Deathly Hallows uberwank: Chapter 19, The Silver Doe
Disclaimer tiem nao! OK, so these are hardly family-friendly most of the time, but this one is really, really not safe for work - specifically, because it contains even higher levels of profanity than usual and... um...
... look, it's got what I guess is NC-17 Harry/Ron in it, all right? I didn't mean to write it. Cliche of cliches, it just sort of happened.
As the chapter starts, Harry and Hermione are doing exactly what they've been doing since forever, and camping pointlessly. As it's still winter (duh), they keep warm by huddling over Hermione's speciality - blue fire, which can be scooped up and kept in a jar. Now, I have no memory whatsoever of this ever being mentioned in the Potter books before - that is, specifically blue fire that can be scooped up and kept in a jar, but I do remember this happening a fair bit in the Nintendo video game Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Things carry on carrying on in this way, and are punctuated only by Harry occasionally settling down for a nice big wank over Ginny's dot on the Marauder's Map, before remembering she's gone home for Christmas. Each time this happens, he finds himself unable to conjure up a viable sexual fantasy, and simply goes for a run in the snow to use up some of that excess energy.
The main action of the chapter kicks off one identical night when Harry, idly sporting a semi-erection and doodling designs for a tattoo on a bit of paper, sees a bright light in the darkness. It comes closer until Harry can see that it's a glowing silver doe with all the trimmings (by which I mean it's got long eyelashes and stuff, not that it comes with potatoes and a selection of seasonal vegetables, although I could so eat that right now. I'm not sure why I wrote "trimmings", actually). It looks at him and then wanders off, so he follows it. Apparently he instinctively knows this is safe. He instinctively knows this glowing, ethereal silver deer is safe, and therefore follows it. Personally I would be instinctively freaked out, and might even instinctively crap myself. Certainly I would instinctively run like the frickin' wind.
Of course, later in the book we'll find out that Snape sent the doe. And that it's a doe because it represents Lily. Why? Why is Lily a doe? Because James was a stag? But James was literally a stag, he could turn into one and presumably, if he wanted, fight with other stags and make that funny chesty-cough noise that stags make during rutting season (it really is called that, which is, in my view, hilarious). But Lily? She wasn't an animagus - at least, there is no evidence whatsoever that she was. Why is she a doe? Because she... died just like Bambi's mother? What? Or is it just because James was a stag and she has to "match"?
It seems a bit weird, then, that Snape's patronus is supposed to represent her, but only as an extension of her husband - who Snape hated! Isn't that, like, the whole point?
Also - Snape's patronus is a doe and Harry's is a stag. If that's not subtexty then I don't know what is.
After a while, the magic alien deer vanishes, leaving Harry alone in the woods next to a little frozen pool. A bit of the old Lumos reveals... the sword of Gryffindor at the bottom of the pool! Harry wants that sword, man, he wants it bad.
It's been discussed elsewhere exactly how stupid Harry is, but I feel it bears repeating. Off the top of my head, I can think of, oh, 80,647 ways Harry could get the sword, but he doesn't consider any of them. For example, in about book three, or maybe four, Hermione melts a path through the snow using her wand, which presumably involves the production of heat. Harry regularly sends pointless sparks out of the end of his wand, which are shown to heat water on at least one occasion (in the lake in GoF). But no, he tries a couple of things which were never going to work and then leaps right in and - this is the point - acts like this is the inevitable only possible option, despite an absolute lack of evidence for this. (Harry? Here's the thing. There are other spells beyond Accio and Expelliarmus, you know. It's like how evil_underlord is always telling me that it's OK to sometimes cook things with no garlic in.)
Anyway, having attempted to accio the sword, Harry tries the only other thing he can think of, which is based on something Dumbledore once told him about how if you ask for help, you might get it. He says, "help," out loud. This does nothing, so Harry takes off most of his clothes and leaps right into the pond. This reminds me a little of a whole bunch of King Arthur type crap, but mainly it reminds me of the video to the James Blunt "song", You're Beautiful, which is about stalking a woman or something.
