the Grey Lady and passed that information on?

Carol:
I'm not sure what you're asking here. They would know (unlike Harry!)
that she's the ghost of their House, but since she's referred to as
the Grey Lady, it's clear that they don't know her identity. She's
apparently rebuffed inquiries from Headmaster Dumbledore and Head of
Ravenclaw, Flitwick. She's not communicative unless charmed by an
expert wheedler, Tom Riddle, or the one person who can help her undo
the damage she's caused, Harry. I think she revels in her mysterious
aura, and the Ravenclaws, themselves lovers of riddles and mysteries,
admire their House ghost despite not being friends with her.
(Slytherins are probably in awe of their House ghost; only Hufflepuffs
and Gryffindors would be on friendly terms with theirs. And even the
Hufflepuffs know their ghost only as the Fat Friar. I doubt that it
occurs to them to address him by name. The "important" details, his
House and his profession, are obvious from the first encounter.)
> 
> 3.    Why would Helena, who coveted her mother's cleverness, hide in
a forest in Albania on obtaining the diadem? Wouldn't the whole reason
for stealing the diadem be to demonstrate to others how clever you are?

Carol:
Not if you don't want to be arrested! She would probably have waited
until her mother's death and then used it secretly, pretending that
her great wisdom and knowledge was inherited from her mother rather
than obtained dishonestly. Sadly, her mother loved her and would
probably have willed her the diadem. As it is, she loses
everything--mother, life, diadem, and lover--because of her greed and
folly.
> 
> 
> 4.    How could Dumbledore not have found out that Helena stole the
diadem? When you consider how difficult it was for him to get hold of
the ring and help Harry obtain the fake locket, would he really not
have found out information that resided in his own school? Doesn't
seem very likely to me.

Carol:
Nor to me. However, I've already mentioned that the Grey Lady refused
to tell anyone other than Tom and Harry the secrets of her past, and
Dumbledore would have no reason to suspect that she knew where the
lost diadem was, much less that she had revealed the secret to Tom
Riddle, who had not to DD's knowledge set about collecting Hogwarts
artifacts for his Horcrux collection before he even left school. (It
seems that the idea struck him then and he talked to Helena but didn't
get to Albania to locate that hollow tree. Till much later. He may
have spent many of his lost years in the seemingly futile search for a
thousand-year-old tree!) Nor would DD have figured out that Riddle as
a schoolboy had found the lost-objects aspect of the RoR (which DD,
never having needed to conceal any objects himself, seems not to have
discovered) and that the adult Voldemort had used it to hide the
Ravenclaw Horcrux on the way to the DADA interview. 
> 
> 5.    Would Dumbledore really never have found the Room of
Requirement? He also fails to find the Chamber of Secrets? For such an
omnipotent wizard, that seems two rather big failures.

Carol responds:
It's not the RoR he fails to find. It's "the place where objects are
hidden"_-one aspect of many that the RoR can assume. (Others include
but are not limited to a room full of chamberpots, a broom closet, a
bedroom for Winky, DA headquarters, a coed dorm for students hiding
from the Carrows.) If that aspect of the RoR can only be discovered by
people who urgently need to hide something (sherry bottles, a Potions
book with a Dark spell in the margins, an illegal activity involving a
Vanishing Cabinet), it doesn't seem that implausible that DD didn't
find it. (It *is* odd that neither MWPP nor the Weasley Twins found
it, though.) I think he knew well enough that Draco was spending a lot
of time there and that both he and Snape knew that the little girl
guards weren't little girls. (What neither of them suspected was that
Draco could find a way to bring DEs into the castle using the RoR.) He
had no reason to search that room for the Ravenclaw diadem, however,
since he didn't know its history, didn't know that Riddle/Voldemort
had actually found it, didn't know that he had it with him before the
DADA interview, didn't know that Riddle knew about the hidden-object
aspect of the RoR and would use it after he'd left Hogwarts to hide a
Horcrux that probably wasn't made until several years, perhaps as many
as ten, after the cup and locket Horcruxes. In fact, I suspect that it
was a recent acquisition and the main reason why he returned to
Britain at that time, the other one being secretly to recruit
followers and build a powerbase.

