the great harry potter re-read: harry potter and the goblet of fire, chapters 8-14

[fabula_vitae]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO SEVERUS SNAPE, WHO'D BE 51 TODAY IF HE HAD NOT DIED IN DEATHLY HALLOWS. DAMN YOU, VOLDEMORT. (Although, by the time I post this, the 9th will be over, but the sentiment is still there.)

Meanwhile, in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire...

Chapter Eight: The Quidditch World Cup

• Mr. Weasley mentions Muggle-repelling charms in this chapter, which will become important in Deathly Hallows when it comes to Harry, Ron, and Hermione hiding from the Death Eaters.
• It's always interesting reading the part where they meet Winky when you know the whole story about Barty Crouch Junior and you know that Voldemort's servant is sitting right there next to them and there's nothing they can do about it.
• Narcissa Malfoy also makes her first appearance here, the first of the three Black sisters to be introduced (although she won't gain a bigger role until Half-Blood Prince).
• So in this chapter Ludo Bagman's face is described as "gleaming like a great, excited Edam" and I have never known what an Edam is so I just looked it up and apparently it's a type of cheese (or a town in the Netherlands). So his face was gleaming like excited cheese? Um, okay then.
• So about the leprechaun gold: wouldn't everyone know that it was fake on the basis that mascots wouldn't just be tossing Galleons into a crowd of a hundred thousand people? I mean, I know Ron can be a little dimwitted sometimes but shouldn't he have figured out something like that?

Chapter Nine: The Dark Mark

• So apparently, this chapter went through sixteen different versions of rewrites and JKR at one point got so frustrated with it that she considered jokingly cutting out the chapter with a note that said "chapter nine was too difficult" before skipping to chapter ten. Considering how important the chapter is to the book's narrative, I find this kind of hilarious. (But it's true, though; I'm working on finishing my NaNo novel right now and I've been stuck at a crucial point in the narrative for longer than what's necessary. That's more of me being lazy than me not knowing what to do, though.)
• I believe it's mentioned in Half-Blood Prince that the spell that the Death Eaters were using to make the Muggles float in midair was the Levicorpus spell. SNAPE WHY DID YOU HAVE TO INVENT SPELLS LIKE THAT.
• I guess the Ministry must be pretty lax about its whole "underage wizards can't do magic outside of school" rule right now, considering that Hermione just used "Lumos" without any fear of punishment.
• So I love how Ron's starting to have his moments of profanity that are censored in the narrative (in this case, "Ron told Malfoy to do something that Harry knew he would have never dared to say in front of Mrs. Weasley), leaving us to be creative as to what he actually said. It might, of course, have been something as innocent as "go to hell," but my guess is that it was something closer to "fuck off." WHY AM I EVEN WONDERING ABOUT RON'S SWEAR WORDS I HAVE NO LIFE.
• The Dark Mark makes its first appearance in this chapter (naturally), as does the Stunning Spell.
• The spell that Amos Diggory uses to determine what the last spell Harry's wand performed is "Prior Incantato," which must be slightly different from the "Priori Incantatem" effect that happens with Harry and Voldemort's wands at the end of the book (since the names are essentially the same except for different endings).
• The Death Eaters get mentioned by name for the first time in this chapter, whereas previously they had just been vaguely referred to as "Voldemort's supporters."

Chapter Ten: Mayhem at the Ministry

• Mundungus Fletcher gets another name-drop in this chapter. I believe he was also mentioned once in Chamber of Secrets as well, just as small mentions before he shows up as a character in Order of the Phoenix.
• Proof that this book reads different in 2011 than it does in 2000: when I read the sentence "Pigwidgeon began twittering and zooming around his cage when they entered" I briefly thought "BUT WHERE DOES AN OWL GET A COMPUTER TO TWITTER ON?" *facepalm*

Chapter Eleven: Aboard the Hogwarts Express

• More proof that this book reads differently in 2011: when Amos Diggory mentioned that Mad-Eye had an intruder in his yard my immediate thought was "HE'S CLIMBIN' IN YO' WINDOWS, SNATCHIN' YO' MAD-EYE MOODYS UP." (Because I'll admit to enjoying referencing the Bed Intruder song at every possible moment.)
• WILL NOT MENTION WHAT WENT THROUGH MY HEAD WHEN I READ "Arthur's the only one who can get Mad-Eye off" BECAUSE I AM TOTALLY NOT OCCASIONALLY A 14-YEAR-OLD BOY STUCK IN A 19-YEAR-OLD GIRL'S BODY.
• Aurors get mentioned for the first time in this chapter. As I mentioned in one of my Prisoner of Azkaban posts, in that book there was mention of something called "Hit Wizards" which I assume was JKR's name for Aurors before she came up with the name "Auror."
• So I don't know whether I've mentioned it before (I probably have), but Draco Malfoy totally reminds me of Seifer in a lot of ways, and just reading Draco and Ron's interactions in this chapter totally had me picturing Ron as Zell, with the way that Draco kept egging him on leading to Ron's anger. I suppose that could make Harry Squall, then, since he does have a rivalry with Draco, although Harry likes Ron a lot more than Squall likes Zell (although Ron totally begs to use Harry's Firebolt like Zell begs to see Squall's gunblade). And Hermione would totally be Quistis.

