The Harry Potter Reread wonders what would happen if it were translated into as many languages as the Harry Potter books. It would probably sprout wings and fly at that point.
This week we’re going to read the worst chapter ever and then have an epic smack down in the Ministry. It’s chapters 35 and 36 of The Order of the Phoenix—Beyond the Veil and The Only One He Ever Feared.
Index to the reread can be located here! Other Harry Potter and Potter-related pieces can be found under their appropriate tag. And of course, since we know this is a reread, all posts might contain spoilers for the entire series. If you haven’t read all the Potter books, be warned.
Chapter 35—Beyond the Veil
Summary
Death Eaters have the group closed in and they’re outnumbered two-to-one. Harry asks Lucius Malfoy where Sirius is, and is taunted by Bellatrix Lestrange for it; he has clearly been duped. He raises his wand and the rest of his friends follow his lead, but Lucius is only interested in the prophecy that Harry is holding. When Harry refuses to hand it over, Bellatrix tries to call it with magic, but Harry prevents that as well. She suggests that they torture Ginny, so the kids all form a tight band around her. Harry assures the Death Eaters that if anyone is attacked, the prophecy will get smashed to pieces and Voldemort won’t be happy. When he says the Dark Lord’s name, Bellatrix is furious that he would dare; she tries to jinx him and is again stopped by Lucius. A couple of the glass spheres nearby break, and they hear fragments of the prophecies within them. Harry realizes that could be useful and tries to convey that to Hermione quietly, and she begins to tell the others.
Lucius Malfoy tells him that the reason he bears his scar is hidden in that prophecy, which gets Harry attention. Apparently Voldemort had assumed that Dumbledore would have mentioned that to Harry, and that giving him hints about where the prophecy was hidden would have urged him here sooner. Lucius reveals that the only people who can retrieve prophecies are the ones who the prophecies are made about, which they found out when Voldemort sent others to retrieve theirs. The Dark Lord can’t go in himself or risk getting caught by the Ministry at a point when they are trying to deny his reemergence. Then Harry shouts “now” and the six start smashing every shelf around them, causing chaos and a chain reaction of breakage as they attempt to flee. They get through the door to the room with the diamonds, and Hermione seals it behind them. It’s then that they realize that Ron, Luna, Ginny were behind them, not in front of them, and that they’ve left them behind. On the other side of the door they hear Lucius split the Death Eaters into pairs to find them. They hide under the desks as two enter the room. Harry stuns one of them, Neville accidentally disarms both Harry and one of the Death Eaters, then tells Harry to get out of the way so he can stun the guy properly. When he misses, Hermione stuns the man and takes his wand away. But the Death Eater falls into the bell jar and his head proceeds to turn into a baby head and then age. Hermione realizes it’s “time in a bell jar.” The Death Eater manages to emerge, but with a baby head.
They run into an office off the bell jar room and get cornered again and knocked off their feet, but Hermione silences one of them, and Harry body binds the other. The silenced one hits Hermione with a purple flame and she passes out, then breaks Neville’s wand and kicks him in the face. The Death Eater pulls off his mask and Harry recognizes him as Dolohov. The baby-headed Death Eater is flailing in the other room, giving Harry the distraction he needs to do another body binding charm, knocking Dolohov down for the count. He and Neville check on Hermione, who thankfully isn’t dead. Harry wants Neville to take Hermione and leave, but he refuses, insisting on carrying her and coming back with Harry to look for the others. Harry hands him back his wand fragments and they head to the other room where the baby-headed Death Eater is stumbling about. The cabinet that Neville accidentally broke earlier keeps repairing itself and breaking again—it holds the Ministry’s collection of Time Turners.
Harry and Neville make it back to the room with the doors, and before they pick another one to try, Ron, Luna, and Ginny fall into the room through another door. Ginny’s ankle is broken and Ron is laughing uncontrollably. Luna explains that they were chased into a room with planets; one Death Eater grabbed Ginny by the ankle, the other hit Ron with this strange curse that’s made him so giggly (and is causing blood to trickle from his mouth). Harry asks Luna to help Ginny, and just as he gathers up Ron the Death Eaters burst in on them. He drives everyone through the next door and seals it. The Death Eaters find other doors into the room—it’s the one with the brain tank—so Harry and Luna try to seal the doors but Luna misses one and gets knocked unconscious as five Death Eaters reach them. Ron is giggling over the brains and calls one to him; it has tentacles and they start wrapping around him, strangling him. Ginny gets stunned and it’s only Neville and Harry left. Harry runs from the room to draw the Death Eaters away, hoping that Neville can free Ron.
He ends up in the room with the stone archway, surrounded by Death Eaters. They order him to hand over the prophecy and he refuses. Neville barrels into the room to help and gets caught. Bellatrix Lestrange decides to torture him like his parents until Harry hands over the prophecy. She casts the Cruciatus Curse on Neville briefly and waits for Harry to submit. Suddenly, five Order members charge in: Sirius, Lupin, Tonks, Kingsley, and Moody. Harry dives out of the way and crawls to Neville as they fight them off. One Death Eater reaches Harry and starts to strangle him. The Order members are too caught up to notice, so Neville jabs Hermione’s wand into the guy’s eye so that Harry has enough breath back to stun him. He notices that Moody is unconscious. Dolohov comes after them next, hitting Neville with the dancing curse, then trying to slash at Harry the same way he did to Hermione. Harry shields himself and Sirius goes after Dolohov before the guy can nab the prophecy. Then Harry body binds him again. Tonks goes down across the room—Sirius tells Harry to gather Neville and the prophecy and get out while he goes after Bellatrix. Harry gets stopped by Lucius and rolls the prophecy to Neville. Before Malfoy can get his bearings again, Lupin dives between them and also tells Harry to get out.
