Calling all Potterians !

[Schokokeks]

Hi guys :)

I work at the local students support center here and I'm currently tutoring a group of three students, giving them extra lessons in English. Yesterday, they asked me whether we could read a book together (you can imagine my jaw dropping - I was veeeery cautious at the beginning, suspecting they only wished to elude the grammar excercises, but no, they really want to read the book in their leisure time and discuss it in our group each week. I'm so proud :D)
They quickly decided that they want to read the latest Harry Potter book (number 6, I think it is) and I agreed, since I don't think any more classical literature would do them good just now...
The only problem is that they have all read the precedent books to the series in German, but I admit I haven't :D. I read the very first book, so I'm a bit familiar with the characters and setting, but then I read it quite a while ago, and there are still some sequals missing to the sixth.

So here's my question:
Could any devoted Harry Potter fan among you please summarise the rest of the books 2-5 for me :D ? I only need to know about any events or new characters that come up and might be relevant for the 6th book.

Thank you very much for your help, you'll save me from looking totally uncool for not knowing Harry Potter :D and from having to read the remaining 4 in 2 weeks.

[Schokokeks]

In case my demand for such a lot of information scares off the knowledgeable among you, you could of course do only one book per person :D. I'd be happy for anything on the story.

[grace86]

What's interesting and also surprising is that the plot gets quite thick for a children's book. I will think over some of the books tonight and see maybe if I could at least try to help.

[Bookworm Cris]

Hello Schokokeks!

Help´s on the way.... here we go: [SPOILERS]

Book one: Harry discovers he´s a wizard, and goes to school. He prevents Lord Voldemort to steal Philosopher´s´s Stone and gain immortality; LV vanishes and Quirrell is dead. (Well, this one you have read, it´s just for remember)

Book Two: He returns to school, being warned by Dobby (a house-elf that appears in his uncle´s) not to go there, terrible tings are going to happen. In Hogwarts, muggle-born students are petrified and Harry is suspect because he can talk to snakes; finally they find the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets and he kills the Basilisk (the creature locked in there by LV, who was petrifying the students). Inside he finds Tom Riddle (LV as a young boy, who was preserved in a magic diary found by Gina Weasley - Rony´s sister) and destroys the diary and, doing this, the image of Tom Riddle.
In the end he frees Dobby, who was Lucius Malfoy´s house-elf.This year the professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts is Gilderoy Lockhart, vain and incompetent, who loses his memory in the Chamber of Secrets, while trying to obbliviate Harry and Rony with the latest´s broken wand (the spell backfired)

Book Three: Sirius Black escapes from Azkaban; he is guilty of having killed Peter Pettigrew and twelve muggles. It happens SB and PP were best friends of Harry´s father.When Harry arrives in Hogwarts people believe Black escaped to kill Harry, because he betrayed his parents and told LV where they were hidden, and he could kill them. The Ministry has sent dementors (Azkaban guards) to seek Black. Dementors suck out a person´s soul with their kiss.
Another friend of Harry´s father, Remus Lupin, is teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts (DADA); he is competent, but also a werewolf. Harry discovers that Sirius Black is his godfather, and was his parent´s friend.(the four of them are the Marauders; Harry uses the Marauder´s Map, given to him by Fred and George - Rony´s siblings- that show where´s everyone in Hogwarts).

NOTE: The Marauders are Animagi. An animagus can transform himself in an animal; Sirius is a dog, Peter is a rat, and James Potter is a stag; they did it to be close to Remus when he monthly turned into a werewolf)

