Waves

There are too many cool moments or events in this story to go into full detail with, so I’ll only do a few of my favourites. The gang breaking into the Ministry of Magic was brilliant – I loved how it didn’t go to plan – like it ever would! I liked how Hermione stuffing Phineas Nigellus’ portrait into her magical bag was a bit of a misdirection. At first I thought he’d betray them to Snape, which in a way, he did, but it later enabled Snape to locate the gang and direct them to Godric’s sword. The whole chapter where Harry is viewing Snape’s memories was absolutely heart-wrenching. Breaking into, and then out of, Gringott’s was, I felt, a nod to the first book when Hagrid said anyone would be mad to try and break in.

It was a lovely moment when we found out there was a Taboo on the word “Voldemort” – Saying it alerted the Death Eaters to your presence, so you’d better not be plotting against him! The impression that we readers got all throughout the rest of the series was that he was referred to as “You-Know-Who” because of fear, and the mere mention of his name evoking memories of his terrible actions in the past. We had no idea it was used to track his enemies, I thought it was a nice touch. Off topic slightly: Why did my dirty mind always add the word “furry” between the words “Hufflepuff’s” and “Cup”?

Going by this last book, Neville could easily have been Voldemort’s equal. He’s the unsung hero in this one, leading the remnants of Dumbledore’s Army against the harsh regime put into place at Hogwarts after the Dark Lord took over the Ministry of Magic. And of course, he pulls Godric’s sword out of the hat to kill Nagini – lovely touch. He only got good at magic after he broke his Dad’s wand in Order of the Phoenix and got one of his own, which I thought was a deft and subtle nod to the wandlore explored in this story.

Overall, I give the series a big, fat [10], it is a delightful read whether you’re an adult or a child.

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I felt that this book was mostly build up, although it was due to necessity really, to set the scene for the Horcrux hunting in the final book. This and Deathly Hallows felt as if they were two parts of one novel, rather than two episodes that could stand alone by themselves, something all the other books could reasonably do. I also felt that the film actually did a better job of conveying Malfoy’s isolation, that he had a job to do, and his increasing desperation. The film also made it obvious that Snape isn’t a bad guy. That is a bad thing. Anyway, stop moaning about the films.

The transformation in Kreacher was delightful – just goes to show that Hermoine’s S.P.E.W. was slightly erroneous. House-elves do love caring for their masters, especially if their masters show them a little love. The various jaunts into Tom Riddle’s past were quite interesting, and shed a fair bit of light on why he is like he is, even before Harry persuaded Horace Slughorn to bequeath the final memory concerning the Horcruxes. I liked when the mouth organ was just a mouth organ, but Harry was clearly thinking along the right tracks.

This book features one of my favourite passages:

The Muggle Prime Minister: ‘But for heaven’s sake – you’re wizards! You can do magic! Surely you can sort out – well – anything!‘
Cornelius Fudge: ‘The trouble is, the other side can do magic too, Prime Minister’

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Harry spends most of this book being very angry. Angry at his friends for not writing to him, angry at Dumbledore for not being straight with him, angry with Dolores Umbridge, angry with Professor Snape… Harry was actually quite unlikable for the first part of the book, he came across as too obnoxious – Maybe this had to do with his link to Lord Voldemort. J.K. Rowling done a fantastic job of growing Harry and the rest of the guys up, I would’ve loved to have been 11 when the first book came out, and grown up beside them all. I have to say this: Luna Lovegood is the greatest character in the Harry Potter universe. I just adore her spaced-out personality, and love the irony that she’s super brave and clearly not altogether with it, but she was placed in Ravenclaw… Maybe there’s a deep intelligence in there somewhere? She is clearly quite perceptive and honest, and has a very open mind when it comes to her father’s theories in The Quibbler, but I’m quite sure her dreaminess is not an act.

I admit, I was once again wrong-footed by the main villain. I was expecting it not to be Umbridge in the end, but there you go. Even though a bunch of Death Eaters show up at the end (and even The Dark Lord himself makes an appearance at The Ministry) she was the main villain of the piece. I liked how Voldemort manipulated Harry to go and retrieve the prophecy for him by faking Sirius’ torture scene in his mind – he knew Harry would go running to save him, and spring the Death Eater trap, very cunning. Voldemort is indeed a true Slytherin. Side-note: Dolores Umbridge was portrayed magnificently in the movie by Imelda Staunton.

