Another Flint? - GoF Carriages

[pippin_999]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "Caius Marcius" 
<coriolan_cmc at h...> wrote:
> I haven't been following the threads in HP4GU very closely of 
late  (the old had-I-but-world-enough-and-time sorta thing), so 
this has  likely been pointed out ere now: but there has been 
some discussion  about whether Harry's ability to see Thestrals 
should've been  activated by his parents' death.<

It's been discussed, in fact it's in the OOP VFAQ. JKR was asked 
this very question at the Albert Hall interview. To summarize her 
answer, she said that she had always known that thestrals pull 
the carriages, but to have Harry see them at the end of GoF 
would introduce them at an awkward time; they really belong to 
Book 5. So she decided that you do not gain the ability to see 
Thestrals immediately on experiencing a death, but only when 
the knowledge has sunk in. 


> 
> well, here we are, the final chapter of GoF, Cedric dead for 
about a  month or so, and yet.....
> 
[quote from GoF]

> END QUOTE
> 
> So Harry still can't see Thestrals, though it's been at least a 
month  since the Kill the Spare sequence. Admittedly, it would 
have been a  clumsy piece of narrative to have Harry fisrt see 
these inexplicable  critters at the end of a book, sans 
explanation, but then JKR should  have invented some narrative 
device allowing Harry to bypass the  carriages at the end of Book 
Four. <

But she *did* use a narrative device..the actual time lapse 
between Cedric's death on June 24 and the closing feast is one 
week, and Harry leaves school the next day. The  narration, 
however, relates these events from the perspective of a month 
later, ie the "present" of the last chapter of GoF is actually
nearly concurrent with the first chapter of OOP.

 I thought this was very clever. It allows JKR to elide the period of 
denial which Harry must have gone through over Cedric's death 
so that she could deal with it   with more pathos when he loses 
Sirius. And since Harry was in denial, he hadn't gained the ability 
to see Thestrals yet.


>She ought to rely on her fan-base: I'm sure that 
 a half-dozen or so trustworthy individuals from HP4GU could be 
found  who know Canon inside out, and who would do a much 
better job of spotting narrative inconsistencies, while preserving 
confidentiality.<

I wonder. The trouble is we *do* know the story inside out. I think 
some times we are too interested in the trees and overlook the 
forest. Would OOP really be stronger if Harry had 
wondered out loud why he hadn't seen Thestrals at the end of 
year Four so that Hagrid or Hermione could tell him? It's really 
not in character for Harry to wonder about things in the past, 
maddening as that is to us.

Pippin