Plot hole?

[heidi]

At the end of HBP, why does Harry not grab a broomstick at the top of the Astronomy Tower and use it to catch snape and Draco?

Is this a post I need to edit to include my *ew, maths!* icon? Or is it just plot and her need to show what was happening in the school taking precedence?

Comments

[shocolate.livejournal.com]

Well, there was fighting at the bottom of the stairs - he couldn't let Snape and Malfoy join in against Ron and Hermione.

And, anyway, he didn't know if they were going to flee through the grounds, or through the Vanishing Cabinet - hurtling around on a broom wouldn't do him any good then, would it.

OK, he should have Accio Firebolt-ed when he got out into the grounds.

You win.

[stormwynd.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Maybe Harry was so devastated by Dumbledore's death that he wasn't thinking logically?

[narcissam.livejournal.com]

My brother developed an answer to any HP plot hole.

"Because wizards are nutters."

It works *all* the time. ;-)

[nyourdrms.livejournal.com]

There are a lot of things like this that I think you'll find if you read carefully or even not carefully. She left lots of holes. I like this one.

good eye

T

[prettyveela.livejournal.com]

That's what I was thinking too.

[ginsu.livejournal.com]

Well, I think it's fairly clear Harry has never thought logically.

For instance, if the goblet could remove the poison from the basin, there was no reason for Dumbledore to have to drink it. They could simply have scooped it out and dumped it into the lake. Harry should have pointed that out, since it was blindingly obvious; Hermione certainly would have.

That Dumbledore drank it anyway I attribute to Rowling's plot-requirement to kill him so that he could then come back in the last book.

[mahoni.livejournal.com]

Maybe because he has just gone through a succession of enormous shocks, and also he's 17 and has not yet mastered the Bruce Willis-inspired Art of Hollywood Heroism?

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

Yes.

and Yes.

[hannahmarder.livejournal.com]

I think it's typical of Harry, and indeed of most people under stress. If you stood and thought about it calmly, grabbing a broom and flying down to cut them off might seem a good option. But Harry didn't have time. He was shocked and angry and he has a tendancy to rush in at the best of times. So he goes with the natural instinctive reaction, which is to follow Snape and give chase.

Secondly, Harry didn't know exactly what Snape was planning. Flying down into the grounds to cut them off would have been a gamble, depending on the escape route they had planned. Even as he chased them, Harry wasn't sure if they were going to use the vanishing cabinet to escape through. If he flew to the grounds without following, he may have lost them altogether. There was also the risk that Snape and the other Death Eaters intended to stay within Hogwarts and fight (the resistance wasn't exactly robust). If Harry flew off, he was potentially leaving his friends to fight the Death Eaters without him.

In hindsight, using a broom would have been a good choice. But with the information Harry had at the time, and with Harry's personality and the stress of the situation, I think giving chase was a more believable reaction.

[siyahsaclikiz.livejournal.com]

I would disagree. If you can't remove the poison in any way, even by using a goblet, then there is no way to get through it - while this would be a very good thing for Voldemort, it would be a very bad thing for the plot. So the goblet would have to be able to remove it. You may remove it temporarily by using the goblet, but when you try to empty it the poison, being the magical liquid it is, won't be disposed of so easily and fly back into the basin. So you'd say, "Why not conjure up 20 goblets and take all the liquid in that way?". Well, yeah, but this is Lord Voldemort who has enchanted the poison, so he would have figured out a way to enchant it in a way unless the first portion removed is not drunk, *nothing* can touch or remove the part remaining in the basin. Dumbledore was a smart enough guy, he has made mistakes but I doubt he would have failed to see that opportunity. I agree that Harry has never really thought logically, but this point is not a plot hole to me.

[obopolsk.livejournal.com]

Maybe this is just one of those "are you a witch or not?" moments -- Harry's first instinct is to run after Malfoy and Snape, rather than to try and think up a magical solution to the problem. Or maybe he was just too angry to stop and be practical.

[ginsu.livejournal.com]

when you try to empty it the poison, being the magical liquid it is, won't be disposed of so easily and fly back into the basin

If there is any indication of this in the book, please point it out to me.

[siyahsaclikiz.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying there is any hard proof of this point, I am thinking it is something that is to be assumed. I apparently forgot to add "it is assumed". Dumbledore concludes the only thing you can do is to drink it. Now, at this point, there is nothing that affects Dumbledore's cerebral functions. He has already figured that the potion cannot be scooped up or parted. (Actually, I would categorize pouring out the potion by using the goblet as scooping up, but since I haven't fully mastered the English language I might be misunderstanding that). And drinking it seems to him the only solution. Again, Dumbledore is fully functional at this point. His mistakes in the past were not mistakes of magic. The guy knows his stuff, and if he says it is the only way, I will trust him. He is supposed to be the greatest wizard of the age, after all. Not only does he know his magic, he has great intellect. So, in conclusion, I trust him. I personally think it is OK to fill in some gaps by assuming the obvious, and to me, this is a more reasonable explanation than "Plot hole! It's a plot hole!" because to me, it is obvious. You're more than welcome to think it is a plot hole, but I will disagree with you. Each to his own.

[glassflower.livejournal.com]

It's also clear Harry doesn't think straight when under stress when, in the cave, the Inferi are closing in and he panicks, completely forgetting what DD told him to do should the Inferi get close.

[ginsu.livejournal.com]

I agree that Dumbledore deliberately drinks the poison.

What I am suggesting is that he intends to die (more subtly, that Rowling intends for him to die) because he can then come back in the last book in this dramatic way, and then explain that it was all foreshadowed with his long association with phoenixes since Book Two.

