The Order of the Phoenix Re-Read: Chapter 36

[slowfox]

Dumbledore corrals most of the Death Eaters. We know that Bellatrix is duelling Kingsley, and then he's bested and she dashes out of the auditorium. Harry gives chase, and we find that the Department of Mysteries can be quite accommodating at times, despite the carousel of doors:

"Where's the exit?" he shouted desperately, as the wall rumbled to a halt again. "Where's the way out?"

The room seemed to have been waiting for him to ask. The door right behind him flew open and the corridor towards the lifts stretched ahead of him, torch-lit and empty.

Of all the bewildering characterisations of Harry throughout OotP, this one got me the most:

Hatred rose in Harry such as he had never known before; he flung himself out from behind the fountain and bellowed, 'Crucio!'

*boggles* It knocked Bellatrix off her feet, but didn't do much beyond that. Questions, nonetheless, arise. How did Harry know how to cast an Unforgivable? It surely can't just be 'wave the wand randomly and say the incantation'. There has to be more to spellwork than that, since otherwise what's the point in Hogwarts? It could be argued that, having been subjected to the spell, Harry's had ample time to analyse how it's conjoured, but you'd think that he'd have had other things on his mind at the time.

Aren't there, y'know, consequences for casting Unforgivables? Even if they're singularly ineffective ones?

But beyond that, this is Harry, who, unless he's really going to go Dark, surely wouldn't ever cast a spell of pure torture? I think, the first time I read OotP, I had to read that sentence a couple of times to make sure I understood. Sirius' death notwithstanding, it just didn't seem to flow naturally as a consequence...

Nice bit of banter between Bellatrix and Harry as to whether or not the Prophecy really has been smashed into a million tiny, tiny pieces. Harry's scar's letting him know that Voldemort isn't pleased at the prospect:

"No!" she screamed. "It isn't true, you're lying! MASTER, I TRIED, I TRIED - DO NOT PUNISH ME -"

"Don't waste your breath!" yelled Harry, his eyes screwed up against the pain in his scar, now more terrible than ever. "He can't hear you from here!"

"Can't I, Potter?" said a high, cold voice.

As entrances go, that's a pretty good one.

I thought Crouch (who would know)/Moody (who should) said you couldn't block Avada Kedavra?

GoF Ch 14:

Moody swept the dead spider off the desk onto the floor.

"Not nice," he said calmly. "Not pleasant. And there's no counter-curse. There's no blocking it. Only one known person has ever survived it, and he's sitting right in front of me.

So, you can't block Avada Kedavra. But, apparently, you can magic a statuesque obstruction in its way, and thus save the day. But that's not blocking, apparently. That's, um, something else. Evidently.

I do like the imagery for Dumbledore's power:

Dumbledore flicked his own wand; the force of the spell that emanated from it was such that Harry, though shielded by his golden guard, felt his hair stand on end as it passed and this time Voldemort was forced to conjure a shining silver shield out of thin air to deflect it.

This time, Harry is genuinely possessed by the Dark Lord, although by what mechanism isn't made clear. However, Voldemort disappears (taking Bellatrix with him), and when Harry comes to his senses, Fudge and others have arrived to pick up the reins.

Dumbledore constructs a Portkey for Harry that whisks him away from the Ministry (although we don't know where to), and the chapter closes.

So the battle is spread across two chapters, really - we have the melée in the Department of Mysteries followed by the Duels in the Atrium, which is quite a bit of action, all told. But I really don't buy that Harry would cast the Cruciatus Curse - when he gives chase, he promises Bellatrix that he'll kill her, so wouldn't AKing her have made as much sense (ie, none at all)?

Dumbledore's role in his duel with Voldemort seems assured right up until the point where Voldemort vanishes (and then possesses Harry). However, he lords it over Fudge quite, to use JKR's own word, magesterially. If anything good has come out of this, it's that Fudge now believes that Voldemort is back. Of course, we've had Luna, Ginny and Hermione all knocked unconscious (how come it was the girls who get knocked out?), Neville beaten up, Ron's mind disturbed, Sirius killed and Harry corrupted by rage to the extent that he tries to cast an Unforgivable. But on the bright side, er, Fudge is no longer in denial.