(Warning: video provided for illustrative purposes only. Before viewing, please ensure your speakers are muted. Do NOT under any circumstances listen to the song. It's turgid shite.)
Harry's rationale for jumping in also involves the fact that he's a Gryffindor, and that Gryffindors are brave and chivalrous. You know something? I don't think most Gryffindors are brave, I think they're reckless, they're often arrogant and they rarely think things through (there are exceptions, like Neville, who I would argue really is brave).
It's been found (and I wish I could reference this but I can't even remember the term for it - it's not self-serving bias and it's not the fundamental attribution error and I can't remember anything else I did at university except drink, but please rest assured that I spent a good five minutes crawling around looking for my notes which I have, inexplicably, kept Found! Lake Wobegone Effect) that people, in general, essentially believe they are luckier, cleverer, and all-round better than others around them. Survey a decent-sized sample of people on how likely they think they are to die of heart disease, chances are that every one of those people will rate him or herself as unlikely to die of heart disease. Of course, that can't be the case - that's not how averages work. The same applies if you ask those people how intelligent they think they are - they will all rate themselves as "above average intelligence" even though, again, that can't possibly be true. This phenomenon, to me, is what makes a Gryffindor - except that JKR obviously believes they are simply better than everyone else, too. This despite the evidence which clearly shows they're all just really fucking stupid.
I can't even believe I'm going to make this analogy, but it's the best I can think of off the top of my head. In The Lion King (*cringe*), the kid lion goes to the elephant graveyard and almost gets raped by a band of hyenas led by Jeremy Irons (is that right? I haven't seen it for a while), because he wants to be brave like his father. And his father explains that being brave isn't about deliberately getting into trouble - it's about doing what's right even if you'd rather not. Lameass though this makes me, I think that's a pretty good definition.
Cedric Diggory was that kind of brave, I think (I REMEMBER CEDRIC ZOMG). Like I said already, Neville absolutely is. Harry... meh, not so much. He's just kind of stupid. Harry is exactly the type who would go to the elephant graveyard on the assumption that it would make Ginny fancy him. (Think of how he almost murders Draco - who is a mean little turd and all, but as far as Harry knows is pretty much just an incredibly annoying kid in his year at school.) Neville would go to the elephant graveyard because one of his friends was being raped by the hyenas, and would offer himself as a victim instead. That is, if Neville was a lion. I think I might be losing sight of my point a bit.
Moreover, I strongly dislike the fact that we are expected to root for Gryffindors when they seem to manipulate and bully as much as any Slytherins we see. I'd rather be hard-working, clever, or ambitious than a twat.
All I'm saying is - if I collapsed in the street, I would strongly hope the passer-by who rushed to my aid wasn't a Gryffindor, who would probably start shocking me with a defibrullator, giving me CPR, and bellowing, "Fera! Don't die! Please don't die!" as I vainly tried to get up and explain I'd only twisted my ankle.
Um, yes, anyway. What really gets me is that Harry even admits that jumping into the pool for reasons of "bravery" is stupid and tenuous - the only link with chivalry he can think of is that he hasn't woken Hermione up and asked her to do it for him. There's something ironic somewhere in that - because if he had woken her, she'd probably have been able to come up with, oh, 80,647 ways to get the sword out of the pool without almost dying of hypothermia (after bollocking Harry for waking her, expressing excessive levels of worry about whether it was an Admiral Ackbar-style trap, and probably going to the library for good measure).
