HBP Chapter 26 re-read

September 22, 2005 by wfzimmerman | No comments

HBP Chapter 26 Re-read

The Cave

What a day for a day trip …

Riddle climbed down the shoreside cliffs by magic … not specified what spell … but we know he had early mastery of telekinesis

Dd suddenly begins swimming with the agility of a much younger man – magic?

Tolkien’s “Say ‘friend’ and enter becomes “pay blood and enter.” Advantage JRR.

Dd says “your blood is more valuable than mine.” Why exactly? Here again Dd sticks with his overall strategic appreciation that Harry Potter is the single most valuable asset available to The Good Guys™. Why? The implication seems to be that he is the best chance of defeating Voldemort. The flip side of that is rather grim, namely that without Harry, The Good Guys, even with Dd, don’t really have a chance of defeating Voldemort.

“We couldn’t just try a Summoning Charm?” Harry, once more with the mastery of “Accio.”

Dd can detect the traces of magic, even decades-old magic left by a supremely skilled wizard. Here he seems to be operating with several orders of magnitude more skill than Harry can even conceive of.

Dd doubts that Harry’s magical capacity will even register on Voldemort’s detection spell b/c the old Voldemort is underestimating the powers of the young. This even though Riddle himself was a famous child prodigy! Suggests hat Riddle’s skill has increased hugely since he left Hogwarts – where he was already proficient enough to make a Horcrux diary.

The effect of the potion that Dd drinks is terrifying … “It’s all my fault… please make it stop.” I felt like I was going to throw up first time I read this. JKR prefigures Dd’s vulnerability.

Harry is hard enough to do what Dd asks and force him to drink the potion. He is perhaps even harder than Dd.

We see the pay-off of the Inferi setups earlier in the book. Harry doesn’t have much presence of mind, but once roused Dd is more than equal to the task.

This ring of fire scene is the cover of the English book. As many of us thought when the US and UK covers were released, the English cover still looks better, and it is a better reflection of the book than the US cover. The scene on the back of the US cover, with Ginny and harry looking up together at the Dark Mark in the sky, either a) does not exist in the book or b) comes after the most exciting part of the action.

Dd: “in the end the protection was well-designed. One alone could not have done it…” In other words, given the advantages of a preset situation, V’s skill was sufficient to defeat Dd.

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