This is the most cringeworthy fight in all of Harry Potter canon. I mean, no one expected Harry to win a one-on-one fight with Snape, but he did hold off and beat several DEs successfully in OOTP, so some competence on Harry's part would have been nice. Instead Snape beat him without even trying. HBP undid a lot of work that OOTP did in building Harry's credibility.

I try to chalk this up to Snape being an expert legilimens. Had it been anyone else of Snape's skill, it might have been more of a fight.

Bella's fanatic faith in Voldemort and willingness to do anything for his cause was highlighted early on in the Pensieve. She did kill Sirius and was the only one strong enough to deflect Dumbledore's spell in the DOM, so even from the fifth book she was shown to be better than the other DEs - she was pretty much the only one who achieved anything in the DOM fight. Also, fighting three people at once is a big deal - not to mention that Hermione has huge spell knowledge and Ginny is fast and accurate.

So, I disagree with you there and thought Bellatrix was built up perfectly until the end. I think JKR expected us to be in awe of how far someone would go to protect their daughter, but it was more of a WTF reaction for most of us than anything else.

Not really. Harry didn't feel anything in any of those three instances, except perhaps joy that he killed Voldemort. Does that mean that he feels nothing in killing other people and would kill in the future without guilt if he had to? I don't think so. I don't think Harry feels responsible at all for either Quirrel or Pettigrew's death - he didn't even no what was going on when he killed Quirrel and he did try to save Pettigrew's life, so his death was anything but deliberate. Voldemort was, but he's Voldemort so he does not count.

The emotion impact of killing someone, or having to murder someone because you had no choice, isn't explored in canon at all. Harry is always morally sure of himself, and there are no hard decisions or morally grey choices where he's concerned. It is one of the things that I thought should have been explored more in the last books where the series got darker. The closest he came to making a hard choice in canon was when he had Sirius down in PoA (What spell would Harry have used to kill him anyway?), and even that he failed because he lacked the strength to kill more than anything else.

 

In addition to the evidence you talked about, there's also this:

The tone of that scene, and especially that last image, gives her pretty firm Badass Credentials, thematically at the very least.

 

Why? I never understood this. Just because we don't see Molly fighting or whatever else until the last battle doesn't mean she couldn't. On top of which, when we realize how advanced her children were in magic (Curse breaking, all the different magic put into the magic shop, and hints throughout the books about Ron), there's no reason to believe that Molly wasn't a very powerful witch.

Add to that the difference between someone that seems to get high on dueling/mocking etc. and someone who believes she's basically fighting for the life of her children, I have no problem believing that she could take down Bellatrix.

In fact, that little scene plays right into a much larger scenario in the books that has become almost cliche in some fanfiction circles . . . the problem with Voldemort and the Death Eaters overtaking society wasn't so much total power (though Voldemort was a very powerful wizard, but bettered by Dumbledore), but the indecision/inability to organize and stand up to them.

 

Molly being that good to kill Bellatrix easily would explain her attitude that the "children" should not fight and stay at home and be safe - she would honestly be far stronger and more suited to fight than them.

 

I will also point out, it is canon that your magic can atrophy with out use.

Lockheart was said to be quite a good wizard if a bit of a dick. But he stopped trying and kept cheating and thus became a joke.

I dont give a fuck if she used magic around the home, she wasn a fucking fighter.

Bellatrix would have owned her.

 

I think Harry killed a few when he was being chased at the beginning of Deathly Hallows. May not have been by the killing curse, but I'm sure falling from great heights after being stunned qualifies

 

I like the fact that Molly killed Bellatrix if only because it makes people so mad.

 

The Bella/Molly duel result has never been much of a problem to me, unusual though it might be.

You've got two witches, dueling to kill (according to canon), and the one with superior skill is clearly overconfident to the point of mania. And just how unskilled was Molly? Not entirely so:

As I said in another thread, "She was fighting to kill. She was using lethal curses. Think about that: in between changing diapers, making sandwiches for Arthur, and whatnot, she found the time to learn how to kill with magic. In a nation where even some Ministry employees can't cast a simple Shield Charm, Molly Weasley put in the required effort to learn how to put bitches in graves."

Furthermore, the way Rowling presents the quote, with dashes between the words, seems to imply that she may have been firing her lethal curses (and/or shielding herself, who knows) while she was yelling at Bellatrix. Which in turn would mean that not only can Molly cast lethal curses - she can do it nonverbally. That is not an unskilled witch, there.

At the end of the day, Molly doesn't have to be a better duelist than Bellatrix. She just has to get lucky and land one of her "one shot, one kill" curses. This task is made slightly easier by the fact that Bella is too busy squee-ing to herself instead of concentrating.

