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deathly hallows uberwank

Deathly Hallows uberwank: Chapter 10, Kreacher's Tale
We open with ANGST, a common motif in this book and, indeed, in this chapter.

Harry wakes up while it's still dark (I did that the other day, having had a dream that a ghost had been in my kitchen listening to my Patrick Wolf CDs without asking) and angsts over the fact that Ron and Hermione seem to have fallen asleep holding hands, and then angsts some more over Dumbledore. There's lots of that "It was strange to think that less than 24 hours ago he'd been masturbating over Ginny's breasts without a care in the world" crap, and loads of reiteration, which even Harry seems to find boring. So he distracts himself by exploring the house by wandlight, like a junior FBI agent (if the X-files was, in fact, a realistic programme). Seriously, dude, put the lights on, it is allowed. First he looks into the room he shared with Ron, where the Phineas Nigellus portrait is empty: "Phineas Nigellus was evidentally spending the night in the Headmaster's study at Hogwarts". If what I've read on fanfiction.net is to believed, he's not the only one who does that. Dayum!

Harry finishes angsting there, and heads upstairs until he finds - Sirius's bedroom! We know it's Sirius's bedroom because it has a nameplate on the door reading Sirius. Man, that kills me. I love it. No, really, I love how Sirius Black - the guy who went to prison for twelve years for a series of murders he didn't commit, like a wizardly member of the A-Team, escaped, was killed in battle, albeit by a curtain - has a nameplate on his bedroom door. Oh, yeah, it's probably from when he was a kid and whatever, but still. If it were up to me, the nameplate would have a picture of a puppy on it.

Anyway, the room is messy and dirty, but cool, albeit oddly similar to Skeletor's (see Chapter 7). Sirius has a bunch of pictures of girls in bikinis on the walls. (Hee, nice try, JK. Sirius's heterosexuality is pastede on yay!) Harry goes through Sirius's stuff, as you do, and finds some designer underwear, some sexually explicit photographs of Remus Lupin, a limited edition Cruciatus vinyl, an empty bottle of poppers and, on the wall, a MWPP picture taken at Hogwarts. (Incidentally, the US edition has a drawing of this photograph, and it's got a full moon in the background which is kind of stupid, but maybe the moon isn't full-full, just extremely gibbous or something.) Harry grabs a handful of papers and shuffles through them and then, right there in his hand is a letter to Sirius from Lily. Harry angsts over it for absolutely ages, eventually resorting to angsting over the similarity between Lily's handwriting and his own, which I find a little cliched. The letter itself raises a few questions:

1. It was written when Harry was a year old, by which point Sirius has left home, so how did it end up in his bedroom? My best guess/fanwank is that Remus brought a bunch of Sirius' stuff back to his parents' house following Sirius' imprisonment, since he didn't want to keep any of it and was moving out of the (one-bedroom) flat they had shared anyway. Um.

2. Lily addresses Sirius as Padfoot (and Peter Pettigrew as "Wormy", which is the second worst nickname in this book, and reminds me of the sort of thing you find in badfic, up there with "Mione". Lily comes up with the worst nicknames ever), which, anyway, makes me wonder if she knew about their Animagus forms.

3. I had a third point, but, no, it's gone.

A while after this, Ron and Hermione find Harry angsting and chew him out for going "missing". Wasn't he gone for like half an hour? Harry, like a fangirl after a book release, badly wants to discuss his new theory about Dumbledore, which he duly does. This involves the tedious spelling-out of a lot of stuff most of us were probably thinking by now anyway, like stuff about Bathilda Bagshot and stuff about Godric's Hollow and stuff like that and more stuff.

They head for the stairs with a view to finding some breakfast. For such a logical girl, Hermione's assumption that there will be anything edible in the house is hardly a sound one. Actually, I say that - when I was fifteen or so my friend Hollie moved back into her dad's house in Plymouth, which had been more or less empty for years. We found a packet of Angel Delight there with a sell-by date of some eight years previously, and ate it anyway. We didn't die, so perhaps Hermione is working on the assumption that all empty houses contain packets of Angel Delight roughly a decade old. Anyway, an angelic delight of a breakfast is on the cards until Harry spots whose room is on the other side of the hall: one Regulus Arcturus Black. Geddit???!?! Harry has figured out, finally, who RAB is! The discovery comes only a few short years after everyone else in the entire world worked it out, so Harry is clearly a clever guy, and a worthy hero.

