This is the first of several guest posts in our Half-Blood Prince Read-Through. Pub patron revgeorge has graciously agreed to cover Chapter 21. Enjoy! ~ Travis
As a first time author on this blog instead of a commenter, I’m a bit nervous and feel compelled to be both coherent and also brief at the same time. I’ll leave you to judge if I succeed.
Chapter 21, The Unknowable Room reads very quickly but is full of important information.
Right at the beginning we again have the distinction made between the Half-Blood Prince and Snape. Harry has complete trust in the Prince but Hermione reminds him if he’d only listen to Snape he’d know the same things.
We’re also introduced to sectum-sempra and Harry’s fascination with the spell, which will soon have a big payoff later on in the book. Connected to this, but not realized at the time, is the conversation with Myrtle and the confrontation Harry later will have in that boy’s bathroom with the crying boy who’s not afraid to show his feelings.
The Room of Requirement also makes another appearance. This room, introduced briefly in Goblet of Fire, plays a huge role in each of the last three books of the series. Perhaps it would be good to discuss the Room as a plot device. That is to say, does the way the Room work make sense or is it rather nebulous, allowing Rowling to fit it to her needs much like the Fidelius charm?
We also have the continuing discussion between Harry and Hermione about Slughorn’s memory. Harry keeps looking for a magical means of getting the memory while Hermione thinks only persuasion will gain the memory. This conversation is paid off in the next chapter.
The continuing dichotomy between humor and terror continues. We have more bad things going on in the war. The amusement of Mundungus being caught masquerading as an inferius contrasts with their gruesome nature described in the DADA class and also foreshadows their appearance later on.
In order to remain brief, I’ll simply mention we have more Ron-Hermione interaction, more house elf concerns, Harry’s ability to make intuitive leaps of logic but yet become fixated on certain ideas, Harry’s meeting with Tonks, and who cannot love “Roonil Wazlib.”
Thanks to Travis for letting me contribute. I’ll leave it to the pub patrons to have at it with this chapter.
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{ 42 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m intrigued by the Room of Requirement. It’s existence suggests some kind of sentient intelligence – or at the least a very complex algorithm – married to advanced magical powers, including legilimency. It actually most resembles a wishing ring, or Aladdin’s lamp.
I’ve always been intrigued by obejcts that seem to have sentience, or at least memory: the wands, the Monster book of Monsters, the chess pieces in Wizard’s Chess, and the Mirror of Erised, not to mention Slytherin’s locket and of course the hopping pot of myth and legend, but also Elric’s Stormbringer, and of course the One Ring.
Nice post, revgeorge.
I’ve been thinking of the Room of Requirement as being like Harry. It can do all sorts of good things but, as we learn a few chapters later, can also transform into the Room of Hidden Things, which is a cesspool of evil full of contraband, poisons, a bloodstained ax, the results of countless banned experiments, Voldemort’s horcrux, etc. Harry does many good things but has a bit of Voldemort’s evil soul attached to his own which sometimes takes over with visions, anger, etc. Crabbe destroys the RoHT with fiendfyre while trying to kill Harry and ends up destroying the diadem horcrux and a piece of Voldemort’s soul instead. Voldemort tries to kill Harry with the killing curse and ends up destroying a piece of his own soul instead. (This makes me think that the answer to Ron’s query whether the ROR will still work after the fiendfyre may be that it will work in all respects except that the ROHT can no longer be accessed.)
Regarding Snape’s essay on dementors – I wonder how Snape manages how to teach them about patronuses without making one himself. Maybe he calls on Harry to do it.
Crabbe and Goyle are transforming into girls, or as Olive Oyl (I think) would say, “goils” — get it: Goyle —–goil——girl!
There’s an interesting juxtaposition between Snape bullying Harry and Ron, which seems to hearten him, and Ron bullying Myrtle, which puts new heart into him. The book uses the word “goading” with respect to Myrtle, but really it’s the same thing Snape does. Both are doing it because they enjoy the predictable reaction. Then a few pages later, invisible Harry sneaks up on Goyle and whispers “Hello . . . you’re very pretty, aren’t you?” Goyle shrieks, sends the brass scales crashing, and runs off. Again, Harry finds Goyle’s terror funny. And as he imagines Draco’s fear inside the ROR, it gives him “a most agreeable feeling of power.” Wow, very Slytherin-y that. All of which is to say that the bullying, or making another person feel bad or scared, is being portrayed from different perspectives here, but Harry does not seem to connect the dots. His anger is aroused when he is the butt of Snape’s “humor,” he smiles along with Ron, and laughs and feels powerful when he does it himself.