Harry tries to pull Neville to his feet as his legs go wildly; this causes him to drop the prophecy and it smashes on the floor, heard by no one. Suddenly, Neville spots Dumbledore. Harry feels a surge of relief, knowing they’re saved. The Death Eaters all run for it, except Bellatrix, who is still fighting Sirius. He taunts her, and her next spell hits him in the chest. He falls back through the veil and disappears. Harry rushes to reach him, expecting him to emerge on the other side of the archway, but he doesn’t. As Harry hits the dais, Lupin throws his arms around Harry to hold him back, telling him that his godfather is gone.
Commentary
I would like to point out that if we put Lucius’ dialogue in order from the end of the last chapter, it goes like this:
“Very good, Potter. Now turn around, nice and slowly, and give that to me.”
“To me, Potter.”
“To me.”
Yes, okay, yes, Lucius, we understand you’re very excited.
I had forgotten that the whole point of giving Harry these dreams—according to Lucius—is that Voldemort assumes that Dumbledore has told Harry about the prophecy and thinks that showing him the way to it will drudge up Harry’s curiosity. And this is stupid for about eight separate reasons—He assumes that Dumbledore tells Harry anything at all. He assumes that Dumbledore paraphrasing the prophecy to the kid isn’t good enough and that Harry will want to hear the exact wording. He forgets that Dumbledore could show it to Harry easily through a Pensieve if he asked. He figures that Harry will understand that he’s showing him the way to the prophecy in these dreams. He figures that Harry knows what the Department of Mysteries looks like in the first place, thus knows where these dreams even take place. (Okay, that’s about five separate reasons. It’s still a lot.) I’m hoping that Lucius just has it misinterpreted on the Dark Lord’s behalf, because if that was really the whole point of this, this might be Voldemort’s worst plan ever. Ever. And he’s not exactly a master planner.
The kids make a run for it by smashing a huge portion of the Ministry prophecies, and I find myself with a lot of questions about this. I mean, if the only people who can retrieve prophecies are the ones who the prophecies are about, then what is even the point of having this room? It’s not like it’s an access library where magic folk go all the time to look at records, it’s in a department of the Ministry that no one knows anything about. Why are these all collected in one place like this? Why are there so many of them? Wouldn’t you get rid of old prophecies that don’t apply to living people anymore? Why save them in this manner at all, wouldn’t it be better to just have them written down somewhere? Or is it important that they only be accessible to the people they are about? IDK, this just seems hugely unnecessary to me overall. The hell, wizards.
That time in the bell jar messing with that one Death Eater’s head is played for laughs through this chapter, but the more I think about it the more horrifying it is, help, I want that scrubbed from my brain this instant.
Neville breaks the Time Turner cabinet, which is interesting in more than one respect. First, that means the Ministry is straight-up out of Time Turners, so whoops! Hope you guys don’t ever need them again. Second, it’s interesting to me that they’re in the Department of Mysteries rather than some equipment department, since wizards do know what they are and what they do. On the other hand, some background reveals that the DoM used to do time travel experiments back in the 19th century, which were discontinued when Madam Mintumble got stuck in the 15th century for five days with horrible results for the present when she finally returned (she had aged five centuries she she got back and rendered at least 25 people unborn due to contact with their ancestors in the past). So maybe the Time Turners were just there because they always have been? Either way, it looks like that cabinet will just be breaking and mending for all eternity, so that kinda sucks. Wondering what happens if you stick your hand anywhere near it?
These books have gone on a journey in terms of who accompanies Harry in the finale; in the first book it’s Ron and Hermione, second it’s mostly Ron, third it’s mostly Hermione, fourth it’s no one. Here it’s a whole crew of people, and though it’s not smart for Harry to turn his nose up at their help, having them there teaches him another important lesson; that when you become a leader in battle, you will hold yourself accountable for the lives of all your soldiers. We see Harry come to this over and over again in the chapter, this silent prayer, a promise that he’ll do anything to get his friends out alive. A war is coming. It’s important that Harry know this is part of what it means to be a leader in one, even if it hurts.
Ron and Hermione become basically useless very quickly here, and I’d argue that it’s because Harry needs them too much from a narrative perspective. He needs to feel alone here. He also needs to go through something this traumatic with Neville because he needs to learn a bit more about Neville’s general valuableness as a person.
I’d like to talk a bit about Neville here actually, because there’s a lot from him in this chapter that could be easily overlooked, but tells us so much of what we need to know about him going forward. Neville tries to help, and messes up, breaking the cabinet, never managing to get that stunning spell across to the Death Eater he’s aiming for, but he picks himself up and tries again… and fails again. Eventually his wand gets snapped in half and he mentions that his grandmother is going to kill him because the wand was his father’s.
