(Anise's Note: Yep, here it is... more great thoughts from Creamtea, with notes by me! And stay tuned for a special preview of my upcoming LP Theory Addendum Essay.)

HARRY POTTER AND THE HERMIONE GRANGER ANGER-MANAGEMENT PROGRAMME

This should be read as a follow-on companion work to the Love Potion essay. Page references are given in brackets and taken from the Bloomsbury standard version.

One of the problems I have as a reader with both OoTP and HBP is that such long gaps separate the publication of each from their predecessor (about two years in each case), hence I’ve not instinctively read the events of HBP as following mere weeks after the end of OoTP. However, I think that it helps us understand HBP more clearly if we do connect it directly to the events at the end of OoTP. When I do that, I can see a prolonged pattern of behaviour in OoTP which gives Hermione further major motivation for potioning Harry in HBP.

SUMMARY

This essay offers both a further motivation for Hermione love potioning Harry, and also an explanation for something which has puzzled many fans: why Harry does such little ostensible grieving or even recalling of Sirius, especially given how devastated Harry was by Sirius’s death at the end of OoTP. Harry does grieve in HBP, but it is in a stop-start way (mostly stop); I believe that Harry’s grief and closure-recall of Sirius is curtailed and stunted because Hermione uses potions to divert Harry’s emotional attention away from Sirius’s death and ‘miserable thoughts’, and onto what she hopes will be happy, anger-free, sunlit days with an obliging girlfriend. Why? – because Harry’s angry emotional state in OoTP nearly got himself and his friends killed in the DoM, and was a tipping factor in getting Sirius killed. Hermione sidelines SPEW in HBP because her imperative project is keeping Harry ‘emotionally stable’ (as she sees it), and to deflect him away from what she fears would be a titanic, destabilizing grief for Sirius (particularly as the logical Hermione knows that Harry was partly responsible for Sirius’ death). She feels she must do this for all their sakes – including for the sake of Harry himself. (Anise’s Note: Once again, this helps to explain why Hermione dropped SPEW completely in HBP, which is otherwise a remarkably inexplicable fact.)

This theory also offers a solution to the question posed by JKR’s claim that she had to kill Sirius. The fanbase has been focusing on finding a narrative reason as to why it had to happen, and there very well may be a future narrative reason why, but that would not alter the fact that there might also be an underlying structural reason why. Under this theory, and the closely associated Love Potion theory, Sirius had to die for the structural reason that his death would cause Hermione to predict a wave of grief for Harry. This wave (on the evidence of Harry’s CAPSLOCK behaviour in OoTP) is something Hermione feels it is imperative to deflect/defuse. She chooses the methodology of Love Potioning Harry to get his attention on a girl and off grief. When her actions come out in Book 7, as I believe they must, the consequences will drive a lot of the narrative of Book 7 (see my essay on Love Triangles). Hence Sirius had to die, as his death was the psychological pivot around which the remainder of the plot swung.

HARRY AND HERMIONE IN OoTP – SCARED OF CAPSLOCK HARRY

This section is dedicated to underpinning Hermione’s motivation; it will be a short section as I don’t think much needs to be said: Harry was snappish, aggressive and dismissive with Hermione throughout OoTP, and Hermione grew afraid of him and grew stressed when expressing contrary opinions toward him because of his aggressive reactions to such. She cannot curb or reason with Harry, and he nearly gets them all killed. She is thus motivated by a concern for the group, and by the fact that she cannot take another year of being yelled at by Harry, to ‘control’ Harry.
In OoTP in dealing with Harry, Hermione uses the tools which have served her well throughout the previous four school years: rationale, logic and a certain brook no objection schoolmarm attitude; with such, she attempts to control Harry’s temper in OoTP but she finds she can’t as the tools no longer work. Harry does not back down to her. Instead, in the face of her objections to his onrush of half-thought-through urges and reactions, he simply turns up the volume and browbeats her into submission. As evidence I will restrict myself to analyzing Harry’s CAPSLOCK arrival at 12 Grimmauld Place and his equally CAPSLOCK insistence that they pursue Sirius to the DoM in the face of Hermione’s sensible objections. The former is the first meeting of Harry and Hermione in the book, and the latter is toward the end. From comparing the two scenes we can see that their reactions toward each other did not improve throughout the book: Hermione never learned to accommodate to, or to handle, Harry’s temper.

At Grimmauld Place he notices upon Hermione’s hands the ‘marks of Hedwig’s beak and found that he was not sorry at all’. (62) He carries right on going in the same vein: short and attacking. In response to his attacks Hermione is ‘anxious’ (63), ‘on the verge of tears’ (64), ‘desperately’ (64), ‘sparkling with tears’ (64), she is appeasing, providing information quickly in an effort to appease his temper (65), she ‘winced’ (65), responded ‘nervously’(65), she is hasty to get information out to forestall his shouting. Harry is equally short with Ron in this scene, who is admittedly as shocked as Hermione by Harry’s behaviour, but that is not the point, the point is how Hermione and Ron differently react to Harry’s behaviour as the book progresses. I think that Ron reacts true to his nature as Hermione reacts true to hers: Ron learns to ride the wave, not generally seeking to corale, control or correct Harry in his outbursts; Hermione seeks to do just that. I think the scene of Harry’s insistence that they pursue Sirius to the DoM shows this, and shows that Hermione’s efforts to control Harry have simply resulted in his increasing aggression toward her, and her increasing trepidation toward him.

