Umbridge a Death Eater?

This will show you how really attentive a reader I am -- I just realized, as I re-read the first chapter of The Order of the Phoenix for the 20-somethingth time, that Dolores Umbridge sent the Dementors to Little Whinging to kill Harry Potter on that hot summer night.


She wasn't playing around. She took it upon herself, without any consultation with Cornelius Fudge or anyone else, to send the most heinous of magical creatures into Surrey to kill an innocent 15-year-old boy who had committed no crime but witness the rebirth of the Dark Lord and return to tell about it.


Woweee.


I mean, these Dementors meant business. They arrived, attacked and were ready to perform the Kiss on Dudley, an even more innocent bystander in all this, without wasting any time at all.


We only learn at the end of the novel that it was Umbridge who, on her own initiative, sent them to attack Harry but, in retrospect, this action says a great deal about this delightful lady.


She could not have known that Harry was so capable with the old Patronus Charm. We can't give her the benefit of the doubt by arguing that she sent the Dementors to force Harry to perform magic so that the Ministry would then have some grounds to snap his wand and expel him from Hogwarts.


She was trying to kill him.


Why? For upsetting Fudge? For making him look bad?


Is it possible that Umbridge is actually a Death Eater who is simply never identified as such? That she is acting on the Dark Lord's orders, trying to kill the Boy Who Lived after Voldemort failed to do so in the graveyard?


If she isn't a Death Eater, Doesn't her decision to try to have the Dementors kill Harry seem like a bit of an over-reaction under the circumstances? To kill Harry just because he represents the only real evidence available that Voldemort has returned?

Adrenaline? or swimming lessons?

When did Harry learn to swim?

In the fabulous cave scene at the end of The Half-Blood Prince, Harry swims through treacherous sea waters, from the rock onto which he and Dumbledore had just apparated, across a narrow stretch of water and into a fissure that eventually leads to a set of steps onto a rocky shore in the middle of a cave.

Rowling says that Harry was weighed down by his waterlogged clothes as he swam, that he "struck out" to follow Dumbledore (who, quite charmingly, was doing "a perfect breaststroke" with his wand held between his teeth), that he "continued to swim" in the "icy" water with "benumbed fingers" before seeing Dumbledore "rising out of the water ahead" and then following him.

What with the dangerous, icy water, the weight of his clothes, and the fact that Dumbledore is able to get quite far ahead of him, this sounds like quite a challenging swim.

Even more impressive, on the way back, Harry must carry the weight of a weak, faint Head Master as he swims back from the cave to the rock before apparating back to Hogsmeade.

It's an excellent, exciting part of the novel and leads directly into the incredible climax involving Death Eaters in Hogwarts.

But when did Harry learn to swim?

In book four, The Goblet of Fire, Rowling writes the following passage to describe Harry's reaction upon deducing that the second task in the Tri-Wizard Tournament would involve swimming into the lake on the grounds of Hogwarts:

But [Harry] suddenly realized what he was saying, and he felt the excitement drain out of him as though someone had just pulled a plug in his stomach. He wasn't a very good swimmer; he'd never had much practice. Dudley had had lessons in their youth, but Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon, no doubt hoping that Harry would drown one day, hadn't bothered to give him any. A couple of lengths of this bath was all very well, but that lake was very large, and very deep...

In two years, Harry has gone from someone whose stomach drops at the thought of being required to swim any distance to someone who can swim a fair distance through frigid, dangerous waters, carrying the weight of a fully-grown adult who is incapable of swimming on his own.

I guess you could argue that, when the need is that great, adrenaline would permit Harry to swim that distance, carrying Dumbledore... but it seems our beloved author missed something between these two stories, doesn't it?

Raised to be evil, grown to resist it

Is Draco evil? Or just a product of his upbringing?

I've often wondered about this question, not just in the context of Harry Potter but also as it might apply to children in the real world too.

Draco Malfoy is raised in a family where allegiance to the Dark Lord is a way of life, where brutality to house elves is normal behaviour, where intense malevolence toward people who are not of pure blood families is commonplace. Should we then see Draco as evil simply for following the beliefs with which he was raised?

Especially when he is still a young kid, perhaps too young to question those beliefs?

This is why I find the movie portrayal of Draco Malfoy to be so interesting, almost more so than the original literary character. In the films, it becomes very clear that Draco, at 16 and 17, is starting to question his parents' behaviours and beliefs that were so much a part of his upbringing.

He can't bring himself to kill an unarmed Dumbledore, even though he knows he will be punished for his failure. He refuses to identify Harry to Bellatrix when Harry is dragged to Malfoy Manor by the Snatchers. He weeps over the death of his friend in the all-consuming Fiendfyre in the Room of Requirement.

