Harry Potter and the Readalong of Fire 4: All twinkling suspended until further notice

After a month of letting Goblet of Fire toy with my fragile emotions, it’s finally come to a crashing halt. This week, Harry learned that Neville’s parents were tortured to the point of insanity, but he couldn’t be bothered to give Neville a kindly pat at the breakfast table; Bertha Jorkins proved herself to be the world’s loneliest witch when she agreed to a romantic moonlight stroll with Wormtail; a sizable group of adults stood by while a 14-year-old boy was tortured; dementors continued to be a terrible idea; Hermione walked around with a kidnapped Rita Skeeter Beetle in a jar in her purse like it was no big; and Sirius turned a doorknob with his PAW.

Even with opposable thumbs, no simple feat.

I know Voldemort is serious business, with the murdering and the torturing and the ability to smell people's guilt despite his complete lack of a proper nose. But I can’t seem to take him seriously. Especially after this:

The thing Wormtail had been carrying had the shape of a crouched human child, except that Harry had never seen anything less like a child. It was hairless and scaly-looking, a dark, raw, reddish black. Its arms and legs were thin and feeble. . . . 

The thing seemed almost helpless; it raised its thin arms, put them around Wormtail’s neck, and Wormtail lifted it. (pp. 640–541)

I need upsies.

Dumbledore, on the other hand, I’m suddenly taking QUITE seriously. His congenial twinkle has been replaced by “cold fury,” and he’s radiating power like burning heat. He’s a contradiction of temperatures. DO NOT MESS WITH HIM.

But I’m really interested to know why Dumbledore looked briefly triumphant when Harry recounted how Voldemort was able to touch Harry’s face without hurting himself. I’m assuming this is an Easter egg and I shall be rewarded later for my keen observation.

RIGHT, Rowling?

And I don’t know what you’ve heard, but this did not, by any means, make me tear up in the Laundromat:

Remember Cedric. Remember, if the time should come when you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy, remember what happened to a boy who was good, and kind, and brave, because he strayed across the path of Lord Voldemort. Remember Cedric Diggory. (p. 724)

Can't we all just get along?

Attachments: SURPRISE I LOVED IT (no one is surprised)

In case you were wondering, writing about a book that all my favorite book-type friends loved long before I did and that I ALSO loved when I finally got around to reading it is HARD. I’m tempted just to say YES IT IS FANTASTIC, pop in a Jennifer Lawrence GIF, and have an ice cream.

But here’s why you're not looking at J-Law making a saucy face right now: YES, everyone has read and loved this book, but did we all love it for the same reasons? Mostly, probably . . . yes. But the first note I scribbled down when I was reading was about the journalism aspect. Because the characters all work at a newspaper, and I was like I CAN IDENTIFY. And we were best friends from that day forward.

That first noteworthy thing for me was this:

Regardless, TV journalists don’t count; cute is their job. There’s no reason to look pretty in print journalism. Readers don’t care if you’re cute. (p. 77)

To which I exclaimed, “Oh HELLO, truthy statement about print vs. broadcast journalism. THE WAR WAGES ON.”

And we have HER on our side, so good LUCK to you.

When I was in journalism school, our classes were in the same building as the broadcast journalism classes, and sometimes we ended up in the hallway at the same time waiting for our classes to open . . . and the contrast was remarkable, let me tell you. Exhausted budding alcoholics with rings under their eyes on the right, freshly spackled smoothie-drinking folks on the left. I’m generalizing, but I'm probably drunk right now so what do I know.

Oh did you want to know what this book is about? WELL. Jennifer is a Features copy editor and Beth is a movie reviewer at The Courier, a small Midwestern paper. It’s 1999, and the paper has just entered the digital age, with Internet access for reporters and internal e-mail. Because Internet equals PORN, this advancement necessitates the presence of a person whose job it is to monitor Internet use and employee e-mails for abuses of the privilege. Enter Lincoln, a 28-year-old complacent sort who lives with his mother. The thing is, Beth and Jennifer misuse the HELL out of the internal e-mail, and their messages keep getting filtered into Lincoln’s folder of suspicious e-mails. So he reads them. And then he keeps reading them. And he can't bring himself to issue them a warning. Because he's starting to like them. And maybe even love one of them.

Like You've Got Mail...but only one person's got mail.

The format goes back and forth from Lincoln’s narrative to e-mails between Beth and Jennifer, and in this tidy way, the plot progresses. It’s charming and light but still makes you feel some real-life feels.

I identified so fully with Beth and Jennifer that I sometimes had to remind myself which was which when I was reading their back-and-forths (until Jennifer said she didn’t care about Batman; that was a rocky point in our relationship).

And Lincoln. He’s that quietly spectacular sort of man that we all HOPE we deserve. This was the precise moment when I loved him, talking to a girl at a noisy club:

“Well, you came here to meet somebody, right? To meet a guy?” 

“Right.” 

“To maybe meet the guy, right?” 

She looked down at her drink. “Right.” 

