Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter/Books/Deathly Hallows/Chapter 14
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Chapter 14 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: The Thief
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[edit] Synopsis
Harry, Ron, and Hermione find themselves lying on the ground in a forest. At first, Harry thinks it is the Forbidden Forest at Hogwarts but quickly realizes the trees are too young. Ron's shoulder has been badly Splinched while Disapparating. Hermione has Harry summon the Essence of Dittany from her bag and partially heals Ron's injury with it, although he remains faint from shock and blood loss. Hermione Disapparated them from Grimmauld Place because Yaxley grabbed her when they Apparated to Grimmauld Place. When Yaxley slackened his grip, Hermione jinxed him, broke free, and then Apparated them all to the forest where the Quidditch World Cup was held three years previously. It is unlikely they can return to Grimmauld Place. As Hermione has been a Secret Keeper since Dumbledore's death and led Yaxley to Grimmauld Place, it is probably now known to him. Harry blames only himself for losing their hiding place, having wasted precious time to retrieve Moody's magical eye from Umbridge's office door.
Remembering that Death Eaters previously found them moments after Hermione Disapparated them to a familiar place, Harry and Ron debate whether they should stay or move on, but Ron is too weak to travel and Harry decides they will stay put. As Hermione casts the protective spells, Harry summons the tent from her bag, recognizing it as one they used at the Quidditch World Cup. When Hermione starts to speak Voldemort's name, Ron halts her, saying it feels jinxed, and requests that Harry and Hermione refrain from using it. Hermione apparently chooses not to argue with an injured Ron.
Hermione retrieves the egg-sized Locket, which bears the initial "S" inset in small green stones on its cover. Harry determines it must be opened before it can be destroyed, but it is tightly shut. Ron detects a small heartbeat within, but Harry and Hermione are uncertain if they hear anything. To keep it safe until it can be destroyed, Harry places it around his neck. He and Hermione then prepare to stand guard using Harry's Sneakoscope.
Standing watch alone that night, Harry starts having awful thoughts. Rather than feeling elated over finding the Locket Horcrux, Harry feels lost, unsure how to proceed, and clueless as to how to destroy the Horcrux. Though worried about Kreacher's safety, Hermione and Harry had decided against summoning him, fearing a Death Eater may come by side-along apparation. And his scar is hurting again.
Suddenly, Harry is inside Voldemort's mind again and sees a man with a snowy white beard suspended upside down. Voldemort, addressing the man as Gregorovitch, demands something that Gregorovitch claims was stolen from him long ago. Voldemort enters Gregorovitch's memories and sees a tall, blond man who Stuns him and, laughing, exits through the window. When Voldemort kills Gregorovitch, Harry returns to himself. Hermione dismisses the notion that he was reading Voldemort's mind and insists on taking over the watch, claiming Harry is too tired. Inside the tent, where Hermione is unable to hear, Ron asks Harry what Voldemort was doing, and wonders how Gregorovitch can make a new wand for Voldemort if he is tied up. Harry relates Gregorovitch's memory about someone who stole something small from him, and thinks he has seen the man before. Ron asks if Voldemort might be trying to make another Horcrux, but based on Hermione's research, Harry thinks Voldemort's soul may be too shredded to allow that. Harry falls asleep wondering about the blond thief. With Gregorovitch gone, whoever he is, his life is in danger now.
[edit] Analysis
Harry's using magic to Summon the dittany from Hermione's bag is partly a demonstration. When the Trio fled the wedding to Tottenham Court Road, the two Death Eaters found them immediately, although Harry did not cast any magic before the Death Eaters arrived. Since then, all the magic that Harry had performed was while he was at Grimmauld Place or within the Ministry of Magic, two locations where it would be undetectable. This was the first time that he performed magic in the open. If Harry still carried the Ministry's Trace that detects underage magic, as he suspected he was, this first unprotected use of magic would have brought Death Eaters, but it did not. Therefore, there must have been some other mechanism that allowed the Death Eaters to find him.
Once again, the Trio was reluctant to inflict harm on an enemy, even under combat conditions. Other Order of the Phoenix members probably would have killed Yaxley, who Hermione believes has now become a Secret Keeper and can expose Grimmauld Place's location to Voldemort. Hermione instead opted to Disapparate the Trio to the countryside, sacrificing their hiding place rather than take a life. Apart from killing Yaxley, Hermione presumably also had the option of incapacitating him and then working a Memory Charm on him, though Hermione may be aware that Memory Charms do not seem to work well when Voldemort counters them. Hermione was responding to a chaotic and dangerous situation, however, and it may have prevented her from thinking rationally enough to consider all other options.
Hermione's reacting incorrectly under stress is seen again here. While it is almost certainly true that Yaxley is now privy to Number 12, Grimmauld Place's location, this does not automatically make him a Secret Keeper. Hermione may be over-generalizing from her own experience. It is true that having been privy to the secret, Hermione has become a Secret-Keeper herself, but that happened only because Dumbledore, the original Secret-Keeper, had died. For Yaxley to become a Secret-Keeper for the house's location at Grimmauld Place, it would be necessary for the person who revealed that secret to him to die. So long as Hermione remains alive, Yaxley can enter the house, but he is unable to reveal where it is to any other person. Snape remains far more threatening, as he is a Secret Keeper and so can freely divulge Grimmauld Place's location. The one factor that increases the risk is that Yaxley now knows that three Order members were still resident at Grimmauld Place, which might inspire Snape to reveal that secret, or cause Voldemort to require Snape to reveal it. Just why Snape has not entered the house, or shared this information with other Death Eaters so they could enter, is puzzling.