And, when push comes to shove in the final battle of Hogwarts, he and his parents walk away from Voldemort and his army.

As I've written before, Draco is redeemed by his own refusal to commit the most egregious acts of evil that are demanded of him as he approaches adulthood.

In an interesting parallel, Dudley Dursley also gets a brief moment of redemption, at least in the book version of The Deathly Hallows, when he says he doesn't feel that Harry is a waste of space and actually comes over to say a proper goodbye to his cousin. Dudley, raised in a household where Harry-hating is an accepted form of behaviour, actually comes to recognise some value in his cousin. As he grows up, he is able to set aside the prejudices his parents have fed him for his entire life and redeem himself. (Oddly, this scene was shot for the film but left on the cutting room floor. You can see it as part of the "Deleted Scenes" section of the DVD/Blu Ray).

My point is that, although J.K. presents both Dudley and Draco as the epitome of evil to the young Harry in the early novels, she recognises that, as they grow up, they gain the ability to question the beliefs among which they have been raised. They are only truly evil if, once they reach an age of awareness, discernment and decision, they choose to embrace their parents' evil teachings.

And both choose a different path in the end.

And I think the filmmakers go even further to bring that point home in the case of Draco Malfoy.

Harry Potter and the "broken" family

Harry Potter lives with his aunt and uncle (just like Luke Skywalker, by the way, but that's another issue).

Neville Longbottom lives with his grandmother.

Albus and Aberforth Dumbledore's father died in prison when they were in their early teens and their mother died in an accident just a couple of years later.

Rubeus Hagrid was raised from a child by his father after his mother left them. His father then died while he was still young.

Sirius Black ran away from home at 16 to live with the Potters.

Tom Riddle was raised in an orphanage, his mother dead and his father having rejected him.

There sure are a lot of boys in J.K. Rowling's world with non-traditional family structures, aren't there?

What does that fact say about the author and her experience with, and understanding of, family? And what does it say about the four major characters who have been raised in what is often called a "traditional" family: Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Dudley Dursley and Draco Malfoy?

To her credit, Rowling doesn't seem to associate a "broken" home with the development of an evil or damaged character. In fact, only Riddle went astray among the boys from the non-traditional families. The others are all on the side of good.

And, also to her credit, Rowling doesn't simply assume that a strong "traditional" family background guarantees the child will turn out to be good: while Ron and Hermione certainly turned out okay, Draco Malfoy and Dudley Dursley are both rather nasty creatures, at least until they redeem themselves, at least partially, in the seventh book.

Also of interest to me is the fact that, aside from the Weasleys and the Dumbledores, every family we see in the Potter novels has only one or two children. Harry is the only child of James and Lily. Neville is his parents' only offspring. Hermione, Hagrid, Tom Riddle and Draco are "only" children too. Sirius has a brother but left him when he moved to live with the Potters. And Dudley is an only child, but for the presence of his cousin, Harry, in his home.

And it's interesting that J.K. seems to present the Weasleys (the one really "big" family) as the ideal family: close, loving, supportive. Percy's decision to abandon his family is shocking and it seems almost inevitable, in the context of these books, that he will be reconciled with them before the end. And he is.

What does this mean? I'm not sure. I'll have to think about it. But it's interesting. And it's something I'll be thinking (and writing) about more in the future. Add it to the list.

What's Mrs. Figg doing in a raincoat?

I think there's a continuity error at the start of the film version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Think about the opening sequences of that movie. It's a brutally hot, sunny day and Harry encounters Dudley and his gang in a local playground. A terrible storm suddenly develops, bringing howling winds, pouring rain and finally Dementors, which attack Harry and his cousin in the underpass leading from the playground back to their neighbourhood. It's a sudden, freak storm that no one could anticipate. So sudden and so freaky that Dudley automatically thinks Harry has created it.

Harry fights off the Dementors and, in a key plot point, old Mrs. Figg appears at the end of the tunnel in a rain coat, umbrella in hand, to help Harry home.

Are you with me?

We've got a sudden, freak storm on a broiling hot, sunny day. Yet somehow Mrs. Figg is dressed for rain when she arrives. Strange, isn't it? And I don't think you could argue she saw the storm brewing, put on her raincoat, then walked all the way to the underpass in the time available. She's too old and slow and the storm and attack both happened too quickly.

I think the filmmakers blew it.

Please note, in the book, Mrs. Figg arrives panting and in her slippers. One of her cats warned her that Harry was out and that Mundungus Fletcher had abandoned his guard duty. She immediately set off to find him and was as caught off guard by the storm and Dementor attack as Harry was.