PS Chapter Two

[hafl.livejournal.com]

- The manner in which Dursleys abuse Harry is so over the top, it is hard to take seriously.

- Harry can't understand why would Dudley want to get a bicycle, since he apparently hates sports and is fat. Clearly, Dudley is morally deficient.

- Harry's glasses are held together only by Scotch tape, because Dudley punches him into nose so often. In the previous paragraph, it was stated that Harry is so fast, Dudley can't often catch him. These two sentences don't mesh together well.

- Not only is Harry not afraid of spiders, but also likes his scar. A true Gryffindor.

- Dudley is so fat he is like a pig. Hahaha, fat people are pathetic. Unless they're matronly of course.

- Okay, Dudley has no trouble while counting his gifts one by one, but when he has to add two at once, he is suddenly having problems?

- Harry find it hard to feel sorry that Mrs. Figg has broken her leg. The power of love at work, ladies and gentlemen.

- Petunia "looking furiously at Harry as though he'd planned this" is actually pretty interesting. If I remember Deathly Hallows correctly, Snape had some measure of control over his magic even before he entered Hogwarts and Petunia knew about it. As far as she knows, Harry may have caused Mrs. Figg to break her leg.

- Dudley is so spoiled he knows he only needs to pretend to cry to get all he wants.

- Again, Vernon warns Harry about doing anything weird. This and all the accounts of Harry's mishaps really reinforces the idea that the Dursleys are scared of Harry and think he is in control of his magic.

- Now that's Harry's school is mentioned, how come nobody noticed him being abused by the Dursleys? I don't mean classmates, I mean the school administration. They should know that both Harry and Dudley have the same address and they should know that Dursleys are Harry's legal guardians. Why didn't anyone the teachers notice that Harry's probably malnourished, wears only old clothes and his glasses are constantly getting broken, while Dudley's fat and owns only new things? I don't know that much about British educational system, especially in the eighties, but it probably wasn't that bad.

- In the zoo, Harry feels compassionate towards the snake. At this point, he's still a sympathetic kid.

- Now, after the snake incident, Piers claims that Harry was talking to the snake. Okay, but Parseltongue is apparently just hissing. So is Piers saying that Harry was talking just a simplification to avoid the revelation that Parseltongue is hissing? Or, if Harry was using human speech, why did the snake understand him?

- The Dursleys reaction is actually completely understandable. From their point of view, Harry was using is magic and from all the incidents that were mentioned, this one is the only one, where Dursleys could reasonably think that Harry was trying to attack them.

- And at the end of the chapter, we are again reminded that Harry is lonely and abused and that there's something mysterious about him.

Comments

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

People mistreat people based on difference all the time. One would hope they wouldn't do it to their children, but I can easily believe this could happen.

mentally or physically challenged, autistic

Children like this were often seen as changelings, and tortured in the hope of persuading the fairies to give the real child back. This was going on in some places in the 19th century. These days, autism, mentally and physically challengedness, albinism, etc are understood, but thanks to wizarding seclusion, Potterverse magic isn't, and the sort of people who would torture their "changeling" children might well do the same (or at least, they would if their fear of their children outweighed their fear of getting caught now that we have better laws against this sort of thing).

JKR's world is just like our own, except for the fact that magical children happen. They are born every year, everywhere around the planet. It's not unlikely that in such world, most people would hear rumors about these "special" children (Especially since it's so disturbing and creepy. ;)), even though they might dismiss them as urban legends – that is, before they have a specimen of their own.

Again, people knew that some children were different. They explained this as them being changelings. If there were rumours of children with strange powers (which is quite likely - the MoM can't memory-wipe everyone who may have seen something), some people would fall back on the changeling explanation (or demons, or aliens, or whatever). Of course, the whole way the wizarding world works is essentially the changeling mechanism, except that they don't give anything back.

In this case, they would probably try to learn more, rather than hurt the kid.

Not everyone would be so calm about their children having unexplained supernatural powers.

After all, even though JKR usually insists that Muggles are basically animals (while conveniently forgetting that she is one of us, too), she doesn't give too many instances of Muggles actually abusing wizarding kids.

Oh yes, but I think that's because she marginalises everything to do with the Muggle world (as you say, basically animals). Other than demonstrating how nice the heroes are and how horrible the DEs are, whether or not someone's Muggle-born doesn't really differentiate them at all from their fellows, and she hasn't thought about the Muggle perspective on thing at all, except to mock the Dursleys' parochialism (which though reprehensible, would quite likely be fairly common - Petunia can't be the only person who'd think magic freakish).

All the talk about {any aspect of her world} is just another way to force the reader to pity our poor Harry suffering in a cold, cruel world/marvel at Harry's courage and compassion. :p

Fixed that for you. :p

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

This is all very interesting because it's reminding me of a fanfiction backstory I wrote for a character (not Harry Potter). In my story, the character's mother treated him horribly when he was little (never let him play with any other children or go to school, kept him locked up in the house, sometimes forgot his own name) just because he was albino. The thing is, I was sure there were people like that in real life (though I went out of my way to make the mother appear as stupid as possible, just incase- she thinks albinism is contagious and you can have a premature birth just by reading about one in the newspaper).