Status Updates From Harry Potter and the Order ...

Kreacher -.-

Ch. 12 In the morning, Harry is still mad and Ron and Neville help him cool down. In the common room are posters about the twin’s new enterprise. Hg wants to stop them but Ron refuses. They go to breakfast and speculate about Hagrid. Angelina is their quidditch coach and lets them know that there is an opening for keeper. Owls come and Hg gets her Daily Prophet to scan and throw out.

He doesn’t know the password. Neville bails him out (the Latin name of the stinksap plant). I forget if this is a clue. Harry goes up to his room and has a quarrel with Seamus whose mother thinks Harry is a liar and Dumbledore is a crank. She was close to pulling him out of school. When Ron shows up, the two have their wands out. Ron and Neville staunchly supports Harry in spite of the rubbish in the Daily Prophet.

Attention drifts. Luna reads The Quibbler. Students quietly talk to her. The rebellion quietly begins. McGonagall’s death stare should have killed her. She finishes her speech and hardly anybody claps. So awkward. Hg fills in the blanks for what Umbridge is telling them. They are dismissed. Ron and Hg do their prefect duties, leaving Harry to face stares on his own. Harry bolts and takes short cuts. He’s angry.

Her voice sounds as serious as her pink bow and cardigan. She speaks a lot of fluff about being everyone’s friends. Her voice changes into more business like when she speaks on behalf of the ministry of magic. She predicts change, but not for the sake of change. Some things will be new and some will be old. Her undertone is that Dumbledore needs to go because he’s stuck in the past.

The quarrelling couple quarrels and Harry ignores them. Dumbledore stands up which shuts them up. He gives the usual announcements about rules (encouraged by Filch), staff changes, and quidditch. Umbridge is DoDA. Blech. That’s like asking an atheist to teach about religion. Suddenly she clears her throat and interrupts his speech. Everyone is astounded and boy is this a foreshadowing!

Ron stuffs himself and his focus on the body is even more excessive than usual. Nick tells them that, when the sorting hat thinks the school is in danger, it tells them to unite. Everyone is disgusted by Ron’s atrocious table manners. Nick surmises that the hat knows because it lives in Dumbledore’s office. In light of the bullies at Slytherin, they are all dubious. Ron insults Nick’s use of physical metaphors.

Ron asked if the sorting hat had ever done this before but McGonagal gives the death stare and even Nearly Headless Nick gets quiet. Harry remembers how he felt as a newbie and he sees how scared the first years look. Ron’s stomach was roaring when they got to the last child. In spite of his reservations, Harry was glad to see Dumbledore because so much is new and disorienting. His speech is short and sweet. Tuck in.

Hogwarts was better when the four were united. The cracks form when students were sorted by qualities. They became cliquish (a bit like the Divergent series which, ahem, came later). When discord showed up, things got worse. There was dueling and fighting. Slytherin clashed and took off. He warns them that the school is in danger again and it is time to unite, not fight. Let the sorting begin!

Its song is different this year. In previous years, it talks about the different qualities of each house and his job in figuring out which house each student goes best. This time he gives a history lesson. What intrigues me is how Slytherin and Gryffindor were close friends at the beginning as well as Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. On the humors chart I made these pairings are at opposite poles so this taps into alchemy!

They notice that Grubbly-Plank is at the head table, but not Hagrid. The trio quietly wonders if he is still on his mission. They suddenly spy Umbridge and Harry recalls seeing her face in shadow at his hearing. Ron scoffs at her pink cardigan. She looks like a pink nightmare. Hg is shocked that she works for Fudge. Everyone gets quiet when the sorting hat begins to sing.

Winged boars on top of stone pillars (when pigs fly)? Harry is sad to see no signs of life at Hagrid’s cabin. He thinks back to when he and Ron saw different things in the mirror of Erised. Everything looks the same in the Great Hall except more students look at him suspiciously and whisper. Luna drifts off to her table and Ginny joins fourth years at theirs, leaving the trio and Neville together.

