Evil Children and Attack Birds
Chapter 13: Evidently ALSO Part of the Great Re-read
I was a few pages into Chapter 13 before I realized I’d read all this before. So one more chapter of review before the “new stuff”…
Never trust a pale child
Children are creepy. Not all children, of course. Obviously. But if you have a disturbed character as an adult and as a child, I can promise you the child will be entirely more unsettling. There’s something about the juxtaposition of innocence and evil that makes bad kids so captivating, and mini-Voldemort is no exception. Kid’s a creeper! Did you see the movie? I saw the movie. We all saw the movie. And not to credit the movie with much (that’s another story for another entry), but the kid…is a creeper, even in the film, definitely more in the book. And there is no attempt to hide that fact. None at all.
Anyone remember the movie “The Good Son”? Mini-Voldey has massive traces of whatever character Macaulay Culkin played in that film. He’s essentially Damien, let’s face it.
Is it safe to say that I’m a little disappointed in how obviously evil this kid is (was)? I think a super sweet young Voldemort would be way more interesting, if only because his descent into darkness would be that-much-more unnerving. If he could turn evil, couldn’t anyone? But so far, all the evil (or potentially evil) characters in the series have been pretty obvious in their affinity for the darker things in life. Save for Tom Riddle’s charismatic appearance in that diary waaaaaaay back (ages and ages ago), there haven’t been any super sweet, amazingly lovely, downright fabulous folks who turned out to be evil. At least not yet (unless I’m missing someone). And it’s a bit disappointing.
Chapter 14: Kind of Feels Like an Episode of Degrassi, Minus the Canadian Accents
Note: If the ladies I know had the ability to do magic in college, there would have been a lot of guys pecked to death by little birds.
Your best friend is going to have to face a dark lord to the death. How do you have time for an angsty teen love triangle? Can someone please explain this to me?
This chapter introduced absolutely nothing I didn’t already know, save for perhaps Draco’s failure to turn up for the Quidditch match (I’m not entirely sure how this played out in the film). But Harry psyching out Ron with the luck potion and Lavender Brown sucking Ron’s face off, much to the dismay of a devastated Hermione, was all verbatim from the film. It seems that where the movie left out massive plot points and huge elements of the main story, it did not leave an ounce of the love story to the imagination. And I’ve already explained how little I care about who’s hooking up with who. I want to know what a horcrux is!
But in the meantime, Harry likes Ginny and Ron likes Hermione, but he’ll continue making out with Lavender and Hermione will continue pouting over it. And I still don’t know why Tonks is appearing all over this book, seemingly arriving out of nowhere – or whether or not Snape is actually evil – or what happened to Dumbledore’s hand – or where the hell this whole thing is going…
…or how to launch attack birds at guys who piss me off.
These things are important and I hope I figure a few of them out soon. Well, at least the bird thing.
So I only think it’s in movies that someone starts out all sweet & innocent and turns evil (thus why darht vader’s decent was so unbelievable in the prequels). JKR’s biggest strength is how real her characters feel because you feel like you know people just like her characters. I always think of the people I went to grade school with and 95% of them are exactly how I remembered them (nice ones are still nice; mean ones are still mean). As Dumbledore would say, if Tom Riddle could have understood love (i.e. if he was ever once good) he probably couldn’t have been Voldemort at all and might not have murdered all those people. Although to your point he was very charming, respected & liked by all the teachers at Hogwarts save Dumbledore so they might have been shocked.
That being said, Voldey is the only non-mixed evil in the series and you might get your itch scratched as you learn more about the death eaters. Just look at Draco’s mom, she has already violated the dark lord’s word in an attempt to save her son (luckily for her, Snape was already in on the plan)…
Haha love your insight on teenage angst. Poor Hermoine’s got to be able to have a life too. Plus no one expects Dumbledore to die so they don’t think the Voldey-Harry fight till the finish is years off. I don’t even think Harry fully understands all the implications of being a marked man and won’t until Dumbledore dies. Then you’ll hear him lament about how he wish he learned more…
I am finally re-reading Book 6–and I’m on chapter 15, now. Yes, by the time we see Tom Marvolo Riddle at age 11, he is obviously evil, and not new to it. I say “obviously” but in the book Harry asks Dumbledore if he knew then what Voldemort would eventually become, and Dumbledore says “No, I had no idea that he was to grow up to be what he is. However, I was certainly intrigued by him. …intending to keep an eye upon him…for other’s sake as much as his.” And true to his character, Dumbledore has always been willing to give others the benefit of the doubt.
Remember also, that there were certain similarities between Harry and Tom Riddle, both having lost their parents while young, both feeling more at home at Hogwarts than the place they had to return to each summer. Doing magic made Tom feel “special” though, where Harry seemed to be merely pleasantly surprised by the accidental magic he performed. And Harry was bullied by Dudley and his friends whereas young Voldemort was the bully to the other orphans.
Take Draco. Is his personality set in stone? He was very bullying through the other books and the beginning of this one, but has seemed to “have better things to do” now. So it is less obvious.
Neville has been overshadowed a lot by his grandmother and her expectations, but as McGonagall pointed out (in Chapter 9) “It’s high time your grandmother learned to be proud of the grandson she’s got, rather than the one she thinks she ought to have–particularly after what happened at the ministry.”
I have often thought it was hard to imagine whether a newborn baby will be good or bad, and I think it can go either way depending on many things, not the least of which is their individual choices, like Harry when being sorted having the hat tell him “You could do well in Slytherin” or something like that, but Harry responded “not Slytherin!” What if Tom Riddle had been told he could be a hero if he were in Griffendor? Would he have said “No, I would rather have power over the weak and foolish people, and have no desire to be a hero at all!”
Generally, I think the books have several themes running through them, one of which is “how children grow up.” Whether we like it or not, the crazy adolescent love stage is very pronounced here, and it was even more so in the movie. Some things are important to the plot, like the love potions, since that is what Tom’s mother probably used to get together with Tom Riddle Sr. for that reason, alone, we should agree with Slughorn who said “It is probably the most dangerous and powerful potion in this room….” (Chapter 9.)
If you wanted to know more about attack birds, you should have paid more attention in Charms class, or was it in transfiguration? I forgot, didn’t pay enough attention.
Yes, Tonks does play a part in the book, unlike in the film, but mostly it is a mystery. Why has her personality seemed to have changed? Snape had even commented on her patronus being different now.
What about other mysteries? Are you wondering what happened to Dumbledore’s hand that made it black? Are you wondering why the topic is even brought up so frequently? I was wondering those things when I read this book for the first time.