 

The idea of Molly killing Bellatrix doesn't bother me that much. But that actual implementation leaves a lot to be desired. It's too vague. I understand that every witch and wizard from the age of 11 is pretty much carrying a loaded weapon ready to kill, and i can very much see Molly getting in a lucky killshot. But we just have no idea what it was. That being said, I see there being less than a 5% chance that it actually was a killing curse - the action description is just too vague, and the lack of certain elements isn't justification for something actually (or not actually) happening, as we've seen in the past.

 

Satisfying is one thing. Realistic is another, and I do think it's realistic as the storyline goes. Hell. Remember Buster Douglas? If you have to google him, my point's been made. He did little before and nothing after that night. But that night, he was the man.

Absolutely no reason to suspect that couldn't happen here. (but again, I'm talking about plausibility, and you're talking about satisfaction, and I do understand that difference).
----------

On that note - would watching Neville's grandmother kill Bellatrix been more satisfying?

 

Augusta is portrayed as a very tough, skilled witch in a few stories.

 

Except that, Neville gives us some insight on his granny: "They bit off a bit more than they could chew with Gran. Little old witch living alone, they probably thought they didn't need to send anyone particularly powerful. Anyways, Dawlish is still in St. Mungo's and Gran's on the run."

It's probably fair to surmise that Neville didn't know Dawlish, or he wouldn't have made that comment. Why? 1. Dawlish scored "outstanding in all his NEWTS, according to Dumbledore. 2. He was an Auror, and a body guard of Fudge.

It might be argued that since he wasn't a Death Eater, he probably wouldn't have gone into the Longbottom house the same way a Death Eater would have—but nonetheless, he was still bettered. So there is definitely reason to suspect Gran would hold her own against a very powerful fighter.

 

Little known fact: the Vulture on her hat is actually still alive. It is just too afraid to move.

 

Molly being a bit of a hypocrite comes as no surprise to me. Not exactly what you meant, I know, but still...

I can't help but wonder how much of this was just JKR capping off the series by giving one of the two characters that most represented motherhood in the HP series a badass moment, because she, herself, had so famously spent that time as a beleaguered, financially strapped, single mother, during the writing of Philosopher's Stone.

She's made it no secret that Hermione and Ginny are both, at times, acting as author avatars, so I don't think it's too far out in left field to think Molly got a moment of badass, so that JKR could somehow translate her personal "mama bear" feelings onto the page and highlight them.

Unfortunately, Molly beating Bellatrix was too far out in left field for many readers' logic filters not to choke on.

I would be open to the idea that it was a curse that could stop someone's heart or cause a similar, severely traumatic, cardiac problem... an embolism or aneurism, perhaps: Something that could drop a person almost instantly, without leaving a mark.

Nothing too fancy, exotic, or arcane for a smothering hausfrau in a resistance group to know, but still lethal if it connects.

While most of the spells Molly cast at Bellatrix in the movie looked suspiciously green, the last two were white (maybe blue?), which looked like it caused Bellatrix to desiccate, and then red, which caused her to explode into a cloud of shredded goth chick.

What that was all about is beyond me. It wouldn't be the first time the people behind the movies fucked up a detail because they made an assumption (PS Flitwick comes to mind - I wouldn't mind a well-deserved Lucas-style revisionist CG fix for that gaffe) or simply made something up out of whole cloth.

So, yeah, in the books she just topples over, in the movie she dries out (or something) and then disintegrates. Maybe they misread the following (marginally complex in structure, I guessss) sentence: "he saw McGonagall, Kingsley and Slughorn blasted backward, flailing and writhing through the air, as Voldemort’s fury at the fall of his last, best lieutenant exploded with the force of a bomb."

...and it's like all they saw was: Voldemort’s last, best lieutenant exploded with the force of a bomb. :facepalm

I suppose this is all my roundabout way of thinking about the situation and affirming for myself that the movie is completely worthless, for the purposes of determining what curse Molly killed Bellatrix with, in the books.

The only thing the movie got right about that scene, in my opinion, was Molly clumsily back-peddling and her expression changing to one of brick-shitting fear, for a moment after firing her first spell.

