HBP Chapter Twenty-Two

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

*A burial for somebody we couldn’t care less about. What a shock, it’s a Hagrid chapter!

*LOL! I’m going to miss Harry and his moods that are failed to be lifted even by the approach of summer. Stop trying to out-emo Malfoy, Harry. You may have done it last year with your brooding, fiery rage, but this year your life is an Archie comic. Accept it.

*Hagrid sends Harry a note reminding him that he thinks anything he feels the Trio owes it to him to feel too.

*Hagrid says Harry and Ron know how special Aragog was. Special. That’s one word for it.

*You know, usually I think of Malfoy as the character who says what everybody’s thinking about Hagrid, but to be fair he really shares that job with Ron. What else do these two have in common? Oh right, they’ve both spent time in the infirmary thanks to Hagrid.

*Harry notes that tears have fallen onto the parchment. Probably because Hagrid writes all his letters with a magical weeping pen for extra guilt: "Dear Dumbledore, ::sniff sniff:: I’m righ’ sorry ‘bout squashin’ that firs’ year ::snuffle wail:: when I got drunk an’ sat on him. I s’pose you’ll be ::small spray of snot:: wantin’ me outta yer hair…"

*Hermione can’t imagine what’s more important to use the luck potion for than this memory—you haven’t seen the memory, Hermione.

*Hey, why doesn’t Harry use it to find out what Malfoy’s up to? Oh. IITS.

*Really he’s been wanting to use the potion to break up Dean and Ginny. As opposed to wanting to use the potion to get lucky with Ginny.

*JKR finally finds time to drop in some actual war news about the Montgomery sisters—but only in service of giving Tonks a reason to be wandering the halls. Or sort of a reason.

*Hermione vaguely says she heard the Montgomery parents refused to help the DEs. Don’t ask me what she was supposed to help them do or why or how. The DE don’t actually seem to do anything that I can see. Certainly nothing it seems they’d need some random person’s mother to help them do.

*Surely Werewolves don’t kill? asks Harry. Because when one hears "werewolf" the last thing one would think of was excessive violence.

*Ron says they kill when they get "carried away" but isn’t it far more logical to say that they only just bite and infect when they’re interrupted during an attack? Wolves don’t go around just biting as many things as possible.

*I think I’ve asked this before but…they have bells at Hogwarts? A regular school bell seems incredibly out of place in a castle.

*There were only three of them in Potions: Harry, Ernie, and Draco Malfoy, who gets two names because he’s so damned spoiled!

**snuggles three baby Potions boys*

*Interesting. Ernie speaks sycophantically and Malfoy doesn’t crack a smile on his thinner, greyer face. Harry always needs to have somebody sucking up to the teacher so he can be superior to them.

*Harry notices no air of smugness and superiority like Draco had on the train. Um, Harry? The train was like 8 months ago. You’re just now noticing the superiority wearing off?

*Harry manages to conclude the loss of smugness means the mission’s going badly, but does not link this to his looking ill or consider just how badly it might be going. That’s our Harry “What, you mean Cho was crying because she was sad?” Potter.

*Note he also doesn’t try to fit it into his own narrative of events. Malfoy looked ill after the necklace, now he looks thin after the mead. It’s like he’s just completely forgotten the two murder attempts. Him and everyone else in the school except Malfoy.

*Harry doesn’t tell Slughorn the sprig of peppermint wasn’t his own inspiration. Which doesn’t make him a cheater at all! Or a plagiarist!!11!

*Ernie is really determined to win me over in this book. First the leaping pirouette and now the purple dumpling in the bottom of his cauldron.

*Malfoy’s hiccoughing solution is graded merely passable. But he made it out of the regular book so Malfoy wins!

*Ron suggests that thinking you’ve taken FF is the same thing as really taking it, which is probably true in a universe where "confidence" is pretty much enough to do anything. (Note that Malfoy, not being a Gryffindor, has "arrogance" not "confidence.")

