Chapter 11: The Dueling Club
In chapter eleven of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Harry helps steal potion ingredients from Snape, duels Malfoy, reveals he talks to snakes, and continues to not recognize his classmates.
(Please be advised that this is a reread and I will be discussing book and movie spoilers.)
So Harry wakes up and tells Ron and Hermione all about Dobby, and they become more convinced then ever that Malfoy is behind the attacks and that they must stop him by illegally brewing a potion and impersonating his friends after stealing some of Snape’s potion supplies.
Somehow Harry gets away with exploding a firework in Goyle’s potion, although we get another hint that Snape can read minds–oh, excuse me Professor, but do Legilimens as he prefers to refer to it, when he stares down Harry and Harry is convinced Snape knows it’s him. But let’s be real, Snape probably blames Harry for everything and wasn’t reading his mind at all. Porridge went cold? Potter’s fault. Stubbed his toe? Potter’s fault. Ruined his life following a bigoted mass murderer? Potter’s fault.
We get another instance of Percy being the only person who is concerned with Ginny’s deteriorating mental state, when he yells at Fred and George for scaring her and threatens them with the dreaded letter home to Mrs. Weasley. Sure he’s pompous, but Percy’s the only one who seems alarmed at how badly Ginny is doing in her first year of Hogwarts. #JusticeForPercy
Somehow Lockhart gets permission to be in charge of even more things, and even more amusingly, he ropes in Snape as his assistant to help teach the students how to duel. This is so spectacularly awful of an idea I can only assume Dumbledore was bored out of his genius mind and wanted some shenanigans to entertain himself with.
Of course Lockhart is wonderfully useless at dueling and when he finally realizes Snape is about to kill him into smithereens the students are forced to duel after receiving no instruction at all, which is roughly my fifth time wondering how Hogwarts has not been sued fifty times over for reckless teaching.
Hermione gets choked out by Millicent Bulstrode and almost suffocates, Neville gets bullied by a grown ass man who doesn’t know how to use shampoo some more, and Harry and Malfoy have a duel that ends with Harry yelling at a snake that gets interpreted by the whole school as a blatant, obvious attack on a Muggleborn. Let’s pause a second to discuss how stupid Harry would have to be to hide his identity as the heir of Slytherin and then blow out in front of literally everyone but somehow, the whole school thinks Harry is exactly that stupid and his reputation is ruined. Which is frankly ridiculous, as his best friend is a Muggleborn, his mother was Muggleborn, and, oh yeah, he defeated wizard Hitler. But sure guys, Harry’s the heir of Slytherin.
On the other hand, you can kind of see how Harry would get a reputation as a bit of an idiot, because he then decides after being informed that speaking to snakes and going after a Muggleborn (Justin) is a bad look he doubles down and searches for Justin. Amusingly, Harry overhears the Hufflepuffs talking mad shit about him and steps out of the stacks dramatically, scaring the bejesus out of them, and it’s that kind of sassy behavior I love and wanted from my movie Harry.
Further proof that Harry is a bit of a lackwit occurs with our ongoing theme: Harry Potter has roughly forty people in his year and yet somehow he never recognizes any of them when he doesn’t know who the Hufflepuffs smack talking (Ernie and Hannah) are. Harry, m’boy! How is it you not only can’t learn forty names, but you don’t even usually recognize their faces?!
Anyway, so Harry looks for Justin and finds him…petrified, and lying next to the petrified form of Nearly Headless Nick. And this time, Dumbledore wants a chat.
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Do you think Snape read Harry’s mind and knew he blew up the potion?
Why does Dumbledore allow Lockhart to teach a dueling club when he’s so obviously incompetent?
And why on Earth is Harry unable to learn who his classmates are?
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