Ch. 11 Harry keeps quiet about seeing the creepy horses like Luna. He watches the horses from the carriage even if nobody else could see them. They begin talking about about why Grubbly-Plank is there. Luna doesn’t care about Hagrid because Ravenclaws think he’s a terrible teacher. The quad stands up for him. Even though Ron is rude, Luna lets it go. She’s curious and intrigued by the other.

Luna Lovegood is connected to the patroness of Nonsense which is why she reads the Quibbler upside-down.

Creepy black horses with white eyes and black wings draw the carriages. They look like skeletons. Their eyes are white because there are no. I wonder if they symbolize not seeing but also not being seen since nobody but Harry and Luna can see them, which causes Harry to question his sanity. Luna brings Pig to Ron and Ginny brings Crookshanks to Hg. Luna’s dreamy voice does not reassure Harry.

The weather has flipped from the begining of the book: it’s now cloudy, rainy, and muddy. Ron and Hg have to leave to do their duties. Luna takes Pidwigeon and someone else takes Crookshanks and their luggage. They notice that Professor Grubbly-Plank is herding first years, not Hagrid (pine trees --- fir’ years -- LOL). Harry is disoriented without Ron and Hg and now Hagrid. Now he freaks out when he sees the horses.

Ron asks if there are any articles and Hg offends Luna by saying it’s rubbish. Her father is the editor. How interesting that upside-down girl is in Ravenclaw! Draco makes his interest, full of puffed up prefect pride. He threatens to dog Harry, making Hg and Harry worry about Sirius. Harry and Hg kick out Draco. Harry and the Weasleys could not freely talk about this because of Luna and Neville.

One article protrays Fudge as pure evil, bent on destroying goblins in order to gain their gold. Apparently, he murders them and puts them into pies. That would taste nasty. Sirius is actually the member of a musical band and he could not have murdered those twelve muggles because he would has a romantic dinner with some attention-getter. Reading runes upside down turns your enemy’s ears into kumquats.

Ron and Hg have to patrol. Ron cracks a joke about giving lines to Goyle and Luna’s laughter is to the extreme (which makes sense if she is an upside-down kind of girl). She startles Crookshanks and tears poured out of her eyes (liquidy). Harry notices the crazy headlines in The Quibbler. However, crazy they are, they are not pretending to be serious and true like The Daily Prophet, which is full of propaganda.

The plant squirts gunk that smells like rancid manure all over everyone in the car in time for Cho to see him looking totally uncool. Fortunately, Ginny puts the cleaning spell she learned with the OotP to good use. When Ron and Hg show up, they tell everyone about the other prefects. Ron doesn’t want to look like Percy. Luna tells Ron how much Padma felt misused at the Yule Ball. She’s out there with social skills.

Everyone stares at Harry and makes comments and point. He and Ginny meets Neville at the last carriage where Luna Lovegood sits. They call her Loony because she’s a bit crazy. She is so “Looking Glass” as she sits there reading The Quibbler upside-down. She has the influence of the moon all over her. She speaks in a dreamy, sing-song way. Neville is excited about a plant that he’s excited to show Professor Sprout.

Everybody notices the dog and thinks Sirius belongs to Harry, which does not bode well. One of the OotP is becoming unreliable (Sturgis) and Moody’s ticked off. Molly is ticked off because Sirius is behaving most undoglike. Hg is worried as well but Ron thinks they are overreacting. On the train Harry learns that Ron and Hg must go to the prefect car. He’s a bit lost without Ron. He follows Ginny.

Ch. 10 Harry wakes up from chaotic dreams and his scar hurting to a chaotic morning trying to make it to Hogwarts. Harry needs an escort just in case Voldemort isn’t lying low. Molly is ballistic which means Mrs. Black is ballistic. Sirius decides to send Harry off in dog form and Molly has stopped trying to talk him out of it. They can’t get cars from Fudge so they have to walk for 20 minutes to King’s Cross.

She can’t get rid of it. Then Lupin helps her. He reminds her that, while there is no guarantee, the OotP is much better prepared than the last time. She asks Lupin not to tell about her outburst. She doesn’t want Arthur to worry. Sirius tells her that Percy will come back after he comes to his senses. Suddenly, not being a prefect seems like a first-world problem.