*Harry walks through the portrait hole and accidentally gives yet another blow to the slowly dying Ginny and Dean relationship. I’ve said it before, but for all everyone’s "all teenagers have lots of short romances—don’t judge Ginny!" defenses of the tediousness of the romance plots Hogwarts romances seem to hang on like grim death. Why are these couples together so long? For the sake of the plot kids?

*Does anyone else find it hilarious that JKR invented herself a canonical deus ex machina? "Hmm…it would be far too fake if Harry just ran into Slughorn—wait, what if that’s the point—that it’s fake?" And thus Felix Felicitas was born!

*During chapters like this you wonder if JKR ever regretted just not giving the Gryffindors an actual plot for this book, because finding ways for them to kill time until Malfoy’s ready in June seems like it might have ultimately been harder.

*Harry tells Slughorn he’s off to see Hagrid, because the best thing now is to tell the truth. Err…except that isn’t the truth. Apparently for Harry truth=one level of lie up.

*Slughorn knows Dumbledore trusts Hagrid to the hilt (?!) so he can’t be up to anything dreadful. Which is a bit like saying that you know Tom Cruise thinks Scientology is awesome, so it couldn’t be stupid and crazy.

*Harry invites Slughorn to come along to the funeral to get some venom from Aragog. After all, Harry’s only using Hagrid’s grief as a way to get the FF, why shouldn’t it be of some use to Slughorn too?

*Who thought they were going to wrap Aragog in a Kleenex and flush him down a great big magic toilet?

*Hagrid says Aragog would have been touched Harry was there, proving that Hagrid once again has bonded with his ideal fantasy of Aragog instead of the real thing.

*The other spiders won’t let Hagrid near their webs now that Aragog’s gone, because even monstrous spiders find him annoying.

*Hagrid says he had trouble getting Aragog out of the forest because the spiders usually eat their dead, but he wanted to give him a proper send-off. Note that a "proper sendoff" naturally means a wizard send-off. It’s hardly proper for a spider to have a spider send-off—much better he be harvested for some Potions ingredients and be an excuse for a bout of drinking. I believe Aragog’s Apparition license does say he was an organ donor.

*Hagrid takes time out of sobbing to indicate that he of course does know that he risked getting Harry in trouble by asking him out and is ready to blubber and whine to Harry about that if necessary.

*Ah! The Slytherin’s arrived—in fancy clothes with an armful of liquor!

*Why am I not surprised Slughorn owns a cravat?

*At first I thought Slughorn was bringing all the booze to try to get Hagrid drunk and then suggest he offer Slughorn some venom, but he just steals that. So I’m left to assume that he brought the booze solely in order to get Harry drunk and molest him.

*Harry once more tries to make us believe that Hermione really does still care about that house elf business.

*Slughorn calls Ron Rupert, which is still not as much of a cinematic tribute as Hermione’s punching Malfoy in the face.

*FF tells Harry not to drink tonight. I actually don’t think that’s FF so much as some dim memory of Harry’s from his Muggle childhood where they went to an assembly about "Good touches and bad touches" and "why you shouldn’t let strangers get you drunk."

*Hagrid tells the story about how he raised a man-eating monster in school, the moral being that Tom Riddle contrived to have him thrown out and he totally didn’t deserve it at all. Sure Hagrid’s spider could easily have killed Myrtle. The point is that he didn’t!

*Hagrid reveals he uses unicorn hair to bind wounds if a creature get hurt. If a kid gets hurt he just gets annoyed. No wasting of unicorn hair on them!

*Harry notes that Slughorn is looking around Hagrid’s cabin for stuff to add to his collection. Unlike Harry who’s watching Slughorn to see how he can pluck a memory out of his brain. Or Hagrid who’s looking out for ways to get everyone to feel sorry for him. What a lovely Trio these three make.

*Hmm…well, I guess if I stretch the definition of "luck" I can accept Harry’s being able to do a charm nonverbally that he’s never been able to do that way before counts. But it’s a stretch.

