Battle of Hogwarts – 14th Anniversary

On May 2, 1998, the Battle of Hogwarts was fought. Each year, Expecto Patronum! honors all the brave men, women, Headmaster portraits, and magical creatures who helped in the fight against Lord Voldemort for the future of the Wizarding World, especially:

• Harry Potter – who personally faced Lord Voldemort twice that night… and prevailed
• Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger – who stood beside Harry throughout his Quest and provided much-needed support during the Battle
• Luna Lovegood – for keeping Dumbledore’s Army alive and helping Harry into Ravenclaw Tower
• Neville Longbottom – for keeping Dumbledore’s Army alive and slaying Nagini
• Ginny Weasley – for keeping Dumbledore’s Army alive and giving Harry inspiration
• The Portrait of Phineas Nigellus Black – for locating Harry in the Forest of Dean
• Severus Snape – for getting the Sword of Gryffindor to Harry in the Forest of Dean and for using his dying moments to offer the memories that would help Harry to defeat Lord Voldemort
• The Portrait of Albus Dumbledore – for providing much-needed guidance to Headmaster Snape
• Aberforth Dumbledore – for helping Harry, the Order, the DA, and many others get in to Hogwarts from the Hog’s Head and for then fighting in the Battle alongside many other citizens of Hogsmeade
• The Members of the DA, the Order, the Gryffindor alumni, the Slytherins who returned with Slughorn, and the citizens of Hogsmeade – for standing up to fight
• The Magical Creatures who fought - particularly Kreacher and the House Elves, the Centaurs of the Forbidden Forest, and Grawp
• Minerva McGonnagall, Horace Slughorn, Filius Flitwick – for leadership during the Battle and for directly battling Voldemort
• Molly Weasley – for destroying Bellatrix Lestrange
• Hagrid – for being true of heart
• Peeves and Trelawney – for their unique contributions

And now, we’d like to honor the fallen heroes:

Severus Snape

Credit: DH: Look at Me by FrizzyHermione

Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks

Credit: SPOILERS_Lupin + Tonks Ending? by ~endoftheline

Fred Weasley

Credit: Fredless by ~balmasque

Plus Colin Creevey and the 50 or more unnamed dead.

Thank you!

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Troll… from the Dungeon!

Oooops! I guess I really meant THIS kind of troll…

Yes, it has happened. Death-Eater-wannabe roleplay has invaded Pottermore. And it started in the Dungeon.

At first, it was a minor and occasional annoyance. But when Slytherin effectively banished all the “mudblood” talk from the Common Room, it migrated to the Great Hall. And it wasn’t even clever. I mean, “Die, Mudblood scum hahahaha”?

It was a troll. From the Dungeon. No self-respecting Slytherin would show up in the Great Hall with ZERO House points and launch into such literacy-challenged tirades. Even Malfoy would first have earned some emeralds!

Consequently, a large number of non-trollish Slytherins led the charge to vanquish the troll and clean up the Great Hall… showing, I suppose, that Slytherin solidarity sometimes takes second place to the Greater (Slytherin) Good. After all, we need the good will of the other Houses in order to win the House Cup! (And, of course, most of us just don’t hold with the anti-Muggleborn nonsense!). Which brings me to my main point…

As a result of this incident, a Ravenclaw friend told me of some Death Eater roleplay coming out of the myHogwarts Beta. But those DE wannabes have actually put a little bit of thought into their position. For them, the Wizarding Community remains in essentially the same position as that of the Jews in Nazi Germany. Here is a bit of their argument:

Could one not argue that Witches and Wizards, as a race, were treated the same as the jews, and were, and still are well within their rights to battle muggles and supporters of muggles until the days when witches and wizards are free to walk across this planet as themselves?

To which I reply:

It’s true that the DE hatred of of Muggles and Muggleborns originated in the centuries-long genocidal campaign of Muggles to wipe out all Wizards. But that is still no justification for the MEANS the DEs used to redress the wrong. If we use the analogy of Jews in Hitler’s Germany, Voldemort merely reversed the roles… and attempted to turn the Muggles and Muggleborns into the Jews.

Salazar Slytherin’s suspicions of Muggleborns resulted from fear. He thought they were potential spies who would place loyalty to their Muggle families ahead of loyalty to the Wizarding community. Given that the Muggles were at that time engaged in genocide, his fear was not entirely unfounded.

