At Flourish and Blotts

So here's the thing about rereading Harry Potter, I know what's going to happen. Okay, that's obvious, but knowing what's going to happen means that I have favorite bits and ummm...un-favorite bits. Now, usually when I reread the series I zoom through all 7 books in about 2 weeks, so if I'm at an un-favorite part, I know that I'll be getting to a favorite part soon. When you're only reading a chapter at a time, then you know that the un-favorite part (like, you know, all of Chamber of Secrets) is going to last a while. It's making it a bit difficult. This was my 3rd attempt at this chapter since my last post and I finally made it all the way through.

Everyone receives their Hogwarts letters and a trip to Diagon Alley is quickly planned. Harry is "taught" how to use floo powder, but he has some problems and ends up at what is obviously a Dark Wizard shop. This is made even more clear when Malfoy and his dad show up to sell some of their goods. Harry eventually makes it out to the street where Hagrid finds him and guides him back to Diagon Alley. They soon find Hermione and the Weasleys. Shopping is done, ending with a trip to Flourish and Blotts, where Lockhart is signing his book. He notices Harry and pulls him up for a photo, announcing that he will be teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts that year. After escaping, he and Ginny end up in an altercation with Malfoy, which culminates in a fist fight between Lucius Malfoy and Arthur Weasley.

Basically I find this chapter pretty boring. I know there's lots of stuff that comes up later in the series - the Hand of Glory, the Vanishing Cabinet, Harry teaching Mr. Weasley about telephones - but it's done in a way that feels pretty tedious by the umpteenth read (conservative estimate on how many times I've actually read this book: 8). Anyway, because of all that, I'm going to write a rambling post about the Floo Network.

It's stupid. Okay, it's a cheap and easy way for families to travel, except, you don't seem to be able to have more than one person go at a time. Obviously when the kids are really young you must be able to travel together because you couldn't have an infant traveling alone, but at what age do kids start to travel by themselves. Awfully young it would seem. How safe is that? Harry proves just how easy it is to get lost. How many kids do you think get lost in the floo system every year. Okay, sure. All the fireplaces go to other wizards, who could likely help a lost child get where they need to be, but not all wizards are good people. Imagine a child younger or stupider than Harry ending up at Borgin and Burkes!

Of course, the Floo Network does have it's uses, the whole head in the fireplace method of communication is pretty freaking cool, but as a method of family travel, I think it falls far short. My family would be taking the Knight Bus instead.

Not as long and rambley as I had intended, but my dinner smells done and I'm hungry. Share your thoughts in the comments below.

The Burrow

After an incredibly long and tiring day, it was absolutely lovely to come home and dive into a Weasley-centric chapter. Who doesn't love a good Weasley chapter?

This one starts with Ron, Fred and George showing up in the flying Ford Anglia to spring Harry from the Dursleys. I love when Fred and George are at the Dursleys, it's always excellent. This is obviously the most tame time, they just pull iron bars out of the window, pick the door lock, sneak downstairs, pick the cupboard lock, drag Harry's things upstairs and out the window and then yank Harry from Vernon's grasp as they fly away. Tame.

Seriously, I love the idea that Fred and George have taken the time to learn "Muggle ways" of mischief. I imagine their dad had a little something to do with that, not on purpose of course, but surely Arthur's obsession with Muggles filtered through to Fred and George, who then interpreted it the only way they could. Trouble.

Things get even better when they actually reach the Burrow. As I read, I'm just as fascinated as Harry with this wizard house. I day-dream about being able to flick my wand and do the dishes or create a 1-minute feast. It is interesting to note that the clock is different here. Obviously Rowling knew she wanted an interesting clock, she just hadn't quite figured out how to do it yet.

The garden de-gnoming is a fun slice of wizard life. I love that Molly describes it as "boring", I think it sounds pretty fun!

Finally we get to meet Mr. Weasley. What can I say about old Arthur? As Rowling has pointed out, he's the only decent father in the entire series. I fell in love with him the second he asked his sons how the flight went instead of punishing them.

What about you? What are your feelings about the Weasleys? Love them? Hate them? (If you hate them, I'd be interested to hear why....and I expect your last name is Malfoy.)

The Potions Master

Honestly, I find this chapter to be fairly boring. Sure it's fun to hear about the wonders of Hogwarts, the classes and teachers, but it's not done in the most interesting of ways, and we have plenty of time to learn these things as the series moves along. Even the Snape stuff in this chapter is a bit tedious, since at this point Snape's character (and all the teachers) seem a bit one-dimensional. Sure there might be a slight bit of curiosity as to why a teacher would dislike Harry so immediately, but mostly at this point, Snape just seems like a dick.

