CHAPTER DISCUSSION PS/SS 8, THE POTIONS MASTER

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 188249

Alla wrote:
> 8. I had a warm feeling rereading some paragraphs in this chapter; there was a paragraph that reminded me how I felt when I was discovering magical world through Harry's eyes for the first times. 
> 
> "Then there were doors that wouldn't open unless you asked politely or tickled them in exactly the right place, and doors that weren't really doors at all, but solid walls just pretending". – p.132, paperback.
> 
> For some reason doors that needs to be tickled made me giggle, especially since I completely forgot that such doors existed in Hogwarts.
> 
> So my questions is which doors you think played important roles throughout the series and why? Which ones were your favorites?

Carol responds:

The line about tickling the doors seems to me to foreshadow the door to the kitchen, which requires tickling the pear to get in. Other doors besides the one to the RoR that play a role in the story include the locked door to the third-floor corridor (which requires a simple Alohomora to get past) and the doors to the various common rooms. Interestingly, to me, the door to the Ravenclaw common room has a knocker, so it's recognizable as a door even though the outline of the door, IIRC, isn't visible, but, appropriately for Ravenclaw, it requires the would-be entrant to answer a riddle. the door (really a round opening) to the Gryffindor common room is, of course, covered by a portrait that swings open if you speak the password. (The headmaster's office also requires a password and the wall behind the gargoyle turns into a door allowing access to the moving staircase.) the Slytherin common room, which we see in CoS, is a clear case of a door pretending to be a blank wall; it, too, requires a password, but there's no knocker or portrait to indicate where it is. Maybe that detail reflects Salazar Slytherin's secretive personality; I assume that he designed it, just as the other Founders designed their own common rooms from the location to the means of entering. We don't see the Hufflepuff common room, but I remember that JKR described it in an interview. I can't remember whether it has a portrait, but it probably does. 

BTW, I suspect that Helga Hufflepuff designed the entry to the kitchen, which (IIRC) is in the same corridor as the Hufflepuff common room, which seems in character for her cheerful, open personality. After all, the fat, cheerful Hufflepuff ghost must have enjoyed food, and Helga's cherished treasure was a cup with handles, which seems to be associated with wine or some other pleasant drink.

Carol, just having fun with Alla's question and having trouble typing "Hufflepuff" ("Hugglepubb"!) this morning