*Btw, we’ve been told that magic can’t create food and stuff out of thin air, right? But a refilling charm rather makes you wonder why anyone ever buys more than six bottles of any kind of drink in their life.

*Of all the heroic things Harry’s done in canon I think staying in a cabin with these two giant leaky-eyed drunks ranks up there with the worst of them.

*In his drunkenness, I half-expect Slughorn, upon being asked if he liked Lily to say, "I don’t imagine anyone who met her wouldn’t like her…very brave…very funny…total Mary Sue. We had to like her. ‘Twas in the script."

*Harry says FF tells him Slughorn won’t remember any of this in the morning and I see no reason to not believe FF now.

*For some reason I love it when Harry says "Of course I am" to being the Chosen One.

*Honestly, why does Slughorn the Slytherin have to be such a pussy in such a silly way? Why would it be so dangerous for Voldemort to find out Slughorn helped Harry when it isn’t dangerous for Voldemort to know perfectly well he’s walking around with this memory and could spill it at any second? It somehow seems like the polar opposite of Hermione’s pointless lie in PS/SS that she seems to tell only to get herself into trouble.

*Harry tells Slughorn to be brave. He waves a pudgy hand to remind him that as a fat person, he’s really just an overgrown baby and must be treated as such.

*Slughorn hands over the memory to Harry, which is…well, not really brave at all but Harry has to pretend it is to appeal to Slughorn’s vanity or something. Because we all know even Slytherins, especially a Good Slytherin, secretly want to be brave like a Gryffindor. That’s why Harry can’t, like, appeal to his pragmatism even if it would seem more persuasive.

*Slughorn begs Harry not to think too badly of him when he sees the memory. Am I remembering this memory wrong? Because I don’t recall Slughorn coming off badly in it. It’s not like he gave Voldemort the idea for Horcruxes even.

*Phew! Glad we’ve dealt with this Slytherin finally so we can get back to the real ones good ones bad ones.





The Cricket Rule Day-for-Night
Pretty much!

Designated Hero
Thrill as our hero gets some big old guys drunk and manipulates them!

IITS
For the last time, says Hermione firmly, just forget about Malfoy. She says it firmly, because that’s ITS too.

Idiot World
Only in an idiot world could this memory be so important and require so much page time to get.

Informed Attributes
Aww, Hagrid’s made an armband. He’s just like a big kid truly crying over the loss of his pet. Except really he’s a big dumb narcissistic adult who demands other people participate in his fantasies at personal risk to themselves.

Ken and Andrew’s Rule of Plot Holes
Ken and Andrew’s rule of plot holes meets its match in Felix Felicitas, the Plot Hole Antidote! I mean it to be contrived!

McGuffin
You just need to get that briefcase—err, memory Harry. What’s in it? Errr, nothing that great, actually. Probably better if you don’t actually open it.

Misdirected Answering
Whole. Entire. Chapter.

Final score: 9

Slytherin Liquid Count: Hagrid’s tears, tears that smear ink, Slughorn’s alcohol, Harry’s refills of the alcohol, drunken Hagrid and Slughorn, Slughorn’s tears, Aragog venom, liquid luck, Malfoy’s hiccoughing solution, Harry’s euphoria potion.

H/D cliché alert: Harry notices Malfoy’s getting pale and thin.

Comments

[sarahtales.livejournal.com]

For all everyone’s "all teenagers have lots of short romances—don’t judge Ginny!" defenses of the tediousness of the romance plots Hogwarts romances seem to hang on like grim death.

Yeah, seriously. I had a four-day relationships when I was seventeen. I'd be much less likely to judge Ginny for short romances. The fact she apparently strung along boys who cared about her for months on end while hoping this behaviour would win her the Chosen One, that's something I judge her for. Oh Michael Corner, my man, you traded up like a mad thing.

During chapters like this you wonder if JKR ever regretted just not giving the Gryffindors an actual plot for this book

Oh, how I want to read Draco Malfoy and the Half-Blood Prince, for serious. My poor ill baby, your Potion was good, you have no special book and no time to study and your health is failing under the stress, but damn it you actually listened when the actual Half-Blood Prince was teaching Potions!

