I only recently noticed that Harry successfully conjures his first Patronus in this chapter. In front of a huge crowd of people watching. How on earth did the question about Harry’s Patronus form become something that only he could answer? I bet loads of spectators already saw his Patronus here! I’m talking about Lupin’s secret question to Harry in OoTP.

Re: About the chapter. In a way, Neville is also pretty courageous. It takes a certain amount of courage to immediately confess to a very grave fault (even one you didn’t actually commit). :)

Also, I feel sorry for Neville, too – and Hermione, who is under so much pressure here, studying like a maniac, trying to save Buckbeak from being executed, staying up for more hours a day than there even is in a day, and at the same time have her two best friends not talking to her. She must be so very unhappy during these weeks.

Maggie, are you crazy?! I would love to go to school when Harry was there! It would be much more exciting than a typical school year (if such things exist at Hogwarts). And then to be able to say you went to Hogwarts while this legend of a story was happening. It would just be an incredible experience and story to tell the kids.

elizabethauthor, I half agree with you. I think Hermione knows she’s being ridiculous, but she’s also stressed out, and isn’t thinking too clearly about the Crookshanks/Scabbers situation. Even Hermione’s brain gets overtaxed. She doesn’t necessarily get up on Christmas morning and thinks “I should keep Crookshanks away from Ron at all times” because the cat makes her happy (I know my cats do that for me) and didn’t want to leave him on Christmas. And it’s not like Hermione’s loudly yelling about reasons why Crookshanks wouldn’t kill Scabbers or something. I mean, yea she knows he would, but still, she isn’t being awful about it. And Ron is definitely being a jerk to her about the whole situation. I think we all know if either one apologized to the other, they’d both break down their defenses and remain friends. It’s also hard for me to be sympathetic about Scabbers, knowing what he is.

(Moderated to remove some language references)

Though Ron behaves obnoxiously at times in this book, I have to back him on the whole Scabbers and Crookshanks issue. Whether or not Hermione believed that Crookshanks was after Scabbers specifically, she said herself that it’s his instinct to chase rats and yet she never made any real effort to prevent it. After Crookshanks attacks Ron’s bag where Scabbers is hiding you wouldn’t think she would actually bring Crookshanks into the boy’s dormatory on Christmas morning, would you? And her attempts to defend him after he apparently ate Scabbers were kind of pitiful.