In the Chapter 32, Out Of The Fire, page 645 sees Harry informing both Ron and Hermione of his vision/dream that Voldemort is torturing Sirius in the DoM, and that they, mere schoolchildren, must immediately go there to save him. Ron objects ‘weakly’ (645), indeed he comes to see it from Harry’s POV and starts to provide reasons as to why, logically, Voldemort would be torturing Sirius in the DoM during work hours with hundreds of Ministry staff around. Only Hermione continues to resist and to oppose Harry’s faulty reasoning with her own correct reasoning. However, much good it does her. All that happens is that she gets another verbal beating from Harry as he browbeats her and shouts her down; indeed she is left to face Harry’s aggression alone as although Ron is present he does nothing to either physically or verbally protect Hermione from Harry’s wrath.
In this short scene (645 - 648), Hermione is persistently poses logical and reasonable objections, although speaking ‘in a rather frightened voice’ (645). In response Harry ‘bellowed’ at her and ‘shouted’ (645); on page 646 he progresses to ‘shouted in her face, standing up and taking a step closer to her in turn. He wanted to shake her.’ Visualize this: it is a boy – a trained, athletic boy, good at sports, good in a fight - who is physically squaring off against a smaller girl who is not sporty or athletic. It is a threatening situation. Although Hermione still objects to Harry’s faulty logic and responds ‘desperately’ she gets no support or protective interjection from Ron who simply says of Harry, ‘He’s got a point’, and then Ron actually makes arguments to back Harry up. In response Hermione is ‘persistent’, and in response to that ‘Harry yelled at her’ (646).

Things then get even worse for Hermione as Ron then completely sides with Harry in this threatening shouting session from Harry. Ron is ‘rounding on her’ as she sticks to her guns and continues to throw up valid reasons why Harry could be very wrong (as indeed he is). She continues to speak up against both Harry and Ron, ‘looking frightened yet determined’. She comes out with her ‘you’ve got a bit of a – a - saving people thing’ line, ‘looking more apprehensive than ever’. Harry’s response is ‘a wave of hot prickly anger’ (647) which we know showed in his expression as Hermione is ‘looking positively petrified at the look on Harry’s face’. Harry continues shouting at her and is verbally aggressive toward her. His speech is littered with exclamation marks. ‘Harry let out a roar of frustration. Hermione actually stepped back from him, looking alarmed.’

Harry goes on a rant (bottom of page 647), at the end of which he also rounds on Ron, associating Ron with the objecting Hermione. At this point Ron could have stood up to Harry, defended himself and objected to Harry’s treatment of Hermione, but instead he does not, instead he distances himself from the attacked Hermione with ‘I never said I had a problem!’. This spells it out that standing up to the unreasonable Harry in the only way she can – logically – has only gotten Hermione further attack from the physically and verbally threatening Harry and has isolated her within the Trio. Harry then goes CAPSLOCK, top of page 648.
When, shortly after, Hermione agrees to help Harry verify if Sirius is in 12 Grimmauld Place as a compromise against dashing straight to the DoM, the reader gets the strong impression that one of the reasons she does so is to placate a Harry of whom she is now afraid – even though she still thinks he is wrong and that he is leading them all into a trap. She is right of course, and Harry does lead them all into a trap. The DoM battle is a terrifying ‘near death experience’ for Hermione (nods to Lysette of FAP for that point), which nearly gets the ‘sextet’ killed and does get Sirius killed. It is hardly contentious to argue that Hermione would see the DoM disaster as directly linked to Harry’s uncontrollable temper, and to her own failure to control him through logic.

WHEN LOGIC FAILS, WHAT ELSE DO YOU USE?

Logic has failed Hermione, she thus needs a different anger-management tool to use on Harry if she is to prevent what she fears will be another CAPSLOCK year. Well, obviously I think she used mood-altering potions (Love Potion) in an effort to do two connected things: get Harry a suitable girlfriend and in so doing, get his mind off Sirius. I believe we can see this latter motivation expressed clearly on the page in HBP, as I will show in later in this essay.

In relating Hermione’s potioning of Harry to her basic motivation to steer him away from rage caused by grieving for Sirius, in HBP we have to look for evidence of a truncated grieving process for Sirius on Harry’s part, and a direct on-the-page link between an eruption of Harry’s grief/anger over Sirius and Hermione potioning Harry to deflect him from it.

TRUNCATED GRIEVING

Prior to Harry’s sleep the first night at The Burrow, the reader can clearly see that he is grieving for Sirius, though in a mature, non-angry and unhysterical fashion. Fanbase charges that ‘he never grieved for Sirius’ are not true; he did. True, he is not wallowing in grief or rage, as he does not believe Sirius would want that from him, but he is slowly accommodating to his loss in a quiet, internal way. What does happen is that this quiet, internal grieving is abruptly truncated the morning after That Night at The Burrow.
On page 52 Harry first hears that he has inherited 12 Grimmauld Place. He is not plunged into raging drama-queen grief, but quietly states to Dumbledore that ‘You can have it, I don’t really want it.’ He then thinks that he ‘never wanted to set foot in Grimmauld Place again if he could help it. He thought he would be haunted forever by the memory of Sirius prowling its dark, musty rooms alone, imprisoned within the place he wanted so desperately to leave.’ The conversation continues and Dumbledore points out that the house may have, in actuality, passed to Bellatrix Lestrange. ‘Without realising what he was doing, Harry sprang to his feet; the telescope and trainers in his lap rolled across the floor. Bellatrix Lestrange, Sirius’s killer, inherit his house? “No,” he said. He ‘said’, not he shouted, roared, yelled, but ‘he said’. Harry is angry, rightly so, but controlled and mature. We move onto the subject of the ownership of Kreacher, and Harry feels that ‘the idea of owning him, of having responsibility for the creature that betrayed Sirius, was repugnant’ (54).

