I don’t think Figg really saw the dementors. Her description was vague (tall and cloaked). I think she lied at the hearing because she thought it would help Harry.
Did anyone think Rowling was making a commentary on government interference in public schools?
Anyone?
Must have been just me, my libertarian self, then.
Carry on.
The way the curriculum for DADA was changed seemed to echo some odd changes that happened while I was in school. But I think Rowling was stabbing more at the general stupidity of (most) bureaucracies, especially when run by bad people.
I could very easily be wrong!
As for Arabella Figg not seeing the dementors, that could easily be true. Are squibs so uncommon that a whole room of wizards wouldn’t know anything about them? (Not a rhetorical question)
Julie
Well, then, is there a President of the Wizarding World? Elections held? Who appointed Cornelius Fudge? He seems to be the highest ranking member (or is Dumbledore? He had quite a resume too). Who had the power to remove Dumbledore and reinstate from the Wizard Council?
It sounds like the Minister of Magic is appointed like all the other Ministers, by the PM.
That’s what I thought too… showing how messy us bureaucracy is.
You know, while, of course, all the kids in the book hate ‘History of Magic’, I wish Rowling would focus on some of it more… sounds facinating :D.
I don’t think it’s the subject. I think it’s the teacher.
I don’t think anything’s been said about how common squibs are, but Filch was definitely embarassed to be found out as one. If there’s a stigma associated with being it, squibs might not be all that eager to let people learn about the condition.
Read Mrs. Figg’s testimony again. She ends with, “And that’s what happened.” She does not describe what she personally saw.
I think I spotted a continuity error. In Book 1, Percy reminds Ged and Forge that he’s a prefect; they reply that they think he may have mentioned it, “once—or twice—a minute—all summer.” Which would seem to indicate that prefects are appointed at the end of fourth year, but Ron and Hermione got their notices just a few days before school started.
And as far as that goes, R and H didn’t really do anything with their authority, even before Umbridge’s dictatorship made it moot. Ron was preoccupied with his Quidditch woes, and the timing of Hermione’s appointment was ironic: they made her a prefect just when she started maturing out of her know-it-all persona. She has definitely evolved, now understanding that the most important rules aren’t in a book. She should apply for a Ministry position.
How does Hermione know so much about relationships? She did, however, analyze Harry’s mistakes beautifully.
Umbridge is my mom.
How many magical people are there in the UK? Up till now, there’s always been an implication that they are a rare breed, but there are always people bustling around Gringott’s, Mungo’s, and the Ministry. The traffic at those three institutions, combined, seems to add up to the entire population of Wales. 
The Death: She cried over that?!
And I’ve got Mr. Rilch thinking it was Hagrid! He asked if it was Ginny, and I said no. Then he asked if it was Hagrid, and I started whistling. “WAS it Hagrid?” More whistling.
I went through so many emotions. I felt like I was high.
Maybe I should make my male lead more aggressive. No. No, I won’t. Because that’s the way I’m writing him: he is a VERY controlled person and DOES NOT give in to his emotions. Except the time he drinks vodka.
You’d think, wouldn’t you, that the Dursley’s would be more grateful towards Harry for saving Dudley’s worthless ass.
I have heard of thestrals before! When I was a kid, I read a compendium of mythical and literary “creatures”, like gryphons and werewolves. Thestrals were listed, and they were as Hermione said: harbingers of doom. If you saw one, something awful would happen, like your house catching on fire. But of course, in Rowling’s world, they turn out just to have a bad rep.
I didn’t believe Gandalf was dead when the Balrog got him (I read the book first), and I don’t believe Sirius will never be seen again. In some form, by some means. That last chapter was a total setup for some communication from Beyond.
I gotta say, Harry rocked when he was leading the DA.
And Ginny rocked throughout the whole thing! Us youngests should never be counted out.
I didn’t like GoF. I still don’t, really, but I can now see why it was necessary. Harry really didn’t belong in the Triwizard competition, but it had a profound effect on him. Krum, Delacour, and poor Cedric were being tested on what they could do, but Harry was given stuff he couldn’t do, and the result, it appears, that that was the last time for him to be unable to do something. If that makes any sense.
I may be reaching for this, but in the Department of Mysteries, Narnia was called to my mind twice: when they see the archway, and when Hermione marks the multiple doors so they’ll know which ones they’ve tried. (If you remember, in The Last Battle, there was a doorway which only became functional when someone walked through it, and in The Magician’s Nephew, it’s in time’s well-worn nick that Digory and Polly remember to mark which pond they came in by.) Thin, I know, but I did think, “Hm, two Narnia devices in two pages…Oh well.”