The problem (quite apart from Salazar’s Basilisk!) is that even after centuries of proof that Muggleborns were loyal to the Wizarding community, some Purebloods maintained their fear and suspicion of Muggleborns.

Regarding the Muggles themselves, it seems to me that the Wizarding community was faced with two options: non-confrontation and invisibility OR deciding to organize an effort to wipe the Muggles out. IMO, the Statute of Secrecy was as much about the virtue of the Wizarding community (i.e., deciding not to counter one genocide with another genocide) as it was about self-protection. In other words, it was as much about protecing the Muggles as it was about protecting the Wizards. IMO it is one of the most extraordinary feats of moral heroism imaginable.

However, after centuries of persecution it is hardly surprising that not all Wizards were on board for it. Hence, Dumbledore’s flirtation with Wizarding dominance. Hence, the appeal of Voldemort to many Pureblood families. One of the key attractions of the Wizarding dominance ideology was that Wizards would no longer have to hide. Also, my assumption is that the Purebloods are the ones whose ancestors suffered most under the Muggles… and were the least inclined to forgive.

So the DE wannabe argument itself is not entirely out of left field. However, there is never any justification for genocide, even in its incipient rather than fully realized form. And there is never any justification for the use of dark magic. So Voldemort’s entire project was fundamentally flawed at its base.

CCS

Thoughts?

Pottermore Content: Number 4 Privet Drive

Time to discuss some actual Pottermore content!

But first… I draw your attention to the new Pottermore CEO’s comments on Pottermore’s future. You can stream or download Charlie Redmayne’s remarks and listen to them for yourself. But here are a few key points:

• We will see new books on Pottermore in the “next few weeks and months.”
• Content, rather than functionality, will become the primary focus in the next few weeks, and there will be a considerable amount of new JKR content added to the site.
• “New interactives and community functionalities will be added in the coming weeks.”
• Pottermore will be looking to port the Pottermore experience to other platforms, including tablets and phones – and to make greater use of Facebook and YouTube. (No timeline given on this)
• The future may include enhanced ebooks from the Pottermore Shop. (No timeline given on this)

One thing to realize: Redmayne took over Pottermore in November. Apparently, not having the site up and running by October – as originally promised – and needing to migrate to an entirely new platform did not play well for the previous CEO.

So… what this means is that Redmayne was not involved in any of the Beta problems. His job was to fix them. And actually, dueling came up in December (a month after Redmayne took over) – after it had been down since August. Not a bad start!

Anyway, it sounds like Redmayne has the vision for Pottermore that previous leadership lacked. He wants to make Pottermore “amazing”… and he recognizes that it’s not close to being there at this point.

Now, on to some content…

A couple of weeks ago, I made my first purchase from the Pottermore Shop. Actually, I bought all 7 ebooks all at once and put them on my Kindle.

One nice thing about the Kindle is that you can see popular highlights. And the most popular highlight in PS/SS is this one:

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

That sentence has been highlighted by 7 people.

7 books, 7 highlights… interesting. But I digress.

Now, much as I love the opening line, and love its whimsical quality, I’m not sure I would have highlighted it. It’s not like it’s possible to miss it! After all, it’s the first line in the Harry Potter series!

Yet it is important… and JKR’s content on Pottermore gives us a little bit of insight into the thought process that went in to assigning that address to the Dursleys. The privet bush is, apparently, the quintessentially suburban British hedge bush. And that alone would make it remarkably Dursleyish.

But what I found curious is what she says about the number four in the “exclusive JKR content” for the very first scene in Pottermore. There, she claims that she has always found four to be a “rather hard and unforgiving number” – which is why she gave it to the Dursleys.

Okay.

Obviously, four is the number of the square – and perhaps JKR does not like being boxed in. But in addition to the box, four is the number of letters in the Tetragrammaton (YHVH) – the Hebrew name for God. A considerable amount of Western music is composed in 4/4 time. There are four Gospels, four temperaments, four humors, four suits of cards, four seasons, four Beatles, four elements, and yes…

There are Four Hogwarts Founders, and Four Hogwarts Houses!

So JKR did not give the number four only to the Dursleys. She gave the number to Hogwarts itself.

