[HPforGrownups] Re: COS Chapter 3 Summary - The Burrow

[dfrankiswork at netscape.net]

No: HPFGUIDX 23244

Amber ?, hoping to come after Z in the fellytone book, wrote:

>2) What did you think when first read about Percy acting strange? 
>Did you  automatically think that it was because of a girl?
>
I didn't notice it at all - at that time all I knew was that PS had a twist in the end, so I might expect something similar this time.  I had no idea that there were to be seven books or that they were to be a coherent whole.  So, for example, when Parseltongue came up, I thought that JKR had just taken up an amusing incident from the first book.  Hagrid's expulsion made me start to realise there might be a backstory.  By the end of the book, I remember thinking 'no centaurs this time - I don't suppose we'll see them again', and hoping but not expecting Dobby would reappear in a future book.  In other words, I thought she was more or less making it up as she went along.

It wasn't until after POA and the MWPP revelations that I recognised there might be something more and I started looking on the internet and realised that JKR had gone public about the composition of the series as a whole, and so minor clues in early books might mean something later.

The point of this ramble being that on a first read you don't appreciate the significance of details if you're not expecting details to be significant.

>4) Do you think the Weasley twins and Ron really thought they could 
>get away  with Harry just showing up? The excuse `Mum, look who turned 
>up in the  night!' is a pretty flimsy explanation. Do they really 
>underestimate their  mother that much?>

Not an excuse but an attention deflecting mechanism.  They hoped that seeing Harry might give Molly something else to think about, and possibly she would be less likely to go ballistic in the presence of a stranger - it shows how much Molly accepts Harry as a family member that she goes ahead and chews out F,G&R anyway.

David


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