I really liked Luna. She was both useful for the plot and interesting as a character, and the “kook” aspect was handled just right. I admire her ability not to let other peoples’ actions affect her. Like when Harry snarled at her, “‘We’ aren’t doing anything…” I would have crumbled, but she is one cool cat!
Will Hermione give up on liberating house-elves? She might, if Harry tells her they’re not all like Dobby.
Some people have said that they were surprised that the adults and the students seemed to be fighting “evenly” in the final conflict, using the same spells and charms. I don’t think that indicates an equal level of skill, though. The students had learned this stuff at school, but when you are at school, you’re not necessarily as good at whatever you’re being taught as the adults who instruct you. Like, when I was ~15, I could peel an apple with a paring knife, as my mom had taught me, but not in one long continuous strip, as she could. Actually, I still can’t. But you get the idea: same skill, different level of expertise.
I had long suspected that Snape’s past was what we saw. No one gets to be so bitter without a deep-seated reason. The scene with him and the quartet was the only one that made me cry. (Mr. Rilch saw my speckled face and said, “Did you get to the death?” “There are worse things than someone dying,” I told him, not realizing I was quoting Dumbledore ahead of time.) And the glimpse of his parents also made me tear up. People who become victims of bullies rarely come from a functional family.
Those dragon jackets are way cool, but Ged and Forge should not be spending their profits so soon! Many business owners have thought there was a limitless market for their product and been mistaken, or didn’t factor in the many costs of doing business.
Two fan speculations were proven true: that Arabella Figg would turn out not to be a Muggle (although I felt terrible for her, being a Squib), and that Percy would be corrupted. Yay us!
Remember Ron said it was wierd that they got their letters so late this year. I’m thinking that usually it comes a month after they leave school (seeing how it seems they have only a 2 month break, and seeing as Hagrid in Book 1 gave Harry his list on his birthday, which is in late July).
Don’t forget that those are only three areas :D. I suspect that there are enough wizards to fill a large town, but that’s about it.
I don’t really think the Ministry of Magic will be able to spare any active Aurors for the DADA-teaching position, so I’m skeptical about Tonks or Mace Windu – excuse me; Kingsley Shackleford --taking the job. I like the idea of Lupin being brought back, although: 1. he’ll be reluctant to risk a repeat of the incident at the end of Year Three (even if he would be less likely to need to keep his lycanthropy a secret; and 2. Dumbledore may still have to take into account the prejudices of the majority of parents regarding werewolves.
Ineresting points about Petunia have been brought up. Until the chapter when Dumbledore explains, I was certain that the Howler had been sent by Voldemort, and I itched to know why. Dumbledore’s explanation of it was only marginally satisfying to me, however. I’m still unsure why Petunia was motivated by the passage in the 1982 letter to overrule Vernon throwing Harry out; Dumbledore’s explanation of the nature of the protection offered by the blood-bond didn’t seem to suggest that not placing Harry at Voldemort’s mercy would benefit her or her family in any way. During chapter Two, I said to myself, “That woman’s a Squib.” although now I’m sure I misspoke myself. However, I can still see that she might have been admitted to Hogwarts as a lass, only to have been sent down a unsuited for continued training after a year. It would account for a lot of resentment of Lily and her spawn. It would also make Dudley a good candidate for being one of those late bloomers Rowling seems to have brought up in her discussions with the public.
Editing/continuity: Why in Heaven’s name did Rowling have to forget that Fred and George had pulled down five O.W.L.s each (c.f. Year Four - Back to the Burrow), and drop it to three??!!?? And in the final chapter of Year Three she revealed that they had scraped a handful of O.W.L.'s each, half a month or more before the middle of July, when they should have received their notifications.
Did anyone else have to pop their eyes back into their skulls when Uncle Vernon yelled “Those effing owls!”? What am I going to bowdlerize thatto when I read it to Michaela?
As to the illustration for “The Second War Begins”, I thought that was cool, although she should have had lots more mascara around Moody’s unobstructed eye (Malcom MacDowell for Alastor Moody in the Goblet of Fire movie, anyone? 
)
I mentioned this in one of the other HP threads, but what the hell: At one point we’re told that Voldemort couldn’t risk going into the Ministry of Magic to pick up the prophecy himself, yet the Ministry is empty enough for a group of schoolkids, a group of Death Eaters, and the Order of the Phoenix crew to waltz into the most secret area in the damn building and have a major battle, followed by Voldemort popping in anyway? So what was stopping him from quietly popping in, grabbing the prophecy and popping out again without all the hoohah about getting Harry and company there? Did I miss something?
