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earlgreytea68
Page 17: “Very true,” said Aunt Petunia, who was still squinting into next door’s runner beans.
What are runner beans?
Page 20: Uncle Vernon was pulling on his car coat.
Also, what is a car coat? Are these all British-isms, or am I just clueless?
Page 20: “Knocking the stuffing out of me won’t make Aunt Marge forget what I could tell her,” he said grimly.
Harry is really very clever. The threat of physical violence would have had me cowering away, but Harry just keeps his head and makes an excellent point about the power he holds in the situation.
Page 28: They go and get themselves killed in a car crash (drunk, I expect)—
I really don’t understand why Aunt Marge is so vicious to Harry, and about Harry’s parents. Is there some kind of jealousy involved somewhere or something? Or I guess it’s just one of those fairy-tale aspects of Harry Potter that it’s best not to question: The wicked step-family is wicked just because they are. But still, it’s quite shocking to behave toward a child this way.
Page 30: “I’m going,” Harry said. “I’ve had enough.”
Rowling does a great job with subtly aging the kids throughout the series. They get older, noticeably so, but it never feels jarring. This is just one little moment where you realize how much older (and more confident) this Harry is than the little boy we met in Book One.
Page 32: He had the Invisibility Cloak he had inherited from his father –what if he bewitched the trunk to make it feather-light, tied it to his broomstick, covered himself in the cloak, and flew to London?
Why don’t the Hogwarts students bewitch their book bags to be feather-light? Hermione spends a lot of this book lugging a filled-to-bursting book bag around. Are they just not allowed to make them easier to carry?
Page 34: With a feeling of unease, Harry saw Stan’s eyes move to the scar on Harry’s forehead. “Woss that on your ‘ead?” said Stan abruptly. “Nothing,” said Harry quickly, flattening his hair over his scar. If the Ministry of Magic was looking for him, he didn’t want to make it too easy for them.
It is very difficult to go into hiding when you are Harry Potter. You’d need plastic surgery, I would think.
Page 35: “Eleven Sickles,” said Stan, “but for firteen you get ‘ot chocolate, and for fifteen you get an ‘ot water bottle an’ a toofbrush in the color of your choice.”
A hot water bottle! Hot water bottles are the best inventions ever! I hope Harry sprang for one. (I wonder if it came in a Dalek cover.)
Page 36: “How come the Muggles don’t hear the bus?” said Harry. “Them!” said Stan contemptuously. “Don’ listen properly, do they? Don’ look properly either. Never notice nuffink, they don’.”
So much of fantasy depends upon this idea, that the human race is really rubbish at noticing the things going on around us. In effect, we are all constantly scuba diving in Spain with Donna.
Page 41: One by one, wizards and witches in dressing gowns and slippers descended from the upper floors to leave the bus. They all looked very pleased to go.
The Knight Bus does not seem to be a very pleasant way to travel. I wonder why these wizards and witches don’t use Floo powder, or Apparate?
Page 46: “Don’t want to lose you again, do we?” said Fudge with a hearty laugh. “No, no…best we know where you are…. I mean…”
I think, in this scene, you definitely once again get an idea of how vitally important the wizarding world finds Harry Potter. The Minister of Magic himself frets about keeping him safe. Granted, Sirius Black is on the loose and thought to be gunning for him, but, later in the book, when Snape complains to Fudge about how Harry gets preferential treatment at Hogwarts, Fudge says something about how he’s Harry Potter, and they all have a soft spot for him. One wonders what panic would seize the wizarding world if anything were to happen to Harry.
Page 50: Harry didn’t have to do his homework under the blankets by flashlight anymore; now he could sit in the bright sunshine outside Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlor, finishing all his essays with occasional help from Florean Fortescue himself, who, apart from knowing a great deal about medieval witch burnings, gave Harry free sundaes every half an hour.
Sorry, let’s just pause here for a second: Harry ate an ice cream sundae EVERY THIRTY MINUTES?!
Page 53: I thought we’d seen the worst when we bought two hundred copies of the Invisible Book of Invisibility – cost a fortune, and we never found them….
Ha! How would you even read this book? I love this line, it cracks me up.
Page 57: It’s my birthday in September, and Mum and Dad gave me some money to get myself an early birthday present.
We never really see what Ron and Hermione get for their birthdays. The only birthday we ever see celebrated is Harry’s.
Page 67: But Harry happened to agree wholeheartedly with Mrs. Weasley that the safest place on earth was wherever Albus Dumbledore happened to be.
Probably true. But, just because it’s the safest place doesn’t mean that it’s safe.
Page 70: Harry had no chance to speak to Ron or Hermione in the chaos of leaving; they were too busy heaving all their trunks down the Leaky Cauldron’s narrow staircase and piling them up near the door, with Hedwig and Hermes, Percy’s screech owl, perched on top in their cages.
See? Why don’t they just make the trunks feather-light?
Page 71: They reached King’s Cross with twenty minutes to spare; the Ministry drivers found them trolleys, unloaded their trunks, touched their hats in salute to Mr. Weasley, and drove away, somehow managing to jump to the head of an unmoving line at the traffic lights.
