Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince VHS

My name is Regina and I've been a fan of Harry Potter since Order of The Phoenix. I've only read Sorcerers Stone, Chamber of Secrets, and the Goblet of Fire. Unfortunately, my poor reading abilities affected my experience reading Harry Potter and other books in general. So that is why I mainly resided with watching the movies. Chamber of Secrets is my most favorite HP movie following Goblet of Fire. However, this post is not about me and my past HP obsession, it is about something Harry Potter related I saw that changed my view on a specific movie. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.
When I was living with my grandparents, we couldn't afford much. We had hit the early 2010's and were still watching VHS tapes on old dingy TV's. It wasn't the best experience, but at least there was some form of entertainment. A family member I know remember once gave me The Chamber of Secrets on VHS for my 7th birthday and I was so ecstatic to have it. I watched it so much that the tape broke on me and it took a while to get some more tapes. 
When my 12th birthday hit, my grandma took me to Goodwill, literally the only store we could afford to go to, for my early birthday shopping. I immediately ran over to the VHS/Books section to see if there were any HP related things in the aisle. I dug through many tapes when I came across one that obviously caught my eye. It wasn't very appealing to any typical person, but to me, it was some forbidden treasure of some sort. There, sat a black VHS tape with a Sony label and in blue marker wrote "HARRYPOTTER HBP". The handwriting was pretty sloppy, but I could still tell what it said. I picked it up and examined it. there wasn't much about it, just a black Sony tape that lacked a proper case with Harry Potter written on it. I held the tape under my arm while I resumed looking through the lot of tapes, hoping to find some other interesting gem. Perhaps another copy of Chamber of Secrets.
My grandma caught me off guard when she told me we had to go. I held the black tape in my hand along with a few T-shirts and we checked out the things I picked out and left. On the way home, I showed my grandma the tape and she just looked blankly at it before nonchalantly telling me, "It's a bootleg tape, don't watch it. It might have some inappropriate content on it." I ignored what my grandma said and kept the tape in my mind until we arrived home and I could finally play it. 
We were home in less than 5 minutes and I rushed to my bedroom and popped the VHS in grinning hard. I never had the chance to watch Half Blood Prince when it came out a year ago and my grandparents didn't want me to go and view the movie in the theaters when it premiered. It took up to 3 minutes for the tape to load, which happened every once in a while, but not often. The tape finally started with a few seconds of static. Come to find out, the tape was already played, it was play the end credits. There was no sound and the credits went down extremely fast. So fast that a person wouldn't be able to read anything in the credits on first look. I rewind the tape and as it was rewinding, I went downstairs to grab some crackers.
A few minutes went by, rather quick and the movie was ready for me to watch. I even turned off my lights for better viewing experience. The movie starts and I find nothing strange. Thinking of it now, Hermione and Harry's voice had some type of foreign accent, Asian like accents that I somehow didn't notice when I saw the tape. Draco's eyes weren't a light blue as they usually were. Instead, they were very dark and his eyes were shaking. The movie seemed to be going pretty normal. I didn't find anything unsettling about the tape so far. 
At least an hour goes by and I dosed off from being bored. To be honest, the movie wasn't all that fun to watch as I had though prior to watching it, but it wasn't a bad movie overall. It just didn't fit my movie standards. I could have fallen asleep if only the TV didn't blare loud static in my ears. It might have been around 11pm and my grandma and grandpa had to have been sleeping at this time. All the lights off and crickets chirping in the night. Things might have been that way if static didn't blast my eardrums and cause me to jolt up in my bean bag chair. I fixed my eyes on the TV and the static was still playing, now in lower volume. However, there was no sign of static of deterioration shown on the tape. The movie was barely audible, although some words could be heard. It was the scene where Harry confronts Katie Bell as she looks past Harry at presumably Draco. He appears to look nervous and sweaty and he turns away and runs to the bathroom. Katie walks off when Harry turns around and nearly notices Draco leaving the Great Hall. The camera abruptly cuts to Draco in the bathroom. A part of the scene was obviously cut because in the movie as we know it, Draco starts crying while looking into the mirror until Harry confronts him, but the one on the tape, Draco stares into the mirror as Harry says his line and he just stays in place, not even turning to look at Harry. This is where things start to really get unnerving.
Harry sounds to be chanting something in reverse. It sounded like he was saying something along the lines of, "I'm sorry. Don't fear." Draco's eyes start turning darker until they are now seen as bloodshot eyes. His small red pupils were visibly shaking. I was terrified at what I was seeing. Draco was my favorite character and seeing his unsettling appearance made me squeamish. Draco looked to be mouthing out some words, but I could't read lips so I wasn't sure what he was saying. Thinking about it, he could of been repeating a curse. Draco spun towards Harry, attempting to strike him. Harry struck back, hitting Malfoy in his leg. He tumbled backwards and started groaning in pain. Harry slowly walk towards Draco, whom was rolling on the ground still groaning over his leg and pointed his wand at Draco smirking. Something in me knew what Harry was going to do to Draco. My eyes started watering, but no tears yet roll down my eyes. I saw in a previous scene that Harry had a book opened on a page with the Sectumsempra spell. I gazed strongly at the TV, hoping the worse wouldn't happen. 
Harry stared at Draco, still smirking. This is when I noticed Harry's appearance. His glasses were gone, around his eyes were so dark that it looked like he had no eyes. His nose had a dark red bruising on it. After a couple seconds of white noise and Harry staring as Draco is crying, he does it. Harry shouts out "SECTUMSEMPRA" in a harsh slicing motion to the right. Draco was not shown, but was heard screaming. His screams were echoing. I thought to myself, "What the hell am I watching? This is horrifying!" I still gazed into the screen in horror. The sound of blood flowing was present and made me more squeamish than ever. Harry stood in place, not moving a muscle until Draco for sure, was dead.
The shot instantly cut to Draco on the ground. He was all bloodied and his face were full of tears. He even had blood flowing from the side of his mouth and began violently choking on it. It stayed on Draco dying for minutes. It seems like forever it was on the screen. I had tears running down my face, I cried silently as I watched. It was so painful and disheartening to watch. I felt my chest hurt as I saw it. I tried to eject the tape, but my crap VCR didn't do anything. I pressed the power button in attempt to turn it off and nothing worked. I looked up at the screen and to my horror, it was Draco. He laid motionless on the ground, pale. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It seemed incredible. Harry was seen walking out of the bathroom when he stopped in his tracks. Faint footsteps were heard and sure enough, it was non other than Draco's footsteps. 
The shot cut to Harry, and to his right, there Draco was. He had cuts, scars, and bruises with blood still pouring out of him. Harry had a gaunt face expression as he stood as still as possible. He looked scared, he couldn't move out of fear. Draco creepily walked behind Harry while he spoke in a slurred voice that obviously wasn't his. From what I remember is that he said something along the lines of, "Why? Why did you do this to me? I did nothing. I have nothing to do with this. Harry, you are going to regret this.... hehehehehehe" Draco said this in the most menacing way possible. I was having cold sweats and felt like I was about to faint. 
Just as things seemed to be getting started, the tape flew out the VCR and my TV cut to static.
Category:Harry Potter