Aaaaaaaaaanyway! So! Harry strips off his clothes ready for a swim. For no good reason, though, he leaves his underwear on, even though he's alone in the woods and therefore unlikely to be seen - and surely it's better to be as naked as possible, so that after you get out of the pool you can be dressed completely in warm, dry clothes. The only possible reason I can see is this: JKR knows Ron is going to show up any second, and that he's going to pull Harry out of the pool. When this happens, she wants Harry's dick - which, considering he's just jumped into a frozen pool in the middle of winter, will be shrivelled to the size and shape of a paperclip - to be safely hidden behind clean, wholesome, heterosexual underpants. Because if it's not, then Ron might brush against it with his hand as he pulls Harry out of the icy water - and Harry, in his state of shock and confusion (not to mention the fact that he's not been able to crack one off over Ginny's dot in a couple of weeks), gets hard without even thinking about it being Ron, an instinctive response, and he and Ron both realise what's happened at the exact same moment and there's an extremely tense moment while they stare into each other's eyes before Ron begins to stroke Harry, gently at first, then more firmly, while Harry gasps and tries to push Ron's hand off, but only half-heartedly, and Ron's saying, "No, you want this, we both do", and Harry gasps and pulls Ron's face to his and bites his bottom lip, hard, and then things continue faster and faster and just as Harry screams, "GINNY!" and comes all over Ron's hand, Voldemort leaps out from behind a tree and AKs them both, but it turns out he was filming the whole thing and he puts it on Youtube, and the very last scene in the book is Molly Weasley crying hot, humiliated tears...
Therefore, Harry leaves his underpants on.
... Fuck, did I just write that?
...
So! Anyway! Harry jumps into the pool, it's really cold, he dives to grab the sword but the locket horcrux - which he is still wearing, because he's really stupid, which I cannot stress enough - tightens up and tries to drown or possibly strangle him. Dunno why it didn't try and strangle him before now, except that JK Rowling's editors are suxx0r. Luckily, though, Gollum bites it off and... oh, no, wait, that's not right. Harry passes out...
... And comes round a bit later with Ron by his side. Rather than provide Harry with the aforementioned handjob, Ron berates Harry for jumping in while wearing the horcrux. Thank you, Ron. It's good to know I'm not alone here.
They go over everything that just happened, not least the fact that Ron is back, but that he saw Harry following radioactive Bambi around in the woods, and followed him in turn.
Exposition dealt with, Ron makes to destroy the locket. He keeps on at Harry that Harry should do it, but Harry insists it's Ron's job. There's no reason within the story that it needs to be Ron, he's not the Destined Destroyer Of Jewellery or anything, but it's clear that JKR specifically wanted Ron to do it, for two reasons:
1. It means each Horcrux is destroyed by a different and significant person: the diary by Harry, the ring by Dumbledore, the locket by Ron, the cup by Hermione, the diadem by... well, Crabbe, I guess, which is a bit random, the snake by Neville and the one in Harry by Voldemort.
2. While Ron is waving the sword around inexplicably waiting to tear up the locket, the locket gives off a ghostly, mash-up Harry and Hermione who pwn Ron, tell him he's a n00b and a luser and everyone hates him, and eventually start making out. This acts as an enormous kick in the bollocks to Harry/Hermione shippers. Well, actually, I guess it also allows us to see some of Ron's fears and insecurities, but it does it through the medium of kicking Harry/Hermione shippers really hard in the bollocks.
Harry delivers a final boot to the groin reassures Ron by re-enacting this scene from Return of the Jedi more or less word-for-word:
(Except without the yowly Ewok noises going on in the background, obviously.)
Harry and Ron exchange manly hugs in a totally manly and non-gay way and head back to the tent. Hermione isn't totally pleased to see Ron, though, and calls him a stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf-herder, or something. Actually, no, she calls him an "arse", which I'm sure is supposed to have impact, because there hasn't been anything approaching swearing in any previous books (except for one use of "slut" in book six, I believe) and this shows how Hermione totally means it - but, honestly, I think it comes across as all kinds of hilarious, because "arse" doesn't really do Hermione's rage justice (in her position, I'd be calling Ron an "uncle-fucking jizzstain" or "dog-raping shitflap" or simply a "monumental cock", although I suspect those would be even funnier coming out of Hermione's mouth), and because "arse" is a fucking funny word in general.
