Chapter 26 -- The Cave
In which Dumbledore and Harry enter the Mines of Moria, Dumbledore drinks poison, the Inferi make an all-too-brief appearance, and our heroes forget nearly every alternative that might possibly have been useful.
When next we see Harry, he's "standing upon a high outcrop of dark rock, water foaming and churning below him." It's not really clear where Harry's standing…presumably on a rock in the ocean near the cliff, but I had to read this several times to figure out where the rock was and where the cliff was.
He glances over his shoulder and spots a cliff behind him. This--the location of the cave where young Tom Riddle terrorized and tortured two small children--is where Voldemort hid one of the Horcruxes.
The cliff, by the way, is described as "a sheer drop, black and faceless." Um…JKR? It's night. The only cliffs I can think of offhand that wouldn't look like black faceless sheer drops at night would be the white cliffs of Dover.
Harry is incredulous. He cannot "imagine a less cozy spot for a day trip." Dumbledore explains that the orphans visited a village nearby. He THINKS--again, there is no proof--that Tom and his victims were the only ones who went to the cave.
No Muggle could reach this rock unless they were uncommonly good mountaineers
NO. It's "No Muggle could reach this rock unless he or she were an uncommonly good mountaineer." It's a Time Clause-- which is defined as a clause beginning with "when," "while," "before," "after," "by the time," "as soon as," "if" or "unless"--which is why the verb is written as "were" instead of "was." My seventh-grade English teacher would weep at this egregious error being in a published book. Rowling's editor should know better.
and boats cannot approach the cliffs, the waters around them are too dangerous.
Uh-huh. But it is, as underlucius pointed out to me, safe enough to swim. And presumably it was safe enough for Tom and two younger children to swim there, too.
And what is that comma doing separating two independent clauses? Commas are not the same as full stops, JKR.
I imagine that Riddle climbed down; magic would have served better than ropes.
That raised a brief question in my mind. How would magic have served better than ropes? (redcoast pointed out that, according to Quidditch Through the Ages, no spell has been invented to allow humans to fly unaided, so we know that Tom didn't levitate down the cliff.)
And he brought two small children with him, probably for the pleasure of terrorizing them. I think the journey alone would have done it, don't you?"
Well, since he DID terrorize them to the point where they were never right afterwards, I think it's fair to say that Tom brought the kids along for the fun of terrorizing them, yes. [/sarcasm]
Harry and Dumbledore climb down the rock they're standing on, so that they can get to the cliff. The rock has handholds and niches in it, which made me wonder if Voldemort had created them to make his own climb easier. Once down, though, they're in the ocean, and they have to swim for the fissure that's the entrance to Cave Horcrux.
When did Harry learn to swim? Yes, he could swim when using the gillyweed, but you could conclude that the gillyweed temporarily gave Harry the ability to swim, along with webbed fingers, flipper-like feet and gills. But I can't see the Dursleys forking out for swimming lessons for Harry, can you?
And WHY are they swimming? Why not just Apparate to the mouth of the cave?
When Harry reached the spot he found steps that led into a large cave.
Yep. Sounds like Voldie's been doing some interior decorating, all right.
He clambered up them, water streaming from his soaking clothes, and emerged, shivering uncontrollably, into the still and freezing air.
Sounds like Harry forgot the Impervius Charm--you know, the one that Hermione cast on his glasses so that rain and mud wouldn't get on them during a crucial Quidditch match. Now, if he had just thought to cast that on his clothes and glasses, he'd be toasty dry.
But never mind. Dumbledore came out of the water soaking wet, too.
Dumbledore then delivers his verdict--this is the cave they've been looking for. I suppose it would be uncharitable to note that this is the ONLY cave we've seen in these cliffs so far, so that's not much of a shock.
"It has known magic," said Dumbledore simply. Harry could not tell whether the shivers he was experiencing were due to his spine-deep coldness or to the same awareness of enchantments.
Yeah, because you couldn't possibly be shivering because you're scared, right, Harry?
"This is merely the antechamber, the entrance hall," said Dumbledore after a moment or two.
It's sad that Rowling feels she has to give a definition of "antechamber," rather than just letting kids figure out what the word means from context. Unfortunately, children's books are often cursed by the publishing world's tradition of limited vocabulary. Can't have kids learning words that are beyond their grade level, after all.
That's why I've always loved Beatrix Potter. I read in a biography about her that in the original version of Peter Rabbit, she wrote that lettuce, for Peter, was a soporific. Nowadays, you can't do that. You have to say that lettuce made Peter sleepy. (And that's the way the modern version reads.)
"We need to penetrate the inner place…Now it is Lord Voldemort's obstacles that stand in our way, rather than those nature made…"
"Penetrate the inner place" made me think of all the bad porn I've read in which Male Character "penetrates Female Character's inner core." I do think that Dumbledore could have found a better way of saying, "We need to go deeper into the cave." Unless, of course, he was trying to hint at something else… (Harry/Albus! Theirloveissocanon!)
Dumbledore approached the wall of the cave and caressed it with his blackened fingertips, murmuring words in a strange tongue that Harry did not understand.
I couldn't figure out why he was touching the wall. If the hand is blackened and withered, there probably isn't much sensation left in it.
Oh, and when do wizards learn these arcane languages? Obviously not at Hogwarts. And, according to one of JKR's comments during an interview, wizards don't have universities.
Dumbledore feels his way around the cave and finally touches a wall, saying that they have to go through here. How he knows this, I don't know, but Harry doesn't question him.
Dumbledore stepped back from the cave wall and pointed his wand at the rock. For a moment, an arched outline appeared there, blazing white as though there was a powerful light behind the crack.
Did anyone else picture Gandalf pointing his staff at the magically sealed door in the Mines of Moria?
The outline doesn't remain, however. Dumbledore thinks about it for a while, then figures out that the door won't open without "payment." Blood, in other words.
Dumbledore calls this "crude."
"The idea, as I am sure you will have gathered, is that your enemy must weaken him- or herself to enter. Once again, Lord Voldemort fails to grasp that there are much more terrible things than physical injury."
Now, to me, the use of blood magic made perfect sense. Blood magic is very old in folklore, and traditionally it's immensely powerful. In addition, I kept hearing Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer saying:
"Blood is life, lackbrain. Why do you think we eat it? It's what keeps you going. Makes you warm. Makes you hard. Makes you other than dead. ' Course it's her blood."
So I was disappointed in Dumbledore's reaction. It dismissed so much of legend and folklore, simply so he could look superior. I wasn't impressed.
Harry's not thrilled with the idea of physical injury, particularly if it's at all avoidable. Fanficcers who make Harry an emo cutter, please take note.
"Sometimes, however, it is unavoidable," said Dumbledore, shaking back the sleeve of his robes and exposing the forearm of his injured hand.
Just remember, Dumb One--it's down the road, not across the street, mmkay?
There was a flash of silver, and a spurt of scarlet; the rock face was peppered with dark, glistening drops.
A "spurt"? Okay...he just cut a vein or an artery in his arm. Good one, Dumbles.
