Precision In Grief And Rage

Precision in Grief and Rage

I wanted to talk about the shift in Harry's internal voice from Order of Phoenix to Half Blood Prince, and how his grief, guilt and immense self-loathing for his part in events around Sirius' death informs it. At the end of Order of Phoenix, Harry is a mess - of incoherent, unfocused grief, where he wishes he never wished more that he was anybody else:

“Harry, suffering like this proves you are still a man! This pain is part of being human — ”

"I DON'T WANT TO BE HUMAN!” Harry roared, and he seized one of the delicate silver instruments from the spindle-legged table beside him and flung it across the room.

The scene at Dumbledore's office is rife with how much he blames himself for his godfather's death. After one cathartic scene at the office, Harry spends the next year avoiding any and all mention of Sirius (he wolfs down his breakfast when Ron and Hermione bring him up) and suppresses his grief and rage surrounding the events of OOTP- unless he is sure that the person he is speaking to understands the weight of Sirius' loss: he hopes Remus would write to him, he mentions Sirius voluntarily to Tonks (under the impression that she is grieving him), and talks about him to Buckbeak ("Missing him? But you're okay with Hagrid, aren't you?"). His grief and rage manifests in precise, focused rage in this chilling Harry scenes:

Thank you!” said Mundungus, snatching the goblet out of Ron’s hand and stuffing it back into the case. “Well, I’ll see you all — OUCH!”

Harry had pinned Mundungus against the wall of the pub by the throat. Holding him fast with one hand, he pulled out his wand.

“Harry!” squealed Hermione.

Why do I call it a focused, precise rage? Mostly, because unlike the other times Harry is provoked with perceived disrespect to a dead parent, Harry has not forgotten his wand. (Cue the scene in OOTP that he is so angry he just beats up Malfoy with his fists). What Harry has done is not just grab him by the throat, he makes sure Mundungus (who is shorter than him) is nose to nose with him and then threatens him with a wand. (btw, a note from my reread: younger Harry attacks people bigger than him by grabbing their throats too - Vernon to get his letter, the troll etc etc. It seems to be something he had picked up from Vernon. We see Vernon grabbing him by throat in opening chapters of OOTP)

“You took that from Sirius’s house,” said Harry, who was almost nose to nose with Mundungus and was breathing in an unpleasant smell of old tobacco and spirits. “That had the Black family crest on it.”

“I — no — what — ?” spluttered Mundungus, who was slowly turning purple.

“Give it to me!”

“Harry, you mustn’t!” shrieked Hermione, as Mundungus started to turn blue.

There was a bang, and Harry felt his hands fly off Mundungus’s throat. Gasping and spluttering, Mundungus seized his fallen case, then — CRACK — he Disapparated.

And Tonks has to throw Harry magically off Mundungus.

Harry swore at the top of his voice, spinning on the spot to see where Mundungus had gone.

And he doesn't stop until Tonks magically throws him off Mundungus. It is not a coincidence that we see Harry's darker and more chilling traits in a book where he is heavily paralleled with Tom Riddle. The parallel is explicit in the scene where he uses his mother's death to guilt Slughorn into giving him the memory. But here is a tiny mention of how Tom Riddle reacts to perceived disrespect to an heirloom from his parent:

“That’s right!” said Hepzibah, delighted, apparently, at the sight of Voldemort gazing at her locket, transfixed. “I had to pay an arm and a leg for it, but I couldn’t let it pass, not a real treasure like that, had to have it for my collection. Burke bought it, apparently, from a ragged-looking woman who seemed to have stolen it, but had no idea of its true value — ”

There was no mistaking it this time: Voldemort’s eyes flashed scarlet at the words, and Harry saw his knuckles whiten on the locket’s chain.

Quite telling to me that Harry specifically notices how Voldemort's knuckles whiten around the locket, after Hepzibah pretty much talks about how Merope was essentially robbed. Harry understands.

When Harry had finished speaking, Ron shook his head.

“You really understand him.”

“Bits of him,” said Harry.