I also think Ron got kind of shafted in his Prefecthood. I mean, the minute he gets it he gets told that everyone thought Harry would get it instead (thus confirming Ron’s feelings of playing second fiddle). And then, at the end of the book, it’s confirmed that Ron really did only get it because Dumbledore didn’t want to burden Harry with it. I was kind of hoping that at some point it would be revealed that no, Ron was chosen because he really was better at being a Prefect (whatever that involves, apart from yelling at people). No such luck, however, and Ron turns out to be a pretty lame Prefect. Hmph.
Now, the Cho thing, which I wanted to put in its own post.
I was opposed to Harry and Cho getting together, because of my own Snape-esque bitterness. See, I did not get my high-school crush. In fact, I was generally regarded as a fool, because I was so unable to hide my feelings, and because of this, I have it engraved in my mind that Just Because You Like Someone Does Not Mean That They Like You. So I saw what Harry was doing: he saw a face he liked and created a personality for it, and I knew that that’s no good. I always knew where my crush was, the same way Harry could always pick Cho out of a crowd, but in both cases, that turned out to mean nothing. Like on their one date, she says, “I saw you at the World Cup; we were on the same campsite!” Big deal: she didn’t stop and talk to him or anything. Just like with my crush, he would say ‘hi’ to me at the library or something, but if he had really liked me, he would have gone beyond that.
First, I didn’t like Cho because she seemed to represent Harry’s inability to meet normal teenage goals. Although I did feel terrible for her when she was weeping over Cedric at the end of GoF, so when it turned out that she really was interested, I warmed up to her a bit. I didn’t find her to be “ditsy”, as someone said, but she was very ladylike. Unfortunately, ‘ladylike’ is another way of saying ‘conventional’. When she didn’t go on the rescue mission, I knew that was it. Harry can’t bond with someone who doesn’t really know what he goes through. As others have said, a romance between fifteen-year-olds cannot go perfectly, and certainly not in Harry’s case. Nothing else in his life does, and I would have been insulted if he had gone through all that crap and then returned to cuddle up with the Hero’s Girlfriend[sup]TM[/sup], who just adores him unconditionally and without a clue.
Furthermore, I wonder about her motivations. Now, I’m not accusing her of toying with him, but she does seem to have a lot of suitors, and I wonder if she really knows what she wants. “I really like you,” based on what? That he’s a Cedric substitute? Entirely possible. I can understand why she would be frustrated that Harry wouldn’t tell her about Cedric’s death, although her timing wasn’t the best: it was hardly a coffee conversation. (And it would be Valentine’s Day, wouldn’t it, just to ramp up the awkwardness.) Then she apparently cried when she read the interview, and since her crying makes Harry uncomfortable, that seemed to bring closure right there: she found out what she wanted to know without putting him on the spot.
Anyway, her being seventh year, about to graduate, would have given any relationship between them a built-in stopping point. BTW, does Hogwarts have a graduation ceremony? I daresay we’ll find out.
Someone noted that it was clever of Rowling to leave the kiss to our imagination. True, but also remember, the little ones are reading this! Peck-on-the-cheek is as far as she can go. Or the observations in the café, but those were not first-person.
Also, a nitpick. The first time Harry sees Cho, in PoA, he notices that she is “extremely pretty”. That is such an odd turn of phrase. The extreme of “pretty” is “beautiful”. A thirteen-year-old guy is not likely to think “beautiful”, but wouldn’t “very pretty” be enough?
Oh, and the room with the arch and the veil is specifically referred to as the “Death Chamber” (by Dumbledore to Fudge). I’m guessing it’s used for administering the death penalty, although what crimes would warrant that versus a life sentence in Azkaban (which the Death Eaters got, even after torturing and killing several people) or a Dementor Soul Kiss (which seems to be the ultimate punishment) I don’t know.
Perhaps a death penalty is a lesser penalty than life in Azkaban?? Or for use in case the dementors go rogue and won’t kiss people 
Harry and Cho seems quite realistic - they both fancy each other, until they speak hope they may be friends later, but who knows. My money’s on Luna, though maybe Ginny.
Interesting how Ginny and Neville seem to have got comptetant; some real development there.
I thought she was the same age as Harry? If not the same, then just one year above. I didn’t think of her as seventh year at all. I think in 4 it was mentioned that she was younger than Cedric (kinda like the Krum - Hermione age difference).
I wondered about that myself. Perhaps, and this is likely, he didn’t want to do the dirty work. He seems like the kind of guy that makes all his followers do the grunt work. When they messed up, then he stepped in.
My money’s on Ginny and Neville as an eventual couple.
Oh, and the phone booth thing: a Get Smart reference?
I was thinking Doctor Who.
I thought that Cho was a year ahead of Harry.