On page 71 Slughorn casually speaks of Sirius and his recent death; at the mention: ‘It was as though an invisible hand had twisted Harry’s intestines and held them tight.’ Slughorn goes on to complain about being on the run and whines that Dumbledore wants him to stand up and be counted, the reaction is: “You don’t have to join the Order to teach at Hogwarts,” said Harry, who could not quite keep a note of derision out of his voice: it was hard to sympathise with Slughorn’s cosseted existence when he remembered Sirius, crouching in a cave and living on rats.’ In all this we can see that Harry does not lose his temper, but that thoughts of Sirius are never very far from his mind. On page 76 Dumbledore says how proud he is that Harry is bearing up so well ‘after everything that happened at the Ministry’ (i.e. Sirius’s death), and says that Sirius too would have been proud. We are then given a page (77) where we are given explicit, direct insight to how Harry feels about Sirius’s death. Harry does not want to discuss Sirius (which is NOT the same as not wanting to think about him), but Dumbledore gently does so to help Harry ease his burden. We are told that:
“Harry had spent nearly all his time at the Dursleys’ lying on his bed, refusing meals and staring at the misted window, full of the chill emptiness that he had come to associate with the Dementors’.

‘It’s just hard,” Harry said finally, in a low voice, “to realise he won’t write to me again.”

His eyes burned suddenly and he blinked.

Harry goes on to reflect that ‘now the post owls would never bring him that comfort again’. (Note the use of the word ‘comfort’.) Dumbledore acknowledges that ‘naturally the loss is devastating’ but Harry rallies and states that him cracking up over it is not what Sirius would he wanted. That instead he should attempt to bear up and get on, but that if it does come to it, he’ll go down fighting. Dumbledore approves of Harry’s attitude (78): ‘Spoken both like your mother and father’s son and Sirius’s true godson!’ Indeed, I think that on page 49 when Dumbledore first sees Harry and is ‘looking up at him through his half-moon glasses with a most satisfied expression’ and says ‘excellent, excellent’ Dumbledore has, via Leglimens, noted Harry’s grieving but controlled state and approves of it.

Over these initial chapters JKR has given us a picture of a boy who is mourning, but who is doing so in an undramatic fashion. He is someone who does not necessarily want to talk about Sirius, but he does think about him. Then, Harry enters the Burrow, Dumbledore leaves and after some conversation Harry goes to bed and crashes into a heavy sleep. I have covered these circumstances in my Love Potion essay, but I did not note then that Hermione’s need to suppress Harry’s grief for Sirius was just as important to her as provoking ‘happy times’ with Ginny Weasley. Indeed, it was more important to her as it was the main reason why she sets Harry up to fall for Ginny. I was not reading the scene, or indeed the book, with an eye to the effect of Hermione’s potion-efforts upon Harry’s grieving for Sirius, but when I do …
On page 89 – directly after Harry has woken up and has noticed Hermione ‘scrutinizing Harry as though he was sickening for something’, his reaction is: ‘He thought he knew what was behind this and, as he had no wish to discuss Sirius’s death or any other miserable subject at the moment, he said, ‘What’s the time? Have I missed breakfast?”
We already know from his conversation with Dumbledore (page 77) that Harry ‘did not think he could stand to discuss Sirius’, and on page 93 (breakfast scene again) when Hermione brings up The DoM in a row with Ron, ‘Harry’s heart sank. They had arrived at Sirius,’ he keeps his head down and stays out of it. Hermione goes on about ‘survivor’s guilt’ and depression in relation to Tonks. However, the fact that she was so ready with ‘survivor’s guilt’ means she’s been thinking about it – also in relation to Harry? What we note from Harry’s perspective is that not only does he not talk about Sirius that morning (no surprise there) but also, he does not THINK about him, when previously he did. Indeed from then on we get no thought of Sirius at all until page 151 when Harry is approaching the school with Tonks – six weeks later!

This sudden cessation of grief is weird. It is not true to life. People cannot shut off grief like just like that merely because they’ve decided they don’t want to grieve any more, so voila, they won’t. It is all totally unrealistic. Did JKR decide she did not want to devote page time to Sirius and thus decided to make Harry get over it because she was bored writing it? Well, how many words/lines would it have taken, spread throughout the book, to give us some semblance of a more realistic grief-recovery? Not many. Indeed, if JKR KNEW she did not want to be bothered writing ‘grieving Harry’, then why kill Sirius in the first place, when any specific plot contrivance stemming from his death could almost certainly be traversed with him alive, and she wouldn’t be laid open to charges of ‘crap writing’? Once again, as with the sudden, jarring advent of Harry/Ginny, IMO the readership is left with two possibilities: either JKR’s writing has gone down the pan, or … she is deliberately writing a warped, unrealistic grief arc as a clue that something is up. So far, many in the readership have voted for ‘gone down the pan’.

Looking at it from the Love Potion H/G angle, I thought the reference to Sirius by Harry at breakfast was just a red-herring on JKR’s part, as she has to give the reader some ostensible explanation of Hermione’s scrutiny seeing as she has deliberately drawn attention to it – in fact as the writer she has deliberately created it. Now, however, I think that mention of Sirius is a crucial pointer to the ‘missing half’ of the equation re Hermione’s motives for dosing Harry. Hermione desperately wants to forestall Harry going CAPSLOCK, and to do that she feels she must stop him from grieving over Sirius and start him chasing after Ginny, and after Harry’s night at the Burrow when he is exposed to whatever potion Hermione used, that is what happens … ‘he had no wish to discuss Sirius’s death or any other miserable subject at the moment’ … After ‘That Night’, miserable is something Harry wishes to avoid …

On the walk toward Hogwarts with Tonks, Harry feels that he is expected to talk about Sirius, but ‘did not like talking about Sirius if he could avoid it’. Furthermore, ‘he was quite keen to leave this new, gloomy, Tonks behind’. Since ‘That Night’, Harry doesn’t like thinking about miserable things, or being with miserable, gloomy people … it’s as though he’s been fitted with an aversion to misery. He then accompanies Snape up the drive and bitterly piles most of the blame for Sirius’ death onto Snape. He thinks about Sirius here, but once again not with any grief, but instead it’s as though in throwing the responsibility for Sirius’ death onto Snape, he is somehow throwing grief aside.

