Book: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Page: 928
Which is: Dumbledore just explained a lot of stuff, including why he’s ignored Harry all year
Lead: 782
Time Spent: 54.28 hours
Movie Target: Read the last chapter
Pages Remaining: 796 (80% complete)
Estimated Completion: Sun 15th July
Favourite Character: Harry
Cool Moment: The fight scenes in the Department of Mysteries
Random Quote: don’t you think you’ve got a bit of a – a – saving-people thing?
Movie’s tonight so very excited. I have one chapter left – which I’ll start in a few minutes and finish on the train in tonight.
So the two related questions are: Does Harry have a saving-people thing? and Is Dumbledore a complete idiot/git?
On first reading this I was a bit taken aback by Hermione’s comment. Mostly ‘cos it comes from Hermione. That Harry’s being rash, not thinking about the possibility of a trap, acting more on emotion than reason is fair enough. That he has a messiah complex is an odd complaint. Harry normally detests anything that makes him different, he just wants to be a normal boy (much like Buffy in that respect). Hermione’s normally more shrewd than that. There are lots of valid criticisms of Harry’s behaviour but having a “saving-people thing” jars – and not just in the clumsy language.
Dumbledore’s behaviour on the other hand is more understandable but almost as unsatisfying. The explanation he gives for not wanting to interact much with Harry or for not telling him more about the Prophecy make sense, and from a writing point of view they allow Rowling to have the “no-one understands me” teenage thing going – but it’s just so frustrating. Also, why didn’t the Order of the Phoenix simply destroy the prophecy once they knew that’s what Voldemort was after. They knew the exact contents of it after all. They had people in the Ministry. These are things that seem to exist largely to create the story – which of course is always true – but when it’s so apparent the story suffers.