The visit to Hagrid's is a bit more interesting, if only for the fact that we get a little clue that this is going to be a mystery, Harry's got some ideas about what's going on with the bank heist (and really what 11-year-old wouldn't?) and he's going to take it upon himself to see if he can sort it all out. Perfectly reasonable. (Yeah, I'm feeling a bit sarcastic today.)

One last thing, and if you have the answer, please tell me because I might just be having a brain fart. The last sentence in this chapter: "And did Hagrid know something about Snape that he didn't want to tell Harry?" Did he? I was under the impression that Dumbledore was the only one who knew about Snape's motivations and back story. I mean, okay, Hagrid may have known that James and Snape didn't get along, but is that really something to act all weird and avoidy about? If that's it, wouldn't it make more sense just to say; "Yeh, well, he and yer dad didn't really get along and the guy carries a grudge." I mean wouldn't that be better than to allow an ELEVEN YEAR OLD to think that a TEACHER hates him for NO REASON? Not that the James thing is a very good reason either, but Snape's emotional intelligence level isn't exactly stratospheric and at least it would give Harry something to hang onto through the next 7 years. Perhaps, if Harry had been told this from the beginning, he could have just reminded himself of it every time Snape was unfair, "He's really punishing my dad." and perhaps at least Harry could have been spared some of the enmity of the relationship.

Diagon Alley

This chapter is where Rowling starts really building her world. To this point, we've been in reasonably familiar locations, but we're about to fully immerse ourselves in the magical world, so that's what I'll be focusing on in this post, the differences and similarities between the wizarding world and ours. Who's excited? I know I am!

While it's been alluded to in previous chapters, we find out a little bit more about Owl Post. It turns out owls don't just deliver mail, but newspapers as well. We find out that they know when they need to be paid and how to go about making sure they don't get stiffed and at the end of the chapter we find out that owls can find the person they're supposed to deliver to with nothing more than a name. Basically, owls are pretty dang smart it turns out!

Hagrid tells Harry he flew to the island and Harry is certainly interested in the idea of flying. Now, exactly how Hagrid flew there is a mystery as we later find the wizards generally need a broom or some other enchanted item or magical creature to fly (unless you're Voldemort or Snape) and Hagrid in particular has to stick to Sirius' motorcycle. Now, if Hagrid used Sirius' motorcycle, how does he get it back? After he leaves Harry at the train, does he take the boat back over to the island and then take the motorcycle back? That would help explain how the Dursleys get back I suppose, but it seems like an awful lot of trouble.

It also turns out that wizards have their own form of government, the Ministry of Magic, who's main job, according to Hagrid, is to "keep it from Muggles that there's still witches an' wizards up an' down the country". This is really a simplified version of what the Ministry does and it's unclear as to whether Hagrid is trying to make it easy for the barely 11-year-old Harry to understand, or if that's what Hagrid thinks the Ministry does. We'll be getting more into the Ministry when we get to the later books.

The first place Harry and Hagrid go upon reaching Diagon Alley is Gringotts Wizard Bank, and its rife with important moments. We're told multiple times, in prose and in verse, that Gringotts would be impossible to rob, so that when later in the book we find that someone tried to do so that same day, we're duly impressed at the thief's daring. Brilliantly, Rowling lets us think she's played out the Gringotts angle, only to bring its impregnable qualities back to the forefront in Deathly Hallows. We also meet Griphook, and while it should be a rather glaring clue that he's the only Goblin that gets a name, I'll admit to being surprised when he turned up again later in the series. Gringotts also lets us learn that Hagrid wants a dragon, which becomes important soon, and we learn a bit about wizarding currency (and Rowling's apathy toward good math, 17 sickles to a galleon and 29 knuts to a sickle?! that's one messed up base scale! Not to mention, it really bugs me that earlier in the chapter a woman is complaining about the price of Dragon Livers at 17 sickles an ounce, THAT'S A GALLEON! No one prices something at 100 cents, it's a dollar!) Okay, so that's off my chest, moving on.

Next up Harry meets a boy we'll later learn is Draco Malfoy and discovers that there are unpleasant wizards just like Muggles. He also hears fun new words like "Quiddich", "Slytherin" and "Hufflepuff". Though he does ask Hagrid about them, we'll have to wait a bit longer to get much more than Quiddich is a sport and the other two are houses at Hogwarts.