Comments

[cynthia_black]

I suppose I'd err on the side of Harry having experienced Crucio firsthand, he knows full well how to cast it - but as we see here, there's more to casting the spell than just saying the word with the flick of a wand and seeing it happen: even with all Harry's grief and anger, it's not enough to do more than a minor hurt. And I think that's a very good thing, and the thing that prevents all witches and wizards from using the Unforgiveables as an everyday occurence. Yes, Harry tried to use Dark Magic here and failed, and I'm very glad he did.

It's very rare that we get to see the extent of Dumbledore's power, or why he's held in such high esteem, but here we see it :)

The possession bit: I suppose Voldemort was using the mind link in exactly the way Dumbledore had feared he might earlier in the year - it's just that before this, Voldemort was quite content to just use it to view Harry's world, once he became aware of it.

And I do like Dumbledore putting Fudge in his place :-)

[slowfox]

Yes, Harry tried to use Dark Magic here and failed, and I'm very glad he did.

It would have been a very different tale if he'd become Darth Harry for the final books - I think that there had to be some temptation for him, somewhere, to fall towards the Dark side, but I'm not sure that this was really it.

I think that the Sectusempra in HBP was more chilling because it was more believable - Crucio here just seems to come out of nowhere. And, like I said, how did he know how to cast it? Even with Lupin there to give him step by step instructions, it took Harry ages to conjure a Patronus, and it stands to reason that the Unforgivables should be every bit as hard to create as Prongs...

Yes, Dumbledore shrugs off his cloak of doddering old fool for this chapter (rather like Yoda, actually - it's evident he's revered, but the moment when you see why is still awesome).

[aome]

I think it's actually fairly evident that Harry did NOT know how to properly cast Cruciatus - note that nothing actually happened to Bellatrix aside from knocking her over. He copied what he'd seen others do, but it wasn't enough to get it right. I don't like the idea of him trying something so Dark, but I suppose many people just go beserk in moments of grief. In fact, "anger" is the second step of the recovery process, so we'll just say he whipped right past the initial "disbelief/numbness" stage and into "anger", and that's what happened in his recklessness. On the other hand, this same thing happens again after Dumbledore's death, when he tries to curse Snape. I suppose this is the Slytherin side that the Hat saw in Harry. Perhaps we all have our darknesses within - and this is Harry's. A flawed hero. Not a comfortable moment, seeing our Hero stoop so low but ... there you go.

I thought Crouch (who would know)/Moody (who should) said you couldn't block Avada Kedavra?

I got the impression that he meant there was no way to block it by magical means. Recall that in the graveyard, Harry successfully hid behind tombstones. So - physical objects can be "killed" in lieu of you, if they are in between you and the spell-caster; the spell does not just pass through walls or other solid objects as if they did not exist. Otherwise, why bother going into someone's house to kill them, when you could do so just as easily through the window, across the street?

[slowfox]

On the other hand, this same thing happens again after Dumbledore's death, when he tries to curse Snape. I suppose this is the Slytherin side that the Hat saw in Harry.

But the Slytherin house trait isn't evilness, it's 'ambition', and there's nothing inherently wrong with ambition, per se...

Anyway, I definitely feel uncomfortable with the whole Cruciatus attempt, because it just seems to come out of nowhere, your explanation of the anger arising from Sirius' needless death notwithstanding. You could argue that Harry's use of Sectusempra was evidence of a Darker, deliberate nature, particularly when he attempts to cast it on Snape, when he knows what the effect's supposed to be...

So - physical objects can be "killed" in lieu of you, if they are in between you and the spell-caster; the spell does not just pass through walls or other solid objects as if they did not exist.

Too much AD&D as a child - one of the standard Magic User spells was 'magic arrow', guaranteed hit, 1d4 damage, I think. You couldn't dodge them, because they were... magic, like. So that sort of fostered in me, from an early age, the notion of a kind of magically guided missile.