[HPFGU-Movie] It is! It is

[Amanda Geist]

Felicia, who should know better (all of you should! Shame on you!) said

> If it is Draco being as the victim of Harry's Expelliarmus spell, can be
take this as revenge for his being a *slicked back* Slytherin.

Okay. Enough. I felt a psychic call to go through my email, this must have
been it--my inner L.O.O.N. alerting me.

<Binns mode>
Harry does not cast Expelliarmus in the duelling scene. Snape casts it at
Lockhart and blasts him against the wall. Harry doesn't cast this until he
uses it on Lockhart, when he and Ron go to confront him before going down
into the pipes (on p. 220, and at that point Harry confirms they learned it
from Snape--here.)

After the students are all paired off, here's the order of Harry's/Draco's
spells:
--Malfoy starts on "two" and hits Harry; it doesn't say what spell it was,
but it "his spell hit Harry so hard he felt as though he'd been hit over the
head with a saucepan." (p. 143).
--Harry casts Rictusempra at Malfoy, which shoots silver light at him and
hits him in the stomach and doubles him over, "wheezing"; this is identified
as a Tickling Charm on the next page. Harry hangs back, "with a vague
feeling it would be unsporting to bewitch Malfoy while he was on the floor."
Wrong.
--Malfoy manages to get Tarantallegra out, which makes Harry dance.
At this point the room in in chaos, Hermione and Millicent are fighting,
Ron's broken wand has done something awful to Seamus, Snape casts Finite
Incantatem, and the first exchange is over.

Then Lockhart decides to teach the students how to block spells, and wants a
volunteer pair, and Snape suggests Harry and Draco. This is where Draco asks
Harry if he's scared. Harry does not cast anything in this; Draco casts
Serpensotia very quickly, and then we have the interchange with the snake.
</Binns mode>

Okay, as for the movie. I really think they have to leave a lot of this in,
or manage to work it in at other points. This whole scene is very important
for plot points:
--this is where Harry, Ron, and Hermione *learn* Expelliarmus, even if they
don't cast it; they picked it up from Snape, here. So I think we'll see
Snape blasting Lockhart with Expelliarmus, because the usage of that spell
is important in subsequent scenes in this and other books.
--this is where Hermione picks up Millicent's cat hair. Unless the movie
makers have it be a random cat hair, and not Millicent's; or perhaps
Hermione and Millicent will interact differently. Point is, the cat hair is
also very important to the story, and whatever form the getting of it takes,
it will likely happen here.
--this is where the readers are alerted to how serious the problems with
Ron's wand are. We already know it doesn't work; now we see it can be a
danger. This is a significant instance in the drumbeat of "Ron's wand is
unreliable," in that it presages its backfiring on Lockhart later. Unless
they work this in somewhere else too, we ought to see some malfunction of
Ron's wand here.

My prediction: I hope I'm wrong, but I'm betting they'll cut the first
exchange with the many students paired off, and have first Snape/Lockhart
and then Harry/Draco up on that little runway thing. Especially since, from
what we've seen, it seems there's a lot more Harry/Draco spells happening up
on the runway than occur in the second exchange in the book. The cat hair
and Ron's wand can doubtless be worked in or reinforced some other way. I
think the main points that come out of that scene are (1) Expelliarmus and
(2) Harry is a parselmouth, and they can cover those even if the first
exchanges are left out.

I also am really hoping that they leave Snape/Lockhart in to establish that
Snape doesn't like Lockhart, to lay the groundwork for the staffroom scene,
one of my very favorites. Please o please o please let them have that one in
there, too!

Anyway.

--Amanda