PS Chapter Three

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

*After the boa constrictor incident, Harry’s locked in the cupboard until after summer starts. Err…did he not have to go to school?

*Dudley’s broken all of his new things and run down Mrs Figg on his racing bike—well, at least now we see why Dudley wanted one.

*If Mrs Figg was a regular old lady instead of a Squib secret agent, can you imagine how much she’d hate both these boys?

*Harry’s glad school is over, so I guess he was really just grounded, not locked in a cupboard. Still, remember—even though Harry hates being at home school sucks just as much. Only Magic school is a proper escape from this house.

*More big stupid bullies who come over every day. I’m going to guess that friends like these are no friends at all. Vernon’s probably paying them to be friends with Dudley. Either that or they’re just angling for a job at the drill factory.

* Harry spends most of his time wandering out of the house, far from any blood protection the house might provide, and once again making Dumbledore’s plan a bit questionable.

*Also making it a bit more suspicious he has no friends.

*This chapter gives us our first taste of Harry’s devastating wit, which Dudley is too stupid to work out. Just as well. If he could work it out he’d have to be struck speechless by it.

*Mrs Figg redeems herself slightly before Harry’s escape to Hogwarts. She lays off on the cat love a bit and gives him cake. Though it’s not good cake. Tastes stale. Go make Harry a chicken pot pie, bitch!

*Dudley tries on his new, ridiculous Smeltings uniform. God, there’s nothing more embarrassing than people with pretensions to upper class tradition when their names aren’t even down for Hogwarts.

*Harry can’t speak, it’s so hard to keep from laughing at Dudley’s knickerbockers and boater. Harry ought to get all the laughs about uniforms he can now before he slips into his Hogwarts dress and squashed elf hat ensemble.

*At least he didn’t have to wear those horrid grey clothes Aunt Petunia dyed for him. That might have looked silly!

*Vernon tells Harry to get the mail, and Harry says to "Make Dudley get it." Poor thing, so cowed and downtrodden.

*Harry receives his first ever letter. It’s addressed to the cupboard under the stairs, in case you wondered if Dumbledore wasn’t aware of how Harry was treated. Too bad it wasn’t addressed to "The Child Nobody Loves at 4 Privet Drive."

*Harry rather stupidly takes the letter to the table, thus dooming the audience to pages and pages of tedious letter hijinx. This is the section of the book that made me almost put it down on my first read.

*Wonder why Petunia and Vernon are surprised at Harry’s letter. Surely Petunia had no illusions about Harry not going to Hogwarts? I’d imagine she’d have been on the lookout for letters for weeks.

*Dudley and Harry squabble like actual brothers in this scene. ♥

*Petunia can’t believe there’s Wizards watching the house—apparently for all her anti-Wizard prejudice Petunia gives the bastards too much credit. They are watching the house!

*She was probably lulled into a false sense of security by thinking if the house was being watched they wouldn’t let her abuse the small child inside it. But no, they just need the kid alive. Peripheral abuse is fine.

*You know, the spiders in Harry’s cupboard are a nice touch but kind of indicate nobody lives there.

*To review, a friendly letter from Hogwarts simply calling Harry to attend is enough to get Vernon to give him a bedroom. So much for all the claims that Wizards couldn’t possibly step in to help Harry for fear it would cause the abuse to escalate.

*I have a hard time believing that Petunia allows Dudley to have a second bedroom full of broken things. She doesn’t exactly seem like the "broken televisions kept around for years" type.

*The shelves are also full of untouched books. Because Dudley’s stupid. Not like Harry, who reads one book.

*One might think a boy in Harry’s position might have become a big reader for the imaginative escape, but remember he’s only got access to Muggle books, and they must suck.

*Dudley’s thrown his tortoise through the greenhouse roof in anger. It’s really a shame he’s not magical. He’s got such the talent for animal abuse.

*In case you were ready to stop feeling sorry for Harry, btw, he’s been given the smallest bedroom, which sucks. I, too, suffered the pain of having the smallest bedroom in the house growing up. You don’t get over that sort of thing easily.

*Dudley goes down in my estimation by once again announcing the arrival of the arrival of the Hogwarts letter instead of just reading the damn thing.

