I guess we have to assume that they managed to grab them off the ground? Don't they lose their wands because Umbridge has taken them? So maybe she dropped them when the centaurs carried her off.

The hazard of reading via audiobook: I have no way of easily checking such facts.

Speaking of HP, I'm about halfway through Half-Blood Prince and (a) finding Harry quite annoying in that he's really quite obsessed with Malfoy and it's clear he's right and I rather wish he weren't; (b) wishing JKR had done better by Lavender Brown.

Also, why does JKR insist on using full names for so many students? It's not just Dean and Seamus, it's always "Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnegan", even though we've met them in every single book since the first. Katie the Quidditch player is always Katie Bell, along with Angelina Johnson and Oliver Wood and Ernie MacMillan. Why so completist? It comes across kind of OCD, and a bit patronizing, as if the reader can't be expected to remember anyone's names.

I guess we have to assume that they managed to grab them off the ground? Don't they lose their wands because Umbridge has taken them? So maybe she dropped them when the centaurs carried her off.

After the centaurs are gone, Harry and Hermione are trying to figure out what to do next, and Hermione says, "Well, we can't do anything without wands." Then the wands aren't mentioned again, as far as I can tell, until they get to the Ministry and they take their wands out of their pockets.

Woops! Well, that would be a bit of a flub, then. Huh.

I'll check out your friend's book, Scrappy!

I'm towards the end of reading Prisoner of Azkhaban to my son. Snape really is a monster in this book.

I'm about halfway through, and yeah, he's really, really awful. I mean, he's just been generally terrible so far, and for no discernible reason.

One thing that's fun is that I've forgotten what actually happened the day Sirius supposedly killed thirteen people and laughed about it. I remember a little, but not the whole story, so I look forward to finding out again! Also looking forward to the Scabbers reveal, which is one of my favorite plot twists of all time.

Also looking forward to the Scabbers reveal, which is one of my favorite plot twists of all time.

Yeah, once you get that, you like Crookshanks a lot better...

I kind of wish there was a scene where Crookshanks didn't go after some other rat, to indicate that he was specifically going after Scabbers for a reason.

Man, that's weird. I was just reading Mark Reads for The Golden Compass and somebody mentioned "HSQ" in the comments and I realized that might be my greatest contribution to the culture.

But then it's a little weirder because I tracked it back through TV Tropes where it alludes to it probably originating here and then it has a page about Gus. Just saying that he was the originator of TV Tropes and that he had his roots here at b.org. Which is accurate but weird.

That is weird.

I mean, I think language is fascinating and I love that you originated something here and that it propagated through the general (for very specific iterations of the term general) population. But I also think it's weird every time Gus comes up, which is more than I thought it would at this point.