A Break with the Weasleys and Foreshadowing 101
Chapter 3: The Burrow
While Chamber of Secrets isn’t the best of the Harry Potter series (as most readers agree), one of its shining moments is the visit to the Burrow. Any time you spend with the Weasleys is time well spent. What’s not to love about the Weasleys, and in turn, what’s not to love about the Weasleys’ home?
The Burrow introduces us to life in a wizarding family. This is a side of the wizard world we haven’t seen up until this point. The Weasleys act as our only true look into the normal domestic lives of a sane, happy full-blood family in the series. It’s a peak into the type of family Harry could have been a party of, if things had worked out differently years before.
Likewise, Mr. Weasley acts as a mirror by which we can see ourselves looking in at the wizard world through his looking out at how muggles live. (Yeah, I’m feeling deep tonight, folks).
Chapter 4: At Flourish and Blotts
OR
“How to figure out who’s trying to kill everyone in Half-Blood Prince“
There’s a lot of foreshadowing in this series. Tons. Too much to catalog here. But Draco standing in Flourish and Blotts staring gaping gawking at the opal necklace – THE opal necklace – is a foreshadowing smack in the face.
The first time I read Chamber of Secrets, this moment didn’t even register. Draco looking at a creepy necklace – big deal. And when I got to Half-Blood Prince, I couldn’t figure out who could possibly have sent that very creepy necklace to Hogwarts, nearly taking out Katie Bell in the process. It’s so obvious when you go back and reread, but remembering this sort of detail four books later…good luck!
Did anyone pick up on the fact that Draco was behind the poisoned necklace in Half-Blood Prince because of what you read in Chamber of Secrets? Does anyone have that good of a memory for little details like that? Because I evidently don’t.
What I do have, thought, is the tendency to read the Harry Potter series in the worst places, sometimes resulting in embarrassing public reading moments. Anyone whose been following this blog from the beginning may recall my stories of tearing up on the bus to work during Goblet of Fire, or trying not to draw attention to myself tearing through chapters and freaking out at my desk during lunch.
This time, I all but yelled out “IT’S THE NECKLACE!” on a crowded airplane.
I wonder if airplane security has protocol for passengers who overreact to the Harry Potter series mid-flight.
I actually remembered that. Which is why I supported Harry throughout HBP. (The older he got, the more inclined I was to like Ron)
hehe I am with you there…. I am the kind that wear a long black cloak in the winter- yeah, I am not a muggle- and I have been reading Harry Potter on the bus every time a new book was released, throwing it across the bus in a fit when Sirius died and bursting out laughing a thousand times…
strangly enough, I am always left alone on the bus
As for the necklace, I never doubted that it was Draco, but I honestly dont remember him looking at it in the chamber of secrets. It just seemed so half hearted that it could be none other than Draco. I am pretty disapointed that he did not change sides in the end- Draco was never a bad boy…
That was the ONE THING I was holding out for in this series. I wanted to see Draco come around. I think at one point, I even said the whole series would be a wash for me if he didn’t turn around.
But the story took a more realistic route. Draco became what he was meant to be. You’re set-up to believe he’s evil from the beginning, but there are outward signs that while he is not meant to be as “good” as Harry, he will never be as “bad” as his father. He lives in the middle. He’s a snob and will always be a snob. He is a brat and will always be a brat. But he’s not evil.
Want another thing? The cabinet that Harry hid in to avoid detection by the Malfoys was …….. the one the Death Eaters used to get to Hogwarts in HBP.
Yeah, maybe you ought to just match up CoS with HBP.
Yeah, and didn’t Lucien turn his nose up at the creepy mummified hand that gives light only to the bearer (can’t remember the name)? Draco used that to guide the Death Eaters through the Peruvian darkness outside the Room of Requirement.
No, I didn’t notice the necklace detail either the first time around. Isn’t it fun discovering them on the way back through, though!?
The Hand Of Glory!…yeah I never noticed until I re-read and the Vanishing Cabinets too
Rowling said, during interviews at the time of HP6′s publication, that much of its material was originally intended for HP2 and some vice versa.
I believe those little, folded bags in the seat-pocket facing you while in flight are ordinary barf-bags for mere Muggles and a secure place to scream into for HP fans. They should be available on other modes of Muggle transportation but are, strangely, absent.
Ha! I’m taking a flight tomorrow, “Chamber of Secrets” in hand, and that’s ALL I’m going to be thinking when I see those bags.
The series is symmetrical in many of its small details. There are a lot of Book 2/Book 6 parallels (a mysterious book playing a key role in the plot), as well as Book 1/Book 7 (a trip to Gringotts, a magical stone) and Book 3/Book 5 (dementors, Sirius, and the corrupt Wizarding justice system featuring prominently in both). The level of planning it takes to pull this off is mind-blowing.
You know, people like to dump on Book 2, but re-reading it I realized how many important concepts are introduced here. The whole ides of blood status and pureblood supremacy, house-elves, Voldemort’s real name (how long did it take her to assemble that anagram???) Parseltongue and why Harry can speak it, HORCRUXES (although we don’t know what they are at first), Expelliarmus – arguably the most important spell in the whole series…there really is a lot in there between rogue bludgers and Gilderoy being silly.
Good points. Yeah, I am thinking that next time I do my re-reads, they should go in this order: 1, 7, 2, 6, 3, 5, 4.
Oh, and another one I just thought of: Lucius Malfoy plotting in Book 2 and Draco plotting in Book 6, having taken over his father’s role.
There’s another thing that I think I think is a tie between HBP and CoS, but we’re not there yet. Remind me.
I don’t agree with that! I actually loved the Chamber of Secrets…although I seem to be the only one…
But I DO agree that when I first read the Chamber of Secrets, with ‘At Flourish and Blott’s', I wasn’t really paying attention to what Draco was doing. Mostly, I was thinking, “Oh my God, Draco is SO cute!” (Of course, I was also 11/12, so that might explain it.) Later in the series…well, I still didn’t think about it…but I realized it soon enough. As I reread the series multiple times, I love smugly thinking, “Necklace. Evil. I get it now.”
Actually, even though I have my favorites in the series, I actually really loved ALL of them!
Draco never impressed me, though, especially not in the books. What could possibly be considered “cute” about him?
We are currently re-reading COS right now. To me this book is important because we see Harry for the first time in a family situation with people who want him. That is a whole new situation. Secondly, there is a ton of foreshadowing in this book – the diary, Borgins and Botts, a future love, the site of a final conflict – while giving us some history lessons about Hogwarts. I love this adventure.
Actually, CoS was one of my favourite books! I guess I’m really into that ‘damsel in distress’ theme. I love how it is the first link into the harry/ginny relationship (of which I am a huge fan). Whenever I reread the series, CoS, PoA and DH were always my favourites. I detested OotP and HBP! But now, as I’ve got older, I love HBP! It’s gone from my least favourite to my second most loved (after DH). My list probably goes: DH, HBP, PoA, CoS, OotP, SS, GoF. I don’t like GoF. I find it too frustrating, I sit there going, “No, Harry, no! Mad-Eye is really a crazy David Tennant! Don’t leave Crouch with Krum! Don’t let Cedric touch the cup! Aaaah! But yeah, I love the cleverness and the foreshadowing of CoS to HBP. Oh, and did anyone realise the Vanishing Cabinet was also mentioned later in CoS? Nearly Headless Nick convinces Peeves to throw it on Filch’s office, causing Harry to see the Kwikspell course!