Half-Blood Prince uberwank: Chapter 6, Draco's Detour

They're idiots, losers, they're scum
Taking advantage of everyone
You're a dog, they're your fleas
Doing everything they can to spread disease

They'll take your beer, they'll take your drugs
Leave you with microscopic bugs
Their company is something you won't miss
When your icetrays are filled with piss

They are the Moron Brothers
Don't get along with others

- NoFX, "The Moron Brothers"

The chapter starts with a description of the next few weeks at the Burrow: Harry spends it eating, masturbating, playing two-a-side quidditch (which sounds like a rubbish game, frankly), masturbating, and eating. Then it's Harry's birthday, which Remus Lupin thoroughly ruins by showing up, looking like crap, and telling everyone about all the latest deaths. This includes that guy Karkaroff who was in GoF and is a total Bothan. (So it goes, Karkaroff.) Not only this, but it turns out that some guy named Florean Fortescue - who, if I recall correctly, provided Harry with a free sundae every 30 minutes for a two-week period during PoA, raising again the eternal question of why Harry isn't a complete fat bastard - has been "dragged off". The way the conversation goes implies he's dead (indeed, he never shows up again in canon). And Ollivander, purveyor of finest wands, is also missing (although he'll be accounted for in the final book, of course). All in all, woo! This is one crazy party! In a minute no doubt someone will pee on Stifler or something; it will be hilarious, I expect.

Anyway, we skip to the next day and learn that Harry has been made quidditch captain. My heart sinks at the realisation that I won't be able to avoid quidditch this year (well, my heart would sink if I hadn't read the book before - you know what I mean, come on). Other that this, there's very little I can say yet about Harry's captaincy; in fact, very little fanfare is made around this achievement at all, in glaring contrast to the CAPSLOCK WANGST we went through in OotP over Harry not being made a prefect. Let's face it, this is all about JKR not being arsed to go into it, isn't it? And I suspect that will be the answer to many of the apparent oversights in the book.

So, a few more pages go by, during which a trip to Diagon Alley is proposed, planned and embarked upon. As they (trio, Ginny, Mama and Papa Weasley) make their way over their, apparently in some kind of limo, Arthur mentions that they will be accompanied by "security" for the duration of their shopping trip. Harry presumes this means aurors, and so is pleasantly surprised when he discovers that his bodyguard will, in fact, be... HAGRID! ... Oh.

I can't say I share Harry's joy. Hagrid, who isn't legally allowed to perform magic, has been assigned to protect The Boy Who Lived. WTF is this - operation human shield? And call me ungrateful, but this guy is wearing a fur coat (beaverskin, to be specific - oh god don't make a rude joke don't do it don't) and it's August. I know the dementors are breeding and whatnot but Hagrid's a big guy. As a fat person, I would not wear a fucking fur coat in August no matter how foggy it was. What I'm getting at is, if someone is sufficiently dumb as to wear a fur coat in August then I sure as fuck don't want them as a bodyguard.

Following this they shoot the breeze for a while, during which JKR shows that she can't write accents, and in return I prove that I take everything too seriously. The offending phrase, then:

"Let's get goin', then - after yeh, Molly, Arthur -"

- p107, UK edition; emphasis mine

People with westcountry accents don't say "yeh" for "you" if that's where the emphasis is. They might say "Yeh parents were a great wizard and witch" or "I'll see yeh next week" or something, but in the above sentence, it would be "you" because it's the most important part of that sentence (and also because westcountry voices go up at the end of a clause, like a question's being asked, similar to the Californian accent). I could go into this in more detail, but I have not the energy; point is, as a westcountry type myself, I find Rowling's accent transcription elluva horribow and om gunna tellurr, ee goes loigis buddis loigat, innit - buh whaddyoo expect, she's from op the loin. (For the record, I'm not expecting anyone to understand that last bit; that was fuelled utterly by nostalgia.)

Moving on. With Hagrid in tow, they wander along Diagon Alley, passing many boarded-up shops and, in front of those, seedy traders, flogging fake amulets and so on. Arthur makes a sort of quasi-threatening remark that, if he were on duty, these guys would be in some serious trouble; this may provide some insight as to why he's only very recently been promoted. The gang then spend a bit of time debating the merits of sticking together vs splitting up: eventually, three Weasleys go to the bookshop, leaving our trio plus Hagrid to head to the robe store. Hagrid, due to his instense phobia of dressmaking pins, waits outside, which nicely paves the way for the bitchfight that now goes down.