Of course, we are supposed to believe that this has no effect, as he heals the wound in the skin with a touch of his wand. However, it can't be that easy. Otherwise, wizards and witches wouldn't train to be Healers for three years. What I suspect he's done is heal the surface of the skin while leaving the deeper wound in the vein or artery untouched.
To quote underlucius, "Obviously he thought that a cursed ring, a poisoned potion, a killing curse and a fall from a high place weren't enough to kill him off."
Once the blood spatters on the wall, an arch appears. I swear I was expecting a variant of the "Speak, friend, and enter" riddle from Lord of the Rings. But instead, Dumbledore and Harry just go trotting through the archway--which, for all they know, could be booby-trapped.
They end up on the edge of a huge lake so big that Harry can't see to the opposite side (because it's dark?), in a cavern so high that they can't see the ceiling (because it's dark??) .
I fully expected these facts to be important, and for Voldemort to have concealed weapons or guards on the opposite side of the lake or in the cavern's roof, but neither proves to be the case. Something--presumably the Horcrux--is glowing in the middle of the lake. Jeez, you'd think that Voldie could find a way to hide the glow so that the Horcrux wouldn't be shouting "Here I am!" to all and sundry, wouldn't you?
We then get this incredible line:
The darkness was somehow denser than normal darkness.
So this darkness isn't normal darkness. It's…what? It's like a black hole, containing more mass than your average darkness? It's stupid darkness?
Honestly, all I could picture was Harry yelling, "I cast Magic Missle at the DARKNESS!" (Though, ideally, for that to work, Hermione should be the Dungeon Master. And Ron should be at a tavern getting drunk.)
Harry and Dumbledore walk for a while. There's nothing to transport them across the lake. Why this is even an issue, I do not know. After all, all Dumbledore has to do is Apparate across the lake to the island on which the Horcrux lies, taking Harry with him via Side-Along Appartion, and then use a Portkey to go back to Hogwarts. Dumbledore has a Portkey set for Hogwarts in his office. They also could have brought brooms and flown across the lake.
There really is no reason for the rest of this chapter to happen, for there are no obstacles--none stated in the text, anyway--that prevent them doing any of the above. I wouldn't mind if there were anti-Apparition charms, or if there was a spell in place to prevent the use of brooms or Portkeys. I wouldn't mind if they had tried these methods and failed. What I DO mind that there are other established ways of transportation that we have every reason to think would work...and the heroes, unaccountably, disregard them.
The failure to Apparate is particularly irritating. There has been a great deal of focus on Apparition throughout this book...and now, at the climactic moment, when the Apparition lessons should be of use--
Harry doesn’t use them.
Anton Chekhov said, "If there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last." Rowling apparently does not agree with this. Her story's internal consistency suffers as a result.
Harry suggests doing a Summoning Charm. Dumbledore asks him why he doesn't do just that. So Harry tries it, with the following result:
With a noise like an explosion, something very large and pale erupted out of the dark water some twenty feet away; before Harry could see what it was, it had vanished again with a crashing splash that made great, deep ripples on the mirrored surface.
Harry, you need to enunciate more clearly. It's "Accio Horcrux," not "Accio Inferius."
Dumbledore states that he thought something would happen if they tried to get the Horcrux, and praises Harry for, essentially, setting off the burglar alarm.
There is some talk about what the thing was--Dumbledore states that there are very likely many such things, which doesn't make Harry any happier--and some discussion about where the Horcrux is (where the green glow is, duh).
The instant that Dumbledore says that they will have to cross the lake, he stops, runs his hand through the air in front of the cavern wall, grabs something Harry can't see, taps the air with his wand and voila! A coppery green chain--which coincidentally just HAPPENS to be attached to a boat barely big enough for two people--materializes.
Harry gasped as the ghostly prow of a tiny boat broke the surface, glowing as green as the chain, and floated, with barely a ripple, toward the place on the bank where Harry and Dumbledore stood.
This annoyed me. I really felt that JKR was straining my suspension of disbelief to a painful degree.
Harry's amazed by this, and wants to know how Dumbledore knew the chain was there. Yeah, Dumb and Dumber. I'd like to know that too.
"Magic always leaves traces," said Dumbledore, as the boat hit the bank with a gentle bump, "sometimes very distinctive traces. I taught Tom Riddle. I know his style."
Uh-HUH. So magic leaves traces, does it? You know Tom's style? And that's how you could tell that the former Tom Riddle possessed one of your teachers for over a year? And how you could tell that a fragment of Tom's soul was in the diary of one of your first-year students, who was also possessed by him?
Bitch, please.
But never mind that, because you're batting a thousand in this cave. You can sense the magic in the exact spot that you need to sense it. You anticipated the need for blood, or you wouldn't have brought a knife. You knew where the Horcrux was hidden. Tell me, O Glorious Dumb One--why does Harry have to be here at all? Seems like you're doing fine on your own.
Harry then wants to know if the boat is safe. Dumbledore's answer is not precisely reassuring.
"Oh yes, I think so. Voldemort needed to create a means to cross the lake without attracting the wrath of those creatures he had placed within it
*coughAPPARATINGcough*
in case he ever wanted to visit or remove his Horcrux."
Of course he'd want to visit it! Don't you know how lonely Horcruxes get at night?
Harry, of course, wants to be reassured that the things in the water won't do anything if they use the boat.
"I think we must resign ourselves to the fact that they will, at some point, realize we are not Lord Voldemort.
Yeah, I think that even a zombie could figure out that Lord Voldemort isn't plural.
Harry wants to know why the things in the water let them raise the boat.
"Voldemort would have been reasonably confident that none but a very great wizard would have been able to find the boat," said Dumbledore.
Actually, I'm surprised that Voldemort didn't set things up so that no one could find the boat but him. I don't see him taking any chances on the possible existence of previously unknown great wizards. Also, Dumbles, did you just call yourself a very great wizard? (Well, at least as very great as R.A.B.)
"I think he would have been prepared to risk what was, to his mind, the most unlikely possibility that somebody else would find it, knowing that he had set other obstacles ahead that only he would be able to penetrate. We shall see whether he was right."
First, stop using the word "penetrate."
Second, you keep talking about what you THINK Voldemort may have done. What you think he did and what he did do are not necessarily the same thing. Please acknowledge this!
Harry is worried about the boat being seaworthy. I can't blame him. I wouldn't want to capsize into a lake of unknown monsters either. Dumbledore tells him that he thinks that Voldemort has enchanted the boat so that only one wizard at a time can sail in it.
"I do not think you will count, Harry: You are underage and unqualified. Voldemort would never have expected a sixteen-year-old to reach this place: I think it unlikely that your powers will register compared to mine."
So Voldemort didn't expect a sixteen-year-old to reach this place. Well, that explains how Teen Death Eater Regulus got across.
And oh my, I see we're back to Dumbledore's self-aggrandizement. Could you please stop telling us how wonderful and wise and powerful you are for two seconds?!
So they get in the boat. Blah blah sailing over the bounding main blah blah description of lake blah blah fishcakes.
Then Harry yells that he's just seen a human hand in the water.
"Yes, I am sure you did," said Dumbledore calmly.
