Deathly Hallows uberwank: Chapter 28, The Missing Mirror
This is another one where the title is only mildly relevant to the content. The mirror does show up - the one that Sirius had, this is, and Aberforth has it now for reasons I don't care about enough to bother reiterating. But mainly this is about the gay Victorian soap opera that is Dumbledore's backstory.
So, at the very end of the last chapter, the one about which I had nothing to say, our intrepid trio apparated in the direction of Hogsmeade. We're now in the part of the book where there are virtually no breaks from real time, something which I think both works and doesn't work, but I'll come to that later - so the very first sentence of this chapter is what happens as they land. The exact wording is "Harry's feet touched road", which - because I am remarkably immature - makes me think of the phrase "touching cloth". As we have previously established, I am twelve. There is absolutely no need for me to be bringing up anything as vulgar as that, and yet I do it. Sigh.
So they land in Hogsmeade, which provokes Harry to begin his usual wangst about Dumbledore and how Dumbledore was all weak the last time Harry was here and all that. Luckily, some kind of death eater siren is set off immediately, and a bunch of them come running from the pub with their wands out. Oh, and the trio are still under the cloak, so a stalemate occurs whereby the Phoenix Crew can't be seen, but can't move or attack for fear of giving away their position. A death eater tries to summon the invisibility cloak, but the cloak is immune to "Accio" because it is basically the Mary Sue of clothing.
The death eaters wander about trying to find the kids, but are epic fail. They stage a brief debate over whether to summon dementors, finally agreeing to do so, on the grounds that even though Voldemort wants to be the one to kill Harry, he won't mind if his soul has been taken first. This is an odd distinction to make - I mean, without a soul you'd be more or less dead, anyway, wouldn't you? In His Dark Materials, people who are eaten by spectres (which seems to amount to the same thing - having your soul eaten away by a ghostly monster thing, anyway) eventually die, since without their souls they become completely indifferent and just stop bothering to eat. Obviously, different fictional worlds, different rules, but it does strike me as odd that having your soul kissed out by a dementor is considered that different enough to being killed that they don't reckon Voldemort will mind Harry being kissed. Or something. Technicality, you know?
Anyway, it doesn't matter because (obviously) it doesn't happen; as the trio are going all woozy under the cloak and it all goes dark and the usual stuff, Harry manages to summon a patronus - the silver stag bursts from his wand like a great big Freudian metaphor, and the dementors GTFO. Harry's Happy Thought while doing this is Ron and Hermione, and sorry for the broken record thing, but this is another point where JKR just failed to convince me Ginny is Harry's soulmate. Although I can sort of let this one off due to, I dunno, Ron and Hermione being in close proximity to Harry and therefore salient or something.
The patronus, of course, breaks the stalemate and the death eaters come running, looking for Harry. Luckily, a myserious voice from a nearby doorway whispers, "In here, Potter. I've got some sweeties, and you can see my puppies too. Go on, come in my house" and our intrepid trio just go right ahead and come indoors. Whut. It would be fucking funny if they opened the door and inside they found Luke Skywalker, Frodo Baggins, maybe Neo from The Matrix, and so on, all looking sheepish and embarrassed and like they had been there for a while - but instead they find the bar of the Hog's Head pub. The barman carries on an argument with the death eaters down on the street, telling them it was his patronus, and it was a goat - which I think is the clearest in-canon clue we get that he actually does love goats, or fucks them or has long-term relationships with them or whatever, isn't it. Anyway, his grizzled ramblings get rid of the death eaters, and he comes upstairs, where Harry tells him stuff he already knew, such as:
- This dude is Aberforth Dumbledore.
- Aberforth is the owner of the eye Harry's been seeing in the mirror. So this is the "you'll be seeing Sirius's mirror again" that we were promised post-OotP. I'd be disappointed if I had given a shit in the first place.
- Aberforth sent Dobby to Malfoy Manor.
They nom some food, and then begins the exposition. Harry and Aberforth argue a little - Aberforth thinks Harry should just run away; the Order is fucked, Voldemort has won, there is no point trying to be like Luke Skywalker any more. Harry has seen Star Wars and knows that he has to fulfil his destiny and all that bollocks. This goes round a few times before Aberforth plays the "you didn't know my brother like I did" card, and Harry STFUs for the most part so that Aberforth can talk about his dead little sister and Dumbledore's ex and stuff like that. Also, Harry occasionally has to modify his talk, as he keeps referring to Albus as "Dumbledore" before remembering that this guy's name is also Dumbledore. I think at one point I was going to snark that and say it was unrealistic or whatever, but I had exactly that problem a couple of weeks ago, meeting up with the younger sister of my brother's friend Brooks, and constantly having to correct myself because I kept referring to him as Brooks or Brooksy and I'm not used to calling him "James", because, you know, "Brooks" is her name too. Um.
So, summary of backstory. When Ariana, the dead little sister, was six (this is before she was dead, by the way - she wasn't some kind of weirdass zombie sister), some muggle boys saw her doing magic, and got carried away trying to make her do magic again, or not do magic, or something. This completely screwed her up. OK, so are we assuming this was sexual assault? I don't think it's obvious, but I can't think of anything else that would mess someone up to the point that Ariana is supposed to have been messed up. Prolongued torture, I guess. We don't know how old the muggle boys were, either - there are different implications if they were, like, six than if they were fourteen. Not that it matters enormously; it's pretty dark either way.
