Chapter Five: Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes
In chapter five of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire I do a full body cringe at the description of Bill, Percy is obsessed with booty cauldron bottoms and a wild CHARLIE WEASLEY appears.
(Please be advised that this is a reread and I will be discussing book and movie spoilers.)
It’s been three books and four chapters, but we finally meet the eldest Weasley brothers, Bill and Charlie. Everyone commit Charlie to memory, because this isn’t going to happen much again, and forget all about seeing movie Charlie, who apparently is faffing about in Romania with dragons, not giving one single solitary fuck about his family and wizarding Britain fighting wizard Hitler.
Bill is…look there’s no other way to say it. I generally love JKR’s descriptions, but her attempts at making people sound cool are CRINGE. (We will see this with Tonks later on, and also in Lethal White when a certain character goes undercover as a “punk” with blue hair.) Show, JK, not TELL.
Harry had always imagined Bill to be an older version of Percy: fussy about rule-breaking and fond of bossing everyone around. However, Bill was–there was no other word for it–cool. He was tall, with long hair that he had tied back in a ponytail. He was wearing an earring with what looked like a fang dangling from it. Bill’s clothes would not have looked out of place at a rock concert, except that Harry recognized his boots to be made, not out of leather, but of dragon hide.
I will tell you from my experience with working with teenagers a key point: do not ever EVER as an adult over the age of 22, attempt to be cool to the youths. It will not work. It will never work. They will make this face at you
or this one
or worst of all, this one
I generally think JK does a good job of writing an adolescent boy (except in Half Blood Prince COUGH) but as we said when I was very young about this Bill Weasley passage:
There! Did you see how outdated and uncool that reference was?! Ok, ok, I’m moving on! (Fang earring…whimpers…)
Arthur Weasley reappears to ream out the twins for their Dudley bullying and I’m reminded afresh how Albus Severus had a better alternative staring Harry right in the face with a perfectly normal name like ARTHUR.
We get another edition of Hermione Abandons Her Poor Muggle Parents, Won’t Someone Think of the Grangers? And then we hear for the first, glorious time, the phrase Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes, one of my favorite random subplots in the books, and a frankly amazing store in Diagon Alley at Universal, but we’ll delve into it more later.
Percy is being one of those annoying workaholics who shame the rest of us slackers who just want to half ass our jobs and screw around on social media, crying over our miserable lives compared to everyone else–I–I mean…I totally relate to Percy’s work ethic! I’m just like him!
Another recurring theme rears its head of our trio + Ginny hanging out, while Ginny gets left out of the loop, and damn, how much do you think this dynamic has wreaked havoc in the Hinny/Garry marriage?!
Percy’s pompously talking about cauldron bottoms some more, making a very valid point that someone should be looking for Bertha Jorkins, and wildly hinting about the Triwizard tournament, and maybe I’m nosey as shit
but I would’ve asked Percy in one second flat what he was hinting about as soon as he said “top secret.” Everyone else has more self control then me though, and this mystery goes unsaid for longer.
Then Viktor Krum, random famous Quidditch player gets name dropped which I’m sure will have no bearing on the plot or anything!
<—Previous Chapter Next Chapter —>
Join in with your thoughts below, on twitter, or instagram with #ReadHarryPotterWithMe. Follow me on my twitter @HSecretLibrary, pinterest, and my instagram @hermionessecretlibrary
Do you wish we had more CHARLIE WEASLEY in the books/movies?
What do you think about Bill’s “cool” description?
Are you a workaholic like Percy?
Would you have asked Percy about the top secret mission?
Picture taken in Villa del Balbianello, Italy. Send me/tag me in your pics of you reading Harry Potter!