OoP clues? (and a bit of GoF)

[potioncat]

No: HPFGUIDX 158989

Carol wrote in Post 157954: 
(snip)
> It seems to me that we've said all we can say for the moment about HBP
> and it might be fun to look at a different book, one for which the
> mystery (Voldemort's "weapon") seems to be fully resolved, and see
> what's introduced there that might prove important. Kreacher, for one.
> And maybe Tonks' abilities as a Metamorphmagus. And how about Ragnok
> the goblin? <winks at KJ>


Potioncat:
Inspired by this post, I began re-reading OoP. It's hard to stay 
focused; I still get caught up in the story and have those "Wow, I 
didn't catch that before!" moments. To add to my confusion (and you 
know I don't need any additions to my confusion) I'm reading OoP myself 
and listening to GoF with my son.

Not sure about sub-plots. JKR did say that she had to move Harry around 
and that took time. So she wasn't content to just say, "DD sent for 
Harry and he arrived by broom the next day." She had the entire chapter 
about the Advance Guard and we learn a bit about Andromeda and Ted and 
so on. So it will be hard to say how much of OoP is just for the 
mechanics of OoP, and how much is for the overall plot of the series.

By chapter 15 a few things have jumped out at me.

First is another parallel between Snape and Harry. By chp 13 Harry is 
upset because no one seems to believe he fought LV. Hermione is 
explaining that they hadn't seen what happened in the maze. "We just 
had DD's word for it that You-Know-Who had come back and killed Cedric 
and fought you."  Harry insists it's true and Hermione says she knows 
it. So here it is, DD's word for Harry and DD's word for Snape.

The other thing is that Draco knows a lot. He makes the "dog your 
steps" comment--indicating he knows about Sirius. He later says Hagrid 
took on something too "big" for him. which I think means he knows 
Hagrid went to the giants. It seems he's more in his father's 
confidence than I would have thought and in retrospect indicates he was 
nearing membership in the DE.

Is anyone else reading OoP? Any other catches?

And--I'll toss a GoF catch in. Sirius and Harry are discussing 
Karkaroff before the first challenge. Sirius says Karkaroff is a good 
actor--he would have to be to convince the MoM to let him off. It 
reminded me quite a bit about Snape's comment about knowing how to act. 
Does JKR have something against actors? 

The funny thing is, Sirius says Karkaroff put lots of DEs in prison and 
they were very mad at him. Yet we didn't see that in the Pensieve. He 
only came up with one new name. So--is Sirius wrong? Did someone else 
name names that Karkaroff was credited/blamed for?