Since ‘That Night’, Harry has stopped grieving.

It is not until half-term, when Harry goes on the Hogsmeade weekend – approximately two and a half months after That Night - that Harry abruptly has ‘miserable thoughts’ about Sirius. And it is here that we also get something we need for the theory in this essay to stand up: a direct connection wherein Harry’s anger over Sirius prompts Hermione to dose him, with the effect that he forgets Sirius and concentrates on Ginny instead. We explicitly get that connection, and we get it in the Hogsmeade weekend scene.

TIME TO TAKE YOUR MEDICINE HARRY …

On page 231 Harry spots Mundungus flogging-off Sirius’s belongings, presumably having stolen them from Grimmauld Place. The abrupt sight of it sends Harry into a rage. He swerves into physical violence, pinning Mundungus to the wall by his throat; he is ‘shouting’, his speech is thick with exclamation marks, he ‘swears at the top of his voice’, he ‘snarls’, he is ‘yelling’. Mundungus ‘started to turn blue’ as Harry continues choking him. Hermione shrieks ‘Harry you mustn’t!’ but to no effect as Harry only lets go when someone (Tonks?) shoots Harry off Mundungus with a spell, leaving Mundungus to apparate to safety. Yes, we are back into CAPSLOCK Harry mode – literally, as JKR switches to CAPSLOCK for Harry’s line, ‘COME BACK YOU THIEVING -!’. Tonks leaves, and Hermione, Ron and a still-angry Harry go into the Three Broomsticks. And what happens next…?

‘The moment he was inside, Harry burst out, ‘He was nicking Sirius’ stuff!’ (and JKR uses italics for emphasis.)

“I know Harry, but please don’t shout, people are staring,” whispered Hermione. “Go and sit down, I’ll get you a drink.”

Harry was still fuming when Hermione returned to their table a few minutes later holding three bottles of butterbeer.

“Can’t the Order control Mundungus?” Harry demanded of the other two in a furious whisper. “Can’t they at least stop him stealing everything that’s not fixed down when he’s at Headquarters?”

“Shh!” said Hermione desperately, looking around to make sure nobody was listening; there were a couple of warlocks sitting close by who were staring at Harry with great interest, and Zabini was lolling against a pillar not far away. “Harry, I’d be annoyed too, I know it’s your things he’s stealing -”

Harry gagged on his butterbeer; he had momentarily forgotten that he owned number twelve, Grimmauld Place.

“Yeah, it’s my stuff!” he said. “No wonder he wasn’t pleased to see me! Well, I’m going to tell Dumbledore what’s going on, he’s the only one who scares Mundungus.”

“Good idea,” whispered Hermione, clearly pleased that Harry was calming down.

Then the conversation shifts to Ron and Hermione spatting about Ron gawking at Rosmerta, during which time ‘Harry was thinking about Sirius and how he had hated those silver goblets anyway.’ Hermione is drumming her fingers on the table, keen to be gone, ‘The moment Harry drained the last drops in his bottle she said, “Shall we call it a day and go back to school, then?”. Seconds later they are out in the street and Harry’s thoughts turn, for the first time in abut six weeks, to Ginny – dwelling on her and resenting the time she is spending with Dean. He forgets Sirius and forgets his anger.
Well, for me this is the PERFECT potioning scene in HBP because it has all the key factors strung together in beautiful order: Harry is angry, Hermione gets nervous, Hermione gives Harry a doped-up drink and it has the desired effect in that he becomes less angry, he forgets about Sirius and starts thinking about Ginny instead.

Let’s go over it to get the best out of it.

Harry is in a rage and is choking the life out of Mundungus – literally. Hermione tries appealing to him rationally, ‘Harry, you mustn’t!’ but fails to have any effect. They go into the pub, and Harry is still shouting-angry. Hermione is pleading and whispering for him not to shout as people are staring, and then she goes to get him a drink. Note that here Harry has not mentioned the Order at all, yet Hermione is still afraid in the face of Harry’s anger – she is vaguely appeasing and pleading and cowering. She is not just afraid of Harry endangering them by letting intel slip, but she is afraid of his anger full stop. When she comes back with the drink, and before Harry has taken any from the specific drink she offers him, Harry is ‘still fuming’, demanding and ‘furious’, though he is speaking in a whisper. Hermione shhh’s him ‘desperately’ and verbally tries to appease him, then … he takes the first recorded chug at his drink and gags on it. We are given the ostensible cause for his choking as ‘surprise’, but I think he ‘gagged on his butterbeer’ because there was something in the drink. His next sentence must be delivered in a more calm fashion, as we then see that Hermione is ‘clearly pleased that Harry was calming down’. As Harry drinks on, his anger abates: ‘Harry was thinking about Sirius and how he had hated those silver goblets anyway.’ Hermione waits till he’s drunk ALL of his drink, and then they go, with Harry then thinking about Ginny and forgetting about Sirius.

Cause, action, effect: the perfect scene.

(Anise’s Note: The very existence of this scene always bothered me before reading this essay. I really couldn’t figure out why it was there. Why spend all that time on Harry running into Mundungus Fletcher when , as Creamtea notes, it really isn’t followed up on at all? I actually spent time trying to come up with weird elaborate theories about why this happened, and none of them made any sense. But this one does!)

The very next day Harry is discussing the incident with Dumbledore; Phineas Nigellus is ‘incensed’ and ‘stalked out of his frame’ referring to Mundungus as ‘that mangy old half-blood’. Notably, Harry doesn’t even talk about it, despite Phineas’ appropriate wrath, and simply changes the subject. On page 312 we get one mention of Sirius from Lupin during the Christmas break: Harry does not react at all. On page 436, without thinking Harry mentions Sirius to ‘Tonks’ in the corridor by the Room of Requirement (Tonks? Huh! She’s either Imperiused in that scene, or it’s someone got up as Tonks!)