THE WAND IS FRANK LONGBOTTOM’S WAND.
Remember how we talked earlier about the possibility that maybe Ron’s education was a little stunted due to starting out with Charlie’s old wand at Hogwarts? Neville has been using his father’s wand his entire school life. And we know that Neville isn’t much like his father, at least not in temperament. Neville’s entire development as a wizard has been stalled by a grandmother who is desperate to get Neville to fill his father’s shoes. No wonder he can’t get any of these jinxes to fly. Sure, Neville might be frightened here, but he’s also determined, and he’s still having trouble taking shots. Getting his father’s wand broken is honestly the best thing that could happen to him. I’d also like to point out that in the battle in the veil room, Neville is the only magical person around who thinks to use a wand as a sharp, pokey harmful thing. Neville shows himself to possess the kind of common sense that we’re always lamenting wizards lack. And he saves Harry’s life in doing it. So you know, you’re a hero, Neville. You’re the best. *sniff*
When they run into the rest of the group again, Luna explains how they got out by way of a room full of planets, and talks about sending Pluto right at the Death Eaters chasing them and, just—Rowling basically predicted Pluto’s downgrade from planet status here with this joke. I’m not saying it was intentional (I highly doubt it was), but that’s AMAZING. Luna breaks Pluto into pieces, and suddenly human scientists are like “Dude, that’s not a planet.” Which actually gives me in-universe questions about this, making me wonder if wizard astronomy would make the same mistakes that Muggle astronomy does, meaning that they’d sort of follow suit when Muggles declared Pluto isn’t a planet. Science?
Then this happens:
“Harry, we saw Uranus up close!” said Ron, still giggling feebly. “Get it, Harry? We saw Uranus—ha ha ha— “
—and that makes Uranus Joke #3 of the series, by the by. Yes, I’m still counting. This is important.
On another note, Hermione seals that door with a special spell that doesn’t seem to be common knowledge in the group. But once she’s unconscious, Harry (and Luna, though she doesn’t really get the chance to finish the spell) picks it up instantly. So, another reminder of how skilled these kids are.
…I want to keep talking about other important stuff so I never get to the end of this chapter and have to deal with the thing I hate most.
The Order rushes in, and then Dumbledore arrives, and Harry feels safe because of that, making it the worst possible setup. And there’s Sirius, poor Sirius, who is finally where he wants to be, who is doing his job beautifully, knocking Death Eaters aside left and right, telling Harry to up-and-outta-there because Molly can say what she wants about Sirius thinking that Harry is James, but he knows that his godson is his to protect and wants him out of harm’s way. And he’s up there fighting Bellatrix, a member of the family that he loathes so much, enjoying the taunts and the chance to stretch his legs outside that horrible house—
—and then he’s gone. And it’s so sudden that you don’t have the chance to recover. And you never will.
Chapter 36—The Only One He Ever Feared
Summary
Harry screams that Sirius is not dead, remembering the voices he heard on the other side of the curtain the first time he’d been in the room, but Lupin will not let go of him. Even as Remus drags Harry back, he expects Sirius to reemerge… until he realizes that Sirius had never kept him waiting before. Dumbledore has most of the Death Eaters rounded up and hogtied. Moody is awake and trying to revive Tonks. Lupin asks Neville where the others are in order to round them up as well. Harry notices that Kingsley has been hit by Bellatrix, and goes after her for killing Sirius. He follows her through the think tank room, out into the department entrance with the doors. She gets out before him and the room spins; Harry asks for the exit door and the room seems to open it at his request. He dives into the elevator, goes up to the Atrium, dashes after Bellatrix when she stops to aim a curse at him. He hides behind the fountain as she taunts him. He gets up and hits her with the Cruciatus Curse, but it doesn’t have much effect. She tells him that he has to really mean it for it to work, he has to want to cause pain and enjoy it.
Bellatrix tells Harry that she’ll spare him if he hands her the prophecy, and Harry takes great pleasure in telling her that it’s gone. As he does, his scar sears; Voldemort knows. He tells her that as well, and that he suspects the Dark Lord won’t be happy about that. Bellatrix begs the Dark Lord not to punish her, and Harry tells her that he can’t hear her from down here… except then a voice speaks, and Harry opens his eyes to find Voldemort in the middle of the hall. Bellatrix grovels to apologize and tries to warn him of something, but Voldemort isn’t interested; he plans to kill Harry now that they are face to face.
But when he casts the killing curse, the wizard from the Atrium statue steps down between them to shield Harry—Dumbledore has arrived. They begin to duel, Voldemort throwing deadly curses at Dumbledore, Dumbledore seeking to drive him off, bringing the whole fountain to life. When Voldemort presses Albus on that not-killling subject, he insists that there are fates worse than death and that one of Tom’s (as he insists on calling him) problems has always been his inability to understand that. They continue fighting, Voldemort turning one of Dumbledore’s spells to a serpent, Albus countering with the appearance of Fawkes (who dies to be reborn again). Dumbledore encases Voldemort in water and the Dark Lord vanishes. Harry assumes the fight is over and tries to step out, but Dumbledore tells him to stay behind the statue. Suddenly Harry feels a burst of pain, so terrible that he’s sure he’s about to die. He feels that he is in the clutches of a creature with red eyes and it speaks through him, telling Dumbledore to kill him. Harry agrees with it, wanting the pain to end, wanting to see Sirius again. But that outpouring of emotion over Sirius causes the creature to withdraw and Harry clambers for his glasses while Dumbledore asks if he’s alright.
