Day 3 -- Chamber of Secrets

Location: Book 3, page 40
Pages read: 690/4100, 3410 to go.

Technically, this is the post you should have seen yesterday, but I was at Cedar Point all day. I'm still a little behind. At this point I need to read ~228 pages a day. I've started Prisoner, but nothing interesting to report yet on that one.

Overall: Chamber got much better toward the end! Still my least favorite to read, but the end is very very interesting, now that we've seen stuff with Horcruxes. And I just love the happy ending stuff. Lots to discuss today. The cool stuff on Horcruxes is toward the bottom if you want to skip to that. ;)

Interesting tidbits on characters:

• We hear Harry’s signature spell, Expelliarmus, for the first time. This spell saves Harry in Book 4 and is the final spell he uses on Voldemort in book 7, and guess who taught it to him? Snape. That Snape…Always saving Harry’s butt.
• When Harry goes to Dumbledore’s office for the first time: “Harry waited nervously while Dumbledore considered him, the tips of his long fingers together.” Then he hides a bunch of stuff from him. Harry doesn’t feel comfortable with him yet. At the end of the book, talking to Dumbles: “and Harry sat, feeling unaccountably nervous.” Still nervous, but starts to open up. It’s cool to see their relationship develop.
• How anyone ever thought Harry and Hermione would get together, I don’t know. After discovering Hermione is keeping a get-well card from Lockhart under her pillow and leaving with Harry, Ron says: “Is Lockhart the smarmiest bloke you’ve ever met, or what?” It was always going to be Hermy and Won-won. :P
• It interested me greatly that the only reason Tom Riddle frames Hagrid and stops attacking people is because Prof. Dippet suggests that, maybe, he’ll get to stay at Hogwarts over the summer if the attacks stop. He hates the orphanage and loves his home at Hogwarts so much that he’s willing to stop doing what he loves – killing people – to stay at Hogwarts. This *almost* humanizes him. Not quite. xD
• Trio-dynamic! Hermione does the thinking and problem-solving. Harry is the brave one who goes and confronts things. Ron…assists...? He seems pointless sometimes, but I thought of something about his role – he’s the connection to the magical world. The other two come from non-magical backgrounds, but he’s cultured in wizardry, so he brings things to the table that the others can’t.

 Cool stuff on Horcruxes. SPOILERS APLENTY!

• Tom Riddle, talking about growing powerful: “Powerful enough to start feeding Miss Weasley a few of my secrets, to start pouring a little of my soul back into her…” This *obviously* suggests that part of Voldy’s soul is contained in the diary. Re-reading it is funny because you see all of these obvious hints and go, DUH!
• About Harry being a Horcrux: Harry feels a connection to the diary – Tom Riddle seems like a half-forgotten friend, and he keeps picking it up and flipping through it for no reason. So there seems to be a connection between horcruxes, even if they’re separate pieces of soul. Harry and the diary is our first taste of this. More examples: Voldy has a special connection to Nagini, and Harry often sees into Voldemorts thoughts – Voldy eventually uses this to put thoughts into Harry’s head; Harry even has a dream from Nagini's perspective. ALSO, Talking to Dumbledore: ‘”Voldemort put a bit of himself in me?’ Harry said, thunderstruck. ‘It certainly seems so.’” So, once we knew about Horcruxes, shouldn’t we have known that Harry was a horcrux?? I believed that he was, but a lot of people were trying to deny it. The hints were there, people!
• When Tom asks Harry how he escaped from Voldemort as a baby, we get this description: “There was an odd red gleam in his hungry eyes now.” We get this same description time after time in the 6^th book, when we see memories of Tom Riddle. The first time I saw it in book 6, I noticed it was usually around objects that he wanted to turn into Horcruxes, so I thought it was part of that magic... But it just seems to come up when he really wants something. I guess it’s a result of being less human after creating Horcruxes.
• Lucius Malfoy seems to end up with the diary. I’m going to have to pay attention in book 6 to see if Dumbledore has it, because if he does, it would appear to be an error. I know he has it in the 6^th movie…stupid movies! :P

 Found 2 typos in my edition of this. p283: “Professorr”. p321: “Fawke’s”. :P

To Azkaban!