The Chamber of Secrets

Harry and Ron had no idea how they were going to get to talk to Moaning Myrtle until Lockhart gave them the perfect opportunity. Unfortunately, just before they reached her bathroom, McGonagall found them. Harry told her they wanted to see Hermione and tell her that the mandrakes would be ready that night. McGonagall got a bit emotional and told them to tell Madam Pomfrey she said it was okay. At Hermione's bedside, Harry noticed a piece of paper clutched in her hand. Upon extraction, the boys saw that it was a description of a Basilisk and everything fell into place. Between Hermione's clues and Aragog's hints, they realized that the monster was a Basilisk and the Chamber of Secrets must open into Moaning Myrtle's bathroom! They headed straight to the staff room to tell McGonagall, but before they could it was announced that Ginny had been taken by the monster into the Chamber of Secrets.

Harry and Ron eventually determine to tell Lockhart, who is suppose to be getting ready to mount a rescue, what they know, but when they reach his office they find him packing. It turns out none of his stories actually happened to him, he'd been stealing the stories from other witches and wizards and then erasing their memories. He's about to erase their memories as well, but they disarm him and take him to Moaning Myrtle. Upon request, she tells them the story of how and where she died. They find the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets and the three of them head in. Lockhart steals Ron's wand and attempts a memory charm, but it backfires, causing a cave-in and the loss of his own memory. With Ron and Lockhart trapped by the entrance, Harry moves ahead alone...

I have to start out by saying how much I LOVE that all the other teachers despise Lockhart as much as Harry and Ron do. It's a bit of a relief to know none of the staff witches fell for his "winning" smile.

As we know Hogwarts was founded "over one thousand years ago". At that time, indoor plumbing wasn't exactly available, so how exactly did Salazar Slytherin manage to build the entrance in the bathroom?

Imaginary Reader: The magical world is different from our world.

Me: Okay, true. Still it seems a bit weird that they're using candles still but have had plumbing for hundreds of years.

Imaginary Reader: Okay, so the room used to be something else.

Me: So, how did the etching of the snake get on the sink? Slytherin was the only one who knew where the entrance was, and was probably dead by the late 19th century, not having a Sorceror's Stone and all.

Imaginary Reader: ....magic?

Me: *sigh* I suppose that's what we're stuck with, but I don't like it.

As you can see, I've resorted to having conversations with myself, but if you leave me comments I can have conversations with you instead! Consider subscribing to my comment RSS feed! I've also added buttons so now you can share your favorite posts in a variety of web-by ways!

Gilderoy Lockhart

I want to start off this post with a big thank you to Lisa at Her Book Self for giving me the Great Blog Neighbor Award. I highly recommend checking out Lisa's blog, a fun mix of book reviews, interesting quotes, and personal entries. Recognition by one's peers always feels good and I appreciate it immensely. I fully intend to pass it on, but I want to take a bit more time to think about to whom I will give it.



Now on to today's chapter: The day after their grand entrance, Ron receives a howler from his mother, admonishing him for his thoughtlessness. After breakfast, Ron, Harry and Hermione head to Herbology, where they run into Lockhart who proceeds to act like a giant ass and make assumptions about Harry. In class muggle-born Justin Finch-Fletchley joins their group in repotting Mandrakes. After lunch first-year Colin Creevey introduces himself to Harry, whom he has come to idolize in the short time he's had to learn about the wizarding world. Lockhart shows up again and more ass-ery ensues. Then comes Lockhart's class, which is pretty much what you'd expect: a quiz about him and then a disastrous practical lesson involving Cornish Pixies.

I have two things I want to talk about, howlers (awesome!) and Mandrakes (horrifying).

I think Howlers are one of Rowling's best ideas. First of all, they make sense, by which I mean I can understand how they could work, unlike so many of her magical apparatuses. I do wonder if you buy a special Howler envelope or if you cast the spell on any random envelope and the spell turns it red. If you do have to buy a Howler, who sells them? For some reason, based on the three people we know to use them in the series, I'm more inclined to think that the spell changes the envelope rather than the envelope being necessary to the spell. Also, it'd be a bit weird to keep something like that around and if you didn't keep it around you'd have to go out and buy one and by the time you finished doing that you probably would have lost some of your steam.

On the other hand, I'm conflicted about Mandrakes. On the one hand, they obviously work. On the other hand, I'm a vegetarian, so the idea of chopping up living, sentient creatures is abhorrent to me. Think about how they're described, first as babies and later as adolescents and teens who try to sneak into each others pots. It's pretty gross. Then again, maybe there's no other way to de-petrify someone. Would it be fair to leave a person in a petrified state when you had a way to heal them? What about a cat? Or a ghost? It's interesting to me that no one seems to have any sort of moral dilemma about this. I'd actually love to hear how Hermione feels about it as someone who is socially active and was saved by the Mandrakes. I tend to think that I might have to start my own activism group: WWETMR perhaps (Witches and Wizards for the Ethical Treatment of Mandrake Root).

Oh, and while I'm on the subject, why isn't that something you can buy at the apothecary's? I'd imagine not everyone can afford to cultivate their own, what if they need to counter a curse? But if it is sold at the apothecary's, isn't it negligent of Dumbledore to wait 8 months to cure anyone?

Lot's of question marks in this post, the question marks aren't rhetorical. Weigh in with your thoughts in the comments!

The Whomping Willow

Summer vacation comes to an end and Harry and Weasleys pack up and head to King's Cross Station. Running late they quickly head through the barrier to Platform 9 3/4 in pairs. Harry and Ron are the last to go, but the barrier won't let them through. After a couple minutes of panic, they decide to use the car to get to school. They reach the school, just as the car starts to lose steam (gas? magic?). The car crashes into a tree that proceeds to beat the ever-loving poo out of it and them, breaking Ron's wand in the process. The car escapes into the forest and the boys head to the castle where they're intercepted by Snape. Snape gleefully leads the boys down to his office, informing them that they were seen by several muggles. They are soon joined by McGonagall and Dumbledore, who assign them detention and tell them they're going to inform their families. After a dinner of sandwiches, they head upstairs, where all of Gryffindor is waiting to celebrate their grand entrance.

I LOVE the Hogwarts Express. That symbolic journey between the real world and the magical world are generally some of my favorite chapters. This could certainly be one of the reasons that I don't like this chapter much.

I'm also rather intolerant of stupidity and this chapter's just chock-full of that. There are any number of ways that Harry and Ron could have gotten to Hogwarts without taking the car and the fact that they didn't think of any of them irks me. Maybe it's normal for 12-year-old boys to act on the first idea they come up with, I don't know, I've never been one. Even so, the idiocy of the idea in the first place is unbelievable.

I can understand why Rowling did things this way, the car, the willow and the barricade closing are all important later on, and she does make an effort to have the decision make sense: Ron wonders if his parents will be able to get through, Harry notices that they're being stared at, etc. but I need something more for this chapter to be reasonable to me.

What are your feelings on the Flying Ford Anglia problem?

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?