Meh. That scene must have gotten mauled in the editing room, anyway, since we cut from a portion of the drawn out Nagini versus Heron chase (that is determined to hit almost as many high points of Hogwarts' architecture, before it's done, as the ridiculous Harry versus Voldemort grand tour), to see Molly behind Ginny as her daughter (apparently fighting solo, instead of alongside Luna and Hermione) blocks a single spell from Bellatrix, hard cut for an instant to Bellatrix's expression of glee, hard cut to Molly suddenly several feet in front of Ginny and saying her "not my daughter..." line. If you've read the books, there's a lot of detail (and people) missing, there. I would imagine that, even if one hasn't read the books, it still feels like something is missing in that scene.

If canon didn't go far enough to prove that Bellatrix was a dangerous fighter, then how on earth could it have proved Molly was? Bearing that in mind, doesn't that put us back at square one, with Bellatrix being Voldemort's most feared lieutenant and Molly merely being Dumbledore's most fecund lieutenant follower and treacle tart producer?

Even if you set the bar too high for Bellatrix to rate a gold star, Molly is still well below her in skill level, given what we see written on the page... right up until Molly kills her in one of the most head-scratching moments of Deathly Hallows.

Up until then, all we hear from the good guys is how crazy and dangerous Bellatrix is. While the occasions we hear from the bad guys are few and far between, we never hear them whispering that Mollywobbles gives them the collywobbles. We don't hear anything like that about her from the good guys, either.

If Bellatrix's bona fides as a deadly fighter hadn't been proven by then in the text, then Molly's were virtually nonexistent by comparison.


Anyway, bottom line, I think JKR indulged her desire to put a spotlight on the underestimated mama bear aspect of mothers everywhere, herself in particular, as if Lily hadn't already underlined that statement at the outset of the series... and it backfired because children don't care about and probably can't relate to that (and are probably too busy snickering at the use of the word 'bitch' to contemplate it), and older, more critical, thinkers are going to wonder whence the heck Molly's prowess suddenly appeared.

It suffers from the same "Where did that come from?" feeling as Harry/Ginny. Unless you were shipping H/G from the start, just because you wanted to see it happen, H/G pretty much appeared out of nowhere: At least Harry's side of it does. We know Ginny was hung up on Harry and had been for ages, but we're more or less privy to Harry's every thought, and he barely looks twice at her until he's suddenly obsessed and making embarrassing metaphors about chest monsters.

There was more support in the text for Hermione secretly being a robot (that plotbunny is yours for free, folks) than there was for Valkyrie!Molly or H/G OTP, either one, and to have those things sprung on you without any setup just leaves you kind of cold.

We're not just meant to believe Molly outmatched Bellatrix, we're also supposed to buy that they're trading curses so fiercely that, in what could have only been a few seconds of fighting, "the floor around the witches' feet had become hot and cracked." Seriously? If that's how it is, one wonders why Molly didn't just waddle into the Department of Mysteries and solve the Dark Lord problem by pushing Dumbledore aside and finishing off Voldemort (at least temporarily).

It's exaggeration, it's drama... it's "See, mommy can be a badass, too, kids." and that's all. Had Molly's skills been at least minimally introduced earlier, one could have at least nodded and said, "Fair enough; that's that, I guess." Instead, it is what it is.

Taure, lol, unfortunately it looks like you're copy/pasting from the same godawful PDF I've got. :fire

O', to have a searchable copy of the books, without paying for something I already own.... You have my sympathy.

ROFL! The Power He Knows Not = Harry used his cloak to slip in and remove the grippy flowers (you know it was flowers, let's not kid ourselves) from the Dark Lord's bathtub.

Probably flushed the toilet, too, after Voldemort started scrubbing and singing "I Ain't Got No Body." You know wherever he was hiding out must have had old plumbing...

Xandrel
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: Trollish-occupied Silesia

Seven books (plus, at the time, two supplemental), eight movies, a decade of waiting, and let's say close to two-hundred dollars worth of hardbacks and DVDs...

Satisfying kind of counts for something, doesn't it?

Word.

I guess it's more satisfying than her original idea of killing Harry at the end...

Less satisfying than her idea of killing Ron, though. Lol, did I say that?

 

I loled.

Personally, I'd love someone take the idea of the Longbottoms being destined for being Badasses into a story.

"Augusta Longbottom's patronus is Chuck Norris."

"Augusta Longbottom's wand is made of GROOT wood with the heart of Ctulthu."

 

Augusta Longbottom once met Death on the road. He offered her all three Hallows if she'd just turn around.

 

Personally, I think that if JKR really wanted Molly to kill of Bellatrix, the best way to handle it would have just been to not have any semblance of an actual duel between the two. Molly sees one of her kids nearly get killed, goes Mama Bear, and chucks out a killing curse Bellatrix even realizes she's a threat/is busy gloating.

Though seriously, it should've been a Longbottom that killed her off.