“Well, when you think about that guy—who, by the way, we both know isn’t me—when you think about meeting him, do you think about meeting him in a place like this? In a place this ugly? This loud? Do you want him to smell like Jägermeister and cigarettes? Do you want your first dance to be to a song about strippers?” (p. 52)

Only if SHE'S there.

Harry Potter and the Readalong of Fire 3: Do these dress robes make my butt look big?

We're three-fourths of the way through Goblet of Fire, and this is what's happening: Winky's role model is Mammy from Gone With the Wind ("I is looking after the Crouches all my life, and my mother is doing it before me, and my grandmother is doing it before her . . ."); Hagrid is feeding dragon liver to the Blast-Ended Skrewts (I think it's safe to say we've all underestimated the availability of dragon parts; heartstrings for everyone!); Fleur worries about gaining weight and not fitting into her dress robes (they are ROBES, Fleur); McGonagall's idea of dressing up is superior to everyone else's (Tartan is the fanciest of all the patterns); at the Yule Ball, Karkaroff is looking at Krum the way Ron is looking at Hermione (I see this as somewhat of a problem); and Moody is using his magical eye to look through Harry's robes (ALSO A PROBLEM).

Let's talk about families.

I know we're supposed to be indignant over the superb stinginess of the Dursleys in sending Harry a single tissue for Christmas this year, but I continue to be impressed when they send him ANYTHING. I mean, he's out of sight, out of mind for a WHOLE year. And yet, around Christmas, they think of him at least long enough to send him something from the bottom of Aunt Petunia's purse. And they might even have to use some sort of magical conveyance to get it to him at Hogwarts, which you KNOW they hate. So I choose to see this glass as half full . . . of terrible relatives.

In a shocking fairly unsurprising bit of news, we learn Hagrid is half-giant. But I'm struggling to make sense of how this whole human/giant relationship worked between his mom and dad, and I want ANSWERS, Rowling. Where did they meet? Was it a whirlwind love affair? Why did she leave when Hagrid was 3? How did they . . . um? How would they . . . ? Because pure giants are about 20 feet tall and, well . . .

"Tiny little bloke, my dad was. By the time I was six I could lift him up an' put him on top o' the dresser if he annoyed me." (p. 428)

He's gonna get back to us when he works it out.

Harry Potter and the Readalong of Fire 2: What if we're ALL teenage girls?

We’re halfway through Goblet of Fire, and here’s what’s happening: Hermione is stepping up her game on the “free-the-house-elves” front, everyone continues not to care sufficiently about Neville, the owls need a PETA representative, Hermione wants to mouth-kiss cannot abide by Krum, Ron and Harry are acting like mean girls, Sirius is saying things seriously and Snape is snapping, Bagman is acting MORE suspicious, wizard journalists do not learn ethics in Wizard Journalism School, and wands continue to be so very dirty (“I polish it every night”; “rather thicker than one usually sees . . . quite rigid”).

I'm so sorry, Mom.

On the topic of house-elves, Ron so sincerely believes that they like to be enslaved, and Hagrid repeats that same belief later. To that I say, of COURSE the house-elves like being enslaved. I'm thoroughly convinced. When was the last time I heard that argument . . . OH YEAH.

Your wizard logic is faulty.

And I suppose the owls ALSO enjoy their life of hard labor? (Oh, they do, you say? Very well then.) Harry is pretty hard on Hedwig. She flies for days and who (owl humor) knows how far to get a letter to Sirius, and then the very next morning, Harry makes her fly out again to deliver a stupid letter that is stupid. You SHOW him your tail feathers, girl. He doesn’t even deserve you.

Oh, that reminds me. I have a bone to pick with Rowling about the owls. So Hedwig can find Sirius in his most secret of secret headquarters. Acceptable. Hedwig is a very special owl, even as far as magical owls go. But then Harry is able to grab just a random school owl to send a letter to Sirius, and this owl will ALSO be able to find him without any difficulty. So, I ask you, what’s stopping the Ministry of Magic from just . . . sending Sirius an owl? And then when the owl got to his hidden location to deliver the “message,” the message would be “SURPRISE! DEMENTOR'S KISS. Love, Ministry of Magic.”

I leave you with Potter and Malfoy, mean girls:

Harry Potter and the Readalong of Fire 1: Sorry about your nose, big guy

I have no Neville/Harry subtext to comment on YET for Goblet of Fire, but Peter Pettigrew and Voldemort are fulfilling that need nicely for now.

"I can always tell, Wormtail! You are regretting that you ever returned to me. I revolt you. I see you flinch when you look at me, feel you shudder when you touch me. . . ." (p. 9)

There, there, Voldemort Fetus.

And he's calling Pettigrew by his school nickname, so . . . yeah.

The whole World Cup chapter is clearly fantastic, with the underage gambling and Mr. Weasley's sincere fondness of Muggles (bless them) and Percy sitting on a proverbial hedgehog and the Bulgarian mascots almost causing Ron and Harry to leap to their untimely deaths (all in good fun, really) and Viktor Krum being all broody and bird-of-prey-like (and waaay too old for Hermione, so let's just not).

