PoA Chapter One
Jan. 29th, 2010 06:05 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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deathtocapslockTotally forgot I meant to post this this morning!
Come with me to a time in the distant past, back when starting the book with Harry’s birthday didn’t mean hundreds of pages before he got to school and ending in June didn’t mean Voldemort plotting his evil plans around summer hols. In fact, Voldemort isn’t even in this book, which on the whole will do wonders for his reputation!
Harry Potter is an unusual boy. Not only does he hate summer holidays, but he really wants to do his homework. Wait…what? Who is this intellectually curious boy who wants to practice his magic? Not the Chosen One I know!
Harry’s writing an essay on how Witch Burning in the Fourteenth Century Was Completely Pointless. So basically, he’s writing a whole essay on how Muggles are idiots and completely impotent when it comes to hurting Wizards, as if this is something any wizard might forget if they weren’t assigned it in class. Why do they even care about what Muggles were doing in the 14th century?
Not to mention, it wasn’t pointless whether or not they burned witches since it’s not like the whole period in history was really about chasing down wizards as defined by this book.
If nothing else all the death provided a joke essay for Harry to write, so there’s a point right there!
Btw, was Dumbledore’s sister the only witch in history hurt by Muggles? We relentlessly laugh at Muggles thinking they could ever do anything to even get a Wizard’s attention but when Dumbledore needs a back story suddenly they’re capable of producing brain damage in people who are dropped on their heads from six story windows by their own families.
Which btw makes me think of how unlikely it is that, memory charms or not, there’s no society of deadly Muggles taking out Wizards right and left in stealth. Or….is there?
Harry’s using a quill and a bottle of ink in his bed to write this essay, despite no doubt having ball point pens a few feet away. Surely the quill thing’s lost its novelty by now. Especially since he’s afraid the Dursleys will hear the scratching. Quills aren’t one of those magical things we Muggles can’t handle, Harry. We stopped using them because we invented something better.
The Dursleys have a very medieval attitude towards magic. Understandably, since most of the time they’ve experienced it some wizard has been going medieval on their ass.
The narrator telling us the Dursleys tried to squash Harry’s magic out of him by keeping him downtrodden is like a remnant of that early idea that maybe magic was like creativity or imagination. Remember, before we knew Wizards didn’t really have much of either?
Earlier the Dursleys went out to talk about their new company car in loud voices so the neighbors could hear. Too bad Vernon couldn’t fly the car in through the window while everyone was eating lunch in a big dining hall, huh? That would have been really ostentatious!
Remember this later when we learn that when you have a truly superior transport everyone will flock to you without your asking them too. Nice subtle pointer to the true moral of the series, that Harry is a more deserving version of Vernon.
Harry’s friend Ron is stupid when it comes to telephones, but knows a lot more than Harry about important things because he comes from a wizard family. Take a moment to savor that, Ron. This is the last book you’ll be anything like the authority on wizard life.
OMG, Vernon says he doesn’t want to hear from people ‘like YOU’ to Harry. It’s like he looks down on Harry just because of his magical standing! He must be a bad guy.
Harry assumes Ron told Hermione not to call him, even though she actually knows how phones work, and she’d have been sensible enough to not say she went to Hogwarts. So…would she have said she knew Harry from one of the many other places at which Harry meets people that call him? Because there are none.
One good thing this summer is that Hedwig gets to fly out at night instead of being stuck in her cage. Though she might have been willing to stay in the cage if it meant Harry would let her out four years from now when it comes time to get chased by Death Eaters. RIP Hedwig.
Dudley is enormous and makes loud noises in his sleep. Probably because his weight problems make breathing difficult.
Harry’s never received a birthday card in his life. It’s kind of disturbing how likable Harry still is here. If I didn’t know him better, I’d see a nice young boy who just wants to go to school, be with his friends and do his homework.
Btw, I suspect Harry’s birthday is now an international holiday for wizards. (Even if the world war only took place in Britain.)
