I assumed Snape was playing the part of someone who served V up to his downfall, at which point all the Death Eaters scattered and he ended up at Hogwarts, and then returned to serve V (prob. by spying on D.) when V reappeared… ?
How about the ending of Book 2? Harry’s facing down this basilisk, which he can’t even LOOK AT without dying or being turned to stone. Suddenly, that flaming parrot comes out of NOWHERE, pecks the serpent’s eyes out (“But he can still hear you!”…uhh, basilisk’s can’t smell?) then drops a hat that contains…TA-DA!..a sword! Talk about a total deux ex machina, no matter how hard Rowling tried to explain it away.
And if nobody knew where the Chamber of Secrets was, why didn’t they ask Fawkes? Apparently HE knew…
And how ironic was it that none of the basilisk’s victims got killed? They all just HAPPENED to catch a reflection, and got “stoned” instead. What’s to stop the snake from looking right at them after they collapse, or just eating them where they lay?
It was a bit of a deus ex machina, I suppose, but there was some foreshadowing of it. Dumbledore dropped a couple of hints (stressing the phoenix’s loyalty and assuring the invisible trio that help would be available to anyone who asked for it). Presumably, he set Fawkes to watch over the school in general and Harry in particular before he left. So when someone loyal to Dumbledore asked for help, Fawkes sensed it and came looking. Yeah, it’s a bit weak, but not too bad.
Well, he knew where Harry was, at any rate. It doesn’t follow that he could have found the Chamber on his own. How do the owls find people to make their deliveries? It’s magic.
Myrtle died, but I know that’s not what you meant. The books were still fairly child-oriented at the time, so things weren’t quite as deadly as they have become. Besides, most of the cases make sense in terms of the characters. Case by case:
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Mrs. Norris happened to be drinking from the puddle. Well, she got lucky. Cats and nine lives and all of that.
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Creevy’s first response to anything new was to snap a picture, and he always carried his camera around. Maybe he spotted the basilisk before it saw him, and he tried to get a shot?
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Justin could easily have been talking to Nick–perhaps Nick was trying to convince him that Harry wasn’t after him–when he saw the basilisk through Nick. When he froze, Nick would have turned to see what he was looking at. Speculation, I know, but not unreasonable.
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Hermione and Penelope knew what the monster was, and were prepared for it (although I believe I would have written down a more thorough explanation than “pipes”, and carried it prominently).
As to the other nitpicks…the basilisk doesn’t kill by looking at you, or shutting your eyes wouldn’t help; you die if you look into its eyes, which means petrified people (who can’t see anything) are immune. Finally, it couldn’t eat them because they were petrified–snakes don’t generally eat stone statues. (Yes, I know they didn’t look like stone in the movie; nevertheless, stone they were.)
Fawkes was drawn to Harry by his extreme loyalty to Dumbledore- it’s “the only reason Fawkes would be drawn to someone in that manner”, to paraphrase.
I’ll certainly give you that Rowling’s strong points do not necessarily include unforced conflict resolution, but wasn’t the explanation that Dumbledore had hidden it there? Not a great device, I’ll agree.
Not necessarily- see above.
I noticed this, too. I think this may be a byproduct of the inevitable shift in the maturity level of Rowling’s audience. At that point, it was still a children’s book, with pre-teen main characters, mainly pitched at a pre-teen audience, so death wasn’t something she wanted to tackle on the main stage (is. other than through past events). But as we’ve seen with the last two books, as the original main audience ages along with the characters, and it has become apparant that there are plenty of demographics reading along, we’ve seen Rowling begin to write much more to both levels: a Grimm-ish style children’s tale.
-j
This brings us to my person pet nit to pick. I think a girl like Hermione would have written down something more helpful than “pipes”, but that’s not my real problem here. No, the thing that bothers me is that Hermione wrote “pipes” on a piece of paper torn from a library book! It seems badly out of character both for her to be in the library doing research without her own paper and for her to be willing to vandalize a rare book.
A wizard did it.
That did bother me, Lamia. That whole bit would have set better with me if the paper had been described as something she transcribed from a library book, with an extra note quickly scribbled at the bottom. Remember, though that she took off for the library in a state of considerable excitement, and I don’t think she had her book-bag with her at the time. Still, the only way I can picture it is in a scenario like this:
Hermione is in the library, and has just found the important passage in a book. All the pieces have just fallen into place when she hears a rasp of scales and a hiss from outside the door. She may have only moments before she’s found. She quickly jots down the key piece of information that’s missing from the passage and tears out the page, crumpling it in her hand to hide it, and whispers urgently to Penelope as she drags her toward the door. Penelope follows her out of the library, digging her mirror out of her purse. Hermione’s hopes of sneaking past are dashed when she hears a menacing hiss from around the next corner, so she comes up with a desperate plan. She holds up the mirror at the corner…and deliberately looks straight into the reflected eyes, counting on her petrified state to save her life, and on her teachers and friends to find the note. Penelope follows her gaze and is petrified as well.