Several Ministry officials are on the scene, including Fudge. The Minister is flabbergasted by the whole scene, almost tries to have Dumbledore arrested before Albus points out the obvious; that he’s been telling the truth all year, that someone should grab the Death Eaters downstairs and start clearing up this mess. Fudge is more dismayed to find Harry there and demands to know what’s going on. Dumbledore creates a Portkey in front of Fudge, which also gets his ire up (he doesn’t have authorization to make one). Albus makes a list of demands, couched as a simple order of events: Fudge will tell Aurors to stop pursuing Hagrid, depose Umbridge, let Harry go back to school, get half an hour of time to discuss what happened here, after which he can contact Dumbledore at the school via letters sent to the headmaster. Dumbledore gives Harry the Portkey and promises to join him in a half hour. Harry touches it and returns to Hogwarts.
Commentary
Harry has a moment where he looks at the veil and thinks that Sirius can’t be dead because he heard people on the other side of it before, hiding just out of sight. Which is such a profound metaphor for exactly how we often feel in the absence of the dead. They’re around a corner. The room smells like them. You hear their voice across a crowded room. Out of the corner of your eye, you’re sure you see them. Why won’t they stop hiding? Yeah. I give such credit to Rowling here, for all of this.
And then she lands on this:
But some part of him realized, even as he fought to break free from Lupin, that Sirius had never kept him waiting before…. Sirius had risked everything, always, to see Harry, to help him…. If Sirius was not reappearing out of that archway when Harry was yelling for him as though his life depended on it, the only possible explanation was that he could not come back…. That he really was…
I’m sorry, I actually do need a minute. (Walking away from keyboard…)
Okay…. This is articulating the flip side of Sirius’ recklessness, something that hasn’t been pointed out in the narrative before. Perhaps we think of him as irresponsible because the narrative gives us some guidance on that front, but Harry is also right; Sirius always risked everything to be there for Harry, to talk to him, comfort him, shore him up, be that living connection to his family. This is the one way that he would never let Harry down. And to use that realization as the pinpoint turn, the place where reality catches up…. It’s devastating. Harry’s grief is monumental in this perfectly understated way, brought home even harder by the break in Remus Lupin’s voice—he and Peter are the only ones left now.
And then this:
“Harry…. I’b really sorry….” said Neville. His legs were still dancing uncontrollably. “Was dat man — was Sirius Black a — a friend of yours?”
Harry nodded.
I don’t actually want to draw attention to the fact that Harry can’t begin to explain what Sirius was to him in that moment. I want to draw attention to beautiful, selfless Neville, who has been told for the past few years now about the danger of the murderer Sirius Black. Who in that moment knows not to question that narrative, to demand an explanation. Who only sees that Harry is in pain, and understands that this pain warrants his sympathy and understanding. He doesn’t know how important Sirius was, but he knows grief when he sees it, and his immediate response is only to offer his apology. This unimaginably sweet young man.
I need another minute.
Back to the action of the chapter, which doesn’t let up for a second. Bellatrix runs, and manages to avoid spells thrown at her by Kingsley and by Dumbledore. It’s often the case that people only remember Bellatrix for her insane devotion, but do we ever talk about what an incredible magic-user she is? Her skills are top-notch, which isn’t true for plenty of the Death Eaters. We get a better look at this when she schools Harry on curses after his feeble attempt to torture her. She explains that he has to really mean a curse, that he has to enjoy the affect it produces. (I can’t wait until we get to the point where this comes back in the final book. The payoff is everything.)
I had forgotten that Bellatrix tells Voldemort that she was fighting “the Animagus Black” when she tells him about how she was distracted when the prophecy broke. Why call him that? Is she trying to distance herself from her relation to him? Is that simply how Voldemort knows him because Lucius brought that information to him earlier in the year? I wonder….
Dumbledore hits the floor and it’s a showdown that we’ve basically been waiting the whole series for, as the title of the chapter harkens back to. It’s the only guy he ever feared—this has got to be a big deal, right? And wow, the visuals are striking with the fountain coming to life, and the snake and the phoenix, and water like molten glass, it’s all appropriately epic. But we learn quickly that Dumbledore has no intention of killing Voldemort, and at this point we don’t know why. His foreshadowing about a “fate worse that death” is particularly ominous here, but the real issue is the fact that Dumbledore knows about the horcruxes and knows that destroying Voldemort’s body at this point would only be a minor setback. (We have to assume that he could gain another body pretty quickly at this point with the resources he’s amassing.) So Voldemort peaces out, only to overtake Harry’s body for one final taunt.
It’s extremely important that the thing that causes Voldemort to recoil from Harry is the outpouring of emotion he feels when he recalls Sirius’ death. It’s a hefty clue about what should matter to Harry going forward. (This is an aspect that the movie handles in such an on-the-nose fashion that it’s laughable, but we’ll get to that in a couple weeks.)
