more on OotP
Jul. 29th, 2003 02:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pauraque_bkI'm surprised to see how little I've updated this month. After the way June dragged on and on, it seems like we can't possibly be more than a week into July, but damn, it's almost August. Too much real-life running around and angsting, I guess.
I've finished re-reading OotP. I ended up catching up with and going at about the same pace as my friend R--- on her first reading, so we talked our way through a lot of the book, which was great. And it's fun to have someone to sit around the computer and wibble over the new PoA movie pictures with you on your lunch break.
Anyway, here are some of my thoughts while reading the book a little more slowly than the last time.
-It seems that Muggles can't testify in wizard court -- if they could, we'd expect Dudley to be called as a witness for Harry's hearing (and perhaps Obliviated afterwards?). This could serve as an incentive for wizards to steer clear of the Muggle world; if they run into trouble, they stand a good chance of being wrongly convicted of a crime due to a lack of acceptable witnesses.
-Molly offers to get Ron a new rat because he "always liked Scabbers". This seems jarringly insensitive. Does she know the full story of what happened in the Shrieking Shack?
-Where the hell are Hermione's parents? There are so few references to them, even in passing. You'd think she'd want to see them when she can, but she spends almost no time at home during the holidays. She's staying most of the summer at the headquarters of a covert organization waging war on the forces of evil -- what kind of permission slip do you have to get for *that*? The Grangers can't possibly realize what their daughter is involved in; she must be lying to them. And in that case, she's lying to Molly and Arthur too.
-I guess Percy never knew where his family was staying, because otherwise he'd have tipped off the Ministry that they were at Sirius's place. It seems funny, though, that he doesn't know.
-Anybody else get the idea that Umbridge may be only part human? There are *so* many references to her looking/acting like a toad, and her vendetta against half-humans has no stated basis -- could it be displaced self-loathing, echoing Voldemort's crusade against his own kind?
-I thought it was interesting that Lucius recognized Padfoot. He'd have already left school by the time MWPP had mastered the transformation, so he wouldn't have seen their animal forms then. Presumably Lucius found out about it from Peter when they were DEs together, before Voldemort's fall. So Lucius wouldn't have *really* known it was Sirius on the platform, it would just have been an educated guess, later confirmed when he heard from Kreacher that Sirius had indeed been with Harry. The fact that Sirius was an Animagus evidently wasn't general DE knowledge, though, since Snape didn't find out until GoF.
-I see that McGonagall started teaching in December of 1956. I wonder what happened, that Dumbledore needed to hire a new teacher in the middle of the school year.
-"[The barman at the Hog's Head] was a grumpy-looking old man with a great deal of long grey hair and beard. He was tall and thin and looked vaguely familiar to Harry." Do we know what Aberforth Dumbledore does for a living? ;)
-Professor Umbridge says that "Lucius Malfoy always speaks most highly of [Snape]." What's the deal here? I'd have thought, after Snape didn't show up for the DE meeting at the end of GoF, Lucius would have realized Snape was a double agent. Maybe Lucius didn't know Snape wasn't there. Or maybe (as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
theatresm recently suggested), Snape *was* there.
Oh, and one more thing I noticed as I was re-reading the end of GoF. Voldemort tells us that Peter ran into Bertha Jorkins at an inn in Albania, convinced her to take a "nighttime stroll" with him, and then overpowered her and dragged her off to his master. This is certainly a side to Peter we've never seen: Charming and collected enough to pick up a woman (who's evidently a perfect stranger to him) at some bar in a foreign country, and persuade her to take a walk with him into the forest after dark. Hm.
I've finished re-reading OotP. I ended up catching up with and going at about the same pace as my friend R--- on her first reading, so we talked our way through a lot of the book, which was great. And it's fun to have someone to sit around the computer and wibble over the new PoA movie pictures with you on your lunch break.
Anyway, here are some of my thoughts while reading the book a little more slowly than the last time.
-It seems that Muggles can't testify in wizard court -- if they could, we'd expect Dudley to be called as a witness for Harry's hearing (and perhaps Obliviated afterwards?). This could serve as an incentive for wizards to steer clear of the Muggle world; if they run into trouble, they stand a good chance of being wrongly convicted of a crime due to a lack of acceptable witnesses.
-Molly offers to get Ron a new rat because he "always liked Scabbers". This seems jarringly insensitive. Does she know the full story of what happened in the Shrieking Shack?
-Where the hell are Hermione's parents? There are so few references to them, even in passing. You'd think she'd want to see them when she can, but she spends almost no time at home during the holidays. She's staying most of the summer at the headquarters of a covert organization waging war on the forces of evil -- what kind of permission slip do you have to get for *that*? The Grangers can't possibly realize what their daughter is involved in; she must be lying to them. And in that case, she's lying to Molly and Arthur too.
-I guess Percy never knew where his family was staying, because otherwise he'd have tipped off the Ministry that they were at Sirius's place. It seems funny, though, that he doesn't know.
-Anybody else get the idea that Umbridge may be only part human? There are *so* many references to her looking/acting like a toad, and her vendetta against half-humans has no stated basis -- could it be displaced self-loathing, echoing Voldemort's crusade against his own kind?
-I thought it was interesting that Lucius recognized Padfoot. He'd have already left school by the time MWPP had mastered the transformation, so he wouldn't have seen their animal forms then. Presumably Lucius found out about it from Peter when they were DEs together, before Voldemort's fall. So Lucius wouldn't have *really* known it was Sirius on the platform, it would just have been an educated guess, later confirmed when he heard from Kreacher that Sirius had indeed been with Harry. The fact that Sirius was an Animagus evidently wasn't general DE knowledge, though, since Snape didn't find out until GoF.
-I see that McGonagall started teaching in December of 1956. I wonder what happened, that Dumbledore needed to hire a new teacher in the middle of the school year.
-"[The barman at the Hog's Head] was a grumpy-looking old man with a great deal of long grey hair and beard. He was tall and thin and looked vaguely familiar to Harry." Do we know what Aberforth Dumbledore does for a living? ;)
-Professor Umbridge says that "Lucius Malfoy always speaks most highly of [Snape]." What's the deal here? I'd have thought, after Snape didn't show up for the DE meeting at the end of GoF, Lucius would have realized Snape was a double agent. Maybe Lucius didn't know Snape wasn't there. Or maybe (as
theatresm recently suggested), Snape *was* there.Oh, and one more thing I noticed as I was re-reading the end of GoF. Voldemort tells us that Peter ran into Bertha Jorkins at an inn in Albania, convinced her to take a "nighttime stroll" with him, and then overpowered her and dragged her off to his master. This is certainly a side to Peter we've never seen: Charming and collected enough to pick up a woman (who's evidently a perfect stranger to him) at some bar in a foreign country, and persuade her to take a walk with him into the forest after dark. Hm.
