The Order of the Phoenix Re-Read: Chapter 19

[slowfox]

It's clear from the outset that Harry's really taking heart from the DA sessions, and I have to concede that life would surely be pretty miserable without them.

Picking up a point that aome raised a couple of posts ago, it seems that there really isn't much inter-house socialisation at the school:

Hermione soon devised a very clever method of communicating the time and date of the next meeting to all the members in case they needed to change it at short notice, because it would look suspicious if people from different Houses were seen crossing the Great Hall to talk to each other too often.

They're kinda big on segregation, aren't they? Between wizards and Muggles, between purebloods and mixed, and between Houses themselves; it's practically institutionalised...

We finally get acknowledgement that it might have been logical for Hermione to have been Sorted into Ravenclaw:

"Well, the Sorting Hat did seriously consider putting me in Ravenclaw during my Sorting," said Hermione brightly, "but it decided on Gryffindor in the end."

In the build up to The Match, I do like Fred's admission that he and George were seriously considering admitting [Ron] was related to them... classic Twin stuff again. And we get to see a bit of Luna again (yes, she's in the DA, but she actually gets a mini-scene in the Great Hall this time, with that fantastic Lion hat).

And there's Ron/Hermione kissage, kinda, and a long, ambiguous hyphen for Harry. Did she kiss Harry on the cheek too, or not?

The game with Slytherin does underline how ridiculously biased the scoring system for Quidditch is - with only 10 points for a goal, but a whopping 150 point for catching the Snitch, it's a system that's guaranteed to turn the Seeker into hero-material.

I'm surprised that Harry let Malfoy's goading get to him as much as it did, Umbridge's unwelcome 'assistance' with McGonagall's punishment is magnificently biased: banning Fred because he looked like he would've got involved too is a lovely bit of pre-emptive justice.

I did wonder at 'banned for life', though: did she mean simply their Hogwarts years, or literally their entire 150 years or so of life? 'cos that would seem to be a pretty hefty sentence.

One thing that strikes me as curious is the chapter title itself - the Lion and the Serpent. Is this a reference to Luna's hat and... something else? Or a metaphor for the Quidditch match? Or is the Serpent specifically Malfoy? Or Umbridge (what House was Umbridge - do we ever find out?)?

About the only good piece of news in the chapter is that we learn that Hagrid's back right at the close...

Comments

[aome]

And see, I had plenty of abuse in middle school (age 12-13), and for me, the idea of having nearly the entire school so publicly against me - that's too painful. Having small groups against me was hard enough.