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]

Doing something right in terms of what will sell and doing something right morally are by no means the same....

Especially given a society in which education is so poor and intellectualism so hated that attempting to apply a sustained critical reading to a text - especially a popular one - is unthinkable. What do you do when you want to sell a story in a society that is overrun with anxiety, is seeing all of their systems breaking down, is distrustful of intellectual activity/education, glorifies violence, action and unthinking recklessness, and feels the right to bully other parts of the world into submission? Give the people easily-identified scapegoats, "others" who are responsible for the chaos/bad things, whom the heroes can bully into submission and then further for vengeance's sake defeat vicareously for them through sheer unthinking "bravery" and bigger/better weapons. Let them identify with this glorious divinely-chosen hero who defeats all of his, and their, problems by getting rid of the evil Others who hate their freedom and control all the money/political influence. Classic (see: all of 20th century for references.

Really, the only vaguely original thing JKR added here was having the reader identify with the ones who actually are different (magic), versus the ordinary-folks who suffer under them; and it only works because of the witchhunt craze in history and the explicit emphasis on Secrecy and Being Threatened, on the one hand, and the splitting of the Others into Muggles and Slytherins, on the other hand. And of course for this to work Harry has to really belong to the world of heroes, the ones who are special and threatened, despite his upbringing - it can't be any sort of 'ordinary kid is pulled into another world for a time, to rescue his own world, but can/does go back.' He has to be a changeling, a hidden prince, who doesn't go back to the ordinary world because he never belonged there. (See also Hermione Granger and the breaks she does not spend with her family.)* The from-our-POV-ordinary world IS the otherworld, and vice-versa. Except the morals didn't get flipped when the story went through the funhouse mirror; they are just as ugly as they are in the original version.

*Someone - I think terri, or mary? - has an essay on the Otherworld and HP, possibly on Snapedom.

[dungeonwriter.livejournal.com]

Can I just bow in awe of the awesome in this post?

It's just...right.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Regarding the Otherworld--yes, that was me, inspired by Maryj_59 (and also Dan Hemmon's excellent essay of the HP series bing a "Nildungsroman").

It's not on Snapedom, because it wasn't directely Snape-related. Nowadays I'd post non-Snape-specifice meta here, but back then it was just on my personal lj.

Here's a link, if anyone's interested... Or if you go to my lj, tag for Harry Potter meta, and go back to 2009....

http://terri-testing.livejournal.com/23772.html#cutid1

[sunnyskywalker]

Or learn to belong to both worlds, with hope that someday there can be more communication and understanding between them. Nope, can't have that. He must fit into a box: wizard or Muggle? You can't have personal and cultural ties to both, because then we'd have to think about identity and that's hard.