I keep reproaching myself for loving Draco so much in this book, since in this one he actually did terrible things, like almost killing Ron and Katie, and I like Ron and, you know, disapprove of murder. And yet I thrill to someone's bad choices actually having terrible consequences! For themselves, that is, not Sirius' bad choices having terrible consequences for Snape, or Harry's bad choices having terrible consequences for Draco. The evidence Draco is actually feeling something makes me melt, given that everyone else is too wrapped up in giant spiders/Ginny or Ron Weasley to have a drop of mercy or remorse in their veins. Oh God, HP characters, I want to love you, I don't want to be Filch yelling for punishment, please feel something! (Okay, no, I never loved Hagrid. He may perish. Bury him alongside Aragog, his chosen life partner!)

I half-expect Slughorn, upon being asked if he liked Lily to say, "I don’t imagine anyone who met her wouldn’t like her…very brave…very funny…total Mary Sue. We had to like her. ‘Twas in the script."

Things have also come to a sorry state when I wince at well-deserved snarkery, since Lily may be my favourite female character at this point. Defending someone she didn't personally like because it was the right thing to do! Catch Ginny Weasley and her great compassion doing that, she would have done the Bat-Bogey Hex on Snape's private parts once James Potter had his underpants off. Oh, Lily, Lily, I wish you had lived. If your son had eviscerated someone and you heard about it, you would have bitch-slapped him until he (at the very least) made sure the kid he'd eviscerated was OK. And made him apologise. And withered any horrible redhaired pretenders talking about how it was great Harry had something good up his sleeve with your scorn!

You know, I think Aragog was pretty special. He decided not to kill humans while living in Hogwarts: Hagrid clearly made no effort to restrain him, even though he must've known that Aragog's kind naturally ate humans. Wow, had it been a less principled spider Hagrid adopted, the spider and the basilisk together could have emptied Hogwarts and then Hagrid and Voldemort's pets could have had a death match! I find it extremely amusing that the monster spider seems to have been the one with the sense of responsibility and proper behaviour. As opposed to Hagrid. (Oh. Now I am feeling sorry about Aragog's death. Ew, a trait in common with Hagrid, get it off me, get it off!)

Wow, Sister M, sorry about all the ranting, I think this chapter being filled so full of Hagrid's false idiotic sentiment when all I want to see are the characters having normal human feelings kind of made me delirious. Excellent as ever!

[merrymelody.livejournal.com]

Ernie speaks sycophantically and Malfoy doesn’t crack a smile. Harry always needs to have somebody sucking up to the teacher so he can be superior to them.

It's like they had a conference before class.
'Look, MacMillan, I really don't have the energy or the inclination to flatter Slughorn today, but obviously someone needs to, or the audience might laugh at Harry "It must be my mother's talent coming out; wait, try my potion, Sir?" Potter.'
'Understood, understood, all in the service of glorifying the heroes. We Hufflepuffs are old lags at that!'

I’m assume that he brought the booze solely in order to get Harry drunk and molest him.

I'm beginning to suspect that every childless adult in the WW not currently engaged in the fight against Good and Evil is an alcoholic.

Because we all know even Slytherins, especially a Good Slytherin, secretly want to be brave like a Gryffindor.

He's just warming us up for 'DON'T CALL ME A COWARD!'

Harry once more tries to make us believe that Hermione really does still care about that house elf business.

Luckily, Harry doesn't need to 'abuse' house-elves by having them test his food and drink - that's what Ron's for!

I half-expect Slughorn to say, "I don’t imagine anyone who met her wouldn’t like her…very brave…very funny…total Mary Sue. We had to like her. ‘Twas in the script."