I don’t know about you, but I find this point curious. Even back in the bad old days before the publication of Deathly Hallows, when many fans assumed that Slytherin = Evil and that it should be eradicated not only from Hogwarts but from the face of the Wizarding Earth (thus turning four Houses into three), JKR held strong and said that the four Houses aligned with the four Elements, and that they all were needed to balance each other out and reach fulfillment.

So what do you think?

• In tying the four Houses to the the four Elements and claiming the necessity of each, was JKR trying to move beyond her antipathy to the number four?
• In showing the conflict between the four Houses throughout the series (or at least between the three Houses and Slytherin), was JKR playing to her antipathy to the number four – and illustrating the hard, unforgiving nature of the number four?
• Is the conflict between the four Houses necessary in order to arrive at the uneasy reconciliation at the end, when Harry offers his son a more enlightened, adult view of Slytherin House?
• Or is it just oddly coincidental that the number four is both the number of the hard, unforgiving Dursley home and the number of Hogwarts Houses?

I await your comments…

Still Waiting for Pottermore? – Here’s More DH2

I’ve got about 40 minutes until my potion finishes brewing, so… okay, where were we before I got sucked into Pottermore? As I recall, we were discussing DH2. And I still had a few things left to say.

For me, the movie “worked” all the way up until the final battle with Voldemort. Thankfully, it had worked in a big way to that point - from the moody opening, with Snape on the balcony and Harry at Shell Cottage, through the tense conversation with Aberforth, through the the look of heartbreak on Snape’s face when he realizes he must duel McGonnagall (not to mention his quick-thinking in taking out the Carrows and leaving Hogwarts to McGonnagall), all the way through the Battle of Hogwarts, the Pensieve memories, and King’s Cross.

I cried when Hermione blasted Fenrir off the dead body of Lavender Brown, her former rival for Ron’s affections. I cried when Aberforth announced his return to the fight by casting a powerful Patronus. I wept, like everyone else, over the fallen heroes in the Great Hall… and then over Snape’s memories in the Pensieve and Harry’s walk into the Forest.

The first three times I saw the film, though, I did not cry over Snape’s death. I just sat there with my mouth hanging wide open, hyperventilating. Curiously, a few friends who do not like Snape did find themselves crying… and then hated themselves afterward. LOL.

On the fourth viewing, I finally did cry. I think maybe it was because the theater was nearly empty. Snape is the character who resonates most with me, and so his death is the one that is most personal to me. I think I probably just needed some time alone in order to really let loose. And when I finally did, I cried so hard that my eyes were burning with the salt of my tears!

But enough of Snape for now, what I really want to talk about is the big VoldyBattle.

I suppose that any moviegoer would prefer a running-around-the-castle-Wizard Battle over a Harry talk-a-thon. BUT the problem with the sequence for me is that it creates the misperception that Harry could actually match Voldemort in power and skill. I mean… Srsly?

In the book, Harry wins because he understands the situation (the Elder Wand belongs to him) and because he sacrificed his life in the Forest to kill the scarcrux… not because he’s more powerful or more skilled than his antagonist. As a consequence of Harry’s sacrifice, Voldemort really can be killed. All it takes is for Harry to cast a disarming charm at the same moment that Voldemort casts a killing curse. The Elder Wand will do the rest.

Now, none of this is to downplay the significance of what Harry has done. In going into the Forest, he becomes a truly great man, a sacrificial figure, a young man willing to lay down his life in order that the Wizarding World might live. That, imo, is of far more significance than wizarding power or skill.

But the film plays up power and skill – matters in which Harry cannot begin to match Voldemort – and downplays the sacrificial significance of Harry’s walk into the Forest. Though I understand some of these choices from a cinematic standpoint, this is one matter in which I think the film does the book a disservice.

The point is not that Harry wins because he has power. The point is that he wins because he has love.

Well, my potion has finished brewing, and I was supposed to get House points, but the system logged me out, and I didn’t get the points.

(Funny how I never fail to lose points when I melt a cauldron but never seem to gain points when I successfully complete a potion. Argggggg. There’s Beta for you!)

Anyway, I’ve finally said everything I have to say about DH2. So next stop for those waiting is to start in on the Random Re-read. First chapter up is the first chapter in PoA: “Owl Post.” Should be fun!