And then Fudge is there with a bunch of Ministry folks, and he’s all “What happened to our fountain?” and you’re like SERIOUSLY, GUY. SERIOUSLY.
Nothing is really better than the timeline that Dumbledore rattles off to Fudge without concern. He knows Cornelius’ time is over. Everyone saw Voldemort, the jig is up, Fudge is out. Dumbledore is basically saying, “Hey, before you leave, could you remember to fill up car’s gas tank and put everything back where you found it and leave the keys in the mailbox? Thanks, you’re a real sweetheart.” Creating the Portkey without a by-your-leave is just the sprinkles on the sundae. (I don’t like sundae cherries, so, sprinkles.) It’s flipping the bird while the door hits Fudge’s butt on the way out.
Wow. We’ve only got two more chapters. Not sure I’m ready for it. See you next week.
Emmet Asher-Perrin on another note, why does the think tank want to kill people? Do the brains harvest more brains? …Whoa. You can bug her on Twitter and Tumblr, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.
You know, when Ron tells Harry and Hermione that Voldemort’s name is Taboo’ed, I always thought everyone fighting him should have just switched to “Riddle”, or even “Tom”. They could have discussed him, and in their minds brought him down to size, and there’s no way the Death Eaters could have Taboo’ed either name…
I really don’t like the battle sequence in the first of these chapters, at least until the Order shows up. While I can buy six of the most talented wizards and witches giving the Death Eaters some trouble, the six are able to give the Death Eaters far too much trouble for too long. Especially given that the Unforgivable Curses are shown consistently throughout the series as relatively easy to cast for Death Eaters (IMO, they should have been invented by Voldermort, which more adequately explains why he is so dreaded by the wizarding world). Its still a fun chapter to read but it doesn’t totally stand up to scrutiny.
teg
I think the movie version of the battle is pretty decent, it clearly shows the Death Eaters holding back against the kids until the Order shows up, and then the only one who can (barely) keep up is Harry.
I always thought Bellatrix referring to Sirius specifically as an animagus in her pleas to Voldemort was an attempt to back up her excuse to Voldemort for why she was distracted from retrieving the prophecy – this isn’t just some dimwitted blood traitor, this is a seriously skilled wizard who mastered at fifteen what no Death Eaters are noted as having mastered (even Voldemort for all his snakey-goodness never turns into a snake).
Kinda surprised that Moody gets knocked unconscious in this fight. I had the impression that besides Dumbledore, he was the best fighter of all the old Order members. There is something about him having been knocked out in this fight that diminishes Moody’s statute as a great fighter. Oh well, I am probably over analyzing.
Do we ever learn what that purple flame spell was which Dolohov uses on Herminone? Do we ever see it used again. Also, what happens to Bellatrix’s husband. IIRC, he was among the Death Eaters who escaped earlier in this book. Did he participate in this fight? What about the Battle of Hogwarts in the final book? Finally, who was the Death Eater whose head got stuck in the time jar? Did he ever get healed?
The appearance of Bellatrix here makes me remember something. There is a lack of female Death Eaters. IIRC, besides Bellatrix, the only other female Death Eater is the Carrow sister. (I do not count Malfoy’s mother. While she may be sympathetic to Voldermort’s cause, we do not actually ever see her fighting. She never seems to be doing any Death Eater sinister stuff.) How come JK did not create more female Death Eaters? She certainly created her fair share of female students/DA members and members of the Order. I think that is one thing she did not do well. She made it as if the Death Eaters only had male members (with one or two exceptions).
Emily, great point about Neville. I never thought about it. You are 100% correct. Neville’s use of his father’s wand is a good portion of what held him back. Once he gets his new wand, he becomes a much better wizard. I do not think he could have done what he did in Book 7 (run the resistance at Hogwarts) if he still had his father’s wand.
Thanks for reading my musings
AndrewHB
I don’t like that Moody was effectively used as a Worf like character – said to be strong, but gets shafted in the narrative to show the threat of the bad guy. Makes his death feel really hollow.
The point of the ministry collecting all of the prophecies is control. If you control information, you control society, and a prophecy is a powerful form of information. And we know that the ministry is obsessed with controlling the magical world, to the point of devoting as much energy to covering up the Death Eaters’ crimes from the muggles as to actually stopping them.
I suspect that there are also controls to keep people who have heard the prophecy firsthand from repeating it to others. Dumbledore is powerful enough to work around this, but for most people, access to prophecies is tightly controlled by the ministry.
@5 I can buy Moody being knocked on his backside. I get the feeling he was a great fighter in his day, but his day was at least 10 years ago if not more. He’s the Lance-Corporal Jones of the Order, the old warhorse who hears the trumpet call one more time to service that he isn’t really up for, but he won’t let that stop him because those Death Eaters, they don’t like it up ’em sah, they do not like it up ’em!
I never understood what Dumbledore wants to acomplish in his duel with Voldemort. He knows trying to kill him will be useless. So what’s his point? Just to drive him away?
That point about Neville’s wand is fantastic. He really blossoms from here on out, though even in this battle he proves that he would have been as worthy as Harry to be the subject of the prophecy. But still, once he gets his own wand, he does seem to get a lot better at magic.
There’s also a lot of disarming in this chapter and knowing what we do now about its significance, I get confused trying to follow all the implications.