In other words, Dumbledore knew, unlike Harry, that he could dump the poison in the lake. He chose not to.

[midnitemaraud-r.livejournal.com]

Hindsight is 20/20 isn't it? In some fanfics, Harry would have flown on the broom down to the grounds, or even down the stairs after them because, well, a writer has the luxury of time. And then the readers would either exclaim "How cool!" or "OMG! What a Mary Sue thing to do!"

If you're writing James Bond (or Bruce Willis as someone mentioned above *g*), you've got options for 'coolness'. But you have to keep Harry's limitations in mind. Even he didn't think of using his broom against the dragon until fake Moody did his "leading the witness" act. Harry has moments of brilliance and insight, but they are usually clumsy in some fashion (like when he spied in the Slytherin train compartment, or even when he realized that there was something fishy about someone just happening to have a dragon egg for Hagrid in PS/SS). Why did he have to sneak into the Slytherin compartment? Why didn't he just go get Ron's pair of extendable ears and stand outside the compartment under his invisibility cloak? Wouldn't that have been safer? And smarter?

Part of the reason Harry is so endearing is because he's not (as some fanfic portray him) Super-Harry. He does the right things for the wrong reasons and does plenty of wrong things that end up being the right thing by sheer dumb luck. He's not an "outside the box" kind of thinker. (He didn't think about owling the school after he and Ron missed the train.) He acts on impulse, he's stubborn, he's young and inexperienced, he follows his heart...

Certain things that we look at as plot holes are not so much plot holes as adolescent thinking processes. Or, in the case of Dumbledore drinking the potion in the basin - it's magical logic, not Muggle logic. We have a habit (and rightfully so because of who we are) of applying Muggle thinking to magical situations and it doesn't always work that way because it's just different. We have to take a leap of imagination when we both read and write in this universe because while there are certain similarities and analogies that can be drawn, it's just not the same. Don't we treat dolphins and other intelligent animals in a similar way that wizards treat Muggles? As 'lesser' because they're not human? Yet it's okay for us to do so, because we all know that dolphins aren't nearly as intelligent as we are. [/sarcasm] And if we discovered extraterrestrial life, how would we view them? By human (Muggle) standards of course. Wizards don't condescend to Muggles out of cruelty. Right or wrong is not the issue. It's more how we think of the Amish as being "quaint".

I'm getting a bit off topic, but it all fits in with the same sort of pattern. I'm probably also giving JKR a bit too much credit, because she does make plenty of errors, with maths, with character continuity, with certain facts... Harry is an imperfect hero who makes mistakes, wizarding society is a flawed system, (just as our Muggle societies are flawed despite and even because of our ideals) and even Dumbledore is not infallible - he's not Galdalf or Merlin or Belgarath or Aslan. It's much easier to sit back after the fact and analyze what someone should have or could have done. With a book or story, you need your characters to act and react to the pressures and surprises of the situation as themselves, otherwise it comes across to the readers as false and trite. And Mary Sueish. :)[/end ramble]

[dejaspirit.livejournal.com]

Well, as much as I enjoy the books, I think it helps to remember that JKR really is a pretty mediocre writer. Great , fun, witty stories - but she's not Faulkner. I tend to ignore these things and just go with the tale, you know?

[judyserenity.livejournal.com]

Good point about the broom, Heidi. Still, I agree with those who say it isn't a plot hole -- the only time the broom would have helped is when he was already on the grounds, and so much was happening by then that he just didn't think of it.

It's interesting that JKR hasn't made Harry particularly smart or creative at magic. (Compare him to, say, Hermione, or to what we know of teenage Snape.) I think this is intentional; JKR wants Harry to be Everyman -- or rather, Everyboy -- as opposed to some Sherlock Holmes of wizarding. The idea is that it is his character, not his inborn talents, that will save the day.

Of course, if his character is going to save the day, I hope he won't be ANGRY CAPSLOCK Harry in Book 7.

As for pouring the potion on the ground, I also wondered why Dumbledore didn't try it. I think, though, that it wouldn't have worked -- Voldie would have prevented that, just as he prevented conjuring up water. I suppose JKR left out any such attempts because they would interfere with the flow of the chapter.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Did you see Jane Yolen's comments of the week? I adore her books for my boys, but I think she was overstating her own early-90s book, and perhaps utterly forgetting about Neil Gaiman at the same time.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Flying down into the grounds to cut them off would have been a gamble, depending on the escape route they had planned.

I agree with this. But I was also thinking that he could've grabbed it and carried it with him, to use if necessary. That wouldn't necessarily have changed the ending of the book - Snape could've blasted it into a thousand pieces under him - but it would have used Earth Logic, wouldn't it?

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

I suppose JKR left out any such attempts because they would interfere with the flow of the chapter.

Exactly. Same with the broom. He could have Accio-ed it any time he needed it, but it would've interfered with the flow, so he didn't need it or get it.

But I want a little of CAPSLOCK!Harry back. I thought he disapeared a little too quickly here - it's like he skipped a few phases of the grief process.

[february-sea.livejournal.com]

*bows deeply*

Exceptionally well stated. :)

[midnitemaraud-r.livejournal.com]

:) Thank you!

[jocelyncs.livejournal.com]

I just figured it was Harry being Harry and overlooking the obvious as he is wont to do when under stress (recall the oversight that led to the (SNIFFLE!) death of Sirius in OOTP?)

[stormwynd.livejournal.com]

I wormed my way around the whole "why on earth is Dumbledore _drinking_ the poison" issue by pretending that there was some sort of spell on the basin that only made the necklace appear if the poison was actually ingested rather than dumped aside.