I believe that the quote “expectations are scarcely ever fulfilled in truly literary texts” is something that can be applied to the first two books of the Harry Potter series. J.K Rowling does a nice job of tricking the reader to expect things in her novel and when the novels end you find out that your original expectations are false. As some of my classmates have already mentioned, I expected that Professor Snape was the most obvious character that was causing all of the problems at Hogwarts. I wasn't really convinced though that Snape was helping Voldemort and messing with Harry because in mystery books the killer is rarely the character that everyone expects is the killer. So I had my doubts about Snape, but I thought the most convincing instance of red herring was during the quidditch when Harry's broomstick was bewitched and Hermione believed Snape was the culprit. It wasn't until the end of the novel that Harry found out Snape was trying to help Harry not hurt him. In the second novel I thought that Harry was the heir of Slytherin and that Malfoy opened the Chamber of Secrets, but then we find out Jenny opens the chamber. It's important for expectations to fail because it keeps the reader interested in the books especially when it comes to series. If the reader was able to figure out what was going on in the books it wouldn't be interesting to keep reading the books in the rest of the series because the books are predictable. This is my first time reading the entire series and I am excited to read them and so far I have really enjoyed them, but I went into reading the books expecting them to be exactly like the movies and I am glad that my expectations were false because the books are ten times better then the movies.
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