01 HP Chamber of Secrets

[chantaldormand]

I promised, I deliver.

Ch1 The Worst Birthday

>Such melodramatic chapter title fits our protagonist. Well done Jo.

>Coincidentally CoS was the first HP book I read. It was... really confusing experience for me. Jo reminding reader basic facts like Harry being wizard doesn’t really work.

>We know that we aren’t reading fanfiction, because Harry stupidly kept Hedwig in cage instead of sending her off to Hermione.

>If I was Hedwig, I would take the first opportunity to pull runner and never look back.

>Harry being on purpose antagonistic towards his relatives is extra annoying to me. Yeah they are treating him poorly, but abusing advantage in such petty fashion is really stupid. +1 to Leap of Logic

>If I wasn’t sure that there is serious trauma from magic users in Vernon’s past, now it’s confirmed.

>One would think that Petunia would know that Hogwarts’ students cannot do magic at home. This means that: a) Lily was regularly breaking law; b) this law is recent; c) Jo couldn’t keep track of facts even this early in the game. Take your picks.

>According to Harry, proper methods of deactivating explosive materials include panicky shouting. +1 to Leap of Logic

>Damn, Harry is whining here like a kid who is annoyed that his parents dragged him away from his awesome secret base for dinner. Then again, to him Hogwarts probably is his private super special awesome secret base.

>Harry’s whining about his place on Quidditch team has me wondering: why in seven hells a Quidditch team would pick anyone who lives in urban area? As far as we can see WW is really small, so we probably can forget about hidden areas in cities where kids can train their skills .

>Also, Jo could have easily used this occasion to never ever write another Quidditch match. I bet that in later books she was cursing herself for not taking easy way out.

>Huh, narrative starts to be pretty judgmental about someone not having magic. And here I thought that we had a few more books before this sentiment started.

>Darn, Harry is such bratty drama queen. His main complaint against his abusive guardians? They dare to forget his birthday!! +1 to Leap of Logic

>No seriously, Harry mopes about Vernon preparing for dinner party that can decide his future income, instead of the brat’s birthday. Just how much self-centred can our hero be?

>Also, why Dursleys didn’t just decide to ask Arabella to babysit Harry for one evening? +1 to Leap of Logic

>Harry kicks himself out of house so he won’t be in Petunia’s way when she cleans house. According to fans and FF writers alike, this event never took place and instead Harry was slaving away, so his relatives could have fun.

>Eh, while I can understand Harry’s teenage angst over not hearing from his friends, you would think after this summer the trio would come up with some other way of communicating. +1 to Leap of Logic

>As I said in the last chapter of PS: Harry the most loving and merciful hero in history of literature enjoys tormenting his cousin. What a pleasant boy! +1 to Crime Count for bulling

>Harry has nightmares about escaping Voldemort yet not about Quirrell’s death. I suppose that burning someone alive is nowhere nearly as traumatic as seeing a random student being zapped by pretty lights. Or Quirrell wasn’t pretty enough to be memorable.

>Poor Dudley. He might be a walking caricature of character, but after sitting in Harry’s head for last… half year, I’m way more empathic toward Dudley than Harry.

>What? Tossing frying pan? At head? Jo you can’t ramp up abuse AND have your protag act like an entitled rich brat whose favourite toys were taken away. +1 to Death Count

>Eh, if “two slices of bread and lump of cheese” are “pitiful supper” then both our hero and author never experienced serious financial problems.

>I almost managed to forget Dobby’s existence. Almost. *Sigh*

Crime Count: 1

Death Count: 1

Freud Would Be Proud: 0

Leap of Logic: 5

Uncovered: 0

Spell Count: 0

Comments

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/Such melodramatic chapter title fits our protagonist/

Also, when you look back on it, it doesn't make sense. None of the birthdays that Harry had before he found out that he was a wizard and made friends at Hogwarts were worse than this? Is this like how Draco is somehow worse than Dudley now?

/One would think that Petunia would know that Hogwarts’ students cannot do magic at home/

Except that in the first book, she ranted about how Lily was turning teacups into rats. Unless Lily did those things before she got her Hogwarts letter, I presume that she was doing that at home while still a student. So, I think that any of the three options that you suggested would work.

/WW is really small, so we probably can forget about hidden areas in cities where kids can train their skills/

How are Muggle-born students supposed to train their skills during the summer when they can't perform magic in front of the Muggles that they live with? This just points to another advantage that pureblood students (theoretically) would have: they live away from Muggles so they don't have to worry about secrecy laws when practicing and they presumably live in rural areas where they could practice Quidditch.

/Harry mopes about Vernon preparing for dinner party that can decide his future income/

Except why is Vernon conducting a business dinner at his house? Why isn't he meeting them at a fancy restaurant instead?

/why Dursleys didn’t just decide to ask Arabella to babysit Harry for one evening?/

Because then Arabella would've taken one look at Dobby and kicked the house elf out of her home before reporting him to Dumbledore.

/while I can understand Harry’s teenage angst over not hearing from his friends, you would think after this summer the trio would come up with some other way of communicating/

And this happens again in OOTP, only in that book, Harry gets on his high horse and screams at Hermione and Ron for not mailing him.