Rony´s rat, Scabbers, fights with Hermione´s cat (Crookshanks) and dissappears. He is found by Hagrid, and Rony and Scabbers are taken by a big black dog inside a tree, The Whomping Willow (really fighting-like tree). Harry and Hermione follow them and find themselves inside an abandoned house in Hogsmeade. There they find out that the dog is Sirius Black. He says that the real traitor is Peter Pettigrew, and that he´s Scabbers. Peter aks Harry not to kill him, and Harry agrees. He will deliver him to the dementors. When they go outside, the moon is full and Lupin transforms into a werewolf; Pettigrew escapes; Harry and Sirius are saved by being kissed from the dementors by a patronum (spell cast by someone across the lake). Dumbledore tells them they can save more than one innocent; they use a time-turner to return in time, and Harry and Hermione save Buckbeak, a hypogriff that hurt Draco malfoy in Hagrid´s class, from being beheaded. Then they wait till night, and when Sirius is about to be kissed by a dementor, Harry casts the Patronum spell and saves him.
(It´s really complicated at this point, if you can, see the movie so you may understand it better).
Sirius is released and escapes with Buckbeak. He asks Harry if he would like to live with him, and he is delighted with the idea.

[Bookworm Cris]

Here we go again:

Book Four: At the beginning of the book, we see Lord Voldemort kill a muggle in an abandoned house; he tells Scabbers (Peter Pettigrew) that he needs Harry Potter to something he´s planning. Then Harry goes to the World Quidditch Cup with the Weasleys; there, a group of wizards in disguise cause riot and the Dark Mark (Lord Voldemort´s signal) is cast in the sky.
Hogwarts is going to receive wizards from other schools, in the Triwizard Tournament; they arrive from Beauxbatons (a girl´s school) and Durmstrang (a boy´s school). Each school will have one champion; only students above 17 can apply, putting their names in the Goblet of Fire, a magic device who will choose the champions.
Harry´s name is taken from the Goblet, and he´s the fourth champion (along with Cedric Diggory - Hogwarts, Fleur Delacour - Beauxbatons, and Victor Krum - Durmstrang, this one a famous quidditch player). People think Harry cheated, and Rony in special is angry with him because of that.
There´s a new DADA teacher, Mad-Eyed Moody. He´s a former auror (Death-Eater chaser) , and tries to help Harry in the three tasks of the Tournament.
First Task: Catch a golden egg from a dragon. Here he has help from Hagrid, and tells Cedric.
Second Task: Rescue Rony from the bottom of the lake. Here, he arrives at last, because he tries to save Hermione and Fleur´s sister too (each champion has a hostage to save); he´s awarded points for bravery.
Third Task: Find the Triwizard Cup in the middle of a Labirinth. There he sees Krum (possessed) cast a spell in Fleur; he and Cedric escape and arrive together at the Cup, and decide to touch it together. As soon as they do it, they are transported to a cemetery (the cup is a Portkey, a way of transportation).
In the cemetery LV tells Scabbers to "kill the spare", and Cedric is murdered.
Harry is tied to a grave, and Scabbers makes a complicated potion, with his own hand, a bone from LV´s father, and Harry´s blood. Immerging into this potion makes him get a body. Then he casts the Dark Mark in the sky and his followers, the Death Eaters, arrive at the cemetery.
Voldemort releases Harry and invites him to a duel. When they cast spells together, they colide in mid-air and form a "net" (their wands have cores with Fawkes´s - Dumbledore´s phoenix - feathers, and don´t work well against each other); we see the latest victims of LV´s wand emmerge, between them Harry´s parents and Cedric. Harry escapes, gets Cedric´s body and touches the Cup, being transported back to Hogwarts.
He tells everybody that LV is back, and we discover that Mad-Eyed Moody is a Death Eater in disguise, who set up all this to lead Harry to the cemetery; he is Barty Crouch, Jr, and is kissed by the dementors.

