Philosopher's Stone Chapter Six
Jul. 25th, 2010 02:39 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Philosopher’s Stone Chapter Six
*Harry does some reading of text books for the first time. It is also the last time he does so with any kind of eagerness.
*Dud’s tail has got to be removed my non-magical means since Hagrid couldn’t be bothered to get rid of it. This is another way the Dursleys are treated differently to other muggles. Not only are they spared mind wipes, but they are given constant reminders of the existence of the magical world they would much rather forget.
*JKR had forgotten the layout of King’s Cross Station. The sign for platform 9 ¾ has been placed on a wall a short distance away from the other platforms as its location in the book is totally inconsistent with the way the real platforms are positioned. They have also bolted half a trolley to the same wall :p Makes you think you are really in the Potterverse.
*Naturally Hagrid cannot be relied on even for the simplest thing.
*The conversation Molly is having with her kids is strange. Surely she can’t have forgotten that the Hogwart’s Express leaves from platform 9 ¾ seeing as she was there the previous summer...? Perhaps she is as innumerate as JKR.
*What must it be like to have twin sons who don’t have distinct personalities? Molly must really have trouble telling them apart.
*Ron is the quintessential sidekick. It is readily apparent that he will never be the sex magnet that Malfoy will become.
*The Twins are uncharacteristically helpful in assisting Harry with the trunk. Perhaps they only become really horrible as the series develops.
*Ron immediately greases up to Harry on the grounds of his being Harry Potter. Just imagine how differently the series would have progressed if it had been Ron and not Draco who was unaware that Harry was the Boy Who Lived on first meeting him.
*Oh don’t worry Ron, in my estimation you will at least compare favourably to Fred and George in the end.
*It clearly must be a passive-aggressive gesture on Molly’s part to give Ron Charlie’s old wand.
*Why is Ron shocked that Harry can say Voldemort’s title? Surely he realises that Harry was just that awesome, even from birth?
*Again, those horrible sandwiches must also be a sign of Molly’s displeasure. She really ought to get over it. She has had her Mary Sue (to be) daughter now after all, can’t she give Ron a break for being born a boy and a stereotypical sidekick?
*Chocolate Frog cards remind me of collectable football player stickers. And they are equally dull. Still, they are the most advanced children’s recreation the magical community seems to have.
*It’s Dumblesnore. I wonder how Harry would react to the card if he had been introduced to the magical community by the Malfoys. I began an AU fanfic on that topic as a matter of fact.
*Great idea, the every flavour beans including flavours that are unpalatable. I suppose the horrible flavours must be for Gryffindors to dare each other to eat them.
*Here’s Neville, the might have been. Push off Neville, Harry Potter’s the centre of this universe.
*Ron’s spell for turning Scabbers yellow does not sound remotely like any other incantation we read in the series. I suppose the fact that Ron doesn’t realise it is a fake is an indication that he is not all that bright?
*I can imagine that I would be very much more provoked by Hermione rudely butting in and insulting me than I would have been by Draco in Diagon Alley. And surely any gruesome girl must be much more irritating by very definition than a kid who is just a bit snobbish but not actually provoking in any way? I suppose we have to infer that Draco went wrong by reminding Harry of Dud at the beginning and the rest is just in the script.
*I suppose Ron might have unwittingly strengthened Harry’s prejudice against Slytherin house had that ship not already sailed.
*It must’ve been a powerful dark wizard to get round Gringotts? Arthur seriously overestimates Gringotts security in that case.
*Ron explains the rules of Quidditch to Harry. The ensuing conversation really ought to have unfolded like the very funny excerpt from a fan fiction that another member posted on my commentary to the previous chapter. What a joke the position of Seeker makes of the entire sport!
*Enter Malfoy again. Too late Malfoy, you already reminded Harry of Dud. And you didn’t introduce him to the magical world or buy him his first birthday present so his views are set in stone. It’s no good pointing out that Hagrid is riffraff or insulting the Weasleys now.
*JKR couldn’t be bothered to write out this entire vignette in a logical fashion, so Wormtail bites Goyle and then Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle just evaporate. It is odd as JKR could not have known when writing this that her work would be made into a video game which is a medium where this kind of thing can happen.
*Oh come on can’t you see Hermione’s angling for a fight much more than Malfoy was?
*Hagrid’s in charge of the entry ceremony to Hogwarts. Whose great idea was that...?