The Veil. This, like Grawp, feels like an abandoned plot point to me. I always kept expecting it to play some sort of role in one of the later books, but we never really hear about it again. I suppose it’s some sort of confirmation of the existence of a soul or an afterlife, setting things up for Harry’s vision of King’s Cross in book 7, but really we knew that already from the various ghosts. It seems that Bellatrix could just as easily have disintegrated Sirius or ripped out his heart and taken a big bite or something and given us and Harry a similar emotional experience. OK, he might have been less motivated to follow up on that mysterious eye in the mirror in DH, but that’s it.
There’s a great Albus Potter septology that really goes in-depth as to what the veil is and how it works. I really enjoyed it.
I still remember when I read Beyond the veil for the first time (a lifetime ago). I was trembling awefully and didn´t sleep that night. One of the most terrifying experiences in my life, deffinitly.
Sirius is referred to as “the Animagus” because it is a title of distinction and accomplishment among the magical community, one that denotes particular skill or mastery of the craft and that even the Death Eaters would respect. It gives Sirius more of stature in her effort to make excuse to her master, thereby making her ‘failure’ seem more acceptable. I stated last time that all the kids had to do was confiscate the wands of the Death Eaters they overcame and they would have made life a lot easier for themselves. It seem like they kept having to take on the same one’s over and over again.
Also, why doesn’t Dumbledore kill Voldemort here? Sure, sure, he has horcruxes, but last time he was ‘killed’, he was out of action for, what, fifteen years? Seem like a good deal to me. Even if we can assume that Voldy took precautions to recover again, what, is he going to launch another elaborate scheme to get Harry’s blood again? Have someone else cut off their hand for him (this may not be to difficult, given the little personality cult he’s got going, but still)? A set back is a set back, even if it isn’t a permanent solution.
In 15 years Harry Potter won’t be young, malleable, and easily led. He’s a lot less likely to totally trust Dumbledore and be respectful and obedient. He’ll have his own ideas about how things should happen. He might even succumb to less benign influences. Dumbledore needs this to go down now, when he can be sure of Harry, and certain of his influence over Harry.
Dumbledore’s greatest flaw (and perhaps his biggest asset) is his ego. He wants this all to unfold under his direction — he is certain that is the only way to defeat Voldemort. He’s ruthless enough to use Harry’s youth and inexperience to further this (admittedly important) end.
“The Harry Potter Reread wonders what would happen if it were translated into as many languages as the Harry Potter books. It would probably sprout wings and fly at that point.”
Well, the Harry Potter books have been translated in Latin. I’m sure that somewhere in this reread, there must be a combination of words that is a spell. “Don’t speak Latin in front of the books.”
So none of the Death Eaters know any spell to incapacitate a group of teenagers? Did they ever learn anything besides Crucio and Avada Kedavra? Apart from Bellatrix and her Accio, nobody tries anything in the prophecy room, even as they start running away. For vicious killers, they really had to have no reflexes to let them escape at first. Moreover, couldn’t they at least have set a trap that would trigger when someone would take the prophecy? They know that Harry has defeated Voldemort twice already (I’m not counting the first one, because come on, he was a baby. And they might not know about Tom Riddle in the second year), including one time when they were almost all there, so why would they leave any chance? And later, their targets are only using stun spells: those are the worst henchpeople ever. I’m really hoping that there are tactical reason for using the dancing and laughing curse (incantation time, simplified targeting, easier gestures…), because I really can’t imagine Voldemort keeping that kind of people around otherwise.
Last week, I deplored the lack of protection on the artefacts kept in the Department of Mysteries. The destruction of the time turner’s cabinet is properly baffling. What I really wonder about smashing the prophecies is that if that’s enough to hear them, what’s the point of making them accessible to the relevant person only?
I wonder how Harry and co. intended to leave had they found Sirius tortured by his cousin and reduced to the mental and physical condition of the Longbottoms?
So how did wizards determine that the Veil was death, if nobody came back? It could be a one way portal to the distant future, or some place in another world, or a magical prison.
Since Dumbledore can’t kill Voldemort, is he actually trying to capture him? I can’t see the point of that fight for him.
It seems to me that Dumbledore, aside from needing to confront Voldemort to protect Harry, was trying to capture him. That’s a dangerous plan, but killing him won’t work as long as there are Horcruxes left and Dumbledore may not live long enough to see a return engagement if and when Voldemort rises yet again.
Good advice in many series.
Too bad you’ve skipped on this part, but notice Harry’s reaction when Hermione is struck by Dolohov’s curse. He can’t function at all by the thought of Hermione possibly being dead! When Sirius dies, Harry goes completely berserk, even using an Unforgivable Curse. But with the thought of Hermione being dead, he can’t do anything at all. It was Neville who had to check for a pulse. Now, I don’t care what Romione/Hinny-shippers think, but to me THAT showed how much Harry loves Hermione.
Maybe it was different for others but before this book was released iirc it was known someone important was going to die – so everything in the ministry such as the attack on Hermione was wondering if this was the death.
And those looking for a reason for Dumbledore to battle Voldemort – perhaps he was merely killing time until Fudge or any other authority members showed up to prove once and for all that Voldemort was back?
