Deathly Hallows uberwank: Chapter 13, The Muggle-born Registration Commission
Chapter summary:
We pick up right where we left off. Umbridge assumes Mafalda!Hermione is there to help her with some kind of record-keeping, and takes her downstairs in the lift. Harry, as Runcorn the badass, gets out at level one, and runs right into Pius Thicknesse, the minister for magic. (What the hell kind of name is that? He sounds like a character from a porno made in about 1372.) Pius, for the record, has long black hair, and a "great overhanging forehead". On the first read, my eyes and brain pretty much just took in "long black hair" and "overhanging" and came away thinking Pius was an emo, but I now that this would be far too sensible and in fact he resembles one of those guys in the Mos Eisley cantina (the actual one in Star Wars, rather than the fake one I lied about in chapter 9). Anyway, Harry blags his way out of trouble by bad-mouthing Arthur, and this Pius guy gets off his case.
For want of anything better to do, Harry goes to screensaver mode and gets under the invisibility cloak. He ponders how their plan is laughably stupid, and how they n00bed up by putting all their energy into getting inside the ministry instead of considering what to do once there. Well, I could've told you that. Really, though, I can't believe that in a month of planning, it didn't occur to any of them that polyjuicing into employees might lead to them getting hauled off to do some work. (Then again, none of them has ever had a proper job, unless you count the very specific type of job Ginny gave Harry a couple of times, so I guess it would be harsh to judge them for that.)
Nevertheless, Harry decides to make the most of a bad situation, and resolves to go through Umbridge's stuff. Still under the cloaking device, he wanders along the corridor until he happens upon a team of office drones. They are busily assembling propaganda leaflets about "mudbloods" and how they pose dangers to purebloods and so on. It's illustrated with a picture of a pretty rose being strangled by a weed. I think I like this - I mean, it's a blatant allegory to Nazi propaganda in particular, and the thing is, that propaganda was incredibly unpleasant and also highly effective. There's a part of me that wonders if it borders on anvilicious, but on the whole I think it works well as an illustration of exactly how evil the death eater regime is.
Harry guesses the pamphlet is the work of Umbridge, and this is rather helpfully confirmed by a conversation between two of the employees, who also happen to glance at the door to her office. Harry follows their gaze, and is instantly livid: Mad-Eye Moody's mad eye has been set into the door for Umbridge to use for spying on her staff. Harry is furious - she's not a real metal fan, and has no idea how much that eye would go for on ebay! The only answer, of course, is to rob the office. In order to distract the workers, Harry sets off what I guess is a Bob-omb from Super Mario, which causes sufficient kerfuffle that he can get into the office.
Once inside, he busts out an Accio, but no dice, so it's manual search time again. In the filing cabinet, he finds a file which totally badmouths Arthur, and a poster of himself captioned "Undesirable number one", with a note on it reading "to be punished". Well, no shit. I can't decide if this is kind of stupid (why the hell would you leave yourself that memo?) or if it truly shows how awful Umbridge is - she's both an evil motherfucker and kind of a stupid show-off.
Right after this, Harry spots what he initially thinks is a mirror, reflecting Dumbledore's face. He rushes to it, but it's not a mirror, it's Rita Skeeter's book with a photo on the front. why the hell would you think it was a mirror? Especially if you'd been living for the last six years in a world where photos and portraits move as standard. Harry is pretty dumb. Anyway, he flicks open the book to a picture of a teenage Dumbledore, complete with stupid teenage beard, pissing himself laughing, and with his arm around a rather attractive chap who we will later discover is Grindelwald, you know, that guy that got mentioned a couple of times before.
... You guys, that's, like, Dumbledore's boyfriend. How cool is that?
I'm getting ahead of myself, though - Harry doesn't have time to find out who the guy in the photo is, because porn supremo Pius Thickstick walks in. Harry manages to put the book back on the shelf and pull the cloak over his head, and as such is not seen (and as we'll discover later, it turns out he has the power to slow down time like Hiro Nakamura, and was unconciously doing it in this scene, thereby allowing himself to do all that stuff without being noticed, except for the part where I'm totally making this up). As Pius leaves a note for Umbridge, Harry fucks off.
