30 Days of HP: Day 11

Day 11: Character you’re crushing on

I’m not sure why this is in present tense, because I’m not really crushing on any HP characters anymore. But Ron was the second literary character I ever had a crush on (the first was Tom Sawyer), and I was pretty much in love with him from the first time I read SS up until … I’m not sure when. I do still have a huge soft spot for him, though, and I think Hermione is very lucky.

And of course everyone is in love with Sirius, but my thing for Sirius is so different than my thing for Ron. Sirius brings out that horrible and unhealthy “I-want-to-go-rescue-you” thing in me. You know, the thing that makes you want to go hug him and cuddle him and make everything okay.

(I’m not sure what it means that the two characters I had crushes on are also the two characters I most strongly identify with. I mean, no one wants to date themselves, so I don’t really know what’s going on there.)

That said, if these characters actually existed in real life, I would probably be most likely to date one of the Weasley twins or Lee Jordan. I mean, they’re hilarious and slightly depraved and sort of arrogant assholes but deep down total softies, which seems to be what I’m attracted to. (The media (all media) ruins you: it tells you that assholes are actually the biggest, most compassionate softies of us all. In reality, assholes are just assholes. They get pissed off over stupid stuff, don’t care about anyone but themselves, and are very much the guys you don’t want to date. This is how you know the people in HP are definitely fictional characters.)

30 Days of HP: Day 12

Day 12: Favorite movie scene

Probably Voldemort’s resurrection. Ralph Fiennes really takes the film to a whole other level. His performance is just … I mean, he’s so Voldemort that if you didn’t know Ralph Fiennes was in that movie, you would never guess Ralph Fiennes was in that movie. And it’s not just because of the CGI nose and stuff. It’s everything. It’s what he’s doing with the character. It could have been so cheesy and awful and over the top, and he made it so believable. I could gush about this forever.

And then there’s Dan, who, as I noted in the Day 4 question, is really at the top of his game in this scene. Dan has had some pretty cringe-worthy moments throughout the series, but man does he bring it when it counts. If there was ever a scene where he really needed to sell it, it was this one, and he totally delivered.

This scene is why I absolutely adore Mike Newell. This is the pivotal scene in the series, and it so easily could have been botched, but he really made it into something special. And, like I said before, I really think he’s the main reason Dan is so good here, because he was able to pull performances out of the young actors that no other HP director has.

I do have one tiny complaint about this scene, though. I don’t understand why there are so few Death Eaters. I don’t even know why that bugs me so much, but it does. There is this one wide shot in particular where you can see that there are only four or five Death Eaters (I’m not sure exactly, I haven’t the film in a while), and it’s always so distracting to me. I don’t know why, I just feel like there should be more of them. But aside from that, this scene is spectacular.

Also, this isn’t a scene, but Sirius telling Harry, “Nice one, James!” in the OotP movie kills me every single time. Every. Single. Time.

30 Days of HP: Day 13

Day 13: Least favorite character(s)

Probably because I haven’t read the books in so long, I can’t really think of any. I mean, I absolutely hate Umbridge, obviously, but as a person. As a character, she’s fantastic. And I find Lavender Brown irritating in HBP, but I like her in all the other books, and look, it’s not her fault romance and HP don’t mix well. And I didn’t like Kreacher, but DH obviously changed that.

The only one I can think of where I felt like I wish this character didn’t exist is Cho Chang, and I can still understand her necessity narratively. But yeah, I guess probably her, because it’s not like Harry couldn’t have dated a less annoying girl. And I’m sure there are others, but I can’t think of them at the moment.

30 Days of HP: Day 14

Day 14: Moments in the books/movies that made you cry

Books: Sirius’s death. Ron destroying the locket. Dobby’s death. The Resurrection Stone scene.

Films: In GoF, I always start crying somewhere between Harry’s parents coming out of his wand and fake!Moody pulling Harry out of the arena. If I’m on my period, I cry at the end of OotP when Harry is possessed and then all his friends show up and he remembers himself.

I should note that I’m defining “crying” here as “get a bit teary-eyed/maybe actually have a tear or two roll down my cheeks”. If by “crying” you actually mean “full on genuine crying”, then the only one of these that counts is Sirius’s death. (I was also fourteen, my hormones were severely whacked out, and I had a lot of emotional problems, so I’m not even sure how much of the full on crying actually had to do with Sirius dying (though I still got sad rereading PoA a few months ago just because I kept thinking about how Sirius dies, so it probably had a bit to do with Sirius dying).)