Yeah, and helps the Trio have somewhat of an edge over their peers and even older students in the DA.

Yeah, I like how she uses her hands to mimic the things she's thinking about as she comes to the realization. And how Harry and Ron are still clueless.

It also proves once and for all that the Daily Prophet is ridiculously inconsistent about its stances. I suppose the British tabloids really are that way as well. And it mentions giants (though that should've been half-giant of course) and werewolves, which most of their readers - with good reason - will think have to be bad signs. That's fairly typical for the genre, having good guys who are good despite somehow belonging to a group that is generally evil, and forcing the other good guys to keep justifying their involvement with them, and to keep facing the charge of being evil themselves for associating with such creatures/groups. Happens all the time in BtVS/Angel, at least.

Indeed. The first and also the last, I believe, as they'll be together already next time we hear from them.

Yeah. But then, you were already saying Cedric was too perfect to not die, and he only got more perfect in the labyrinth scenes.

Agreed. Rather appropriately, in the chapter that sees Voldemort return for real at last. From here on out it'll be teenager books more than children's books. Works out nearly for those who were ten or so around the time GoF came out, but not so much for young children nowadays who want to read the series start to finish aged ten, or less... then again, as Anthony Horowitz proves on a regular basis, children really can take some pretty horrific stuff if you do it right.

"Kill the spare" (that's what he says, yes? it's "kill the second one" in Dutch) is perhaps even more chilling than the killing itself. Cedric Diggory is a massively talented and promising young wizard, but for Voldemort he's just some random body getting in his way. Showing someone getting killed is dark enough stuff; showing someone getting killed with the killer not even giving a damn is a fair bit darker still.

Yeah. And most of those deaths don't happen in a heroic, glorified way either. Dumbledore's death at least wasn't senseless in the sense that it was necessary to put Snape in a position from which to strike when the time was right, but it's far from heroic or glorious. There will be others who do go out with a bang in book seven, but for the most part, credit to Rowling for how she avoids the typical fantasy trap of having people die in exaggeratedly glorious ways.

That is an odd choice of words, yes... makes sense.

As is Lucius' having been the ringleader of the World Cup events. And the way he likes to talk big more than he likes to act.

Correct, as it turns out. Dumbledore had commented on how stupid that was before, of course.


Yes.

Agreed.

Heh. It's true we only really got certainty - logical certainty, anyway, which lots of people ignored, but still - that Snape was good at the climax of HBP. But making that argument is rather silly, because in the light of the discussions with Wormtail, in the first chapter and now here, surely it has to be Barty Junior.

Probably. Makes more sense to have it there than in HBP.

That it does.