Back in the lift, Harry reviews his options. These amount to GTFO. At the next floor, Ron gets in, and right after that, Arthur, who gives Runcorn!Harry a dirty look and tips Reg!Ron off as to how to sort out the rainy office, but doesn't do much else. Then Percy gets in the lift and out again. Exhilarating stuff here. Before leaving the lift, Harry manages to make himself semi-useful and lets Arthur know he's being watched.
Harry makes his way to the courtroom level with a view to "borrowing" Mafalda!Hermione and GingTFO. He is met with crowds of muggleborn witches and wizards, huddled on benches and surrounded by dementors. As Harry watches, a man cries out that he is a member of the Imperial Senate on a diplomatic mission to Alderaan, but Umbridge doesn't give a fuck and points out that he is a member of the rebel alliance and a traitor, and orders the dementors to take him away. Then she calls out the name of one Mary Cattermole, Ron's fake wife, to be interrogated next. Harry, the badass, slips into the interrogation room under the cloaking device, where more dementors are being used to subdue the prisoners; Umbridge's patronus is protecting her, Yaxley and Mafalda!Hermione from their effects. Again, I rather like the way this part is written. I think the setup of the scene, not to mention Umbridge's patronus being so strongly maintained, are really effective ways of showing (to borrow a phrase, and possibly invoke Godwin's law) the banality of evil.
So Umbridge starts interrogating Mrs C about the location of the rebel base or something (FYI, it's on Dantooine). Again with the effective chillingness, as Umbridge quizzes her over where she "stole" her wand from, and laughs at her answer. Harry almost causes Hermione to crap herself when he stands behind her, still invisible, and whispers (in Runcorn's voice, remember) "I'm behind you". Hermione, who even in the face of fear is a quick-witted sort, spins around and pepper-sprays Harry in the eyes, then knocks him down with a punch to the face and stamps on his crotch. That's a lie, really she pretty much gasps and that's it. Then she comments on Umbridge's pretty locket; Umbridge tells a big fat lie about how it's to do with her ancestry, and uses the opportunity to segue into another burn aimed at Mrs C. This flips Harry over the edge and he springs into action, delivering Stupefy!s here and roundhouse kicks there, finishing up with a badass patronus of his own. Hermione takes the horcrux.
Grabbing Mrs C, Harry and Hermione head back to the corridor, tell the assembled muggleborns that the new official position is that they should run away as fast as they possibly can. Back in the atrium, Harry-as-Runcorn manages to bullshit the ministry workers into allowing the muggleborns to leave before they seal up the exit, and then when Yaxley shows up right after that, Harry punches some random right in the face (not a lie, he really does) and yells that the guy has been helping muggleborns escape. Ron shows up, and escapes through a fireplace with Mrs C in tow; meanwhile, the real Mr C has shown up and freaking about who is that guy who looks like him and is hanging out with his wife. Harry and Hermione manage to make it to a fireplace too, and emerge in those toilets we visited in the last chapter; Ron is trying to shake off Mrs C, who can't grasp that she is not, in fact, his wife. Yaxley shows up there too, so Harry grabs a hold of Ron and Hermione and they apparate right to the door of 12 Grimmauld Place, where there is a flash of light and they apparate again right away. Wait, that was stupid of them. Why apparate right home? Why not apparate to three or four different places, and then home? This is an example of why I'm annoyed with the "plan" the Phoenix Crew use for their day trip to the ministry. OK, so perhaps they couldn't have anticipated everything that's happened, but it seems like they didn't even try. And it's not like they didn't know about side-along apparition before now - they used it to get to the Cantina back in chapter 9. (Actually, is side-along apparation a fanon term? You know what I mean, anyway.) It just grates a little that they didn't even think to set up a rendezvous point for if they got split up or lost. Hell, whenever I'm on holiday in an unfamiliar place I do that - agree to meet back at the hotel/at the Rialto bridge/outside the Hershey store/at the entrance to Fantasyland, as soon as we realise we've been split up/at 4.30/at closing. I don't think it's that weird a precaution to take - and they've been planning for a month, and in any case one of the people involved is Hermione, who I can't imagine not being utterly paranoid about that sort of thing.
