PS Chapter One: "The Boy Who Lived"
Sep. 4th, 2015 10:53 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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deathtocapslock* Well, here we are, people: the one that started it all.
* “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” I know we’re meant to look down on the Dursleys as the personification of Middle-England boringness, but frankly, after reading these books “normal” starts to seem like quite an achievement.
* Mr. Dursley is director of a drill-making firm. Based on what we know of the Potterverse chronology, Lily is just a few years out of school, and Petunia’s probably not more than a few years older. So either Mr. Dursley is a fair bit older than his wife, or he’s remarkably adept at climbing the corporate ladder.
* Mr. Dursley has hardly any neck, whereas Mrs. Dursley has twice the usual amount. Hopefully this will average out for Dudley, and he’ll end up with normal proportions.
* To be honest I don’t blame the Dursleys for trying to keep away from James and Lily. Would you want to mix with people who might suddenly hex you for fun?
* Wow, these wizards are really bad at the whole secrecy thing. Owls flying around everywhere, cats reading maps, people openly going about in green robes? It’s no wonder the Ministry employs so many people, the amount of mind-wiping spells they perform must be phenomenal.
* I know Mr. Dursley is supposed to be this stereotypical middle England/Daily Mail-reading caricature, but the description of him being “enraged” by people in funny clothes just seems over-the-top. It’s almost like something you’d expect to find in a bad parody of a bad parody of the sort of people who read right-wing newspapers.
* Though I’m surprised he didn’t realise that they were wizards. He seems to have met Lily and James at some point in the past, and he can hardly have failed to notice how weirdly they all dress.
* “‘Harry. Nasty, common name, if you ask me.’” Oh, I don’t know, Petunia, it does have a certain pedigree. “Follow your spirit, and upon this charge / Cry ‘God for England, Harry and Saint George!’”
* Not sure why Dumbledore’s got a crooked nose, when wizarding medicine can fix broken bones in a trice. Maybe it’s just to show everybody that he got injured, like the 19th-century Prussian obsession with collecting heroic duelling scars.
* The putter-outer can turn off streetlights, as well as letting you eavesdrop on absent friends’ conversations and apparate next to said friends. Maybe it’s actually a multi-purpose spying device – so you can turn off any lights to let yourself sneak around more easily, listen in on conversations without actually being there, and know where the person you’re keeping track of currently is.
* Professor McGonagall’s been waiting all day, showing that she’s already picked up her mentor’s talent for doing sod all. Dumbledore meanwhile has apparently been un-contactable this whole time, showing that he’s already picked up his annoying habit of never condescending to tell people what’s going on.
* Flinching at the mere name of Voldemort is pretty odd behaviour. You don’t find Jewish people flinching at the name of Hitler, and there’s no way that Voldemort’s reign of terror was worse than the Holocaust.
* “It was plain that whatever ‘everyone’ was saying, she was not going to believe it until Dumbledore told her it was true.” Rule no. 1 of Hogwarts: only ever believe what Dumbledore tells you.
* McGonagall starts crying over the death of Lily and James. To be fair I’d probably do the same in her place, although in my case I’d be crying tears of relief.
* McGonagall objects to the idea of leaving Harry with the Dursleys, on the grounds that “You couldn’t find two people who are less like us.” Given what we see of the wizarding world, “not being like us” sounds like quite a desirable quality TBH.
* In theory Dumbledore’s plan is quite a good one: raising Harry up as a normal child until he’s ready to take his fame does sound like a sensible idea. Unfortunately it fails, in that (a) eleven is still too young to take being world-famous, and (b) Harry never actually experiences being a normal child. His entire life is spent as either a hated nobody or the most important person in the world, his world is divided into abusers and abused, and it’s no wonder he ends the series so morally screwed up.
* “‘I would trust Hagrid with my life,’ said Dumbledore.” So, are there any examples in the books where Dumbledore actually does trust Hagrid with his life? I’m struggling to think of any, although of course there are plenty of times when he trusts Hagrid with someone else’s life...
* Hagrid himself arrives on a giant flying motorcycle. What was that about the need to stay hidden from the muggles, again?
* Still, good way of slipping in Sirius Black’s name like that.