(Anise’s Note: Yeah, I think so too. Personally, I think it was really Draco Polyjuiced as Tonks. We already know he’s capable of crying, and Sirius was his cousin.)

Tonks’ eyes fill up and Harry is embarrassed, muttering awkwardly ‘I mean … I miss him as well’. But does he? We get the impression he says it because he feels he ought to say something, and then he promptly clean forgets about Sirius again. On pages 497 and 498 both Sirius and James crop up on the detention cards Harry is forced to sort during detention with Snape. At that time Harry is boiling with anger at Snape and seeing their names gives Harry a jolt in the stomach, but immediately he is back obsessing with Ginny and almost instantly after we get the Common Room Snog, and then that’s it – no more Sirius for the rest of the book, until … It is the last chapter and Harry determines to break with Ginny. Page 591 he knew he must break with her and ‘forgo his best source of comfort’ then on 595 he recalls that there was no body to bury for Sirius and on 596 that with Sirius he had ‘looked desperately for some kind of loophole’ that would have brought him back from death. Page 598, Harry feels a great rush of affection for Neville and Luna, on page 600 he has a ‘wonderful momentary urge’ to laugh at Grawp and Hagrid, and grins at memories of Dumbledore. Then he recalls all those lost to him: mum, dad, godfather, Dumbledore and realises there can be no comforting whisper in the dark that can say it is all safe really and sedate him. Two pages later he has broken with Ginny, and with a ‘miserable gesture’, ‘turns his back on her’.

MISERY AND COMFORT: AN EQUATION

Note that at the start, when Harry and Dumbledore are discussing Sirius in the broom-shed at The Burrow, Harry thinks of the comfort he has lost with Sirius’s death. He then gets junked up That Night and the next day he just associates Sirius with ‘miserable’ things, and more or less banishes misery and gloom from his company and mind. He comes to see Ginny as ‘his best source of comfort’ (given that Sirius is now dead), but chooses to break with her ‘with a miserable gesture’ i.e. to turn away from cotton-wool sedation and to embrace emotional truth again.

I think Hermione eradicated misery and replaced it with comfort: she eradicated that which should have been, Harry’s grieving for Sirius, and replaced it with something that should not have been: his ‘interest’ in Ginny. She wiped out an ‘uncomfortable truth’ and replaced it with ‘something that was making him happier than he could remember being for a very long time’ but which felt ‘like something out of someone else’s life’.

In the end Harry finds the strength to overcome the switch and returns, of his own volition, to reality. (Anise’s Note: There’s a special sneak preview of my upcoming addendum essay at the end, and it relates to this point, debunking once and for all the “happier than he could remember being for a very long time” fallacy.)

Saddest of all, unlike Hermione the reader can quite clearly see that in the early chapters of HBP Harry was grieving for Sirius in an emotionally mature way: he was not engulfed with irrational CAPSLOCK rage. Hence the tragedy is that Hermione needn’t have done her potioning of Harry at all, and thus in Book 7 when the truth comes out, the grief and strife it will undoubtedly engender for the characters need never have happened …

ADDENDUM : ANGER-MANAGMENT THROUGH POTIONS USE – WHEN DID HERMIONE START?

Here I’m going to revisit the much derided ‘Draught of Peace’ theory. Note this theory was not debunked or discredited by its objectors, it was derided. I think Hermione dipped her toe in the water of ‘anger-management by mood-altering’ back in OoTP by tampering with the chocolate egg – affecting it with the Draught of Peace - so when she hits HBP she has already broken through any taboo against dosing Harry. After that, in HBP it simply becomes a question of what she doses him with, not whether she doses him. In short, I don’t think that her potions use against Harry was something that exploded onto the scene in HBP, I now think it was simply a ramping up of a strategy she had already begun in OoTP.

I was vaguely aware of the Draught of Peace theory on my re-read of OoTP. When I first heard of the theory I dismissed it as desperate and fantastical, as originally I dismissed the Love Potion theories which ricocheted through the fanbase after HBP. However, it was impossible not to note the level of attention and detail which JKR shoves the reader’s face into on the initial mention of the Draught of Peace (210-211). Over two pages we are given close detail how to make it, what it looks like when being mixed, what it does (calm anxiety and soothe agitation), what the effects are of mixing it incorrectly (puts the drinker into a heavy and sometimes irreversible sleep – something I will touch upon later in this essay).

We also find that Hermione is extremely attentive to it ‘Hermione sat up a little straighter, her expression one of utmost attention’ and we find that although is it a very difficult potion to get right, Hermione can brew it perfectly. At that stage Hermione has every incentive to pay attention to the opportunity offered by the Draught of Peace as not only has Harry already gone CAPSLOCK on her personally, but his failure to control himself has already seen him in detention with Umbridge. All in all, this is not some idle, passing mention of a potion which is never to be seen again, this is a potion which is going to come up as a plot point later on.
When I re-read the ‘chocolate in the library’ scene I was not looking for evidence of the Draught of Peace theory as I actually believed that the Draught of Peace was, among other potions including Love Potion, used on Harry in HBP. I thought that was where it was first used and that was what justified its big introduction in OoTP. I idly thought that if the Draught of Peace theory as relating to the egg were true, then we would have to at least see clear signs that the wrapping of the eggs had been tampered with.

