PS Chapter Eight

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

*You bet he gets his own chapter title. (Totally forgot today was Friday!)

*I kind of love the solid walls that just pretend to be doors. This is what keeps the Wizarding World in balance. You'd think magic would make things easier but in fact with the ability to do magic comes the compulsion to be as childishly irritating as possible, even if you're architecture.

*Harry runs afoul of Filch on the very first day. He'll get back at him soon enough. Ruddy Squib.

*Btw, remember that third floor they're not allowed to enter? Good.

*The Weasley twins know all the secret passages of the school. All the better to practice their japes and mischief!

*There was a lot more to magic, Harry learned, than waving your wand and saying funny words. Not very much more at all, but more.

*Professor Sprout is called dumpy-you know, the word that's insulting when Vernon Dursley uses it.

*I can kind of understand the theories about some kind of conspiracy behind the boring history classes. I always thought history was one of the most interesting classes and you'd the addition of Goblin Rebellions would just make it all the more so. But in the WW the only history anybody seems to remember is the last time Slytherin pissed them off.

*McGonagall threatens to throw out anyone messing up in her class. If every teacher did that the classes would all be empty.

*Quirrel says his turban was a present for getting rid of a zombie…so they have zombies as well as Inferi?

*Harry displays typical Wizarding logic by deducing that Quirrel's turban could not have been given to him as a reward for getting rid of a zombie, because it might be stuffed with garlic. Um, relevance?

*Ron says Snape favors the Slytherins and wishes McGonagall favored them, which she does not judging by the piles of homework she gives. Something tells me Snape doesn't favor the Slytherins either by that definition.

*Draco, Crabbe and Goyle snigger when Snape calls Harry a celebrity. Because they just have it in for Harry. Nothing to do with Harry insulting them earlier.

*Snape's eyes are dark like Hagrid's but with none of his warmth. All that intelligence really messes them up.

*I love in the movie the way ickle Malfoy seems to get all overly excited by Snape's Potions speech.

*Hermione, of course, just wants to prove she's not a dunderhead.

*Seamus winks at Harry when he sasses Snape. You don't fool me, Seamus. That was far too independent-minded a wink.

*Btw, note that Seamus is totally set up as a potential friend for Harry in this book. What happened, Seamus?

*Hermione's an idiot in this scene. I really like her. I miss this Hermione, the socially inept one. She's a lot more likable.

*I can't believe I'm going to say this but Snape on the first day? Not so bad as I remembered. I've never bought the "Snape's just trying to help Harry" and I still don't-he's being a jerk-but he's within the bounds of regular snarky teachers. I wouldn't be surprised if he always picked out one kid the first day. Or maybe usually he asked three kids one question each.

*Snape sets them to making a simple potion to clear boils. So regular boils, then. Not like the things Marietta Edgecomb's going to be forced to wear the rest of her life for crossing Hermione.

*Malfoy's slugs are perfectly stewed. Not so perfectly as to suggest he could ever get an O on his Potions OWL, of course. Only Hermione can get that.

*Snape's not so bad to Neville, either. Idiot boy isn't a nice thing to say, but it seems within the realm of gruff care.

*It's only taking points from Harry that crosses the line and indicates Snape really does hate him.

*Like Hagrid, Fang was not as fierce as he looked if you're a Gryffindor. Unlike most of Hagrid's creatures, who are indeed as fierce as they look and woe to anyone who pisses them off.

*Hagrid calls Filch an old git straight off, so they do have a rivalry. One that Hagrid naturally wins because he's a Wizard and Filch is a sneakin' Squib. Which is why Hagrid will be rewarded with a teaching position he fills badly while Filch, who seems to do his job fine, will be hexed in the hallways for the rest of his days. It's nice when the natural order of things works out.

*I pause to applaud here. Rowling really is good about introducing information smoothly so that it seems like filler but is really important. The information here being Ron's brother Charlie who works with dragons.

*Harry finds yet another clipping about a Gringotts break-in that still doesn't justify Hagrid's long expositional speech about all the security there.

*I know it's not the next chapter yet, but boy the first sentence of the next chapter's a doozy (my eye just fell on it as I read the end of this one). To prepare for it, you might want to think back on the last eight chapters, specifically on everything Malfoy has actually done to Harry, particularly as compared to Dudley.






Idiot Picture
You can see why Dumbledore trusts Hagrid with his important missions. If he used an actual adult our sixth grader protagonist couldn't easily figure out what was going on.


Final score: 1

Slytherin liquid count: Tell me that Potions speech didn't get the Slytherins all hot and bothered!