While we're being unnecessarily pedantic, here's something else I'm a little stuck on. Is this all supposed to happen in an hour? Because that's how long polyjuice potion lasts, if I recall correctly. Meh, I guess it's not impossible: despite all the faffing around, all that's happened in the last two chapters is - they arrived at the ministry, stunned and polyjuiced into a few people, went up in the lift, came down again, attacked Umbridge, took the locket and legged it. It's just that it feels like I've been reading and fanwanking over this chapter and the previous chapter since the dawn of time.
Overall, as always, I'm torn on this one. It's exciting, which I like, and the parts that give us glimpses of the death eater regime and those upholding it are, I think, suitably disquieting. In addition, lots of the exposition and background that, in other chapters, seems shoehorned in is presented relatively elegantly - for example, through conversations and remarks we wouldn't normally have access to, but we do because the trio are polyjuiced into people who do. On the other hand, too much action tends to mean I don't have anything very funny to say about the chapter, nor enough opportunity to refer to Star Wars or put in random pictures of cats, and the upshot is, I end up simply recapping what happens in a mildly snarky tone. Which is all very well, but was never the point. From my perspective, the best chapters are the ones that are truly godawful. (When I started writing this, the first chapters I wrote proper snarks for were the epilogue and other chapters from the end, because there's a lot to say about them.)
And, anyway, like I said in the last chapter, this whole section feels a bit like an unnecessary distraction from the main issue. However, it's nothing like as unnecessary as the next few chapters - because next time on Deathly Hallows Uberwank, our intrepid trio go camping! For, like, a billion pages!
I think I'm losing the will to live. Macros pls?
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Click to viewWe pick up right where we left off. Umbridge assumes Mafalda!Hermione is there to help her with some kind of record-keeping, and takes her downstairs in the lift. Harry, as Runcorn the badass, gets out at level one, and runs right into Pius Thicknesse, the minister for magic. (What the hell kind of name is that? He sounds like a character from a porno made in about 1372.) Pius, for the record, has long black hair, and a "great overhanging forehead". On the first read, my eyes and brain pretty much just took in "long black hair" and "overhanging" and came away thinking Pius was an emo, but I now that this would be far too sensible and in fact he resembles one of those guys in the Mos Eisley cantina (the actual one in Star Wars, rather than the fake one I lied about in chapter 9). Anyway, Harry blags his way out of trouble by bad-mouthing Arthur, and this Pius guy gets off his case.
For want of anything better to do, Harry goes to screensaver mode and gets under the invisibility cloak. He ponders how their plan is laughably stupid, and how they n00bed up by putting all their energy into getting inside the ministry instead of considering what to do once there. Well, I could've told you that. Really, though, I can't believe that in a month of planning, it didn't occur to any of them that polyjuicing into employees might lead to them getting hauled off to do some work. (Then again, none of them has ever had a proper job, unless you count the very specific type of job Ginny gave Harry a couple of times, so I guess it would be harsh to judge them for that.)
Nevertheless, Harry decides to make the most of a bad situation, and resolves to go through Umbridge's stuff. Still under the cloaking device, he wanders along the corridor until he happens upon a team of office drones. They are busily assembling propaganda leaflets about "mudbloods" and how they pose dangers to purebloods and so on. It's illustrated with a picture of a pretty rose being strangled by a weed. I think I like this - I mean, it's a blatant allegory to Nazi propaganda in particular, and the thing is, that propaganda was incredibly unpleasant and also highly effective. There's a part of me that wonders if it borders on anvilicious, but on the whole I think it works well as an illustration of exactly how evil the death eater regime is.
