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I saw a link on my flist this morning to some answers JKR gave about DH, one of which I found didn't really work for me. I mean, I think she undermined what she was going for a bit
There are two answers. One confirms that the DD/GG relationship came down to an unreciprocated crush that sent Dumbledore into a life of emotionless celibacy which I think we could already pretty much guess. He wasn't so much gay as that he was once at 18 a homoromantic asexual.
The other one, though, is about the Elder Wand transfer from Draco to Harry. One thing I like about this explanation is that it does at least confirm the way I read it in the book which I know at least some others didn't agree with--namely, the ownership of the Elder Wand passes from Draco to Harry when Harry yanks the hawthorn wand out of Draco's hand (along with 2 others) at Malfoy Manor. She liked making this a non-moment because:
The trouble with that, imo, is that whether or not that one moment was supposed to show that all of DD's machinations are supposed to come to naught the fact is DH spends hundreds of pages proving the opposite. Almost every character spends the entire book trying to follow DD's machinations. For Harry this means dozens of pages of obsessing about exactly what those machinations were and whether he’s following them correctly. He’s barely ever following his own ideas or plans (the plans of his own he does follow usually lack an ending). From beginning to end he's trying to figure out what Dumbledore needed him to do. The whole story of the Deathly Hallows happens because Dumbledore puts a tiny hint in a book that he needs Harry to follow, but slowly.
Harry is far more passive in DH than he was back in, say, PS/SS--he's grown up and learned that lesson, I guess. Reading it I remember feeling like most of the major movement consisted of Harry and Co. sitting or wandering around until something external dropped down to push them to the next step--be it Snape's Patronus showing up to lead Harry to the sword or Harry accidentally saying Voldemort so that the snatchers carry him to the Manor. So it's just very hard for me to see DH as *not* ultimately validating the choice to follow Dumbledore. Certain details might not work the way Dumbledore planned, but he still managed to pull off having the 3 teenagers destroy Voldemort mostly themselves in secret without even telling them how to destroy a Horcrux, and Harry still mostly follows Dumbledore's trail of breadcrumbs straight through. Logically Dumbledore's plan shouldn't have worked at all, so the fact that it works as well as it does suggests those plans were Meant To Be. The Deluminator thing alone would prove that, I'd think.
What's bizarre to me about this in context of wanting to show that Dumbledore's plans came to naught is the fact that I thought that I had gone wrong in thinking that was the whole point of HBP. I admit some part of me will always be waiting for the story I thought was coming after that book and wasn't. That book had Voldemort *and* Dumbledore setting down to some very specific chess moves hinging on one minor pawn, Draco. And Draco actually did put their plans in their place by proving more capable than either of them was banking on, based at least on part on mundane things they couldn't know because they weren't the right age. Voldemort expected Draco to fail or get killed. Dumbledore expected him to fail and get neatly captured. Instead he got Death Eaters into the castle completely surprising Dumbledore, realized that Voldemort's side was bad news, but still wound up running away, a potential wild card (if not a strong one).
Which I thought--and I fully admit that I was completely wrong here--but I thought that was one of a number of things that signaled exactly what JKR is talking about here: putting Dumbledore's plans in their place. The guy was dead now, and he hadn't died exactly the way he himself had planned and now all bets were off. The last book, I had thought, was going to be about wiping away that chess board and starting again with all new players, players that Harry might sometimes be able to play better than Dumbledore. Harry and his friends were going to be making things up on the fly and dealing with their issues (like their relationships with Snape, Draco and others) instead of Dumbledore. Instead it became all the more about Dumbledore's issues. Characters proved to be mostly what Dumbledore said they were. Harry's job in DH at most required a little fixing of Dumbledore's plans before implementing them.
So I admit reading this answer I find it kind of exactly the opposite of what it's supposed to be saying. Harry happening to have grabbed Draco's wand away from him (it's not even a tussle, actually--iirc, Draco's distracted by the falling glass from Dobby and Harry just yoinks the wands out of his hands easy-peasy) is yes, underplayed for such an important transfer. But it doesn't exactly the turn the plot around. Had Harry not done that imo things would have still come out the same. He just would have had to have gotten the wand another way, possibly by intention. After all, there was plenty of groundwork laid between the two characters by that point to justify Draco giving Harry the wand under the right circumstances. Which would make the whole thing come down to the choice of a person Dumbledore had meant to take off the board, and have the choice based more on the way the antagonistic relationship between Harry and Draco had evolved in surprising ways on both sides. An evolution which was a real contrast to the James/Snape relationship that Dumbledore explicitly compared to Harry/Draco early on. (Certainly Dumbledore would never have intentionally left a plan up to Draco willingly giving Harry anything—Snape couldn't even be counted on to teach Harry Occlumency and Draco had no Lily-love to blackmail him with.)