[Bookworm Cris]

And finally:

Book Five: After harry told everybody that LV is back, the Ministry starts a "campaign" to make a fool of Harry, because of fear of losing control and arising panic. The Order of the Phoenix is revived, and it´s headquarters are in Sirius Black´s house (he is hidden in there). The Order is formed by wizards who wish to defeat Voldemort, and their leader is Dumbledore.
Harry´s having repeated dreams with a closed door; Dumbledore says it´s good that Harry closes his mind from Voldemort, and tells Snape to give him Occlumency lessons, which Harry doesn´t take seriously.
Rita Skeeter, a reporter who was covering the Triwizard Tournament (and distorting all facts) is forced by Hermione to help harry, publishing his version of facts in the magazine of Luna Lovegood´s (new friend of Harry) father. Hermione menaces to tell everybody that Rita is an unregistered animagus - she can transform herself in a beetle. Meanwhile, there´s a mass escape of Death Eaters from Azkaban.
Harry is fond of Cho Chang, Cedric´s ex-girlfriend; there´s a new DADA teacher, Dolores Umbridge, sent by the Ministry. Now almost everything is forbidden, from students´meetings to clubs and even quidditch to Harry, Fred and George, after a fight with Draco.
A group of students decide to study DADA by themselves, taught by Harry; they call it Dumbledore´s Army (DA). Umbridge discovers it, Dumbledore takes the responsability on it and escapes from Hogwarts before is arrested. Umbridge is now Hogwarts´ headmaster.
In a last dream, Harry sees the door open and LV in the Ministry torturing Sirius. He escapes with a group of students of DA (Hermione, Rony, Neville, Luna, and Gina) and they fly to London, to rescue Sirius in the Ministry. Right before it, Fred and George leave the school in an spectacular mess thy cause to "divert" Umbridge.
There, they go through doors inside the Department of Mysteries and arrive at the Room of Prophecies (the room where he arrived through the open door in his dream). He takes a prophecy with his name and suddenly there are a lot of Death Eaters, wanting the Prophecy. A chase follows, and a battle between Death Eaters and the students, and later with the help of wizards of the Order. Sirius fights and is killed by Bellatrix Lestrange, his cousin and Death Eater, when he falls through a strange veil in an old stone arch.
Later, Dumbledore arrives and fights with Voldemort; LV possesses Harry, but leaves when Harry has thoughts of love; that´s a power he doesn´t know and can´t stand.
After all this, Harry is mad about Sirius´s death; Dumbledore then tells him about the prophecy. Sibila Trelawney (Divination teacher) made it in a trance before Harry was born. It said that " the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born at the end of the seventh month. He will be born from those who thrice defied the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord will mark his as an equal, and he will have a power that the Dark Lord knows not. One will die in the hands of the other, for no one can live while the other survives" (sorry, I´m quoting by heart)
It means that LV heard part of the prophecy, and tried to kill the baby who could kill him later. That baby could have been Harry or Neville (whose parents were also from the Order), but he chose Harry. When he tried to kill him, Harry´s mother got in the way to save him and the spell rebounded, causing LV to be in a semi-death state for 13 years. This love protection will continue as long as the house where Harry´s mother´s blood lives can be called his house. That´s why he needs to return to his aunt´s house every year, till he´s of age.
At the end of the book, Harry returns to his uncle´s house, still in shock with Sirius´s death, and knowing that he will have to face Voldemort someday.

[Bookworm Cris]

Schokokeks, I hope you can understand all the plot.

I´ve read each book at least three times, after a while I lost the count. The plot is complicated, but I think I mentioned a lot you will have to know to understand the sixth book. There the plot really thickens... but after that, you will be longing for the seventh and last book (as I am).
But I recommend that you read all the books when you can, because knowing what happens doesn´t take the pleasure of the reading (at least for me). It´s a really good story, and well told by Joanne Rowling.

Hope I could have helped; anyway, it was a pleasure to relive this story, I liked to write this to you.

Good work (and reading) with your students; it´s good to see kids interested in reading. Harry Potter awakened this reading desire in many children and just for this it would have been worthwhile. But the story is really good...

Cristine

[Pensive]

Hey Schokokeks! I hope you will enjoy reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. :)

Before I could summarize it, Christine has done it, and quite well. :)

[Schokokeks]

Wow, thank you so much for your detailed summary, Cristine !!! That has helped me a lot :nod:.
I never knew the series would grow that complicated, but thanks to your info, I shall be able to get along with my students :D.
Again, thank you very much, you too, Pensy, for wanting to help :).

