Philosopher's Stone Chapter Fourteen

[urbanman1984.livejournal.com]

PS Chapter Fourteen

*Enter Norberta the Norwegian Ridgeback!  I wonder how the characters involved in her story arc remember her.  They seem to have forgotten all about it by the next chapter and yet Harry can remember her in Order of the Phoenix.

 

*Voldemort’s steadily draining Quirrell’s life force.  It would be a hideous thought, just sharing a dormitory with him, let alone a body.  Personally I would struggle to accommodate even the Bowdlerised Voldemort in A Very Potter Musical.  

 

*Snape sweeping around in a bad temper is a fixture of the first six books.  He was always a reliable antagonist.  One of the many many things wrong with Deathly Hallows is that Snape is not in the ever present antagonistic role he had always occupied previously  :\

 

*I wonder what Quirrell thinks of Harry and Ron’s efforts to cheer him up?

 

*It’s pretty obvious Hermione needs all the revision time she can get.  She has to waste much of it with that compulsive chart and colour code making, just like Rimmer on Red Dwarf.

 

*In the first year, failing the exams mean removal from Hogwarts, but not subsequently *shrugs*

 

*I wonder what kind of research Hagrid had to do to breed the Blast Ended Skrewts *shudder* Must have been in the Restricted Section.

 

*Is Hagrid taking the egg for a walk or what?

 

*Hagrid’s one to admonish Ron about discretion and keeping Fumblewhore’s secrets.

 

*At this point Ron is the one to supply information about the wider magical world – he is the one who would realistically know about it.  But just wait till Hermione becomes a Mary Sue and Ron is downgraded *retch*

 

*I wonder what the point of keeping dragons a secret is?  Oh well, this series was never strong on logic.

 

*Hermione’s actually better at getting information from Hagrid than Voldemort and Quirrell both were.  She doesn’t even need to get him drunk.  Does she remind Hagrid of a giantess or some kind of monster making him sentimental?

 

*Voldemort doesn’t know how to get past Cerberus... what a wally!

 

*Are the chickens at Hogwarts entirely managed by Hagrid?  He must steal a good number.

 

*Malfoy’s eavesdropping!  His ensuing course of action will be puzzling.

 

*Norberta’s description sounds like she is aerodynamic.  Naturally her wings would have to be very much larger than her body.  Still I always wondered how bumblebees fly, do they look aerodynamic? ;)

 

*Go on Norberta bite him!

 

*Hagrid considers himself to be the dragon’s surrogate mother.  JKR explained that since he is part monster he has a pathological fixation with owning monsters that could potentially kill him.  The Blast Ended Skrewts were a very much more sinister manifestation of his desire to enact his own unnatural conception.  A distinctly Neo-Nazi or KKKlanish type of concept, JKR!

 

*Malfoy’s seen the dragon and now he is going to ... do nothing?  Is this practice for when he is a Death Eater?  They do a lot of nothing.

 

*It would be great if Norbert could just be left alone to grow larger than Hagrid.  Perhaps she could finally get rid of the silly old monster.

 

*Perhaps it is better that Ron was bitten rather than burned.  If we applied human standards to Hagrid then he would seem quite callous here, but he genuinely is not right in the head, JKR actually intends it in his case.

 

*I wonder how much correspondence Ron had with his brothers.  Harry is so self-centred that he never notices such things.

 

*There is a pressing need to get rid of Malfoy even though he has done absolutely nothing.

 

*Okay why is Ron lending Malfoy books at all?  There is no way at all I would have lent one to any boy I was on bad terms with when I was eleven, whatever the circumstance.

 

*Did Malfoy get a free pass to the hospital wing, because Lucius was still a school governor?

 

*Hagrid’s not so stupid – he’s set the kids the task of taking the dragon to the top of the tower even though he’s the one entitled to roam the grounds at night.  At least it saves him the exertion!

 

*So was Malfoy trying to catch them in the act or did he just want to see the dragon...?

 

*Hermione still works really hard to keep in Harry’s good books this year, including adopting all his feuds as her own. 

 

*Charlie’s friends were a cheery lot, but they are just blurs to Harry.

 

*And they left the invisibility cloak at the top of the tower, but that’s not the stupidest thing to happen in the series by a very long way.

Comments

[aasaylva.livejournal.com]

I wonder what Quirrell thinks of Harry and Ron’s efforts to cheer him up?
But notice how , in PS, Harry is still some sort of normal, empathic boy: He realizes Quirell is unhappy and tries to make him feel liked or something along those lines. It's hard to imagine him doing something similar in, say OotP or further down the road.

*Hermione’s actually better at getting information from Hagrid than Voldemort and Quirrell both were. She doesn’t even need to get him drunk. Does she remind Hagrid of a giantess or some kind of monster making him sentimental?
Oh come on, you know it's her budding feminine wiles which allow her to manipulate a male!


*Hagrid considers himself to be the dragon’s surrogate mother. JKR explained that since he is part monster he has a pathological fixation with owning monsters that could potentially kill him.
OMG, is that true? And how on earth would such a weird complex come into existence? It sounds like illogical illogic on crack.


*Malfoy’s seen the dragon and now he is going to ... do nothing? Is this practice for when he is a Death Eater? They do a lot of nothing.
Bwahaha - and another case of IOIAGDI: in DH, Harry will be practicing the good kind of not doing anything.

[sunnyskywalker]

Well, giants are supposed to be brutal monsters, so maybe Hagrid's unconscious reasoning is something like, "I'm not a monster, just misunderstood, so they are too!" Or, "If I can prove they're okay/make them okay, it proves I'm okay." I imagine it was pretty awful for him after he was expelled, too, staying on campus where kids could point and whisper about how they hear he had a monster that killed someone, figures, freak like him... And yet he also had reasons to feel grateful for this situation, which has got to twist up things in your head even more... It's not surprising he got some kind of complex.

[aasaylva.livejournal.com]

Your interpretation would make sense, but as far as I can see, that doesn't follow from Rowling's citation at all. Nor does it explain the strange gender shift - why not feel like Norberta's daddy?

[sunnyskywalker]

I'm taking the loosest possible interpretation (monsters who can kill him = monsters like him/his mom?), because that's about the best you can usually do with JKR. The best I can figure for why he's mommy rather than daddy is he's identifying with his own giant monster mommy, or making her what he wished she had been, or something like that. Not that it will ever entirely make sense.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Hermione and Hagrid: In 4 years Hagrid's half-brother will develop a mini-crush on her. Maybe she's attractive to the giant-kind.

Did Rowling literally refer to Hagrid as a monster? Sounds like another case of her adopting the supposedly evil prejudices of her world and justifying them - if she did.

[urbanman1984.livejournal.com]

Hagrid no, but the giants yes, it is even stated in the text that Grawp is a monster. So the text states that Hagrid is biologically half-monster.

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

"*Hagrid considers himself to be the dragon’s surrogate mother. JKR explained that since he is part monster he has a pathological fixation with owning monsters that could potentially kill him.
OMG, is that true? And how on earth would such a weird complex come into existence? It sounds like illogical illogic on crack."

Insane Troll Logic?