Then they rehash everything that just happened. Ron explains he tried to come back that very first night, but couldn't find them, and then he got picked up by Jawas Snatchers, and then escaped. A while later, many weeks in fact, the deluminator led him back - apparently it not only turns the lights on and off, it also can give off balls of light which float into your chest and then you apparate and it brings you exactly where you need to be. Well, duh. By which I mean WTF. It pisses me off no end the way that most of the plot devices JKR uses are either so, so blatantly obvious that you see them coming a mile off (RAB, hello) or else so completely random and out-of-the-blue that there's nothing clever about them. OK, we saw the deluminator in the very first chapter of the very first book, but it just turned out the lights. Prior to now there's been nothing to suggest it can do anything other than that. So this isn't any more intelligent or exciting than if she'd created a completely new magical device called the Friend Finder or something.
There's a book I read a few years back, which I won't even name just in case it's on anyone's to-be-read list. :) The big twist in that book is that the protagonist had an identical twin who died very young, but she's forgotten her. (It's better than it sounds, honestly!) One of the things that made the ending work so well in this particular book was that if you read the book a second time, it is absolutely full of clues to the ending, some of which are almost brazen in how obvious they are. But on the first read, without knowledge of the ending, they utterly pass you by. The ending is - to use another cliche - hidden in plain sight. Or consider something like The Sixth Sense, or Fight Club - again, on a second viewing it's easy to see the clues and foreshadowing that lead up to the eventual OH MY GOD moment.
The deluminator stuff in this book doesn't work in this way, because if you re-read the entire Potter series, there is no indication whatsoever that the deluminator can be used the way Ron uses it here.
So Ron did all that stuff with the deluminator a couple of times, but couldn't find the tent due to the protective charms around it. Then all the stuff I just told you about happened. Then Hermione punches the fuck out of Ron some more and threatens to cut him, because that's always funny, and the credits for this episode roll. Sunday, Monday - Happy Days... etc...
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... look, it's got what I guess is NC-17 Harry/Ron in it, all right? I didn't mean to write it. Cliche of cliches, it just sort of happened.
As the chapter starts, Harry and Hermione are doing exactly what they've been doing since forever, and camping pointlessly. As it's still winter (duh), they keep warm by huddling over Hermione's speciality - blue fire, which can be scooped up and kept in a jar. Now, I have no memory whatsoever of this ever being mentioned in the Potter books before - that is, specifically blue fire that can be scooped up and kept in a jar, but I do remember this happening a fair bit in the Nintendo video game Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Click to viewThings carry on carrying on in this way, and are punctuated only by Harry occasionally settling down for a nice big wank over Ginny's dot on the Marauder's Map, before remembering she's gone home for Christmas. Each time this happens, he finds himself unable to conjure up a viable sexual fantasy, and simply goes for a run in the snow to use up some of that excess energy.
The main action of the chapter kicks off one identical night when Harry, idly sporting a semi-erection and doodling designs for a tattoo on a bit of paper, sees a bright light in the darkness. It comes closer until Harry can see that it's a glowing silver doe with all the trimmings (by which I mean it's got long eyelashes and stuff, not that it comes with potatoes and a selection of seasonal vegetables, although I could so eat that right now. I'm not sure why I wrote "trimmings", actually). It looks at him and then wanders off, so he follows it. Apparently he instinctively knows this is safe. He instinctively knows this glowing, ethereal silver deer is safe, and therefore follows it. Personally I would be instinctively freaked out, and might even instinctively crap myself. Certainly I would instinctively run like the frickin' wind.