/I suppose that burning someone alive is nowhere nearly as traumatic as seeing a random student being zapped by pretty lights/

Yeah, that's why I never took the excuses for Harry's caps-lock rages in OOTP seriously. "It was after he just watched someone die!" Yeah, and he also watched and heard someone painfully die in front of him way back in the first book. Where were all his nightmares about Quirrell? He hadn't heard from Ron and Hermione all summer? He didn't hear from Ron and Hermione all summer in COS because Dobby was confiscating his mail. He'd nearly escaped from Voldemort killing him? Voldemort had tried to kill him twice before then, in PS/SS and COS. No, Harry was throwing temper tantrums left and right because JKR wanted OOTP to be the 'dark, gloomy, and angsty' book. Not because it was 'realistic.'

[chantaldormand]

/Is this like how Draco is somehow worse than Dudley now? /

I think that key to understanding Harry's though process lays in the next chapter, where narrative gives us this oh so wonderful line: "This makes the Dursleys sound almost human" (the line is in response to Dobby describing how Malfoy's treat him)
From what we can see in chapter 1, Harry's treatment (especially compared to Dobby's) is decent. Sure he cannot train his magical skills and his pet is on lock up, but he is fed, has roof over his head and Vernon hadn't kicked him out of the house for constantly threatening his traumatized son. Yet, Harry doesn't consider Durslays to be humans.
Considering how through whole series Durlays are portrayed as those caricatures of human beings and books being writen from Harry's POV I would go a step further and say that Harry doesn't consider his time outside magical parts of the world to be real.

/How are Muggle-born students supposed to train their skills during the summer when they can't perform magic in front of the Muggles that they live with?/

A few years ago I played a visual novel called Magical Diary. It's a game that clearly takes a lot of inspirations from HP books.
Author of said VN explored the problem of secrecy and muggle families and found a smart solution to this problem: students from non magical families are encouraged to integrate into magical society and to distance themselves from mundane world by atmosphere in the school and by enchantment placed on their families that caused them to gradually forget about magic and their kid being magical. In the end a lot of students from non-magical families ended up staying at the school all year-round.
Now I'm not saying it to promote the game or something, but to point out that thanks to Jo's Tunnel Vision, she not only fails to plug up her plot holes, but managed to once again walk pass a very interesting plot line.

/Except why is Vernon conducting a business dinner at his house? Why isn't he meeting them at a fancy restaurant instead? /

In my barbaric part of Europe that would be the case, but I must admit that I'm not exactly fluent in British culture so I decided to put it in "it's a British thing" box and do something more productive.

/ No, Harry was throwing temper tantrums left and right because JKR wanted OOTP to be the 'dark, gloomy, and angsty' book. Not because it was 'realistic.' /

Yup, either Jo doesn't have much contact with teenagers or all of her progeny were this capslock happy harpies.

[nx74defiant.livejournal.com]

students from non magical families are encouraged to integrate into magical society and to distance themselves from mundane world by atmosphere in the school and by enchantment placed on their families that caused them to gradually forget about magic and their kid being magical. In the end a lot of students from non-magical families ended up staying at the school all year-round.

JKR never explains why Muggle borns are so cut off from their families that in the last book they are living on the streets of Hogsmeade in the last book.

What does Hogwarts do about muggle parents wanting things like report cards, parent teacher conferences, visits to the school? Do the Board of Governors or Dumbledore send some one to the homes the make the parent magical not care? Does Hermione feel like she can remove her parents memory because she has seen the minds already being tampered with by wizarding people she respects?

[oryx_leucoryx]

Hogwarts is modeled after the British boarding school literature. In those books parents are just as much out of the picture as in HP. Definitely no conferences. Maybe the occasional letter.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

Except why is Vernon conducting a business dinner at his house? Why isn't he meeting them at a fancy restaurant instead?

Some people like to present a 'home-cooked' meal experience rather than the more traditional restaurant dinner. Or they might want to show off their happy family life. I suppose it would depend on the client and the client's preferences, but it's not a bad idea, just an alternate one. People who travel a lot probably get tired of eating in restaurants all the time.

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

In sitcoms of the Fifties and Sixties, “bringing the boss home for dinner” was a standard trope, allowing for stressed-out husband, panicking wife, misbehaving children, and humorously humiliated authority figure. Who could ask for anything more?

It had to be a real practice in order for there to be a comedy trope making fun of it. One of the benefits of having a stay-at-home wife is that she can (given advance notice, Ricky!) create a really fancy dinner to impress the boss. My dad ran his own business, and my mom considered it part of her job as a stay-at-home wife to give him support, including maintaining good social contacts with his clients and their wives. I don’t remember having any of them over to dinner, but Mom provided homemade Christmas treats for them every year, delivered in person by the whole family.

A lot of JKR’s social assumptions are about twenty years out of date for the time period she’s writing about. Which makes them forty years out of date now.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

Yeah, nowadays both partners would be out there killing the Corporate World. No one would have time for cooking up a fabulous dinner for the Important Client. Probably a good thing, given what poor Lucy had to go through. Good thing The Potential Boss's Wife told her that Ricky said he had her trained "like a trained seal" or we wouldn't have had such a funny episode. And, Ricky got the job! Not a good way to treat the wife but perfect for employees.

Aside from being a Terrible Person, Petunia is presented as a competent homemaker and Goddess of the Kitchen in the books. It makes sense for Vernon to bring an Important Client home - since so many people these days are part of a Power Couple, a homecooked meal a la 1950s sitcoms would be a special treat that few could provide.