As for why Dumbledore didn't find the Chamber of Secrets, I can think
of two possibilities. One was that his acquired knowledge of
Parseltongue, which he perhaps studied for that very purpose, did not
enable him to speak it, only to understand it. (Where would he find a
teacher or recordings to listen to? Unlike Harry, he didn't have a
Voldie!bit in his head to enable him to understand and speak it
instinctively; unlike the Gaunts and Tom Riddle, he wasn't born with
that ability.) We never hear him speak it, and he seems to understand
it, perhaps as much from Legilimency as through study, only in one HBP
memory. It's quite possible that, not being a native Parselmouth, he
doesn't hear the Basilisk in the pipes. It's also possible, and I
think this point is more important, that the Basilisk won't reveal its
presence to him, along with the secret of the entrance, because it
responds only to Slytherin's true heir. And Slytherin's true heir, in
the form of the diary Horcrux, wanted Harry to find and enter the
Chamber. It must have known, via Ginny writing in the diary, that
Harry could speak Parseltongue. It certainly knew that he would try to
find and save Ginny (who spoke Parseltongue only when she was
possessed). So, if DD can't actually speak Parseltongue, only
understand it through study (speculation) and is not the Heir of
Slytherin (Riddle) or the container of a soul bit from the true heir
(Harry), it stands to reason that he can't find the Chamber. (If he
knew where it was, he could probably open it through imitation and
practice, as Ron does, but that opportunity never arises. And Moaning
Myrtle's "great big yellow eyes" story would probably tell him that
the monster was a Basilisk but not that the chamber was opened by the
tap that Myrtle tells Harry has never worked.)
> 
> 6.    Isn't it a bit reckless to rush through the castle with a
bunch of mandrakes? Surely the commotion in the castle would aggravate
them? Aren't they at risk of killing innocent students/teachers?

Carol:
LOL! Yes, it is, unless the students and bystanders happen to have
earmuffs! And they can only drop them on DEs who aren't fighting good
guys. Then, again, Ron and Hermione are running around with their arms
full of Basilisk fangs. If the venom, one of the most toxic substances
known, drips out or they fall and are punctured by one of those
saberlike fangs, good-bye, HR! And they just drop them in the hideaway
version of the RoR, so they don't have them when they need them in the
room of hidden things. (Could they wish them there? We don't get to
find out because of the Fiend-fyre. Meanwhile, Ginny, who's supposed
to be hiding in the version of the room that has the fangs in it,
could find them--not thought out well at all, IMO.)
> 
> 7.    Is it remotely believable that Ron could remember enough
Parseltongue to enter the Chamber?

Carol responds:
All that's required is one word, "Open," which Ron has heard several
times under adverse circumstances and is quite likely to remember.
We've also seen that several of the Weasleys (Ron, Ginny, the Twins)
are rather gifted mimics. It's not as if Ron has become a Parselmouth
and now speaks or understands the whole language. But his having a
broom to get out (mentioned along with the Basilisk fangs as it
tumbles to the floor and then forgotten--two brooms show up later just
as they're needed either courtesy of the RoR reading Harry's mind or
by coincidence) is not particularly believable. When has Ron been
known for his foresight?  Nor are the armfuls (armsful?) of Basilisk
fangs, not the kind of objects that you're going to scoop into your
arms like dirty laundry and hold onto while you're flying (Ron needs
to steer and Hermione is terrified of flying--she'd be holding onto
*him*, not the fangs). And when they get off the broom, Ron has an
armful of Basilisk fangs but is also holding the broom? One Basilisk
fang, maybe, but don't drop it for a badly timed kiss and leave it
behind. What was JKR thinking? 
> 
> 8.    If Harry truly loves Ginny, wouldn't he make more of an effort
to stop her entering the battle?

Carol:
Not with a Horcrux to find and destroy, Nagini to kill, and Voldemort
to fight. He has too much on his mind to worry about Ginny, who isn't
going to listen to him, anyway. At least, she's not alone. Her
brothers and parents are there.
> 
> 9.    Do we think Tonks appearance at the castle makes her a good
wife or a bad mother?