* So Hagrid says he got Harry “before the Muggles started swarmin’ around,” i.e., pretty much right after the attack. The way he describes his flight to Privet Drive implies that he came directly, without stopping on the way. And yet it’s been at least a day since Voldemort attacked the Potters, and possibly more, depending on how fast it would take for news of his downfall to spread throughout the wizarding community. So what exactly took him so long?
* “[P]oor little Harry off ter live with Muggles—” Remember, though, it’s only evil Slytherins who are bigoted against non-magical types. Gryffindors and other good guys are fine with muggles – they just don’t want them associating with their children.
* I wonder what Dumbledore’s letter said? “Dear Petunia, Knock knock, who’s there? Not your sister, she’s dead lol. Love, Dubledore”?
* So, does this whole blood protection thing only protect Harry from Voldemort, or does it work against the other Death Eaters too? Also, is it just magic that it stops, or is any harm ruled out? If, say, Bellatrix Lestrange turned up and dashed Harry’s head against the doorstep, would he still die? If so, why on Earth is Dumbledore just leaving the boy here helpless and undefended?
* Not to mention non-magical dangers like the cold or wild animals. Maybe Dumbledore already suspects that Harry is a horcrux, and is hoping that he’ll die, taking the soul fragment with him.
* “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” I know we’re meant to look down on the Dursleys as the personification of Middle-England boringness, but frankly, after reading these books “normal” starts to seem like quite an achievement.
* Mr. Dursley is director of a drill-making firm. Based on what we know of the Potterverse chronology, Lily is just a few years out of school, and Petunia’s probably not more than a few years older. So either Mr. Dursley is a fair bit older than his wife, or he’s remarkably adept at climbing the corporate ladder.
* Mr. Dursley has hardly any neck, whereas Mrs. Dursley has twice the usual amount. Hopefully this will average out for Dudley, and he’ll end up with normal proportions.
* To be honest I don’t blame the Dursleys for trying to keep away from James and Lily. Would you want to mix with people who might suddenly hex you for fun?
* Wow, these wizards are really bad at the whole secrecy thing. Owls flying around everywhere, cats reading maps, people openly going about in green robes? It’s no wonder the Ministry employs so many people, the amount of mind-wiping spells they perform must be phenomenal.
* I know Mr. Dursley is supposed to be this stereotypical middle England/Daily Mail-reading caricature, but the description of him being “enraged” by people in funny clothes just seems over-the-top. It’s almost like something you’d expect to find in a bad parody of a bad parody of the sort of people who read right-wing newspapers.
* Though I’m surprised he didn’t realise that they were wizards. He seems to have met Lily and James at some point in the past, and he can hardly have failed to notice how weirdly they all dress.
* “‘Harry. Nasty, common name, if you ask me.’” Oh, I don’t know, Petunia, it does have a certain pedigree. “Follow your spirit, and upon this charge / Cry ‘God for England, Harry and Saint George!’”
* Not sure why Dumbledore’s got a crooked nose, when wizarding medicine can fix broken bones in a trice. Maybe it’s just to show everybody that he got injured, like the 19th-century Prussian obsession with collecting heroic duelling scars.
* The putter-outer can turn off streetlights, as well as letting you eavesdrop on absent friends’ conversations and apparate next to said friends. Maybe it’s actually a multi-purpose spying device – so you can turn off any lights to let yourself sneak around more easily, listen in on conversations without actually being there, and know where the person you’re keeping track of currently is.
* Professor McGonagall’s been waiting all day, showing that she’s already picked up her mentor’s talent for doing sod all. Dumbledore meanwhile has apparently been un-contactable this whole time, showing that he’s already picked up his annoying habit of never condescending to tell people what’s going on.
* Flinching at the mere name of Voldemort is pretty odd behaviour. You don’t find Jewish people flinching at the name of Hitler, and there’s no way that Voldemort’s reign of terror was worse than the Holocaust.
* “It was plain that whatever ‘everyone’ was saying, she was not going to believe it until Dumbledore told her it was true.” Rule no. 1 of Hogwarts: only ever believe what Dumbledore tells you.
* McGonagall starts crying over the death of Lily and James. To be fair I’d probably do the same in her place, although in my case I’d be crying tears of relief.