Of course, later in the book we'll find out that Snape sent the doe. And that it's a doe because it represents Lily. Why? Why is Lily a doe? Because James was a stag? But James was literally a stag, he could turn into one and presumably, if he wanted, fight with other stags and make that funny chesty-cough noise that stags make during rutting season (it really is called that, which is, in my view, hilarious). But Lily? She wasn't an animagus - at least, there is no evidence whatsoever that she was. Why is she a doe? Because she... died just like Bambi's mother? What? Or is it just because James was a stag and she has to "match"?
It seems a bit weird, then, that Snape's patronus is supposed to represent her, but only as an extension of her husband - who Snape hated! Isn't that, like, the whole point?
Also - Snape's patronus is a doe and Harry's is a stag. If that's not subtexty then I don't know what is.
After a while, the magic alien deer vanishes, leaving Harry alone in the woods next to a little frozen pool. A bit of the old Lumos reveals... the sword of Gryffindor at the bottom of the pool! Harry wants that sword, man, he wants it bad.
It's been discussed elsewhere exactly how stupid Harry is, but I feel it bears repeating. Off the top of my head, I can think of, oh, 80,647 ways Harry could get the sword, but he doesn't consider any of them. For example, in about book three, or maybe four, Hermione melts a path through the snow using her wand, which presumably involves the production of heat. Harry regularly sends pointless sparks out of the end of his wand, which are shown to heat water on at least one occasion (in the lake in GoF). But no, he tries a couple of things which were never going to work and then leaps right in and - this is the point - acts like this is the inevitable only possible option, despite an absolute lack of evidence for this. (Harry? Here's the thing. There are other spells beyond Accio and Expelliarmus, you know. It's like how evil_underlord is always telling me that it's OK to sometimes cook things with no garlic in.)
Anyway, having attempted to accio the sword, Harry tries the only other thing he can think of, which is based on something Dumbledore once told him about how if you ask for help, you might get it. He says, "help," out loud. This does nothing, so Harry takes off most of his clothes and leaps right into the pond. This reminds me a little of a whole bunch of King Arthur type crap, but mainly it reminds me of the video to the James Blunt "song", You're Beautiful, which is about stalking a woman or something.
(Warning: video provided for illustrative purposes only. Before viewing, please ensure your speakers are muted. Do NOT under any circumstances listen to the song. It's turgid shite.)
Harry's rationale for jumping in also involves the fact that he's a Gryffindor, and that Gryffindors are brave and chivalrous. You know something? I don't think most Gryffindors are brave, I think they're reckless, they're often arrogant and they rarely think things through (there are exceptions, like Neville, who I would argue really is brave).
It's been found (and I wish I could reference this but I can't even remember the term for it - it's not self-serving bias and it's not the fundamental attribution error and I can't remember anything else I did at university except drink, but please rest assured that I spent a good five minutes crawling around looking for my notes which I have, inexplicably, kept Found! Lake Wobegone Effect) that people, in general, essentially believe they are luckier, cleverer, and all-round better than others around them. Survey a decent-sized sample of people on how likely they think they are to die of heart disease, chances are that every one of those people will rate him or herself as unlikely to die of heart disease. Of course, that can't be the case - that's not how averages work. The same applies if you ask those people how intelligent they think they are - they will all rate themselves as "above average intelligence" even though, again, that can't possibly be true. This phenomenon, to me, is what makes a Gryffindor - except that JKR obviously believes they are simply better than everyone else, too. This despite the evidence which clearly shows they're all just really fucking stupid.
I can't even believe I'm going to make this analogy, but it's the best I can think of off the top of my head. In The Lion King (*cringe*), the kid lion goes to the elephant graveyard and almost gets raped by a band of hyenas led by Jeremy Irons (is that right? I haven't seen it for a while), because he wants to be brave like his father. And his father explains that being brave isn't about deliberately getting into trouble - it's about doing what's right even if you'd rather not. Lameass though this makes me, I think that's a pretty good definition.