I’m a lurker here at the Hog’s Head. I’ve been following this discussion for awhile but have never left a comment until now. It was the mention of the Room of Requirement’s mutability that’s called me out, because it’s a really good point. I just finished reading Order of the Phoenix outloud to my son, and of course that book relies heavily on the RoR. The thing is, according to book 7, the room will let people out at a different location every time in order to escape detection, but why wouldn’t it have done so in books 5 and 6? Why wouldn’t the DA have been able to escape Umbridge by bursting out of the door on, say, the third floor instead of the 7th? Why would Malfoy have to worry about someone being outside the door when he’s in the RoR in book 6? Perhaps Neville is smart enough about the room that he thinks of the solution, that they NEED to exit in random locations, while no one thought of that before?
Okay, I’ll go back to my hole now.
Amanda, glad you commented! Stay out of that hole! (Unless, of course, you’re a Hobbit, in which case you live in that hole.)
Did the room ever actually let someone out on a different floor? I’m not sure it can do that. But I’m not remembering the reference you’re making to book 7. Can you elaborate?
Cool blog, by the way
Yes, certainly I can elaborate. At the end of Deathly Hallows, when Harry & Gang join Neville & Gang in the “treehouse” version of the RoR, Neville says “It comes out somewhere different every day, so they’ve never been able to find it…Only trouble is, we never know exaclty where we’re going to end up when we go out.” (pg 585 American hardcover) On the next page, Harry checks the Marauder’s map after he and Luna leave the RoR and says they’re on the 5th floor.
[And yes, I'm a bit of a dork when it comes to Harry Potter. I've read the books so many times I have huge passages memorized...]
Well, good for you – we could use a good encyclopedia in the pub!
Might be one of those instances where JKR needed a plot device later in the books, and the magical way something operated changed slightly. There’s been lengthy discussion about that odd Fidelius charm, too.
I do think it’s plausible though that – whether or not it was intended – the Room’s ability to change the exit can be attributed to Neville’s intelligence about the room. So even if she needed a plot device, I think this one can be explained, unlike some others. (Thinking, for example, about Mrs. Weasley making gravy pour from her wand in book 4, which goes against the whole laws of transfiguration, or the whole Creevy brothers issue…) I’ll have to look up the discussions on the Fidelius Charm. I only stumbled on the blog back in the discussions of early chapters in HBP.
I think that’s a very plausible explanation, yes.
And on a related sidenote, I haven’t given enough thought to Neville’s unbelievable development in DH, but this might just be an instance of it. He’s the guy with the brilliant idea about the RoR, and leading the Hogwarts rebellion!
Here’s a stumper: if the ROR comes out in a different place every day at the end of DH, how do the newcomers who just escaped from the Carrows find the entrance? Only answer I can think of is that an entrance can be made to appear on the seventh floor as well as where the daily exit is.
I got the impression that the exit and entrance were different, I suppose.
Well, I’m glad this post has generated a lot of commentary. I credit the Unknowable Room as opposed to my scintillating prose & piercing insights.
To throw in another quick thought, was the depiction of the Room in the OOTP movie consistent with what we saw in the books? Aside from Neville finding the room as opposed to Dobby telling Harry about it. And is there any way in which the Room was depicted in that movie that might have ramifications for the later movies? Kind of a side topic, I guess.
Interestingly, in the movie, the room was already letting them out at a different location than the entrance. It was just around the corner, but still. On the other hand, Umbridge blew open the wall to the room, and I’m not sure how that’ll effect later movies.
Both good observations, Amanda. I was thinking when you quoted the different exits of the last movie, and I always did think Umbridge’s blowing the wall down was a little dumb.
Amanda, you caught two of the instances I was thinking of. The room is already letting them exit at other places to avoid detection. So, should be no problem there.
With Umbridge I thought the same thing, that she just blasts a hole in the wall. But of course she wasn’t able to do that until she had gotten the information out of Cho through veritaserum. So, does that hold up to what happened in the book, where the Inquisitorial Squad is able to get into the room because they know exactly what it’s being used for? Hermione brings up this point in this chapter in response to Harry’s confidence that he’ll be able to get in & see what Malfoy’s doing.
Whether it was in the book or not [I can't remember] I find the blowing the hole through the wall totally out of character with everything the ROR is supposed to be. It is a magical room for those that need it. It is inter dimensional sized to suit and walls have no place to blow through. Remember the tent at the Quidich WC and the sedan that seats the entire Weasley family and Harry? Heinlein used the same device in his stories I am sure others have as well.
On the other hand I find Neville discovering the room much more satisfying than Dobby telling Harry about it. Neville has the [u]need[/u] for it not Dobby.