Harken back, fellow rereaders, to a time of innocence, a time when none of us had READ Order of the Phoenix yet.
(Did Emily cover the Great Mark Evans Debacle? I didn’t catch that post.)
We knew so little about OotP, but we knew one thing: Tonight, Someone Dies.
I don’t remember a lot about my first read of OotP, but the one thing I remember with striking clarity is when Hermione got hit with Dolohov’s purple flame curse. I was reading so fast at that point, I nearly skipped over it, but then I went back to reread and realized
fuck
hermione died
It was almost a relief when Sirius went through the veil, my despair at Hermione’s fate was so intense.
Omg I remember bits of that!
@15: I don’t think Emily skipped that at all; she just approaches the scene from a different angle: “…having them there teaches him another important lesson; that when you become a leader in battle, you will hold yourself accountable for the lives of all your soldiers.”
Hermione going down is the first potentially fatal wound taken by any of the team. There doesn’t need to be any particular romance between the two for Harry to have a spectacularly bad reaction to the idea of losing someone who was following him. You can certainly read that passage as evidence of romantic feelings, but there are plenty of other valid ways to read the passage.
Nobody said ‘romance’, just love. Harry and Hermione enjoy a beautiful, platonic relationship. It’s clear in the books; it shows well in the movies. They are great friends, for many reasons.
I agree that his love for Hermione is deeper than his love for Sirius. Harry knows her better; they’ve been through more. Their friendship is tested. Sirius is a trusted adult; there’s an affinity there, but the relationship is fundamentally different.
Also, I adore Neville, for every reason.
Why does my comment not appear and I’m suddenly logged out? In the preview the comment had the number -1.
It is interesting that both Dumbledore and Voldemort have totem animals that are symbols of rebirth. But while the phoenix really is reborn, the snake shedding its skin is not really getting younger, just bigger. Dumbledore doesn’t have children, but many of the students are loyal to him, so his legacy lives on in the next generation. Voldemort tries to be immortal by getting a new body, but this fake immortality ends, and since he sees his followers as tools, not heirs, nothing is left after his death.
Beyond the veil, my least favourite chapter of the whole series.
I don’t blame Dumbledore at all for not trying to kill Voldemort. Not only is he aware of the horcruxes, he probably suspects that Harry (or his scar) is one. Add in the fact that Voldemort used Harry’s blood in his creation of a new body, the psychic interactions between the two of them and Voldemort’s brief possession of Harry right here, and if I were Dumbledore, I’d be very worried that “killing” Voldemort could lead to him taking over Harry.
I’m not sure he’s trying to capture Voldemort either. What would they do with him? The Death Eaters just staged a massive break out at Azkaban and the dementors may very well be working for the bad guys. Where could he possibly be contained? I think Dumbledore is trying 1) to keep Harry and as many others as possible alive and 2) slow Voldemort down long enough that plenty of people get a good look at him. If Voldemort had fled as soon as Dumbledore showed up, then the only people who would have seen him would be Harry and Dumbledore. That leaves things right where they were after the Triwizard Tournament. But now lots of people, including reliable Ministry workers, have seen him and there’s no more denying his return. The wizarding world now has no choice but to prepare for war.
@13 Athreen: “The worst henchpeople ever” … or people so sure of their own superiority that they just couldn’t be bothered to exert themselves for the sake of a bunch of half-educated, Muggle-loving young incompetents? That’s the only explanation that’s ever made sense to me, and it makes a lot. Voldie uses the classic Evil Villain ploy of airing his ego at the wrong moment, explaining who he is, what he’s doing and why it works so wonderfully well – and gets so caught up in the story of his own amazingness that he can actually be bested in the end. And the henchpersons (more PC like that!) are doing the same kind of thing but on a lesser scale, as befits their lesser status. This way, the dancing and laughing curses make perfect sense: not to control or overcome them, but to dish out public humiliation. A good way to hurt most teenagers, but not these ones.
As for nobody ever coming back from behind the Curtain, wouldn’t that suggest to even the dimmest Ministry quillpusher that they just might not be coming back because of being dead? “That undiscovered country, from whose bourne no traveller returns”, and all that. Wonder if Shakespeare went on to Hogwarts after Stratford Grammar School?
@23
I think there is also a deeply symbolic element to how Harry and his friends are able to defeat the Death Eaters, or at least hold them at bay. Both Harry and Voldermort have bands of fanatically loyal followers but the way in which they cultivate them is totally different. Voldermort virtually exclusives uses terror and tantalizing hints of sharing power with the Death Eaters. In contrast, Harry builds up his friends and allies both emotionally and in terms of magically strength. The result of this is that while Voldermort is at first glance able to build up a huge army of powerful followers, it is a structure build on sand and it collapses instantly both times he loses power. In contrast, many of Harry’s friends prove willing to die for him even and fight on when dies. The Battle of the Department of Mysteries is just one incident that demonstrates this quite clearly.
I think there was a rumor recently that one of the trio was going to die during the series. Everyone seems to have assumed that it was Ron but I wonder whether Rowling didn’t really decide either who was going to die or whether either would die at all until rather late in the writing of Book 5. Both Ron and Hermonie are put in life-threatening situations and their fates aren’t made 100% clear until the next chapter. Potentially Order of the Phoenix could have been a horrific bloodbath with the deaths of Ron and/or Hermonie, Sirius, and Mr. Weasley.