* McGonagall objects to the idea of leaving Harry with the Dursleys, on the grounds that “You couldn’t find two people who are less like us.” Given what we see of the wizarding world, “not being like us” sounds like quite a desirable quality TBH.
* In theory Dumbledore’s plan is quite a good one: raising Harry up as a normal child until he’s ready to take his fame does sound like a sensible idea. Unfortunately it fails, in that (a) eleven is still too young to take being world-famous, and (b) Harry never actually experiences being a normal child. His entire life is spent as either a hated nobody or the most important person in the world, his world is divided into abusers and abused, and it’s no wonder he ends the series so morally screwed up.
* “‘I would trust Hagrid with my life,’ said Dumbledore.” So, are there any examples in the books where Dumbledore actually does trust Hagrid with his life? I’m struggling to think of any, although of course there are plenty of times when he trusts Hagrid with someone else’s life...
* Hagrid himself arrives on a giant flying motorcycle. What was that about the need to stay hidden from the muggles, again?
* Still, good way of slipping in Sirius Black’s name like that.
* So Hagrid says he got Harry “before the Muggles started swarmin’ around,” i.e., pretty much right after the attack. The way he describes his flight to Privet Drive implies that he came directly, without stopping on the way. And yet it’s been at least a day since Voldemort attacked the Potters, and possibly more, depending on how fast it would take for news of his downfall to spread throughout the wizarding community. So what exactly took him so long?
* “[P]oor little Harry off ter live with Muggles—” Remember, though, it’s only evil Slytherins who are bigoted against non-magical types. Gryffindors and other good guys are fine with muggles – they just don’t want them associating with their children.
* I wonder what Dumbledore’s letter said? “Dear Petunia, Knock knock, who’s there? Not your sister, she’s dead lol. Love, Dubledore”?
* So, does this whole blood protection thing only protect Harry from Voldemort, or does it work against the other Death Eaters too? Also, is it just magic that it stops, or is any harm ruled out? If, say, Bellatrix Lestrange turned up and dashed Harry’s head against the doorstep, would he still die? If so, why on Earth is Dumbledore just leaving the boy here helpless and undefended?
* Not to mention non-magical dangers like the cold or wild animals. Maybe Dumbledore already suspects that Harry is a horcrux, and is hoping that he’ll die, taking the soul fragment with him.
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no subject
Date: 2015-09-04 10:47 pm (UTC)Well, if the name had been the subject of a 'taboo' spell in the first war then that would explain it.
I suspect Rowling only came up with the 'Taboo' thing when she needed it for book 7 ... I don't believe we are told in the text anywhere that Riddle had used it before, it's just something she whipped up to get out of a hole in DH. But if it had been used back then the fear of the name would be understandable.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-05 12:01 am (UTC)And leaving a baby on a doorstep? How about the poor child wetting itself and sitting in a soiled diaper all night? Or screaming of hunger?
no subject
Date: 2015-09-05 01:13 am (UTC)That might work. It's one of his "little silver instruments," then. And he passed it to Ron because people might get separated while questing and it would be handy, not because he predicted specifically that Ron would leave and want to come back.
Of course, this raises the possibility that he had already set the Put-Outer/Deluminator to spy on the Trio well before he passed it along, rather than having re-set it for Ron's use. But that wouldn't be terribly surprising after all, I guess.
So, if Dumbledore's been inaccessible and McGonagall's been gone, and Slughorn retired last year... who's been running the school today? Sprout? Flitwick?
I also have to wonder in what ways McGonagall thinks the Dursleys are unlike wizards, given what we later see of wizards.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-05 01:33 am (UTC)We can assume Moody’s many injuries were unhealable due to dark magic, but Albus’s nose was broken when Aberforth punched him. Do you suppose teenage Aberforth, enraged at his beloved sister’s death, might have put some dark magic into that punch, intentionally or otherwise? I prefer to believe it was not done accidentally. The Dumbledore siblings are a powerful bunch.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-05 07:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-05 11:42 am (UTC)And people question whether he was a Gryffindor!
no subject
Date: 2015-09-05 08:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-05 11:44 pm (UTC)Maybe he couldn't quite bring himself to have it healed after Aberforth broke it because of why he did it.
