COS Chapter Seventeen: "The Heir of Slytherin"

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

 

* I’ve got to hand it to JKR, this part of the book is genuinely frightening and tense.

* Still, you’ve got to wonder at how poorly thought-out Harry’s plan is. “Shutting your eyes” is not a good strategy when in the presence of a huge poisonous snake that’s trying to kill you.

* Salazar’s statue looks like a monkey. Because Slytherin House is just so evil, even their founder was sub-human.

* Harry flings his wand aside. After all, it’s not like it could be of any conceivable use in a hidden chamber with a deadly monster somewhere nearby.

* “For a second, Harry wondered how [the diary] had got there” – wait, Harry’s showing signs of curiosity? Are we sure that the real Harry hasn’t been temporarily kidnapped and replaced with a doppelgänger?

* Now Tom’s got Harry’s wand, leaving him practically defenceless. D’oh!

* Good God, but Harry’s slow on the uptake here. So he’s found Tom Riddle standing next to Ginny’s almost-dead body, Tom’s taken his wand, is refusing to help Harry, talks calmly about calling the basilisk, pockets his wand and doesn’t seem keen on leaving the Chamber. Hey, Harry, do you think that Tom might possibly not be a good guy?

* I believe it’s been noted here that Harry seems to feel a natural affinity to dark wizards and magic. It seems that Ginny’s the same (“No one’s ever understood me like you, Tom”), which gives her and Harry something in common to form a basis of their future relationship (ha! And you thought JKR just threw them together without laying any groundwork or bothering to give them any common interests! :p). ESE!Ginny would also explain things like her happiness to hex people for little or no provocation, or her willingness to defend her bf’s attempted murder in HBP.

* Now I’m imagining a fic where Harry and Ginny try and take over the WW and rule as dark king and queen. And fail miserably because they don’t have Hermione to help them.

* “If I say it myself, Harry, I’ve always been able to charm the people I needed.” A bit like Dumbledore, in fact, or for that matter Harry himself…

* “‘Haven’t you guessed yet, Harry Potter?’ said Riddle softly.” Really, Tom, a boy who still hasn’t guessed that you’re a bad guy is hardly likely to have worked out that Ginny was the one attacking people, is he?

* So Ginny knew (or at least suspected) that she was the one behind the attacks, but still didn’t tell anyone. Gryffindor courage, anyone?

* DD persuaded Dippet to keep Hagrid as gamekeeper. Given that Hagrid had allegedly killed someone, I wonder how he managed to do this? Blackmail? Imperius? After DH, I don’t think anything would surprise me.

* “‘I bet Dumbledore saw right through you,’ said Harry, his teeth gritted,” without stopping to wonder why Dumbledore didn’t tell anyone of his suspicions or do anything to try and confirm them.

* “For many months now,” said Tom, “my new target has been – you.”

“Wait,” said Harry. “You mean you don’t want to be my friend?”

* Harry’s little pro-Dumbledore speech is actually quite inspiring. Or would be, if we didn’t now know that DD has essentially been raising him for the past eleven years as a mindlessly obedient soldier, which makes it look rather creepy.

* Fawkes is here! Luckily he’s recovered from his rebirth in time to save Harry the indignity of being rescued by something ugly. Only the beautiful are worthy of saving Our Hero’s life!

* “We even look something alike,” says Tom, foreshadowing the dishy!Harry of HBP onwards.

* Sill, Tom’s really naïve to think that he and Harry are at all similar. Harry’s in Gryffindor, remember? That alone outweighs any petty similarities in background, looks, morals or behaviour that Tom could ever come up with.

* Now this is where Tom’s Pureblood mania really comes back to bite him on the bum. If he’d been more familiar with Muggle fiction like James Bond, he’d know that villains who kill their opponents in really long-winded and theatrical ways always end up being defeated at the last moment. Much better just to AK Harry and Fawkes, then magically burn their bodies along with the Hat, just to be on the safe side.

* Even with Fawkes’ and Tom’s help, Harry would still have been snake-food were it not for the fact that God JK Rowling the basilisk sweeps the Sorting Hat into his arms.

* No, Tom, don’t take your time! Learn from all those Bond villains, finish him off quickly!

* Fawkes gives Harry Tom’s diary, when surely a real Gryffindor would let him fight it out, man-to-man. Christ, DD, what were you thinking of, getting this cissy pet bird? It’s probably some cowardly Ravenclaw. Those Gryffindor-coloured feathers are just a disguise to try and make it look brave!

* JK Rowling pulls her trick of having characters crying to distract from the fact that their behaviour has been pretty shoddy. She’ll do it again with Hagrid in POA.

* Interesting to see how Ginny’s main concern is that she’ll get expelled, rather than, say, whether she’s hurt anyone. Good to see she’s got her priorities right.

