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Entry tags:	hbp uberwank

Half-Blood Prince Uberwank: Chapter 8, Snape Victorious

There's a campaign of hate
Waiting at the school gates

- The Libertines, "Campaign of Hate"

So at the end of the last chapter, Harry either sucked Draco's cock or has his nose broken, depending on whose version you prefer. Either way, when this one begins, we find our hero lying on the floor of a train compartment with his face covered in one of two bodily fluids which, I'm told, have a pretty similar chemical makeup anyway. Also, he is covered with an invisibility cloak, and of course he's been hit with a petrificus totalus jinx, so he can't move or even make a noise. I believe I touched on this subject during the last instalment's unexpected pr0n, but it's probably worth discussing properly - how does that work, then? The curse can't simply work by freezing up every muscle in your body, because your heart is a muscle and your breathing is controlled by muscles and there are muscles at work constantly to ensure you don't throw up or piss yourself.

Perhaps it's like sleep paralysis - if you're lucky enough never to have experienced it, this is the thing where you wake up very suddenly and your mind is conscious but you can't move. (If you've never had this, it's horrible, and very unsettling.) But anyway, when this happens to me, my breathing is shallow and regular, but I can't call out or take a deep breath, so I guess I'm on autopilot. That's kind of how I imagine this must work (or, at least, that's how I rationalise its existence so that my brain shuts up about it).

Harry isn't reflecting on this, though; he's wangsting about whether Ron and Hermione will notice he's gone, and listening out for people calling his name or falling to the ground screaming over the loss of him, although he does have the decency to hate himself for thinking that. The train's moving by this point and he's rolled under a seat. How I wish I had any sympathy for him.

Luckily, we are spared any more of this, because... Tonks shows up. Oh. Exactly how she found Harry is more or less handwaved away when they talk about it in a few moments (she noticed he didn't leave the train and also that the blinds were down in that compartment, and was lucky enough to be right). In the next book Hermione uses a spell which scans to see if there is anyone in 12 Grimmauld Place, so why Tonks didn't use that same spell here is unclear - unless, as always, we remember that JK Rowling is making it up as she goes along. Anyway, Tonks pulls the cloaking device off our hero, takes the sleep paralysis jinx thingy off him, and leads him to the train door, where they jump. This is a remarkably stupid thing to do, but both survive it, so... meh.

Next, Tonks fixes Harry's broken nose (if we go with the broken nose version of events, or, I guess... fixes his smudged lipstick, if we're going with the oral sex version? OK, this is one of the points where my version doesn't quite hold water). Following this, she sends a message to the castle to say she's got Harry, communicating via patronus. Her patronus is an "immense silvery four-legged creature", and the "silvery" part is because it's a patronus, so basically it's a large thing with four legs and could therefore be anything: a lion, a grizzly bear, half an octopus, a diprotodon, Longcat, a mudkip, a pantomime horse, an abnormally large vole, a bantha, the Chuckle Brothers. Or, of course, a gay werewolf twice Tonks's age.

OK, he's not quite twice her age, but she is outside of his creep threshold, which is the main thing. As you may be aware, there is a mathematical formula you can use to figure out whether an age gap is creepy. The formula is:

x = (a/2) + 7

Where a is the age of the older person in the relationship, and x is equal to the age of the youngest person they can sleep with without it being icky. So, for example, I am 26. Half of 26 is 13; 13 + 7 = 20, so I can hypothetically sleep with anyone aged 20 or older, but if I were to sleep with a 19-year-old, that would be kind of gross and stuff. Sounds about right. (The beauty of the formula is that it allows for the fact that as you get older, age gaps become less of a big deal; a 13-year age gap, which is what Remus and Tonks have, is a much bigger deal when you're, say, 18 and 31 than when you're 52 and 65.) With me so far?