Also, we discover that this is the reason that their father went to Azkaban - he attacked the muggle boys (although honestly, both on the first read and this time, which is obviously taking much longer, I had forgotten by this point that he was imprisoned anyway). Aberforth refers to said boys as "bastards", and the swearing works here (in contrast to when Hermione called Ron an arse, which was just funny). It actually shows the big-deal-ness of what he's saying. So, anyway, Ariana thereafter refused to do magic, which basically drove her insane, and the family covered it up, knowing that she'd be institutionalised if her existence and her condition got out.
Ariana liked Aberforth best, although this might be a lie. Albus, meanwhile, was a bit of a fuckwit and a swot.
When Ariana was 14, she had some kind of episode, and killed their mother. This meant that Albus couldn't go backpacking, possibly in Thailand, and the cold bastard was annoyed as a result. That is, until sexy, sexy Grindelwald turned up. You know, I was going to try and slide off into another slashy tangent, until I remembered that we're talking about Dumbledore, and as cool as Dumbledore/Grindelwald is, I have a sort of mental block when it comes to actually thinking slashy thoughts about it because that is seriously like writing slash about your own grandpa or something. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Anyway, as we already know, the young Albus became utterly smitten by Gellert, and together they started to plan their world domination. Now I know that hindsight is twenty-twenty and all, and we know that they actually did plan to take over the world, and Grindelwald made a bloody good go of it, but really, how many teenage boys sit around and plan world domination? "Yeah, and I could totally use my bo-staff to fight the enemy." "I'll bring my nunchucks." "What if there's zombies?" "Dave, don't be a twat, there ain't gonna be zombies. Anyway we can fight them with the nunchucks."
The knowledge that Albus was infatuated with Grindelwald does add a lot to this story, although I do wonder if it might have been a more compelling story if we'd been told it within the books and not outside them. My initial reaction to the Carnegie Hall announcement was one of glee, and that persists to an extent, and I certainly don't subscribe to the argument that JKR left Dumbledore's sexuality out of the books because of oppreshun or because she was afraid of the reaction from the religious right (she's British; we cuss the religious right), etc. I think she left it out because she isn't quite a good enough storyteller to handle it properly, or because she thought she'd made it obvious enough. This is something I'm going to come to again, in the King's Cross afterlife chapter, so I won't go into too much depth here, but I will say this: I think the Dumbledore backstory, and specifically the Grindelwald element of that, might have been more satisfying had it not seemingly come from so far out of left field.
Anyway, so Albus and Gellert spend a delicious summer alternating between planning their coming war with the ninjas in meticulous detail, and banging each other's brains out. All is sunshine and rainbows until Aberforth points out that they can't go off to fight the ninjas when Ariana needs to be cared for; naturally, it kicks off, curses are thrown around, and the end result, as we know, is that Ariana dies. Nobody knows exactly whose fault it is so both Dumbledore brothers experience extreme guilt as long as they live. (Grindelwald, though - he could give a fuck.)
ETA: Shit, man, did I almost miss a trick here or what? Kendra, Ariana - this one's for you.
Click to viewIn general, I like the Dumbledore backstory; I like that Dumbledore stops being so perfect, that he is given reasons to behave the way he does, motivations and so on. What I'm less easy with is that this backstory isn't even hinted at prior to this book, unless you count the way that Dumbledore has always behaved, which I don't, really, because it's not like a dead little sister is the only explanation. I'm not even talking about needing major foreshadowing - I'm thinking of, perhaps, a prominently-displayed portrait of Ariana in Dumbledore's office that Harry asks him about and he refuses to explain, or perhaps - I don't know - Dumbledore reacting to Ginny's disappearance in CoS relatively mildly until someone points out that she's Ron's little sister. I'm no writer, and it's not my job to come up with a plausible way of hinting at this backstory, which is why both those ideas are suxx0rz, but you get the idea. The point is, the impact of the whole Ariana story is, I think, diminished by the fact that it seemingly comes out of nowhere.
In fact, as I recall, in one of the post-HBP interviews, possibly the Memerson one, JKR was asked something like - what are you surprised that nobody has ever asked you? And she answered something like "Dumbledore's background and family would be a profitable line of inquiry" (I've paraphrased all that, but you get the gist). My point is, if she'd built that bit of the story properly, people would have been asking her about it, or guessed at it. I have very mixed feelings on the Snape-loved-Lily thing (which seem to balance out around the "I'm surprised, but I'm also surprised to find I like it" mark) but if nothing else, that theory was being thrown around as early as GoF, by my recollection. So there were enough clues, but not enough that it was obvious, which is - I think - the way these things should go.
Once the exposition bit is over, the argument resumes, with Aberforth telling Harry again to just GTFO, and Harry being all big-shot hero and insisting that he will carry out the task left to him, and if anyone gets in his way he will rip off his shirt and look sexy in front of them while "Eye of the Tiger" plays, or something like that. Hermione backs Harry up by going on about how Dumbledore loved him, and Aberforth is snarky and cynical about that. I have a feeling I'd get on very well with Aberforth. I want to get drunk with him and watch crap films and shout at the screen about how crap they are. Anyway, eventually Aberforth relents and shows them the only way into the school, which turns out to be quite cool - one of those bits of Potterverse magic that doesn't need explanation, you can just sort of accept that it's magic. The portrait of Ariana turns and walks off into the distance, and then returns with someone behind her. When they both reach the frame, she stays put (obviously) but the picture opens like a door and the someone who was following jumps down into the bar, guns blazing, trenchcoat blowing in the nonexistent breeze. And who is this someone?
Why, it's Neville motherfucking Longbottom!
I really feel there is only one way I can properly express my delight at Neville's reappearance:
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