I have never been a fan of big fight scenes in movies or books, so I’m already a little biased against this chapter. But at reread I definitely found myself frustrated with some of the ‘hijinx’ (like the stuff in the time room) and it actually started to completely stretch disbelief that at least one of them wasn’t killed. For example, why is Luna knocked unconscious, or Ginny stunned? Why wouldn’t they be Avada Kedavaring all over the place? (Ah, I see several others have brought this up!)
I do have to credit the reread for helping remember the good points about Sirius but I remember the first time I read it, I felt such a non-reaction to Sirius’s death (especially as the stuff from the Penseive weas still fresh in my mind and so he wasn’t a character I felt invested in any longer) that I felt a bit miffed that the big emotional death we were going to get was Sirius, haha.
For Harry, losing his parental surrogate though, it’s huge :( Perhaps now that I have kids of my own I am a little more sensitive to that. His belief in the steadfastness’s of Sirius’s love; that he would always risk everything to be there for him if he could is really beautiful and the kind of thing one would want their own kids to think of them. And the part where his love for Sirius is what drives Voldemort out…awwwww.
Lastly – my first instinct was that Dumbledore was mainly trying to protect Harry (although I can grant that he’s also trying to manipulate things to make sure they fit into his long game). I think his comments about death/a fate worse than death is some nice foreshadowing. Voldemort does horriffic things to avoid death, and later does end up with a horrible fate. Whereas, people like Dumbledore (despite his flaws) and Harry’s mother (and of course Harry later) are willing to sacrifice themselves and those are all actions on which the series hinge. Possibly a similar type of lesson as Anakin vs. Obi-Wan in Star Wars; Anakin is possessive and fearful, whereas Obi-Wan can sacrifice himself to the greater life force. Or even some of the deeper themes in Lord of the Rings (in many of his writings, the flaw of the Elves was their propensity to try to keep things in a state of stasis). Obviously, it’s not a unique message per se – I think even in the last Harry Potter book, there is a Scripture reference (‘and the last of these to be destroyed is death’).
Just as so many posters here have only now realized about the “Think Tank”, I’ve just realized the significance of the phoenix tail feather wand core.
Maybe this is old news to everyone else, but it only just occurred to me when the article mentioned that Fawkes died but came to life again, as phoenixes do.
That’s also what Voldemort does. Who has a phoenix tail feather (Fawkes specifically) wand core.
Who else has a phoenix wand? It’s incredibly rare. But Harry Potter does. And he *also* dies then comes back to life.
A comment above says: “It is interesting that both Dumbledore and Voldemort have totem animals that are symbols of rebirth. But while the phoenix really is reborn, the snake shedding its skin is not really getting younger, just bigger. ” Yes, the snake may be his ‘totem’, but the phoenix is in his wand.
My favorite thing in “The Only One He Ever Feared”, and one of my favorite things in the entire series, is the way Dumbledore calmly refers to Voldemort as “Tom” throughout their duel. It’s both a great bit of characterization (that for all Voldemort has done, he will always be Tom, the bright but unnerving student, to Dumbledore) and an effective tactical move (irritating Voldemort, distracting him, making it known that his self-styled grandiosity doesn’t work on Dumbledore and undermining the same in front of any observers). I’m so glad that JKR thought to have Harry do the same during their confrontation in DH, and that, for all the change it made to their final duel, the movie had Harry calling him Tom as well.
Wouldn’t it be great if Luna addressed Sirius as Stubby in the middle of the fight, and everyone on both sides would stop and stare at them dumbfounded, while Harry used the opportunity to hex Death Eater #5?
Hello, everyone. It’s almost a year later so I don’t know if anyone will see this comment. But in case anyone does I just wanted to point out that I’ve always been confused about what killed Sirius and I’m surprised that no one mentioned it in this post.
Maybe I’m the only one confused. Was it Bellatrix’s curse that killed him or the fact that he fell through the Death arch? So if he had fallen on the dais instead of through the arch he would have been fine?
Dumbledore doesn’t kill Voldemort here because V and Harry were tethered together. While V lived, H lived. Dumbledore was trying to keep Harry alive.
@29 – IMO it was both. He was hit in the chest by her curse, it’s possible he would have survived it, but he was knocked backwards into the Veil and there was no getting out of that one.
@30/thepupxpert: While Voldy’s possessing Harry was certainly a dangerous possibility, there’s no evidence, here or in later books, that Harry’s life is tethered to Voldemort’s in any direct way.
Dumbledore perhaps had another long-term strategic angle for not killing Voldemort at this point, though. Until the horcrux problem was solved, destroying Voldemort’s current body was not merely futile but potentially counterproductive: imagine the panic and despair that would grip the wizarding world if faced with a wizard powerful enough to die and resurrect twice! The next iteration of the Order (possibly without Dumbledore) might struggle to rally support even more than they did this time around. Better to wait until you know dead means dead.
Someone asked if Bella’s husband was involved in this battle.
I believe he was, as was Rastaban. Both got locked up in Azkaban again once Dumbledore sorted things out at the Ministry, no doubt.