the great harry potter re-read: harry potter and the chamber of secrets chapters 1-6

[fabula_vitae]

Remember back in October when I talked about starting a grand re-read of the Harry Potter series in honor of it being eleven years since I first started reading the series (hey, that means my length of time as a Harry Potter fan is old enough to be a Hogwarts student, WEIRD)? Well, I ended up only doing one post for the first few chapters of Sorcerer's Stone before I kind of gave up on writing about things. But now, I've been reading Mark Reads Harry Potter, which is a book-by-book, chapter-by-chapter recap of someone reading the series for the first time, and it's made me want to continue my re-read, as someone who's been reading the books since I was seven-almost-eight and has read all of them at least three times. So, since I finished Sorcerer's Stone already, I figured I'd start with Chamber of Secrets, and I'll be liveblogging it because I feel like that's the only way my thoughts are ever going to get written down.

So yeah. Armed with my old, ratty, falling apart copy of Chamber of Secrets that I got for my 8th birthday (because I left my good copy in my dorm room lol), my laptop, a box of chocolate, and some gingerbread cookies, let's restart the re-reading adventure.


Chapter One: The Worst Birthday

• In the chapter artwork Harry's head kind of looks disproportional to the rest of his body lol
• So Dudley's just like "I want more bacon" and ALL I CAN HEAR is Frank Lapidus being all "Don't talk about bacon." I MISS LAPIDUS.
• Oh wow boring recap is boring. I'm glad the later books are slightly better at the exposition in the first chapters.
• Proof of how Lost ruins your life: Uncle Vernon just mentioned 8:15 and I was just like OMG HEY THE NUMBERS.
• So I feel like I'm mentioning Lost too much, but EVERYONE FORGETS HARRY'S BIRTHDAY, JUST LIKE THEY DO FOR BB BEN. (Except bb Ben has Annie to give him those cute dolls.)

Chapter Two: Dobby's Warning

• DOBBY <3 Although because I know everything that happens in Deathly Hallows it's more like DOBBY ;_; (When I went to see the Deathly Hallows movie I was getting very annoyed at the people who were laughing at Dobby's antics in the Malfoy Manor because HOW CAN YOU LAUGH WHEN YOU KNOW HE'S ABOUT TO DIE)
• "Not--not He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, sir." I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE, DOBBY. Because of course the plot at Hogwarts has nothing to do with "Voldemort," technically. (I think this line is mentioned at the end once Harry puts it all together?)
• From what I've read on the Getting Crap Past The Radar page on TV Tropes, Uncle Vernon's "Japanese golfer joke" is not exactly the most family friendly joke. Then again, JKR is pretty good at slipping in things like that (like Ron's Uranus jokes in Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix).
• DO I EVEN WANT TO KNOW WHERE DOBBY WAS KEEPING THE LETTERS THAT HE PULLED OUT FROM UNDER THE PILLOW CASE HE WAS WEARING?
• I'm pretty sure the whole thing about the Ministry thinking that it was Harry who cast the Hover Charm is a plot convenience/hole because wouldn't the Trace that Harry has on him at this point let them know that he didn't cast any magic?

Chapter Three: The Burrow

• THE WEASLEYS SAVE HARRY IN THE FLYING CAR YAYYYY
• Lucius Malfoy gets namedropped for the first time in this chapter. And I'd forgotten that everyone immediately guesses that Dobby is the Malfoys' house-elf.
• "I mean, there's only so many times you can polish your prefect badge" TOTALLY SOUNDS LIKE A EUPHEMISM OR SOMETHING. (Yeah, it's not too hard to make these books dirty if you're in the right mindset. WHICH I AM BECAUSE I HAVE THE MIND OF A THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD BOY SOMETIMES.)
• MRS. WEASLEY AND HER CAPSLOCK OMG YES. (I really do love Mrs. Weasley. I think it has something to do with the fact that my mom is also named Molly so that won me over when I was little.)
• The Weasley's clock with the odd times is mentioned, although not the bit about one of the options being "mortal peril" (I don't think that detail comes up until Goblet of Fire.)
• AWW GINNY'S CRUSH ON HARRY IS SO CUTE IN THIS BOOK.
• GNOMES :D After the game of hide-and-seek with a garden gnome that went on during the last four or so months of my English class last year (don't ask), gnomes will never stop making me go :D
• OH LOOK LOCKHART GETS AN EARLY MENTION IN THIS CHAPTER WHEN MRS. WEASLEY CONSULTS ONE OF HIS BOOKS
• MUNDUNGUS FLETCHER GETS A MENTION IN THIS BOOK OMG I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT THAT. I didn't know he was mentioned this early in the series.
• "Mortlake was taken away for questioning about some extremely odd ferrets." I HOPE THEY WEREN'T WHITE AND BOUNCING LIKE DRACO MALFOY IN FERRET FORM.
• The ghoul in the attic is mentioned OMG DEATHLY HALLOWS PLOT POINT

