A most curious omission

[snorkackcatcher]

While flipping through my UK-edition paperback copy of OotP (a recent special-offer acquisition, as my original hardback is looking decidedly the worse for wear!) I've noticed a few changes in wording. Yes, I know, I'm very sad to have even realised they'd changed. However, one scene in particular caught my eye as the changes seem to omit a couple of significant Harry/Ginny-related lines. Comments and comparisons from other editions welcome!



Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, UK editions, ch29 "Careers Advice", p577 in both. The scene is Harry and Ginny in the library; deletions in strikethrough, replacements in bold:

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She hoisted a box wrapped in brown paper on to the table; it had clearly been unwrapped and carelessly re-wrapped. There was a scribbled note across it in red ink, reading: Inspected and Passed by the Hogwarts High Inquisitor.

'It's Easter eggs from Mum,' said Ginny. 'There's one for you ... there you go.'

She handed him a handsome chocolate egg decorated with small, iced Snitches and, according to the packaging, containing a bag of Fizzing Whizzbees. Harry looked at it for a moment, then, to his horror, felt a lump rise in his throat.

'Are you OK, Harry?' Ginny asked quietly.

'Yeah, I'm fine,' said Harry gruffly. The lump in his throat was painful. He did not understand why an Easter egg should have made him feel like this.

'You seem really down lately,' Ginny persisted. 'You know, I'm sure if you just talked to Cho ...'

'It's not Cho I want to talk to,' said Harry brusquely.

'Who is it, then?' asked Ginny, watching him closely.

'I ...'

He glanced around to make quite sure nobody was listening. Madam Pince was several shelves away, stamping out a pile of books for a frantic-looking Hannah Abbott.

'I wish I could talk to Sirius,' he muttered. 'But I know I can't.'

Ginny continued to watch him thoughtfully. More to give himself something to do than because he really wanted any, Harry unwrapped his Easter egg, broke off a large bit and put it into his mouth.

'Well,' said Ginny slowly, helping herself to a bit of egg, too, 'if you really want to talk to Sirius, I expect we could think of a way to do it.'

'Come on,' said Harry dully hopelessly. 'With Umbridge policing the fires and reading all our mail?'

'The thing about growing up with Fred and George,' said Ginny thoughtfully, 'is that you sort of start thinking anything's possible if you've got enough nerve.'

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[Isn't OCR handy? :D]

So what's going on here then? The change from 'dully' to 'hopelessly' is presumably intended simply to emphasise Harry's mood, but the omitted bits which had Ginny watching Harry carefully were possibly the key OotP lines used by HMS Chocolate/Orange Crush shippers as hints of forthcoming Harry/Ginny.

The only way I can make sense of the change is to suppose that the lines weren't intended to show Ginny's continued romantic interest, but merely to show that she is, at this point in the story, basically just thinking of Harry as a friend; and were removed because either JKR or the editors had realised that it suggests the opposite, that this is part of her never-quite-having-given-up thing. I suppose it relates to what I was waffling about earlier in that it can be easy to read too much into a scene even after you know what's canon.

I couldn't find any obvious mention of hardback-to-paperback changes in the Lexicon, the Bloomsbury site, or elsewhere, so does anyone have any suggestions or links relating to this?

Comments

[maple-clef.livejournal.com]

That is rather curious... I can't make any more sense of it than you have, so I guess you're probably on the right track! Were the other changes along the same lines too, or completely unrelated?

[snorkackcatcher]

The ones I've seen (and I'm sure there are plenty of others that weren't in passages I remembered particularly) seem to be more or less unrelated. The first one I noticed was the Silencing Charm lesson where the original has 'Ravens are harder than frogs,' said Ron through clenched teeth, which always sounded unusually angry, and which has been replaced by 'Ravens are harder than frogs,' said Ron testily, presumably for that reason?

Anyway, if JKR's going to do this, it makes me feel less worried about retconning mentions of things needed for later into NTLJ. :)

[dizzy-chisel.livejournal.com]

Very interesting. My first stab at an interpretation would be that maybe JKR or her editors thought she'd given too much away about the planned future Harry/Ginny pairing and wanted to tone down the scene. I have the hardback edition (UK), and I've seen its role here, as far as Ginny is concerned, to show her as a resourceful, independent person who definitely has an interest in Harry.

At this age, I think that any kind of developing interest can hint at potential future romantic involvement. This is different for people who have already been friends for a long time: Even though friendship can blossom into attraction, I've never got this kind of vibes from Harry/Hermione. The "swooping sensations" from book three onwards showed that Harry is straight. On the other hand, the new-found connection with Luna would have been a definite possiblity, even in the absence of stomach flip-flops and chest monsters (ugh, what a bad, bad piece of writing, that), had JKR not said in an interview that she was planning to pair Harry up with someone we've known from the start of the series. Susan Bones was an outsider possibility for me.