The 'funny' gives me yet more vibes that should we find out more about Lily, it'll turn out she's fucking irritating. Funny like...Ginny, Fred and George funny?
But yeah, enough already with the Lily anvils (Only the good die young! I note Dumbledore pops it aged 200+. Yeah.), especially the frigging endless rehash of how super brave she was for not giving up her baby to certain death from an evil murderer in exchange for her own life.
(Why did Voldie kill James if she didn't 'need' to die, then? Because he, too, was struck by her almond-shaped emerald eyes and fiery red hair?)
With her husband and baby dead, it'd almost be more brave to live.

Harry notes that tears have fallen onto the parchment.

In stark contrast to OotP, Harry suddenly gives a shit about whether or not people are crying.

Hermione can’t imagine what’s more important to use the luck potion for than this memory—you haven’t seen the memory, Hermione.

This bit cracks me up, though - Hermione and Ron are all 'Well, of course you'll be fighting the Dark Lord with this awesome potion!' How surprising is it that, no, Harry's first thought was to use it for personal gain.

I also kinda love how Ron comes up with the idea to use Felix (a rare moment of competence! Doesn't he fail his Apparitions test later on here? I guess that makes up for it - we wouldn't want to get the idea he's as useful as Harry and Hermione!) and Hermione's instant reaction is 'Of course! Why didn't I think of it?'

Really he’s been wanting to use the potion to break up Dean and Ginny. As opposed to wanting to use the potion to get lucky with Ginny.

He's far too chivalrous for that! (Or else he's already assumed she'll jump at the chance to make time with the Chosen One. Gotta enjoy how all the worries here focus around the guys - she's still with Dean, what about Ron? When the menfolk have made up their minds, we'll let you know who it's okay to date, mkay, Ginny?)

Ernie is really determined to win me over in this book. First the leaping pirouette and now the purple dumpling in his cauldron.

He wants you to forgive him for being in the DA last book. It's okay, Ernie, OOTP was a dark time for all characters, we understand...
(It makes me laugh how he screws up his potion by trying 'to outshine Harry'. That'll learn ya for trying to outst the Chosen One from his rightful position at #1!)

Hogwarts romances seem to hang on like grim death.

Lavender and Ron are still together here, too, aren't they? (I wondered briefly whether Lavender getting angry with Ron was maybe part of Harry's "wish" so to speak, like Dean and Ginny edging towards a split, but then I realised that of course, why would Harry care who Ron ends up with?)
And I can't believe you didn't mention Ginny's awesome feminism - obvious even from her one line!

[kaskait.livejournal.com]

Harry notes that tears have fallen onto the parchment. Probably because Hagrid writes all his letters with a magical weeping pen for extra guilt: "Dear Dumbledore, ::sniff sniff:: I’m righ’ sorry ‘bout squashin’ that firs’ year ::snuffle wail:: when I got drunk an’ sat on him. I s’pose you’ll be ::small spray of snot:: wantin’ me outta yer hair…"

Yeah, I bet he has one for each month of every year he has been teaching at Hogwarts.

JKR finally finds time to drop in some actual war news about the Montgomery sisters—but only in service of giving Tonks a reason to be wandering the halls. Or sort of a reason.

Maybe that was the missing plot. It still amazes me that everyone thinks that Hogwarts is so safe. Maybe it was...until Harry showed up. But they still send their kids there every year especially when it was obvious that the school should have been closed. Maybe Ollivander is the only one with a brain in the WW.

[merrymelody.livejournal.com]

Hmm…well, I guess if I stretch the definition of "luck" I can accept Harry’s being able to do a charm nonverbally that he’s never been able to do that way before counts. But it’s a stretch.

I kind of want there to be a huge Timeturner style contrivance in the next book (OMG, all the bottles of and ingredients for FF were in Dumbledore's pocket as he went over the Tower!) or else there's really no reason not to use Felix for everything once you've started a precedent.
The spell part doesn't bother me so much, though, since most tasks requiring talent for Harry boil down to either a) he instantly achieves it and is Teh Bezt!1! or b) he tries for a rilly, rilly long time but can't do it for plot contrivance reasons before 'shockingly' succeeding.

Note that Malfoy, not being a Gryffindor, has "arrogance" not "confidence."

