Harry Potter Hullaballoo - The Dueling Club

The Dueling Club

In which the Polyjuice Potion starts to be brewed, a dueling club is formed, a parselmouth is outed, and a Hufflepuff is petrified.

The polyjuice potion that will hopefully give Harry, Ron, and Hermione more information about Draco Malfoy has begun brewing. Harry and Hermione carried out an elaborate plot to get all of the ingredients needed, and they're brewing it in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom of all places. Fun, Fun, Fun.

There is an official Hogwarts dueling club that's formed, with Lockhart and Snape as leaders. I just realized that Lockhart tries so hard to make himself known, and he coincidentally appears in nearly every chapter in this book—being an idiot, as usual. The Hogwarts professors are very nervous about the recent attacks on the school's muggle-born students. It's one of the scarier things that happens at Hogwarts. Hogwarts is supposed to be the safest place in the wizarding world, and if even Hogwarts isn't safe anymore, then I don't know where I was going with this sentence. Then bad things are happening.

At the dueling club, Lockhart proves to be incompetent. Snape is taking advantage the one bit of Defense Against the Dark Arts he can teach, the Dueling Club. And together they spell out disaster. Also interesting to note, the Expelliarmus spell, which later becomes Harry's sort of signature defensive move, was taught to him by Snape.

Everything is going fine until Draco shoots a snake out of his wand toward Harry. The snake goes for Justin Finch-Fletchley, Hufflepuff extraordinaire, until Harry tells him to stop. In parseltongue. The language of snakes is something that's rare, even by wizards' standards, and if you speak it, you are automatically an assumed bad guy. Even Ron and Hermione are wary of Harry at first.

By noon the next day, everyone is talking. And even the Hufflepuffs, who are normally a forgiving bunch, are accusing Harry of being a wizard darker than You-Know-Who, who had a vendetta against Justin and meant to kill him with the snake. The worst part is, the perpetrators of the rumors are some of Harry's friends.

Shortly after, Harry runs into Nearly Headless Nick looking all dark and petrified and Justin Finch-Fletchley looking all recumbent and petrified. And everyone's fears about Harry are confirmed—not really. But gosh, Harry has just run into the worst strand of unluckiness that Hogwarts has seen in a century.