My spoiler box reply was to Rocking Chair, not you Rhum. RC said he/she didn’t know how to do em.
That said, I’m glad someone else picked up on my pet theory of Harry being the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher! It’s beautifully set up.
Also, anyone else glad Ron and Hermoine were made prefects? It kinda got them out of the way and let some newer characters come in.
All spoilerboxes in the whole thread are legible at once if you press Ctr-V.
Saves a lot of highlighting.
I kept imagining Tonk’s character as Cyndi Lauper, with the wild hair and clothes.
In previous interviews about the book, J.K. Rowling made some statements that turned out to be wrong. She said:
In an extreme circumstance, a Muggle or Squib character would spontaneously do magic. Didn’t happen.
“In book 5, we go into a whole new area, physically, an area you’ve never seen before, a magical world” Didn’t happen.
thanks gmryujin. i had tried at one point then luckily previewed, didn’t work for me. perhaps i am a squib when attempting coding.
What about the Ministry of Magic? Or St. Mungo’s?
Doesn’t work for me, but Ctrl-A does.
Seems like Sirius may have
I kept seeing Prof. Umbredge as shorter, older Nurse Wratched.
I agree. I think it was a major plot hole, since Sirius told Harry what it was. It seems stupid that they would risk trying to use Umbridge’s fireplace instead of the mirror.
All in all, I’d say I liked the book, but was still a tiny bit dissapointed. Perhaps I had my hopes up too high.
[spoiler] It will be interesting to see how Mrs. Weasley reacts to learning that Harry provided the cash to get Weasley’s Wizzard Wheezes up and running. I sort of wish there had been more about what happened when Mrs. Weasley found out that the twins had left school. With Percy alienated from the family, how will this color her reaction?
I also was a bit surprised at the relatively simple spells used in the Big Battle. They all seemed to be spells that Harry knew how to deal with as a fifth-year. Seems to me that powerful wizards, dark or no, would have a larger, and more spohisticated repitoir of spells to use in combat. What good are the next few years at Hogwarts if they don’t learn anything new?
Will there be any fall-out from Harry’s use of an Unforgivable Curse in the Big Battle? I don’t remember if there were any exceptions to the rule. [/spoiler]
Hmmm. I saw Tonks as Scarlett from “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and Umbredge as Sally from The Dick Van Dyke show.
Hey, anyone else notice a kind of wizard Mod Squad forming with Lupin, Tonks, and those people? They way they A-Team it in there during the climax…
The two-way mirror might be out of the picture–Harry broke his after he called Sirius through it and nothing happened.
Also, those brains that attacked Ron–who wants to bet they show up again?
Also, I love that Dumbledore has all these mystical sounding middles names, and then “Brian.”
One thing did confuse me a bit. When Hagrid got expelled, they destroyed his wand. When Harry was almost expelled, Ministry officials were on their way to destroy his wand. I know Fred and George dropped not voluntarily, but if they’d stuck around they surely would have been expelled. But as far as I know, they kept their wands. Maybe there’s some subtle distinction I’m missing, but I was under the impression that if you didn’t complete your schooling, you didn’t get to keep your wand and practice magic. Was anyone else confused by this?
I enjoyed it overall (couldn’t put it down), but I had a few major criticisms:
(1) I thought that the content of the prophecy was a total letdown, particularly given that there was such a hoo-ha over Dumbledore never having told Harry. I mean, to whom is it a surprise that Harry or Voldie will die? Not to either one of them, certainly. I was waiting for some crazy twist, something which made it all worthwile, but there was none
(2) I found the corruption in the ministry of magic to be way way way over the top. I think that whats-her-face-evil-bitch would have been way more effective if she’d appeared decent at first, but she was ugly and mean and Harry had a bad sense about her from the first moment. I don’t want to sound naive here, but if Wizard society is basically mostly decent people, how could someone that comically evil have risen so high so easily? That whole situation definitely struck me as one that was simplified for the kids. Which, in a book for kids, is fair enough.
(3) Similarly, I found the explanations for why so many people (particularly Harry) were kept so much in the dark about so much for so long to be totally unconvincing. It felt like it was just thrown in to make Harry’s summer that much more tortured.
Marlitharn: in the Australian school system, and I’m guessing that British school system, and hence the Hogwarts system, is similar, someone is considered to have finished their schooling once they get to year ten. In NSW, this is after students have completed an exam called the School Certificate, and I think they’re called the O Levels in England. From there, a student may continue on with their schooling (as nearly all students do, because you’re not going to get very far with only a tenth grade education) to complete the rest of school. The way I understand it, then, is that Fred and George would be considered to have completed their schooling as far as required, and after their OWLs they are at the school to extend upon their education - something that most people do, but don’t have to.
A thought occured to me - how accurate are pensieves? Since we were looking at Snape’s memory, is it possible that the perception Harry saw of James et al a little skewed. Not to suggest they weren’t actually pricks - after all, Sirius and Lupin confirmed that, but Snape’s hatred of them and the shame the memory caused him could have magnified certain aspects of James’ actions, for instance, made the hair flicks more pronounced and more often, made him even less considerate of Lily and even more cruel to Snape then he actually was. I mean, memories aren’t the most accurate things in the world.
Yes, that would be a good casting choice …. unfortunately she’s dead. The actress who played her, Charlotte somebody (?) died a couple of years ago.
Glad to hear about so many other reading marathons!
[spoiler]1. Was it a self-fulfilling prophecy? That is, is it the prophecy itself that caused Voldemort to share his power, make Harry his enemy, and will ultimately bring him down?
Could Neville have been the one, if he had been chosen? Of course, him mum couldn’t have protected him, and this is a large part of Harry’s power. In the words of a previous poster, I would vote him most likely to be a red shirt. Born to be tragic.
Funniest moment for me: Ron’s retelling of his divination exam.
I like that Dumbledore called Voldemort “Tom.” How deflating can you get? [/spoiler]
Oh yea, morelin got home with two copies of the book around 12:30, we stayed up til 3:30 reading em, woke up and spent most of Saturday finishing em.
Here’s something else that bugs me… the entire plot of the book is based on the idea that Harry and Dumbledore can’t convince the majority of the Wizarding community that Voldie is back. But, given the rules of magic that have been established, I can think of at least two ways to conclusively prove it:
(1) Have Harry drink truth serum with many people watching, ask him what happened the night Diggory died
(2) Have some experienced wizard look through Harry’s memory with a pansieve (or whatever that thing is called).
I wish that we’d at least gotten a token mention of why such a plan wouldn’t work.
Also, I thought that the whole Hagrid subplot was pretty unexciting.