He does, however, not refer to himself in the third person yet, so it's another FTW for Draco here. ;)
Like how Neville's incompetence is a lack of confidence, whereas Crabbe and Goyle's is a lack of talent, and if those bastards think they deserve confidence in themselves, then someone oughta knock them down a peg or two, like they deserve!

Err…except that isn’t the truth. Apparently for Harry truth=one level of lie up.

The sad thing is that HBP is probably the nicest Harry's ever been. He tells slightly less convuluted lies and feels bad for several minutes at a stretch over hospitalising people!

Hagrid tells the story about how he raised a man-eating monster in school, the moral being that Tom Riddle contrived to have him thrown out and he totally didn’t deserve it at all.

I love the wording here, it sort of implies that that was Riddle's big plan. Nothing to with Myrtle, the CoS or the basilisk - he wanted the awesome threat that is Hagrid out of the picture!
You know what I don't get? It says how Hagrid was blamed for opening the Chamber of Secrets in my copy, whereas I thought it was for having Aragog, who they thought was the monster.
Besides, how would Hagrid open the Chamber? I imagine he'd have trouble with a door marked 'PUSH', but also, he's not a Slytherin. Or a parselmouth. Or an interesting and important character.

I don’t recall Slughorn coming off badly in it.

OMG he was nice to Riddle!11! would probably be reason enough. If he'd been a truly heroic sort, he would have pre-emptively saved the world by stuffing him in a toilet or flaying him; or just hated him forever for being a Slytherin descendent who stole a harmonica aged eleven.
The whole knowledge vs. concealment double-standard's rearing it's head again too - we can have a whole book devoted to how awful it is that kids can't practise their hexes on the unworthy in lessons; but no-one's allowed to learn the Dark Arts (which don't include cutting people open or disfiguring their faces, apparently.) or even discuss Horcruxes.

Harry says FF tells him Slughorn won’t remember any of this in the morning and I see no reason to not believe FF now.

Heh, I was wondering whether Voldie or someone, wanting to know whether Slughorn's told Harry who's told Dumbledore (who already knows, yeah? God knows from where, I don't really care at this point.) could find this memory. I wonder if this is a little pre-emptive blockade to that, or whether you could find memories that the person themselves doesn't recall.

Btw, we’ve been told that magic can’t create food and stuff out of thin air, right? A refilling charm rather makes you wonder why anyone ever buys more than six bottles of any kind of drink in their life.

It's kinda funny to imagine there being a logical reason why food can't be created from something else, if not air, since the whole structure of the first book rests on the Philosopher's Stone - what, wizards can transform objects into gold, but not bread?
More plot holes standing in the way of the Tragically Destitute Weasleys (I wonder if they're just like Tonks, and are trying - and failing - to look artistically deprived?)

Hagrid

[elanor-x.livejournal.com]

*Hagrid says Harry and Ron know how special Aragog was. Special. That’s one word for it.

I expressed my thoughts about this in the last entry of my lj.The text is too long, so I decided to link to it.
elanor_x

What does FTW and LOL exactly mean?

[(Anonymous)]

*Who thought they were going to wrap Aragog in a Kleenex and flush him down a great big magic toilet?

That was Mike Smith. Incidently, you guys might be interested to know that he's just started Prisoner of Azkaban.

[static-pixie.livejournal.com]

*The other spiders won’t let Hagrid near their webs now that Aragog’s gone, because even monstrous spiders find him annoying.

And yet it still doesn't occur to him that maybe the giant spiders aren't the nice, cuddly, misunderstood creatures he always took them for. It kind of pisses me off that it's looking like Hagrid is actually going to be rewarded for his attitude towards animals in the one and only instance he was right. Grawp. Or Gwap. Or whatever his name is. I bet he gets the giants on their side and it's all "Yay Hagrid the Open-Minded!" from then on. :P

*During chapters like this you wonder if JKR ever regretted just not giving the Gryffindors an actual plot for this book, because finding ways for them to kill time until Malfoy’s ready in June seems like it might have ultimately been harder.