You know, Dumbles, it wouldn't kill you to be scared or surprised by something for a change, because your current attitude is beyond irritating. You do not sound wise or serene. You sound like a smug old know-it-all. And if I were Harry, I'd be furious, wondering what else you knew that you hadn't bothered to tell me.
Harry then discovers that there are corpses in the water. The Totally Dumb One tells Harry that they don't have worry about the corpses at the moment. Harry's reaction is precisely what mine would have been--"At the moment?"
Dumb and Dumber then takes the chance to wax philosophical:
"There is nothing to be feared from a body, Harry, any more than there is anything to be feared from the darkness. Lord Voldemort, who of course secretly fears both, disagrees. But once again he reveals his own lack of wisdom. It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more."
Uh-huh. All very nice, Dumbledore-Stu, but we're not talking about normal dead bodies. We're talking about Voldemort-animated zombies that are set to attack once the Horcrux is gone. Ergo, I think that there is something to be feared.
Oh, and I really don't think Voldie's fear of death is much of a secret. You don't spend years striving for immortality because you're in love with the idea of dying. And we readers have known about Voldemort's pursuit of immortality for six books now, remember?
Dumbledore then tells Harry that zombies--pardon me, Inferi--fear fire. That doesn't seem like much of a revelation. Don't most living and undead things fear fire? I mean, once your body is burned up, you're not going to be around much longer. Fire, as a weapon against the undead, is rather like a stake through the heart. As Terry Pratchett points out in Carpe Jugulum, of course it kills vampires. A stake through the heart kills everybody.
Harry, who is now scared--or so we are told, because actually I sensed no emotion in him whatsoever--sits and broods for the remainder of the journey. This is good, because it means he's not talking to Dumbledore, which means that Dumbledore is not pontificating and thus getting on my last nerve.
So they get to a flat rock which has nothing on it but a pedestal and a stone basin sitting on that pedestal. The basin is filled with a liquid that glows green. I envision the whole thing as looking rather like a phosphorescent birdbath.
Dumbles tries putting his hand in the potion to pull out the Horcrux. He can't do it; there's a barrier between his hand and the potion. Nor does waving his wand over the surface of the potion produce any results.
The Dumb One then makes one of his pronouncements:
This potion cannot be penetrated by hand,
Stop using the word "penetrated"! And yes, thank you, Stu, we SAW that two paragraphs ago.
Vanished, parted, scooped up, or siphoned away,
I'm willing to concede that he could have tried a Vanishing Charm, and that he could have attempted to part the potion as Moses parted the Red Sea. But wouldn't scooping up fall into the "penetrating by hand" category? And when did he try to siphon it in any way?
So--two methods that may or may not have been proven not to work, one that's redundant and one that wasn't tried at all.
nor can it be Transfigured, Charmed, or otherwise made to change its nature."
Not proven, not proven, not proven. Maybe he found this out when he was waving his wand over the potion, but since we don't know what spell, if any, he was casting, we don't know this.
And is there some reason why they don't just pick up the basin and dump out the potion to get the Horcrux? Even if the basin's too heavy to lift, they could levitate it and upend it, couldn't they? Or each one grab hold of a side of the basin and Apparate themselves and the basin back to Hogsmeade?
But these things don’t happen. Like many logical alternatives in this chapter, they're never even brought up.
Dumbles zaps up a crystal goblet and proclaims that "the potion is supposed to be drunk." Uh, yes. That's what you normally do with potions. However, I see no reason why Dumbles has to be the one to drink it. If he can zap up a goblet, can't he zap up an animal to drink the potion for them?
I do get the whole concept of the Wise Old Mentor needing to die before the Young Hero goes off alone to fight the Ultimate Evil that is his Destiny. I do. It's pure Joseph Campbell. Hell, I'd been predicting Dumbledore's death in Book 6 since the instant that I finished OotP.
But this death is so stupid and so avoidable that I have to wonder--what's the point? It's not tragic. It's not arising out of a fatal flaw in Dumbledore's personality. It's not the result of a necessary but noble sacrifice. It's just the result of lack of logic and abysmally poor planning. It's DUMB.
Harry, at least, protests the Dumb One's potion-drinking on the grounds that the potion might kill him. The Dumb One says that Voldemort wouldn't want to kill anyone who reached this island. Harry replies that this IS Voldemort we're talking about. Dumbles corrects himself, saying that Voldemort wouldn't want the person to die...immediately.
"He would want to keep them alive long enough to find out how they managed to penetrate so far through his defenses and, most importantly of all, why they were so intent upon emptying the basin. Do not forget that Lord Voldemort believes that he alone knows about his Horcruxes."
Which is kind of dumb, too, because Voldemort knows that Slughorn knows that Tom Riddle asked about Horcruxes years ago, and it's not impossible that Sluggy could make the connection, is it?
AND -
1. How would Voldemort know? DD said in the last chapter that Voldemort wouldn’t notice if a Horcrux were destroyed.
2. And if Voldemort has defenses in the cave that are sending messages back to him, letting him know someone has broken in, then he'd be happy about that--because young Draco is arranging for the invasion of Hogwarts at the same time.
All Voldemort would need to do is either send a separate group of Death Eaters or summon some of them from Draco's invasion, and tell them to wait outside a certain cave... And then BAM! Hit Dumbledore and Harry with Expelliarmus (so they can't use their wands) and the Full-Body Bind. And then Walden Macnair could polish his axe on their necks. (It's so simple I can't believe that in six books, Voldemort has never even tried this.)
Dumbledore then decides that the potion MUST work in a way that will keep him from taking the Horcrux--paralyzing him, causing amnesia, creating unbearable pain, etc. Um…with all due respect, Dumb-dore, why would it work that way? Wouldn't that effectively keep the Horcrux away from Voldemort as well? You were the one talking about his coming here for a casual visit!
Dumbledore tells Harry to make sure that he keeps drinking the potion, even if Harry has to force-feed it to him. Harry's really not thrilled with this idea. Dumbledore reminds Harry that he swore to obey any command Dumbledore gave.
I confess that did not impress me. People break promises and disobey orders all the time.
Harry, displaying definite signs of a death wish, demands to know why he can't drink the poison--er, potion.
"Because I am much older, much cleverer, and much less valuable," said Dumbledore.
If you were as clever as you think you are, you wouldn't have to tell us how clever you are every five minutes.
Once Dumbledore gets Harry's promise to force him to keep drinking, the potion-drinking commences. He drinks three and a half goblets before anything starts going wrong. His face turns white and he appears to be in the grip of a ghastly nightmare. Harry does as he was told and starts forcing Dumbles to drink. By the time he drinks the sixth goblet of potion, he's in tears:
"Its all my fault, all my fault," he sobbed. "Please make it stop, I know I did wrong, oh please make it stop and I'll never, never again ..."
Now me, I'd have asked what he'd done wrong and what was his fault. But alas, this is Harry we're talking about, and Harry doesn't ask questions as a rule. Unless his own life is in danger, he doesn't even think them.