I really need to get myself a wizard car.
Page 73: Harry, swear to me you won’t go looking for Black.
The plot thickens!
Page 75: “I don’t go looking for trouble,” said Harry, nettled. “Trouble usually finds me.”
Ah, he’s jeopardy-friendly!
Page 77: In Site of Historical Sorcery it says the inn was the headquarters for the 1612 goblin rebellion, and the Shrieking Shack’s supposed to be the most severely haunted building in Britain –
Hermione sounds like my 1937 book here.
Page 87: Harry, Ron, and Hermione followed the rest of the school along the platform and out onto a rough mud track, where at least a hundred stagecoaches awaited the remaining students, each pulled, Harry could only assume, by an invisible horse, because when they climbed inside and shut the door, the coach set off all by itself, bumping and swaying in procession.
Throwaway reference here to the “invisible horse.”
Page 90: “Oh,” said Hermione softly, “we’ve missed the Sorting!”
They almost always miss the Sorting, don’t they? I do not blame JKR for not wanting to describe that every book.
Page 92: “Dementors are not to be fooled by tricks or disguises – or even Invisibility Cloaks,” he added blandly, and Harry and Ron glanced at each other.
Oh, I love Dumbledore.
Page 93: Well, I am sorry to tell you that Professor Kettleburn, our Care of Magical Creatures teacher, retired at the end of last year in order to enjoy more time with his remaining limbs.
This gives one the impression that Care of Magical Creatures was always a dangerous subject. I guess I always thought it was just Hagrid’s usual recklessness in choosing dangerous creatures, but that seems not to be the case.
Page 93: Harry, Ron, and Hermione were the last to stop clapping, and as Professor Dumbledore started speaking again, they saw that Hagrid was wiping his eyes on the tablecloth.
Okay, I admit, I was touched by this moment.
Page 94: The new password’s “Fortuna Major”!
Aw, Fortuna!
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no subject
Date: 2009-10-25 10:49 pm (UTC)Main Entry: car coat
Function: noun
Date: 1958
: a three-quarter-length overcoat
Huh.
I love the nice buildup of tension at the beginning of this book!
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Date: 2009-10-25 11:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-25 11:16 pm (UTC)And, while I don't know why they didn't do it at the Leaky Cauldron, I figured Harry didn't bewitch his trunk at the Dursley's because of the fiasco last year with the pudding and Dobby and the letter from the MoM.
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Date: 2009-10-25 11:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-25 11:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-25 11:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-25 11:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-25 11:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-25 11:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-25 11:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-26 01:41 am (UTC)But I do love the 'Throwaway reference here to the “invisible horse.”' and that JK always has them miss the sorting.
I think they only got to one of them other than their own.
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Date: 2009-10-26 02:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-26 04:33 am (UTC)0.-
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Date: 2009-10-27 12:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-26 11:09 am (UTC)But what's more interesting, I think, about this line, is what happens to Stan at the end. We're told, I think, that's he's Confounded, but considering his opinion of Muggles not being terribly bright, I wonder......
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Date: 2009-10-27 12:57 am (UTC)Love your icon!!
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Date: 2009-10-27 01:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-26 03:57 pm (UTC)I'm guessing she's listened to her brother's grousing about Harry so much she's believing it. And she's probably got a nasty personality similar to his, as well.
Perhaps it's only invisible until it's opened?
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Date: 2009-10-27 12:58 am (UTC)That could be. If you locate it, then it stops being invisible!
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Date: 2009-10-26 10:21 pm (UTC)It's possible that I think way too much about Harry Potter.
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Date: 2009-10-27 01:00 am (UTC)(For some reason, my LJ never notified me you commented! So odd!)
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Date: 2009-10-26 10:56 pm (UTC)As I recall, in a later book she explains how jealous she was of her sister. Lily was the "better" child because she was special. A witch! Apparently her parents fawned over her and left Petunia out in the cold, or so she perceived.
And maybe she was also jealous that Lily found a nice, easygoing guy like James whereas she ended up with Mr. Dursley. I mean, I'd be upset about that, too. :-p Add that with dying before they could make up as sisters AND leaving Petunia with a surplus child to raise... but now I'm getting into fanfic-level personal interpretation.
Oh, and sundaes every thirty minutes? That struck me as wild, too. Good thing Harry burns calories by being in trouble 24/7!
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Date: 2009-10-27 12:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-27 01:11 am (UTC)I guess I owe a rational response: Maybe Aunt Marge is just a horrible, hateful old woman. But that's too easy, I think.
Heaven knows what she's been told about Harry's parentage. She seems the elitist sort that would take anyone but a 9-5 working, church-going, over-assertive person and label them "trash." I imagine she was told that James was some kind of vagrant. And what kind of woman doesn't shoot for a man richer and more respectable than her current place in life? Thus, Lily must be a nutter and a layabout as well, and with parentage like that, Harry is doomed to ineptitude. Not like her poor, put-upon Dudley!
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Date: 2009-10-27 02:12 am (UTC)Oh, poor Dudley! I love their enormous blind spots for Dudley.