The putter-outer can turn off street lights, as well as letting you eavesdrop on absent friends’ conversations and apparate next to said friends.
You know I can't really take this moment seriously since seeing that short comic by Spitcastle on tumblr of Dumbledore turning all of the street lights off and immediately being run over by a muggle in a car.
http://spitcastle.tumblr.com/tagged/harry+potter/page/15
(They have a lot of funny comics going through the books/movies (especially 3). If you check them out use the 'harry potter' tag and the earlier books start from the last page and are in order there going forward. A quick warning there's some pretty dark humour and disturbing imagery.)
Also seeing as it's on my mind and there are ones about book 1, there's a guy 'ProZDvoices' on tumblr who's done some funny voice acting for the comics by 'floccinaucinihilipilificationa'; their comics are still running and feature a sassy a**hole Dumbledore.
http://prozdvoices.tumblr.com/tagged/floccinaucinihilipilificationa
http://floccinaucinihilipilificationa.tumblr.com/tagged/harry-potter
Sorry that wasn't really relevant, but when I started thinking of the beginning of the books I kept getting humourous imagery of the scenes and wanted to share them. Are links allowed?
no subject
Date: 2015-09-06 08:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-06 04:01 pm (UTC)Some of them probably do. I can't think of specific examples, but there probably are those, particularly if they are or know someone who survived the Holocaust, who are legitimately triggered by the name of Hitler because he tried to, you know, kill them all. But, of course, this relies on Voldemort being a convincing metaphor for Hitler, and he's not.
“[P]oor little Harry off ter live with Muggles—” Remember, though, it’s only evil Slytherins who are bigoted against non-magical types. Gryffindors and other good guys are fine with muggles – they just don’t want them associating with their children.
I dunno--it seems to be more like racism and bigotry are fine as long as you don't kill anyone and don't use the absolute worst racial slurs! There's no way minor forms of prejudice could ever change into more dangerous ones unless you were just born evil!
no subject
Date: 2015-09-06 11:09 pm (UTC)Yeah, the books from OotP onward messed with the idea that Petunia and Vernon were just bigoted, suspicious snobs who snubbed the Potters.
/Not sure why Dumbledore’s got a crooked nose, when wizarding medicine can fix broken bones in a trice./
I agree with Penguinsuzie, I think that we’re meant to believe that he kept it as a reminder of what happened to Ariana.
/Harry never actually experiences being a normal child. His entire life is spent as either a hated nobody/
Which, as we find out in later books, Dumbledore *knew.* So, this whole excuse about Harry needing to live as a normal child for the first ten years, to not be a ‘pampered little prince,’ is a crock.
/“[P]oor little Harry off ter live with Muggles—” Remember, though, it’s only evil Slytherins who are bigoted against non-magical types./
And this is before Hagrid finds out what kind of people the Dursleys are.
/So, does this whole blood protection thing only protect Harry from Voldemort, or does it work against the other Death Eaters too? Also, is it just magic that it stops, or is any harm ruled out? If, say, Bellatrix Lestrange turned up and dashed Harry’s head against the doorstep, would he still die?/
Also, if this blood protection only applies to Privet Drive, why is Harry allowed to go to Hogwarts, where presumably he is not under the blood protection? Or, if he is, then why does he have to grow up with the Dursleys at all, if a few months a year at Privet Drive is enough to protect him? He considers Hogwarts home more than he ever does Privet Drive.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-07 08:23 am (UTC)Especially with that bit in DH where Lily's making fun of a tacky vase Petunia's sent. Like, she gets the scorn of being an awful person, but also the mockery of 'haha, you're not good enough when you do make an effort!' Interesting we don't hear mention of anything the Potters ever did to keep in touch with Lily's family.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-12 02:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-14 07:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-14 07:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-14 07:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-14 07:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-14 08:39 pm (UTC)I didn't have a clue about that particular interview. And I don't understand the woman; it makes the whole He-who-must-be-named thing that much more inexplicably trite, as noted by for_diddled. I'll have to try and find the interview to see why Rowling came up with that particular little 'fix'.