The forced drinking and Dumbledore's Generic Angsty Muttering and Screaming™ goes on for a while. This bored me to tears in the book. On my initial read-through back in July, I skipped most of this, simply because it was so repetitive.
Finally Dumbledore starts screaming that he wants to die. My reaction? "Don't worry. You will."
I was annoyed that that was my only reaction, as I knew that this was supposed to be heartbreaking, and it wasn't. Rowling hadn't made me feel anything for Dumbledore at all, save for irritation. I knew that I was supposed to be emotionally devastated by Dumbledore's physical and emotional pain...
...but I didn't believe in his pain.
Rowling had spent so much time having Dumbledore insisting on his vast intelligence, his great wisdom and his superior power that I felt no empathy for him. She hadn't bothered to make him a sympathetic character in HBP, apparently thinking that any sympathy would carry over from the previous books.
This was a gross miscalculation. I had no idea how untouched I was by HBP until this scene. And it saddened me. What a waste.
Dumbles passes out. Harry gets a tad upset.
"No." said Harry, shaking Dumbledore, "no, you're not dead, you said it wasn't poison, wake up, wake up - Rennervate!" he cried, his wand pointing at Dumbledores chest; there was a flash of red light but nothing happened. "Rennervate - sir - please -"
I double-checked that in my copy. I even checked the Lexicon, and yes, Harry does say "Rennervate," so it's not a typo.
The problem is, there's no such spell.
The spell, as we have known since Goblet of Fire, is "Ennervate"--a spell that I detest anyway because it looks so much like the word "enervate." No spell that looks that much like a word that means "to drain of energy" should be able to revive people.
However, since Ennervate--annoying as its appearance is--IS the spell that awakens unconscious people, that's the spell Harry should be using. And he doesn't. But it works anyway.
And yes, the Lexicon now has a piece saying--as it did not when I originally wrote this sporking--that JKR had officially renamed the "Ennervate" spell "Rennervate."
One word:
HORSEAPPLES.
You can't go back and make what you've already written unhappen. No one can. Even George Lucas, apparently, has learned this.
Dumbledores eyelids flickered; Harry's heart leapt. "Sir, are you- ?"
Dead? Unfortunately, no.
Dumbledore asks for water. Harry runs to get it.
He leapt to his feet and seized the goblet he had dropped in the basin; he barely registered the golden locket lying curled beneath it.
So after this whole long, horrifying trip--after Dumbledore drinks an entire basin of poison to get to the Horcrux--Harry manages to not even notice THE THING THEY CAME FOR IN THE FIRST PLACE.
You'd think he could at least grab the locket while picking up the goblet. But no, that would be the practical thing to do, and we can't possibly have wizards using common sense, can we?
I swear, Potterverse magic is a balancing act. You can have magic, or you can have common sense. But you can't have both.
Harry fills the goblet with water by using the Aguamenti Charm. Problem is, every time Dumbles tries to take a drink from the goblet, the water vanishes. Why it should do that, I have no idea, since Dumbledore was the one who conjured up the goblet, not Voldemort.
Harry then dips the goblet in the lake--and a zombie grabs him by the wrist. Not only that, it's not the only zombie moving toward the island…
The surface of the lake was no longer mirror-smooth; it was churning, and everywhere Harry looked, white heads and hands were emerging from the dark water, men and women and children with sunken, sightless eyes were moving toward the rock: an army of the dead rising from the black water.
I was really hoping that James and Lily would be among the zombies. No, seriously, I was, for two reasons--it would be an emotional shock for Harry (and probably for the readers as well); and it would show Harry that even good people can be forced to serve Voldemort, in death as well as in life. I felt this would make the whole situation more ambiguous, and provide the zombies with a human face, so to speak. I believed then, and I believe now, that the story would be better for it.
So, naturally, this doesn't happen. Instead, it's Heroes vs. Monsters on Monday--Night--RAW!
"Petrificus Totalus!" yelled Harry, struggling to cling to the smooth, soaked surface of the island as he pointed his wand at the Inferius that had his arm.
According to the Lexicon, "inferi" is Latin for "the dead," but that's wrong. According to the Latin Dictionary and Grammar Aid at the University of Notre Dame, "inferius" is the comparative form of the preposition "infra." "Infra" means "below"; "inferius" means "lower down."
"Inferiae" are "offerings to the dead," which is probably where Rowling got the notion that "inferius" means "dead person." However, the idea being expressed in "inferiae" is that the offerings are going to those far below, in the underworld. The focus is on location.
The annoying thing is that there are actual Latin words she could have used, rather than screwing up a preposition. "Mortuus"--"a corpse." "Silentes"--"the dead." "Manes"--"shades of the departed, spirits of the dead." "Ademptus"--"dead." But no.
Meanwhile, Harry's having problems with the zombies…
It released him, falling backward into the water with a splash; he scrambled to his feet, but many more Inferi were already climbing onto the rock, their bony hands clawing at its slippery surface, their blank, frosted eyes upon him, trailing waterlogged rags, sunken faces leering.
Harry tries the Full-Body Bind. It hits a few, but most continue heading straight toward him. The same thing happens when he tries using Impedimenta and Incarcerous (which zaps up ropes that then bind the target). Harry tries Sectumsempra, evidently thinking it's the trump card. He has forgotten that corpses don't bleed.
He's being pulled into the water when Gryffindor fire--crimson and gold--surrounds the tiny island in a ring. It seems that Dumbledore managed to recover without drinking water after all.
The Inferi fight to get away from the fire. Apparently you can still feel fear, even if you're an undead corpse.
Dumbledore snags the locket and then motions to Harry to come with him.
Distracted by the flames, the Inferi seemed unaware that their quarry was leaving as Dumbledore led Harry back to the boat, the ring of fire moving with them, around them, the bewildered Inferi accompanying them to the waters edge, where they slipped gratefully back into their dark waters.
Once they get into the boat, the ring of fire stops surrounding them and starts surrounding the boat. Harry apologizes for panicking and forgetting the spell of Incendio. I had no trouble understanding that. Panicking is perfectly normal. I'm still confused about his bothering to use Sectumsempra, though.
They make it safely back across the lake. Harry half-carries Dumbledore back to the archway. Coincidentally, Harry got cut on the rock when he was being dragged into the water by the zombies, so Dumbles doesn't have to cut himself. Then they exit the cave.
"It's going to be all right, sir," Harry said over and over again, more worried by Dumbledore's silence than he had been by his weakened voice. "We're nearly there...I can Apparate us both back...Don't worry..."
Okay, so Harry can Apparate. The decision not to simply Apparate to the island, grab the basin and Apparate back to Hogsmeade is looking worse and worse every minute.
Dumbledore then closes the chapter by saying something that's completely inexplicable, as far as I'm concerned:
"I am not worried, Harry," said Dumbledore, his voice a little stronger despite the freezing water. "I am with you."
Uh...right. What did Harry do again? Got caught by zombies, failed to remember Dumbledore mentioning that Inferi fear fire, used all the wrong spells, nearly drowned...and oh yeah, FORGOT THE HORCRUX.
Yes. These things inspire vast amounts of confidence. I truly believe that Harry will be ready to face Voldemort in a year. Not.