For me, realizing that Harry accidentally became the Master of the Wand didn't seem like chance at all, but simply a way to keep the spotlight on Harry and make sure that victory rested on Harry's use of his own power, after Harry had chosen to be "Dumbledore's Man" 100%. And DH in general validated the choice to follow Dumbledore's riddles and hints than it put them in their place. Harry chose to follow, and he won.
There are two answers. One confirms that the DD/GG relationship came down to an unreciprocated crush that sent Dumbledore into a life of emotionless celibacy which I think we could already pretty much guess. He wasn't so much gay as that he was once at 18 a homoromantic asexual.
The other one, though, is about the Elder Wand transfer from Draco to Harry. One thing I like about this explanation is that it does at least confirm the way I read it in the book which I know at least some others didn't agree with--namely, the ownership of the Elder Wand passes from Draco to Harry when Harry yanks the hawthorn wand out of Draco's hand (along with 2 others) at Malfoy Manor. She liked making this a non-moment because:
"Mm, this massive chess game. But I said to Arthur, my American editor - we had an interesting conversation during the editing of seven - the moment when Harry takes Draco's wand, Arthur said, God, that's the moment when the ownership of the Elder wand is actually transferred? And I said, that's right. He said, shouldn't that be a bit more dramatic? And I said, no, not at all, the reverse. I said to Arthur, I think it really puts the elaborate, grandiose plans of Dumbledore and Voldemort in their place. That actually the history of the wizarding world hinged on two teenage boys wrestling with each other. They weren't even using magic. It became an ugly little corner tussle for the possession of wands. And I really liked that - that very human moment, as opposed to these two wizards who were twitching strings and manipulating and implanting information and husbanding information and guarding information, you know?
Ultimately it just came down to that, a little scuffle and fistfight in the corner and pulling a wand away.
The trouble with that, imo, is that whether or not that one moment was supposed to show that all of DD's machinations are supposed to come to naught the fact is DH spends hundreds of pages proving the opposite. Almost every character spends the entire book trying to follow DD's machinations. For Harry this means dozens of pages of obsessing about exactly what those machinations were and whether he’s following them correctly. He’s barely ever following his own ideas or plans (the plans of his own he does follow usually lack an ending). From beginning to end he's trying to figure out what Dumbledore needed him to do. The whole story of the Deathly Hallows happens because Dumbledore puts a tiny hint in a book that he needs Harry to follow, but slowly.
Harry is far more passive in DH than he was back in, say, PS/SS--he's grown up and learned that lesson, I guess. Reading it I remember feeling like most of the major movement consisted of Harry and Co. sitting or wandering around until something external dropped down to push them to the next step--be it Snape's Patronus showing up to lead Harry to the sword or Harry accidentally saying Voldemort so that the snatchers carry him to the Manor. So it's just very hard for me to see DH as *not* ultimately validating the choice to follow Dumbledore. Certain details might not work the way Dumbledore planned, but he still managed to pull off having the 3 teenagers destroy Voldemort mostly themselves in secret without even telling them how to destroy a Horcrux, and Harry still mostly follows Dumbledore's trail of breadcrumbs straight through. Logically Dumbledore's plan shouldn't have worked at all, so the fact that it works as well as it does suggests those plans were Meant To Be. The Deluminator thing alone would prove that, I'd think.
What's bizarre to me about this in context of wanting to show that Dumbledore's plans came to naught is the fact that I thought that I had gone wrong in thinking that was the whole point of HBP. I admit some part of me will always be waiting for the story I thought was coming after that book and wasn't. That book had Voldemort *and* Dumbledore setting down to some very specific chess moves hinging on one minor pawn, Draco. And Draco actually did put their plans in their place by proving more capable than either of them was banking on, based at least on part on mundane things they couldn't know because they weren't the right age. Voldemort expected Draco to fail or get killed. Dumbledore expected him to fail and get neatly captured. Instead he got Death Eaters into the castle completely surprising Dumbledore, realized that Voldemort's side was bad news, but still wound up running away, a potential wild card (if not a strong one).
