#readingharrypotter

[miss-nerd-alert]

Since it apparently needs to be said, Rubeus Hagrid considered James Potter one of the nicest people he knew. Not just Lily, both her AND James.

[allscrawlwrites-blog]

Reading the Harry Potter books, I always imagined myself as Hermione. Looking back now, I'm realizing that I probably would have been Luna.

Newfound appreciation for Luna

[quillofamuggleborn]

Got to the part where Harry finds the Half Blood Prince's book. So Snape is actually really good at explaining potions. His students just failed because he hated them and wanted them to fail. Good to know!

[miss-nerd-alert]

[miss-nerd-alert]

And so we begin…

[quillofamuggleborn]

Please remind me, why do people hate on Ginny? She's like Fred and George's prank prodigy who is also clever, tough, intelligent, talented, and can kick ass. The movie producers didn't do her justice at all. Also, imagining this fight between Ginny and the twins about who actually hit Percy in the glasses with mashed parsnip is making me really happy.

[quillofamuggleborn]

I've been on this website for a while now, so I've seen a fair amount of pieces from HBP that didn't make it into the movies. One thing I had no clue about though was how Fred and George created shielded clothing items to protect people. Not only did they get the idea from being in DA, but the ministry actually purchased hundreds to keep their employees safe! That's so cool, and something that should have been mentioned somewhere in the movies. Maybe instead of the bit with the love potions.

[quillofamuggleborn]

Ok, I’m at the point in HBP after Harry gets the memory from Slughorn, so I believe I’m passed any other Voldemort memories. I have so many thoughts on these chapters about him:

So first, his mother’s family is absolutely crazy. I can’t believe I had never thought about how they might be a little mentally messed up from being pureblood supremacists and the inbreeding to keep bloodlines pure thing. Absolutely crazy people...

But wow, his mother was kind of a squib, but not really, but basically lost her magical abilities? And then they even hate the dude from the Ministry of Magic. They’re officially insane. All they care about are their heirlooms, which makes the horcruxes and actually going into those memories make sense! I never understood how they somehow knew which objects to look for, but going through his past in this depth made everything so clear.

Why did they show he liked to steal as a kid? To show that treasures (especially those he took from others) were very important to him, which is why the horcruxes weren’t random, untraceable, un-suspectable objects. How did he somehow get a hold of something from three of the four Hogwarts founders? Because he went to work at Borgin and Burks after school and specifically searched them out, especially after finding out he’s a descendant of Slytherin. Why does he hate muggles so much? He found out his muggle father was alive and abandoned him, so he found Voldy him and killed him.

While they clearly couldn’t put all of his backstory into the movie without it being ridiculously long, I’m so fascinated with how he became what he was. Everything he does seems to make way more sense, senseless though his actions were. At least there were motives for using treasures as horcruxes, and  for hating and killing muggles. It always bothered me that it never seemed like he had a motive for being the person he was, aside from maybe a childhood in an orphanage. 

I know this post is long, but man, looking deeper into memories about Voldemort’s family and younger life makes so much of the story clear, and is making this book way more interesting than I thought it could be based on what the movie contains.