[NB: There is text between these extracts in this scene, but I have removed them as they are not relevant to this discussion.]

This is one of my favourite Harry/Ginny moments in the books, which sounds odd because it’s before Harry even realises he has feelings for her. But this scene shows so perfectly why they end up together.

Harry has been freaking out. He’s terrified of who he is and what he’s doing and thing have gotten so bad he attempted to go and live at Privet Drive. Upon being told to stay at Grimmauld place by Dumbledore, Harry retreats to Buckbeaks room at the top of the house.

Angsty and alone, his friends come up to try and talk sense into him and comfort him. While Hermione becomes impatient, and Ron becomes nervous, Ginny [being the sassy bamf she is] talks back at Harry. When he argues back, accusing them of talking about him behind his back, Ginny is the only one who answers. She tells him how they have been trying to talk to him.

Ginny is the only one of his friends who can get through to Harry in times of personal crisis like this. When Harry becomes angry or upset, he always feels as though it’s something he needs to deal with himself [such as when everyone thinks he’s Slytherin’s heir, and when he gets put into the Triwizard Tournement]. He rejects help from other people, and offended by his aggresiveness they usually back down.

But not Ginny. Ginny knows Harry. After growing up with six older brothers, Ginny’s had to learn how to stand up for herself, and how to know when people need a good talking too. She’s funny, and sweet, and kind, and understanding enough to make him happy, and to enjoy happy times with him, just like all his friends. But unlike all his friends, in times of dark and despair, Ginny is the only one who can get through to him.

Unlike Ron, Hermione, Luna, Neville, Draco, or anyone else people may think would be a good romantic interest for Harry, Ginny is the only person who could be Harry’s love for the long term. While they all have connections with Harry, it takes a very special kind of bond to be able to live with someone for your whole life without becoming angry, bored, frustrated, or weary of them.

Ginny is the only one who is fiery and determined enough to get through to Harry when he most needs it. Ginny is the only one who could live with Harry without getting angry or annoyed at his moodswings and sulks. Ginny is the only one who is passionate enough to provide the emotional closeness that Harry so desperately craves. She is the only one patient enough to deal with Harry’s long spurs of self-hate. She is the only one for Harry, who knows him and understands him and can really see him underneath the front he puts up. She is so perfect for him, and he proves that himself. By falling in with her.

Oh, Hermione.

I love how even though she doesn’t understand Harry and Ron’s passion for the game, she can appreciate that it’s special to them. While she get’s frustrated at the importance they place of the outcome of the match [“It’s only a game, isn’t it?”] she knows that it’s something that is very important to them, and so she wants them to do well. And here she knows how terrified Ron is of playing his first formal game, so she does everything she can to make him feel okay.

Because at the end of the day, while she cheers and waves and get’s excited when Gryffindor win, it’s not because she cares about Quidditch. It’s because she loves her boys, and anything that makes them happy is special to her.

When I was reading this part, I jokingly though “Trelawney sounds drunk,” but then when I thought about it she quite probably actually was drunk. We know she has a problem with alcohol because of when Harry finds her trying to hide her sherry bottles in the Room of Requirement in his sixth year.

I really hope Professor Trelawey gets help with her alcohol problems at some point, because it’s clearly serious if she’s showing up to class drunk. I hate to think of her condition just getting worse as she gets older. Perhaps when the Second Wizarding War is over she re-evalutes herself and seeks help. I hope so.

You can tell here that Harry is still really hurting from what happened to Cedric. It’s understandable of course - he saw him die when he was only fourteen, and he feels partially responsible due to the fact he told Cedric to take the cup with him. Of course, we know it wasn’t Harry’s fault, but he doesn’t understand that. There was no way he could have predicted what would happen - but as he see’s it, it’s partially his fault.

And then iwe learn here, it seems that there’s also survivors guilt mixed in with that. Harry knows that he was supposed to be the one to die in the graveyard, not Cedric. It was him Riddle was after, and the fact that he escaped due to sheer luck while Cedric, an older and stronger wizard died because he wasn’t needed must make him feel awful.

No wonder he get’s mad here [note that I’m not blaming Ron, he obviously has no idea what Harry is going through] when Ron suggests that Harry did better than Cedric in the graveyard. If Harry had of been in control of the situation at all, he wouldn’t have let Cedric die. He may have even sacrificed himself for Cedric. Although in the future he will come to be thankful for it, at the moment he see’s his escape as curse.

Also, never insult Cedric Diggory unless you want to endure the wrath of Harry Potter. That includes making “sparkly vampire” jokes. Harry hates those.

Oh Kreacher. You poor thing.

I know Kreacher is a jerk here, but think of his life. When he was younger he was raised by the Black Family and taught to hate muggle-borns and “blood traitors”. He was told all these reasons about why are to be hated, and although those reasons are rubbish, how was Kreacher to know that? The Black Family installed these beliefs in him and seeing as he had nobody else of course he was going to believe these things. They treated him fairly well [for a house-elf at least] and he knew no better. He loved The Black Family. They were all he had.

So here Kreacher is, believing all these terrible things about muggle-lovers and now they’ve come into his house and he thinks they’re “infecting” it and what do they do? he is scared and confused and hurt because he loves the Black Family and they have died and these blood-traitors come into the Black Family house, and what do they do?

