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New week, new thread. Here we go again.

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Voldemort's more feared than Grindlewald was, straight from canon.

Mutant skeletons? Neato.

Percy wears fedoras. Somehow I'm not too surprised.
EDIT: not a fedora, but a different genre of silly hat entirely. My bad.

Either wizards have customs offices for owls or Hermione's making a joke.

Harry almost made it to the end of Marge's stay. What a shame.

Seriously, they almost drove over Harry.

You know, I'd always considered his arrest to be wrongful, but this sentence might mean Stan Shunpike was an actual Death Eater at some point. I mean, if Cedric apparently would've become one if not for dying, well...

Heh.

It's little things like this that make the books so fun, IMO.

Sounds like Arthur doesn't share Ron's prophetic abilities.

She says that, but...

This is one of my favorite lines from the whole book.

So it turns out making some change to the state of a magical photograph actually has a lasting influence on the inhabitants. We know the same about paintings, with Sirius' "attack" on the Gryffindor dorms. This is maybe the only bit of evidence we have that magical photos and magical paintings work on the same mechanisms, and we know that magical photographs become moving through the application of a special potion (because Colin said so in CoS).
It's not unreasonable to conclude, therefore, that paintings also become moving through the application of this potion. The question is, we see painted people move from painting to painting without issue yet never really see the same for photographs that I can recall (although they can duck out of frame). So is there an additional charm or potion for paintings that allows them free passage between frames, or do they not work on the same mechanism at all?

Compared to the mods Arthur did on the Anglia those we see on the Ministry cars seem simple in comparision.
Also interesting: there's official Ministry drivers, with their own (emerald green) uniform.

This is probably when he woke up. I still wonder why he was on the train in the first place.

Gosh, I wonder why....

Huh. What reason could Mr. Weasley have had to go to Azkaban?

What the fuck, Hagrid?
By the way, this reminded me of Teh Sparkly Hufflepuff, where Hagrid wielded wolfchucks. Go read that if you haven't already.

Augusta is perfectly fine, as far as we know. 0 for 1.

Parvati and Ron never really interact, and we never hear about any other red-heads she interacts with. Calling this a 0 for 2.

Dunno about the flu or the voice, so I'll not mark those, and the Easter bit is true. 1/3

True enough. 2/4

True enough. She could've picked this one up from Snape complaining about Neville's clumsiness, but still true. 3/5.

Don't think that happens. Sure, Ron suffers, but I don't think he really becomes very happy - unless the potions high for his leg counts? Let's say 0.5/1 for Harry.

True! 1/1 for Ron.

B-but Ron doesn't like it when Harry lends him money! Also true, with Sirius buying Harry his Firebolt. 2/2 for Ron.

True. As Hermione notes, Voldemort is his enemy and can certainly be called deadly. 4/6

Could refer to Sirius' attack on the dorm, but also Lupin nearly going all Wagga Wagga Werewolf on Harry's ass. I'd count it as true, in any case. 5/7

Could be a lot of things. 6/8

No one dies in this book, but I suppose Sirius did die. Not much of a prediction, in my opinion. 6/9

Final prediction of the section. Unknown.

So Trelawney's actually relatively accurate, but only because she's so vague in everything. Ron's correct on both predictions; this isn't an isolated thing, either, last book he predicted Riddle murdered Myrtle.

McGonagall is rather underrated.

This was the Potion they had to write about during the summer, by the way.

REKT

 

What does that mean?

 

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=rekt

 

Could be referring to Padma (Parvati's Twin) and her time with Ron at the Yule Ball.

 

Not a fedora - this is a fez. And it's quite a strange thing to wear.

Oh god, that. Your post actually did make me go read it again - it's still just as absurd and still good for a few laughs even now. I think that line you quoted actually was the inspiration for that bit, come to think of it.

(Here's a link to the Hipshit, if anyone's curious: [link])

You could take it as a sort of general prediction for Ron's life if you wanted to. He faces a lot of trials but comes out on top of it all in the end.

People usually take this prediction to be true. Just... not in the way Trelawney interpreted it. The grim is a black dog - and instead of meaning death it literally just predicts that Sirius is going to show up. This is played with a lot when Harry sees Sirius lurking around in dog form and assumes he's seeing the grim.

I thought your analysis of all the predictions was really interesting. I think I've heard a fan theory or two somewhere about Ron actually being a really good seer?

I found some interesting things while looking:

 

It seems that they don't. The paintings are make alive by adding enchantments and reflect painters perception of the subject. Also paintings can be taught by their subjects to mimic them better.
(Pottermore: Hogwarts Portraits)

I wonder how this works with multiple portraits thingy. Does painted person's personality change depending on which of their pictures are they in? Or is it composite? Can you troll by hiring people who hate given person to paint their portraits?