The blowing a hole in the wall wasn’t in the book. I agree it feels very out of character for the room. I’m not sure how they’re going to deal with that in movies 6 and 7. I guess since Filch and Umbridge weren’t able to prior to the Veritaserum thing, then Hermione’s explanation still makes sense. On a related note, though, and I know we haven’t gotten this far in the HBP chapters, but Harry finds out that Malfoy was in the room of hidden things when he runs into Trelawney trying to hide her sherry bottles. So Harry knows, now. He should have given that knowledge to the others instead of letting them just hang out in the corridor while Harry went off with Dumbledore to the cave. They probably could have gotten in.
One point of symbolism, or perhaps merely a clue, Goyle is disguised as a girl with scales—- i.e. Libra.
Libra, despite being depicted as a girl with scales, is nonetheless a masculine symbol. Perhaps JKR was using this as a clue back in Chapter 20 when Hermione helped the poor little first year (Goyle, disguised) that all was not as it seemed.
It is possible that the Libra symbolism could also be a longer term clue about Ravenclaw. Libra is associated with Air, with the intellect and with Athena—- all appropriate to Ravenclaw. And, of course, Goyle is standing outside the Room which holds Ravenclaw’s diadem, which we see later in the book.
Ahhh, of course. And the grave inscription “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” tells us the location of Hufflepuff’s cup. Cups and Hearts are the same suit, so the cup lies where Harry’s treasure does—- in Gringott’s.
Very neatly done.
SPT, that’s an interesting take on the grave inscription. But kind of a stretch in my opinion. I really think it has more to do with the import of the passage itself & Dumbledore’s regrets regarding his family.
I am not sure.
However I am looking for some something that might symbolically link the Ministry of Magic and Slytherin’s Neclace.
I looked up that quote on the grave on Google, and apparently it’s from the Bible, directly quoted. I don’t think it was meant as an indicator of where the cup was, though that’s pretty clever…
I think those are fun ideas-heart, treasure, Libra. Cool possibilities there.
Amanda, I think Neville is the one who figures out what the ROR is all about. The various exits would surely be his doing. He probably would have realized that he specifically needed to ask it for ways of exiting that would allow them to avoid detection. It is odd that the room did not do this for the DA even though the room seems almost intuitive sometimes. It might have been able to figure out that the DA needed similar exits, but apparently not.
My guess is that the fiendfyre would have destroyed the room altogether. Fiendfyre is capable of destroying magical objects that are otherwise pretty indestructible, so it could very well take out the ROR. But maybe not.
In movie 5 I hate the way Hermione says, “Congratulations, Neville, you’ve found the Room of Requirement,” (if I remember that correctly; I’ve cut myself off from watching the movies over and over) as though one of the secrets that Voldemort prided himself in knowing was written about in Hogwarts, A History.
And regarding Snape’s essay on dementors, I would love to know how Snape recommends to fight them off. How many ways could there be to do it?
Corinthians, yes. But it is kind of an odd quote isn’t it? Not really appropriate to Arianna or Kendra.
And there is this extremely interesting language:
“He (Harry) did not understand what these words meant.”
Apparently it’s written also in Matthew and Luke. I’m completely Bible-illiterate, that’s just what I found on Google. Looks like it’s an oft-quoted passage though. Interesting the Dumbledore would have a Bible verse on his grave. Also interesting, as you say, SPT, that Harry doesn’t understand the reference.
The quote isn’t about Kendra or Arianna per se but about Dumbledore’s feelings towards them. Or where his feelings should’ve been towards them. They should have been his treaure; his heart should’ve been with them instead of with Grindelwald & with DD’s grandiose dreams for himself. He only realized they were his treasure after they were gone, especially after Arianna was gone.
And of course Harry doesn’t understand the reference because he still doesn’t know Dumbledore’s background & family history.
The absolute irony of Voldemort priding himself on being the only one who found the room is that obviously many people over the centuries have found it and hidden things there. Voldemort is so blind to anything other than his own self-importance that he must think the room created all those other objects just for him to hide his horcrux among rather than accept the evidence of his eyes that others have been there first.
I also have a theory that the bit of V’s soul stuck to Harry’s leads him to the location where the diadem is when he is trying to hide his potions book, probably unintentionally, just nudging Harry along a path that looked familiar to it (remember Harry feels a familiarity with the name T.M.Riddle when he is looking at the diary in COS, as though it was someone he knew long ago).
Lily Luna, those are both excellent points. I always wondered if maybe V saw the room different, so that he didn’t realize all the other stuff was there also, but it makes more sense for him to think the room created stuff just for him to hide the diadem. That’s brilliant.
Lily Luna you have answered the question that has perplexed me forever! I could never understand how Voldy thought he was the only one to discover the RoHT – your theory is perfect!
I find it interesting that the only time we hear the ROR called “The Unknowable Room” is in the title to this chapter. It seems to be referencing the fact that the room is making itself unknowable to Harry, no matter how hard he tries. And until he “knows” what Draco is up to, it’s just not going to let him in.
