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The DA in the Room of Requirement in DH
Apr. 30th, 2010 11:53 pmOne of my occasional "this seems to be a trope and is it just me it bugs?" posts.
Basically, I seem to have encountered a number of stories in which the DA, and often assorted other students, started hiding out in the Room of Requirement very early in the year -- IIRC in one case Neville gets there in about the first week of term! In these fics it seems to have been a proper little secret base for General Longbottom to muster his troops, with everybody assigned to their proper tasks and Aberforth on hand to do the catering, to the point where you have to wonder if there were actually any students left in the rest of Hogwarts who weren't trainee Death Eaters. After all, the Carrows were torturing everybody else on a regular basis right from the start, yeah? And clearly they never noticed that half their pupils were missing, nor did the parents ever wonder why their kids didn't come home for holidays?
Um, not really. Let's consult a credible witness to the actual events, one N.Longbottom, and see what he has to say about it (DH ch29, The Lost Diadem).
"They don't want to spill too much pure blood, so they'll torture us a bit if we're mouthy but they won't actually kill us ... the only people in real danger are the ones whose friends and relatives on the outside are giving trouble"
Note the tense here; he's speaking of an activity that he still thinks of as in the present, not months before. The situation is grim but manageable for most pupils.
"we used to sneak out at night and put graffiti on the walls ... it got more difficult as time went on. We lost Luna at Christmas and Ginny never came back after Easter, and the three of us were sort of the leaders ... we were still fighting, doing underground stuff, right up until a couple of weeks ago ..."
In other words, relatively low-level insubordination (and occasionally something more overt), during a school year that was as normal as it could be with the Carrows in charge of discipline and the DADA curriculum. Neville isn't sole leader, he's just the last one standing after Luna is kidnapped and Ginny goes into hiding with her family. The impression I get is of a gradual wind-up during the year as it becomes more blatantly obvious that yes, You-Know-Who's lot really are in charge of the Ministry. Also, importantly, 'a couple of weeks ago' here is well into the final term -- this is the night of the Battle of Hogwarts.
"they went for Gran ... Gran's on the run ... once they realised they had no hold over me, they decided Hogwarts could do without me after all ... I knew it was time to disappear ... I knew I had just one chance for a hideout: I managed to get through the door and this is what I found! ... when I arrived, it was a load smaller, there was only one hammock and just Gryffindor hangings. But it's expanded as more and more of the DA have arrived"
Let's recap. Neville hides in the RoR very late in the school year after all the other disciplinary measures the DEs have tried have failed. When he does, it's in desperation, he's the only one there, and he didn't know what he was going to find. His disappearance seems to have been the catalyst for the rest of the DA gradually deciding it's time to leave, presumably because they were now being targeted. It's possible DA members could have accessed the place off and on during the year for odd things, yes, but the 'base' idea is pretty much a non-starter until the end.
"I'd been in here about a day and a half, and getting really hungry ... and that's when the passage to the Hog's Head opened up. I went through it and met Aberforth"
Again, no contribution from Aberforth until late on. He wasn't part of the resistance throughout, and even at the end joined in reluctantly, if Fred was right in saying that he was planning to get some kip when the other DA members started arriving in his bar.
Let's borrow Harry's POV for a moment:
"the next moment he, Ron and Hermione were engulfed ... by what seemed to be more than twenty people ... the silver and green of Slytherin alone was absent"
Not half the school, then. Also -- bonus peeve! -- these stories tend to have assorted Slyths hanging out there too, somewhere amid the vast crowds who weren't present. I can sympathise with people wishing JKR had written it that way, but she didn't. (And to be fair, in that situation, it would be almost suicidal for any Slytherin to throw in their lot with the DA. They wouldn't readily be trusted, and the Carrows would really make an example of them if they found out. Not much Slytherin cunning there.)
So there you have it. Doubtless much of this is due to simply not checking back, or overegged Neville-love, or simply fandom's frequent desire to amp up the melodrama rating in everything. Or maybe they're all just fans of Dumbledore's Army And The Year Of Darkness (WARNING: tvtropes.org link). But it doesn't seem to bear much relation to how JKR said things went down in the actual book, and as usual that pretty much throws me out of the story right there.