Harry goes to the window and enjoys the fresh air without once thinking about how the nice weather conflicts with his own inner turmoil. Weird!
Harry’s also longing for Hedwig because she’s the one person in the house who doesn’t flinch at the sight of him like the Dursleys. Good to know that three years from now Dumbledore will show up and tease them. That will totally make up for this lonely life!
We’re told Harry’s parents didn’t die in a car crash—um, did someone say they did? (I know Harry was told that growing up, but this book just says it apropos of nothing.)
Harry had to admit he was lucky for even reaching his 13th birthday. Again…who is this boy who admits he’s lucky in any way?
Harry expects Hedwig to come back with a mouse in her beak expecting praise. Owls don’t work that way, Harry. You’re thinking of a cat or a dog. Owls don’t catch the dead thing to show you. Owls just eat the mice and expel the bones and fur and things in a little pellet.
The Weasleys are spending the summer in Egypt because they won a prize. This sounds like it might be kicking off an exotic story, but really it’s just a reason to show them in the paper.
Another sign we’re still pre-GoF: the Weasleys are going on a fancy trip and not taking Harry!
Instead of writing about the pointlessness of Muggles, Harry ought to write an essay on the pointlessness of wizards inventing black and white magic pictures for the newspaper just so they can make their world look like the Muggle world just out of date enough to be nostalgic. I might read that essay.
Harry can’t think of anyone who deserves to win a pile of gold more than the Weasleys, because they are very nice and extremely poor. The virtuous kind of poor, where Dad’s an important government official and they’re one of the premiere families in the country.
You can tell because no matter how much gold they get, how many promotions Arthur earns or how many children move out and get well-paying jobs, they always remain the exact same level of virtuous poor where Ron can’t get things as nice Harry.
Ron’s note hopes “the Muggles” didn’t give Harry a hard time. I wonder if his letters to Hermione refer to her family that way too.
Molly wouldn’t let Ginny enter a tomb with mutant skeletons—more stupid Muggles who broke into tombs without knowing how to undo the curse.
I’m sure that overprotection of Ginny will stop by the time she’s 16, though, right? And we learn how badass she is? If only she was out of the house and married to someone like Harry Potter. He would never tell her to stay behind for safety.
So Bill’s a grave robber, basically? And grave robbers work for banks?
The Weasleys have blown most of their money on this one trip to Egypt, but at least they’re going to get Ron a new wand for next year. Thank goodness the old one snapped or Ron would probably be spending another year backfiring on himself.
Percy’s looking smug in the photograph. Get used that word, Percy. It’ll be attached to you until you properly grovel at your brother’s feet. And even then it’ll only be lifted for that one moment.
Ron sends Harry a Sneakoscope that Bill says is rubbish because it kept flashing at dinner. Spoiler alert: it’s because of the rat. Luckily the twins are also at the table, and are also untrustworthy so JKR can cover it up. Probably the more expensive Sneakoscopes are attuned to be able to pick out the bad kind of untrustworthy from the good, fun kind.
Harry looks at the present happily for a few seconds. I love this Harry!
Hermione’s in France. I hope you enjoy that family trip, Grangers. It’ll be your last with your daughter. If you even remember you have a daughter.
Hedwig flew to France all on her own because she knew Hermione would be worrying about customs or something.
The theme of pets/animals having their own agendas starts off right away.
Don’t ask me why Hermione was worried about sending a gift through customs. It’s a wood polishing kit, not a baby dragon.
Hermione’s jealous of Ron’s trip since ancient Egyptian wizards must have been fascinating. Ancient Egyptians Muggles were as lame as the British kind, though.
Hermione’s essay is 2 rolls longer than was asked for. I hope Binns rejects it and makes her write it again within the correct word count.
Hermione gives Harry…an actually thoughtful present. To review: Harry finds pleasure in the good things he does have, Ron is the authority on the wizard world and Hermione thinks about what other people would actually want instead of what she thinks they should have. Who are these people?