Pottermore: A First Look Around

As I think everybody knows by now, I received my Pottermore Welcome Email on Friday morning. So I’ve been inside, “exploring the site” (as the Pottermore team likes to put it), for the past three days.

Since this post is mainly about my impressions and first-hand experience of Pottermore, I’m putting pretty much everything between spoiler GIFs for the sake of those who wish to experience everything on Pottermore fresh. :)

A few things you might want to know first, though…

In the Great Hall, there are currently 99,841 104,326 112,423 117,288 126,669 131,622 139,639 142,235 students.

I don’t think students start showing up in the statistics for the Great Hall until they arrive at Hogwarts and go through the Sorting Ceremony (PS/SS Chapter 7). So this means that at least significantly more than 100,000 welcome emails have already gone out and that about 14% of the early entry pool is now inside Pottermore.

According to the Pottermore Insider from several days ago, Pottermore is going to be sending out more and more letters this week… and then take a pause. This means that we could see a large increase over the next few days. And that’s good news for anyone who is still waiting.

Now… on to those first impressions…

Pottermore is being branded as an interactive reading experience, but I think it’s really more of a combination of a lot of different types of experiences.

Moments

Currently, the site has “moments” from PS/SS. We see drawings of various memorable scenes from the book, and in many of these “moments” we are able to “collect” items or “unlock” reading material. To collect or unlock, we just need to move the mouse around until something highlights and then we click on the thing that highlights. Items I’ve “collected” include a number of potions ingredients, Chocolate Frog Cards, and even a few Galleons. It’s amazing how much junk students just leave lying around the castle!

Occasionally, you have to accomplish a task in order to advance. For example, you can’t visit the shops in Diagon Alley to buy your school items (and get your wand!) until you find and collect your shopping list. You can’t move past Fluffy if you never cast the Alohomora spell to open the door to get to Fluffy. You can’t get past Quidditch until you catch the Golden Snitch. You can’t move into the final chamber until you’ve solved Snape’s Logic Puzzle.

This is all a lot of fun. In fact, it’s a bit like JKR’s own website but with a bit more narrative structure… and without the sound. At the moment, Pottermore is dead silent.

BTW, the artwork is often drop-dead gorgeous. :)

The Reading Experience

The reading experience is Pottermore is at its best – and at its worst. The worst is the repetitive canned content. Basically, every moment comes attached with a list of Characters and Places (and possibly Objects, Spells, and Creatures) that you can read about. Unfortunately, most of these are brief, uninformative, and repetitive. You really only need to read about the secondary characters one time because their information never expands. (I’m looking at you Gregory Goyle and Vincent Crabbe, Quidditch Team Members, and Argus Filch!).

For major characters like the Trio, Dumbledore, Snape, McGonnagall, Draco, Hagrid, and Quirrell, you never really know until you click if you are going to get new content. Sometimes you do. Most of the time you don’t. I eventually got so tired of clicking on the exact same content that I finally ended up making all of the major characters “Favorites.” That way, I am, in effect, “collecting” their information for later reading.

In order to avoid reader frustration, I personally think Pottermore needs to create some sort of icon to indicate new information that hasn’t appeared before. That way, the reader won’t have to click unless that icon appears. Right now, Pottermore does have a feather icon to indicate new JKR-exclusive content. But an additional icon for previously unread info about one of the characters could only help the experience.

Hmmm. I think I’ll mention that on the feedback form. ;)

The New JKR Content

That said, the new and exclusive JKR content is AMAZING! For McGonnagall and Quirrell, you get a lot of new and exciting – and often heartbreaking – information.

You unlock new JKR content about McGonnagall for the first time in Chapter 7 and for Quirrell in (I believe) Chapter 8. Much later, JKR provides even more information for each character.

Pottermore doesn’t just offer new JKR info on characters, though. We get a lot of wandlore, straight from Ollivander himself (and I know how interested everybody is in getting, and learning about, their wand). And of course, we do get those House Histories.

But to tell you the truth, some of the funniest new content comes in the most mundane packages. Do you think you want to unlock content with names like “Measurements” and “Clothing”?

No?

Well, trust me, you do. :)

Wand Selection and Sorting

You probably already know that you get quizzed in order to select your wand and your House. Your wand selects you in Chapter 5, and the Sorting Hat places you into your Hogwarts House in Chapter 7.

