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Deathly Hallows: The Reread (Chapters 9 and 10)
WARNING: Since this is a collection of comments from my rereading the book, expect there to be many spoilers in the sections on early chapters for developments that come in later ones; there is really no other way to discuss foreshadowing or the "real" purpose of something that occurs early on and is explained later. Do not read if you are still going through the book for the first time and do NOT want spoilers.

Chapters One and Two
Chapters Three and Four
Chapters Five and Six
Chapters Seven and Eight


Chapter Nine: A Place to Hide

It's rather amusing that Hermione's beaded handbag=Mary Poppins's carpet bag. (She could probably get a cot and a coatrack in there, too). One has to wonder if, in theory, one could hide entire people (or families!) in there.

Rowling is subtle about having men on Tottenham Court Road wolf-whistling at Hermione; just as Muriel talking about Ginny's gown being too low cut and Viktor showing an interest in Ginny (besides the references to her looks in the previous book) is supposed to tell us that she is pretty, the wolf-whistles from perfect strangers should tell us that Hermione is quite attractive as well.

Hermione saying, "Voldemort's taken over the Ministry," causes the Death Eaters to be able to find them in the café, since Hermione has stopped saying "You Know Who". (In retrospect, it might have been better if they'd all done as Dumbledore and called him "Tom". In fact, I'm a wee bit disappointed that Harry didn't call him "Tom" during the final confrontation.) [CORRECTION: He calls Voldemort "Tom Riddle" at one point near the end. I haven't reread that far yet. Too bad Harry wasn't referring to him this way sooner!]

Harry's arguments about why they should go to Grimmauld Place--Snape's only one Death Eater--isn't any more logical than Moody's theory that they only needed anti-Snape jinxes in the house; as one of the many Secret Keepers, Snape could very well tell Voldemort and every single Death Eater (if he weren't really Dumbledore's man, that is :D) the secret, and probably should have done so if Voldemort was going to continue to trust him. In HBP, he told Bellatrix only that he was NOT the Secret Keeper; he didn't say who WAS; still, this should prompt Voldemort who ask him the identity of the Secret Keeper, since, having been told the Secret, Snape would probably know. It's possible that a note like the one Harry read from Dumbledore in OotP could be anonymous and still work, so that members of the Order could be told the secret but not the identity of the Secret Keeper, I suppose. That had better be the case or Voldemort's oversight here can't be blamed on his not worrying about things he thinks are beneath him or even the standard-issue Evil Overlord denseness.

The problem with Harry's "logic" and Hermione's reaction to it is that THEY DON'T KNOW that Snape is likely to do everything in his power to avoid telling the secret, yet it's said that Hermione "couldn't argue" with Harry, even though his logic was rather flawed. On top of that, even for people who aren't Snape, those jinxes are fairly tame and easily overcome, involving only some temporary physical discomfort and a rather bad approximation of a ghost.

Harry is unable to hide from Hermione that he is still connected to Voldemort when his pain at Voldemort's anger makes him react visibly. Hermione still doesn't get that Harry not only cannot slice up his brain to perform Occlumency, as that would be contrary to his being a whole, integrated person, but he should not even try; Voldemort is the one revealing himself to Harry and that is to Harry's advantage.

There's a further rather sweet development of Ron and Hermione's relationship when Mr. Weasley's Patronus shows up at the house to tell them that the family is safe; Ron's relief results in Hermione sitting on the sofa with him, gripping his arm, followed by Ron laughing and hugging her. Right after this we get another confirmation of Harry's ties to the Weasleys; after telling Ron, "I'd feel the same way," he thinks of Ginny and amends this to, "I do feel the same way."

Then, when Harry is feeling the pain in his scar worse than ever, we get confirmation that Voldemort is incensed because the Death Eaters at the café failed to capture Harry. More disturbing, though, is that he orders Draco to do something to the Death Eaters who failed; this is unlikely to be anything less than the Cruciatus Curse, and Harry sees for himself, through Voldemort's eyes, "a terrified, pointed white face," and even after he is able to fully return to his body, "Malfoy's gaunt, petrified face seemed branded on the inside of his eyes." Harry is sickened by what he has seen, by the use to which Draco is now being put by Voldemort.