I sat up straight and, like Hermione, paid ‘utmost attention’ and read the scene again carefully when I realised that JKR shows us just that. We also see something extremely peculiar: the egg Ginny selects to give Harry (he does not have a choice, she decides which one he is going to eat) is a SHOP BOUGHT egg. It has professional packaging, as ‘according to the packaging’ it contains a ‘bag of Fizzing Whizzbees’. Uh? Since when has Molly palmed shop-bought anything off on Harry? She is a home-baker extraordinaire and an excellent cook with the skills to make her own Easter eggs. Home-baking, knitting; for her the time and effort and care she personally puts into the gifts are the real evidence of her love, not the gifts per se. She would regard shop-bought in such matters as an insult to Harry. She bakes her own cakes, makes her own sweets, knits her own jumpers and, we know for a fact, makes her own Easter eggs. In GoF we are expressly told this when Molly’s response to the Daily Prophet accusation that Hermione has been Love Potioning Harry is to send her a mean-sized egg, in contrast to ‘both Harry’s and Ron’s which were the size of dragon eggs, and full of home-made toffee.’ For them to be full of home-made toffee, they had to be home-made eggs. My guess is that the egg Ginny selects for Harry was not even one originally included in the box from Molly but one the girls had bought and doctored, slipping it into Molly’s box when it arrived.

As many before me have pointed out, something weird is going on with the Easter egg in the library scene. ‘Perhaps it was the effect of the chocolate – Lupin had always advised eating some after encounters with Dementors – or simply because he had finally spoken aloud the wish that had been burning inside him for a week, but he felt a bit more hopeful.’ Yes, I think it was the chocolate, I certainly don’t think it was Ginny who had the calming effect, as after that Harry goes back to his default mode of indifference toward her when he isn’t snapping at her.

(Anise’s Note: Yes, this is a very important point. It’s not that speaking with a sympathetic, friendly person like Ginny wouldn’t have been capable of calming Harry down a little. The real problem is that Harry doesn’t treat Ginny even ONE BIT differently after this scene, supposedly so important to the development of H/G. His feelings and behavior towards her do not change an iota. Very odd. Actually, I think this scene is kind of sad, since it shows how Harry and Ginny’s friendship might have developed—and didn’t.)

As an aside: At the end of the book we note in the train ride home that Hermione (and Ginny) still consider that Harry has ‘feelings’ for Cho. At the bottom of page 762 Cho walks past the carriage and, prompted by Ron, Harry looks up at her. Harry says nothing is going on between he and Cho, but Hermione fishes: ‘I – er – hear she’s going out with someone else now.’

Stunned at Sirius’ death, the reader knows that in the train compartment Harry is actually totally indifferent to whether Cho is seeing someone else: Harry is over Cho but it’s a moot point as to whether this shows on his face as even Ron then tries to buck Harry up over Cho. It is Ron who asks Hermione who Cho is now with. Notably, Ginny jumps in with the name: Michael Corner, and explains that Ginny dumped Corner for sulking over the Quidditch match whereupon he promptly ‘ran off’ with Cho. It is debatable as to whether this is true as NEVER in OoTP or HBP do we get any objective evidence to support the claim, and we note that Ginny leapt in to answer instead of Hermione; we know that Hermione is a poor liar whereas Ginny lies ‘unblushingly’ (page 72).

Then Ginny makes her odd ‘I’ve chosen Dean Thomas’ comment, in which she actually uses ‘Dean Thomas’ instead of ‘Dean’, as though he’s a job applicant who has just been ‘chosen’ as the latest holder of the post of Boy Most Likely To Get Me Next To Harry. In this aside, I think the important thing to note is that up until May (the chocolate in the library scene) both Hermione and Ginny were unquestioningly convinced that Harry’s depression was due to his failing efforts with Cho, and not to his inability to contact Sirius. It is evident that they are still concerned that Harry may be emotionally adversely affected by the ‘Cho situation’, even as late as the train ride home. To be blunt: both girls were convinced that some of Harry’s depression was due to romantic difficulties with an unsuitable girlfriend. One logical remedy to that, to Harry’s depression/anger in general – and Hermione is nothing if not logical – would be to arrange a happy relationship with a suitable girlfriend.

ADDENDUM: THE POTIONS ARC THROUGHOUT THE SERIES.

Here I quickly cover the increasing use/reference of potions to and on Harry throughout the series, I am trying to draw a picture in which the stunning proliferation of potions use in HBP did not come out of the blue, but rather was a continuation of a pre-existing trend.

In CoS we have Lockhart telling the schoolchildren that Snape might brew up a Love Potion for them, if they ask nicely. In that book also, we have Polyjuice used by the Trio.
In PoA we have Molly giggling with Hermione and Ginny over a love potion she herself brewed up as a girl. We also have the first Divination lesson. In this we note, and are told repeatedly, that Trelawney always has her fire on no matter how hot the weather and that there is a kettle on the fire and that the fire kicks out a sickly, heavy scent. ‘The heavily perfumed smoke in the room was making him (Harry) feel sleepy and stupid’. (PoA 81). This fire, fume and effect is repeatedly written up throughout the following three books, the information is dinned into the reader’s brain.

In GoF we have The Daily Prophet falsely importing that Hermione Love Potioned Harry (444). We also have the first mention of Veritaserum (448), and of Snape threatening Harry that he might secretly dope up Harry’s evening pumpkin juice with it. Throughout the book, ‘Moody’ drinks only from his own flask as a Dark wizard could always dope up an unattended drink. This was an attitude the real Moody held to.

