Pottermore Moments Revisited: Unhelpful Centaurs
Chapter 15: “The Forbidden Forest”
Chapter thoughts: This is honestly the most horrible detention idea ever. Who lets eleven year olds out at eleven o’clock at night to wander a forest inhabited with a bunch of insane creatures? In any case, this is the chapter where our story comes to a head; Harry finally knows what he has to do, and he (along with Ron and Hermione) are off to find the Philosopher’s Stone!
Moment 1: Harry Becomes an Outcast
Once again, we get a lovely view of the library, though it is…you guessed it, empty of characters! (At exam time too). There’s also some new information in the form of book excerpts, but in reality, there are only a few truly new tidbits (i.e., about zombies and a tree that will protect against Dark creatures). It’s an odd moment to have illustrated; it seems to not correlate with what is happening in the story at this point.
Moment 2: Into the Forbidden Forest
The forest depicted here is dark, but for some reason it doesn’t seem as twisted or dense as I imagined it. As you zoom in, you end up seeing the heart-wrenching sight Harry comes across: a dark figure drinking the blood of a beautiful unicorn. It’s a quick moment, but a very important one for the story.
Chapter 16: “Through the Trapdoor”
Chapter thoughts: After a few chapters of slower information, the action is really starting to pick up as our heroes face the enchantments guarding the Stone. I love that through each of these tasks, each member of the trio faces something that they are particularly good at. It takes all three of them working together to achieve their goal. As they face Devil’s Snare, flying keys, a live chess set, and a potion logic puzzle, we can’t help but see just how well they work together.
Moment 1: The Winged Keys
As we’ve already had a depiction of Fluffy, I’m not surprised that the first task we come up against is not the three-headed dog. Originally, you had to find the key in this moment to move on. Now, the format has changed, and this moment just seems…boring.
Moment 2: The Chessboard Chamber
This is terrifyingly beautiful. The intentional blank faces and the angle we are looking at the scene from reminds me that there were three kids facing these challenges, and that is quite the task. However, there’s not much interaction in the moment, again.
Moment 3: The Potion Puzzle
This is one of my favorite moments in this book. I have sat for hours trying to figure out the answer to this riddle. I am so glad that they included in on the site and let you figure out the riddle for yourself. It’s absolutely brilliant. However, on the original site layout, you had to get the potions right to move on, which made it (in my opinion) more exciting. Though I appreciate being able to skip moments at times, I really did enjoy the feeling of not being able to move on until you had done what the characters had to do to move on.
And now that Harry has made it past the enchantments, we have almost found the Stone itself! And of course, that means we are almost at the end of this first book. But never fear! Yesterday, new moments were released for Goblet of Fire, so there’s so much more for us to explore!
