Mugglenet.com's Harry Potter Should Have Died - Emerson Spartz [67]
The ending is quite predictable and formulaic, again with Harry and his pals in danger before a big duel against Voldemort ensues. Again somebody dies, but unbelievably, this time J.K.R. chooses to kill off a major beloved character—Sirius Black. Fans were outraged about his death since he never really had a chance to do anything much for the other 869 pages of the book. Harry goes nuts, trying to Crucio Bellatrix, then roaring at Dumbledore, blaming everyone in the world for his problems. He has a tantrum, breaks things, and acts like a complete idiot. The big secret Dumbledore gives Harry to calm him down is the worst anticlimax in the series: Voldemort and Harry may have to fight it out to the death someday, and one of them has to die. Yeah, duh—even Harry might have figured that out on his own. That’s not even the complete truth, since Dumbledore conveniently leaves out the whole Horcrux element, not to mention the Deathly Hallows. Too much mystery, not enough real answers.
Chamber of Secrets
OotP may be longer and duller, but for it’s short length, CoS has the worst tendency to go down the toilet. Literally. (Well, not actually literally, but you know what we mean). Half of the book takes place in a girl’s restroom, and this time the villain is crawling through the pipes of the school. Harry discovers that the Chamber of Secrets is sort of like the septic tank of Hogwarts, down in the bowels of the castle, and then rumors start to swirl that Mudbloods might get tanked by a monster. Harry is flush with the idea that he is a Parselmouth and can speak to snakes, but pressure builds up from other kids who see him as a threat. If all of this seems draining to the reader, it’s because it certainly is.
CoS tries to be an action book, but nothing ever really takes off. When Harry and Ron drive the flying Ford Anglia into the Hogwarts grounds, they don’t even have a good time, and it just becomes another reason for Snape to rant and rave, threatening to expel the boys from school. The giant spiders that Hagrid finds so adorable get him thrown into Azkaban. Petrified people keep turning up in the hallways, but no one knows why until the Petrified bodies are stacked like cordwood in the hospital wing. Sadly, Dumbledore never gets a clue that he should investigate whether the Chamber is real, but instead spends his time to having hot cocoa with Minerva McGonagall. All the headmaster would have to do is ask his pet phoenix, Fawkes, to show him the way. We know this since the bird is able to find the Chamber at the end of the book and attack the basilisk who lives there. Why Fawkes had never bothered to clean up such a threat to the school in the first place is the real mystery. Wouldn’t it have been more loyal to save kids from being Petrified or possessed right off the bat?
There’s another major flaw in this book: We know from SS that Harry can talk to snakes because he has a nice conversation with a giant boa at the zoo, and it all seems very polite. If the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets was so special to Salazar Slytherin, then why doesn’t it think to talk to Harry about anything other than killing and eating? It has a brain larger than a boa—why is it so stupid? Even Aragog the spider can talk. The basilisk seems like just a pawn in the game, and while