In OoTP we have: the detailed mention of the Draught of Peace; the (I suspect) actual use of it on Harry in the Easter egg; the ‘actual’ use of Veritaserum on Harry (following on from the mere threat of same in GoF) when Umbridge thinks she has doped his tea; we have Harry deciding not to drink the tea on Moody’s remembered advice not to drink something offered by an enemy as it could be doped. We also have the continued ‘administration’ of the mysterious scented fumes in Divination. I refer to this again, as in OoTP I think we are told what that ‘smoke’ is. Page 340 Harry is trying to read a passage from a textbook which will not go into his head and thus he has to re-read it, the sections from the textbook thus appear over and over again on the page, and in italics: ‘These plantes are most efficacious in the inflaming of the braine, and are therefore much used in Confusing and Befuddlement Draughts, where the wizard is desirous of producing hot-headedness and recklessness …’ Throughout OoTP Harry is referred to as hot-headed and reckless, and his actions are hot-headed and reckless. I think the stuff on the fire/in the kettle in Divination is a Confusing/Befuddlement Draught which Trelawney has habitually scented all her classes up with as she knows she’s a lousy teacher and fears that they only way she can get by is to con her classes by confusing and befuddling them. (And if you think this is a bit of a stretch and surely some teacher would have noticed, well, this is the school where a Death Eater posed as a rat for five years, Crouch posed as Moody for a year, an Auror was trapped in a trunk for a year, Lord Voldemort was growing out the back of someone’s head for a year, Gilderoy Lockhart actually got hired, oh and yes, there was a ruddy great Chamber underneath it with a great big Basilisk in it – and nobody noticed any of it. A bit of Befuddlement Potion? – not even a blip on the radar.)

The reason I’m going over this Befuddlement Potion as though it was a big deal is because, in OoTP, I think it is a big deal. We are specifically told the running order of Harry’s Monday lessons: Potions then Divination then DADA. We notice that in Potions, although Harry hates Snape almost as much as he hates Umbridge, he does not lose control/lose his temper in Snape’s lessons to any great extent. But he has Divination, comes out of it, goes into DADA, and all hell regularly breaks loose with Harry usually ending up in detention. Reason? – the effects of the Befuddlement ‘smoke’; I think it affected Harry more so in OoTP than before partly because of teenaged hormones and partly because Voldemort was in his head, pushing him to lose control.

In HBP we have a potions free-for-all. Love potions flung about left right and centre, Felix Felicis, people getting drunk, Amortentia, the Draught of the Living Death takes another bow, Polyjuice is back with a bang, Veritaserum is on the curriculum, poisoned wine, doctored Gillywater, the ‘misery juice’ in the locket font, sunshine-yellow Euphoria Elixir – and they’re just the ones I can think of without running to check. We also have That Night at the Burrow – where it all starts to go wonky.

ADDENDUM: WHAT WAS HARRY HIT WITH ‘THAT NIGHT’?

Of the vast array of potions and mood-altering substances, what was Harry hit with that night at The Burrow? The truth is we don’t really know, we don’t even know if more than one substance was ‘administered’ to Harry by more than one person over the duration of events. That night he accepts a drink off Dumbledore – we don’t know if anything was in that. He might or might not have been given a drink by Slughorn at Slughorn’s borrowed cottage – that section is very confusingly written, all we know is that Slughorn thrusts the drinks tray at Harry, we don’t know if there was a drink on it for him. What we do know is that Slughorn – a potions specialist – mixes the drinks with his back to the room ‘busy with decanters and glasses’, mirroring Umbridge when she was doctoring Harry’s tea in OoTP. If Harry did take a drink from Slughorn that night, chances are it was doctored. Harry drinks soup when he gets to The Burrow – given to him by Molly who has been offering ‘tea and sympathy’ to Tonks and who is aware that the Dementors are breeding and generally making everyone gloomy; would she be trying to cheer everyone up by slipping them ‘something harmless’? In the bedroom with have the mysterious ‘vase of flowers’ exuding a heavy, perfumed scent, and the ‘Puking Pastille’ stuck to Harry’s pillow.

There were thus at least five chances of Harry being ‘administered’ (either by ingestion, touch or scent) a ‘potion’ that night. I begin to suspect that he got hit by more than one, and it was the unfortunate combination of them that did for him. Whatever they were, I suspect that at least one was badly brewed Draught of Peace, as if you are heavy handed with it, ‘you will put the drinker into a heavy sleep’ and Harry conked out almost immediately his head hit the pillow: assaulted throughout the night by the sweet smell of the flowers and clutching the so-called Puking Pastille. If I am right about the ‘Divination Potion’ then we can assume that if we brew certain potions strongly enough, the mere scent of them is sufficient to have an effect. (Anise’s Note: This is standard knowledge in (Muggle) aromatherapy. The effect an essential oil has on the client depends on whether the oil is smelled, applied to pulse points, or ingested, the strength of the effect going up the scale in each instance.)

I think badly/strongly brewed Draught of Peace was in the vase of flowers – brewed up by Molly probably as a ‘harmless’ sedative for Harry to comfort him – if Hermione had done it she would have brewed it correctly. But Hermione did put something in the room, otherwise why would she be checking Harry for ‘symptoms’ the next day: so if the vase was Molly, Hermione put the Puking Pastille under the pillow. Hermione must have put something to Harry which she expected to have a discernable effect as she is ‘scrutinising’ Harry … ‘expecting strange symptoms to manifest themselves at any moment’. ‘Peace’ does not ‘manifest itself’, it is more of an absence than a presence: hence she had dosed him up with something other than the Draught of Peace. Hermione was looking for something to show itself that was new to Harry. Hermione: a girl with a deep knowledge of Love Potions and a girl with an over-riding incentive to Keep Harry Happy.

Whatever unfortunate combination of substances Harry was hit with That Night, one substance alone, two or even five, I can see the following pattern emerging as a result: an emotional distance from Sirius and ‘miserable’ things, and an unprecedented interest in Ginny Weasley with whom he comes to associate not just lust but to see as a ‘source of comfort’.

(Anise’s Note: More brilliance from Creamtea!  As mentioned above, I’m also writing an addendum to the LP theory, containing thoughts, info, and suppositions that have been worked out since the original chapters were posted. Here’s a sneak preview, as promised
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Even if we ignored all the OTHER evidence against H/G—which there’s no reason to do-- it seems to me that it would be sunk by the fact that when Harry relates to Ginny or even thinks about Ginny, he seems to go into this incredibly selfish and self-absorbed little world that might as well exist only in his own head. He only breaks out of it when he breaks up with her.

