Deathly Hallows uberwank: Chapter 25, Shell Cottage
Shell Cottage, after which the chapter is named, is Bill and Fleur's place, right on the coast of Cornwall. Fleur's family is surely rich, given the size of the wedding and now the fact that Fleur and Bill live in a Cornish cottage - and it's on a clifftop, too, it's not like it's on Bodmin Moor or something (where people eat roadkill or become obsessed with the legendary beast, there are almost no women, and the suicide rate is disproportionately high, and growing). It's somewhere pretty, and according to chapter 23 on the edge of a town.
Then again, the cottage is described as being encrusted with shells, which sounds kind of fugly. Also, someone has spray-painted "Rydhsys rag Kernow lemmyn" on the road outside.
As is so often the case, this chapter begins with wangst, peppered with flowery prose, on the general topic of the house being a nice place and how Harry just wants to be alone and that sort of thing. Also, there is wangst over the elder wand, specifically the fact that Harry isn't going to hunt it down, which is scary for him because it's more or less the first time he's actually sat and had a think about his actions rather than just leaping in and punching people. It makes him uneasy, and he continues to wangst. He is greatly assisted in this by Ron, who (for the moment, at least) seems to have been put on this earth purely to make Harry feel worse about things. At one point, he asks, "If that really is the elder wand, how are we going to finish You-Know-Who?" which is really not helpful. Anyway, the way I see it, they have two courses of action (not counting the way things actually happen, but they couldn't know about that since it's all part of Dumbledore's Xanatos Roulette):
- The Dumbledore vs Grindelwald route. Simply be the biggest badass there is, and through this power of being a total badass, manage to beat an unbeatable wand. (Potentially risky if you never actually had a torrid love affair with your opponent.)
- The "Beedle the Bard" story route. Just slit the other guy's throat when his guard is down. Voldemort's gotta sleep sometime, right? (Unless, like me, he consumes way too much coffee and his motto is "Meh, I'll sleep when I'm dead". Unlikely, since, like Michael Jackson, he plans never to die.)
Oh, and also, Ron at one point argues that Dumbledore might still be alive, because that would explain where the silver doe came from and how Dobby knew to rescue them and stuff. Man, it's almost as if Ron never read HBP. Does anyone these days really not know that Snape killed Dumbledore?
Griphook eventually arranges another audience with Harry, to tell him he'll help him rob the bank but only if he can have the sword of Gryffindor in payment. This is padded out with lots of tl;dr about goblin loyalties and whether goblins or wizards are the biggest wankers and something about how all wizarding property is theft. I think. This goes on for a while, and then our intrepid trio GTFO and mull over some possible courses of action.
Harry wants to just ask Griphook if they can't give him the sword once they're done destroying horcruxes, but Hermione argues that it might take years to do that. That strikes me as remarkably naive. Haven't they noticed yet that they're tied into a year-long story? If it had only happened, say, the one time before now I could accept it, but this will be the seventh year in a row that Voldemort-related events have kicked off around the start of the summer. Personally, if something weird or major or otherwise notable happens to me twice I become aware of it and start looking for a pattern emerging, so that I can decide whether it was coincidence or whether a pattern really does exist, and if so, why. Then again, I'm a) not a fucking idiot and b) remarkably paranoid. Uh, yeah, so after much back-and-forth bullshitting they pretty much decide to double-cross Griphook, telling him he can have the sword, but then not giving it to him.
Apart from JKR's thoughts on goblins, much of this chapter is given over to simply describing life at Shell Cottage - the day-to-day routine and so on. For example, we learn that Griphook refuses to eat normal food; he prefers roots, lumps of meat, and fungi. It's lucky that they're in Cornwall, then, since roots and lumps of meat are the main ingredients of pasties (along with trace amounts of sand, concrete and grockles).
Mmm. Pasties.
One dark and stormy evening, Fleur and Harry (or, as she calls him, 'Arry) are shooting the breeze as she cooks. She is using magical knives to cut up steaks for Griphook and Bill; apparently Bill likes his meat bloody since becoming a quasi-werewolf. Well, then, why the hell is she cutting it up? How are you going to cook a decent bloody steak if it's in bits? (I adore rare steak. I could eat one right now. Hell yeah.) I suspect, you know, that she isn't really French (other than her frankly bizarre accent); I can't believe that someone who really was really truly French wouldn't know how to cook a decent steak. Also, the main meal that everyone else is eating tonight is a casserole - oh my god! It's just hit me! This isn't really Fleur Delacour at all - it's Molly Weasley! Polyjuiced! This explains everything: the dodgy accent, the apron she was wearing in the last chapter, the fact that, in a minute, she says something angry-sounding and, according to the text, resembles Mrs Weasley! The real Fleur is, I would guess, in a trunk at the Burrow. Molly goes over there every week or so to throw in some water and stale bread and to laugh.
OK, so this is bollocks, but wouldn't that be so like Molly? To polyjuice into her daughter-in-law, to ensure that no woman other than herself could touch any of her precious children. Even if it meant sleeping with her own son.
Dear god, I have issues.
Right after this aside, Luna and Dean show up and build a fire (in the grate, rather than just in the middle of the living room, although that would be fabulous, if in chapter 25 it was revealed that two bit-characters were arsonists and they burned the trio to death just for a laugh). Luna chats happily away about fictional animals and this new religion her dad has just founded and that one time she was snatched by death eaters and locked in a cellar. Then Ollivander shows up, all set to leave and go into hiding, and thanks Luna for essentially keeping him from going mad with despair while they were both held captive. I would go on about how much I think Luna rules, but, you know, broken record.