Harry’s now got a broomstick polishing kit and a wand polishing kit. Without TV, wizards spend a lot of time polishing wood. Jealous yet?
I assume Hermione’s thoughtful present is also showing that she does have Harry’s best interests at heart when she tattles about the Firebolt.
Quidditch is the most popular sport in the magical world. It’s also the only sport in the magical world.
Also Harry’s the youngest person in the century to be picked for his school team. Which…should not be that impressive.
Harry opens Hagrid’s gift. Phew! At least Hagrid hasn’t changed. Still annoying as ever. It’s a book that bites. Go ahead and open it, Harry. Maybe it will rip your throat out and Hagrid can berate you for scaring it.
Harry stops grinning when he sees his permission slip for Hogsmeade, since he’ll never convince the Dursleys to sign it. The kids lie throughout the books, but it doesn’t occur to Harry to forge a signature?
“Extremely unusual though he was, at that moment Harry Potter felt just like everyone else — glad, for the first time in his life, that it was his birthday.” Awww! It’s sad that all this stuff that explains why Harry is sympathetic will just turn into the explanation for why he’s a pissy ass whenever people cross him.
I saw a presentation on Phoenix Rising about how JKR always does everything at least twice, so now I obsessively look for parallels and things that are going to happen again/have happened again. In this chapter I got:
Things that happen twice:
Vernon made a big show with his car and the neighbors. Later Harry will get that attention for his Firebolt.
That’s not the last time we’ll be seeing that Sneakoscope go off “accidentally.”
It’s a gun. No it isn’t! It’s Chekov! No it isn’t!
Throughout the books, JKR sprinkles lots of things that turn out to be important later on. These are often incorrectly referred to as “Chekov’s guns” because Chekov, when talking about set decoration in the theater, said that if you put a gun over the fireplace in act I it had better go off in act IV. In HP terms, a “gun” is any detail mentioned anywhere at any time, and even with thousands of pages to work with, some of them still didn’t go off. So I’m mentioning them when they appear and noting if they were fired or turned out to be duds:
Bill the Cursebreaker
Bill’s background with curses and magical artifacts will obviously come in handy at some point, say if Harry puts together a crack team of Horcrux hunters.
Status: Dud. Bill, in general, turned out to be important for looking cool and marrying a French person (yeah, he got scarred, but only to show the kind of girl Fleur really is). And Harry never had a crack team of Horcrux Hunters. Or a crack team of anything, really.
Bathilda Bagshot
Bathilda Bagshot wrote that book Hermione’s always reading.
Status: Fired! In a way far beyond what one might have expected—she became a snake snuggy.
Special note about PoA: I’ve always had a weird relationship to this book because it’s most peoples’ favorite and Scabbers/the Marauders is one of the best reveals. Yet I never wanted to re-read it. I thought it was because I just hated the Buckbeak story—and as you’ll see I really do hate the Buckbeak story, but reading it again I found it kind of boring. I mean, JKR keeps all the balls in the air, she darts back and forth between all the stuff she’s got to entertain you—Hermione’s secret, Quidditch, Sirius Black news, Snape and Lupin, Buckbeak, Hogsmeade. But in the end PoA is really just like HBP. The real story going on isn’t happening to Harry, it’s happening near Harry, usually just out of his line of vision—and there’s no villain going after him so there’s very little at stake.
The Cricket Rule
Day-for-Night
As Harry looks out the window into a balmy summer night, looking for Hedwig.
Foley Work
Cue Dudley and Vernon snoring and turning over in their creaky beds.
Informed Attributes
Because “youngest player in this century…” sounds a lot better than saying “Because there wasn’t anybody else handy in Harry’s quarter of the small student body, he got to join the school team for the sport everyone’s forced to support because there’s nothing else a year early.”
Nut o’Fun
The mutant skeletons were the best thing in the chapter.