Our trio enter the store and are met with the presence of Draco Malfoy, who, we discover, is still a teenage boy with a pale pointed face and grey eyes and so on. I, for one, am relieved to hear this, as I'd been worrying that he might have transformed into a middle-aged Korean woman between books 5 and 6. It also says that he's wearing "dark green robes that glittered with pins around the hem and the edges of the sleeves". There's an ambiguity in there: I presume JKR means the robes are glittering because the pins are catching the light, but there's also a possibility that they are glittery in their own right, because they're covered in sequins or something. Let's assume it's the latter, because it makes this scene even more delightfully camp.

How is "Draco" pronounced, by the way? Because I realise I generally give it a flat A sound - to rhyme with Wakko and Yakko, but in the movies they say Drayco, don't they? (Heh, Drayco looks like the name of a chain of 24-hour pharmacies.) How do you say it?

So, they fight! Draco makes the first move, calling Hermione a mudblood and implying that she smells. Harry and Ron immediately pull out their wands and stand with them pointing directly at him (wow, we're all excited here, but... oh, right. That sort of wand). Backup arrives in the form of Narcissa - and out come the handbags!

Narcissa threatens to kill the trio if they threaten Draco again. Harry calls her a death eater. She calls him Dumbledore's bitch. Harry counters with the classic "come and have a go" football chant, and remarks that perhaps they'll find a special double cell in Azkaban for her to share with Lucius. Wow, Azkaban must be a pretty liberal prison if they allow married couples to share living quarters. And there I was, working on the assumption it was a prison of the federal pound-me-in-the-ass variety. Huh. (OK, I get that Harry's making a diss. I just wanted an opportunity to refer to Azkaban as a pound-me-in-the-ass prison.)

Draco goes to intervene with violence, but trips on his robe and instead settles for telling Harry that he won't stand for "your mum" cusses, presumably because they're his trademark. Narcissa then predicts that Harry will be reunited with Sirius before she sees Lucius again, to which my first reaction is OH SNAP! but then... wait, what? Because, OK, the implication she's going for is that Harry's probably going to die soon, but the other implication of her statement is pretty much, "My husband's gonna be in jail for EVER, LOL!" which is... yeah.

Anyhow, so Madam Malkin, the seller of robes, who has been vaguely hovering this entire time, decides to actively ignore what's happening by fiddling with Draco's glittery catsuit robe. She spikes him in the arm with a pin by mistake; because he is a giant wuss, he and his mother make a huge deal of storming out.



This episode concluded, we move on. Our trio buy some robes or something, then hook up with the rest of their adventuring party to visit the owl shop and apothecary. Nothing of any interest happens here, so I'll skip dicussing it. Then it's time to move on to what I guess is supposed to be the fun part of the chapter, but in fact is about as funny as finding out you've got chlamydia. Yes, that's right: it's time to visit Weasley's Wizard Wheezes!

As they approach the shop, our heroes find themselves experiencing seizures due to the flashing yellow and purple posters on the outside of the shop. The most prominent of these is advertising "U-No-Poo", a pathetic, stupid product which will apparently cheer you up in these dark times by making you constipated. How old is JKR - eight? It isn't even funny. Anyway, you can already buy stuff to make you constipated in the shops, so there's not really any need for a special ~*wizarding*~ version. In fact, what's the bet that Fred and George have simply bought some Imodium from a muggle chemist and are selling it at a huge markup? They are such massive wankers.

Molly, scandalised, whispers that they'll be murdered for this. I wish, Molly. Sadly, almost an entire twin will survive this war.

They enter the store to find Fred and George in the middle of one of their sales patter routines. "So buy our stuff..." Fred yells. "... Or we'll shit you up with a hammer!" George adds. "And remember..."

"It's only gay..." says Fred,

"... If balls are touching!" chorus the twins and the assembled crowds. There's a brief round of applause before the people disperse and we can get back to what actually happens in the book.

So, what can you buy in this delightful shop? Well, there's something called "reusable hangman" - a game that anyone can achieve simply by owning a pen - and then there are "patented daydream charms". As far as I can tell, these induce in the user something akin to a catatonic episode, in which the body goes all stiff and drooling while the mind plays through vivid hallucinations. Fun! Worst of all, though, are the edible Dark Marks, which are simply in extremely poor taste.