The prospect of breakfast is abandoned in favour of checking out this Regulus fellow's room. (Side question - do you pronounce Regulus with a hard or soft G?) His room isn't quite as cool as Sirius's; it's a bit too "school spirit" for my taste, with Slytherin banners everywhere like he's a cheerleader or something. He also has a Voldemort collage. I had a Jarvis Cocker one of those. There's also a picture of Regulus and his Quidditch team (a rather good name for an electro-prog goth/nu-rave band, I think. Think of the Go! Team crossed with Anathema with a touch of Peter Gabriel-era Genesis). Regulus has the traditional Black family look of "haughty", but isn't as hot as Sirius. Note that Harry is always describing men as good-looking. OK, I know he calls Ginny "beautiful" a couple of times, but he also thinks of her as resembling Fred and George. Whereas he hates Voldemort, and yet pretty much every time we hear anything about the young Tom Riddle we hear how attractive he is. Man, you can so tell these books are written by a woman. Time was I'd have used this as evidence Harry was gay, but I'm too jaded these days even to slash Harry, which is depressing.

Right after this we get a ton of "Previously on the Harry Potter Show" about lockets and caves and Death Eaters and stuff. Ron starts searching for the locket, but gets inky hands. Hermione has the genius idea of summoning the locket. Nothing happens, but it might have an enchantment on it so they search manually anyway. So what was the point? Anyway, they spend about an hour searching for this fucking locket, before remembering they had it way back in book 5 but threw it out. LAME! They look for a while longer, and the thought of that ancient dessert becomes ever more beguiling. No joy on the locket, so now Harry summons Kreacher to be interrogated. Naturally, Mundungus Fletcher took the locket. Boo! Hiss! Kreacher breaks down, confesses to having failed in his orders, and totally flips out. He starts frantically self-harming and crying; at the same time, due to the special brand of magic house-elves use, the Linkin Park song "In the end" starts playing. Harry orders Kreacher to STFU, because he does not have time to deal with this type of bullshit (the music stops with one of those comedy record scratching noises) and to explain. Exposition time!

The basic story is this:

• While Regulus was a Death Eater, Voldemort needed an elf; Regulus offered Kreacher's services.
  
• Kreacher went to the horcrux cave with Voldemort and was forced to drink the potion, so that the real horcrux could be placed there. Kreacher was abandoned there, but escaped by disapparating, since Regulus's order to return, to a house-elf, outweighed the theoretical impossibility of disapparation and/or Voldemort hadn't thought to house-elf-proof the cave. Kreacher reported back to Regulus.
  
• Some time later, Regulus asked Kreacher to take him to the cave. This time, Regulus drank the potion, and he died. Under his orders, though, Kreacher replaced the real horcrux with the fake one and escaped.
  
• Regulus had also ordered Kreacher to destroy the locket, but he was unable to do so. It stayed in the house until recently.
  

That's the bare bones of it, but it takes about a year to get through the story due to the sheer number of "Previously on the Harry Potter Show" moments, descriptions of Kreacher's appearance and the fact that he keeps bursting into tears and self-harming and that it's pitiful, bits where Hermione goes on about house-elf enslavement/magic/psychology, and a rather awkward bit where Hermione tries to hug Kreacher.

Eventually, Harry gives Kreacher a task: pls to find Mundungus Fletcher and bring him to the house kthxbai. To try and make things a bit less awkward between them, Harry also gives Kreacher Regulus's fake horcrux locket, which causes Kreacher to have a nervous breakdown/tantrum; it takes fucking ages to calm him down. And that's it.

Meh, this chapter is OK, and I liked the MWPP photo and the letter because I generally like Marauder-era backstory and things related to them. I'm very aware that if JKR wrote a backstory it would be probably quite dull and nonsensical, but because she hasn't properly, these characters still have the potential to be quite complex and interesting. Still, though, this is only OK. I can't think of anything else to say about it - whether to snark or to fangirl, it doesn't matter. And there wasn't a single opportunity to quote from Star Wars, insert a video, or throw gratuitous macros around. Meh and meh again.

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