Jabootu Score: 5
Come with me to a time in the distant past, back when starting the book with Harry’s birthday didn’t mean hundreds of pages before he got to school and ending in June didn’t mean Voldemort plotting his evil plans around summer hols. In fact, Voldemort isn’t even in this book, which on the whole will do wonders for his reputation!
Harry Potter is an unusual boy. Not only does he hate summer holidays, but he really wants to do his homework. Wait…what? Who is this intellectually curious boy who wants to practice his magic? Not the Chosen One I know!
Harry’s writing an essay on how Witch Burning in the Fourteenth Century Was Completely Pointless. So basically, he’s writing a whole essay on how Muggles are idiots and completely impotent when it comes to hurting Wizards, as if this is something any wizard might forget if they weren’t assigned it in class. Why do they even care about what Muggles were doing in the 14th century?
Not to mention, it wasn’t pointless whether or not they burned witches since it’s not like the whole period in history was really about chasing down wizards as defined by this book.
If nothing else all the death provided a joke essay for Harry to write, so there’s a point right there!
Btw, was Dumbledore’s sister the only witch in history hurt by Muggles? We relentlessly laugh at Muggles thinking they could ever do anything to even get a Wizard’s attention but when Dumbledore needs a back story suddenly they’re capable of producing brain damage in people who are dropped on their heads from six story windows by their own families.
Which btw makes me think of how unlikely it is that, memory charms or not, there’s no society of deadly Muggles taking out Wizards right and left in stealth. Or….is there?
Harry’s using a quill and a bottle of ink in his bed to write this essay, despite no doubt having ball point pens a few feet away. Surely the quill thing’s lost its novelty by now. Especially since he’s afraid the Dursleys will hear the scratching. Quills aren’t one of those magical things we Muggles can’t handle, Harry. We stopped using them because we invented something better.
The Dursleys have a very medieval attitude towards magic. Understandably, since most of the time they’ve experienced it some wizard has been going medieval on their ass.
The narrator telling us the Dursleys tried to squash Harry’s magic out of him by keeping him downtrodden is like a remnant of that early idea that maybe magic was like creativity or imagination. Remember, before we knew Wizards didn’t really have much of either?
Earlier the Dursleys went out to talk about their new company car in loud voices so the neighbors could hear. Too bad Vernon couldn’t fly the car in through the window while everyone was eating lunch in a big dining hall, huh? That would have been really ostentatious!
Remember this later when we learn that when you have a truly superior transport everyone will flock to you without your asking them too. Nice subtle pointer to the true moral of the series, that Harry is a more deserving version of Vernon.
Harry’s friend Ron is stupid when it comes to telephones, but knows a lot more than Harry about important things because he comes from a wizard family. Take a moment to savor that, Ron. This is the last book you’ll be anything like the authority on wizard life.
OMG, Vernon says he doesn’t want to hear from people ‘like YOU’ to Harry. It’s like he looks down on Harry just because of his magical standing! He must be a bad guy.
Harry assumes Ron told Hermione not to call him, even though she actually knows how phones work, and she’d have been sensible enough to not say she went to Hogwarts. So…would she have said she knew Harry from one of the many other places at which Harry meets people that call him? Because there are none.
One good thing this summer is that Hedwig gets to fly out at night instead of being stuck in her cage. Though she might have been willing to stay in the cage if it meant Harry would let her out four years from now when it comes time to get chased by Death Eaters. RIP Hedwig.
Dudley is enormous and makes loud noises in his sleep. Probably because his weight problems make breathing difficult.
Harry’s never received a birthday card in his life. It’s kind of disturbing how likable Harry still is here. If I didn’t know him better, I’d see a nice young boy who just wants to go to school, be with his friends and do his homework.
Btw, I suspect Harry’s birthday is now an international holiday for wizards. (Even if the world war only took place in Britain.)
Harry goes to the window and enjoys the fresh air without once thinking about how the nice weather conflicts with his own inner turmoil. Weird!