***
I will return with Chapter 29 -- The Phoenix Lament.
When next we see Harry, he's "standing upon a high outcrop of dark rock, water foaming and churning below him." It's not really clear where Harry's standing…presumably on a rock in the ocean near the cliff, but I had to read this several times to figure out where the rock was and where the cliff was.
He glances over his shoulder and spots a cliff behind him. This--the location of the cave where young Tom Riddle terrorized and tortured two small children--is where Voldemort hid one of the Horcruxes.
The cliff, by the way, is described as "a sheer drop, black and faceless." Um…JKR? It's night. The only cliffs I can think of offhand that wouldn't look like black faceless sheer drops at night would be the white cliffs of Dover.
Harry is incredulous. He cannot "imagine a less cozy spot for a day trip." Dumbledore explains that the orphans visited a village nearby. He THINKS--again, there is no proof--that Tom and his victims were the only ones who went to the cave.
No Muggle could reach this rock unless they were uncommonly good mountaineers
NO. It's "No Muggle could reach this rock unless he or she were an uncommonly good mountaineer." It's a Time Clause-- which is defined as a clause beginning with "when," "while," "before," "after," "by the time," "as soon as," "if" or "unless"--which is why the verb is written as "were" instead of "was." My seventh-grade English teacher would weep at this egregious error being in a published book. Rowling's editor should know better.
and boats cannot approach the cliffs, the waters around them are too dangerous.
Uh-huh. But it is, as underlucius pointed out to me, safe enough to swim. And presumably it was safe enough for Tom and two younger children to swim there, too.
And what is that comma doing separating two independent clauses? Commas are not the same as full stops, JKR.
I imagine that Riddle climbed down; magic would have served better than ropes.
That raised a brief question in my mind. How would magic have served better than ropes? (redcoast pointed out that, according to Quidditch Through the Ages, no spell has been invented to allow humans to fly unaided, so we know that Tom didn't levitate down the cliff.)
And he brought two small children with him, probably for the pleasure of terrorizing them. I think the journey alone would have done it, don't you?"
Well, since he DID terrorize them to the point where they were never right afterwards, I think it's fair to say that Tom brought the kids along for the fun of terrorizing them, yes. [/sarcasm]
Harry and Dumbledore climb down the rock they're standing on, so that they can get to the cliff. The rock has handholds and niches in it, which made me wonder if Voldemort had created them to make his own climb easier. Once down, though, they're in the ocean, and they have to swim for the fissure that's the entrance to Cave Horcrux.
When did Harry learn to swim? Yes, he could swim when using the gillyweed, but you could conclude that the gillyweed temporarily gave Harry the ability to swim, along with webbed fingers, flipper-like feet and gills. But I can't see the Dursleys forking out for swimming lessons for Harry, can you?
And WHY are they swimming? Why not just Apparate to the mouth of the cave?
When Harry reached the spot he found steps that led into a large cave.
Yep. Sounds like Voldie's been doing some interior decorating, all right.
He clambered up them, water streaming from his soaking clothes, and emerged, shivering uncontrollably, into the still and freezing air.
Sounds like Harry forgot the Impervius Charm--you know, the one that Hermione cast on his glasses so that rain and mud wouldn't get on them during a crucial Quidditch match. Now, if he had just thought to cast that on his clothes and glasses, he'd be toasty dry.
But never mind. Dumbledore came out of the water soaking wet, too.
Dumbledore then delivers his verdict--this is the cave they've been looking for. I suppose it would be uncharitable to note that this is the ONLY cave we've seen in these cliffs so far, so that's not much of a shock.
"It has known magic," said Dumbledore simply. Harry could not tell whether the shivers he was experiencing were due to his spine-deep coldness or to the same awareness of enchantments.
Yeah, because you couldn't possibly be shivering because you're scared, right, Harry?
"This is merely the antechamber, the entrance hall," said Dumbledore after a moment or two.
It's sad that Rowling feels she has to give a definition of "antechamber," rather than just letting kids figure out what the word means from context. Unfortunately, children's books are often cursed by the publishing world's tradition of limited vocabulary. Can't have kids learning words that are beyond their grade level, after all.
That's why I've always loved Beatrix Potter. I read in a biography about her that in the original version of Peter Rabbit, she wrote that lettuce, for Peter, was a soporific. Nowadays, you can't do that. You have to say that lettuce made Peter sleepy. (And that's the way the modern version reads.)
"We need to penetrate the inner place…Now it is Lord Voldemort's obstacles that stand in our way, rather than those nature made…"
"Penetrate the inner place" made me think of all the bad porn I've read in which Male Character "penetrates Female Character's inner core." I do think that Dumbledore could have found a better way of saying, "We need to go deeper into the cave." Unless, of course, he was trying to hint at something else… (Harry/Albus! Theirloveissocanon!)
Dumbledore approached the wall of the cave and caressed it with his blackened fingertips, murmuring words in a strange tongue that Harry did not understand.
I couldn't figure out why he was touching the wall. If the hand is blackened and withered, there probably isn't much sensation left in it.
Oh, and when do wizards learn these arcane languages? Obviously not at Hogwarts. And, according to one of JKR's comments during an interview, wizards don't have universities.
Dumbledore feels his way around the cave and finally touches a wall, saying that they have to go through here. How he knows this, I don't know, but Harry doesn't question him.
Dumbledore stepped back from the cave wall and pointed his wand at the rock. For a moment, an arched outline appeared there, blazing white as though there was a powerful light behind the crack.
Did anyone else picture Gandalf pointing his staff at the magically sealed door in the Mines of Moria?
The outline doesn't remain, however. Dumbledore thinks about it for a while, then figures out that the door won't open without "payment." Blood, in other words.
Dumbledore calls this "crude."
"The idea, as I am sure you will have gathered, is that your enemy must weaken him- or herself to enter. Once again, Lord Voldemort fails to grasp that there are much more terrible things than physical injury."
Now, to me, the use of blood magic made perfect sense. Blood magic is very old in folklore, and traditionally it's immensely powerful. In addition, I kept hearing Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer saying:
"Blood is life, lackbrain. Why do you think we eat it? It's what keeps you going. Makes you warm. Makes you hard. Makes you other than dead. ' Course it's her blood."
So I was disappointed in Dumbledore's reaction. It dismissed so much of legend and folklore, simply so he could look superior. I wasn't impressed.
Harry's not thrilled with the idea of physical injury, particularly if it's at all avoidable. Fanficcers who make Harry an emo cutter, please take note.
"Sometimes, however, it is unavoidable," said Dumbledore, shaking back the sleeve of his robes and exposing the forearm of his injured hand.
Just remember, Dumb One--it's down the road, not across the street, mmkay?
There was a flash of silver, and a spurt of scarlet; the rock face was peppered with dark, glistening drops.
A "spurt"? Okay...he just cut a vein or an artery in his arm. Good one, Dumbles.
Of course, we are supposed to believe that this has no effect, as he heals the wound in the skin with a touch of his wand. However, it can't be that easy. Otherwise, wizards and witches wouldn't train to be Healers for three years. What I suspect he's done is heal the surface of the skin while leaving the deeper wound in the vein or artery untouched.