*It is ominous to be thrust into the same boat as both Neville and Hermione.
*We’re at Hogwarts!
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Re: Oh dear, money
Date: 2010-07-27 10:08 pm (UTC)We could have someone over for a few days but not for a whole summer. A week would have been a stretch. You're likening it to eating out and covering the shortage elsewhere - I doubt if you're eating out so regularly that you eat nothing but Ramen at home. That would be the result of a summer-long visitor. There's also a difference between going out occasionally with the people from work or church and covering elsewhere and having those people eating, sleeping and using the utilities in your home.
If I were feeling generous I would suggest that the potential shortages at the Weasley abode were covered by other interested parties such as Dumbledore, McGonagall, maybe a little something from the Ministry, and perhaps a legacy stipend from the Potter vault meant for the Wizarding folks who cared for their son in case of an emergency. It might even have been a financial decision on the Weasleys' part - they would get more in food than they would expend by having Harry there.
If I was feeling less generous but still not wholly miserly I would suggest that, in the beginning, Rowling imagined she could conjure food up via wand as we see Molly doing with her sauce but figured out it didn't work with the story as the kids matured and so had to scrap it.
Re: Oh dear, money
Date: 2010-07-28 03:08 am (UTC)As for the poverty of the Weasleys; I think that Arthur probably makes a wage that would support a family of 4 or 5 in comfort. However, he and Molly have had a family of 9 until shortly before we met them. If Charley finished his NEWT studies (rather than leaving school to take a job in Romania before finishing), then he was only just out of the house the year Harry and Ron started Hogwarts, and Bill had only been gone for two years.
There is a practical limit to how much magic one can remember all the time. Molly has specialized in cooking and cleaning charms, so the Burrow is clean (if probably untidy) and the family eats well, but she doesn't seem to know any sewing or tailoring charms -- which we know must exist, so the kids wear 2nd-hand clothing, and it isn't in the best of condition.
As to the hand-down wand, given that it already had the unicorn hair poking out of it on the first trip up to Hogwarts, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a hand-down from an uncle or other relative when Charlie got it, and that he bought himself a new one when he got the job at the Dragon reserve, and passed the old one down to Ron, then.
Re: Oh dear, money
Date: 2010-07-28 03:46 am (UTC)As for the poverty of the Weasleys; I think that Arthur probably makes a wage that would support a family of 4 or 5 in comfort. However, he and Molly have had a family of 9 until shortly before we met them.
Putting this together with what Robina was discussing, if the Weasleys are lately able to afford more with two sons out of the house, it could still be habit to think and, therefore, act poor. They might also still be paying down debt incurred while they had too many kids around. They're shown at one point to have very little in their vault (didn't they also have a very little vault?) so they may be playing catch-up as well as buy-down.
One disconnect with the Weasleys' poverty is Harry's impressions, for me. He's been in the habit of wearing ill-fitting hand-me-downs so he has no real room to make this sort of comparison but he does, the same as he does in "The Prince's Tale" about young Snape's ill-fitting smock. To me, this should have sparked some sort of sympathetic feelings in Harry, both with Snape's smock and Ron's moth-ball-smelling dress robes but, it doesn't that I recall. IMO, and of course this is subjective, Harry should have had more of a 'hey, that was me at the Dursleys!' sort of reaction, which I never did see in him.
Re: Oh dear, money
Date: 2010-07-28 04:57 am (UTC)And, for that matter, even though they do still *talk* poor, by the time Ron gets a Prefect badge they can afford to buy him a broom. And brooms do not come cheap.
For that matter, the twins have matched Cleansweeps, and I'm reasonably certain that they got those as a reward for making the team. (Bill was out of school and working by then, so he may have contributed something toward them.)
But, yeah, I suspect that they probably had to play catch-up for a couple of years at least. And, yes, Arthur did allow himself to be dead-ended rather than to keep on moving up the ladder inside the Ministry. I suspect that Head of Misues of Muggle Artifacts was a minor promotion when he got it, but it rapidly turned into his "dream job" and he wasn't budging, even though he probably could have moved up sooner. He doesn't lack for contacts, even if he wasn't one of Slughorn's little stars.
Yeah, Harry's lack of empathy or curious aphasia about his own "hard times" is a major clanker.