OK, so let's apply this to Remus and Tonks. The older person is Remus, who according to the Harry Potter Wiki is about 36 right now. So:

36/2 = 18
18 + 7 = 25

So at this point in his life, Remus can do anyone aged 25 or over. But! Tonks, also according to the Wiki, is 23 now. Ergo, their relationship is officially icky. It are fact! Science wins again! And this is without taking into account factors not covered by the formula, like one person being codependent or the other being an alcoholic, or half of the couple having previously been shagging the other one's cousin or whatever. Hypothetically.

Right, where were we? Oh yeah, Tonks did a patronus.

Actually, now I'm really worried that someone who reads this is going to turn out to be in a relationship with a massive age gap. I should probably state that the formula, like the pirate code or the official word on stealing stationery from work, is really only guidelines anyway. (Plus, Remus/Tonks is creepy, whereas you're all very nice people, and therefore exempt. So yeah.)

So, as Harry and Tonks head for school, they chat a little about why Tonks was there in the first place, and then there in silence, during which Harry reflects that she looks like shit and is now a miserable bastard. He wonders if this is due to Sirius's death, but no - because that might make an ounce of sense.

Eventually they get to the gates of the school; said gates are locked. Tonks makes a series of unhelpful comments about how Harry's basically fucked now, before a new escort for Harry arrives, this time in the form of our old pal Snape. While letting Harry inside, and unable to resist a BURRRRNN! when the opportunity presents itself, Snape accuses Tonks's new patronus of being "weak". Jokes about bears and banthas and so on aside, and leaving aside also the fact that he is as always just the wrong side of snarky about it, he's sort of got a point, given that - as we tediously discover later - it's meant to be Remus, and Remus is weak. I especially hate Tonks's patronus changing as a shorthand (or clue or whatever it's supposed to be) for her falling in love with Remus, because of the thing where she sees him as her protector, which is just stupid. I suspect that, prior to this book, they'd have been fairly evenly matched in a fight (he's got more experience but she's had better training and so on), but I can't see how he'd be able to protect her. In fact, the only way he can is by not having a relationship with her ("too dangerous!") and we all know what passive-aggressive bullshit that is.

Actually, I dunno why I'm arguing alongside Snape when he's being such a hypocrite. His patronus is some stupid deer that is meant to represent Lily. Tonks's dumbass wolf patronus might be weak and stupid but I bet it could kill a deer. A patronus deer, obviously, not a real one. In any case - and I never thought I'd find myself defending R/T - at least the inexplicable object of Tonks's affection is actually alive.

The only other interesting thing to note from that section is how malicious Snape is about the new patronus, especially as he says she should have stuck with the "old one". Why does he care? One (though not I) might be inclined to offer that as evidence for, perhaps, a Snape/Tonks ship, only obviously not. I guess, then, that this is just him being a dick for the sake of being a dick. Dude, get some therapy.

So Harry and Snape now walk romantically together up to the castle. On the way, Snape engages in some light flirting, taking points away from Harry (kinky!) and commenting on Harry's appearance and stuff like that. For the record, I find Snarry pretty squicky, but I'm also extremely bored right now. Some time passes, and some more, and we hear that Harry totally blames Snape for Sirius's death, which I believe is called displacement, and then they get to the front entrance of the school. Snape refuses to let Harry wear his cloaking device (and whispers breathily that he'll be wearing even less later, and... no, even as I joke, I can't do this).

Eventually, and with much whispering, Harry reaches the Gryffindor table, where Ron and Hermione naturally question the presence of blood (or, possibly, cum) all over Harry's face; Tonks's spell fixed his nose (lipstick) but didn't clean him up. Harry is deliberately enigmatic with them, hoping that those eavesdropping will assume he's been fighting evil, rather than having his face caved in (sucking dick). That strikes me as a bit out-of-character for Harry, to want people to think he's been a hero. There is a line about how he is hoping no Gryffindors will hear what really happened, which is rather sweet, as if he thinks nobody will pass on the story because it'll have "AN ACCREDITED MALFOY BRAND MALICIOUS RUMOUR" stamped on it. In any case, when Harry sneaks a glance at the Slytherin table, Malfoy himself is acting out, for the benefit of his cronies, stamping on someone's face (sticking his dick in someone's mouth). Incidentally, Harry is watching this because Professor Trelawney, who teaches - is it homeopathy or something? - looks at him and he instinctively looks at Draco. Because he is gay for him.

