Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Chapter Notes

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Chapter 35: Beyond the Veil

• Sooooooooooooooo… only those who the prophecy is about can retrieve it from the Department of Mysteries, but once that it is done others can steal it though? Because that is the plan here: Harry gets the prophecy and the Death Eaters steal it from him. Though one wonders why Voldemort could not steal it himself. I mean apparently there is no kind of security at the Ministry at all (or none that would stop Voldemort). Looks like an awfully complicated plan.

• “The knot in Harry’s stomach tightened. If Sirius really was not here, he had led his friends to their deaths for no reason at all …” – In the end it is not even Sirius’s death itself but the circumstances that led to it. That Harry had risked the lives of all of his friends, that they all could have died, that if it wasn’t for him Sirius would still be alive. And of course nobody blames him for what has happened, but it is a guilt he will carry with him for the rest of his life.

• “‘Did you know he’s a half-blood too?’ said Harry recklessly. Hermione gave a little moan in his ear. ‘Voldemort? Yeah, his mother was a witch but his dad was a Muggle – or has he been telling you lot he’s pure-blood?’” – They’ve all met last summer at Tom Riddle Sen.’s grave Harry, you were there. So yeah, they know. But still, Voldemort is a bit of a hypocrite, I’ll give you that.

• “‘Dumbledore never told you the reason you bear that scar was hidden in the bowels of the Department of Mysteries?’ Malfoy sneered. ‘I – what?’ said Harry. And for a moment he quite forgot his plan.” – I mean back in book 1 it pretty much was one of Harry’s first questions when he met Dumbledore, the reason why Voldemort wanted to kill him. Back then Dumbledore already knew but did not tell Harry because he thought he was too young. And Harry… kinda forgot about it. Even now his main priority is to get everyone out safe and he uses the prophecy as a reinsurance that nobody will hurt him. It is not that he doesn’t want to know, but there are more important things for him. It doesn’t bring back Harry’s parents and no matter the motive a murder is still a murder. Voldemort is all about prophecies and destinies and the right heritage (heir of Slytherin) and to become someone bigger than life. But Harry, the boy who lived, the Chosen One, couldn’t care less.

• “‘Get it himself?’ shrieked Bellatrix, over a cackle of mad laughter. ‘The Dark Lord, walk into the Ministry of Magic, when they are so sweetly ignoring his return? The Dark Lord, reveal himself to the Aurors, when at the moment they are wasting their time on my dear cousin?’” – So Voldemort is sulky that the Ministry ignores his return, that’s it? Like obviously it plays into his hands that the Ministry does not intervene, but nobody can convince me that Voldemort could have not found a way to get in the Department of Mysteries to get the prophecy himself.

• Do wizards have a liability insurance? Because Harry and the others surely need one after smashing all those prophecies. Even worse, all those prophecies are now forever lost (unlike the ones who heard them are still alive and can make another record).

• “The baby-headed Death Eater was screaming and banging into things, toppling grandfather clocks and overturning desks, bawling and confused,[…]” – The image of this Death Eater will never not be funny to me. So is he at the mental level of a baby as well? Or is he simply unable to talk and to perform spells? The whole thing is utterly fascinating to me.

• “‘– anyway, one of them grabbed Ginny’s foot, I used the Reductor Curse and blew up Pluto in his face, but …’” – Ahhh, 1996, when Pluto was still a planet. Those were the times.

• It is interesting that among their group only Harry and Neville remain left fighting the Death Eaters in the Veil Room, and are also the only ones who carry the prophecy. Both of them had the potential to become the boy the prophecy refers to, both had lost their parents because of Voldemort. They are connected in so many ways and I wonder if Harry ever told Neville that the prophecy could have been about him as well.

• “It seemed to take Sirius an age to fall: his body curved in a graceful arc as he sank backwards through the ragged veil hanging from the arch. Harry saw the look of mingled fear and surprise on his godfather’s wasted, once-handsome face as he fell through the ancient doorway and disappeared behind the veil, which fluttered for a moment as though in a high wind, then fell back into place.” – My first assumption was always that Bellatrix had killed Sirius with the Killing Curse, but there is no mention of it. Whatever curse Bellatrix used, it caused Sirius to fall through the Veil, and it was that what killed him, as the Veil seems to function as a passage to the Afterlife, and once you are there you can’t come back.