Who was the infant in the scene with Harry and Dumbledore, part of Voldemort’s soul?
How did the sword return from the Goblin to one of the students?
Umbridge is an over-the-top depiction of the classic power hungry office type. I see her as not exactly for anyone or thing but herself. She didn’t need to be a death eater. She was aiding the cause of Voledemort far better being herself than she ever would have under imperious.
While she may not have been in on the hunt for Harry, she certainly expected to get a chance to work him over again.
On a side note, its amazing how fast the ministry seemed to forget about Voldemort and focus on the order of the phoenix members. He just sort of faded into the background. I would find it unbelievable how the bureaucracy could so throughly ignore the big threat to chase after short-term gratification if I hadn’t worked at a place like that.
Yes, the screaming flayed child thingy was the maimed and torn eighth of Voldemort’s soul that got stuck on Harry the night V accidentally AKO’d himself. I guess it was to illustrate how much Voldemort ripped his soul apart in his quest for immortality, and that if he ever died, he’d enter the afterlife in terribly agony. I may be wrong, but Voldemort would end up with two (separate?) eights of his soul, or one fourth in total? This is assuming that the pieces of soul in the horcruxes are completely destroyed when the horcrux is.
The sword can be called through the Sorting Hat to aid any “true Gryffindor” who is in need of it. Harry did it in Book Two. I also like the fact that the only two people we ever see pulling the sword out of the hat are the two referenced by the prophecy.
“You will not win, Voldemart, because you do not understand love!” declared Harry.
“You will lose, boy,” retorted the evil Wizard, “because Evil is Cool and Good is Dumb!”
“Ah, fuck it.” muttered Draco Malfoy. He drew his Luger wand from his robes, “si vis pacem, para bellum!” and blew Harry through the wall.
Ah, thanks!
It’s the death of an innocent. Dobby was very child-like, beginning to end. When Sirius, or Dumbledore, or even Fred are killed, it’s bittersweet–you’ll miss them, but they died fighting for something they believed in, and were willing to risk their life for. Dobby just does what he’s told, or what he thinks his idol, Harry, needs; and I don’t think it ever occurred to him that that could get him killed, until he looked down and saw the knife sticking out of his chest–if even then.
But Dobby was like that as well…he risked his life (both in book 2 when he went against his masters the Malfoys, and now in book 7) to save Harry because Harry was the only hope of vanquishing Voldemort. Dobby also fought for what he believed in.
What got to me about Dobby’s death was the epitaph Harry carved for him.
Good book, but…
WHY THE HELL DID WE NOT SEE DOLORES UMBRIDGE GET A LONG, PROTRACTED, NASTY, HORRIFIC COMEUPPANCE?!
*Edit: I liked Voldemort’s death, don’t get me wrong. But I kinda wanted to see him meet a distinctly unmagical end. Like somebody stabbing him in the gut with a carving knife. Betcha didn’t see THAT one coming, Dark Lord!
Because that type of evil persists, and will always be there? It wouldn’t surprise me if Umbridge was still working for the Ministry…
Ogre:
And this would have fit into the Harry vs Voldemort plot how, exactly? As it is, it’s a pretty wild coincidence that it was she who had the Horcrux locket (and she got stupefied for it). But to linger overlong on what would have been pretty much a petty personal revenge, much as I think she deserved such a thing (idea: replace all the quills in her desk drawer with the type of quill she made Harry use for his “I must not tell lies” punishment) would have totally been outside the path that the book’s plot follows. As meandering as it sometimes seemed, by the end of the book, pretty much every chapter contained building blocks that led to the conclusion.
I believe in one of the upthread linked JKR interviews she mentions Umbridge being discredited due to her actions in Voldemort’s Ministry and was sentenced to time in Azkaban.
The fact is, bitch though she was, she wasn’t important enough to dwell on, and while it would have been immensely satisfying to the reader, it would have been petty personal revenge to spend time on it, as already remarked by cmkeller.
Though I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been shouting “I hope you get a concussion, bitch!” when Harry stupefied her head into that desk.
Actually, JK Rowling addressed this question in her online chat with fans.
Read from the bottom up
If you don’t want to read the link, Rowling says Umbridge ends up in Azkaban for her crimes. The Ministry of Magic under Kingsley Shacklebolt goes under a lot of reforms.
This is what I would done in the last chapter:
“Hey Harry, hear that Umbridge was denied parole again?”
“Good - I still don’t have any sympathy for her. After all, Azkaban isn’t that bad now that the dementors are gone.”
“Yeah, now that the centaurs are running the place, it’s actually kind of pleasant.”
Ummm, because the entire series is one meandering subplot after another, and it’s damn sloppy to address these things on a friggin’ website, and not, y’know, the book?
I was kinda hoping for a “dodge this” moment like with Trinity and Agent Smith in The Matrix.
Lugers, carving knives, Wizards…
‘There’s one more trick mom taught me that she didn’t teach you.’ [Blam!] ‘The old Luger-up-the-sleeve trick.’
Does anyone know why I recieved the above post in my email seven times?
-FrL-
Good observation - I hadn’t made that connection (Harry/Neville being the 7.31 kids and the ones who got the sword from the hat).
Does anyone recall whether the sword’s whereabouts were known, before Harry retrieved it the first time? I recall in a later book the note that it was hanging in Dumbledore’s office, but no clue if it was there before the CoS scene.
One for each extracorporeal fragment of Voldemort’s soul, of course.
Either that, or the SDMB emailer glitched. I often get dupes of that sort of thing.
I wondered if the Sorting Hat trick could potentially have worked for any of the House relics, so that Harry could have gotten the Hat, and a volunteer of each appropriate House, and gotten his hands on the Ravenclaw Diadem and the Hufflepuff Cup without all the trouble of outrunning fiendfyre and busting into (and out of) Gringott’s.