Carol:
I doubt that "we" have any one opinion on the matter. In any case,
good wife and bad mother aren't mutually exclusive. My personal view
is that the baby is in excellent hands, those of his loving (young)
grandmother, who probably tried to dissuade her daughter and had no
more luck than the Weasleys with Ginny. Tonks is an Auror; she's
fought DEs before. They've killed her father. She doesn't want to lose
her husband, too, and she's not going to let him fight without her by
his side whether he wants her there or not. I don't blame Tonks at
all. She couldn't possibly foresee that her baby son would lose both
his parents. Now if Teddy hadn't had a grandmother to take care of
him, her action would be inexcusable. 

You don't hand your child to a babysitter and rush off to risk your
life fighting alongside your husband. But leaving him with your
mother, who has already formed a bond with him and will take care of
him and love him if the worst happens, whose loss will be much more
grievous than your baby son's if you and your husband die when she's
still mourning your father--that I can understand. Teddy will be okay
no mattter what (and he won't remember the parents who died to make
his world a better place). His grandma will have him to love no matter
what other losses she must endure. But Remus must not face the Death
Eaters, especially Nymphadora's Aunt Bellatrix, without his Auror wife
beside him. She's as much an Order member as he is, and her duty, as
she sees it, lies with him and with the WW, just as Lupin's, now that
Voldemort has actually attacked, is in the battle rather than with his
family. Until that moment, in my view, they both belonged with their son.
> 
> 10.   What is going through Malfoy's head in the Room of
Requirement? Is he only concerned about delivering Harry to the Dark
Lord alive? Or does he want his family freed from Voldemort's
influence and realises Harry may be his only chance for freedom?

Carol responds:
Obviously, we can't know what's in Draco's head, especially when he
doesn't want anything to happen to the diadem. (Is he protecting it
because Harry wants it or does he somehow guess that it's valuable to
Voldemort? He certainly doesn't know that it's a Horcrux.) We've seen
that he's not a killer (HBP) and that he hates using the Cruciatus
Curse, in marked contrast to Crabbe and Goyle (not to mention Harry).
He's seen the Dark Lord abusing his own followers, even taking his
father's wand away with nothing in exchange. His father, as we see in
"Malfoy Manor," is still eager to get back into Voldemort's good
graces and regain his lost prestige. His aunt is as fanatical as ever.
His mother, perhaps, is as disillusioned as he is but can do nothing
more than lend him her wand to replace the one that Harry Potter stole.

Harry thinks, as he encounters Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle, that Draco is
still the same enemy that he always was and that he's going to be
thwarted in his quest for the Ravenclaw Horcrux by the three
Slytherins. But somewhere at the back of his mind, he also knows that
there's a difference between the disillusioned junior DE and his
companions. It quickly becomes clear that Goyle is the same dumb
follower as ever but that Crabbe has completely gone over to
Voldemort's side, eager to kill and torture not only Harry but
"Mud-Bloods" and other enemies of the Dark Lord. Not even the argument
that Snape used on the DEs in HBP ("He's for the Dark Lord!") works on
this young fanatic, who has eagerly absorbed Amycus Carrow's Dark
magic lessons and his sister's anti-Muggle (and, by implication,
Muggle-born) indoctrination as he never absorbed Potions or DADA or
any other subject. He'll have no part of Draco's caution and
moderation, or his leadership. Who is he, one of the disgraced
Malfoys, to know what the Dark Lord wants?

As for Draco himself, I think he's trying, without Snape's skill at
intimidation or acting the part of loyal DE, to pretend to serve LV
but in fact try to protect Harry and the others (as he also, feebly,
tried to do at Malfoy Manor by pretending not to be sure who they
were). Like Regulus and Severus, Draco was seduced by the Dark Lord's
Pure-Blood supremacy ideology and dreams of glory. Like Regulus and
Severus, he's disillusioned by the truth. Unlike Regulus and Severus,
he has no single horrifying experience that's partly his own fault to
push him into either a single desperate act of rebellion or a lifetime
of remorse and perilous lying, spying, and undermining. He's still
where he was on the tower, with his wand lowered a fraction of an
inch, unwilling to commit himself to evil and unable to commit himself
wholly and openly to good.

