Look at em, y’all. They’re fetuses. But then again, so was I the last time I read these books. Hoping to re-read the series before CBR10 closes, book two of the Harry Potter series marking my “throwback” square.
Kind of glad I’m re-reading these now, as I intended to read them to the octolet as bedtime stories in a couple years (he’s not quite two right now), as I remembered how the series does such a good job maturing at the same pace as it’s readership, but damn, even in book two shit gets dark. Moaning Myrtle is a student who gets killed on school grounds, the petrified Hogwarts victims are supposed to get better but reading that as an adult strikes me as authority figures reassuring children with a confidence they don’t possess, and Ginny Weasley seems awfully close to dying for this early in the series. The kraken barely sleeps as much as he should as it is without throwing nightmares in the mix.
That said, rereading the Harry Potter series has been comforting, and as I noted in the first book’s review, one I had forgotten a surprising amount about. Of the last five retail establishments I visited, four had Harry Potter merchandise, and I didn’t look that hard at Home Depot – I’d believe there’s an invisibility cloak drop cloth with Ollivander wand paint stirrer in some corner of the place. Harry Potter merchandise is omnipresent in a way it couldn’t have been when the books were just released, and as a result, I didn’t just forget a lot about the books (as is to be expected after more than a decade, maybe two), I forgot how much I’d forgotten. Couldn’t see the forest for the whomping willow, as it were. But I’m enjoying the series charms anew.