After reading about wand woods and cores, most people I know have concluded that they were chosen by the correct wand. Sorting is another matter entirely. I have some friends who identified heavily with Slytherin but were sorted into Ravenclaw. Others of us identified more with Ravenclaw but were sorted into Slytherin.

I don’t think this is really a problem with the Sorting Hat. I think it’s more a problem with what the fandom thinks Ravenclaw and Slytherin are. The popular views of Ravenclaw and Slytherin are not exactly what we see in the actual House Histories. But more on that in another post.

Regardless of what you think you are, the Sorting Hat will never admit a mistake, so this is your one chance to be sorted. And JKR stands behind her pool of questions.

As far as I can tell, you will get the same wand questionnaire I got. You will not get the same Sorting questions. From what I have gathered, Pottermore has a database full of Sorting questions, and each question will be triggered by the previous answer. This is aimed at making each Sorting experience unique.

Earning House Points

You earn points for your House by brewing potions and engaging in Wizard Duels. Even though Duels are down right now, Potions are brewing all across Pottermore!

Casting spells and brewing Potions are both very fun. But man! Potions really requires precision. If you’re not precise, you will quickly find yourself doing a Neville Longbottom… and melting or exploding your cauldron!

I think I’ve melted about 7 cauldrons so far – most of them just during practice, so no worries. But the last cauldron I melted lost my House points… and it was a relatively expensive Copper cauldron. So the lesson? Stick to the pewter. ;)

Well, anyway, I think you can tell that I’m having fun. The site is not nearly as buggy as I expected. And now that I’ve gone through all the moments, there’s still competition for the House Cup to keep me busy. Plus, I have 6 5 4 3 2 Chocolate Frog Cards to find!

(I have now completed the Chocolate Card set… and the last card I found was Merlin’s!)

With that, I’ll just say that if you have questions about Pottermore, I’ll take them in the Comments thread. :)

Pottermore: I Just Solved Snape’s Logic Puzzle

Sorry I’ve disappeared into Pottermore for the past couple of days. I will be back tomorrow, I think – or possibly Monday – to write up my general thoughts.

In the meantime, I just wanted to let everybody know that on Pottermore, you will have an opportunity to solve Snape’s Logic Puzzle. And when you get to that point in the story, you will find that one of my two final solutions is correct. :)

If you have visited Solving Snape’s Logic Puzzle, then you will know that figuring out the single final solution is impossible without actually seeing the layout of the bottles. You can only narrow it down to two potential positions for the “Forward” potion. (No such problem exists for the “Backward” potion).

I’m not going to reveal right now which one of my two solutions is the correct one. I’d like to give you an opportunity to solve the puzzle for yourself when you get to Pottermore.  But I will say this: while it was a solution I anticipated, it was not the solution I expected… though I think it was kind of the solution I was hoping for.

Feel free to use my Logic Puzzle notes when you get to Pottermore. Goodness knows I did!

Waiting for Pottermore DH2: The Taunting

A fifth batch of emails has been sent out, and there’s still not one for me.

So with that in mind, Expecto Patronum! continues the “Waiting for Pottermore” series…

Note: While we continue the never-ending wait for the Pottermore email, we carry on bravely with our discussion of the DH2 movie…

“Severus Snape wasn’t yours,” said Harry. “Snape was Dumbledore’s. Dumbledore’s from the moment you started hunting down my mother.”

I, and a lot of people, waited for that line in the movie…
and it never came.

After thinking about it, though, I have a theory about why the filmmakers cut it.

It was redundant.

In the book, Harry needs to say it out loud (or think it internally) so that the reading audience gets the point of what he sees in the Pensieve. Yet even with several pages of Harry circling around Voldemort, proclaiming that Dumbledore planned his death with Snape, there remains a tiny contingent of readers who still insist that Snape was truly working for Voldemort and that Harry was merely taunting Voldemort with Snape’s loyalties. He didn’t really mean it. *shrug*

In the movie, though, it’s kind of impossible to miss, or explain away, Snape’s true loyalties. Film is a visual medium, and here is what the viewers (and Harry) get to see…

"You have your mother's eyes"

"... and you're special"

"He doesn't need protecting..."

"So... the boy must die?"