[Niamh]

you could also cheat by watching the first four movies. It might give you a reason to sit in and eat popcorn all day and just relax!:)

[Bookworm Cris]

Thanks all of you!

Schokokeks, it´s good you found it helpful. Good work! and enjoy the books when you can...

Niamhking is right, you can watch the movies and eat popcorn (hehe..); the movies are good to understand the basic plot, but there are a lot of details that remained unseen in the movies, perhaps because of time limitations, or because they are secondary to the plot. But reading them is a delight!;)

Thanks for your comment, Pensive! It was good to write about it, made me want to read them all again, while we wait for the end. I know you enjoy HP a lot, please point out if there´s something important I missed, OK?

Thanks again!:wave:

[Schokokeks]

you could also cheat by watching the first four movies. It might give you a reason to sit in and eat popcorn all day and just relax!:)

Hihi, excellent idea ! :D Are all the four movies available on DVD by now ? And is number 5 already out ?
And are there any hints what the end of the series could look like ? I'm trying to keep up with Harry Potter gossip :D

Thanks a lot for your help and suggestions :nod:.

[Niamh]

The first four are all out on DvD but the fifth movie unfortunately doesnt reach cinemas till july 07. The Prisoner of Azkaban is probably the best. Its got Gary Olman in it.:) the first two are real kiddish but the're getting very dark! The fourth on is the darkest so far. hope you enjoy them! bookwrm cris synopsis of book five is good enough to make you bluff your way through Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix with you book group. the only worry is if the start asking mad indepth questions!;)

[Whifflingpin]

"good enough to make you bluff your way through Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix with you book group. the only worry is if the start asking mad indepth questions!"
I've heard it said that the art of bluff, as a teacher, is to make them do the work. You get a question you don't know the answer to? One of them will! If not, right - next homework is to find out...

.

[Niamh]

Hehehe! I totally agree with you. that is a cunning plan!

[Bookworm Cris]

Thanks for your kind comments about my synopsis; I think it will be good if Schokokeks´ students start a debate about indepth questions of the story; it will make them think deeper, use their brain and pay more attention to the details... this story is full of hints, red-herrings, things you pay no attention at a first read but will come out as important details some books ahead. Me and my daughters discuss it a lot, and we still didn´t found out what will happen in book 7... just guesses by now.
There´s a website made by fan-atics of HP, www.mugglenet.com, and it´s worth a look. Every news, debate, photos, glossaries, etc.... about HP is found there.

That´s the most important consequence of HP to today´s kids; it made them not only read, but discuss and think about it. Please, forgive me, but I´m a big fan...

Good to post here....

[Pensive]

Thanks for your kind comments about my synopsis; I think it will be good if Schokokeks´ students start a debate about indepth questions of the story; it will make them think deeper, use their brain and pay more attention to the details... this story is full of hints, red-herrings, things you pay no attention at a first read but will come out as important details some books ahead. Me and my daughters discuss it a lot, and we still didn´t found out what will happen in book 7... just guesses by now.
There´s a website made by fan-atics of HP, www.mugglenet.com, and it´s worth a look. Every news, debate, photos, glossaries, etc.... about HP is found there.

That´s the most important consequence of HP to today´s kids; it made them not only read, but discuss and think about it. Please, forgive me, but I´m a big fan...

Good to post here....
Mugglenet is indeed a very good HP fan site. :)

And as for movies, I will suggest that it is better if you read the books, as they are five times better than watching HP movies. I don't know, but I just didn't like the movies at all. Only Chamber of Secrets was quite good.

[Whifflingpin]

"Me and my daughters discuss it a lot, and we still didn´t found out what will happen in book 7... just guesses by now."

I found, the other day, a note I wrote to myself when I finished reading the "Half-Blood Prince."