Which I thought--and I fully admit that I was completely wrong here--but I thought that was one of a number of things that signaled exactly what JKR is talking about here: putting Dumbledore's plans in their place. The guy was dead now, and he hadn't died exactly the way he himself had planned and now all bets were off. The last book, I had thought, was going to be about wiping away that chess board and starting again with all new players, players that Harry might sometimes be able to play better than Dumbledore. Harry and his friends were going to be making things up on the fly and dealing with their issues (like their relationships with Snape, Draco and others) instead of Dumbledore. Instead it became all the more about Dumbledore's issues. Characters proved to be mostly what Dumbledore said they were. Harry's job in DH at most required a little fixing of Dumbledore's plans before implementing them.
So I admit reading this answer I find it kind of exactly the opposite of what it's supposed to be saying. Harry happening to have grabbed Draco's wand away from him (it's not even a tussle, actually--iirc, Draco's distracted by the falling glass from Dobby and Harry just yoinks the wands out of his hands easy-peasy) is yes, underplayed for such an important transfer. But it doesn't exactly the turn the plot around. Had Harry not done that imo things would have still come out the same. He just would have had to have gotten the wand another way, possibly by intention. After all, there was plenty of groundwork laid between the two characters by that point to justify Draco giving Harry the wand under the right circumstances. Which would make the whole thing come down to the choice of a person Dumbledore had meant to take off the board, and have the choice based more on the way the antagonistic relationship between Harry and Draco had evolved in surprising ways on both sides. An evolution which was a real contrast to the James/Snape relationship that Dumbledore explicitly compared to Harry/Draco early on. (Certainly Dumbledore would never have intentionally left a plan up to Draco willingly giving Harry anything—Snape couldn't even be counted on to teach Harry Occlumency and Draco had no Lily-love to blackmail him with.)
For me, realizing that Harry accidentally became the Master of the Wand didn't seem like chance at all, but simply a way to keep the spotlight on Harry and make sure that victory rested on Harry's use of his own power, after Harry had chosen to be "Dumbledore's Man" 100%. And DH in general validated the choice to follow Dumbledore's riddles and hints than it put them in their place. Harry chose to follow, and he won.
Tags:
- draco,
- dumbledore,
- hp,
- meta
From:
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The passivity of DH Harry is baffling. The first book's message that you can't want it in order to get it picked up again with a vengeance in the last book. You know, that's probably why James ended up with Lily. Like Ron, he probably gave up trying to impress the girl he liked and just became his supposedly thoughtful self, so naturally the demanding girl came around. Slackers rule in the HP-verse.
None of Rowling's characters learned anything or grew in perception, except arguably Severus and Neville. If anything, Rowling's depiction of her characters got more two-dimensional. Dumbledore was tediously revealed to be the same person when he died as he had been as a teenager. Draco was always trying too hard, even when he wanted to stay out of it, and he was placed on the wrong side, so he was damned, end of story. Rowling said she "wanted there to be redemption." Note the conditionality. I can't imagine what characters she was talking about, or if she intended to really get there.
I guess it's really as simple as the early outline of a story that was never expected to become a world phenomenon. Then, the author indulged in the "Yes, I'm clever" interviews in which she seemed to have no memory or conception of what she wrote. I'm sure she doesn't see a contradiction between following Dumbledore without question and the happenstance of the Elder Wand transfer. One probably follows from the other in her illogical mind. Are you the hero following god in my book? Then all things fall to you as your due.
Trying to reconcile the interviews with the books... that way lies madness. The interviews are the finest example of doublethink I've ever come across. I often wish I could stop trying to make sense of the story. I got sucked into the story, but I saw so much more in it than the author did.
From:
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I think she mostly means Dumbledore, who she already considered the epitome of goodness for some reason I don't understand.
I haven't read an interview in a while-I debated clicking the link but it was spelled out that this was specifically what she was talking about so I thought I just had to see. But yes, actually, when I think about it a lot of interview answers I read seemed to go directly against what was in the book. Sometimes literally, like when she made up those Slytherins coming back that never happened.
From:
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I think she meant Neville, who, let's face it, stood in the Trio's way at the beginning of the story. Bad Neville! He was fully redeemed at the end, though.
... or was he? Did he invoke Dumbledore's name, or just Harry's?
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