Last thing Harry does is get his wand. He meets Mr. Ollivander, who it turns out is a pivotal character at the end of the series and learns that the "wand chooses the wizard" which may just be important as well. While all this set up is all very well and good, what I love about this chapter is finding out about people's wands. We hear that Lily's wand was made of willow and good for charms work (I don't have anything interesting about that) and that James' wand was mahogany and good for transfiguration (we know James was pretty good at Transfiguration, considering he and his buddies figured out how to become an animagus quite young, a truly tricky bit of Transfiguration). Hagrid's wand was oak, which we know are strong and tall, but it's Voldemort's that the most interesting, his wand was made of yew, a tree often found in graveyards, pretty ironic for a "man" who's greatest fear is death. The core of Voldemort's wand comes from Dumbledore's pet phoenix, Fawkes, which is interesting to consider as well. Then of course we find out that the wand Harry ends up with is Voldemort's wand's brother, I'm not going to talk about that right now though, because I'm pretty sure that comes up later.

Yep, pretty good chapter it turns out. On the surface its full of interesting tidbits and straight up fun (I really wish my banks vaults were a cart ride away), but when you look deeper, you find oodles of interesting clues about what's to come. What are some of your favorite places in Diagon Alley? Did I miss any big clues?

Keeper of the Keys

I'm moving! - Across the street! - To an apartment run by the same property management company I currently rent from! Why am I telling you this? Because my awesome property manager is going to give me the keys early and I'll have about two weeks to move my stuff, mostly after work and on weekends. Now, if the weather stays awesome, I might manage to retain enough energy to blog after moving all I can stand everyday, but if I don't, I don't want you to think I've forgotten you. We'll see how it goes. Anyway, speaking of life changing events, Harry's about to experience a doozy. Time to see who's at the door!

The door crashes to the floor and silhouetted in the doorway is a huge man. He comes in, makes himself comfortable, introduces himself as Hagrid, Keeper of the Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts, and proceeds to fill Harry in on the fact that there's magic, that he's a wizard, that his parents were killed by magic, and that he's headed to Hogwarts to study magic. Hagrid also gives Harry a birthday cake (his first (that he can remember)) and gives Dudley a pigs tail. The Dursleys all hide in the bedroom and Hagrid and Harry catch a few more z's before going shopping.

While in some respects, this could be considered a boring chapter, it's pretty much just a bunch of exposition after all, its so chock-full of hints, clues and foreshadowing, the observant reader will find themselves fascinated. I count no fewer than five important points in this short chapter.

1. Harry meets Hagrid. (duh) Hagrid not only tells Harry who and what he is, but he is the first adult Harry has ever known to treat him well. He stands up for Harry, answers his questions and shows Harry more respect than Harry's ever encountered before. Not surprisingly, the meeting creates an almost instantaneous bond between the two that will carry them straight through to the Forbidden Forest and the walk to Hogwarts in Deathly Hallows.

2. "Yeh look a lot like yer dad, but yeh've got yer mother's eyes." Hagrid's the first to say it, but we hear it from plenty of other people throughout the series. Observant readers quickly realized it had to mean something, and sure enough, this one, seemingly innocuous sentence, sets the stage for one of the most beautiful scenes in the series when Snape asks Harry to "Look at me".

3. Hagrid mentions the letter Dumbledore left. While it might not be as important as some of the other hints dropped in this chapter, we later discover that the letter Dumbledore left was not for Harry, but for Petunia, and that it was not the first time they had corresponded. That same letter may just be what later saves Harry's life at the beginning of Order of the Phoenix.

4. Speaking of Petunia, we start to see there's a little more to her than meets the eye. It's reasonably obvious the Vernon is against magic simply because he's an ass, but Petunia's vitriolic speech in which she calls her own sister a freak, could only come from a place of real emotion. We don't know yet what that emotion is, but we know there has to be more. I plan to talk a lot more about this in the future.

5. Hagrid tells Harry about Voldemort. Obviously this is a key bit of plot, for this book and the series as a whole. Before this moment, Harry thinks his parents dies in a a car crash and now he (and we) learn the truth...or as much of the truth as Hagrid knows. It's interesting to see how much Hagrid has guessed ("Some say he died. Codswallop, in my opinion. Dunno if he had enough human left in him to die.") and how much Hagrid got wrong ("You-Know-Who killed 'em. An' then - an' this is the real myst'ry of the thing - he tried to kill you, too. Wanted ter make a clean job of it, I suppose, or maybe he just liked killin' by then.) Regardless, the story Hagrid tells Harry is all Harry has to go on for the next four years in his battles with Voldemort.