I personally like to think that the ROR continues to exist. I also believe that even though all of the items in the RoHT have been destroyed, that, too, still exists – it just gets a fresh start the next time someone needs to hide something.
The Room of Requirements is not a room, it’s a spell. A masterful piece of magic which is attached to a room. You don’t “find’ the room: you invoke it.
revgeorge That is a superb reading of the meaning of the quotation and I am not going to say you are wrong.
Still, the “he did not understand what these words meant” language has me concerned. Usually when Harry does not understand something, it indicates that there is something to understand.
Of course, nothing says it can’t mean both things. JKR could have found the quote by looking for “heart” quotations and then built Dumbledore’s backstory around it.
SPT, it’s a great point – and I do think there is something to understand.
But it’s one of the deeper matters of the HP series, not one of the surface-level matters (like, where are the Horcruxes located?). Rowling said that the two Bible verses on the tombstones “sum up the entire series.” Dumbledore told Harry that he needed his friends, and that love was his most important weapon against Voldemort.
These two things fuse in that quotation from Matthew: Harry is to learn that his greatest treasure is love for others. Remember, even at this point, Harry still doesn’t “get” Dumbledore’s lesson that Love is the “power the Dark Lord knows not.”
Combine that with the quote on the Potters’ grave from 1 Corinthians – and we have the foreshadowing that Harry will die out of love for his friends, and that self-sacrificial love will defeat death. And that, indeed, “sums up” the whole series.
AmandaUm, err, yes, you are right. It is Luke, of course, Luke 12:34. Matthew 6:21 is very similar.
Corinthians is the quote on the Potters grave.
I didn’t realize the quote on the Potter’s grave was from the Bible, either. It’s amazing what you can learn here! Travis, I love the whole summation of the series in two quotes analysis.
Sorry Travis, cross your post while looking up chapter and verse.
Your Rowling quote is persuasive.
Synthesizing Lily’s observations about Voldemort’s hubris re: the RoR with Red’s idea of the room as a mechanism gives us a nice, pointed reminder of just how shallow Voldy’s understanding of magic actually is.
Yet, Neville and the DA seem able to best exploit the RoR. I always took the RoR’s sudden ability to migrate as an indication that those using it were learning more and more its functions, just like Amanda suggests.
Going back to my initial idea of the ROR being like Harry, it seems like the ROR is a mental construct, a meeting place inside someone’s head made literally external. King’s Cross in Deathly Hallows is similar, a construct inside Harry’s head but only figuratively external rather than literally. Harry in fact says that King’s Cross seems like a gigantic room of requirement and when he wishes he had clothes they appear and when chairs are needed they appear.
This has been a fascinating discussion on the RoR, one I’m keeping. Good post and suggestion for examination, revgeorge!
Excellent point, Lily Luna: the RoR is very like Harry’s King’s Cross.
May be taking this idea too far, but…. Is it significant that this is the room that serves as headquarters for Dumbledore’s Army in OotP and DH? The room where those loyal to Dumbledore (and Harry as well, come to think of it) are given what they need? A faith-based community meeting in a room whose magic reminds us of Harry’s King’s Cross?
Good point, although the room also serves lesser needs like when Fred and George need to hide from Filch or when Filch needs more cleaning supplies (interesting that the room works for squibs, too).
Catching up on stuff, now that the essay book is all done.
Lily Luna wrote, “The absolute irony of Voldemort priding himself on being the only one who found the room is that obviously many people over the centuries have found it and hidden things there. Voldemort is so blind to anything other than his own self-importance that he must think the room created all those other objects just for him to hide his horcrux among rather than accept the evidence of his eyes that others have been there first.”
Yes! I make this point in Harry Potter and Imagination and my essay in Hog’s Head Conversations. It’s amazing how arrogant – to the point of cartoonish – Voldemort becomes in that moment when we’re let in on his thought that he believes himself the only one to have ever found that room.
miles365, not only is there a RoR connection between Dumbledore’s Army in OP and DH, but there’s a Hog’s Head/RoR connection. Dumbledore’s Army is organized at The Hog’s Head, and then uses the RoR for a meeting place. For the Battle of Hogwarts, The Hog’s Head is the rallying point for the good guys, and through Arianna’s portrait, they access the RoR, and then into the battle.
Travis, I guess great minds think alike – I own your book but haven’t had a chance to read it yet. I was saving it for the airplane. Any accolades I got for my comment I hereby bestow unto you! Also, good point about the Hog’s Head/ROR connection in both books.
Lily Luna, no need to bestow accolades! I’m not much for the idea that whoever thought of it “first” (or whatever) gets the credit. Obviously, lots of people come up with similar good ideas independent of one another. So, share those “accolades”! It’s an important observation about Voldemort’s character.