CoS Chapter Nine

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

*You can tell Filch is truly evil. Why isn’t he assuming a Slytherin froze his cat?

*In case anybody forgot about Dumbledore’s official announcement of favorites last year, he immediately gathers up Harry and his friends for a private consultation about the cat.

*Hee. I like Lockhart’s portraits with their hair in rollers so much I won’t ask where they get the rollers, why their hair would need rolling, etc.

*Is Snape really trying not to smile here? If so, why? Could somebody please write some serious Meta on Snape in CoS for me? He’s kind of fascinating.

*Harry does feel sorry for Filch’s loss of his cat, though not so much that he doesn’t create an even worse fantasy situation where he’s the real victim here.

*Certainly much better than that nasty Malfoy boy who is not at all moved by Hagrid’s blubbing over Buckbeak. And I’m sure it has nothing to do with the animal attacking him.

*I don’t know if I believe any of Lockhart’s portraits would forget to remove his hairnet. I’m actually not sure why he’s wearing a hairnet. Can portraits cook? Do they work in cafeterias?

*No second year could have done this, says Dumbledore. Excuse me, Albus. We happen to be talking about the Chosen One here! And his friend Hermione! Let’s not get insulting in our defense!

*Snape’s pretty quick, isn’t he? I don’t know if I’d have thought to ask why Harry was up in that corridor.

*Imagine how suspicious three Slytherins would look in this scene.

*This is also the scene where JKR introduces the idea that whatever you teach is what you do outside of teaching. Snape will make the Potion to cure the cat because he’s the Potions Master, so Lockhart will have to kill the monster.

*Harry immediately asks for reassurance that he shouldn’t have told the truth, and Ron’s happy to provide it. Ron and Harry are batting a thousand in this book when it comes to coming up with bad ideas between them.

*Ron’s shows off his healthy Wizard arrogance by sniggering over Filch being a Squib and gloating over Filch’s bitterness at being a second class citizen.

*This scene is really weird. Hermione’s there, and you’d think she’d have strong opinions on all these things, but she doesn’t say a single word.

*Well, we’ll fix that in the movie by giving her all of Ron’s lines.

*Harry ends the scene by claiming Snape’s tried to frame him for something. Which Snape totally tried to do here. And Harry would never do to Snape, obviously!

*For days, no one can talk of anything but the attack of Mrs. Norris. Mrs. Norris’ attack attracts about a hundred times more interest than the near-murders of Katie or Ron.

*Ron invents a love of cats for Ginny to explain her caring about Mrs. Norris. As if Ginny could really care about any animal that wasn’t snot-based.

*I suppose H/G-shippers love this scene for the way it shows Ginny and Harry being soulmates. They both conceal important information they have about attacks if it makes them look bad. (It’s almost like Lupin’s hear already!)

*Harry’s about to say hello to Justin Finch-Fletchly, but Justin turns around and speeds away. Wait, what the hell is going on here? Harry was going to say hello to a student outside his circle of friends?

*Continuing in his single-handed education on how Wizards behave, Ron reminds Harry that he shouldn’t care if Justin says hello to him or not, because he’s been judged an idiot. (This is one part of Ron’s personality I don’t mind seeing sucked out and given to Ginny later.)

*Hermione emerges from the stacks and finally looks ready to talk to them. That’s kind of a relief, actually. Hermione has been totally muzzled since the moment they saw the cat. It was beginning to get a little weird.

*Ron still has inches to go in his composition for History of Magic. I wonder if there’s spells that work like changing the font choice and size.

*Regardless, I hope nobody misses the painful symbolism of Ron’s always being a few inches short. I’m sure Harry’s essay is just a bit longer than average. Not too showy, but befitting a Chosen One.

*Btw, total tangent, but I remember this one fic where Harry and Draco were in a threesome and when Harry sees Draco he has this big moment of relief that Draco is normal-sized, because he’d always had this secret fear that Malfoy was hung like a horse. I so totally believe that.

*Hermione asks Binns if legends don’t always have a basis in fact. Except when they’re coming out of Luna Lovegood’s mouth.

*Note to self: Binns, who deals in facts, says that Wizards were much persecuted. He also gives an actual rationale behind Muggle-born prejudice, one that actually makes a bit of sense. They’re supposed to be untrustworthy because they’re not born into Wizard families. It’s kind of odd that this idea seems to have become less popular as the paranoia about Muggles and secrecy has gotten more popular, isn’t it? It’s like the secrecy counteracted the suspicion.

*Ooh, another nice little line from Binns. Just because a Wizard doesn’t use Dark Magic doesn’t mean he can’t. I was having a conversation about the eternal mystery of who uses Dark Magic and what it is the other day.

*Ron’s totally on a roll in this book. He always knew Slytherin was a twisted old loony! Can’t trust ‘em! Bad blood! And he started all the Pure-blood stuff single-handedly! God knows nobody I know in any way encourages prejudice against people who are different!