Cedric Diggory was that kind of brave, I think (I REMEMBER CEDRIC ZOMG). Like I said already, Neville absolutely is. Harry... meh, not so much. He's just kind of stupid. Harry is exactly the type who would go to the elephant graveyard on the assumption that it would make Ginny fancy him. (Think of how he almost murders Draco - who is a mean little turd and all, but as far as Harry knows is pretty much just an incredibly annoying kid in his year at school.) Neville would go to the elephant graveyard because one of his friends was being raped by the hyenas, and would offer himself as a victim instead. That is, if Neville was a lion. I think I might be losing sight of my point a bit.
Moreover, I strongly dislike the fact that we are expected to root for Gryffindors when they seem to manipulate and bully as much as any Slytherins we see. I'd rather be hard-working, clever, or ambitious than a twat.
All I'm saying is - if I collapsed in the street, I would strongly hope the passer-by who rushed to my aid wasn't a Gryffindor, who would probably start shocking me with a defibrullator, giving me CPR, and bellowing, "Fera! Don't die! Please don't die!" as I vainly tried to get up and explain I'd only twisted my ankle.
Um, yes, anyway. What really gets me is that Harry even admits that jumping into the pool for reasons of "bravery" is stupid and tenuous - the only link with chivalry he can think of is that he hasn't woken Hermione up and asked her to do it for him. There's something ironic somewhere in that - because if he had woken her, she'd probably have been able to come up with, oh, 80,647 ways to get the sword out of the pool without almost dying of hypothermia (after bollocking Harry for waking her, expressing excessive levels of worry about whether it was an Admiral Ackbar-style trap, and probably going to the library for good measure).
Aaaaaaaaaanyway! So! Harry strips off his clothes ready for a swim. For no good reason, though, he leaves his underwear on, even though he's alone in the woods and therefore unlikely to be seen - and surely it's better to be as naked as possible, so that after you get out of the pool you can be dressed completely in warm, dry clothes. The only possible reason I can see is this: JKR knows Ron is going to show up any second, and that he's going to pull Harry out of the pool. When this happens, she wants Harry's dick - which, considering he's just jumped into a frozen pool in the middle of winter, will be shrivelled to the size and shape of a paperclip - to be safely hidden behind clean, wholesome, heterosexual underpants. Because if it's not, then Ron might brush against it with his hand as he pulls Harry out of the icy water - and Harry, in his state of shock and confusion (not to mention the fact that he's not been able to crack one off over Ginny's dot in a couple of weeks), gets hard without even thinking about it being Ron, an instinctive response, and he and Ron both realise what's happened at the exact same moment and there's an extremely tense moment while they stare into each other's eyes before Ron begins to stroke Harry, gently at first, then more firmly, while Harry gasps and tries to push Ron's hand off, but only half-heartedly, and Ron's saying, "No, you want this, we both do", and Harry gasps and pulls Ron's face to his and bites his bottom lip, hard, and then things continue faster and faster and just as Harry screams, "GINNY!" and comes all over Ron's hand, Voldemort leaps out from behind a tree and AKs them both, but it turns out he was filming the whole thing and he puts it on Youtube, and the very last scene in the book is Molly Weasley crying hot, humiliated tears...
Therefore, Harry leaves his underpants on.
... Fuck, did I just write that?
...
So! Anyway! Harry jumps into the pool, it's really cold, he dives to grab the sword but the locket horcrux - which he is still wearing, because he's really stupid, which I cannot stress enough - tightens up and tries to drown or possibly strangle him. Dunno why it didn't try and strangle him before now, except that JK Rowling's editors are suxx0r. Luckily, though, Gollum bites it off and... oh, no, wait, that's not right. Harry passes out...
... And comes round a bit later with Ron by his side. Rather than provide Harry with the aforementioned handjob, Ron berates Harry for jumping in while wearing the horcrux. Thank you, Ron. It's good to know I'm not alone here.
They go over everything that just happened, not least the fact that Ron is back, but that he saw Harry following radioactive Bambi around in the woods, and followed him in turn.
