Harry Potter HFriday - Post the FOR SOBBING OUT LOUD

I MISSED YOU GUYS! I am going to be seriously adrift in Blogland when these Harry Potter shenanigans are over. The frustrating thing about having missed the last 2 weeks is that I actually completed my reading BOTH TIMES and just wasn’t able to write up the post due to the plague (week 1, super shitty!) and a father/daughter weekend in Seattle (week 2, loads of fun!).

SO. Let’s just say I approached this week’s reading with a big ol’backlog of things to talk about, most of which I am going to assume someone in this group covered at some point. But here are my bullet points:

• Dumbledore telling off the Dursleys and Dudley’s confusion
• “Let us not deprive Molly any longer of the chance to deplore how thin you are.” Dumbledore knows what mothers like best.
• Snape. UGH you are being such an ASSHOLE. I have sympathy for you, I really do, but seriously man, you are the only one of the Mauraders generation who had even a CHANCE at a normal adult life, so try not being such a gigantic douche-canoe, would you?
• Ginny, you are amazing and I want to kiss you on the mouth.
• I think we can all take a moment to appreciate Madam Pince’s reaction to writing in books. Or at least I can, because why would you do that when there is a wide world of post-its out there?
• And another moment for this, which I noted as “might be a perfect paragraph”:

She left. At once Lavender and Parvati put their heads together to discuss this new development, with everything they had ever heard about McLaggen, and all they had ever guessed about Hermione. Ron looked strangely blank and said nothing. Harry was left to ponder in silence the depths to which girls would sink to get revenge. (314)

JK, you may not have a good handle on the romantic relationships in your stories, but damn girl, you sure know how to describe people.

• McGonagall sets Seamus lines: I am a wizard, not a baboon brandishing a stick.

You tell'em, Dame Smith!

One last thing for catchup: Ron’s love potion from Romilda Vane was so incredibly fantastic, and then he’s safe, and then he’s in Terrible Danger and how good is JK at foreshadowing and how guilty did I feel for laughing at Ron a moment before?! Most of my notes in this section amount to “aaauuuughhhh this is so good!”

******

OKAY. It happened, that Thing we have all been dreading, for we shall Dumble no more.

 And this whole book I have been approaching the end much like this:

Why is it in a saucepan? Why is there a towel on its head? Why do I suddenly want a kitten?

BUT FIRST, I have jumped on Alice and Rainbow's bandwagon and may supplement my lack of Harry Potter when June rolls around by reading Harry/Draco fic. 

“I need to see what Draco Malfoy is doing inside you…”

Now KISS.

But onward we must trudge, heavy our hearts and heavy our eyelids for staying up way too late to read children's' books:

Back at the beginning Harry was all, “why won’t something attack me?” and Dumbledore is like, “because you’re with ME and I am the baddest ass in these here parts.” (that last may have been just in my imagination, yes?) And then when Harry is taking Dumbledore out of the cave, Dumbles is all, “I am not worried, Harry. I am with you.”

He's going to talk to some food about this.

I’mma segue here a little and assume you are all Firefly fans because you are cool like that. Do you remember when you saw Serenity for the first time? I DO. I went to opening night and stood in line and won a t-shirt that has since disappeared (dammit). And at That Moment We All Remember, the whole theater stopped breathing. But we didn’t get time to cry because there was SLAYING KILLIN’ to be done by River Tam, Intergalactic Badass.

The second time I went to see Serenity, a very unexpected thing happened. When the crew got to Miranda, I started to sob. Great, heaving, trying-to-be-quiet-and-failing sobs. My friends who didn’t know what was coming were extremely uncomfortable, but I wept on undeterred. Because I knew what was coming. Megs and I got choked up over it this afternoon, in fact; it was one of the most devastating things I have ever experienced for a fictional character.

I haven’t read HBP since just before I started book 7, and I was racing through so I could crack open that orange behemoth. I didn’t know. I didn’t understand. I was firmly in the “Snape is evil” camp – I had a bookmark and everything (remember those?).

But this time through… this time, I just wept at the inevitability of it all, from the moment Dumbledore said, “I am with you.”

No exaggeration was used in the creation of this image.

So hey, how about that Fleur, huh? I’m pretty sure that “”Our Great-Auntie Muriel has a very beautiful tiara” anagrams into, “sorry I was mean and dismissive of you; welcome to the family.”

She is quite good looking enough for both of them.