One final thing this chapter brings up for me and that's the Trace. It seems obvious the Trace is being used to track Harry (how else would they know where he is?) but that brings up further questions as to how the Trace works. Is it attached to all wizards, or does it simply find magic? The way Voldemort modifies it in Deathly Hallows would imply the latter, but that would mean that Harry would have had to have (inadvertently) done magic in each of the places the Dursleys tried to hide, none of which is mentioned. Or is there some other, even creepier, big brother way of tracking wizards? If so, its either only for underage wizards, or Voldemort certainly would have used it in Deathly Hallows. Unless, perhaps there's some sort of self-destruct mode...

What do you think of my "important moments"? Would you add some? Do you disagree with me on any? What about the Trace? Does anyone else spend as much time trying to figure out how this stuff works as I do? I look forward to hearing from you!

The Boy Who Lived

See, I told you there was no way I'd actually be able to blog everyday, although, to be honest yesterday's absence had more to do with the sudden panic that I wouldn't have anything of interest to say about the first chapter than any pressing business I had to get done. Unless of course you consider watching the "extras" disc of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince pressing.

Anyway, here's the plan as it currently exists in my head. I often find when I'm reading this series that I have thoughts I want to talk to fellow Potterheads about and then I forget them by the time I have the opportunity, so I'm going to have this post open as I read and if and when these thoughts come to me (no pressure brain) I'll share them with you. This of course means, that anything that comes after this sentence is nothing more than free-flowing, unedited ideas, make of it what you will.

The Dursleys think they're normal and if your definition of normal is boring, nosy, and mean, I guess they are. Mr. Dursley heads to work and notices a lot of strange people around, which he does not appreciate. At one point he hears a group of these strange people talking about the Potters and a child name Harry, could they be talking about his in-laws? Surely not. Later that night he hears about more strange goings on on the news.

While the Dursleys sleep that night, a strange man appears on the street. He uses a lighter to put out all the lights on the street and then heads toward number 4. A cat that's been hanging out on the wall by the Dursleys all day, turns into Professor McGonagall, who greets the man as Professor Dumbledore. They have a conversation that doesn't make a whole lot of sense at this point and are soon joined by a huge man on a flying motorcycle caring a baby. There's some more talk that doesn't quite make sense yet, and they leave the baby, with a lightning shaped scar on his forehead, on the Dursley's doorstep along with a note.

I'm a big fan of Mary Grandpre's illustrations, and I always like to take a second to look at the drawing on the cover page, in this case, of Hogwarts. Scholastic's website has all the illustrations in color, which is pretty cool to see.

I always find it jarring when I read that Aunt Petunia is blond. In most cases, I've been able to avoid having the actor from the movie become the character that lives in my head, but Fiona Shaw is so brilliant, that she's completely taken over the character for me.

Rowling's narrative style has noticeably changed since the first book. The last time I reread Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, I noticed on my last reread that this is the only book where we're given a perspective that is not Harry's when Harry is in the scene (it's during Quiddich, we'll get there) and just now I've noticed that Rowling directly references the fact that she is narrating a story: "When Mr. and Mrs. Dursley woke up on the dull, gray Tuesday our story starts..." I don't know why I find that interesting, but I do.

One of the things I miss most in the movies is cloaks and robes. Most of the adults manage to dress reasonably normally. The "robes" the girls wore to the Yuleball in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (I'm going to start shortening the titles now, consider the "Harry Potter and the" part implied.) were dresses, pretty dresses, but definitely not robes.

We get the first hint at Rowling's knack for names with Jim McGuffin, who does exactly what a MacGuffin is supposed to do by forcing the plot to move along (in this case, making it so that Mr. Dursley has to mention the weirdness he's noticed).

Everyone knows that Rowling had a plan from the start and that there's a lot of set up in the earlier novels that pay off later. Even the first chapter is chock full of them: the mystery of just why the Dursleys hate the Potters so much, the Put-Outer, Voldemort's name, Dumbledore's letter to Petunia, Sirius' bike, and of course, the scar. All will come into play in the future in HUGE ways.

And now comes the hard part: ignoring the pull to keep reading, because once I get started with this series, it's hard to stop myself, even for sleep. I'm determined to do it slowly this time though, one chapter at a time.

Think I've said something stupid? Did I bring up something you've never thought of before (not really expecting that to have happened, but a girl can dream)? Please share your thoughts, I'd love for this to turn into a conversation and not stay a monologue.