Now, in that context, let's take another look at an HBP quote that seems to support H/G, because it’s a statement that I don’t think we can ignore. Either it has to be taken at face value—in which case it really is a very strong argument for genuine H/G in HBP—or else it has to be explained some other way. And it’s here that we really begin to understand the subtlety of the journey on which JKR takes us. Page 678:
quote:
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After all, it made a very nice change to be talked about because of something that was making him happier than he could remember being for a very long time, rather than because he had been involved in horrific scenes of Dark magic.
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Of course, Harry's talking about being with Ginny. And a lot of readers have seen this and sighed resignedly, deciding that they're going to have to ignore the staggering problems with H/G, since, well, Harry's happy, so it must be true love! But let’s look at what happens when we dig just a little deeper and start making some comparisons.

Love potions have been specifically linked with and compared to the Imperius curse in HBP, and Harry himself was the one who did it. It happens when Dumbledore asks him if he can think of what might have caused Tom Riddle, Sr., to fall in love with Merope, page 269:
quote:
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"The Imperius Curse?" Harry suggested. "Or a love potion?"
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So it’s actually Harry who links the two, and note, also, that he thinks of the Imperius curse first.

Now let's look at the very first time that Harry was put under Imperius by fake!Moody, in GoF (pg. 151, hardcover American edition).
quote:
________________________________________
It was the most wonderful feeling. Harry felt a floating sensation as every thought and worry in his head was wiped gently away, leaving nothing but a vague, untraceable happiness.
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Not only have Imperius and LP's been linked by Harry, but the effect they both have on Harry is described in canon in essentially the same way and by using the same word ("happiness".) “Every thought and worry in his head (is) wiped gently away,” just as in HBP, Harry’s infatuation with Ginny is his “greatest source of comfort” and keep him from worrying about anything else, including the things he should be worrying about—the loss of Sirius, the threat of Voldemort, and what Dumbledore asked him to do. Obviously, happiness may FEEL good in the HP-iverse; it would be silly to argue that it doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean that it necessarily IS good.

Honestly, I think that the belief that Harry and Ginny are experiencing and/or will experience true love relies ultimately on a serious misunderstanding of what these books are. They contain joy, but they are not happy little feel-good teen romance novels. Happiness is not guaranteed to anybody. Happiness is not always a good thing, and definitely not always the highest value. Actually, JKR’s attitude about comfort and happiness for her characters sometimes has definite Calvinistic overtones, and also reminds me of John Bunyan’s *Pilgrim’s Progress* enough that it’s worth spending some time on it.

Now, if you haven’t read PP, I’m not really sure I would advise anybody to suffer through it, but suffice it to say that it’s an allegory about a spiritual journey that the pilgrim has to take. On the way, he’s constantly held back by his traveling companion, Sloth, who keeps whining about how they should stop going because it’s getting too difficult, and it’s better to be comfortable and happy than to make this journey. Here’s a typical example of the way these comforts tempting the pilgrim were described:

Then they came at an arbor, warm, and promising much refreshing to the pilgrims; for it was finely wrought above-head, beautified with greens, furnished with benches and settles. It also had in it a soft couch, whereon the weary might lean. This, you must think, all things considered, was tempting; for the pilgrims already began to be foiled with the badness of the way: but there was not one of them that made so much as a motion to stop there. Yea, for aught I could perceive, they continually gave so good heed to the advice of their guide, and he did so faithfully tell them of dangers, and of the nature of the dangers when they were at them, that usually, when they were nearest to them, they did most pluck up their spirits, and hearten one another to deny the flesh. This arbor was called The Slothful’s Friend, and was made on purpose to allure, if it might be, some of the pilgrims there to take up their rest when weary.

And take a look at Bunyan’s description of Standfast’s encounter with Madam Bubble, here:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bunyan/pilgrim.htm#vi.ix-p0.2

STANDFAST: As I was thus musing, as I said, there was one in very pleasant attire… who presented herself to me, and offered me three things, to wit, her body, her purse, and her bed. Now the truth is, I was both weary and sleepy… Well, I repulsed her once and again, but she put by my repulses, and smiled. Then I began to be angry; but she mattered that nothing at all. Then she made offers again, and said, if I would be ruled by her, she would make me great and happy; for, said she, I am the mistress of the world, and men are made happy by me. (My emphasis!) Then I asked her name, and she told me it was Madam Bubble. This set me further from her; but she still followed me with enticements. Then I betook me, as you saw, to my knees, and with hands lifted up, and cries, I prayed to Him that had said he would help. So, just as you came up, the gentlewoman went her way. Then I continued to give thanks for this my great deliverance; for I verily believe she intended no good, but rather sought to make stop of me in my journey.

MR. HONEST: Without doubt her designs were bad….

MR. GREAT-HEART: This woman is a witch, and it is by virtue of her sorceries that this ground is enchanted.


It has some remarkable points of similarity with the way that H/G is written—the hero is tempted by a woman (a witch, even!) who promises to make him happy. Notice, too, that Standfast doesn’t try to argue that Madam Bubble *isn’t* going to make him happy; he *knows* that she can deliver what she offers. But ultimately, he doesn’t stray from his path of destiny. Of course, JKR doesn’t write in quite the misogynist way that we see in PP, and I’m not trying to say that she portrays Ginny as an evil temptress, but what’s striking about this is that it’s essentially the same theme.

So the pilgrims do keep going with their difficult journey, just as Harry kept going-- because otherwise you don’t have much of a book. PP doesn’t have much in common with the HP series in some other ways, most notably that PP was a specifically Christian allegory, and HP obviously isn’t. But the biggest thing they DO have in common is their themes. These books aren’t about being comfortable, or doing anything for the sake of becoming comfortable. Those aren’t the goals that matter. You may get to them eventually, but they will definitely be by-products of the real goal of the quest. In many ways, the HP series merits a careful comparison with PP, especially when it comes to the nature of H/G.
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