*And then Harry attacked Vernon…wait, what? Harry’s got Vernon in a headlock! That’s our boy!

*…"in which everyone got hit a lot by the Smelting stick" still makes me laugh.

*Harry’s got a plan to make sure the next letter gets through. Uh-oh. We might never get this letter.

*And Vernon heads off Harry’s master plan. Which is funny, but not quite as funny as it would have been if Harry had snuck downstairs to find Snape leaning against the door with a sarcastic remark.

*Harry gets up at six, gets yelled at for a half an hour, makes a cup of tea, and the mail’s arrived. Wow. British Post comes early! What time does the Cable Guy show up, midnight?

*Fruitcake joke alert! Just had to note it.

*On Saturday things started to get out of hand. The audience started to shuffle impatiently and yell things like, "Get on with it!" and "Just open the damn letter—the only one who doesn’t know what’s in it is Harry!" and "You’d think with the ability to do magic and all they’d be able to deliver a letter!"

*Dudley’s reaction to all this is funnier than Harry’s.

*Forty letters blow out of the chimney. And not a single one of them will be opened. Is this some sort of literary torture?

*Dudley sniffles after being cuffed for odd packing methods. See, I’m already screwed, because I’m loving Dudley. Even though he’s one of those horrible children who like technology instead of longing for the horse and buggy glory days of Empire.

*Btw, I’m getting a sense that someone is trying to send letters to Harry and Vernon doesn’t want him to receive them. Perhaps the letters are from those people back in Chapter One. It’s just a theory.

*They go to a sucky Muggle motel. Just kidding! All Muggle hotels are sucky, of course. A Wizard hotel would have palatial rooms with roaring fires and edible candy wallpaper!

*And we know it’s not fanfic because Dudley and Harry are in twin beds.

*The food at the hotel consists of stale cornflakes and cold tinned tomatoes on toast. I’m sorry, is the hotel food still being rationed?

*"Daddy’s gone mad, hasn’t he?" asks Dudley—if we could vote on which one of these two were going to be our hero for the next seven books, I think that might win it for sniveling Dudley.

*Harry makes another snide remark about Dudley’s television-watching habits being the reason he knows the days of the week, though since Harry himself didn’t know what day of the week it was, it’s kind of a double-edged comment.

*Okay, Harry’s thinking "you weren’t eleven everyday" pulls him out in front again for the hero vote.

*The Dursleys’ trip out to the island is like a brief detour into A Series of Unfortunate Events.

*The inside of the shack was horrible, for a change of pace. Too bad The Wizard of Oz already took the idea of using black and white to show how dull the mundane world is or the HP movies could have used it to drive that point home.

*Everybody thinks they’ve gotten somewhere nobody could ever send a letter. Everybody except the audience who figures Magical letters can go anywhere they damn well please.

*Harry gets the thinnest, most ragged blanket! The nerve, while the rest of the family is luxuriating under merely moldy blankets!

*Harry considers waking Dudley up on his birthday just to annoy him. Because if there’s one fun way to spend a birthday it’s annoying a bully who beats you up when you annoy him.

*Someone knocks on the door, signaling that the plot can finally now continue.

*This whole letter thing is like being on a crowded subway where they can’t shut the door, and until they get the doors shut they can’t pull out of the station.





Exploitation Filmmakers’ Credo
It’s like someone bet the author she couldn’t stop the plot dead for an entire chapter by having everyone run needlessly in circles.

Foley Work
Who’s making the scary footsteps outside in the rain? I hope it’s Leatherface!

IITS
Dear God, why do both Dudley and Harry, when they both know their parents are determined to keep them from reading these letters or just having anything fun, not just secretly grab one of the dozens of letters and read it in private?

Idiot Picture
I’m sure this road trip is going to stop those letters. Mm-hmm.

Ken and Andrew’s Rule of Plot Holes
So how does this blood protection work? Couldn’t Harry have been killed on any one of the days he was wandering around by himself? It wouldn’t even have had to be a Wizard doing it.

Final score: 5

Signs of things to come: Harry has a plan. This won’t go well.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

And I imagine that if the Dursleys had given Harry the guest or something, the letters would still have had some emo label

Or else have a label that would say how great he is. Middle ground? What middle ground? He's our Chosen one, dammit!