#22 The Less Sexy Red Herring | CoS 4, At Flourish and Blotts

Potter Revisited Episode #22 | The Less Sexy Red Herring Aka Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Chapter 4 "At Flourish and Blotts"

• We are back from our short break with a long episode - so get a cup of tea and a snack!
• We love how at ease Harry is at The Burrow
• Explosions from the Twins' room are seen as "normal" - were they already starting Weasley's Wizards Wheezes? 
• We finally meet Ginny - we discuss Ginny's early crush on Harry and how timid her character seems compared to later in the series
• Gilderoy assigning his own books as textbook seems like a scam. Shay compares it to her Queens University days
• Percy wearing a "knitted tank top" - is it fashion?
• Hermione says she is busy with schoolwork - again we question what kind of work they can be doing outside of school if they can't do magic
• The Twins' note that Percy is acting strange. Shay declares Percy the new Red Herring of this book - but not as "Sexy as Snape" in her view
• Why did they think Harry taking Floo powder by himself on his very first time would be a good idea? Are they not able to send two smaller people together? 
• Harry of course almost runs into the Malfoys when lost in Knockturn Alley - we both feel for him and remember what it was like running into peers you would rather not see on Summer holidays
• Apparently Draco has spent the whole summer complaining about Harry, and even Lucius is sick of it 
• We meet Lucius Malfoy for the first time, we discuss how he comes across and how it shows how Draco is the way he is
• We see a lot of objects in Borgin and Burkes that play big parts later, particularly in HBP: The Vanishing Cabinet, The Cursed Necklace and The Hand of Glory 
• Malfoy is selling dark objects to avoid scandal from Ministry raids - which includes a lot of poisons. What are the Malfoy's doing? 
• Harry is rescued by Hagrid, but why was he in Knockturn Alley? 
• Shay remembers why she loves Fred so much 
• Hermione's parents are introduced, but they do not speak, or do much of anything. Should they have had more of a role in this chapter?
• Would you eat Strawberry and Peanut Butter flavour ice cream? We are not fans
• Ron mentions Percy wants to be Minster of Magic one day - we discuss Percy's ambition and whether it comes down to who he is fundamentally or if it began more out of necessity as he doesn't want to be in the same financial state as his parents
• We agree Lockhart is the OG Influencer 
• Ginny speaks up for Harry despite her crush on him usually debilitating her - showing us the beginning of her strength 
• Was Lucius slipping Ginny the Diary politically motivated? He is firmly against Arthur's Muggle Protection Act and figured if Ginny got caught it would look bad on him, like Dumbledore reflects at the end of the book
• We wish we could have seem Jason Isaacs and Mark Williams duke it out on screen like Mr Malfoy and Mr Weasley did in the book
• What would Hermione's parents be thinking after all of these? They are described as shaking 
• Lucius didn't know the Diary was a Horcurx, but probably knew it would open the Chamber of Secrets - was it supposed to be given to someone who didn't know what it was, or would it have worked out better if someone had it who wanted the Chamber open and knew what it was?
• We know from Dobby that Lucius had been planning the Chamber opening - was he planning Ginny the whole time, or was it a moment of opportunity? 

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Music:

Shelter Song by Alexander Nakarada (www.serpentsoundstudios.com) Licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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