Foreshadowing the Fate of the Weasleys
Mrs. Weasley said something interesting in Chapter 19 that only tonight, made me really raise and eyebrow. As Ron is lying in the in the hospital bed, recovering from his near poisoning at the hands of god-knows-who, Mrs. Weasley turns to Harry and thanks him for saving a whole chunk of the Weasley population: Ginny, Mr. Weasley, and now Ron. At first, I thought “Oh, true point! He is responsible for the Weasley’s having a full table at Thanksgiving”, then I remembered the British don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, which lead to a moment of silence for all the Brits who don’t know the joy of gorging oneself on turkey, only to discover just how many meals one can make out of leftover poultry the next few days.
Anyhoo…
Yes, Harry has saved enough Weasleys to play a mean game of Keep Away, but this struck me as a bit of foreshadowing. If attention is going to be paid to how many Weasleys Harry has saved, logic dictates there will be a Weasley he will get killed.
Elaborating a little…
One of my friends pointed out that an argument could be made that the Wealseys only needed saving because of Harry in the first place. Whether or not this is entirely true, the point still stands that for as many times as Harry has saved his red-headed surrogate family, he has put them in danger as well.
This goes back to my original observation eons ago (yes, eons ago) that there are just too many Weasleys for all of them to make it to the end of the series. It’s still a bit premature to start guessing at who gets the ax in Book 7 (let’s finish Book 6 first), but I’m starting to adjust my original predictions. For the first time tonight, the idea that Mrs. Weasley could die crossed my mind. I’m not sure why she wasn’t on the chopping block from the get-go. I’ve been warned that no one is safe, so save for Harry, Hermione, and Ron (who I can only assume make it to the dust jacket), I should be weighing everyone’s chances for survival. But again, that’s another entry for another day. When this book is done, I’ll float my final guesses at what will happen in Book 7 – the one book I know nothing about.
I just wanted to share the observation that I think the Weasleys are in more Mortal Peril than any family clock will ever tell them.
Moving on, to touch on another interesting aspect of this chapter, Kreacher actually has a task. He has purpose! It doesn’t change the fact that he’s a twit, but there we go. Kreacher and Dobby (who I have come to like, despite initial misgivings) will be trailing Draco.
Enough angst for a Dashboard Confessional album
And a note on Draco, while we’re at it. The sixth film (which we’ve already discovered took the book more as a suggestion than anything else) focuses heavily on the little pureblood. The book does not. This only stands to reason on both counts. For the film, there is something fascinating about watching Draco’s issues. However, seeing him stare angstily into a mirror, looking more like a Twilight character and less like a respectable fictional wizard, reveals that Draco does in fact have issues to deal with. Tom Felton is a good actor and the moments are wrought with emotion, but they completely give away that Harry isn’t crazy and Draco is someone everyone should be watching carefully. From the book’s standpoint, almost the entire story focuses on Harry in what I feel we can safely say is a limited omniscient style. To jump into Draco’s angst would knock the series off its tracks through a dramatic switch in the narrative voice. In other words, it wouldn’t work.
That said, the differences between the two tellings of the story are remarkable.
This is a really fun game — composing a response, hitting backspace to wipe out the whole response, putting in a different response, hitting backspace again to wipe out the *new* response, thinking hard to figure out what can be said……
At the beginning of HBP, Dumbledore tells Harry about all the extra protections that have been put in place at the Burrow (including the screening of all owls at the Ministry, etc.), and tells him that it would be poor repayment to the Weasleys to be reckless. It is fair to say from that, IMO, that Harry is putting the Weasleys at risk. (Obviously, there’s more, but it will have to wait until later.)
I do wonder if the desire to feature Draco in the 6th movie came from a recognition of Felton’s acting talents, and/or a recognition of the popularity of (and desire to compete with?) the Twilight series.
IIRC, Steve Kloves (who wrote the screenplay for the first 3, maybe 4 movies) also wrote the screenplay for HBP, so I can’t blame the plotting on him the way I blamed the plotting of Order of the Phoenix on whichever besotted, benighted, amoral screenwriter was responsible for *that* piece of drivel. And at that point Kloves had the benefit of knowing how everything came out — Deathly Hallows was, by the time he presumably finished the screenplay, old news.
Anyway — like the point you make about the difference in perspectives between the book and the movie. Interesting.
I’m pretty set on the idea that Harry will do something reckless that will put one of the Weasleys in severe trouble, if not inadvertently result in the untimely removal of one Weasley from the wizarding world. I hope it doesn’t happen, but the books seem to be setting you up for it, or something like it.
Yes, I love having to think 3 times about ANY reply that I make in order to avoid a spoiler (but not really complaining). I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…Now I have the slightest inkling as to how J.K. Rowling felt before Deathly Hallows came out!!
Jess, after you finish the books, I think I will feel completely “unblocked”. But until then, I will just enjoy your blog entries and predictions. On a related but not relevant note: Your blog entries remind me of how I write…that is a compliment, by the way.
So, nothing really to contribute on this chapter (well, nothing I feel I can say that is not spoiler-ridden somehow), just glad you’re making headway through HBP.
Oh, one thing I have been wondering about that has no bearing on the plot: Do you think Mrs. Weasley bought her clock or made it from a kit in, say, “Witch Weekly”? She says that she doesn’t know of anyone else with a clock like hers…oh the things I could ask Ms. Rowling if I met her!!
After I’m done the books, I plan to keep this thing going until the final film is out (since the whole impetus in reading the series and writing this was to walk into the final films with some understanding of the story). So there will be plenty of time for unblocked conversation, no worries.
I’m not wanting to give away any spoilers, so I’ll just talk about your friend’s comment.
Ginny was not put in danger because of Harry. She was put in danger because Lucius Malfoy wanted to discredit Arthur Weasley. This is an old feud between two purebloods resulting from Malfoy’s commitment to the pureblood ideology. It would probably have happened even if Harry had never met the Weasleys.
Ron is an indirect victim of a plot that doesn’t really involve Harry. Harry just happens to be present when Ron is poisoned.
Arthur is the only one who was injured because of something directly related to Harry.
So your friend has a point, in that the Weasleys put themselves in the line of fire an awful lot because of Harry. But so far, only one Weasley has been harmed as a result of being in the line of fire.
But of course, more Weasleys may be harmed in the future. I have my eyes fully on the Weasleys. Their numbers are too big for all of them to come out unharmed.
The question then being, will whatever befalls the Weasleys be the result of Harry or the result of Voldemort’s inevitable rise?
As to your question — I think it fair to say that Harry’s and Voldemort’s fates are inextricably intertwined.
I was just confining my comment to the Weasley injuries already mentioned – not confirming or denying possible future Weasley injuries.
Commenting is a bit trickier for those of us who know where the story is heading.
I’m just enjoying watching your process.
Dude I love Mrs. Weasley. That is all.
Don’t worry, we have turkey at Christmas instead!
LOL. Now imagine doing that twice, a month apart!
Hi!
I realise that I’m a whole year and a half late, but I’ve only just discovered your blog (the best time in the world for me to find it as am currently sitting A-levels XD) and would like to say two things:
1) I love this blog, it’s hilarious
2) True, we don’t have Thanksgiving, but we do eat a hell of a lot of turkey at Christmas, the remains of which tend to be recycled in a number of unmentionable curries for about a month.
I’m so glad you like the blog! This whole thing has been so much fun, part because I fell in love with Harry Potter against my will, but mostly because of everyone who read and commented along.
I can only imagine Christmas Turkey has many revivals throughout the rest of December and early January – at least that’s what happens with our Christmas pasta. You’d be surprised how many things go with pasta!