Things get possibly even darker when we move into a back room, which is darker and curtained off. You'd expect a room like that to be full of vibrators and pornographic DVDs, but instead it's a sort of... weapons repository. Fred refers to this stuff as the "more serious line"; it includes various forms of magical armour, as well as "instant darkness powder". They claim these are for use in defence against the dark arts, but later in the book the darkness powder will play a vital role in allowing Draco to let death eaters into Hogwarts, so I'm not convinced. I'm increasingly sure that the difference between the dark arts themselves and defence against them is utterly about whether a designated book good guy is on the throwing or receiving end of any given hex.

Then there's the corner of the shop for the ladies: virtually all the products are pink and a fair number seem to be designed to trap or otherwise manipulate men into falling wildly in love with you. The rest of it consists of beauty products and cute, fluffy pets. I'd go into the implications of all this, what it says about the way women in this series are characterised, but I wouldn't know about that sort of thing because I'm just a girl.

Fred and George are such massive, massive penises. I hate them and I'm glad one of them dies.

The Moron Twins question Ginny then, over her involvement with "about five boys"; she disabuses them of this notion and points out that her current squeeze, one Dean Thomas, is one boy, not five. (That's not what I've heard. Ding dong.) And, to be fair to Ginny, who I'm not keen on in canon, she really doesn't deserve this reputation she appears to have. She seems to have had about two steady boyfriends, and then at 15 she starts going out with Harry and that's it. I still don't like her in this book, where she comes across as a bit of a bully, but it's not on to suggest that she's overly promiscuous (even leaving aside my general dislike of judging women for how much sex they have or don't have). Whatever, though.

In between their questions, she asks about the various Products For Ladies, culminating in her asking her mother if she can have a "pygmy puff", which is a sickeningly cute ball of fluff that makes mewling noises, rolls about, is pink, is apparently a sentient creature, and probably comes with a bow on it and is called "Fwuffy". It makes me puke all down my nice clean top. At this point, Harry - whose soulmate is Ginny, incidentally - finds her warbling over the pygmy puff so fascinating that he spots Draco Malfoy outside the shop and immediately decides to follow him. The trio don the Mary Sue Cloaking Device for the first time in the book, and, huddled together, fuck off down the street to engage in one of their favourite pastimes, stalking. Presently, they see Draco heading down Knockturn Alley.

Incidentally, it took me absolutely ages to figure out the whole Diagon Alley/diagonally thing. And then I realised you could do it with all kinds of adverbs - the obvious one is Pornographic Alley, but perhaps you could also have Ethnographic Alley, where every single person on the street is engaged in participant observation?

(For what it's worth, Knockturn Alley is a brilliant bit of wordplay, and something I think JKR actually does do very well is wordplay.)

Anyway. So, yes, our trio stalk Draco for a while, eventually finding themselves lurking outside a shop called Borgin and Burkes, where Draco is talking to the owner or something. They spend a while wangsting about how they can find out what sort of mischief he's up to, then use extendable ears - a sort of wizarding bugging device which would probably be illegal had a Slytherin invented it - to provide us with some easy exposition. Long story short: Draco has something he wants fixed but he refuses to bring it in; he wants the shopkeeper to tell him how to do it instead; he also wants to buy something that's in the shop now but won't take it with him in case he looks like a dick carrying it. Moreover, if he doesn't get what he wants, he'll send his good family friend, one Fenrir Greyback, around to cause trouble. Then he GTFOs. Later, Mister Borgin (for it is he) will be posting about this on Customers Suck.

Naturally, our intrepid trio find themselves unable to resist finding out exactly what's going on, immediately and without formulating a proper plan (this is the Gryffindor way!), so Hermione - who, you will remember, is the cleverest witch ever and so on - more or less goes in there and bellows "IS MALFOY UP TO SOMETHING EVIL?" which is epic fail. Well, no, actually she goes in and asks outright whether he's reserved anything, because she wants to buy him a birthday present and doesn't want to get him anything he's already bought for himself. Both Harry and JKR find this "lame" - it actually says that in the book - although I don't think it's that bad a plan, if only they'd put a bit more thought into it.

Then again, if Hermione really did want to buy Draco something, she'd just look at his Amazon wishlist or something, and Borgin knows it.

Following this, the chapter ends awfully abruptly; Hermione is told by Borgin to GTFO, and our trio leg it back to the Chuckle Brothers' LOL Emporium, there to insist they never left. That happens right at the bottom of the page, and you turn the page expecting it to continue, and there's the next chapter, right there. Like much of this book, this leaves one with the sense that one has been short-changed.

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