You know the drill.

So why didn't she just tell him she's affiliated with the Order? And she calls him an idiot boy. Squibs and House-elves: utter shits.

I imagine the reason Dumbledore did this was to insure Harry wouldn't go charging off to investigate for himself, which is a reasonable concern, but in the first place, why didn't he just bring Harry to the Burrow or Grimmauld Place?

Too young? I can imagine this being the case before his first year, but after that there's surely nothing wrong with letting him know she's a Squib.

Vaguely interesting are the wizarding sayings Figg peppers her dialogue with: "hanged for a dragon as an egg", "crying over split potion", "cat's among the pixies"...

I love the whole conversation with the Dursleys about Harry's backstory.

I remember Grimmauld Place being a bit chiquer.

Thinking about it, is the snake nailed to the door a callback to this?

Wonder what building that is? First thought is Ministry of Magic for Sturgis.

Seems like goblins don't all live under Gringotts, like fanon claims.

Apparently killing house-elves is murder. Good to know.

Support for those goblin blood tests?

Did he end up doing so, actually?

Hmm. Interesting law.

So Aurors handle more high-profile cases.

 

He, in fact, does. Throws in alle the money in his purse if memore serves me right.

 

I dunno, Dobby saved Hermione's life and Figg saved Dudley's soul. They have their uses, just useless at being normal.

Also I remember blood wards being vaguely canon, mention me when that comes around.

 

My new personal headcanon is that the absent-minded professor act isn't entirely an act, and he just flat out forget about her...

 

Well, here we are, the definitive point where the series went downhill.

This really is my least favorite book - at least, until Cursed Child came along. It feels like Rowling wrote an entire book of filler, simply because she wanted to save the HBP plot (in itself mostly filler) for later. Here we were, waiting 3 years for an awesome book full of action from Voldemort and the Death Eaters, and instead we get this blunder, where the actual antagonist is just a bunch of dumb, useless bureaucrats who should have been dealt with by using simple mind altering charms (the only one that gets this treatment in the end is a little student), Voldemort spends an entire year dreaming about a door and having fits of rage, Dumbledore holds the idiot ball higher than ever, and we have to suffer Harry's angst over being too proud to tell someone that Umbridge is mutilating him during detention - or over anything else really. I don't mind angst, but this angst is just lame. Don't even get me started on the prophecy.

On the upside, this book does introduce some nice bits of world-building and lore (the Room of Lazy Writing not being one of them), and a greater set of characters (not you, Grawp).

Anyway, enough bitching.

This entire scene feels a bit too heavy-handed, harsh, and out of character. But I guess Voldemort was in the mood for muggle baiting and it leaked into Harry.

I never really got the point of this. It's not like Voldemort or The Ministry have eyes in every inch of Britain. If Sirius wants to go out a bit, why can't he take Polyjuice, change his appearance with Transfiguration, or just apparate to a place without many people? it's ridiculous.

Wonder why Voldemort killed them. Looking for more treasure? Or maybe he did so after getting the secrets of Gringotts from them? or, maybe one knew about the item he placed in the Lestrange vault and thus had to die?

This seems to imply that he was just some kind of politician, out in the open, before he "showed his true colours". I assume that "what he was prepared to do to get power" involves allying with outcast creatures such as werewolves and giants that the purebloods didn't like, though it can be something more sinister.

This is one of those little details I love - how magical objects seem to attain life and personality. Perhaps it's the influence of the Horcrux in the drawing room.

By the way, does anyone else feel that the reread is a bit too slow? while there might be much to discuss about seven chapters in a week, it's usually not the case, and I think most of us can finish reading that amount in an hour or two. Particularly when it comes to such a long book such as OotP - we're really going to draw this one over months.

Figg didn't save Dudley's soul, and I don't recall how Dobby saved Hermione's life as well.
The "blood wards" are canon, but the term "ward" is never used. Voldemort mentions it in his speech at the end of GoF, and Dumbledore mentions it at the end of OotP when he talks about why he sent Harry to the Dursleys.

Figg actually says that Dumbledore told her not to inform Harry about the wizarding world because he was too young - that is, before he became 11.

 

I can't say I've been following the reread schedule but I do feel like in order to really reread content and get something more from the books a week is definitely a decent amount of time. Besides if your reading in between normal life goals you need the extra time to read.

 

Chapter 1: Dudley Demented

It would amuse me if 'demented' was actual wizarding terminology for someone who'd been Kissed.

Perhaps all she needs to do to warm up to the wizarding world is check out some of Rita's articles? She'd probably love the ones insulting Harry!

Nope. Never. Especially not when violent murderers named Sirius Black escape from prison...or the showers of owls on the weather forecasts in PS.

Poor Harry. So meek. So mild. So downtrodden by his vicious relatives.

Chapter 2: A Peck of Owls

So...is that a particularly common thing to do?

Mrs Figg is actually pretty awesome, tbh. Although given how many magical colloquialisms she slings around in this chapter, it's a wonder she hasn't let something slip to someone before. She must be an actress on the level of Crouch Jr.

Chapter 3: The Advance Guard

Five words which basically sum up the book, tbh.

Chapter 4: Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place

Ron is clearly Auror material. Although in fairness to him, there's a fifty-fifty chance that Harry's wrong, here, although it's a reasonable assumption for him to make.

So...Ginny's got dung on her hands, right? Dung. As in shit. And she's just sitting around?

Chapter 6: The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black

Rather better than you think, actually.

Not unlike Dumbledore at the start of HBP, in fact. And both of them die at the end of the book. In fact, given the number of unusual, silver objects in cupboards in this scene, there's quite a few odd echoes of Dumbledore and his office.

But only slightly.

Between this and his dress robes last year, he doesn't have much luck with fashion, does he?

Chapter 7: The Ministry of Magic

There's a joke about rug munching and Ginny somewhere in here, but fuck it.

Quite ironic, given the problems they had in Cursed Child performances with live owls.