Puddings arrive (Harry gets no main course, and eats only treacle tart for his dinner; later he'll be so full of sugar that he'll watch some indecipherable anime - Adventures of Mini-Goddess, say - and it will make perfect sense to him). The sidekicks fill Harry in on things like Dumbledore (he has done nothing of interest yet) and Hagrid (he's learned to wave over the summer, and is doing it now, look), and the sorting hat's song ("JK Rowling obviously couldn't be bothered to write another one," says Ron, through a mouthful of arctic roll, breakfast burrito and bacon pudding), and what Harry and Slughorn talked about on the train (some boring crap).

After a few dull pages of this, Dumbledore staggers to his feet and emits an ear-splitting screeching sound - somewhere between the roar of a b-movie dinosaur and the sound of nails on a blackboard - that gets everyone's attention. (OK, really he just commands everyone's notice by simply being that kind of a guy, the kind of guy that everyone pays attention to, but it would be good if he screamed.) As he begins his traditional speech - which is really just a bunch of admin and the odd pseudo-wise comment - Hermione and about half the other people in the room point out Dumbledore's mash-up hand and wonder how it happened. As we're not supposed to know yet, I'm just going to work on the assumption it's always been like that, but these fuckers are all so dim they've only just noticed.

The speech covers familiar ground. Weasley's Wizard Wheezes products are banned, so in theory there will be no hilarious outbreaks of the plague or syphillis this year, nor any chortle-inducing rape or suicide bombing. If people want to play quidditch, then they should do that. Also, a new teacher, Professor Slughorn, is welcomed; he will be teaching POTIONS!

This induces a state of shock in the assembled crowds, who had assumed he was the new DADA teacher. Hermione blames Harry for this misinformation: if Harry said it, it must be true! But no. And, of course, the upshot of this is that the new DADA teacher will, in fact, be Snape. And bricks will be shat. Across the room, this same conversation is going on, until Dumbledore makes that horrible screamy noise again and starts talking about Voldemort, presumably in a misguided attempt to calm everyone down. Malfoy ignores him, everyone else drools into the remnants of their coffee and petit fours. Then the great Dumbledore tells them all to go to bed, and they duly GTFO.

On the way out, Harry tells Ron about the contact between his own nose (mouth) and Malfoy's foot (cock) and is beginning his usual thing of accusing Malfoy of killing kittens for fun and so on, when Hagrid turns up. The arrival of Hagrid makes my reinvigorated enthusiasm for writing this thing tail right off again; Hagrid is stupid and annoying, a great lump of failure and tedium, and I am dreading having to comment on the things he does. Even worse, he's built a nice house in a cave for his useless fuck of a brother, Grawp - a character whose existence is surely down to JK Rowling having smoked some seriously good shit.

The silver lining of Hagrid showing up now, though, is the discovery that all three of our intrepid heroes have ditched his crappy animal care class this year. So at least we won't have to deal with any more wacky episodes in which Hagrid shows them the most dangerous creature in the world - perhaps an ungodly hybrid beast with the body of a velociraptor, the reflexes of a ninja, a chainsaw for a head, rusty syringes for claws and the cock of one of those insects that has a cock three times the length of its body, with a spike on the end - and proceeds to stick his finger up its arse to see what happens. Of course, Hagrid doesn't yet know that none of them are taking his class, so the relief of this knowledge is somewhat dampened when one considers the massive fucking guilt-trip he and JKR will be putting us through when he finds out.

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