Until now, Dumbledore's quest has mainly tested the Trio's intellectual and magical prowess rather than their physical abilities. Forced to leave their cozy hiding place, they must now endure the harsh environment while on the run, coping with cold winter weather, limited food supplies, and being cut off from their allies, who, until now, at least knew their location. Losing their headquarters is a huge blow to the mission, but fortunately, Hermione was well prepared for this eventuality and has stored everything they need inside her bag. However, despite Hermione providing them with a snug tent containing a kitchen, bunks, and other necessities, it hardly compares to Grimmauld Place's amenities and Kreacher's attentive care. The hardship causes the Trio's morale to plunge to an all-time low, but for Ron, used to three hot meals a day and comfortable living conditions, it proves especially difficult. But they may have needed just such an incentive to force them into leaving Grimmauld Place and search more aggressively for the other Horcruxes, rather than sequestering themselves in an endless attempt to hypothesize what and where they might be.
While Ron may be less suited for the quest than Harry and Hermione, having grown up in the Wizarding world, he can contribute in ways they are unable to. His ability to detect a "heartbeat" within the Locket while Harry and Hermione cannot may indicate that he has far more magical ability then he ever realized. He will also become more adversely affected by close physical contact with the Locket Horcrux than the other two, although it is having an immediate effect on Harry when he first wears it. These emerging traits and this stage of the quest's hardships could be a major turning point in Ron's maturation and magical development.
Knowing that Voldemort is searching for Gregorovitch, a wandmaker, it initially seems apparent that Voldemort wants a new wand or is looking for an explanation as to why Harry's wand always defeats his own. No matter what wand Voldemort wields, Harry's wand seems impervious. If Voldemort only wanted a new wand, presumably he would have Gregorovitch make him one, with the expectation that a wand made by a different artisan would be protected from the same fate as the other wands he used on Harry. As was seen with Mr. Ollivander, Voldemort's persuasion techniques tend to leave an artisan in a rather unsuitable state to perform fine craftsmanship. However, having found Gregorovitch, Voldemort asks him about something he is thought to have once owned. Although Gregorovitch claims he never possessed it, Voldemort sees in his memory that someone stole it from him, although it is unknown what that object was or who the thief might be. As Voldemort then murders Gregorovitch, it seems our assumption about Voldemort wanting a new wand is incorrect. What then, is Voldemort seeking?
[edit] Questions
[edit] Review
- What does Ron mean when he says Voldemort's name feels like a jinx? Why do the others respect his request not to say it?
- Why is Ron able to detect a "heartbeat" within the Locket, while the other two cannot?
- Why did Voldemort capture Gregorovitch?
[edit] Extra Study
- Why does Harry have awful thoughts while he is taking the watch?
- Who might the blond thief be?
- Considering the mental connection that exists between Harry and Voldemort, why does Hermione dismiss the notion that Harry is reading Voldemort's mind?
- How might losing their comfortable hiding place actually help the Trio's search for the Horcruxes?
[edit] Greater Picture
Ron's instinct that Voldemort's name feels "jinxed" will prove to be more than mere superstition on his part. It is learned later that Voldemort's name is tabooed; anyone speaking it immediately alerts Death Eaters and Snatchers, Voldemort's bounty hunters, to their location. Voldemort knows that unlike most other wizards, Order of the Phoenix members in general, and Harry in particular, do not fear speaking his name, thus making it easy to locate him. This is yet another example of Harry's predictable behavior often being used against him, just as when he revealed his presence by executing what has become his signature spell, during the attack while leaving the Dursley house.
Although Harry's presence remained undetected when he uttered Voldemort's name inside Grimmauld Place, speaking it may have broken some protective charms on the building. We do not know why it did not seem to; possibly it was the age of the protective spells, or that the protective spells were cast by a Dark wizard that prevented it from breaking. Additionally, the fact that Grimmauld Place is unplottable may make it impossible to determine exactly where Harry is. It is possible that the magically-enforced taboo caused Harry to experience another painful session inside Voldemort's mind immediately after he spoke his name. Ron's twitchiness about Voldemort's name has resulted in it being largely unspoken to date, and that continues through this chapter and several more.
The object Voldemort seeks is the Elder Wand, one of the three titular Deathly Hallows. Voldemort, raised in a Muggle orphanage, has never heard of the Deathly Hallows; he knew nothing about the Resurrection Stone when he made Gaunt's ring into a Horcrux, and he has never searched for Death's Invisibility Cloak. The Elder Wand, however, has its own history apart from the Hallows, and that attracted Voldemort's attention. It is because he believed that Voldemort was ignorant about the Hallows' significance that Dumbledore never tasked Harry with recovering them, though he knew where they all were. Dumbledore believed that the Horcruxes were the greater danger.
It will be revealed later that the young blond thief is the evil wizard Grindelwald, who Dumbledore defeated in a duel and captured the Elder Wand from.