 

Maybe multiple portraits require the portraits to be multiple prints of the same painting - not just portraits of the same person.

 

Random question: in hindsight, was it really the best idea to expose all the kids to each other's worst fears? Some of them are harmless enough, like Ron and his spiders. But what if there was one that was either really embarrasing, really personal, or genuinely horrifying. While Harry is an extreme example, he still nearly exposed a bunch of thirteen year olds to either Voldemort or a dementor. And is anyone else wondering if a thirteen year old Lupin had to worry about his classmates figuring out his worst fear is the full moon?

I get the idea behind showing them a boggart: both to face fears and know how to deal with a pest that could look a lot worst than it is. But maybe it would have been better as a private thing for each individual student?

 

I see where your coming from however I think Lupin seemed like a reasonable enough person that if a student had asked not to face the boggart I'm sure he would have been fine with it. Also at thirteen years old the chance for kids to prove to themselves and others as being tough probably would have been enough to keep them from leaving the lesson.

 

Chapter 1: Owl Post

Good to see he's paying attention to the twins lessons.

Which begs the question of why they sent him a Christmas present in PS (and CoS? Can't remember). It's presumably not out of any sense of affection. Maybe they're worried about people at Hogwarts getting pissed off with them? Although that doesn't occur to them with their behaviour over the summer.

Chapter 2: Aunt Marge's Big Mistake

There's two ways of taking this. Either Dudley is even more spoiled than I'd remembered, or they are ridiculously dedicated to treating Harry like dirt. Honestly, this is insane.

I think this summer section makes me think Marge is the worst of the Dursleys. Petunia and Vernon are awful, but they are at least scared; it doesn't excuse it but there's some reasoning behind it. Same for Dudley, although with him it's more that he's following his parents example. Marge? Marge just treats him like dirt because he's an imposition on her brother's family. She's a horrible, horrible person.

Another example of Harry consciously manipulating his accidental magic, much as young Tom Riddle presumably did.

Chapter 3: The Knight Bus

All political point scoring aside, both here and in OoTP, can the Ministry tell the difference between accidental magic and deliberate magic? I assume not, given that they can't tell who cast it with Dobby, but that seems like it opens up a whole host of problems - accidental magic seems to more or less stop after you get your wand, based on the examples we see, but, well, accidents happen.

Come Deathly Hallows...

He might not be a Death Eater, but he is a bit of a tosser.

More wandless magic, which I'd thought largely confined either to PS or to people like Voldemort and Dumbledore.

Chapter 4: The Leaky Cauldron

It obviously paid off.

In fairness, Ron's only been there once. And one of Harry's trips was a detention.

It really is a fun running gag.

 

I don't think I realized when I first read Prisoner just how bad Marge is. She talks about killing Harry at birth because he is 'defective' just like how she has to kill some of her dogs at birth if the bitch (Lily) is defective. I am honestly surprised she doesn't receive more hate from the fandom.

 

Probably because she only appears in one chapter. Harry blew her up, the Ministry takes care of the blowing up and any memory of it, and she's never seen again. It's easy to laugh at her fate and move on, even if what Harry actually did to her was still pretty horrifying for accidental magic against a monstrous woman.

 

Chapter 5: The Dementor

Exhibit A: Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone.

Try that again in a couple of books, Ron, I dare you.

See Exhibit A, above.

I'd forgotten this moment, which is a shame, because it's brilliant. Need some light but concerned you might need your wand free? No big deal, just set fire to your hand. It's also an excellent contrast to both the previous DADA teachers; a shabby, inconspicuous man who actually does proper magic.

More evidence of Harry's intuitive grasp of magic, or just an excellent guess?

Spoiler

It's the latter

...Yes, he will. Might not be the last, although I don't think we hear about anyone else.

Excellent use of a joke to disguise an important plot point.

 

Wait, what?

Cedric would have become a Death Eater??

 

Yes could someone please put a little more logic behind that statement.

 

It's a Cursed Child thing.

Spoiler

In one of the alternate timelines, Cedric becomes so bitter after his failures in the Triwizard Tournament that he joins the Death Eaters and kills Neville Longbottom. Really.

 

I see thank you for clearing that up, but I'm going to stick to my head canon about Cedric waking up in a new dimension as a glittery vampire. I think it sounds cooler.

 

Spoiler

In Cursed Child, Albus and Scorpius go back in time and humiliate Cedric by sabotaging his Triwizard Task attempts causing him not to be there in the graveyard and thus saving him. However he apparently gets very bitter due to this and joins the Death Eaters, at some point even killing Neville.

Edit: Should have refreshed after reading the thread.

 

Spoiler tags please.

 

Why do people always do this. Peter North, don't quote what you want spoilered.