Honestly, I'm really curious as to how they're going to turn HBP into a Harry-centric movie. Beyond my doubts as to Dan Radcliff's ability to portray Harry's having a raging chest monster that no one can see without just looking like something from The Exorcist, there's just nothing at all happening with the Trio or even Gryffindor in general to make a movie with. God, if we get more sunlit days I don't know what I'll do.

[baeraad.livejournal.com]

*Hagrid sends Harry a note reminding him that he thinks anything he feels the Trio owes it to him to feel too.

I hate Hagrid very, very much. This, I understand, does not make me stand out around here in the slightest, so I guess I don't need to elaborate why. =]

*Hagrid says Harry and Ron know how special Aragog was. Special. That’s one word for it.

It's so sad that Aragog has more dignity than most people in this series. "No, I'm not going to eat you, because I promised Hagrid. On the other hand, I didn't promise to keep my children from eating you, and they're hungry, poor dears. Nice of you to drop by, enjoy being digested, I'm going to take a nap now." =]

That's what these books need more of. Characters who're not really out to get Our Heroes, but who just don't give a shit.

*Really he’s been wanting to use the potion to break up Dean and Ginny. As opposed to wanting to use the potion to get lucky with Ginny.

Yes, isn't it strange that jealousy seems to make up most of what is called "love" around here? Gives you an interesting view of wizarding relationships. Do they habitually cheat on each other just to keep the spark going?

*Does anyone else find it hilarious that JKR invented herself a canonical deus ex machina? "Hmm…it would be far too fake if Harry just ran into Slughorn—wait, what if that’s the point—that it’s fake?" And thus Felix Felicitas was born!

Freaking ridicolous. A potion that makes everything turn out your way, and the side-effects are such things as "over-confidence"? Uhm... no, sorry, everyone would totally take this all the time and to hell with over-confidence. At the very least, all Death Eaters would take a small sip, good for half an hour or so, right before every important mission.

And Malfoy was ever so keen to win that competition so he could get the potion? Uhm, yeah... because he doesn't have a very rich mother who desperately wants him to survive, and who could easily have found some potion-canny wizard to cook up a batch?

*Harry invites Slughorn to come along to the funeral to get some venom from Aragog. After all, Harry’s only using Hagrid’s grief as a way to get the FF, why shouldn’t it be of some use to Slughorn too?

Would it be very bad if I said I actually liked Slughorn? Not just thought he was a fun character, but really thought he was a pretty cool person?

(*shrugs*) He never does anything worse than forgetting people's names (and, yes, explaining Horcruxes to Voldemort. Who already knew they existed and who would eventually have found someone to tell him. The hell with that, it's not even like Slughorn told him how to create them), and he always seems like he's having a lot of fun. He knows how to enjoy himself. Got to respect that in a man his age. =]

And, of course, the fact that the narrative voice is constantly harping at me to hate him makes me like him even more. Slughorn likes fame and money, and thus he's evil? Tell you what, JKR, if you hate fame and money so much, how about you give me some of the freaking piles you've made by writing this excuse for a fantasy series? Being the moral sinkhole that I am, I wouldn't mind taking them off your conscience. (*beams innocently*)

Might be my biggest pet peeve, actually - this immensely wealthy woman preaching the evils of money. I bet she'd say she didn't have a thought about money when writing the first book, either, despite being dirt poor at the time. She just wanted to entertain the kiddies. Her current enormous riches is her just reward for being such a paragon of virtue. Or something.

[violaswamp.livejournal.com]

*Harry notes that tears have fallen onto the parchment. Probably because Hagrid writes all his letters with a magical weeping pen for extra guilt: "Dear Dumbledore, ::sniff sniff:: I’m righ’ sorry ‘bout squashin’ that firs’ year ::snuffle wail:: when I got drunk an’ sat on him. I s’pose you’ll be ::small spray of snot:: wantin’ me outta yer hair…"

*dies*

God, Hagrid's creeptastic. He's the only character in the books who I can't imagine anyone would like.