Chapter Twelve: The Triwizard Tournament

• This chapter reveals that siblings don't always go to the same House, which becomes important in Order of the Phoenix when it's revealed that Sirius comes from a whole family of Slytherins but still ended up in Gryffindor.
• So as Mad-Eye Moody makes his first physical appearance in this chapter (well, not really, but since we're supposed to think it's Mad-Eye at this point I'm just going to go with it), I might as well mention that for some reason when I'm not picturing the movie version of Mad-Eye (who, incidentally, kind of looks like a teacher I had in high school), I always end up picturing Auron and I have no idea why. Maybe because "Auron" and "Auror" sound similar? I HAVE NO IDEA.
• Hahaha you can tell that this book was made for both British and American audiences in mind because it uses the words "football" and "soccer" on the same page. (Although that might confuse some Americans who would have to think for a moment before realizing they're not talking about American football.)
• "Harry grinned into his pillow, exceptionally glad that Ron couldn't see what he could." Yeah, Harry, you'll also be wishing that two years from now when you start having erotic dreams about Ginny.

Chapter Thirteen: Mad-Eye Moody

• I've realized that this book has starting becoming rather liberal with its use of "damn"--a lot of the adults have been using it, and in this chapter even Ron says "Damn it, we're still with the Slytherins." Somehow this language completely escaped my attention when I was younger, which is maybe proof that kids don't pay attention to stuff like that. Of course, by Deathly Hallows we have lines like "And that's the second time we've saved you tonight, you two-faced bastard!" and "NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!" so yeah. I have a feeling, though, that when my mom read this book to me when I was eight she censored out all the hell's and damn's.
• Harry and co. are collecting bubotuber pus in their Herbology class, which of course will pop up later, along with the fact that the pus does weird things to the hands when undiluted.
• Trelawney guesses that Harry was born in midwinter, which is an interesting note to make considering that although Harry was born in July, Voldemort was born in the winter, and Harry is connected to Voldemort so... (WHOA WTF I JUST GOT THE IMAGE OF MAGUS IN MY HEAD FOR VOLDEMORT, THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU PLAY CHRONO TRIGGER TOO MUCH.)
• Oh Ron, you and your Uranus jokes (another thing that I didn't get until I was re-reading the books when I was around 11 or so). What's even funnier, though, is that his comment is directed at Lavender who will be his girlfriend in Half-Blood Prince.
• HAHAHAHAHA HARRY'S GIVING "YOUR MOM" INSULTS TO MALFOY HE IS SUCH A TEENAGE BOY.
• Okay, so you know what I said before about picturing Mad-Eye as Auron? Doing so makes the "Draco Malfoy, the Amazing Bouncing Ferret" scene EVEN MORE HILARIOUS because I just have this image of Auron standing there calmly bouncing a ferret up and down. That's what he should have done whenever Tidus annoyed him.

Chapter Fourteen: The Unforgivable Curses

• So this is the chapter that introduces the Unforgivable Curses which will show up repeatedly during the remaining books (and even Harry will end up casting them himself). It's also the chapter that gives a name to the spell that killed Harry's parents.
• The fact that Neville volunteers information about the Cruciatus Curse in this chapter becomes really sad when you know that a) his parents were tortured to insanity with that spell and b) the guy impersonating Mad-Eye Moody was present at said torture.
• Speaking of Neville, I think this is the first book that mentions his proficiency in Herbology. I don't remember it being mentioned in earlier books, at least, and it is a fairly important aspect of his character considering he goes on to become the Herbology professor.
• Harry and Ron follow the same desperation move I do when it comes to homework: when in doubt, make shit up. (Although shit I make up usually involves literature rather than predictions of doom, but whatever.)
• S.P.E.W. is founded in this chapter (although Hermione's been going on about house-elf rights for the past several chapters). Her preaching about house-elf rights does pay off eventually, though, because in Deathly Hallows it's Ron finally showing concern about the well-being of the house-elves during the Battle of Hogwarts that makes her kiss him in an "it's about damn time" kind of moment.

Now I'm off to finish my extensive Final Fantasy XIII liveblog which might get posted here once I get it all typed up. It's wicked long, though, so I might have to condense it a bit to keep it from going into tl;dr territory, especially when I'm just summarizing things without being amusing about it.