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So, I was going to do an HBP read-through and then, for reasons unknown I thought it would better to do an OOTP read-through instead before the film comes out. Which means that I have to actually re-read OOTP.

Its probably not going to be a traditional DTCL sporking so to speak, but large parts of this one are just irresistably mockable.


- ’His jeans were torn and dirty, his T-shirt baggy and faded, and the soles of his trainers were peeling away from the uppers’

I honestly don’t get this AT ALL – If the Dursleys care that much about appearances and are bothered about local gossip then they’re not going to let Harry wander around looking like that, surely?


’….grinding their teeth so loudly that he could not hear the news…’

*Boggles*

’He and his gang spent every evening vandalising the play park, smoking on street corners and throwing stones at passing cars and children’

It’s a jungle out there in…um…middle-class suburban Surrey. Apparently.

’The opening notes of the music that heralded the seven o’clock news reached Harry’s ears…’

As the HP lexicon points out, the only seven o’clock news is the channel four news: which tends to be both very liberal and enlightened, and very serious. I rather see the Dursleys as viewers of the ITV news (think Fox news, but with approximately 25% more truths, Americans).

’…that a helicopter that had almost crashed in a field in Surrey…’

Remember Draco’s story about nearly crashing into a helicopter whilst on his broom? Wiltshire’s the next county over. I’m just saying…

’…the top of his head collided with the Dursleys’ open window…Harry felt as though his head had been split in two’

OUCH! I always forget just how many blows to the head Harry takes in the series. True, wizards do seem hardier than muggles thanks to their more advanced medical treatments but still. And yes, I may have chuckled rather uncharitably at Harry’s pain.

We can only assume that OOTP Harry showed that window what-for by hexing it into a slug later on…

’Uncle Vernon yelped and released Harry as though he had received an electric shock. Some invisible force seemed to have surged through his nephew, making him impossible to hold’

Ah, wandless magic. Something that rather bizarrely, Harry only seems able to achieve whilst surrounded by muggles, rather than by other wizards as conduits.

’Harry felt a dull, sinking sensation in his stomach and before he knew it the feeling of hopelessness that had plagued him all summer rolled over him once again’

I really shouldn’t laugh, but…emo much? I think this sentence is also a rather good starting point for anyone that might want to attempt a ‘Rosencrantz and Guidernstern’ version of HBP about Draco – he’s all about the hopelessness and despair! (Do you think the wizarding world has an equivalent for ‘Radiohead’ that he listened to?)

’He was so angry with them he had thrown away, unopened, the two boxes of Honeydukes chocolates they’d sent him for his birthday’

Hee!…I mean awww! Harry spends a lot of this book doing things that work against him in petulant fits of temper, or in misguided attempts at independence.

I’m clearly mellowing because I think its pretty sweet that Hermione and Ron are sending him a joint present or sorts. That is officially going to be the last time I say something complimentary about Hermione in this book so you might want to savour it.

’…he had unsettling dreams about long dark corridors, all finishing in dead ends and locked doors, which he supposed had something to do with the trapped feeling he had when he was awake’

I know the wizarding world has dream analysis because they cover it in Divination, I think. Even if they don’t then I’m pretty sure that a muggleborn like Hermione could check out a book on Jung or something and do a bit of dream analysis – you’d think that even in the rather macho wizarding world, SOMEONE would consider it worthy to attempt to read Harry’s dreams, what with him being the chosen one and all. But of course, this being Harry, he keeps his dream quiet.

Oh, and ‘long dark corridors’? Freudian sexual metaphors = FTW!

’His insides writhed with anger

Any mention of Harry’s insides makes me howl with laughter. Oh chest monster, you have so much to answer for…

’”There you go, Sirius,” Harry thought dully, “Nothing rash. Kept my nose clean. Exactly the opposite of what you would have done”’

Amidst the rage-filled tantrums, OOTP Harry occasionally manages to be quite perceptive: normally with regards to adults he'd previously revered and is now starting to see as decidedly less than perfect.

Also? Note Harry’s lack of rashness here, as it will be all heady recklessness from here on in…

”Yeah? Did he say that you look like a pig that’s been taught to walk on its hind legs? ‘Cause that’s not cheek, Dud, that’s true”

*Facepalm* He’s a rebel without a cause, isn’t he?

Harry’s irritatingly nasty here, especially since he’s essentially goading Dudley into a fight that Harry know he can win. It gives him a sense of satisfaction not unlike that in HBP, when he feels a sense of power at knowing that Draco is trapped in the room of requirement.

”Whereas you just need four mates behind you before you can beat up a ten year old.”

Pot? Meet kettle! Harry’s definitely on thin ice here, taking the moral high ground over this, when we never see him without his own back-up. But then Harry’s not one to analyse the importance of his entourage: Snape’s not wrong in HBP when he calls Harry average but he has underestimated the degree to which the Trio are greater together than the sum of their parts.

”Don’t kill Cedric! Don’t kill Cedric! Who’s Cedric – your boyfriend?”

Dudley Dursley: secret slasher.

Harry rather brings this on himself by starting with the vicious insults and Dudley returns them with vigour – and gets the satisfaction of seeing Harry genuinely upset. Is Dudley stupid? I rather think not…

I think this is the only canon reference to hint at homosexuality, which makes it all the more exciting that its in relation to Harry. And a grey-eyed Seeker. Although that may be a selective reading. On my part….

…and a voice spoke inside his head: “Bow to death, Harry…It might even be painless…I would not know…I have never died…”. He was never going to see Ron and Hermione again-

Creepy. Good stuff.

And its Ron and Hermione that give the Harry the strength to conjure a patronus. If I wasn’t made from stone that would be rather sweet.

A second dementor was crouching low over him, gripping his wrists in its slimy hands, prising them slowly, almost lovingly apart, lowering its hooded head towards Dudley’s face as though about to kiss him

Much love for that sentence, however long and unwieldy it is: its powerful, evocative and frightening, and picks up on a subtle use of sexual assault metaphors throughout the chapter in relation to the wizarding world.

Ahem. Was I just nice about OOTP? We’ll skim over that…


So that chapter one. Only 37 to go. *Gibbers*