That Harry sees and at last understands Draco's dilemma, feeling
compassion for him that he can't articulate, is evident from his
insistence on saving Draco and the unconscious Goyle from the
Fiendfyre that Crabbe set off and couldn't control. (He seems to feel
pity even for Crabbe but doesn't waste time trying to look for him.)

As Draco lies wandless, believing himself to be dying, he puts his
arms around the unconscious Goyle, his stupid and deluded but loyal
friend. Draco sees Harry coming and raises one arm, keeping the other
around Goyle until Ron angrily but determinedly comes to the rescue.
Draco also seems to mourn Crabbe as a friend, or at least feel grief
and shock at his death. Clearly, the reality of what Crabbe had become
has not yet caught up with him. But, clearly, too, he actually cares
for the boys who served all those years as his bodyguards. They
weren't just thugs that he was using to back up his own bullying.

Clearly, Draco has changed. He's no hero, later telling a DE that he's
on the DEs' side rather than be killed, but then he's wandless and has
no chance to fight for the good guys who have just saved him. He does,
however, acknowledge his debt to Harry in the much later nod at King's
Cross Station.

IMO, Draco had no intention of delivering Harry up to the Dark Lord.
He only wanted Crabbe and Goyle to think that he was doing so, all the
while doing everything he could to thwart them, especially the openly
pro-Voldemort Crabbe. Just possibly Draco knows that only Harry can
defeat LV and rescue him and his family from their servitude.
> 
> 11.    Why is Harry suddenly so reticent to use the Cruciatus curse?
Crabbe is trying to kill his friends – wouldn't this anger Harry more
than his previous attempts with this curse?

Carol:
Hm. Good question. I think it's different because he knows Crabbe to
be just a dumb kid and realizes that he's been brain-washed whereas
Carrow (also stupid, to be sure) is a grown man who's been teaching
kids (including Crabbe and Goyle) the Cruciatus Curse, expecting them
to use it on each other. Carrow has also just spat on MacGonagall,
setting fire to the dry kindling that is Harry's temper at that point.
Just getting the aggression and anger out of his system by taking
revenge on Amycus may have kept Harry from doing the same thing with
Crabbe. Also, Crabbe may not seem as dangerous as he really is now
that he knows Dark magic and has swallowed the DE propaganda. To
Harry, he may still the same Crabbe who until now has been easily
thwarted by hexes. More likely, Harry knows how important it is to get
the Horcrux, and he has no time for a duel. He can't help noticing,
too, that Draco, far from joining Crabbe or leading the attack, is
trying to restrain him. This is no time for revenge or punitive action
(which works fine, ethical questions aside, when you can jump out from
under an Invisibility Cloak and take a lone enemy by surprise with
your allies beside you). And if Harry takes the time to Crucio Crabbe,
Goyle might strike and Draco might abandon his neutral stance.

Whatever the case, now is not the time to let anger and a desire for
vengeance cause him to lose control. Harry may have learned that
lesson with Snape after the death of Dumbledore. 
> 
> 12.     Crabbe is a complete idiot – how could he manage to conjure
such a devastating curse (Fiedfyre)?

Carol:
Even complete idiots are generally good at something. Maybe he's an
idot savant who's found his forte, the Dark Arts. Possibly, he's
inspired by Amycus, whose IQ is surely on the wrong side of 90 but has
managed to become the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts. More likely, he's
excited by the nature of the subject matter. He's never been inspired
to learn, say, Transfiguration, but if he knows that he can use the
Disillusionment Charm to sneak up on people, he'll be inspired to
learn it. (Even Goyle, who's even stupider, learns that one. Just
don't ask them to pronounce or spell it.) Crucio, which can be used to
torture people, their cup of tea. No more bruised fists or failed
attempts at hexes, just concentrate all your anger and desire to
really hurt people into one spell, and, by George, you've got it. And
Fiendfyre, perhaps beyond goyle's skill, would appeal to Crabbe's
newly kindled desire to hurt and maim and kill in the name of the Dark
Lord. Thorfinn Rowle showed a similar impulse when he set Hagrid's
house on fire. But Fiendfyre would seem like the ultimate instrument
of mayhem. Too bad, as Ron says, that Crabbe wasn't listening when
Carrow taught them the countercurse.
> 
> 13.     Why, why, why did she have to kill Fred???