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And this is where the Harry Potter series stopped being aimed squarely at children. You can tell just by the size of it – it’s twice the size of Prisoner of Azkaban and three times the size of Philosopher’s Stone. This is probably my favourite book of the series behind Deathly Hallows (for reasons that will be explained later), it’s just so well written, so well thought out, so exciting and thrilling and so very, very mysterious. Taking the previous three parts into consideration (that you should always expect the unexpected, and the main villain often turns out to be someone you least expect, or not a villain at all) I had pretty much every new character in the book on my list of suspects as to who this main villain would turn out to be in the end. Everyone except Mad-Eye Moody – or at least, the person who looked like Mad-Eye – that was some twist.

The plot of the book was adapted heavily for the big screen, but unlike Prisoner of Azkaban, it didn’t work out for the better. The film adaptations started missing out massive elements of the stories, again, because the books became that much longer, we missed out on such details as the Weasley family destroying the Dursely’s front room as they tried to collect Harry via Floo Powder, the madness of Barty Crouch, Rita Skeeter being an unregistered Animagus, the monsters in the maze of the third task, how Barty Crouch Jr. escaped from Azkaban, S.P.E.W. and the House-elves, Dobby and Winky. Anyway, I shall stop complaining about the film adaptations now.

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At this point I feel these are still children’s books, although the tone is starting to shift a little. I loved the dynamic between Remus Lupin and Harry – it was the first time Harry really learned about his father from someone who knew him very well, although they seemed to talk about Sirius Black more (given his escape from Azkaban and the later revelation that he was responsible for Harry’s parents death). Whilst reading I always looked forward to their next Patronus lesson as I knew it’d be very emotionally written (and as an aside, I always found it interesting that Harry was more like Lupin than like his Godfather, Sirius). And what a surprise ending! It turns out that you can’t even count on the main villain (who had been portrayed as the main villain throughout the whole book) being the main villain! I would’ve never expected Scabbers.

While not my favourite book of the series, The Prisoner of Azkaban is probably my favourite film. Ah, I only lasted two-and-a-bit books before I mentioned the films. I thought I’d do better than that! The plot was slightly reworked to make it work better on screen, and I thought the revelation and battle scenes in the Shrieking Shack were very well done, and the Time Turner shenanigans were better implemented.

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Anyway, enough about me, let’s get back to the books, shall we? The Chamber of Secrets is a cracking mystery – The main villain turns out to be someone… er… something most unexpected. A part of Lord Voldemort’s soul encased in his diary – Later revealed to be a Horcrux. And the Sword of Gryffindor was given Horcrux destroying abilities in this book too. Again, how much of the future did J.K. know when she first wrote it? Such neat dovetailing.

Gilderoy Lockhart was a highlight – I just knew he was a sham as soon as he appeared in Flourish & Blotts. Nice dig at celebrity culture there. It was also great to see that his memory charms were about the only thing he was good at – The lasting damage the backfired charm did to him was still evident years later. I also enjoyed Moaning Myrtle, but never imagined she was so central to the plot (upon reading the rest of the books the first time around I took note of everyone and everything – the author is so good at hiding answers in plain sight). Throughout the series I lost count of how many times Hermione pulled an answer from Hogwarts: A History. She must’ve had the entire book memorised and I loved how she patronised the boys for not reading it.

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In terms of “stuff what I read”, March was most definitely Harry Potter month. One month, all seven books. These were originally going to be one “MASSIVE POST”, but I felt they’d be better as separate entries over the course of a few days.

Anyway, this was the second time I have read the series, and I got through the first three quite quickly – I had forgotten how slim they were compared to the later books. Here’s what I thought upon re-reading the epic saga of The Boy Who Lived, written by J.K. Rowling.

Well, this is where it all started. This is most definitely a children’s book, with it’s simple (yet mysterious and often misleading) story. I’m glad it actually had a story though, and it wasn’t just 200 pages worth of exposition, basically introducing the wizarding world and all the various characters – I don’t think the series would’ve been that popular if that were the case. It helps massively that Harry is seeing this world for the first time with us – he can ask all the stupid questions that we, as readers, want to know the answers to.

I’m still amazed that after the whole series has been finished and done with, everything in this first book fits. Either the entire wizarding universe came to Rowling in it’s entirety like a bolt from the blue one day, or she paid extra special attention to what she had written and didn’t contradict herself or her universe once. A bit of both, I think. I couldn’t care less if she knew in advance exactly what was going to happen over the course of the series, or how much of it she made up when she got to it – what fascinates me is that someone is brave enough to publish something which gives us the bare minimum of information crucial to the future. Mysteries are like hooks though, they keep people interested – I’d just blurt the answers to mysteries all over the place (this is why I feel my future does not lie in writing fiction!).

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