HBP CHAPTERS 7-9 POST DH LOOK

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 184342

Alla wrote:
>
> Okay, before I go any further may I just say how dismissively I look
at Malfoy in this book now.
> 
> When I read it before DH I always used to worry about Malfoy 
seriously harming Harry and Co, I never dismissed him as their enemy,
etc and I still do so in the earlier books, but in this one?

Carol responds:

I don't remember whether I ever saw Draco as a serious threat to
Harry, but my reaction to this chapter was different. I thought that
Draco was getting his promised revenge on Harry ("That's for my
father!") and then moving on to what he thought were bigger things.
Harry is small potatoes now. He's going after Dumbledore. (Of course,
I didn't know for sure what Draco's mission was, but clearly it was
something dark and dangerous assigned to him by Voldemort.) The change
from the earlier books, where he's mostly relying on his father's
power and authority (or on this thuggish escorts) to back up his
threats, is already marked at the end of OoP, where he's vowing
revenge and seems to mean it. He has real cause for anger this time:
his idolized father is in Azkaban thanks in part to Harry. Perhaps
he's already planning to join the DEs, but he's still focused at that
point on Harry and his threats are still empty. At the beginning of
HBP, he's either a DE or a prospective DE (I think he has the Dark
Mark; Harry's hypothesis is never disproved and Draco seems to have
LV's permission to use Fenrir Greyback to threaten Borgin). At any
rate, it's clear from his bragging to his fellow Slytherins that he
now sees himself as important. In my view, he resembles the boy Rolf
in "Sound of Music" (except that he was never nice): becoming a
Nazi/Death Eater has gone to his head.

Alla: 
> All that I am thinking now even when he boasts to his 
Slytherinsbreaks Harry's nose is something like that - you silly
little boy, who cannot make one good decision without getting in the
whole lot of trouble, just go away and wait till you will be forced to
kill your Headmaster. Then maybe your head will clear up somewhat. <snip>

Carol:
I didn't react that way at all. I just felt that his mother was right;
he was in over his head and didn't know it. He's overconfident at this
point (a natural and realistic reaction for a sixteen-year-old given a
man's job, even if that job is to assassinate a great Wizard), and he
thinks that Harry Potter is barely worth his notice (though he
certainly feels satisfaction at seeing Harry helplessly bound in an
absurd position by his freezing charm and in stamping on his nose and
hand, not to mention re-covering him with the Invisibility Cloak and
leaving him on the train to be forgotten and returned to King's Cross.
But it's as if he puts that little business behind him to concentrate
on doing the Dark Lord's will. He has a plan; he has DE back-up. All
he has to do, he thinks, is fix the Vanishing Cabinet, following
Borgin's instructions, bring in the DEs, kill dumbledore, and voile!
He'll be "rewarded beyond all others. Heck, he'll even outperform
Professor Snape and get his father out of Azkaban. It'll take him no
more than a few weeks at worst.

Anyway, his arrogance is short-lived. By Christmas, he's becoming
desperate. He may even realize at that point that LV expected him to
fail. He certainly knows that his family, including himself, is in
danger. Knowing what's coming, I feel more pity than contempt for him.
I'm not sure how I felt on a first reading, but I think I thought he
was heading for a fall even then. (Sad, isn't it, that we can't
recapture that first reaction?)

Alla quoting: 
> "Hmph," snorted Professor Mcgonagall. "It's high time your
grandmother learned to be proud of the grandson she's got, rather than
the one she thinks she ought to have - particularly after what
happened at the Ministry" p.174
> 
> Alla:
> 
> That is why I love Minerva, because I want to believe that despite
her being an *sshole to Neville several times, I believe that she
learned to appreciate him as well.

Carol:
Setting aside McGonagall, with whom I'm not pleased because of DH, I
think that Neville's gran was already proud of him. She brags about
him in one of the articles that the narrator quotes from while Harry
is sleeping in Chapter 3, and instead of "killing" Neville because he
broke his father's wand, she bought him a new one (the last one sold
by Ollivander before the DEs kidnapped him). And, of course, we see
the best side of her in DH. She's always loved Neville, IMO; she just
didn't know how to show it (and she must also have genuinely thought
that he lacked his father's talent considering how long it took to
show that he wasn't a Squib). Both McGonagall and Augusta Longbottom
have a no-nonsense, tough-love approach. Whether McG sees the
similarity or not, I don't know. (BTW, I find it hard to believe that
a formidable and talented witch like Augusta Longbottom failed her
Charms OWL. She certainly has no trouble with DADA.)
> 
Alla:
> 
<snip> 
> Funny, Snape indeed does not do demonstration of Unforgivables.

Carol:
Maybe he thinks that the NEWT DADA students don't need to see those
spells demonstrated since they all saw them in Fake!Moody's class. Or
 maybe he's afraid that casting them will tempt him back to the DArk
side, especially controlling the students with the Imperius Curse as
Fake!Moody did. Maybe he's sworn off using them because he associates
them with the DEs and Voldemort; his job now is to teach Defense
against the Dark Arts, not the Dark Arts themselves. Maybe DD asked
him not to use them or maybe the Ministry won't grant him permission
given his background. Any other ideas (or arguments supporting one of
these possibilities over the others)?

I personally never thought that the demonstration of the
Unforgiveables was necessary even before I knew that "Moody" wasn't
Moody. Setting aside the temptation to control the students (and
cruelty to spiders), the curses are illegal. It's like saying, "I'm
the teacher, so I'm above the law." (Reminds me of Nixon: "When the
President does it, that means it's not illegal"!)

Anyway, I think that Snape's moving poster of a person writhing in
pain conveyed the idea of the Cruciatus sufficiently. As for an AK, a
person lying dead with a surprised expression and no hex mark would
suffice.

Carol, suspecting that Snape himself decided not to demonstrate the
Unforgiveable Curses primarily because Draco was in the class