Harry’s also longing for Hedwig because she’s the one person in the house who doesn’t flinch at the sight of him like the Dursleys. Good to know that three years from now Dumbledore will show up and tease them. That will totally make up for this lonely life!
We’re told Harry’s parents didn’t die in a car crash—um, did someone say they did? (I know Harry was told that growing up, but this book just says it apropos of nothing.)
Harry had to admit he was lucky for even reaching his 13th birthday. Again…who is this boy who admits he’s lucky in any way?
Harry expects Hedwig to come back with a mouse in her beak expecting praise. Owls don’t work that way, Harry. You’re thinking of a cat or a dog. Owls don’t catch the dead thing to show you. Owls just eat the mice and expel the bones and fur and things in a little pellet.
The Weasleys are spending the summer in Egypt because they won a prize. This sounds like it might be kicking off an exotic story, but really it’s just a reason to show them in the paper.
Another sign we’re still pre-GoF: the Weasleys are going on a fancy trip and not taking Harry!
Instead of writing about the pointlessness of Muggles, Harry ought to write an essay on the pointlessness of wizards inventing black and white magic pictures for the newspaper just so they can make their world look like the Muggle world just out of date enough to be nostalgic. I might read that essay.
Harry can’t think of anyone who deserves to win a pile of gold more than the Weasleys, because they are very nice and extremely poor. The virtuous kind of poor, where Dad’s an important government official and they’re one of the premiere families in the country.
You can tell because no matter how much gold they get, how many promotions Arthur earns or how many children move out and get well-paying jobs, they always remain the exact same level of virtuous poor where Ron can’t get things as nice Harry.
Ron’s note hopes “the Muggles” didn’t give Harry a hard time. I wonder if his letters to Hermione refer to her family that way too.
Molly wouldn’t let Ginny enter a tomb with mutant skeletons—more stupid Muggles who broke into tombs without knowing how to undo the curse.
I’m sure that overprotection of Ginny will stop by the time she’s 16, though, right? And we learn how badass she is? If only she was out of the house and married to someone like Harry Potter. He would never tell her to stay behind for safety.
So Bill’s a grave robber, basically? And grave robbers work for banks?
The Weasleys have blown most of their money on this one trip to Egypt, but at least they’re going to get Ron a new wand for next year. Thank goodness the old one snapped or Ron would probably be spending another year backfiring on himself.
Percy’s looking smug in the photograph. Get used that word, Percy. It’ll be attached to you until you properly grovel at your brother’s feet. And even then it’ll only be lifted for that one moment.
Ron sends Harry a Sneakoscope that Bill says is rubbish because it kept flashing at dinner. Spoiler alert: it’s because of the rat. Luckily the twins are also at the table, and are also untrustworthy so JKR can cover it up. Probably the more expensive Sneakoscopes are attuned to be able to pick out the bad kind of untrustworthy from the good, fun kind.
Harry looks at the present happily for a few seconds. I love this Harry!
Hermione’s in France. I hope you enjoy that family trip, Grangers. It’ll be your last with your daughter. If you even remember you have a daughter.
Hedwig flew to France all on her own because she knew Hermione would be worrying about customs or something.
The theme of pets/animals having their own agendas starts off right away.
Don’t ask me why Hermione was worried about sending a gift through customs. It’s a wood polishing kit, not a baby dragon.
Hermione’s jealous of Ron’s trip since ancient Egyptian wizards must have been fascinating. Ancient Egyptians Muggles were as lame as the British kind, though.
Hermione’s essay is 2 rolls longer than was asked for. I hope Binns rejects it and makes her write it again within the correct word count.
Hermione gives Harry…an actually thoughtful present. To review: Harry finds pleasure in the good things he does have, Ron is the authority on the wizard world and Hermione thinks about what other people would actually want instead of what she thinks they should have. Who are these people?
Harry’s now got a broomstick polishing kit and a wand polishing kit. Without TV, wizards spend a lot of time polishing wood. Jealous yet?