To quote underlucius, "Obviously he thought that a cursed ring, a poisoned potion, a killing curse and a fall from a high place weren't enough to kill him off."
Once the blood spatters on the wall, an arch appears. I swear I was expecting a variant of the "Speak, friend, and enter" riddle from Lord of the Rings. But instead, Dumbledore and Harry just go trotting through the archway--which, for all they know, could be booby-trapped.
They end up on the edge of a huge lake so big that Harry can't see to the opposite side (because it's dark?), in a cavern so high that they can't see the ceiling (because it's dark??) .
I fully expected these facts to be important, and for Voldemort to have concealed weapons or guards on the opposite side of the lake or in the cavern's roof, but neither proves to be the case. Something--presumably the Horcrux--is glowing in the middle of the lake. Jeez, you'd think that Voldie could find a way to hide the glow so that the Horcrux wouldn't be shouting "Here I am!" to all and sundry, wouldn't you?
We then get this incredible line:
The darkness was somehow denser than normal darkness.
So this darkness isn't normal darkness. It's…what? It's like a black hole, containing more mass than your average darkness? It's stupid darkness?
Honestly, all I could picture was Harry yelling, "I cast Magic Missle at the DARKNESS!" (Though, ideally, for that to work, Hermione should be the Dungeon Master. And Ron should be at a tavern getting drunk.)
Harry and Dumbledore walk for a while. There's nothing to transport them across the lake. Why this is even an issue, I do not know. After all, all Dumbledore has to do is Apparate across the lake to the island on which the Horcrux lies, taking Harry with him via Side-Along Appartion, and then use a Portkey to go back to Hogwarts. Dumbledore has a Portkey set for Hogwarts in his office. They also could have brought brooms and flown across the lake.
There really is no reason for the rest of this chapter to happen, for there are no obstacles--none stated in the text, anyway--that prevent them doing any of the above. I wouldn't mind if there were anti-Apparition charms, or if there was a spell in place to prevent the use of brooms or Portkeys. I wouldn't mind if they had tried these methods and failed. What I DO mind that there are other established ways of transportation that we have every reason to think would work...and the heroes, unaccountably, disregard them.
The failure to Apparate is particularly irritating. There has been a great deal of focus on Apparition throughout this book...and now, at the climactic moment, when the Apparition lessons should be of use--
Harry doesn’t use them.
Anton Chekhov said, "If there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last." Rowling apparently does not agree with this. Her story's internal consistency suffers as a result.
Harry suggests doing a Summoning Charm. Dumbledore asks him why he doesn't do just that. So Harry tries it, with the following result:
With a noise like an explosion, something very large and pale erupted out of the dark water some twenty feet away; before Harry could see what it was, it had vanished again with a crashing splash that made great, deep ripples on the mirrored surface.
Harry, you need to enunciate more clearly. It's "Accio Horcrux," not "Accio Inferius."
Dumbledore states that he thought something would happen if they tried to get the Horcrux, and praises Harry for, essentially, setting off the burglar alarm.
There is some talk about what the thing was--Dumbledore states that there are very likely many such things, which doesn't make Harry any happier--and some discussion about where the Horcrux is (where the green glow is, duh).
The instant that Dumbledore says that they will have to cross the lake, he stops, runs his hand through the air in front of the cavern wall, grabs something Harry can't see, taps the air with his wand and voila! A coppery green chain--which coincidentally just HAPPENS to be attached to a boat barely big enough for two people--materializes.
Harry gasped as the ghostly prow of a tiny boat broke the surface, glowing as green as the chain, and floated, with barely a ripple, toward the place on the bank where Harry and Dumbledore stood.
This annoyed me. I really felt that JKR was straining my suspension of disbelief to a painful degree.
Harry's amazed by this, and wants to know how Dumbledore knew the chain was there. Yeah, Dumb and Dumber. I'd like to know that too.
"Magic always leaves traces," said Dumbledore, as the boat hit the bank with a gentle bump, "sometimes very distinctive traces. I taught Tom Riddle. I know his style."
Uh-HUH. So magic leaves traces, does it? You know Tom's style? And that's how you could tell that the former Tom Riddle possessed one of your teachers for over a year? And how you could tell that a fragment of Tom's soul was in the diary of one of your first-year students, who was also possessed by him?
Bitch, please.
But never mind that, because you're batting a thousand in this cave. You can sense the magic in the exact spot that you need to sense it. You anticipated the need for blood, or you wouldn't have brought a knife. You knew where the Horcrux was hidden. Tell me, O Glorious Dumb One--why does Harry have to be here at all? Seems like you're doing fine on your own.
Harry then wants to know if the boat is safe. Dumbledore's answer is not precisely reassuring.
"Oh yes, I think so. Voldemort needed to create a means to cross the lake without attracting the wrath of those creatures he had placed within it
*coughAPPARATINGcough*
in case he ever wanted to visit or remove his Horcrux."
Of course he'd want to visit it! Don't you know how lonely Horcruxes get at night?
Harry, of course, wants to be reassured that the things in the water won't do anything if they use the boat.
"I think we must resign ourselves to the fact that they will, at some point, realize we are not Lord Voldemort.
Yeah, I think that even a zombie could figure out that Lord Voldemort isn't plural.
Harry wants to know why the things in the water let them raise the boat.
"Voldemort would have been reasonably confident that none but a very great wizard would have been able to find the boat," said Dumbledore.
Actually, I'm surprised that Voldemort didn't set things up so that no one could find the boat but him. I don't see him taking any chances on the possible existence of previously unknown great wizards. Also, Dumbles, did you just call yourself a very great wizard? (Well, at least as very great as R.A.B.)
"I think he would have been prepared to risk what was, to his mind, the most unlikely possibility that somebody else would find it, knowing that he had set other obstacles ahead that only he would be able to penetrate. We shall see whether he was right."
First, stop using the word "penetrate."
Second, you keep talking about what you THINK Voldemort may have done. What you think he did and what he did do are not necessarily the same thing. Please acknowledge this!
Harry is worried about the boat being seaworthy. I can't blame him. I wouldn't want to capsize into a lake of unknown monsters either. Dumbledore tells him that he thinks that Voldemort has enchanted the boat so that only one wizard at a time can sail in it.
"I do not think you will count, Harry: You are underage and unqualified. Voldemort would never have expected a sixteen-year-old to reach this place: I think it unlikely that your powers will register compared to mine."
So Voldemort didn't expect a sixteen-year-old to reach this place. Well, that explains how Teen Death Eater Regulus got across.
And oh my, I see we're back to Dumbledore's self-aggrandizement. Could you please stop telling us how wonderful and wise and powerful you are for two seconds?!
So they get in the boat. Blah blah sailing over the bounding main blah blah description of lake blah blah fishcakes.
Then Harry yells that he's just seen a human hand in the water.
"Yes, I am sure you did," said Dumbledore calmly.