[snorkackcatcher]

My first stab at an interpretation would be that maybe JKR or her editors thought she'd given too much away about the planned future Harry/Ginny pairing and wanted to tone down the scene.

Could well be -- I think the paperback originally came out some months before HBP? Mind you, it does kind of draw attention to it. :)

I thought Luna and Susan were possibles too -- actually, I remember once really looking hard for that quote about Harry's love interest (possibly as a result of discussing it with some Harmonians), and completely failing to find it. I've a feeling it may be one of those HP urban myths (although probably irrelevant now anyway).

I didn't mind the 'chest monster' thing, really -- from personal experience, I'd say it's actually not a bad description of what male jealousy feels like. :)

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

I remember once really looking hard for that quote about Harry's love interest (possibly as a result of discussing it with some Harmonians), and completely failing to find it. I've a feeling it may be one of those HP urban myths (although probably irrelevant now anyway).

Seconded. The problem with that quote (as well as the perennial rumor about Lupin playing a major role in Book Seven) is that it's hard to locate a time frame when JKR could have said it without the fans and the media instantly pouncing on it. The Harry Potter phenomenon really took off around the release of PoA. (I'd even say before, but my perspective is somewhat colored since I was working in a children's bookstore at the time -- but the point is, Harry was a household word VERY soon after the third book came out.) It's highly unlikely that anybody would be prescient enough to ask JKR about either Lupin's future or Harry's love life before PoA came out -- I'd even say the chances of the second question coming up before GoF are low, although there may be some Harry / Cho hinting in PoA that I've forgotten about. And if she had made any statements about these points after PoA, I'm pretty confident that somebody, somewhere would have preserved a copy.

Both rumors also sound like prime territory for fannish wishful thinking, to me. (I'm reminded of the "I heard JKR said she wanted to include two gay characters in her story but the mean editors wouldn't let her!" rumor that enjoyed a brief flush of popularity after HBP. If people want to believe it, they will repeat it.)

[hannahmarder.livejournal.com]

There are hints at Harry/Cho in PoA - only very mild. He plays her at Quidditch and gets a funny feeling in his stomach every time he looks at her. It's fairly clear that he's interested in her. But as you say, HP didn't really take off until after PoA, and the fandom only really developed in earnest after GoF, so I don't think people were that worried about it. Or perhaps they were, but had less opportunity to get together collectively and make it known?

You're right though, people believe what they want to believe. I know I snatch on any snippet of theory that might exonerate Snape. It's part of the fun, but it can get in the way of objective discussion sometimes.

[snorkackcatcher]

I think somebody asked whether he would have a date with Hermione after PoA came out, and in an interview JKR made some remark along the lines of "yes, Harry does show interest in a girl in GoF, you'll be able to work out who from a close look at PoA". As Hannah said, there was some Harry/Cho hinting in PoA, enough for me to expect it in GoF and therefore be quite pleased to have called it when it showed up. (But then, I appear to be one of the half-dozen or so people in the fandom who actually quite liked the idea of Harry/Cho, even on structural grounds, and was slightly disappointed when it all went pear-shaped in OotP.)

[hannahmarder.livejournal.com]

They seem odd things to have changed to me, but then I'm not interesting in shipping so I never read those type of scenes too closely. If it had been something to do with Snape, of course, it would be a different matter ;-) Since H/G came as a bit of a surprise in HBP (to an objective reader, anyway) I would have expected JKR to put in a couple more lines suggesting Harry might be interested in Ginny than anything else. If anything, these changes are playing down the relationship. Maybe the editors were worried about putting off too many rabid shippers? But then, most people who get really worked up about these things have read the first edition anyway. Interesting, anyway. I might try comparing some of my earlier and later editions.

[snorkackcatcher]

Since H/G came as a bit of a surprise in HBP (to an objective reader, anyway) I would have expected JKR to put in a couple more lines suggesting Harry might be interested in Ginny than anything else.

Yes, an extra line or two would have helped -- on reflection, I think it had a lot of structural setup, but not so much character setup, which is why the loss of those two phrases seemed odd. H/G in HBP did surprise me a bit too when I first twigged to it (the Hogwarts Express sequence) but then (in character interaction terms) the role of Harry's Love Interest was left so open at the end of OotP that it would probably have felt the same whoever JKR set him up with. :)