* Back off, Ron, only the Chosen One’s good enough to comfort Ginny!

* Ron’s “grinning” at Lockhart’s predicament. Yay, let’s laugh at the person with serious brain damage! You can tell he’s a true Gryffindor, alright.

* It would be sort of ironic if Harry had beaten Tom without needing Fawkes or the Hat, and then died of starvation along with Lockhart, Ron and Ginny because they couldn’t get out. Any bets on how long it’d take before they resorted to cannibalism?

* Harry goes to Professor McGonagall’s office. If only he’d thought of this sooner, we might have had a more believable book.

 

Comments

[karentheunicorn.livejournal.com]

So it wasn't a Slytherin-type ambition that drove Ginny; just a crushing hope of a little girl who waited in the background for the author to grant her a boon.

Yea, I kinda feel like way. Or, I almost think Ginny was intended for Harry from the start. It's like the Lily twin. She's popular, powerful, redheaded, got a temper and just damn near perfect for the 'hero' of Hogwarts.

Which in Lily's case was James, and so Ginny is the do over made perfect for Harry, red hair and all.

For me I think she was always meant to be Harry's future wife, that was her design but I think in a lot of ways her biggest flaw because like Lily these two females become the 'perfect female character' - this is the character that most fanfic writers get the dreaded MarySue label from. The character that can do no wrong and is visually stunning, and is date material, etc.

I just sort of always figured they were going to end up together, maybe thats why I found the teenage romance, I don't know what words to use, dry and uninteresting maybe.

I know I've had a lot of discussions about the series and a lot of the really bad things that happen the characters seem to get over them so easy it's kind of shocking sometimes. And the romance, most of it seems like a lot of comedy instead of a real and deeply meaningful thing. It kind of comes across as shallow, like the characters if they were in the real world wouldn't really give a damn about each other, they'd be reading and following a script to know what kind of romantic roll they were going to play with each other.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Ginny is supposed to be popular, but do we see it? Does she have any friends other than the trio? Lily is at least shown with a group of female friends and she had friends to whom she had trouble justifying her continued hanging out with Severus.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

It's clear, I think, that Ginny was intended for Harry from the start; we know this from her author pushing it down our throats in all the post-publication instructions on how her books need to be read, how the character should be seen, her patting herself on the back and telling us what a good job she thinks she did with the pair, the 'soul mates' nonsense, the 'emotional journey', the ...

It's the do-over that Ginny got in upgrading from v1.0 to v2.0 which was hard to accept, given its artificiality. Plus Ginny 2.0 just isn't a very nice girl.

It kind of comes across as shallow, like the characters if they were in the real world wouldn't really give a damn about each other, they'd be reading and following a script to know what kind of romantic roll they were going to play with each other.

Yes. And if Harry hadn't read the part of the script which said "and now you suddenly find the girl you've ignored all those years very attractive and you lust after her" nothing would have happened. Ginny would still be waiting, she'd still be dating other boys while 'never giving up' on her hope that one day the hero would notice her.

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

It's clear, I think, that Ginny was intended for Harry from the start; we know this from her author pushing it down our throats in all the post-publication instructions on how her books need to be read, how the character should be seen, her patting herself on the back and telling us what a good job she thinks she did with the pair, the 'soul mates' nonsense, the 'emotional journey', the ...

I think I remember reading somewhere that Rowling stated that we all should have known Ginny and Harry were slated (fated?) to be together because Ginny ran after the Hogwarts Express at the beginning of Book 1...

Maybe I'm just not a romantic, but when I read that passage I just figured it was a little girl who was being left home alone without her siblings for the first time, and that she was running after the train because she'd miss THEM, not this stranger boy that she just met a few moments before...

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

I think I remember reading somewhere that Rowling stated that we all should have known Ginny and Harry were slated (fated?) to be together because Ginny ran after the Hogwarts Express at the beginning of Book 1...

Waving goodbye to her *brothers*.

I *don't think* Rowling ever instructed her fans that this was to be part of their H/G bible, but certainly it's a plank in many H/G fans' vision of that 'ship. I think it's a 'meta reason' that isn't evidence at all to the pairing, at least as far as the story itself goes. Ask Harry "when did you realise that Ginny was the girl for you?" and he's certainly NOT going to say "oh, when I saw her waving goodbye to her brothers when I was eleven". Shucks, he forgot that she'd almost been killed by the world's most evil wizard one year later!

Maybe I'm just not a romantic, but when I read that passage I just figured it was a little girl who was being left home alone without her siblings for the first time, and that she was running after the train because she'd miss THEM, not this stranger boy that she just met a few moments before...

Nah, you've just got too much common sense. :-)

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

Nah, you've just got too much common sense. :-)

Not the first time I've been told that! LOL