You know, Dumbles, it wouldn't kill you to be scared or surprised by something for a change, because your current attitude is beyond irritating. You do not sound wise or serene. You sound like a smug old know-it-all. And if I were Harry, I'd be furious, wondering what else you knew that you hadn't bothered to tell me.
Harry then discovers that there are corpses in the water. The Totally Dumb One tells Harry that they don't have worry about the corpses at the moment. Harry's reaction is precisely what mine would have been--"At the moment?"
Dumb and Dumber then takes the chance to wax philosophical:
"There is nothing to be feared from a body, Harry, any more than there is anything to be feared from the darkness. Lord Voldemort, who of course secretly fears both, disagrees. But once again he reveals his own lack of wisdom. It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more."
Uh-huh. All very nice, Dumbledore-Stu, but we're not talking about normal dead bodies. We're talking about Voldemort-animated zombies that are set to attack once the Horcrux is gone. Ergo, I think that there is something to be feared.
Oh, and I really don't think Voldie's fear of death is much of a secret. You don't spend years striving for immortality because you're in love with the idea of dying. And we readers have known about Voldemort's pursuit of immortality for six books now, remember?
Dumbledore then tells Harry that zombies--pardon me, Inferi--fear fire. That doesn't seem like much of a revelation. Don't most living and undead things fear fire? I mean, once your body is burned up, you're not going to be around much longer. Fire, as a weapon against the undead, is rather like a stake through the heart. As Terry Pratchett points out in Carpe Jugulum, of course it kills vampires. A stake through the heart kills everybody.
Harry, who is now scared--or so we are told, because actually I sensed no emotion in him whatsoever--sits and broods for the remainder of the journey. This is good, because it means he's not talking to Dumbledore, which means that Dumbledore is not pontificating and thus getting on my last nerve.
So they get to a flat rock which has nothing on it but a pedestal and a stone basin sitting on that pedestal. The basin is filled with a liquid that glows green. I envision the whole thing as looking rather like a phosphorescent birdbath.
Dumbles tries putting his hand in the potion to pull out the Horcrux. He can't do it; there's a barrier between his hand and the potion. Nor does waving his wand over the surface of the potion produce any results.
The Dumb One then makes one of his pronouncements:
This potion cannot be penetrated by hand,
Stop using the word "penetrated"! And yes, thank you, Stu, we SAW that two paragraphs ago.
Vanished, parted, scooped up, or siphoned away,
I'm willing to concede that he could have tried a Vanishing Charm, and that he could have attempted to part the potion as Moses parted the Red Sea. But wouldn't scooping up fall into the "penetrating by hand" category? And when did he try to siphon it in any way?
So--two methods that may or may not have been proven not to work, one that's redundant and one that wasn't tried at all.
nor can it be Transfigured, Charmed, or otherwise made to change its nature."
Not proven, not proven, not proven. Maybe he found this out when he was waving his wand over the potion, but since we don't know what spell, if any, he was casting, we don't know this.
And is there some reason why they don't just pick up the basin and dump out the potion to get the Horcrux? Even if the basin's too heavy to lift, they could levitate it and upend it, couldn't they? Or each one grab hold of a side of the basin and Apparate themselves and the basin back to Hogsmeade?
But these things don’t happen. Like many logical alternatives in this chapter, they're never even brought up.
Dumbles zaps up a crystal goblet and proclaims that "the potion is supposed to be drunk." Uh, yes. That's what you normally do with potions. However, I see no reason why Dumbles has to be the one to drink it. If he can zap up a goblet, can't he zap up an animal to drink the potion for them?
I do get the whole concept of the Wise Old Mentor needing to die before the Young Hero goes off alone to fight the Ultimate Evil that is his Destiny. I do. It's pure Joseph Campbell. Hell, I'd been predicting Dumbledore's death in Book 6 since the instant that I finished OotP.
But this death is so stupid and so avoidable that I have to wonder--what's the point? It's not tragic. It's not arising out of a fatal flaw in Dumbledore's personality. It's not the result of a necessary but noble sacrifice. It's just the result of lack of logic and abysmally poor planning. It's DUMB.
Harry, at least, protests the Dumb One's potion-drinking on the grounds that the potion might kill him. The Dumb One says that Voldemort wouldn't want to kill anyone who reached this island. Harry replies that this IS Voldemort we're talking about. Dumbles corrects himself, saying that Voldemort wouldn't want the person to die...immediately.
"He would want to keep them alive long enough to find out how they managed to penetrate so far through his defenses and, most importantly of all, why they were so intent upon emptying the basin. Do not forget that Lord Voldemort believes that he alone knows about his Horcruxes."
Which is kind of dumb, too, because Voldemort knows that Slughorn knows that Tom Riddle asked about Horcruxes years ago, and it's not impossible that Sluggy could make the connection, is it?
AND -
1. How would Voldemort know? DD said in the last chapter that Voldemort wouldn’t notice if a Horcrux were destroyed.
2. And if Voldemort has defenses in the cave that are sending messages back to him, letting him know someone has broken in, then he'd be happy about that--because young Draco is arranging for the invasion of Hogwarts at the same time.
All Voldemort would need to do is either send a separate group of Death Eaters or summon some of them from Draco's invasion, and tell them to wait outside a certain cave... And then BAM! Hit Dumbledore and Harry with Expelliarmus (so they can't use their wands) and the Full-Body Bind. And then Walden Macnair could polish his axe on their necks. (It's so simple I can't believe that in six books, Voldemort has never even tried this.)
Dumbledore then decides that the potion MUST work in a way that will keep him from taking the Horcrux--paralyzing him, causing amnesia, creating unbearable pain, etc. Um…with all due respect, Dumb-dore, why would it work that way? Wouldn't that effectively keep the Horcrux away from Voldemort as well? You were the one talking about his coming here for a casual visit!
Dumbledore tells Harry to make sure that he keeps drinking the potion, even if Harry has to force-feed it to him. Harry's really not thrilled with this idea. Dumbledore reminds Harry that he swore to obey any command Dumbledore gave.
I confess that did not impress me. People break promises and disobey orders all the time.
Harry, displaying definite signs of a death wish, demands to know why he can't drink the poison--er, potion.
"Because I am much older, much cleverer, and much less valuable," said Dumbledore.
If you were as clever as you think you are, you wouldn't have to tell us how clever you are every five minutes.
Once Dumbledore gets Harry's promise to force him to keep drinking, the potion-drinking commences. He drinks three and a half goblets before anything starts going wrong. His face turns white and he appears to be in the grip of a ghastly nightmare. Harry does as he was told and starts forcing Dumbles to drink. By the time he drinks the sixth goblet of potion, he's in tears:
"Its all my fault, all my fault," he sobbed. "Please make it stop, I know I did wrong, oh please make it stop and I'll never, never again ..."
Now me, I'd have asked what he'd done wrong and what was his fault. But alas, this is Harry we're talking about, and Harry doesn't ask questions as a rule. Unless his own life is in danger, he doesn't even think them.
The forced drinking and Dumbledore's Generic Angsty Muttering and Screaming™ goes on for a while. This bored me to tears in the book. On my initial read-through back in July, I skipped most of this, simply because it was so repetitive.