Chapter Ten: Kreacher's Tale

Ron and Hermione possibly falling asleep holding hands is rather cute, and this making Harry feel strangely lonely shows yet again how much he's missing Ginny.

Harry's exploration of Sirius's bedroom is interesting, from the Gryffindor banners to the pictures of motorcycles and girls in bikinis. Most poignant, though, is the photo of the Marauders, since by the end of the book all four will be dead, and all--including Peter--from being on Harry's side. The perfection of her choosing the William Penn quote is again evident.

When Harry finds the first page of Lily's letter to Sirius we learn that Sirius actually gave Harry his very first broom, when he was only a one-year-old, and that he almost killed the cat while riding it, as well as smashing a "horrible vase" Petunia had sent for Christmas. Apart from the issue of Petunia's taste in knick-knacks, it's interesting that when Harry comes to live with the Dursleys we are told that Petunia has not spoken to her sister in "years", yet as recently as the year Harry was born Petunia bothered to send her sister a Christmas gift, one that shows a little more thought (Petunia probably thought it was beautiful) than the coat hanger and old socks that Harry got for his tenth birthday.

It's also interesting that when Peter visited James and Lily she thought he seemed "down"; according to this, Peter didn't seem to delight in the prospect of betraying Lily and James, which was probably the real reason for his moodiness, not the McKinnons. (Unless it was a combination of the two--Peter contemplating that Lily and James would soon go the way of the McKinnons.)

Considering how Rowling feels about cats (and that Crookshanks no longer seems to exist in this book) it's interesting that she gave the Potters a cat, whose fate Harry wonders about. He also very rightly wonders why Dumbledore, with no need of a cloak to be invisible, had borrowed James's cloak. He comes up with the plausible idea that another member of the order needed it, however, and moves on, although he still wants to go to Godric's Hollow to talk to Bathilda Bagshot about Dumbledore.

The exchange between Harry and Hermione is swiftly followed by their finding the sign Regulus made for his bedroom door, revealing that his initials were R.A.B. (although many of us knew this months ago, due to news about the Dutch translation plus Rowling saying, "That's a good guess," about someone mentioning R.A.B. being Sirius's brother). Following on the non-evil Slytherin, Slughorn, in HBP, we get an image of Regulus as both a dedicated Slytherin AND a good person, because he not only couldn't bear to be a Death Eater but used what he learned to steal the locket Horcrux. Harry also finds out that Regulus played Seeker, something else he and Harry have in common (and something he has in common with Draco Malfoy, who was also the Slytherin Seeker!).

Hermione sheds some light on all of the annoying articles they cleaned out of the house in OotP: she proposes that the purpose of them might have been to protect the locket's hiding place. We never get confirmation of this, but it makes enormous sense!

After they remember that there was in fact a locket and that Kreacher had been retrieving a lot of things from the rubbish heap, they also get confirmation of what many readers suspected: Mundungus Fletcher stole it and probably fenced it. This is followed by something very logical and also suspected by many: that Kreacher helped Regulus steal the locket. However, first comes some unexpected info: Voldemort used Kreacher to put the locket in the cave in the first place, which is how he is able to help Regulus get it out again. Voldemort, however, once again does not think about a creature he disdains having power he does not; it evidently does not occur to him that he has not actually left Kreacher in the cave to die, that Kreacher could Apparate out of the cave and return to the Black home with no problem as soon as Regulus summons him. Hermione understands this blind spot of Voldemort's, just as Dumbledore did.

The story of what Regulus did truly marks him as a (Slytherin) hero; he drank the potion himself after Kreacher took him to the cave, had Kreacher swap the lockets, and was then killed by the Inferi. Kreacher tried to destroy the locket but repeatedly failed and punished himself each time. It seems possible that he was driven mad by his failed attempts to obey the order to destroy it; a house elf's goal in life is to obey, and he couldn't quite manage it in this case, so it sent him around the bend! However, Regulus had only forbidden him to tell anyone in the family what had happened in the cave, so he is not disobeying by telling Harry, Ron and Hermione.

Chapters 11 and 12