I gave in and read the second Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. It was just as HORRIBLY EMBARRASSING as I remembered. In fact, it was even worse! Not only did it turn out that Harry and Ron steal the car and fly it into the tree, but also I had TOTALLY forgotten how Professor Lockhart kept embarrassing Harry ALL THE TIME! And then of course there was the everyone thinking Harry was the bad guy (except Malfoy, which was funny) and no one noticing that the bludger was trying to kill Harry in the quiditch game, which was just like, dude, how come no one is noticing this? And then of course I had totally forgotten all together about the ‘dueling club’ scene where Harry talks to the snake and his acquaintance thinks he was trying to get him to kill it and he runs off practically screaming or at least really mad.

UGH!

Fortunately, I’m a faster reader then I was in like, fourth grade or whenever these books came out so I read the whole thing in like, eight hours. It blazed by and I didn’t have to dwell on the agonizingly embarrassing parts that make up the bread and butter of Harry Potter’s second year at Hogwarts.

(Oh, man, I bet the fourth book is going to be WAY worse. That’s the one with Rita Skitter, right? That’s not the THIRD one, is it? o.o O.o o.O The thing I’m preparing for in the third one is the whole Knight Bus incident with aunt Marge, but that’s not even that bad… that’s it right? And the whole passing out thing, but I didn’t mind that much, and I really liked Lupin. And the fourth book may have had a classic ‘Harry-Potter-Gets-Framed’, but it also had MAD EYE MOODY THE COOLEST CHARACTER EVER. Even if he does turn out to be a bad guy, which was really sad just because then it is like… is that relationship even real? Especially when he turns up later and he’s like, the same guy? Super weird.)

Anyway. The second book.

Super dark.

Super scary.

Super depressing.

I always forget how horrible it is (in a content is awful sense, not in a horribly written sense) because it is so early in the series and we always talk about the Harry Potter books getting darker as they go on. Well, let me tell you, the second book may not have dwelled on the content but HOLY SHIT it was dark. I mean really.

These kids are like TWELVE.

Isn’t that little? Someone told me twelve was little once.

And yeah, there are a bunch of older kids. That’s cool. How many of them get paralyzed? Also, horribly racist messages being written on the walls? Twelve-year-olds shouting death threats at one another? (Lookin’ at you, Malfoy.) Eleven-year-olds getting brain controlled and unleashing giant racist snakes on the school?

Yeah. Pretty dark.

Good think the messages weren’t painted in blood. I swear, I thought they were the first time I read through this. I actually had to read the passage where the first attack is described THREE TIMES before I was sure that the substance the message was painted with wasn’t mentioned. (Later, Riddle mentions Ginny mentioning paint all over her front, so we’ll just assume it was paint, shall we? Red paint, perhaps? Thin red paint that dried super fast and smelled of copper and salt?)

Anyway.

Did I like the second one?

I have no idea.

I’m gonna go read the third one now.