Exposition dealt with, Ron makes to destroy the locket. He keeps on at Harry that Harry should do it, but Harry insists it's Ron's job. There's no reason within the story that it needs to be Ron, he's not the Destined Destroyer Of Jewellery or anything, but it's clear that JKR specifically wanted Ron to do it, for two reasons:
1. It means each Horcrux is destroyed by a different and significant person: the diary by Harry, the ring by Dumbledore, the locket by Ron, the cup by Hermione, the diadem by... well, Crabbe, I guess, which is a bit random, the snake by Neville and the one in Harry by Voldemort.
2. While Ron is waving the sword around inexplicably waiting to tear up the locket, the locket gives off a ghostly, mash-up Harry and Hermione who pwn Ron, tell him he's a n00b and a luser and everyone hates him, and eventually start making out. This acts as an enormous kick in the bollocks to Harry/Hermione shippers. Well, actually, I guess it also allows us to see some of Ron's fears and insecurities, but it does it through the medium of kicking Harry/Hermione shippers really hard in the bollocks.
Harry delivers a final boot to the groin reassures Ron by re-enacting this scene from Return of the Jedi more or less word-for-word:
(Except without the yowly Ewok noises going on in the background, obviously.)
Harry and Ron exchange manly hugs in a totally manly and non-gay way and head back to the tent. Hermione isn't totally pleased to see Ron, though, and calls him a stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf-herder, or something. Actually, no, she calls him an "arse", which I'm sure is supposed to have impact, because there hasn't been anything approaching swearing in any previous books (except for one use of "slut" in book six, I believe) and this shows how Hermione totally means it - but, honestly, I think it comes across as all kinds of hilarious, because "arse" doesn't really do Hermione's rage justice (in her position, I'd be calling Ron an "uncle-fucking jizzstain" or "dog-raping shitflap" or simply a "monumental cock", although I suspect those would be even funnier coming out of Hermione's mouth), and because "arse" is a fucking funny word in general.
Then they rehash everything that just happened. Ron explains he tried to come back that very first night, but couldn't find them, and then he got picked up by Jawas Snatchers, and then escaped. A while later, many weeks in fact, the deluminator led him back - apparently it not only turns the lights on and off, it also can give off balls of light which float into your chest and then you apparate and it brings you exactly where you need to be. Well, duh. By which I mean WTF. It pisses me off no end the way that most of the plot devices JKR uses are either so, so blatantly obvious that you see them coming a mile off (RAB, hello) or else so completely random and out-of-the-blue that there's nothing clever about them. OK, we saw the deluminator in the very first chapter of the very first book, but it just turned out the lights. Prior to now there's been nothing to suggest it can do anything other than that. So this isn't any more intelligent or exciting than if she'd created a completely new magical device called the Friend Finder or something.
There's a book I read a few years back, which I won't even name just in case it's on anyone's to-be-read list. :) The big twist in that book is that the protagonist had an identical twin who died very young, but she's forgotten her. (It's better than it sounds, honestly!) One of the things that made the ending work so well in this particular book was that if you read the book a second time, it is absolutely full of clues to the ending, some of which are almost brazen in how obvious they are. But on the first read, without knowledge of the ending, they utterly pass you by. The ending is - to use another cliche - hidden in plain sight. Or consider something like The Sixth Sense, or Fight Club - again, on a second viewing it's easy to see the clues and foreshadowing that lead up to the eventual OH MY GOD moment.
The deluminator stuff in this book doesn't work in this way, because if you re-read the entire Potter series, there is no indication whatsoever that the deluminator can be used the way Ron uses it here.
So Ron did all that stuff with the deluminator a couple of times, but couldn't find the tent due to the protective charms around it. Then all the stuff I just told you about happened. Then Hermione punches the fuck out of Ron some more and threatens to cut him, because that's always funny, and the credits for this episode roll. Sunday, Monday - Happy Days... etc...
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