Sure, Severus cradling Lily’s body at Godric’s Hollow is extra-canonical. And sure, Severus never actually says “You have your mother’s eyes.” But movie-only viewers don’t have the advantage of reading the text… over and over and over again… and thinking about its implications. They need to have things spelled out visually. And this approach to the backstory does have JKR’s highest blessing:

“They do it perfectly in the film, that was a place I was very glad they were faithful to the book. Snape’s journey is important, it’s such a lynchpin of the books, the plot can’t function without Snape.” ~ J. K. Rowling

After witnessing the series of images from Snape’s demise through the Pensieve memories, the viewing audience has no question that Severus loved Lily from the time he was a child or that he had been working for Dumbledore – and against Voldemort – ever since the Dark Lord started hunting her down. Viewers don’t need Harry to tell them that. And so, in the movie, he doesn’t.

I’m disappointed, of course, to find one of my favorite moments missing. But I’m appeased by the recognition that it was not necessary to show it. How about you?

Let us know in the comments.

Waiting for Pottermore: Stupefied

Here’s an amusing follow-up to the last post on DH2. Enjoy!

And speaking of stupefied…

Luna is now a Gryffindor. Yep, Luna actress (and big HP fan) Evanna Lynch sorted into Gryffindor on Pottermore.
(Many thanks to janinavalencia for finding and sharing that information).

Here’s what Evanna tweeted out about the experience:

Ahhhh umm errrrrr…. Just got sorted. Slight identity crisis. Need to sit down and process this… #pottermore

I’m in Gryffindor. #Pottermore #confusion #shock #pride #happiness #LUNADONTLEAVEME!!!

I don’t know what to do. I feel like Jo just told me I’m a man. I’m SO utterly confused.

Gryffindor! Woahhh what an honour! I’m so happy! But confused! But happy! BUT CONFUSED. #Pottermore #farewellravenclaw

Dammit, now I have to change my whole bleedin’ wardrobe!!! #pottermore #butredandgoldarenotmycolours

Sorry for the tweet explosion… I’m just…having a moment. #farewellravenclaw #pottermore #JowhathaveyouDONE?!

Sounds a bit stupefied herself, doesn’t she?

I guess we can now use this pic with feeling!

Luna in her Gryffindor Lion hat

Waiting for Pottermore DH2: choices, choices, choices

Note: While we wait for the Pottermore email, we continue our discussion of the DH2 movie…

But first… you need to know about the most deeply horrible, astonishingly EVOL poll in the history of humankind:

It’s the Anglophenia Fan Favorites poll, in which we are given the choice of voting between Alan Rickman and Benedict Cumberbatch or between Colin Firth and David Tennant.

In fandom terms, that translates:

Professor Snape (or Colonel Brandon/Alexander Dane/Hans Gruber/ Sheriff of Nottingham) VS. Sherlock Holmes.

and…

Mr. Darcy VS. Barty Crouch, Jr. / The Tenth Doctor

Yikes! Those are choices that really hurt – probably at least as much as the choices the filmmakers had to face in translating the second half of Deathly Hallows to the screen.

Choices that hurt

Let’s say you’re doing a book that fans are passionate about. There are moments that fans have been dying to see…

Fred’s death, for example. Or Snape’s loss of Lily’s friendship. Or Dumbledore’s backstory. Or Snape saving Lupin’s life and telling the portrait not to say “Mudblood.” Or Harry taunting Voldemort with Snape’s true loyalties and giving Riddle one last chance at remorse.

But you’ve got this other audience to account for… the audience that never reads the books and only sees the movies and that could care less about the intricacies of wandlore.

How do you make a movie that gives the book-fans enough of what they want to see and is still comprehensible for the movie-only fans? That’s the dilemma that the filmmakers were faced with. And they left every single one of those “dying-to see” moments out… yet managed to leave most fans feeling satisfied.

Let’s talk about a few of those choices…

The Mudblood Incident

One of the key complaints I’ve heard from one small corner of the fandom is that the film’s portrayal of “The Prince’s Tale” makes Severus Snape look like an innocent victim by failing to present the “Mudblood” incident or its aftermath.

Okay, I personally wanted to see this material on the big screen, but after giving it some thought, I realized that it presents a devil’s snare of potential difficulties. Here is what I wrote about it on the CoS forum:

I would have liked to see them include the “Mudblood” incident too, but in thinking it over, I realized that its inclusion is fraught with all sorts of potential difficulties for other characters – difficulties that I doubt the filmmakers wanted to unleash, particularly given the raw emotional power of Rickman’s overall performance.

