Augurey or loosing of sanity
Wed 28 August 2019
(my comments on “The Augurey” by La Matrona, originally published on Reddit)
What is my pet-peeve is when the characters behave like idiots just to keep the plot together. Let’s see. I have just deleted “The Augurey” from my computer.
First of all, just let me state, I have nothing serious against Harmony. I probably prefer Hinny, just because I don’t feel like going against canon when not necessary, and because Northumbrian and “Inner Demons by serendipity_50” have shown me it can be done well, but otherwise it doesn’t bother me. For example, “Escape by SingularOddities” is a rather decent story (I wrote a review of it). So, it is not that.
SPOILERS AHEAD, so please skip if it bothers you (and it doesn’t make sense to mark everything as a spoiler, not much will make sense without them).
It is not even the original premise of the story. The Trio while still hiding in the Grimmauld Place finds out through the Family Black Tree wallpaper (finally somebody found some good use for it!) that Delphini happened (after all, Bellatrix was Black originally). Harry, having a soft heart for orphans, finds her after the war (completely neglected and abused), saves her and brings her as his own. I have never heard about it before, and it could lead to a nice story. So, it is not the basic plot either.
What bothers me, is how it is done. Harry for reasons nobody ever explained (and which don’t make sense either) decides to hide his wish to look for Delphini from everybody (including and especially from Ginny; it looks like the only reason is to make a tension between them, which could lead to their break up). Then he asks (only!) Hermione for help, and finally he breaks in in the middle of night to the house where Delphini lives hidden, takes her away, and presumably kills her neglectful foster mother (he “takes care of her” in rage after finding out how horribly Delphini was neglected). Then he brings her to the Grimmauld Place, where Hermione finds a book on the paediatric care and cures her. So, to summarize, Harry (who still planned to be an officer of the law at that point) just committed completely useless breaking and entering, abduction of a baby, murder, and non-reporting of crime, and I wonder whether not-bringing her to St. Mungo for professional help does not constitute a criminal neglect as well. What’s Hermione’s reaction? She doesn’t report him to the law officers, but she gushes about his big heart and how great a man he is. Sorry, I thrown the story away in that moment, so I don’t know how it continued.
There are zillion other things he can do (even if the existence of Delphini should stay hidden from the wizarding world), just to mention the first idea which came to my mind, he can ask for help his buddy The Minister for Magic, there is zero reasons to keep this whole thing hidden from Ginny and other Weasleys.
There are many decent ways how to break up with your girlfriend decently, and there are many possible reasons which could be found. I can happily imagine that after Ginny haven’t heard about him for a year fallen apart for the biggest hero of them all, Neville. I can imagine Hermioine deciding that after all her affection towards Ron was more curiosity or wish to have her first crush completed than true love (no, Hermione not forgetting Ron his leave after being cursed by the locket makes as much sense as anybody accusing Ginny of bringing the basilisk to the castle, i.e. none at all). So, I believe even post-War Harmony can be written in a reasonable manner (I tried to make a suggested talk between Hermione and Ron in “Late Morning Talks” to show how I would do it). However, the author was lazy and he just wanted to to get to the Harmony cooing over small baby as easily as possible, so he went straight ahead. Grrr.
Category: faith Tagged: review harryPotter blogComment