Finally Dumbledore starts screaming that he wants to die. My reaction? "Don't worry. You will."
I was annoyed that that was my only reaction, as I knew that this was supposed to be heartbreaking, and it wasn't. Rowling hadn't made me feel anything for Dumbledore at all, save for irritation. I knew that I was supposed to be emotionally devastated by Dumbledore's physical and emotional pain...
...but I didn't believe in his pain.
Rowling had spent so much time having Dumbledore insisting on his vast intelligence, his great wisdom and his superior power that I felt no empathy for him. She hadn't bothered to make him a sympathetic character in HBP, apparently thinking that any sympathy would carry over from the previous books.
This was a gross miscalculation. I had no idea how untouched I was by HBP until this scene. And it saddened me. What a waste.
Dumbles passes out. Harry gets a tad upset.
"No." said Harry, shaking Dumbledore, "no, you're not dead, you said it wasn't poison, wake up, wake up - Rennervate!" he cried, his wand pointing at Dumbledores chest; there was a flash of red light but nothing happened. "Rennervate - sir - please -"
I double-checked that in my copy. I even checked the Lexicon, and yes, Harry does say "Rennervate," so it's not a typo.
The problem is, there's no such spell.
The spell, as we have known since Goblet of Fire, is "Ennervate"--a spell that I detest anyway because it looks so much like the word "enervate." No spell that looks that much like a word that means "to drain of energy" should be able to revive people.
However, since Ennervate--annoying as its appearance is--IS the spell that awakens unconscious people, that's the spell Harry should be using. And he doesn't. But it works anyway.
And yes, the Lexicon now has a piece saying--as it did not when I originally wrote this sporking--that JKR had officially renamed the "Ennervate" spell "Rennervate."
One word:
HORSEAPPLES.
You can't go back and make what you've already written unhappen. No one can. Even George Lucas, apparently, has learned this.
Dumbledores eyelids flickered; Harry's heart leapt. "Sir, are you- ?"
Dead? Unfortunately, no.
Dumbledore asks for water. Harry runs to get it.
He leapt to his feet and seized the goblet he had dropped in the basin; he barely registered the golden locket lying curled beneath it.
So after this whole long, horrifying trip--after Dumbledore drinks an entire basin of poison to get to the Horcrux--Harry manages to not even notice THE THING THEY CAME FOR IN THE FIRST PLACE.
You'd think he could at least grab the locket while picking up the goblet. But no, that would be the practical thing to do, and we can't possibly have wizards using common sense, can we?
I swear, Potterverse magic is a balancing act. You can have magic, or you can have common sense. But you can't have both.
Harry fills the goblet with water by using the Aguamenti Charm. Problem is, every time Dumbles tries to take a drink from the goblet, the water vanishes. Why it should do that, I have no idea, since Dumbledore was the one who conjured up the goblet, not Voldemort.
Harry then dips the goblet in the lake--and a zombie grabs him by the wrist. Not only that, it's not the only zombie moving toward the island…
The surface of the lake was no longer mirror-smooth; it was churning, and everywhere Harry looked, white heads and hands were emerging from the dark water, men and women and children with sunken, sightless eyes were moving toward the rock: an army of the dead rising from the black water.
I was really hoping that James and Lily would be among the zombies. No, seriously, I was, for two reasons--it would be an emotional shock for Harry (and probably for the readers as well); and it would show Harry that even good people can be forced to serve Voldemort, in death as well as in life. I felt this would make the whole situation more ambiguous, and provide the zombies with a human face, so to speak. I believed then, and I believe now, that the story would be better for it.
So, naturally, this doesn't happen. Instead, it's Heroes vs. Monsters on Monday--Night--RAW!
"Petrificus Totalus!" yelled Harry, struggling to cling to the smooth, soaked surface of the island as he pointed his wand at the Inferius that had his arm.
According to the Lexicon, "inferi" is Latin for "the dead," but that's wrong. According to the Latin Dictionary and Grammar Aid at the University of Notre Dame, "inferius" is the comparative form of the preposition "infra." "Infra" means "below"; "inferius" means "lower down."
"Inferiae" are "offerings to the dead," which is probably where Rowling got the notion that "inferius" means "dead person." However, the idea being expressed in "inferiae" is that the offerings are going to those far below, in the underworld. The focus is on location.
The annoying thing is that there are actual Latin words she could have used, rather than screwing up a preposition. "Mortuus"--"a corpse." "Silentes"--"the dead." "Manes"--"shades of the departed, spirits of the dead." "Ademptus"--"dead." But no.
Meanwhile, Harry's having problems with the zombies…
It released him, falling backward into the water with a splash; he scrambled to his feet, but many more Inferi were already climbing onto the rock, their bony hands clawing at its slippery surface, their blank, frosted eyes upon him, trailing waterlogged rags, sunken faces leering.
Harry tries the Full-Body Bind. It hits a few, but most continue heading straight toward him. The same thing happens when he tries using Impedimenta and Incarcerous (which zaps up ropes that then bind the target). Harry tries Sectumsempra, evidently thinking it's the trump card. He has forgotten that corpses don't bleed.
He's being pulled into the water when Gryffindor fire--crimson and gold--surrounds the tiny island in a ring. It seems that Dumbledore managed to recover without drinking water after all.
The Inferi fight to get away from the fire. Apparently you can still feel fear, even if you're an undead corpse.
Dumbledore snags the locket and then motions to Harry to come with him.
Distracted by the flames, the Inferi seemed unaware that their quarry was leaving as Dumbledore led Harry back to the boat, the ring of fire moving with them, around them, the bewildered Inferi accompanying them to the waters edge, where they slipped gratefully back into their dark waters.
Once they get into the boat, the ring of fire stops surrounding them and starts surrounding the boat. Harry apologizes for panicking and forgetting the spell of Incendio. I had no trouble understanding that. Panicking is perfectly normal. I'm still confused about his bothering to use Sectumsempra, though.
They make it safely back across the lake. Harry half-carries Dumbledore back to the archway. Coincidentally, Harry got cut on the rock when he was being dragged into the water by the zombies, so Dumbles doesn't have to cut himself. Then they exit the cave.
"It's going to be all right, sir," Harry said over and over again, more worried by Dumbledore's silence than he had been by his weakened voice. "We're nearly there...I can Apparate us both back...Don't worry..."
Okay, so Harry can Apparate. The decision not to simply Apparate to the island, grab the basin and Apparate back to Hogsmeade is looking worse and worse every minute.
Dumbledore then closes the chapter by saying something that's completely inexplicable, as far as I'm concerned:
"I am not worried, Harry," said Dumbledore, his voice a little stronger despite the freezing water. "I am with you."
Uh...right. What did Harry do again? Got caught by zombies, failed to remember Dumbledore mentioning that Inferi fear fire, used all the wrong spells, nearly drowned...and oh yeah, FORGOT THE HORCRUX.
Yes. These things inspire vast amounts of confidence. I truly believe that Harry will be ready to face Voldemort in a year. Not.
***
I will return with Chapter 29 -- The Phoenix Lament.