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

[oryx_leucoryx]

Either Ginny is lying or there is something we don't know about, because she was already relaxed around Harry at the beginning of GOF and her first known date was with Neville to the Yule Ball, which led to her getting together with her first known boyfriend, Michael Corner. So either she had a secret previous boyfriend somewhere in POA or there was no connection between dating other boys and her being more relaxed and more -herself.

Too much thinking about Ginny, not too pleasant a way to spend the day. :-)
Agreed.

[aasaylva.livejournal.com]

I'd say what we get to see over the books is a sort of social climbing within the Hogwarts pecking order on the part of Ginny:
she starts out as a mousy little nothing (always as far as we in Harry's POV can see) - and the mousyness is NOT just something that depends on Harry: e.g. in CoS there never seems to be any female friend of hers around - which would account for her pouring her soul into a diary instead of her bestest friend's ear.
By GoF, as you say, she has relaxed enough to talk like a normal not overly popular girl would and consequently goes out with Neville - he is a boy she can "get" because he's low on the pecking order as well so he would hardly get a girl like Lavender or Parvati as a date for the Yule Ball. From their, Ginny works her way up to Michael (we don't know much about him, but he is in Ravenclaw and never described as a bumbling charity case like Neville mostly is - movie canon treated him much better and you got the impression Ginny might actually have enjoyed herself in a mild way whereas in the book it is obvious she just accepted him because he was the only one who had asked her at all).
From Michael, she upgrades to Dean who - being a Gryffindor AND one year her senior - is obviously better dating material.
And then, tatatataa! - Harry in the end.