Chapter Four: At Flourish and Blott's

• So there's this really weird transition in the chapter that occurs on pages 46-47 in my copy. George wonders how the Weasleys are going to manage to afford school stuff for everyone, leading to Harry to feel guilty about all the money he has. The last sentence of the paragraph is "He had never mentioned his bank account to the Dursleys; he didn't think their horror of anything connected to magic would stretch to a large pile of gold." And then there's a section break that cuts it to Mrs. Weasley waking them up the next morning to go shopping. I dunno, that sentence just seems like a really incomplete way to leave that scene. /writing style ramble
• OMG THE HAND OF GLORY. That totally comes up again in Half-Blood Prince.
• OMG DRACO LOOKS AT A CURSED NECKLACE THAT I'M PRETTY SURE IS THE SAME ONE THAT HE USES TO CURSE KATIE BELL IN HBP. OMG OMG FORESHADOWING.
• OH GOD LOCKHART I BOTH LOVE HIM AND HATE HIM. HE'S SUCH AN ATTENTION WHORE. (Also, I totally hear Kenneth Branagh's voice whenever Lockhart talks, just like I can't help but hear Alan Rickman when Snape talks.)
• "Mr. Weasley started to ask them how bus stops worked." FUCKING BUS STOPS, HOW DO THEY WORK.

Chapter Five: The Whomping Willow

• "They had almost reached the highway when Ginny shrieked that she'd left her diary." OMG THAT'S PROBABLY THE DIARY THAT'S THE PLOT POINT OF THIS BOOK/ALSO A HORCRUX. (Think of how many things could have been avoided if Ginny had left that diary at home. THE WHOLE REST OF THE BOOK WOULDN'T EXIST.)
• I think Apparition is mentioned for the first time in this book, when Ron says that his parents don't need the car because they can just Apparate home.
• So once they start flying the car there's a bit where Harry and Ron just start laughing uncontrollably AND ALL I CAN THINK OF IS THIS SCENE. FINAL FANTASY X HAS RUINED LAUGHING SCENES FOR ME FOREVER. (And on the topic of FFX, Ron and Hermione are TOTALLY WAKKA AND LULU.)
• OH HEY IS THAT A PRISONER OF AZKABAN PLOT POINT HITTING HARRY AND RON? (Also, Ron's wand ;_;)
• Oh hi, random expository paragraph about how Harry had almost been sorted into Slytherin but had ended up in Gryffindor with Ron and Hermione and they had helped Gryffindor win the House Cup last year.
• AWW I HATE HOW DUMBLEDORE IS BEING ALL "SON, I AM DISAPPOINT" AT HARRY AND RON'S CAR ESCAPADE :(

Chapter Six: Gilderoy Lockhart

• I love how Mrs. Weasley's voice in the Howler is all BOLDED AND CAPSLOCKED AND ITALICIZED. I can totally hear Julie Walters's voice during the whole "YOUR FATHER'S FACING AN INQUIRY AT WORK AND IT'S ENTIRELY YOUR FAULT!" part.
• Hermione's fangirling over Lockhart is so adorably 12-year-old. SHE OUTLINES HIS CLASSES ON HER SCHEDULE WITH LITTLE HEARTS.
• SPEAKING OF CRAZY FANS, HERE'S COLIN CREEVEY. But like Dobby, all I can think about is how he DIES IN DEATHLY HALLOWS ;_;
• Ron tells Draco to eat slugs. THAT'S TOTALLY NOT FORESHADOWING FOR A LITTLE LATER ON.

So there will be more tomorrow or whenever I end up getting around to it. I'm hoping to get through Prisoner of Azkaban by the time I go back to school at the end of January but I tend to be terrible when it comes to sticking to schedules like that so we'll see. But if I do six chapters a night I'll end up done with Chamber of Secrets by the weekend, so maybe it won't be that difficult.