gotta get back to hogwarts
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Ch. 25-30
Harry, Ron, and Hermione are really bad at making plans. Like, they’ve been coming up with wacky schemes for seven years now, shouldn’t they be a little better at this?
Buuuut they’re not. As a weird mirror of Dobby’s wizard-worshipping self-sacrifice, Griphook does not like and does not trust wizards, and thus everybody hates him. There’s an odd aside about how he ‘refuses’ to eat the same food as everyone else… but, like, he’s a different species! Of course he does!! But Griphook is transparently only out for himself, and while Harry mentally acknowledges that Griphook’s suspicions are completely correct, it still feels like we’re meant to be judging him for not particularly liking or caring about our heroes. His cultural differences are explained by Bill not as a different but equally valid way of existing, but a suspicious threat.
I’m almost… almost… able to convince myself there’s an intentional irony at work here, given that Harry and co. live up o Griphook’s worst suspicions about wizards in the same section that Our Heroes and their allies begin using Unforgivable Curses with abandon. Harry Imperiuses like ten people (okay, two) and McGonagall whips one out, too. It’s in the name, guys! It’s never okay! Is this a commentary on the war turning them into their worst selves? I… don’t quite think so. They free the poor, blind dragon that the goblins have been torturing. They’re clearly the good guys still.
But the good guys aren’t doing so well. Aberforth Dumbledore answers the question that I asked last week: the resistance isn’t doing anything because it’s dead. Neville’s crew at Hogwarts seems to be having a bit more luck—or at least, more effective communications networks—but they’ve all basically been driven into hiding, too. And Neville’s descriptions of their activities at their height seem… a little bit pointless? They’re giving people hope, okay. And talking back. And doing graffiti. What does that actually do? When Harry arrives, they instantly spring into action and explain that they’ve been… waiting for Harry? Why do they need him? I’m skeptical of what their big dream of fighting off Snape and the Death Eaters and reclaiming Hogwarts would really do in the scheme of things, but let’s accept that it would potentially give the Order of the Phoenix a base of operations or something like that. Why haven’t they actually been working towards that, instead of pulling pranks and waiting around for Harry’s symbolic leadership?
Given how often these books were referenced (to everyone’s annoyance) after the 2016 US election, before last week, I never really stopped to think about the fact that they never demonstrate what effective organizing or collective resistance looks like. It’s all pussy hats and no substance. Until the hour comes for a big, dramatic battle, of course. But it seems like Neville could have summoned all these people to come fight at literally any time before now. He hasn’t been building to this in any meaningful way, except I guess by building a relationship with Aberforth.
“You don’t have to do everything alone, Harry,” Hermione tells him when he’s refusing to let the students of Dumbledore’s Army help with finding the penultimate Horcrux. From the first book, I’ve said that Harry has been characterized by his friendship and loyalty. When did that fall away? And how much less miserable might this book have been for both characters and readers if it hadn’t? It’s fitting, though, that it takes a return to Hogwarts to remind Harry that he can put his trust in other people, that he need not end every single book standing against Voldemort alone.
In conclusion… Percy Weasley is redeemed at last, and it genuinely makes me so happy that JKR didn’t just forget about him. Like Draco, his clearly momentous personal journey of discovery goes entirely undepicted. There’s something in that, perhaps related to Harry and co’s instincts for isolation: the stories of people who change dramatically, who have to fumble for the right path, are politely sidelined, just as Harry disdains the claim that youth is an excuse for bad behavior. Growth that has to be learned—perhaps from other people—is less interesting, or less important, than people who are guided from the start by their own inner certainty, their instantly accurate moral compass. The question of how and why people can grow and change is (with one major, extremely crap exception which we’ll discuss next week) not of interest. People like Percy are only welcome back into the story once they’ve already found the way.
Next time: Chapters 31 to 33.