*Harry takes a moment to misremember his own Sorting as the hat seriously considering putting him in Slytherin, when in fact what happened was the Hat responded to his frantic plea not to be in Slytherin by trying to point out it wasn’t so foreign or bad for him. This is why I’m a Sorting Hat fangirl.

*Also—gee, this book has some good stuff in it—note how the bias against Slytherin drives even Harry to have to be ashamed of himself. Too bad this is going to all lead up to Dumbledore assuring Harry he really belongs in Gryffindor. We’ll have to wait until HBP for Dumbledore to encourage Harry to embrace his inner Slytherin, and even then he never says in so many words that’s what he’s doing.

*Hee. "People here’ll believe anything," says Ron, who, along with his two friends, is pages away from deciding Malfoy is Slytherin’s Heir.

*Hermione says if Dumbledore can’t cure Mrs. Norris than whatever petrified her must not be human. Just cause.

* Fred really missed his calling. He should have been a character in a Stephen King novel with that instinct for revenge.

*H/R moment here, I think, btw, with Hermione giggling at Ron’s Arachnophobia.

*I love that Harry’s surprised that someone’s mopped up the water that was on the floor.

*It’s kind of weird the school puts so much effort into making a nice Great Hall with gold cups and a sky that imitates the weather, but they can’t be bothered to fix a broken bathroom stall.

*Actually, it’s not weird at all. Whoever designed the school knows teenagers have a natural affinity for melodrama. Just as the sky in the Great Hall should be stormy, like the sky, the bathrooms need to be chipped, flaked, dirty and broken, like the heart of the students who go in there to cry.

*Percy swells like Mrs. Weasley. There’s a lot of people who are Molly-like. I can’t think of any Weasleys that ever seem like Arthur.

*Ginny’s apparently afraid Ron will get expelled. Not afraid enough to, like, tell anybody her diary’s possessed, but afraid.

*Ron tells Percy he doesn’t care about Ginny. Actually, Ron, Percy does seem to care about Ginny. Which is why it’s only fitting he’ll turn out to be a dirty traitor and Ginny II will abuse him for it.

*Wait, who said anything about Slytherin not liking Squibs? We know Pure-bloods blast them off the family trees, but what do they have to do with the Chamber of Secrets? Since they can’t do magic, they’re hardly being taught it in the school.

*Ron reminds us you only have to look at Draco’s foul rat faced to know he’s the Heir of Slytherin. Go Ron! Bring it on home!!

*I love that apparently in order to be a descendent of Slytherin one would have to be evil enough. Because Slytherin was made of evil.

*Ron suggests the Malfoys could be handing down the key to the Chamber of Secrets for centuries, from father to son. Well, right there we know Draco isn’t doing it. Lucius would never trust him to the key to the men’s room, much less the key to the Chamber of Secrets.

*Ron’s being a liberal Pureblood’s kind of against him here. If he were a Black he’d know whether the Malfoys were direct Heirs of Slytherin. Of course, Draco would probably have told everyone that anyway, if he was. Not to mention, I’m sure there are places to look up stuff on the Malfoys.

*Notice I didn’t say the Blacks, because this is before anyone thinks of Draco as being anything other than a Malfoy.

*Hermione’s already worked out a plan that’s dangerous (to appeal to Harry) and breaks about 50 school rules (to appeal to her own bad girl self).

*Hermione says they’ll have to use Polyjuice to pretend to be Slytherins, as Malfoy is probably boasting about being the Heir openly in their Common Room all the time. Good idea, Hermione! Use Polyjuice! Or maybe look for something that would make you invisible and just sneak into the Common Room and listen to what he says to his real friends when he’s boasting. If only you had some way of being invisible. Like an Invisibility Potion!

*Just kidding with that last one. We all know how dangerous Invisibility Potions can be, all black roses and purple prose and the next thing you know they’re all handcuffed to goal posts. Yeah, maybe the Polyjuice is better.

*Ron says only a really thick teacher would fall for Hermione’s excuse for getting the Potions book. Oh! They mean Lockhart. I thought they would just pop round to see Hagrid and ask him to get it for them.





IITS
No really, why can’t you tell anybody why you were in the corridor? Wouldn’t the disembodied voice maybe be a clue?

Idiot Picture
Nope, not going to tell. And neither is Ginny. Move along now, nothing to see here.

Informed Attributes
No second year could do this. Not even the second years who are about to make the Potion that no second years could make. Oh, and Ron represents the Wizards who aren’t prejudiced.

Final score: 3

Signs of things to come: This chapter title’s fitting. With all the hints about different bigotry, the basis for it, how it makes people act, it really is the writing on the wall. Ron tries to buck up his sister in the standard Gryffindor way, by reminding her that people getting hurt is okay if they are people Gryffindors don’t like. Because this is Ginny I, it doesn’t work. No wonder she won’t survive long. Ron suggests one would have to be evil enough to be the Heir of Slytherin. He doesn’t yet know you have to be more than evil, you also have to be insane, dirty, ugly and inbred—and it also helps if you can play the banjo.