As soon as Rickman’s Snape starts showing the depth of his pain, he’s got the audience in the palm of his hand. If the pain had started sooner, beneath the portrait of the Fat Lady [when Lily cut off their friendship], it could have swayed movie-only audience opinion in directions that the filmmakers would not have wanted – like against Lily, for instance. That wouldn’t be fair, since he used the word [Mudblood] on her, but film is an essentially emotional medium, and film audiences love redemption stories – especially when a character is in love. Film audiences generally want to see all but the most monstrous characters given a second chance after they’ve blown it in a big way.

In that context, the filmmakers probably made the right decision to cut the incident. They could not really tell which character(s) would get hurt the most by showing it, and filmmakers like to know exactly what audience impact will be.

There are additional problems with its inclusion as well. David Yates used a portion of SWM (“Snape’s Worst Memory”) in the OotP movie, but he did not incorporate the “Mudblood” incident. Adding it for DH2 would require re-shooting the earlier scene or working some digital magic to insert Lily into it. And that, of course, would mean casting a third actress to play Lily’s part – and getting Alec Hopkin (Teen Snape) back to utter the unforgivable word. (ETA NOTE: The additional material with a third Lily that was originally shot for OotP and then cut would not help since Harry is in the frame – in completely the wrong clothes and without all of the battle grime and gore that we see in TPT).

In addition, I think that the complaint that the exclusion of the Mudblood incident makes Snape look like an innocent victim is a product of very short-sighted thinking. What is most visually striking about the incident (and film is a visual medium) is watching James Potter and the Marauders launch an unprovoked attack on Severus Snape. In all likelihood, including the incident in the film would make Snape look even more like a victim.

Little James is puckishly cute as he runs through the halls tipping over his “victims’” school books.

This James, though, is hardly “cute” as he attempts to remove “Snivelly’s trousers”:

I would humbly submit that the filmmakers just didn’t want to go there with James, particularly given that they will later need to present him sympathetically in the Forest… and there’s really very little story to get the movie-only crowd to buy in to that sympathetic portrayal once the filmmakers re-unleash SWM. It’s hard enough already for many book readers to make the leap of faith into believing that James simply changed, and book readers have information that the movie-onlies don’t possess.

The choice the filmmakers made, then, was to make nobody look very much like the victim, and nobody look very much like the perpetrator. For purposes of the film, it was probably a wise choice.

Weasley Loss and Gain

Some book fans are angry at not seeing Fred die. And one big question many fans have asked is, “How the heck did Percy get there?”

That’s a good question! But there are actually other people whose return is a bit confusing – for instance Cho Chang (what’s she doing there in the Room of Requirement when she graduated the year before?) and Luna Lovegood (how’d she get there ahead of Harry, when she’d last been seen at Shell Cottage?). In the case of the Ravenclaw girls, my assumption is that they are there mainly to answer Harry’s question about the lost diadem. And yes, they are supposed to be there, even if the film never quite lets us know how they arrived.

Percy, though, has one of the book’s more dramatic entrances into the Room of Requirement, and we never see that drama in the film. I do think, though, that the filmmakers’ decision (while perhaps making Percy’s sudden appearance confusing for book fans ) actually makes matters less confusing for the general movie audience. Percy’s estrangement from his family has never become an overt plot point in the films. We do see Percy doing Ministry duties at cross-purposes to Harry and Dumbledore, but that’s about as far as that subplot goes. And let’s face it, without the subplot, many movie-only fans probably don’t really remember who Percy is anyway.

So, that nixes Percy’s big entrance because the big entrance would simply not make sense. And sorry, but if we nix Percy’s big entrance, we also nix witnessing Fred’s death. Yeah, we could still see Fred die, but we wouldn’t see it in the context of his welcoming Percy back into the family and later Percy throwing himself on Fred’s dead body.

If we remove Fred’s death from the context of Percy’s return, we may as well see Fred lying already dead in the Great Hall. And that is the choice the filmmakers made. Rather than go for overkill by showing Fred die on the screen and then show his family mourn, the filmmakers went the more subtle route of showing him already dead, surrounded by his family.

Whether we actually see Fred die or not, this scene still has tremendous emotional impact. I have not gotten past it once without breaking into sobs.