Harry guesses the pamphlet is the work of Umbridge, and this is rather helpfully confirmed by a conversation between two of the employees, who also happen to glance at the door to her office. Harry follows their gaze, and is instantly livid: Mad-Eye Moody's mad eye has been set into the door for Umbridge to use for spying on her staff. Harry is furious - she's not a real metal fan, and has no idea how much that eye would go for on ebay! The only answer, of course, is to rob the office. In order to distract the workers, Harry sets off what I guess is a Bob-omb from Super Mario, which causes sufficient kerfuffle that he can get into the office.
Once inside, he busts out an Accio, but no dice, so it's manual search time again. In the filing cabinet, he finds a file which totally badmouths Arthur, and a poster of himself captioned "Undesirable number one", with a note on it reading "to be punished". Well, no shit. I can't decide if this is kind of stupid (why the hell would you leave yourself that memo?) or if it truly shows how awful Umbridge is - she's both an evil motherfucker and kind of a stupid show-off.
Right after this, Harry spots what he initially thinks is a mirror, reflecting Dumbledore's face. He rushes to it, but it's not a mirror, it's Rita Skeeter's book with a photo on the front. why the hell would you think it was a mirror? Especially if you'd been living for the last six years in a world where photos and portraits move as standard. Harry is pretty dumb. Anyway, he flicks open the book to a picture of a teenage Dumbledore, complete with stupid teenage beard, pissing himself laughing, and with his arm around a rather attractive chap who we will later discover is Grindelwald, you know, that guy that got mentioned a couple of times before.
... You guys, that's, like, Dumbledore's boyfriend. How cool is that?
I'm getting ahead of myself, though - Harry doesn't have time to find out who the guy in the photo is, because porn supremo Pius Thickstick walks in. Harry manages to put the book back on the shelf and pull the cloak over his head, and as such is not seen (and as we'll discover later, it turns out he has the power to slow down time like Hiro Nakamura, and was unconciously doing it in this scene, thereby allowing himself to do all that stuff without being noticed, except for the part where I'm totally making this up). As Pius leaves a note for Umbridge, Harry fucks off.
Back in the lift, Harry reviews his options. These amount to GTFO. At the next floor, Ron gets in, and right after that, Arthur, who gives Runcorn!Harry a dirty look and tips Reg!Ron off as to how to sort out the rainy office, but doesn't do much else. Then Percy gets in the lift and out again. Exhilarating stuff here. Before leaving the lift, Harry manages to make himself semi-useful and lets Arthur know he's being watched.
Harry makes his way to the courtroom level with a view to "borrowing" Mafalda!Hermione and GingTFO. He is met with crowds of muggleborn witches and wizards, huddled on benches and surrounded by dementors. As Harry watches, a man cries out that he is a member of the Imperial Senate on a diplomatic mission to Alderaan, but Umbridge doesn't give a fuck and points out that he is a member of the rebel alliance and a traitor, and orders the dementors to take him away. Then she calls out the name of one Mary Cattermole, Ron's fake wife, to be interrogated next. Harry, the badass, slips into the interrogation room under the cloaking device, where more dementors are being used to subdue the prisoners; Umbridge's patronus is protecting her, Yaxley and Mafalda!Hermione from their effects. Again, I rather like the way this part is written. I think the setup of the scene, not to mention Umbridge's patronus being so strongly maintained, are really effective ways of showing (to borrow a phrase, and possibly invoke Godwin's law) the banality of evil.
So Umbridge starts interrogating Mrs C about the location of the rebel base or something (FYI, it's on Dantooine). Again with the effective chillingness, as Umbridge quizzes her over where she "stole" her wand from, and laughs at her answer. Harry almost causes Hermione to crap herself when he stands behind her, still invisible, and whispers (in Runcorn's voice, remember) "I'm behind you". Hermione, who even in the face of fear is a quick-witted sort, spins around and pepper-sprays Harry in the eyes, then knocks him down with a punch to the face and stamps on his crotch. That's a lie, really she pretty much gasps and that's it. Then she comments on Umbridge's pretty locket; Umbridge tells a big fat lie about how it's to do with her ancestry, and uses the opportunity to segue into another burn aimed at Mrs C. This flips Harry over the edge and he springs into action, delivering Stupefy!s here and roundhouse kicks there, finishing up with a badass patronus of his own. Hermione takes the horcrux.
