Chapter Twenty-Four: Occlumency
In chapter twenty-four of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Arthur is cured and Sirius and Snape act like fifteen-year-old boys towards each other. If you think I don’t find that hilarious, you don’t know me very well.
(Please be advised that this is a reread and I will be discussing book and movie spoilers.)
Sirius and Harry are both brooding like angsty boys going through puberty about the Christmas Holidays coming to a close and while I love you, Sirius, only one of you two is actually a teenage boy going through puberty. Although now might be a good time to discuss the theory I’ve read numerous times that people can get developmentally stuck at the age they experienced trauma.
To me, this makes total and complete sense in regards to Sirius. He’s 21 or 22 when he’s sent to Azkaban, a place where he essentially cannot grow as a human. All he can do is wallow in bad memories. How can he possibly age to that of a 35/36 year old man, like he is in Order of the Phoenix? He can’t. So when I think of Sirius’s bad decision making and immature responses to things, the human brain isn’t done developing until it’s 25, and Sirius got interrupted before that. In many ways, he’s an overgrown teenager, and that’s what makes him so interesting and is also what the movies got so terribly, horribly wrong. He’s complicated and tragic and occasionally awful, and not a mild mannered dude who thinks Harry is his dead father James when he’s not wandering around in a creepy bathrobe.
Anyway! So Harry’s miserable about returning to Umbridge when he finds out that his hell will be getting even hotter, in the form of Severus Snape giving him private lessons.
Snape and Sirius are sitting around the kitchen table in the most awkward meeting since Buffy could hear everyone’s thoughts in the Sunnydale Library.
If i’m being generous enough to say Sirius is stuck at his Azkaban age trauma, perhaps Snape is stuck at the age he realized he made a horrendous mistake about joining the Death Eaters.
Either way, the two dudes have a pissing test where they basically whip out their man parts and wave them around, even going so far as to stand up and loom in each other’s faces and DAMMIT MOVIE why didn’t I get this moment?! The two of them descend to such immature shenanigans that Harry, I repeat HARRY has to step in and try to stop it. You know, the teenage guy who’s been doing this all book?
Seriously, Snape’s throwing low blows about James (still can’t get over that Lily slept with him, huh SevS,) Sirius is calling Snape Snivellus like they’re in grade school, Snape’s calling Sirius a coward (come ON that’s ridiculous by any measure) and Sirius is bringing up the fact that Snape’s head is buried up Lucius Malfoy’s ass. They’re about to wand fight (LOL) when Arthur and co interrupt
because they’re just trying to celebrate Arthur’s survival, dammit!
Sirius gives Harry a gift and tells him it’s in case Snape is being a jerkwad (a certainty) and Harry needs to contact Sirius, but don’t worry, this part exists to tear out your heart and smash on it! Or perhaps it exists for your brain to fall out of your skull from Harry’s stupidity. Pick your poison, but we will definitely come back to this later.
Lupin tries to talk some sense into Harry about the importance of Occlumency but Harry’s distracted by Zacharias, the World’s Only Unamiable Hufflepuff being a dick and Cho dropping nuclear bomb level hints about Valentine’s Day that Harry nonetheless doesn’t pick up on. Oh, Harry!
He finally gets it about twelve minutes later and enters his lesson with Snape high off the fumes of going on a date with Cho.
We’ll talk about Occlumency more, but I find these lessons fascinating and frustrating in equal measure. For one, why isn’t Harry good at this? He should be due to his talent with resisting the Imperius, and I’m convinced it’s solely because Snape is such a horrendous, antagonistic teacher. Second, why doesn’t Harry freaking try to calm his mind? Can someone please force him to do yoga before these lessons? Third, why is Snape so insistent on having Harry saying “sir” every two words? Fourth, why doesn’t Snape seem to gain any kinship with Harry after seeing how horrible a childhood he really had? And lastly, why is Snape “tracing his mouth with his finger” while they talk? (OK sure that one doesn’t really matter but it’s a bizarro description that’s always stuck out to me.)
But the lesson isn’t all bad, because Harry’s now figured out where Voldemort keeps dreaming about, and also realizes Voldz is happier then he’s been in 14 years! Wait, did I say that was good? Harry, maybe just go back to thinking about your date with Cho some more. That can’t go wrong, right?
….oh no.
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Do you think Sirius and/or Snape are stuck at a younger age mentally due to trauma?
At this point, who does Snape hate more: Sirius or the ghost of James Potter?
Why is Harry so bad at Occlumency?
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