Sectumsempra!

This was the biggest shock I had in the book! Harry yelling this spell and the effect it had on Draco. And yet we didn't get a long look at Harry's feelings after using this spell, just enough to comprehend his shock. And at the end of the book - he tries to use the spell again - knowing what it does.

Snape is the first to respond to Myrtle's yells. He knows the spell is his own. Knows Harry must have gotten it somewhere. Suspects the text book. Yet doesn't follow it up with anything other than detentions. Was Harry meant to have the book? Meant to learn such Dark Spells? I'm not sure . . .

He responded so quickly that I had to wonder whether he was waiting outside the door or something. It seemed entirely too fast, unless he just happened to be walking by, or perhaps seeking to drain his bladder, when he heard the use of his own spell.

I also found it incredibly curious that Snape gave Harry only detention. I mean, he's demanded Harry's expulsion for FAR less than, oh, potential manslaughter. I would have thought that if he were truly eeeeeevil, he would have wanted Harry's head on a platter for splitting Draco down the middle like that.

Yeah, I thought it odd, too, that he didn't try to get Harry expelled. Although it did say he told the staff what had happened. (But of course, we don't know how much he told.)

I think Snape was not about to jump at the chance to point out that he'd invented some seriously damaging curses. His position between the two sides, whatever the hell it may be, I'm sure became more and more fragile by the minute in this book.

And the detentions, though boring, were not the worst detentions Harry underwent. Going through his father's misdeeds would have been a treat compared to Dolores Umbridge's detentions of the previous year.

I'm sure that Snape was never too far away from Draco, both because of Dumbledore's orders and because of the Unbreakable Vow. I'm not too sure if Snape knew it was his own spell that he'd want the rest of the staff to know that.

Wasn't this fantastic writing? Huge build up as to what Sectumsempra was, and it still shocked us, especially because Draco WAS crying. Could this be the spell Snape used on James in the pensieve, I'll read back over that, but I think it sounds like the one...

It made me recoil in shock! Perhaps I pictured something more serious than what was intended, but I really imagined that Draco had just ben split straight down the middle, quite gruesomely no less. The whole time I had worried it would be something horrible, and yet the fact that it was just sort of knocked the wind out of me. It was definitely a talented bit of storytelling.

OK, now I have to watch Chamber again, because isn't this the spell that Malfoy uses on Harry at the dueling lession. But in the movie it creates a snake? I keep thining I have heard this spell before. Also in Chamber in the interviews on the DVD the mentioned using a future spell. hmmm

Krapp, I believe it was Rictusempra in the movie, not Sectumsempra.

Oh, thank you. I guess with the ends of them being so similar ( I am not a real fan of that particualr move and do not watch it often) I guess I was grasping. I am goign to have to watch the interviews again though...

I noticed the similarities between the two spells as well. I wonder if rictu- and sectum- have latin meanings? Are the spells related somehow?