"Decline of Dumbledore in the Half-Blood Prince

“It is the unknown we fear when we look on death and darkness, nothing more”

Voldemort’s weakness is his obsession with death, and his determination to remain alive, in whatever state, at whatever cost to others. Death however, is the normal and proper end to life, and is to be accepted. A death accomplished in the service of others is a triumph, not a defeat.

Throughout the book, there are repeated references to Dumbledore’s age and physical decline. Dumbledore, a hero wizard, does not seek to delay, by unnatural means, the onset of old age, but chooses the manner, and time, of his death. It is clear, in the death scene, that he is asking some service from Snape. Obviously, this is not a plea for mercy, since Dumbledore has not shunned or avoided physical pain or death. It is a request that Snape, his trusted colleague, should fulfil the last terrible (to Snape) service, and kill him.

Exactly what benefits may come from this, we have yet to find out. Three advantages are clear already. Dumbledore’s death was in a manner of his own choosing, not Voldemort’s. Malfoy has failed in the task that, for some reason, was laid on him specifically by Voldemort. Snape has demonstrated, beyond all doubt, that he is in the service of evil.

My guesses for the next book?
Dumbledore’s trust in Snape throughout the whole series cannot be misplaced, or the whole thing is pointless. Snape is therefore a Trojan horse at the heart of the Enemy’s citadel.
The Horcrux that Harry and Dumbledore did not find in the cave was removed by Sirius’ younger brother, Regulus Black. (“Regulus” is a hero name, not an evil name – the Roman Regulus went back to captivity and death in Carthage, unforced, because he deemed it honourable to do so.) "

[Niamh]

The horcrux that Sirius blacks brother regelus removed was the locket that Harry picks up during the clean out of the living room of Sirius' house and base of the order in The Order of the Pheonix.

[grace86]

The horcrux that Sirius blacks brother regelus removed was the locket that Harry picks up during the clean out of the living room of Sirius' house and base of the order in The Order of the Pheonix.

For some reason I barely remember that part. But like it was mentioned, HP is full of things that are important that can easily be skimmed through.

Whiffling...they are going to be reading the sixth book together...be careful not to put in spoilers.

[Niamh]

For some reason I barely remember that part. But like it was mentioned, HP is full of things that are important that can easily be skimmed through.

Whiffling...they are going to be reading the sixth book together...be careful not to put in spoilers.

i never copped on to it until someone in work pointed it out to me, but its there! I notice it clearly when i read the book again. god damn j.k.rowling for making important things appear so insignificant!:smash:

[certiorari]

The horcrux that Sirius blacks brother regelus removed was the locket that Harry picks up during the clean out of the living room of Sirius' house and base of the order in The Order of the Pheonix.

Actually, that part is just a theory. The exact words are "also, a heavy locket that none of them could open..." Pg. 116 American Ed. It never said any details of the locket, except when Dumbledore got around to telling Harry over a year later.

http://www.hp-lexicon.org is also a very good place to go to find out more about Harry Potter.

[Bookworm Cris]

Whifflingpin:

Your note is really interesting; I agree with some of the things you said (about Dumbledore fearing not death, and Snape being a Trojan Horse:lol: - that was good). But Grace86 is right; they will read the sixth book together. That´s why I posted synopsis of the 1-5 books.

Pensive:
You´re right, Schokokeks should read the books instead - or before - seeing the movies (best case scenario). But she said time is lacking for this, so maybe she´ll have to read the books later. But I agree, the books are far better than the movies; but, among all of them, my favourite is the fourth movie (maybe the director got the tune - acertou a mão, as we say in Brasil).

But coming back to the books; Schokokeks, go on and read it along with your students; the sixth book is the best of them (in my humble opinion), and also the darkest and more complicated. But believe me, you will like it.:p

Certiorari: Lexicon is a good place to find HP stuff; by the way, both sites were awarded by JK Rowling in her site (best fan sites). That´s something...:thumbs_up