Does that make it any better? I like to retcon at least as much as I like to nitpick.
I’m afraid to post a link here because most of the sites have at least a few NC-17 stories. Most of the Snape-centered fanfics of all ratings I’ve read involve Snape and (adult) Hermione Granger. (And I must admit to my shame that I’m writing one right now.) I have seen other pairings of course (including loads of slash that I haven’t read either) but I haven’t read many others. And I’m sure there are non-romantic Snape fics out there too, but I haven’t had the patience to look for them yet.
My point is, anyone who is interested in SS/HG is welcome to e-mail me and let me know what ratings you are looking for and whether fics where Hermione is still a (not child!) student would bug you, (also whether you mind if some events have since been contradicted by OotP) and I can give you more links than you would ever want.
On topic/in canon: The issue of Snape being a double agent has always bugged me too. It seems like he is openly functioning as a Death Eater while being secretly trusted by Dumbledore. But I would think that eventually you-know-who would start to get suspicious that Snape is still working at Hogwarts and Harry Potter hasn’t died in a mysterious cauldron accident yet.
This isn’t such a mystery, really. The Big V hasn’t shown any sign of wanting anyone else to kill Harry Potter. This seems like a job he wants to give his personal touch to. Aside from the revenge angle, it getting whupped by a baby couldn’t have been good for his image. Killing an older Harry himself might make up for that, but having a minion do it (because he’s too scared to take on a little boy?) wouldn’t make him look too cool.
Spoilers for Books 4 and 5:
The prophesy does imply that if Voldemort wants Harry dead he’s going to have to do it himself, but we don’t know whether Voldy suspects as much or not. However, in GoF he did need Harry alive, at least temporarily, for the resurrection spell. So he wouldn’t have been expecting his followers to kill Harry before then, at least not since he thought up that plan.
Voldy? Voldy?
(exactly.)
Yes, that makes a lot of sense actually. I just have trouble understanding the extent to which death eaters are allowed to function in wizard society when they are supposed to be responsible for such atrocities. But there are historical parallels after all. Sorry if my questions are a bit stupid.
They do use the Floo network from Grimmauld Place.
Sirius’ face appears in the fire to Harry, Hermione, and Ron in the G-house common room, later Harry uses floo from Froggy U’s office to see where Sirius is after he dreams Sirius is in grave danger.
He can’t because the prophecy says that either V or H will kill the other.
Just showing I’m not askeered of him. I can say his name! I can even call him by a silly diminutive version of his name! That should put Mr. Uppity Dark Lord in his place.
That would be kinda “ewww” for me, but that’s just me! 
Yes, but wouldn’t Tommy Boy at least try? I mean, if you know a certain someone and only that certain someone could destroy you, wouldn’t you try anything to get rid of him? Including sending a servant out to kill him? I mean, you’d at least try right?
Bah! I’m not scared of him either! I think I’ll start calling him V-Dog from now on!
This is silly.
To think that if you said “Valdemart” instead of “You Know Who” he dould come and get you or som
You know what bothers me, wasn’t there supposed to be a bunch of sneakoscopes in the DA room, why didn’t any of them go off while Cho’s friend was there?
Also what is a deus ex machina?
Umm, it occurs to me that what I posted above is a spoiler but it won’t allow me to edit my post, so can a moderator handle that please?
Spoilers for OoP in the quoted spoiler box. General, unboxed spoilers for the rest of the series in my response below.
Well, setting aside the reasons I mentioned earlier for not sending someone else to do it, I think it is also possible that Voldy did try to have minions kill Harry but this plan failed so miserably that Harry was never even aware of it. But I don’t think Voldy would have had much chance to attempt such a plan.
It doesn’t seem that the disgraced and disembodied Voldy was in contact with or getting any help from anyone until just prior to the events of the first book. So until then he had no one to send to kill Harry, and no one in the wizarding world except Dumbledore, McGonagall, and Hagrid knew where Harry was anyway. Even if Harry could be tracked to the Dursley’s home, we have it on good authority that he is safe from dark magic while he’s under their roof. When he’s at Hogwarts under Dumbledore’s protection he’s also a difficult target. (This could be Snape’s excuse.) So any Death Eaters trying to knock the kid off at any point up through the first two books wouldn’t have met with much luck. Voldy might have realized this and decided not to waste his time, or he might have tried, failed, and decided to try another angle.
By Prisoner of Azkaban Harry was spending time away from both the Dursleys and Hogwarts. As people kept warning him, he was more vulnerable to attack then. But by then Voldy must have already been setting up the scheme we’d see play out in Goblet of Fire (this also explains his absence from book 3), and that plan required a living Harry. In Order of the Phoenix Voldy also had reason to want Harry alive, at least for the time being.
Oh, and sv_87:
The Sneakoscopes may not have registered Cho’s friend as a possible threat because she wasn’t planning to sell the club out when she was at the meetings. She must have decided to squeal/been pressured into squealing sometime after the last meeting she attended.