But then the Death Eaters have to get tipsy and start exploding things and floating Muggles.

And poop on all your parties, too.

The obvious similarities between the Death Eaters and the Ku Klux Klan got me thinking, is there an equivalent society in the UK? I always kind of identify the KKK as distinctly American, but I suppose they've come to be a universal symbol for intolerance. Teach me things, Laura, for you are British and I'm too lazy to use the Internet.

And when Harry, Ron, and Hermione are running away from the Death Eaters, they stumble on Ludo Bagman just kind of hanging out behind a tree in the dark woods. No reason to be suspicious of him at all. (I AM SUSPICIOUS OF HIM.)

Yaaaaay for The Triwizard Tournament, but doesn't it kind of suck for the seventh-year Quidditch players that there will be no Quidditch Cup in this, their last year at Hogwarts?

Wood wouldn't STAND for it, I tell you.

Bits and pieces:

• How did Molly Weasely get gold out of Harry's vault FOR him? That . . . is not how banks work.
• Hermione SEES a house-elf and is immediately a crusader for equal rights for all house-elves. A house-elf risks his life for Harry, and he remains unimpressed. Well OK then.
• Hedwig and Pigwidgeon. That is all.
• Mad-Eye is obviously wonderful, but I remember I'm supposed to be wary of him. So I'm giving Mad-Eye the side-eye until further notice.
• "Arthur's the only one who can get Mad-Eye off . . ."

HP and the Readalong of Azkaban: Let's hear it for the boys

So Prisoner of Azkaban. This has been perhaps the most eventful book so far. The evil-wizard-who-isn’t turns out to be Harry’s dogfather godfather. There’s a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher who has some dark arts I don't WANT to be defended against, if you catch my drift. Harry almost dies some more on the Quidditch field. A hippogriff is wrongfully executed (OR IS HE?). Hermione bends the laws of time and space so she can be an even bigger nerd. Ron shows character for just a minute right at the end of Chapter 19. The scaly, putrid Hand of the Law tries to Cuckoo’s Nest an innocent child.

This is getting out of hand, guys.

But I don’t want to talk about any of that. Instead, I’m gonna use this post to talk about Harry’s latent romantic feelings for Neville Longbottom.

“Woss your name?” Stan persisted.
“Neville Longbottom,” said Harry, saying the first name that came into his head. (p. 34)

He watched, as though somebody was playing him a piece of film, Sirius Black blasting Peter Pettigrew (who resembled Neville Longbottom) into a thousand pieces. (p. 213)

Harry slept badly. First he dreamed that he had overslept, and that Wood was yelling, “Where were you? We had to use Neville instead!” (p. 302)

 

The Valentine Harry REALLY wanted in Book 2.

And Lupin sums up Snape in one sentence:

“What about Professor Snape?” said Hermione in a small voice, looking down at Snape’s prone figure.

“There’s nothing seriously wrong with him,” said Lupin. (p. 377)

HP and the Readalong of Secrets 2: Sure, Percy...you had a girl in your room that whole time

Midway through Chamber of Secrets, everyone is convinced that Harry is the Heir of Slytherin because he talked Super-Secret Snake Language (it has a proper name, you say? Well I refuse to acknowledge it, because it's dumb) in front of basically the whole school and kind of seemed maybe to be telling the snake to eat someone. A MINOR misunderstanding, really.

But when he goes to apologize to the almost-victim, he stumbles upon a GOSSIP FEST.

“A group of the Hufflepuffs who should have been in Herbology were indeed sitting at the back of the library, but they didn’t seem to be working. . . . Their heads were close together and they were having what looked like an absorbing conversation.” (p. 198)

. . . about how Harry is a murderous snake charmer.

I especially like that the two most vocal of the bunch are described as “a stout boy” and “a girl with blonde pigtails.” Heh, Hufflepuffs . . . what a bunch of losers.

Dammit, Hufflepuffs!

On a more adorable note, there are no fewer than four instances in which Ron demonstrates that he’s completely in love with Hermione already. For example:

“Ron read the message, swallowed hard, and looked sideways at the empty seat usually filled by Hermione. The sight seemed to stiffen his resolve, and he nodded.” (p. 270)

Just so we’re clear on why Ron is resolve-stiffening, he has to go into the Forbidden Forest in the middle of the night to follow a bunch of little spiders that will lead to a bunch of GIANT SPIDERS.

That's love, dudes.

While we're on the topic of Petrified Hermione, even though it’s the only way to revive everyone, I find it more than slightly morbid that paragraphs are devoted to explaining Mandrake development in the context of human maturation—hormonal acne and all—only to be followed by Madame Pomfrey saying, “It won’t be long before we’re cutting them up and stewing them” (p. 234). She could at least try not to sound so cheerful about it.

I know pretty much everyone loves Lockhart. In general, I can take him or leave him, but I have an intense fondness for innocuous, post-memory-loss Lockhart. He reminds me of the Witch of the Waste from Howl’s Moving Castle, after her magic and meanness are stripped away by that chair-spinny contraptionator.

They would make a lovely couple.