They treat kreacher like crap. They push in further the beliefs he has about familys like the Weasleys. They take the Black Family possesions and throw them away. They treat Kreacher like dirt. Nobody asks his opinions. Nobody cares about his feelings save Hermione, and whenever she tries to show kindness she’s usually told to shut up by Sirius. Nobody even thinks that he could be useful in fighting the Dark Lord, because like 99% of the wizarding population, they see house-elves as sub-human and worthless.

People don’t show love if they don’t recieve it. Kreacher was never shown love by anyone other the The Blacks - and so his actions are entirely expected of him. Later on in the series when the trio talk to him [and even then it’s only for their own gain] he changes, he changes so much just because someone cared and listened to him, and I think that is one of the most beautiful storylines in the whole series.

Sometimes people who seem bad really just need to be shown the light, and then they can shine brighter than us all.

Hermione’s simple gesture says a lot here. Harry had just come out of a terrible ideal, seeing the Dark Lord rise again and seeing Cedric die. Hermione and Ron had undoubtably talked about it without Harry, and they must be incredibly worried about him.

Hermione isn’t a very “touchy-feely” person. She’s a smart girl, and is good with emotions - but due to her not having any friends until Harry and Ron, she generally doesn’t really know how to express deep fondess or caring for someone.

Here however, Hermione shows how much she cares by giving Harry a small kiss on the cheek before the trio leave each other for the holidays. It’s her way of saying “I know you’re hurting, but please remember that Ron and I love you so much, and are always here for you. Everything will be okay.”

This is a strange thing for Riddle to say, because it almost seems as though he is sad about his Mother dying. However, Riddle’s very essense means he can’t love. If he could, he would never have become He Who Must Not Be Named.

Is it possible that Riddle does care for his lost Mother? Perhaps this is the one time he cared for someone, and it hurt him so much that he closed his metaphorical heart forevermore. Or do you think his desire for his Mother is simply to do with his hatred for the orphanage he grew up in?

Cedric’s death is a devastating moment in the Harry Potter series. While there were many deaths in the books, Cedric’s is particularly shocking [to me, at least] for a few reasons.

Firstly, Cedric’s death was the first we witness. We didn’t witness the death of James and Lily, nor the death of Quirrell [Harry fainted before Quirrell died in PS] and up until this point the books had been very innocent, and then he we see Cedric murdered for no reason other than that he was just there.

Secondly, Cedric is such a decent person in the books and he’s so young when he dies. - he’s only 17/18 here. Cedric is a wonderful person, he values fair play, he’s loyal, he’s hardworking, he honorable, he’s lovely. In Prisoner of Azkaban when he found out Harry had fainted at the Quidditch match he wanted a rematch to make it fair, and told Harry he was very happy for him when Harry got his Firebolt. Here to, in Goblet of Fire, he always worked hard to make sure that him and Harry were on the same level [telling Harry about egg, helping Harry in the maze]. Cedric was like a knight of the roundtable.

Thirdly is the senseless way in which Cedric was killed. Cedric wasn’t killed during battle or because he did something to anger Riddle - he was killed simply because he was in the way. Cedric was struck down like a fly by someone preparing for a banquet, only in this case the banquet involves some twisted blood magic. The way Riddle ordered Wormtail to kill Cedric shows how corrupted and evil he is - he literally has no remorse, no empathy, no feelings. Other people are nothing to him unless he can use them for his own gain.

When Cedric dies here, Jo is basically saying “Shit’s about to get real, kids. There’s more where this came from.”

This is a very important scene in the Potter books. While it’s not an action scene, and nothing “outside” of Harry’s brain happens, this is a significant change in the way Harry views the world and his role in it.

Before this moment Harry’s view of Riddle was more or less “He murdered by parents and messed up stuff at school, what a jerk”. But here Harry realises the scale of Riddle’s evil: It’s not just his family that was tore apart. It’s so many families, in so many different ways. Whether it was like his family with children being left orphaned, or like Neville people’s families being tortured and driven insane, or like Crouch’s family where relatives being were set against each other. Riddle destroyed so many people in so many different ways. He injects fear into friendships and scratches away at the feeling of safety we may find with our loved ones.

This is where Harry realizes [although he does say it aloud until OotP] that he wants to end Voldemort - not because he’s The Boy Who Lived, but because he can’t sit by and let the horrors of the First Wizarding War happen again. Because he is a person who can’t let such evil exist. This is the moment Harry goes from being a branded boy to a hero.

I think this here shows where Hermione went wrong with S.P.E.W.

House-elves like to work. Forcing them to be free, tricking them into picking up clothes by hiding them under bits of rubbish in the Gryffindor common room is not fair. What Hermione did was well intentioned - she saw house-elves suffering and wanted to help. But what she failed to do was talk to the House-elves, to listen to them, and to understand what they want. She started speaking for the house-elves rather than speaking with them, and that was why S.P.E.W never worked during her Hogwarts years.

What Hermione should have done, and what I believe she did while working at the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, was to improve conditions for house-elves - to take legal action against Masters who abuse house-elves, and to give house-elves the right to leave their work if they so choose. Also, I think it would be good if all owners of house-elves had to register their house-elves and then the house-elves can be checked up on every few months - I imagine this wouldn’t be to difficult as house-elves only belong to rich families/business’ and thus there aren’t to many of them