Re: Oh dear, money
Date: 2010-07-28 07:49 am (UTC)Sluggy. I think his club opened the first doors - it would be up to the club member to carry on after that. I expect that part of the club, too, was teaching general methods on doing that. People can learn to network and to make friends even without Slughorn's guidance and Arthur is amiable. I can see most people liking him while only a few would get fed up with his laid-back attitude. I was just thinking that Crouch may be one of those people who assume that, if someone isn't visibly on fire for their job, they think they're not interested and treat them accordingly.
Re: Oh dear, money
Date: 2010-07-30 08:04 am (UTC)Aphasia is the "loss of ability to understand or express speech, caused by brain damage." Hmmm. Perhaps Voldemort did more than just implant an accidental horcrux into baby Harry's head. Brain damage would explain a lot about Harry that otherwise doesn't make sense. :D
Re: Oh dear, money
Date: 2010-07-30 07:56 am (UTC)I don't remember the scene in PS/SS, but having just skimmed DH again, it's clear from at least chapter 28 onward that Harry is going into shell shock and starting to dissociate. There's a reference to him consciously choosing to put his emotions aside to deal with later, and many references to his feeling numb, or or feeling like the people and events around him aren't real. Those are all symptoms of dissociation, and people in that state are largely incapable of empathy. He probably needed treatment for PTSD when the war was over. By contrast, in SWM, Harry does empathize with Snape's distress and humiliation.
This just occurred to me, but why do Ron's robes smell like mothballs, anyway? Even those dimwitted Muggles know that, if you're taking clothes out of storage, you should let them air out for several days before wearing them. Have those superior wizards not figured that out yet? Even after sending five other kids to school before this? And why do wizards need mothballs? Shouldn't they use some kind of charm instead, with a name like Insectus Preventus?
Re: Oh dear, money
Date: 2010-07-30 11:10 am (UTC)Re: Oh dear, money
Date: 2010-07-30 01:58 pm (UTC)Re: Oh dear, memory
Date: 2010-07-30 09:05 pm (UTC)Re: Oh dear, memory
Date: 2010-07-31 05:30 am (UTC)Maybe because he's so traumatized by what he found out about his loved ones--and his enemy? It's clear he was ecstatic about seeing his dad, as well as Sirius and Remus. Then he found out Dumbledore and Remus had lied to him while that awful Snape had been telling the truth all along: James really was a POS (not POA ; )) and thug. Even worse, he had to have backup for his bullying, which made him a coward as well. So much for Gryffindor courage! He was just like Dudley! Aaaaaggggghhhhh!!!!! While Harry was absorbing that, he found himself feeling sorry for Snape, which he never expected. Then along came Harry's mom to rescue Snape, and she turned out to be a better man than any of the boys.
What did his mom do after that? She made fun of Snape's gray underwear--which was just like Harry's. Sure, he called her a bad name first, but she still chose a particularly intimate way to hit back. It's not as if she called him a "greasy git," like everybody else, and told him to wash his hair instead of his underwear. She used the one insult that applied to both Severus and her son. Maybe Harry was reeling too much from all these shocks to consciously absorb that last, ugly little detail.
Re: Oh dear, memory
Date: 2010-07-31 05:58 am (UTC)However, from the shocking mess of the Prince's Tale, we learn that Snape was in fact her childhood friend, so it indicates she was a pretty nasty person. She most likely would not have intervened at all if the Marauders had been picking on anyone else.
Re: Oh dear, memory
Date: 2010-07-31 02:48 pm (UTC)I think, in this case and in the others we've discussed, Rowling didn't think things through. She has stated that she never re-reads and it appears she tosses things in just to ramp up the moment - Petunia blanching those clothes, for instance, purposely shaming Harry. There's no association in Harry because the incident meant nothing to the author other than to make the Dursleys into petty monsters yet again. There's no real link between these incidents and Harry's actual life in the Potterverse, they're just sympathy grabbers.
Re: Oh dear, money
Date: 2010-07-31 04:40 am (UTC)He chose to put them aside in that one particular instance. The impression I got from the other mentions was that he was just so worn out from being on the run, being at war, and probably malnutrition (since they didn't eat well on the endless camping trip) that the emotional numbing happened of its own volition in the other cases. That's particularly true of his shock after he found out he'd been set up to die.
You're correct he's not a warm and fuzzy guy, though. IIRC, most of the series characters are rather cold.