Spoilers Ahead: Read with Caution
Alright, to start off my re-read obviously we start at the very beginning, a very good place to start (sorry, the Sound of Music reference just made itself). Let's dust off those Hogwarts house robes, grab your wand and glasses and get reading! Before I found that fic I was talking about in my last post for my part it had actually been a ridiculously long time since I had read Harry Potter and I'm glad I took the opportunity to re-read. From a re-reading perspective the events in the books take on a whole new meaning when you know what will happen later on and yes I may have cried just a bit thinking about Hedwig (I also looked at the Website for the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Florida and that really didn't help at all cause now I'm semi-broke but desperately want to go to Florida (and I will! Mark my words I will go).
Also, when I re-rad the books I notice a lot of flaws (not in the books themselves) but in Wizard logic and reasoning (I'll get to that later in the commentary section).
Summary:
OK, Chapter One: The Boy Who Lived. We start with the Dursley's. We are introduced to them and we know that they are perfectly normal, nothing out of the ordinary every happens to them. Vernon works at a firm called Grunnings that makes drills and he's married to his loving wife Petunia and they have an infant son Dudley who they think is an angel. He's actually quite the terror. By all accounts Vernon loves his family very much and they're a typical (ish) suburban family living in Surrey. Petunia spends her days staying home with Dudley and spies on the neighbours and Vernon works for Grunnings. From what we can glean Petunia has an estranged sister, married with a child of her own, but, as we find out later she doesn't really approve of and definitely doesn't speak to her sister or her sister's husband. However we know that Petunia's sister is a bit weird (at least by Dursley standards) and they don't want their perfect angel Dudley mixing with his cousin in case some of the weirdness rubs off.
On the day our story starts, presumably it's November 1st, or thereabouts, given what we know from later, and Vernon's day starts as normally and boringly as it usually does. He picks out a dull, boring tie for work, dons a normal, workaday suit and leaves. Then things start to get interesting. First he sees a cat sitting at the corner reading a map and later the street sign (but cats can't read can they? *Snort*) He starts seeing people in strange clothes conversing on street corners (blatantly flaunting the Statute of Secrecy I might add). He hears something about the Potter's his sister-in-laws family, maybe, Potter being a very common name after all, and goes home resolved not to mentioned it to Petunia. Later that evening, after the owl...I mean weather report they go to bed completely unconcerned.
Later that night, the cat on the garden wall transforms into Professor McGonagall and she meets with professor Dumbledore to find out the truth about the Potters and complain about her fellow witches and wizards for flaunting the Statute of Secrecy. Hagrid arrives on Sirius Black's flying motorbike with baby Harry and they leave him on the doorstep of Number 4 with a letter for his relatives.
Commentary:
I love the way that Rowling describes the Dursley's. When the story opens, it opens with "Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of Number Four Privet Drive were very proud to say they were perfectly normal, Thank You very much." Reading the rest of the paragraph she kind of makes them sound like Hobbits, they're perfectly normal, and they don't hold with nonsense, imagination or adventure. Also, I'm not going to lie, when I pictured the Dursley's the first time they turned out really funny looking. A stick of a woman with a huge neck, she uses to spy on the neighbours, a huge walrus of a man complete with moustache and a round beach ball of a son who just gets bigger as the years progress.
However, as years (and books) progress and we hear more and more about just how awful the Dursley's are to their nephew but for the fact that they are horrid to Harry they seem to love each other quite a bit. (I saw a theory that it was maybe the Horcrux in Harry's head but I don't think so, prolonged exposure for 10 years wouldn't just have made them horrible to him, it would have driven them insane, if what the locket does to Ron in Deathly Hallows is any indication, or what the diary does to Ginny in Chamber of Secrets.)
Also, I'm struck by the sheer stupidity of wizards, like, Harry has a perfectly good, maybe a little overly playful, but perfectly loving godfather. If Hagrid had left Harry with Sirius, would he have gone after Pettigrew? There's the entire possibility that he wouldn't have and Harry would have grown up loved and knowing his parents and you can't tell me that he didn't have cousins on the Potter side of things who couldn't have taken him in. Yes I get not wanting him to grow up arrogant and getting a swelled head but doesn't Dumbledore remember what happened last time a half-blood wizard child was left in an abusive situation? The Dark Lord about, and we got Severus Snape, need I say more. Minerva spends the entire day sitting on a garden wall watching the Dursley's, one day, that's all it takes for her to peg the kind of family they are and what does she do? She tells Dumbledore all she's seen, seems logical right? What does Dumbledore do? LEAVES HIM ON THEIR DOORSTEP! Like, charms to keep him safe and warm notwithstanding, it's November and he's leaving a baby on a doorstep? Of abusive relations who didn't want him in the first place with a letter a letter explaining why they had to keep him and couldn't just ship him off. He claimed it was for their protection and his but it's clear from the snippets we get as Harry's growing up that whatever Blood wards there may be to keep Wizards from finding him? Don't work. At all. An old man bowed to him once in a shop, he got waved at on a bus by a random old lady, by all accounts that probably shouldn't be happening if Dumbledore's protections worked at all.
But enough about that. Thinking back to the whispers about the Potters. When you first read it the gravity of the situation doesn't really sink in. But on the second/third whatever read through you come to the realization, The Potters, a new couple, no older than 21, with a son who's only a year old have just died and their son is now an orphan. Does anyone think about that. No, they're just happy that the Dark Lord is finally gone and they didn't think about what it cost poor little Harry, or indeed Neville, he lost his Parents that night as well, just not in precisely the same way.
But the next chapter, further along in Harry's life, will be alright right? Nothing could be more horrible for him than it already is right? Wrong.
It's Dudley's Birthday next, let's see what happens. Until next time Potterheads! In the mean time check out my poll (also, some of you may have noticed that I've started tagging my posts to make them easier to sort through, if you feel so inclined, check it out (yes I'm retroactively tagging my 96 odd blog posts so sue me))
No comments:
Post a Comment