How HBP could have interwoven into CoS/Real or cartoon?/JKR reading

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 156374

> JD: I disagree. I think moving this scene forward robbed it of its
> power. Book 2 is when Harry begins to suspect that he may be evil.
> Other students call him the Heir of Slytherin, suspect that he is
> petrifying people and gossip that the reason Voldemort tried to 
kill
> him as a baby was so that he wouldn't have any Dark Lord 
competition.
> Harry doubts himself and asks the Sorting House for reassurance 
that
> he is supposed to be a Gryffindor. A scene where Harry accidentally
> does dark magic would build on these events. Simply being a
> Parselmouth is enough for Harry to wonder if he is evil, but the
> Sectumsempra scene would cause serious doubts in his mind. It 
doesn't
> have the same effect in Book 6 because Harry doesn't have the same
> doubts about himself anymore.
> 
> I found Harry's reaction to using Sectumsempra to be out of place 
in
> Book 6. Harry says, "You know I wouldn't've used a spell like that,
> not even on Malfoy" (Chapter 24 "Sectumsempra"). Yet Harry used the
> much worse unforgivable torture curse on Bellatrix Lestrange a few
> months before. Harry WOULD use a spell like that and he HAS. If he 
had
> said the same thing in Book 2 it would have made more sense.
> 
> It's also easy to see how the logistics of the Sectumsempra scene
> could be transposed 4 years earlier. 

Magpie:
I disagree--at least with Sectumsempra in its present form.  The 
spell is far too bloody and dangerous for CoS, which is still 
carefully substituting petrifying curses for death (except Myrtle, 
who's "alive" as a ghost).  Sectumsempra is, imo, important for 
Draco's story in HBP as much as Harry's, and I wouldn't be surprised 
if that incident isn't fully resolved yet. If Draco came that close 
to death in CoS he couldn't be getting as much of a wake up call to 
the meaning of it in HBP, Lucius would presumably have gotten 
involved, and it probably would have become relatively unimportant 
by Book VII.  Harry and Draco's animosity is on a different level in 
HBP.  If Harry had done Sectumsempra in CoS it would be, just as you 
said, a kid making a mistake and being wrongly paranoid that he was 
bad because of it (and in its present form would stick out like a 
sore thumb in the level of brutality).  In HBP Harry's old enough 
and experienced enough to be more realistically guilty about the 
spell--he knows he didn't know what it did, but still feels guilty 
for doing it. (The Prince really didn't "betray" him at all with 
Sectumsempra--he gave Harry exactly what he promised.)  It walks the 
line between serious fight out of control and spell Harry uses by 
accident.

Joe:
No I wouldn't think one bit less of Harry. Not a bit less. Malfoy 
has been asking for something like that since their first year. He 
has pushed, prodded, insulted and been a general jerk to the three 
of them for so long I wonder why they haven't done it. So much so 
that it makes the books a little less believable. In a real school 
they would have stuffed him in his locker at bestand bat him down at 
worst long before fifth year. Harry is a saint for not having given 
him the beat down he has been asking for.

In fact I think if someone had taken Malfoy down a few pegs earlier 
he would not have been willing to let things go as far as they did.

Magpie:
Actually they have taken him down a few pegs more than once--taking 
him down a peg was the start of Malfoy's animosity.  He's been 
beaten and hexed more than once.  (To compare it to the Snape/James 
scene as described, Malfoy often says something unpleasant and 
Harry's friend start the real aggression.) Amazingly (not), it 
doesn't actually solve him as a problem any more than it apparently 
fixed Snape. I think JKR's going for something more with Harry than 
James had acheived by this scene. 

Jordan:
Whoa. There is no indication in canon that _every_ potion requires 
use of a wand. This seems like one of those evasive answers, where 
the real meaning is "Yes, there are some potions that they can make, 
the ones that don't require a wand"

Magpie:
If that's an evasive answer, I don't know how the woman ever manages 
to say anything!  The answer reads as pretty direct to me, with your 
re-interpretation being exactly the opposite of what she said.  Why 
would there need to be a specific mention in canon that every Potion 
requires a wand?  She just said every Potion did require a wand to 
answer the question: no, Muggles can't make Potions.   

-m