Grabbing Mrs C, Harry and Hermione head back to the corridor, tell the assembled muggleborns that the new official position is that they should run away as fast as they possibly can. Back in the atrium, Harry-as-Runcorn manages to bullshit the ministry workers into allowing the muggleborns to leave before they seal up the exit, and then when Yaxley shows up right after that, Harry punches some random right in the face (not a lie, he really does) and yells that the guy has been helping muggleborns escape. Ron shows up, and escapes through a fireplace with Mrs C in tow; meanwhile, the real Mr C has shown up and freaking about who is that guy who looks like him and is hanging out with his wife. Harry and Hermione manage to make it to a fireplace too, and emerge in those toilets we visited in the last chapter; Ron is trying to shake off Mrs C, who can't grasp that she is not, in fact, his wife. Yaxley shows up there too, so Harry grabs a hold of Ron and Hermione and they apparate right to the door of 12 Grimmauld Place, where there is a flash of light and they apparate again right away. Wait, that was stupid of them. Why apparate right home? Why not apparate to three or four different places, and then home? This is an example of why I'm annoyed with the "plan" the Phoenix Crew use for their day trip to the ministry. OK, so perhaps they couldn't have anticipated everything that's happened, but it seems like they didn't even try. And it's not like they didn't know about side-along apparition before now - they used it to get to the Cantina back in chapter 9. (Actually, is side-along apparation a fanon term? You know what I mean, anyway.) It just grates a little that they didn't even think to set up a rendezvous point for if they got split up or lost. Hell, whenever I'm on holiday in an unfamiliar place I do that - agree to meet back at the hotel/at the Rialto bridge/outside the Hershey store/at the entrance to Fantasyland, as soon as we realise we've been split up/at 4.30/at closing. I don't think it's that weird a precaution to take - and they've been planning for a month, and in any case one of the people involved is Hermione, who I can't imagine not being utterly paranoid about that sort of thing.
While we're being unnecessarily pedantic, here's something else I'm a little stuck on. Is this all supposed to happen in an hour? Because that's how long polyjuice potion lasts, if I recall correctly. Meh, I guess it's not impossible: despite all the faffing around, all that's happened in the last two chapters is - they arrived at the ministry, stunned and polyjuiced into a few people, went up in the lift, came down again, attacked Umbridge, took the locket and legged it. It's just that it feels like I've been reading and fanwanking over this chapter and the previous chapter since the dawn of time.
Overall, as always, I'm torn on this one. It's exciting, which I like, and the parts that give us glimpses of the death eater regime and those upholding it are, I think, suitably disquieting. In addition, lots of the exposition and background that, in other chapters, seems shoehorned in is presented relatively elegantly - for example, through conversations and remarks we wouldn't normally have access to, but we do because the trio are polyjuiced into people who do. On the other hand, too much action tends to mean I don't have anything very funny to say about the chapter, nor enough opportunity to refer to Star Wars or put in random pictures of cats, and the upshot is, I end up simply recapping what happens in a mildly snarky tone. Which is all very well, but was never the point. From my perspective, the best chapters are the ones that are truly godawful. (When I started writing this, the first chapters I wrote proper snarks for were the epilogue and other chapters from the end, because there's a lot to say about them.)
And, anyway, like I said in the last chapter, this whole section feels a bit like an unnecessary distraction from the main issue. However, it's nothing like as unnecessary as the next few chapters - because next time on Deathly Hallows Uberwank, our intrepid trio go camping! For, like, a billion pages!
I think I'm losing the will to live. Macros pls?
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