Afraid to sleep with the lights off.

[justcarol67]

stacygalore wrote:
>
> After reading chapter 17 of DH, I was too afraid to sleep with the
lights off.  For some reason, after reading this, I had a vivid image
of this in my head, and it greatly disturbed me. That image of Nagini
emerging from Bathilda Bagshot's dead body is so deliciously horrific!
 There is also something so freaky about an old lady with cloudy eyes
who doesn't speak . . . and even more freaky that "she" later speaks
in parseltongue.  Anybody else feel this way?  What 
> was your sleep-with-the-lights-on moment in any of the HP books?  
> 
> Stacy Galore
> Grew up reading Stephen King, and loving the horror elements of HP
>
Carol:

I know that we don't need to use spoiler space now, but just in case,
there's more to come in my response.

Enter, poster, but take heed
Of what awaits you when you read.

I wasn't afraid to sleep with the lights off, but that moment was
definitely the most horrific in the book for me and left me with a
hatred and loathing of Nagini that I never felt for Voldemort himself.
(not that I have any liking for Voldemort, but except for what he did
to Snape, I never felt the horror or terror that he's supposed to
inspire. But Nagini!Bathilda made me jump out of my skin and scream.
Imagine that moment on screen for people who haven't read the book!

BTW, Nagini is a "she"--Voldemort's mother substitute whose venom
helps to provide him with a fetal form and serves as the "milk" that
sustains him until Wormtail provides the resurrection potion with its
flesh of a servant, blood of an enemy, and bone of the father.

JKR may not be able to count, but she has a vivid imagination that
rivals Stephen King's and the power to render what she imagines in
words that horrify or terrify the reader--or, at least, this reader.
If she wanted me to think that Horcruxes, especially the locket and
Nagini, were indeed Dark magic, she succeeded admirably. I hate
Nagini. I hated her even before she killed Snape (on the orders of his
actual murderer, Voldemort). She may be a snake and not a human being,
but she's pure evil (in contrast to that poor boa constrictor in SS/PS).

Carol, who punched the air and cheered when brave Neville chopped off
the monster's head