Basically, I seem to have encountered a number of stories in which the DA, and often assorted other students, started hiding out in the Room of Requirement very early in the year -- IIRC in one case Neville gets there in about the first week of term! In these fics it seems to have been a proper little secret base for General Longbottom to muster his troops, with everybody assigned to their proper tasks and Aberforth on hand to do the catering, to the point where you have to wonder if there were actually any students left in the rest of Hogwarts who weren't trainee Death Eaters. After all, the Carrows were torturing everybody else on a regular basis right from the start, yeah? And clearly they never noticed that half their pupils were missing, nor did the parents ever wonder why their kids didn't come home for holidays?
Um, not really. Let's consult a credible witness to the actual events, one N.Longbottom, and see what he has to say about it (DH ch29, The Lost Diadem).
"They don't want to spill too much pure blood, so they'll torture us a bit if we're mouthy but they won't actually kill us ... the only people in real danger are the ones whose friends and relatives on the outside are giving trouble"
Note the tense here; he's speaking of an activity that he still thinks of as in the present, not months before. The situation is grim but manageable for most pupils.
"we used to sneak out at night and put graffiti on the walls ... it got more difficult as time went on. We lost Luna at Christmas and Ginny never came back after Easter, and the three of us were sort of the leaders ... we were still fighting, doing underground stuff, right up until a couple of weeks ago ..."
In other words, relatively low-level insubordination (and occasionally something more overt), during a school year that was as normal as it could be with the Carrows in charge of discipline and the DADA curriculum. Neville isn't sole leader, he's just the last one standing after Luna is kidnapped and Ginny goes into hiding with her family. The impression I get is of a gradual wind-up during the year as it becomes more blatantly obvious that yes, You-Know-Who's lot really are in charge of the Ministry. Also, importantly, 'a couple of weeks ago' here is well into the final term -- this is the night of the Battle of Hogwarts.
"they went for Gran ... Gran's on the run ... once they realised they had no hold over me, they decided Hogwarts could do without me after all ... I knew it was time to disappear ... I knew I had just one chance for a hideout: I managed to get through the door and this is what I found! ... when I arrived, it was a load smaller, there was only one hammock and just Gryffindor hangings. But it's expanded as more and more of the DA have arrived"
Let's recap. Neville hides in the RoR very late in the school year after all the other disciplinary measures the DEs have tried have failed. When he does, it's in desperation, he's the only one there, and he didn't know what he was going to find. His disappearance seems to have been the catalyst for the rest of the DA gradually deciding it's time to leave, presumably because they were now being targeted. It's possible DA members could have accessed the place off and on during the year for odd things, yes, but the 'base' idea is pretty much a non-starter until the end.
"I'd been in here about a day and a half, and getting really hungry ... and that's when the passage to the Hog's Head opened up. I went through it and met Aberforth"
Again, no contribution from Aberforth until late on. He wasn't part of the resistance throughout, and even at the end joined in reluctantly, if Fred was right in saying that he was planning to get some kip when the other DA members started arriving in his bar.
Let's borrow Harry's POV for a moment:
"the next moment he, Ron and Hermione were engulfed ... by what seemed to be more than twenty people ... the silver and green of Slytherin alone was absent"
Not half the school, then. Also -- bonus peeve! -- these stories tend to have assorted Slyths hanging out there too, somewhere amid the vast crowds who weren't present. I can sympathise with people wishing JKR had written it that way, but she didn't. (And to be fair, in that situation, it would be almost suicidal for any Slytherin to throw in their lot with the DA. They wouldn't readily be trusted, and the Carrows would really make an example of them if they found out. Not much Slytherin cunning there.)
So there you have it. Doubtless much of this is due to simply not checking back, or overegged Neville-love, or simply fandom's frequent desire to amp up the melodrama rating in everything. Or maybe they're all just fans of Dumbledore's Army And The Year Of Darkness (WARNING: tvtropes.org link). But it doesn't seem to bear much relation to how JKR said things went down in the actual book, and as usual that pretty much throws me out of the story right there.
