The Letters from No One

Important decision to make today, does blogging "every day" mean on the weekends as well? I've decided that Saturdays, yes, Sundays, only if I feel like it. Decision made, moving on.

This is the chapter where we get to see Harry's sense of humor. Personally, I'm a big fan. In this chapter we get gems like:

"They stuff people's heads down the toilet the first day at Stonewall," [Dudley] told Harry. "Want to come upstairs and practice?"
"No, thanks," said Harry. "The poor toilet's never had anything as horrible as your head down it - it might be sick."

and

"What's this?" he asked Aunt Petunia. Her lips tightened as they always did if he dared to ask a question.
"Your new school uniform," she said.
Harry looked in the bowl again.
"Oh," he said, "I didn't realize it had to be so wet."

What can I say, it makes me laugh.

In the next scene a mysterious letter arrives for Harry but before he can read it, Vernon grabs it out of his hands. Now, as I don't live in England, I'm not sure of the legality of reading someone else's mail there, but were this the U.S., it's a bit of a problem. Of course, since the next thing Vernon does is throw both Harry and Dudley bodily from the room, there's obviously some more serious issues happening at old number four. I have to wonder if one of the reasons Harry never got to watch much TV was the Dursley's worry that he might discover that he was being rather horribly abused and report them. I'd love to see them play that off with their friends and neighbors.

I generally find this chapter to be pretty boring (except, of course, for the excerpts above). The first read through it might have been interesting to read about all the ways "they" tried to get the letters to Harry, but by now, I just want to get to the good stuff, namely Hagrid and Diagon Alley. Thankfully, it's midnight and someone is knocking on the shack's door...