Signs of things to come: See the tall kid with the red hair? Look immediately to his left. Malfoy sniggers behind his hand at Snape's jokes in class-this will immediately turn into Snape letting Malfoy run amuck in Potions class in many readers' memories. Hagrid still can't keep a secret. If you open to any page of the Daily Prophet it *will* directly relate to something concerning Harry.

Comments

[sarahtales.livejournal.com]

Maybe at first Snape was like 'now, now, self, come, be an adult: the boy wasn't raised by James Potter, after all. Sure he looks like him, but maybe he'll be - tolerable - and anyway, you're better than this now, Dumbledore trusts you, Voldemort's gone, you don't care about no childhood enemy, you're the MAN, Snape!' And then Harry started with the backchat and the strutting and a red mist sort of descended before Snape's eyes.

Didn't everyone in the HBP Potions class get an O except for Harry, since he was the only one who didn't have a book and got the Princely Cliff Notes? Oh dear, does that mean Ernie Macmillan got an O? My Draco's glory is sadly lessened.

Oh Lord, the zombies. I call Flint. (C'mon, you guys. Multi-million dollar books. Editors, plz!)

I love that first line. I looooove it. One-sided, ha! Under his skin like a needle, I tell you, like a needle! I love the suggestion of how important Draco's attitude towards him is: it is the only poor indication we have that the opinion of someone very different from him will ever count for Harry.

[ellecain.livejournal.com]

Harry displays typical Wizarding logic by deducing that Quirrel's turban could not have been given to him as a reward for getting rid of a zombie, because it might be stuffed with garlic. Um, relevance?
Harry's brain works in strange ways all right....it goes:

Turban stuffed with garlic = scared of vampires.
Scared of vampies = too cowardly to fight zombies.
So since A equals B equals C (which it doesn't really) Quirrel didn't get no zombie and that's not a reward. The notion that one can pwn a zombie but still be scared of vampires just doesn't agree with Harry. He likes his people all-black or all-white.

[pacoman.livejournal.com]

I`m pretty sure Ron was in the HBP Potions class, and he didn`t get an O anywhere (because we can`t have the goofy sidekick be academically better than the Hero, after all; this isn`t shounen anime, this is serious literature!). Maybe Ernie also got an E?

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Ron and Harry were the two who didn't need books, which does seem to indicate everyone else got an O. Unless, of course, you don't want Draco to get an O because it suggests some kind of competence at something, in which case you need a complicated reason why everyone else in school got a note telling them about Snape teaching DADA except for Harry and Ron. You're going to have to give Ernie his O for the sake of the rest of the class!

Heh--I love the idea of Snape working himself up before class convincing himself he's not going to lose it. And then he does.

Taht first line is hilarious. It would make more sense coming from Draco's pov since he was at least the one that got dissed. With Harry it's like, uh, haven't you already won?

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Aha! Thanks! They need to teach courses on Wizard logic. It's too complicate for my mere Muggle head.

[kaskait.livejournal.com]

Quirrel says his turban was a present for getting rid of a zombie…so they have zombies as well as Inferi?

LOL, that was because she didn't think of a really wild, alternate word yet. But I remember reading that Zombies aren't corpses but people who were given drugs that caused brain damage. It was written by anthropologist Wade Davis in "The Serpent and the Rainbow".

Hermione, of course, just wants to prove she's not a dunderhead.

I always got the feeling that Snape didn't like Hermione because she reminded him of himself as a kid.

Harry finds yet another clipping about a Gringotts break-in that still doesn't justify Hagrid's long expositional speech about all the security there.

LOL, I think the Goblins are helping Riddle in some way. The whole WW community is scared crapless of them. Not to mention the fact that the goblins control their whole shaky monetary system. Heck, I'd be frightened of them too.

[(Anonymous)]

Something just occured to me. There are were four Slytherins and four Ravenclaws in the advanced potions class vs. one Hufflepuff and one (legitmately Outstanding) Gryffindor.

Maybe the Slytherins and Ravenclaws got together to form their own secret potions-making group: The S.A. (Snape's Apothecaries). Unfortunately, Draco was their leader and he had to bow out in sixth year, due to his pressing need to work on his carpentry skills.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Now there is the question we ought to have asked. What is the difference between an Inferi and a Vampire?

After all, neither of them is transparent.

[saylee.livejournal.com]

*I kind of love the solid walls that just pretend to be doors. This is what keeps the Wizarding World in balance. You'd think magic would make things easier but in fact with the ability to do magic comes the compulsion to be as childishly irritating as possible, even if you're architecture.

Who wants to bet that it was Godric who designed that part of the castle?