Bill takes Mister Ollivander to his Auntie Muriel's house, which seems to have become some sort of rebel base (I would love it if there was a way for me to imply she lives in a cottage called Hoth, but I don't think there is an easy way of doing that), and when he returns, he brings news, namely that everyone is OK. Ginny is there too and she sends her love. OK, it's hardly Ginny's fault she is safe at home, but if JKR wanted to convince me over the course of this book that Ginny is a badass, this was maybe not the way to do it. Just sayin'.
Following dinner, there is an uneven banging on the door that goes on just a bit too long, followed by a slurred cry of "Lemme in!" Bill challenges the intruder, and Remus Lupin successfully convinces the assembled cast that he is who he says he is, mainly by bellowing out a variety of details about himself. I argued in chapter 22 that he's probably so poor because he banks online but uses an obvious password, and I think this backs up the argument I made there. Stop telling people your mother's maiden name and the name of your first pet, dude. Anyway, let into the cottage, he pukes into a plant pot and grins lopsidedly. "Iss the wife!" he cries. "She's hadda baby!" Through the haze of the bottle and a half of Jack Daniel's he has consumed over the last two hours, he announces that the baby is to be named Teddy Lupin.
Let's take a moment to stick our fingers down our throats, shall we.
Teddy Lupin is one of several exceptionally bad baby names in this book, although the first that appears prior to the epilogue. Right after I finished reading this book, despite not really having slept, I went online so I could get an idea of other people's reactions. And I was pleased to discover that I wasn't the only person who thought of Teddy Ruxpin, the 1980s cartoon about a slightly cross-eyed teddy bear and its unnecessarily unnerving cuddly toy tie-in with built-in cassette deck.
Seriously, look at it.
Click to viewHorrible.
Remus strides across the room to Harry and envelopes him in a sloppy sort of hug. "You, mate, are my best friend," he says. His eyes are too wide and he has to struggle to focus. He declares that Harry shall be godfather to his child. Tomorrow, he won't even remember saying this.
Ah, you know, I'm just totally indifferent to Harry being godfather to Remus's kid, but then again I don't actually believe the kid exists, so meh. I guess JKR presumably wanted to make it all speshul and stuff like that, various generations of Marauders godparenting each other's kids (Marauderlings? Petit Marauders?) or whatever. Harry just seems kind of bemused about the whole thing, anyway. He and Ron say "blimey" a lot.
Meanwhile, at her mother's house, Tonks lies panting and exhausted in a puddle of amniotic fluid and blood. She has been awake for almost two days solid. Her labour was a difficult one, and drawn-out, and the baby was breech. It is cold and dark. Where is her husband? She had pictured this moment as a tender one - her husband by her side, whispering, "well done" as he brushed the hair from her eyes, planting a sweet kiss on her forehead. Their newborn child in her arms; the child that would finally bring them together, repair the cracks in their marriage. But the baby, born yellow-purple and screeching, has been whisked off by Andromeda, and Remus, bottle of whisky in overcoat pocket, has already disappeared into the night. The storm rages outside.
Back at Shell Cottage, an Irish folk band has materialised from nowhere, a jig is being danced and the whisky is freely flowing. You might want to picture this scene as directed by someone like Chris Columbus, if it helps. The bits with Tonks are directed by, say, Ken Loach. I would feel bad for her and all, but she's kind of a n00b.
OK, srsly. Here's an actual quote from this bit.
[Remus:] 'I think [Ruxpin] looks like Dora, but she thinks he is like me. Not much hair. It looked black when he was born, but I swear it's turned ginger in the hour since. Probably be blond by the time I get back. Andromeda says Tonks's hair started changing colour the day that she was born.' He drained his goblet. 'Oh, go on then, just one more,' he added, beaming, as Bill made to fill it again.
- DH, p416; emphasis mine
OK, so the baby was born an hour ago and he's drinking with his buddies? He refers to her once as "Dora" and once as "Tonks" in the same paragraph? Worst. Husband. Ever.
Although I dunno what it says about me that I kind of like him better as a slowly-going-mad alcoholic than as a happily married heterosexual. M'just sayin'.
(OK, I'll forgive him the Dora/Tonks inconsistency. Perhaps since they... ugh... married he has been trying to train himself to call her by her first name or something, and he keeps slipping up. It's easy to forget stuff when you're drunk, anyway.)
Eventually, Lupin GTFOs. The party continues, though, and - as is inevitable at any party - Harry finds himself hanging out in the kitchen. Bill is there too, and uses the opportunity to give Harry some information regarding goblins: they are gangsta as fuck, and if you take their eye, they'll take your motherfucking head. Don't fuck with goblins, in other words. As Bill says all this, Harry feels like there's a snake squirming inside him, which is only just marginally better than the infamous Chest Monster of HBP.
Anyway, Bill warns Harry not to fuck with goblins etc etc, and the chapter ends on Harry drunkenly (no, really) reflecting that he is all set to be just as reckless a godfather to little Ruxpin as Sirius (remember Sirius?) was to him. Hmm. I might argue that Harry is more reckless; Sirius, after all, never once robbed a bank for little more than shits n' giggles. Then again, he did break out of prison. Hmm. Prison break vs bank robbery - which is the most badass? Discuss.
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Just FYI, I am moving house at the weekend so I don't know when the next chapter will be up - hell, I don't even know where my copy of DH is right now. Fear not, though - it is coming, I just don't know when yet.