I assume Hermione’s thoughtful present is also showing that she does have Harry’s best interests at heart when she tattles about the Firebolt.
Quidditch is the most popular sport in the magical world. It’s also the only sport in the magical world.
Also Harry’s the youngest person in the century to be picked for his school team. Which…should not be that impressive.
Harry opens Hagrid’s gift. Phew! At least Hagrid hasn’t changed. Still annoying as ever. It’s a book that bites. Go ahead and open it, Harry. Maybe it will rip your throat out and Hagrid can berate you for scaring it.
Harry stops grinning when he sees his permission slip for Hogsmeade, since he’ll never convince the Dursleys to sign it. The kids lie throughout the books, but it doesn’t occur to Harry to forge a signature?
“Extremely unusual though he was, at that moment Harry Potter felt just like everyone else — glad, for the first time in his life, that it was his birthday.” Awww! It’s sad that all this stuff that explains why Harry is sympathetic will just turn into the explanation for why he’s a pissy ass whenever people cross him.
I saw a presentation on Phoenix Rising about how JKR always does everything at least twice, so now I obsessively look for parallels and things that are going to happen again/have happened again. In this chapter I got:
Things that happen twice:
Vernon made a big show with his car and the neighbors. Later Harry will get that attention for his Firebolt.
That’s not the last time we’ll be seeing that Sneakoscope go off “accidentally.”
It’s a gun. No it isn’t! It’s Chekov! No it isn’t!
Throughout the books, JKR sprinkles lots of things that turn out to be important later on. These are often incorrectly referred to as “Chekov’s guns” because Chekov, when talking about set decoration in the theater, said that if you put a gun over the fireplace in act I it had better go off in act IV. In HP terms, a “gun” is any detail mentioned anywhere at any time, and even with thousands of pages to work with, some of them still didn’t go off. So I’m mentioning them when they appear and noting if they were fired or turned out to be duds:
Bill the Cursebreaker
Bill’s background with curses and magical artifacts will obviously come in handy at some point, say if Harry puts together a crack team of Horcrux hunters.
Status: Dud. Bill, in general, turned out to be important for looking cool and marrying a French person (yeah, he got scarred, but only to show the kind of girl Fleur really is). And Harry never had a crack team of Horcrux Hunters. Or a crack team of anything, really.
Bathilda Bagshot
Bathilda Bagshot wrote that book Hermione’s always reading.
Status: Fired! In a way far beyond what one might have expected—she became a snake snuggy.
Special note about PoA: I’ve always had a weird relationship to this book because it’s most peoples’ favorite and Scabbers/the Marauders is one of the best reveals. Yet I never wanted to re-read it. I thought it was because I just hated the Buckbeak story—and as you’ll see I really do hate the Buckbeak story, but reading it again I found it kind of boring. I mean, JKR keeps all the balls in the air, she darts back and forth between all the stuff she’s got to entertain you—Hermione’s secret, Quidditch, Sirius Black news, Snape and Lupin, Buckbeak, Hogsmeade. But in the end PoA is really just like HBP. The real story going on isn’t happening to Harry, it’s happening near Harry, usually just out of his line of vision—and there’s no villain going after him so there’s very little at stake.
The Cricket Rule
Day-for-Night
As Harry looks out the window into a balmy summer night, looking for Hedwig.
Foley Work
Cue Dudley and Vernon snoring and turning over in their creaky beds.
Informed Attributes
Because “youngest player in this century…” sounds a lot better than saying “Because there wasn’t anybody else handy in Harry’s quarter of the small student body, he got to join the school team for the sport everyone’s forced to support because there’s nothing else a year early.”
Nut o’Fun
The mutant skeletons were the best thing in the chapter.
Jabootu Score: 5
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Date: 2010-01-30 06:02 pm (UTC)Which all thing's considering is so rare with Rowling that it has become way too easy to regard it as a fluke.