Harry Potter Abridged! GOF Chapter 3

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

[Life at the Dursleys goes on as usual.]


Petunia: Alright, come and get your tasty, nutritious grapefruit for breakfast!

Dudley: But Muuuuuuuuum, this is destroying my propensity to act like a nasty, slobbish, lazy Fatty McFatfat!

Petunia: Orders from your school nurse so quit your complaining!

Harry: Cheer up, Dudley- if you can get thinner you just might turn out to be an alright guy!

[Just then, Vernon gets a letter from the Weasleys.]

Vernon: Not this shit again.... Harry, we need to talk!

[Vernon drags Harry to the living room.]

Vernon: So... yeah. Those wizard friends of yours sent me a letter: “Dear Mr. Muggle. We want to take Harry to the Quidditch World Cup. We will take Harry there NO MATTER WHAT! Signed, Mrs. Weasley. PS: If we used too many of your bliddy stamps you can pay the cost.”

Harry: Well that’s saying something considering the envelope is covered in stamps!

Vernon: Do your friends have any idea that they look positively functionally retarded?

Harry: Well, they say the same thing about you.

Vernon: So who is this Mrs. Weasley, anyway?

Harry: She’s my best friend’s mother, of course!

Vernon: Yeah, yeah. Whatever. And... what is Quidditch?

Harry: It’s a game played on broomsticks that every one of us loves even though it makes no sense.

Vernon: Honestly, the stories you bring under our roof. You’re mighty ungrateful, considering everything we’ve done with you over the years.

Harry: Yeah, well... you guys are abusive! Oh, by the way, I’ve been telling my mass-murderer godfather that.

Vernon: ...Are you serious?

Harry: Yeah, he’s not happy. So let me go to my friends the Weasleys’ or I’ll tell him about the time you beat me with all sorts of-

Vernon: We did no such thing!

Harry: He doesn’t know it!

Vernon: Aye, aye, aye... alright, go hang out with your wizard friends, then! See if we care!

Harry: Alright, then I will!

[Harry then returns to his room to gorge himself on the sweets that his friends sent him.]

Harry: [Excessively twee] Ooh, goodie! I gets my sweeties today! I shall rise above the oppression- starting with my delicious birthday cakes that my friendses have sented me! *Gurgles* By the way, these cakes really should be getting rotten or moldy by now, but whatever.

[Just then, a tiny gray owl enters the room with a letter.]

Harry: You’re Ron’s owl, aren’t you? This is interesting. It says here, that they’ll be picking me up at five on sunday. Hermione is going to stay with them as well- convenient! Oh, and Percy is boringer and stupider than ever. Why do I get the feeling every single one of these events is orchestrated to get my trio together?

[Harry writes his eager reply and sends it back with the little owl, Pig, before sending Sirius a note with Hedwig explaining everything that’s been going on.]

Comments

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

You know I agree with you totally on the whole issue of Slytherins as Evil/Gryffindors as Elect. What really makes me ragey in particular though is (as I think you've pointed out elsewhere) JKR uses pasted-on Nazi imagery as a cheap way to get us to confuse Slytherins and Death Eaters and thus hate them all, but then turns around and characterizes Slytherins as untrustworthy and threatening but weak using *classic* antisemitic stereotypes. (Which of course she also uses for the goblins....) That makes me want to break things.

[Sidenote: TBH, I am uncomfortable with the use of "whore" as a derogatory term, in any situation. But on everything else I am with you here. Dumbledore is possibly the only character in the series I truly hate.]

[urbanman1984.livejournal.com]

JKR's not alone in that respect, pasting Nazi or Soviet imagery onto things because it looks cool or creepy is a cheap tactic done by many book and film makers.

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

True. However, I've never seen it so unbelievably shallowly/thinly done as in HP. And I also haven't seen anyone else combine it so...*headdeskingly* with such explicit (but apparently unconscious?) use of antisemitic stereotypes for the same villains. Perhaps someone else has done it, but I haven't seen it.

As to the films....OMG I *could not believe* the random redshirts (only with blue shirts) standing around in Nazi-esque uniforms everywhere in DH. You know, the ones mentioned nowhere in the books and clearly not drawn from the ranks of any recognizable *Death Eaters.* I can believe JKR ok'd it, but it was just so pasteded-on-yay I wanted to hit my head on the back of the seat in front of me.

[sunnyskywalker]

Even if you leave the early books as-is, I could see a good author writing Harry as a badly damaged kid who nevertheless has a chance to grow and heal some (you know, working on imagining how others feel and realizing they're important for their own sake, learning to analyze others' actions to realize that someone disagreeing with you doesn't necessarily hate you and want to get you and might eve be right, that sort of thing). And it could go tragically, with it clearly shown how the Hogwarts experience damages him further to the point where he's dangerous (excuse me, "gallant"), or you could go the happy ending route where he does do better. Either would have been better than what we got.