The Worst Birthday

After a restful weekend I'm ready and raring to start in on book two, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I'm hoping to move through this one at a pretty fast clip and I'll tell you why. I long ago removed the dust jackets from my copies and have the book displayed on a shelf full of other Potter stuff (a snitch, glasses, movies, etc.) and I've discovered that when you remove Chamber of Secrets, the red of Sorcerer's Stone and the purple of Prisoner of Azkaban clash horribly. I'm telling you. Go try it with your copies and see how long you'd want to have to see that on you shelf everyday! I would put up pictures if I had a decent camera, it's that bad.

So, now that I've whined about decor for half a page, let's talk about the chapter. There's not much to this one really. It's basically your standard "let me do a quick recap of the first book for you" all sequels are cursed with. I know that it's there for the people who missed the first one and came in in the middle, but for me, who's far too compulsive to ever start a series in the middle, it gets old fast. I wish publisher's would consider putting out editions for people like me, that skip over all that stuff. Rowling is better than most at making it interesting (maybe not here, but she gets better at it). I can remember the days when I was into The Baby-Sitter's Club and Sweet Valley Twins when I would just skip the chapter that gave me all the back story stuff and I never missed a thing. Perhaps now that ebooks are becoming more popular, it will be possible to have editions of books that cut all that junk out. Then again, if you were to cut out all that stuff from this chapter, it would go a little something like this:

Harry and Dursleys were eating breakfast. Dudley demanded that Harry pass him some bacon and Harry said, "You didn't say the magic word."
After Uncle Vernon finished freaking out about Harry saying magic (again) he reminded everyone of his big business meeting. He headed out, admonishing Harry to stay out of Aunt Petunia's way.
He was trying to do just that, quietly singing Happy Birthday to himself and feeling sorry for himself that no one had sent him any gifts. Perhaps Ron and Hermione didn't want to be his friend. Sure, they'd risked their lives just a month before to help him, but they could have easily had a change of heart.
Something's watching him from the hedge.
Dudley comes out to make fun of Harry's lack of friends on his birthday and Harry takes the bait, pretending to cast magic on the hedge. As punishment Petunia makes Harry do the gardening. When finally the day is over, Harry eats and heads upstairs, where someone is sitting on his bed!

That's it. Short chapter. How do you feel about the "previously in" recaps, required of sequels?

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!