Dumbledore’s Backstory

King’s Cross is a big disappointment to many people. The wandlore, the backstory, Dumbledore’s remorse – all of it is missing.

Most of the essentials, though, were presented in DH1. And when the filmmakers decided (ACK!!!) to negate Grindelwald’s big moment of defiance and remorse, they couldn’t exactly go deeply into the Grindelwald plot in King’s Cross. In fact, I predicted in November that this would happen.

At least Ciaran Hinds’ fabulous performance – bringing to life Aberforth’s hundred years of bitterness – implicitly verifies the depth to which Albus Dumbledore had sunk in his youth. If we want to know more detail about the manner in which Albus’ choices sacrificed his sister’s life, we can always consult the books – or at least the nearest Potter fan. :)

Honestly, though, I did miss the King’s Cross wandlore. I suppose I experienced a bit of it vicariously through the interaction between Harry and Ollivander at Shell Cottage. But after all we’ve seen of the wand, would it truly have been too much information for the general movie audience if Harry had briefly discussed the Elder Wand with Dumbledore?

Well, at nearly 1500 words, this post has now gone on too long (thanks for making it this far with me!). So  I think I’ll devote my next DH2 post entirely to the element I missed the most… and why I think it made sense for the filmmakers to cut it.

Until then…

Pottermore: Clue #7 Is Up!

UPDATE 5: Registration has closed…

Now the waiting for our Welcome Letters begins. :)

UPDATE 4: Clue 7 is still up! There is still time!

UPDATE 3: Screenshot of the Magic Quill

Remember, the Quill will not glow if you do not hover over it. Here’s what the screen should look like:

The banner ad is at the top (above Parseltongue Translator).

The Quill that will glow is the light brown/white striped Quill.

UPDATE 2: Help with the Magic Quill

The Magic Quill will not appear before the Warner Bros. promo finishes playing. When it does finish playing, you will see a banner ad.

The Magic Quill will not glow automatically. You will need to hover your mouse over the Quills to make the Magic Quill glow. Click on the Quill that turns into a sort of blue glowing Quill.

UPDATE: What to do with the Magic Quill

You will be redirected to the Warner Bros. website, where you will watch a promo for the Deathly Hallows 2 movie. Once the promo has finished playing, you will see a small banner ad at the top of your screen. It asks you to find the Magic Quill.

You will need to hover your mouse over the Quills. One of them will change to a blow glowing Quill when you hover over it. Click on that Quill, and it will redirect you to the Congratulations notice, from where you can get to Registration.

If you do not see the promo or the small banner ad, try turning off ad blockers.

Day 7 clue:

Can you find The Magical Quill?

How many Deathly Hallows are there?
Multiply this number by 7.

Here’s what you need to do once you’ve figured out the clue and multiplied by 7:

Put http://quill.pottermore.com/

in your address bar, put the number you’ve derived from multiplying the clue times 7 after the slash, and hit enter.

NOTE: This is NOT the Pottermore address. This is the Quill address. Copy and paste the Quill address given above into your browser address bar but DO NOT HIT ENTER BEFORE adding the solution after the slash at the end. Otherwise, you will end up on the Pottermore website.

DO NOT add www. to the beginning of the Quill address. Otherwise, you will (sadly) land nowhere.

DO HIT ENTER after you have put the solution at the end of the correct Quill address (after the slash).

Once you hit enter, with the correct solution at the end of the Quill address, you will be taken to the Magic Quill.

The Magic Quill will be on a 3rd party website. Do not panic when you see that you have been redirected.

I will go try the challenge myself right now (but not register), so that I can give you more information on what to do with the Magic Quill.

If you run into technical difficulties, TRY AGAIN!

Don’t have a book handy?

Here’s a good breakdown of Deathly Hallows.

If you are still unsure of the answer, you might try the last page of Chamber of Secrets forum’s Pottermore thread. Or, as the Last Muggle suggests, you can use hp_batsignal on Twitter.

Oh, and of course, there’s always the Comments thread below. Some people may just be kind enough to post the answer for you there. :)

Feel free to use the Comments thread to let us know how it is going so that we can help you troubleshoot if you run into difficulties. Comments by people new to the blog may be delayed a little bit, but I’ll work hard to release comments quickly from limbo. :)

GOOD LUCK!