Chapter Twenty-Four: The Wandmaker
In chapter twenty-four of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Harry honors Dobby while I ugly cry and Voldemort adds creepy graverobber to his resume.
(Please be advised that this is a reread and I will be discussing book and movie spoilers.)
My pain, your pain, all of our pain continues with Harry when he mourns Dobby’s death. I love Harry forever and ever more when he treats Dobby’s death with the utmost seriousness it deserves, digging his grave by hand, carving a stone saying Dobby’s a free elf, and thinking on how Dobby deserved a funeral as magnificent as Dumbledore’s. Hell, I say more magnificent! Who was more noble then Dobby in the story?! I do wish Harry had said some words over Dobby’s grave but dang, I need an ounce of moisture left in my body and if he’d talked about all the billion times Dobby was awesome to him I’d die from dehydration.
While Harry mourns he locks out Voldemort, which is good because it doesn’t ruin his beautiful moment for Dobby and bad because watching Voldemort lose his goddamn mind at Malfoy Manor over being called back to hear about how Harry Potter escaped again (Or did they lie and say they called him on accident?) might’ve been entertaining. Just imagine this fool throwing a tantrum!
Harry hasn’t just got the ability to finally block out Voldz, he also finally has some insights into what he needs to do and interrogates Griphook and Ollivander in turn.
Griphook is an interesting turn in the story. Because he’s another example of a character that we should feel sorry for as a marginalized species but he’s given more complexity then that. But we’ll get to that more later. Griphook decides to maybe help Harry because he observed Harry burying Dobby and saving himself and that he’s different then most wizards.
But he’s definitely enjoying letting Harry twist in the wind for awhile instead, because Griphook is kind of a sadist, just saying.
We move on to Ollivander, who confirms that the elder wand of power most likely does exist and that Harry didn’t make up the weirdness of his wand fighting Voldemort of its own accord.
Just in case you thought Voldemort couldn’t cross any more human conventions of decency, he breaks open Dumbledore’s tomb, and instead of being…well…you know….a rotting corpse…Dumbledore is weirdly preserved. Can we just talk about why on earth Dumbledore didn’t make sure his wand didn’t get buried with him? I know he planned for the wand’s power to die with him, but why not just destroy it instead? He knew Voldz would eventually go after it…why not obliterate it? Why not throw it into the lake? Why not bury it in a desert somewhere? Chuck it into the Mariana trench? I guess he assumed his genius plan would work and didn’t trust Snape with the knowledge that Dumbles owned the Elder wand. Which raises the question…what would’ve Snape done if he got possession of the elder wand?
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Why does Harry dig Dobby’s grave by hand?
Should Harry have spoken over Dobby’s grave?
Why is Dumbledore so…preserved?
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