How and when did you get in to Harry Potter?
My very first approach to Harry Potter was the first film. I wasn't enthusiastic about it, but the other films at the cinema were war or action films I didn't like, so SS was the only choice. When we got to the cinema we were so late that we got the tickets for the first row of seats -very uncomfortable, so my attitude towards the film was not exactly positive. Despite all, I remember I was quite satisfacted with the film, I was really scared by the alive-chess game at the end of it, and I thought "This is not children stuff at all!"; I remembered my friends' children reading the books and wondered "How can they?!?" However, I didn't immediately fall for HP at that time, it took much much longer...After some months, a friend of my sister's offered to lend me her books; I accepted, and back home, I read the first one in one evening. The following day I asked her for the second, and so on, so that in one week I had read all the four of them. Since then, it was all a downhill: I started reading fanfictions on the HP web site, then on non-official sites, at a rate of 5-6 long stories a day; then I joined an Msn group where people uses to rp and became co-manager of it...I used to have an extremely strong addiction to the HP world, too strong perhaps, but now I got back to earth!

Which Harry Potter book is your favorite?
My favourite one is the Prisoner of Azkaban (I hear many of you saying "How trivial!"). I know I know...but it is so touching, I can't resist it. Hermione becomes really really cool and Lupin is simply lovely, I shed a tear when he had to leave the school at the end, he looked like the perfect father for Harry! Order of the Phoenix is my second favourite... I had a sort of love-hate reaction towards this book, probably because it is the most realistic of the five. The way JKR describes Harry, his changing moods, his being so arrogant, in the way every rebel adolescent has been, was simply superb. There were moments when I wanted to throw the book against the wall, or have Harry right in front of me, flesh and bones, in order to shake his shoulders and tell him "Stop behaving like this!"; but that's what makes this book so true and so special.

What character can you relate to most?
I'd say Hermione. She's quite straight-forward and has no fear of telling what she thinks or doing what she has planned to (in my mind I have impressed her image, walking through the high snow to go talking with Hagrid while Harry and Ron have remained in the common room doing their homework...); just think about SPEW or all the rows she has with Ron! I feel like Hermione in this sense...I could never be compared to her from the academic point of view! ;-)

Are you satisfied with the handling of the "boy/girl stuff" in book 5?
Very much. I had never liked Cho, I completely supported Ginny. Harry needed to get over this Cho thing, and probably JKR treated it the best way, letting him have his first kiss, but no big love story -it would have looked a little ridiculous, considered their age and the wizard world at war, don't you think? As for Ron and Hermione, they're one of my favourite couples. I confess I expected some development in their relationship, but as I said, I think Rowling did the best thing not pushing on the romance too much...even though I've read some theories somewhere on the net, saying that perhaps Ron and Hermione secretely got together, but haven't told Harry because they're afraid of his reaction... (just think how he felt towards his friends at the beginning of the book, so jealous and angry that they knew more that what he did...)

What did you think was the most exciting thing that happened in book 5? What was the most disturbing? What left the biggest impression on you?
The most exciting...perhaps the episode in which Hermione and Harry lead Umbridge into the forest and the centaurs attack them... I had liked the centaurs very much in the first book, and I didn't expect them to be so aggressive as to attack two innocents. I found it very exciting, more than the battle in the department of misteries exactly for this reason; somehow I expected a big battle or something at the end of the book, and that was a completely Evil vs Good battle, whereas the centaurs really shocked me. The most...hem hem...disturbing...hem hem...was...hem hem...Umbridge. She was another reason why I wanted to tear the book into pieces or throw it against the wall... It really took me a long time to finish reading OotP, because anytime I thought she had fallen to the lowest point and couldn't do anything bad anymore, she turned out with another of her educational decrees! The biggest impression...well, many of them. I was impressed by the big development of the characters, especially Ginny's and Neville's; by Neville's courage during the battle in the department of misteries; by the discover that Harry's father was such a nasty man and that Petunia had (very hidden but had) a heart, and, yes, by the discover that Dumbledore is not the superman I'd alway thought, but a man with his weakness and his mistakes...another point for JKR.

Was the character that died the one you thought it would be? (Be honest now!)
Honestly, no. I was sure it wouldn't have been Ron or Hermione, because they were too important to the story -it would have been like killing Harry himself! I thought that it would be another minor character like Cedric, like for example Colin Creevy. While reading I really thought it would be Hagrid -Firenze's advice, Grawp, etc...everything pointed to that direction! When Sirius died...well, I confess I was not sad for Sirius himself, but because Harry had lost all the "good" links to his parents (although after the revelation about Petunia the Dursleys have won some points...); but let's cross our fingers, there's still Lupin!

Which house would you like to be in and why? Do you think the Sorting Hat would place you in that house?
I'd like to be in Slytherin, maybe just to try to change their bad reputation! But I think that the Sorting Hat would place me into (well, it actually already has, all over the sites on the net) Hufflepuff: I'm not corageous, nor smart, nor cunning enough to be placed into any of the other Houses; besides, I think that Hufflepuff is the more realistic house, the one most of the people would be sorted in -the others are a little too extreme...

Do you have any interesting HP stories to share?
Well, maybe it's not very interesting but...I'm planning to write my university thesis on Harry Potter. It's like...a diamond, with its hundreds of faces which reflect the light in different ways, an field open to many theories, debates, discussions...I really hope my professor accepts this as my thesis topic, because I could join the pleasure with the work!

Do you have anything else you'd like to add? Maybe a theory you've concocted, a shout-out?
I'm sorry I don't have any big theory about the books...to end I want to thank all Mugglenet staff very very much, for giving me the possibility of expressing my opinions on Harry Potter -Thank you guys!!!

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