Carol:
You'll have to ask JKR that one. Other readers feel the same way about
other characters. Obviously, one reason is to make the story more
realistic. The good guys can't have too easy a victory; they must
suffer losses, too. If they suffer, they'll remember, and they'll be
unwilling to let evil triumph again in their lifetimes.

Why a Weasley? We knew that Mrs. Weasley would lose someone she loved.
Her boggart in OoP foreshadowed her loss. (Possibly, the foreshadowed
loss was supposed to be Mr. Weasley in the attack by Nagini, but JKR
couldn't make herself kill him.) Mrs. Weasley's clock also seemed to
suggest that at least one Weasley would die (though not Mrs. Weasley
herself, who would suffer the loss rather than die. 

But why Fred, specifically? Probably because Bill and Charlie weren't
important enough to Harry or the reader to create sufficient impact
(besides, Bill had already suffered mutilation). It couldn't be Ginny,
Harry's future wife, or Ron, Harry's best friend and Hermione's future
husband. It couldn't be Percy, who had to come home, apologize
abjectly but sincerely, and be reconciled to the Twins only to watch
one of them die. But which one? Who should lose the ear and who should
die, assuming that both had to happen but not to the same Twin? I
think she went for maximum poignancy in both cases.

Fred shows fear and compassion, traits we've never seen from him, when
he thinks that George is going to die. George shows humor and courage
and grace. I wonder whether Fred, always joking that he was the better
looking twin despite being identical, could have borne the
disfigurement so well. (I still wish that Snape could have restored
George's ear, but that's not how JKR wrote it.) 

Fred, the ringleader, the slightly funnier, slightly less ethical
twin, is probably the favorite of most readers who like the Twins and
differentiate between them. JKR may have chosen him to die rather than
George for that reason. Or she may have looked at their respective
relationships with Percy. George, normally the more forgiving and
compassionate, was adamant in his opposition to Percy. Fred was more
inclined to joke about it. It's Fred, not George, who makes the first
move toward reconciliation by summing up Percy's transgressions and
giving him names to take onto himself. Once he's done so and Fred has
said, "Well, you can't say fairer than that," George follows his lead.
And then the Twins split up, each guarding a separate sealed entrance
(probably telling the others where they are and sending off teams to
each place--an exercise in futility, as it turns out because they DEs
get in by other means), Percy joins up, not surprisingly, with Fred.
It's Fred who gets to witness and appreciate Percy's joke about the
Minister for Magic, Fred who literally dies laughing.

It's poignant in the extreme, and I don't think it would have worked
quite so well for George, who's good at self-deprecating humor but
perhaps not quite so ready to laugh at Percy's joke. And if it had
been Percy rather than Fred who died, would the reader and HRH have
felt so much pain? Would Fred have mourned for Percy as Percy mourned
for him?

And thinking in terms of survival, the terrible loss of one twin by
the other, would Fred have fared as well as George, who had already
adjusted to the loss of his ear and now had to adjust to the loss of
his other self? Would Fred have kept Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes in
business, still able to run a store and invent new products? Or would
he have been so devastated that he wasn't Fred any more? Not that
George didn't suffer just as much as Fred would have, but the always
joking, slightly egotistical Fred, who nevertheless listened to his
slightly more reasonable, equally intelligent twin, have been as
resilient? 

At any rate, in contrast to many parts of this chapter, I think that
the scene with Percy and Fred is brilliantly handled. Fred's sudden
death from a collapsed wall just as he's laughing with Percy
illustrates just how unpredictable and random death can be. It throws
Harry into a state of shock and denial almost as profound as the one
caused when Sirius Black goes through the Veil, only this time, the
body is right there in front of him. But when another body falls,
Harry is shaken out of his denial. This is real. Fred is dead. And if
Fred Weasley can die, anybody can die. And the longer Harry waits
before confronting Voldemort, the more deaths there will be.

IMO, this chapter begins with JKR at her most mediocre and ends with
JKR at her best, brilliantly blending humor and pathos, shock and
irony, the mundane (a falling wall) and the profound (Harry's
reaction, extending into the first paragraph of the next chapter).

Carol, whose own chapter discussion is due a week earlier than she
thought!