#and then when cedric actually dies the idea of the school closing isn't mentioned

[greenerteacups]

Never a Romione shipper but tbh, love Harry and Ginny or at least the potential of them. It always irked me to no end that JK Rowling reduced Ginny to "hot cool girl who likes Quidditch" when, in reality, that girl's been through some stuff. There was so much missed opportunity here for them to bond on a deeper level i‘ll be mad forever. Hello?? She knows what it's like to have Voldemort in her head, she was possessed for like a year at ELEVEN. That's insane, only to be brought up literally once

This is what I'm talking about with Early Installment Weirdness! The transition from children's book to Y/A involves a major pivot in how serious you can be about the almost-dying stuff. Plus, if you take it on face, Chamber of Secrets is by far the darkest book. The main plot is a slasher thriller stapled onto a murder mystery. There's an 11-year-old girl being possessed by a malignant spirit. There's a dead girl haunting the bathroom. Threats are painted in blood in the walls. Dumbledore warns Hogwarts might have to "close forever." Harry's hallucinating a whispering voice in his head saying "hunt, hunt" and "kill, kill." It's all gothic as hell and fucking awesome, but also, uh: "children's book"? HEWWO?

This is part of the reason I cut Ginny's possession arc in Lionheart. It's a shame to take a major plot beat away from her, but I didn't feel that Book 3 or Book 4 gave her any space on the page to deal with it, and by the time she loops back around to being a major character in Book 5, it's been two years and the book's so crowded I can't imagine where an arc for her would fit.