Now that I’ve been confined to my home by the current state of things, I think there’s no better time to revisit my childhood. A specific part of my childhood to be exact, as well as the childhood of millions of others around the world; the Harry Potter series. Even if you are Patrick Star and live under a rock, under the sea, there’s zero chance that you don’t know this absolute juggernaut of a series. My plan here is basically to go through the series and try and see if the revelation that wizards used to shit themselves has ruined Hogwarts for me.
Speaking of shitting oneself, I’ll haven’t really been keeping track of Rowling’s tweets or the bits of canon that were added through Pottermore so the discussions will be limited to the Book Canon. Putting the quality of the additional bits of worldbuilding aside, this is more about taking another look at the series that I experienced as a kid and not about the series in its current state. Without further ado, let’s get right into Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (not the Sorcerer’s Stone, which is dumb)
“Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.”
With its iconic opening, the book makes it the personalities of the Dursleys pretty clear. It goes on to describe both of them as being unattractive in very different ways. The series falls into the same pitfall as many other children’s books where physical attractiveness is inversely proportional to ‘evilness’. Super Best Friends Play used the term “the Fat Evil” to mock the use of this trope by David Cage and it seems like it is also applicable to Rowling.
As the chapter goes on, we learn more about Vernon and Petunia, including the fact that they want nothing to do with the “Potters”. Unfortunately for him, it’snot his last name of the cover of the book. We are also introduced to Dudley, who is meant to be seen as a spoiled brat with blissfully unaware parents. I don’t really think it’s fair that the book seems to be judging a literal baby but more on that later.
“It was on the corner of the street that he noticed the first sign of something peculiar – a cat reading a map. For a second, Mr Dursley didn’t realise what he had seen – then he jerked his head around to look again. There was a tabby cat standing on the corner of Privet Drive, but there wasn’t a map in sight. What could he have been thinking of?”
As Vernon leaves for work, we are introduced to our first magical character, Professor Minerva McGonagall. A somewhat fitting name given that Minerva was the Roman Goddess of Wisdom, among other things. Very irresponsible to be openly reading a map in her cat form for a supposedly strict character though. Funnily enough, my mental image of her while reading the series was Yoruichi from Bleach. I have no idea why my brain did that since the two characters couldn’t be more different, apart from their cat transformation ability.
Anyway, as Vernon drives to work, he notices many weirdly dressed people walking about and mentally justifies it as a group of people ‘collecting for something’. Not exactly an unreasonable assumption, especially coming from a character who’s not exactly supposed to be the sharpest drill in the shed. When I think about it now, a less whimsical tone would have made this chapter resemble the start of a Lovecraftian horror story. We live in a world where Anime conventions exist so we’re not going to be fazed by people in cloaks but for Vernon, they might as well be cultists trying to awaken Azathoth.
After a productive day filled with shouting at people, Vernon goes to stretch his legs. Well, as far as walking across the street to buy food counts as stretching your legs. On the way back, he overhears the suspiciously dressed people talking about the ‘Potters’ and their son Harry which causes quite a reaction in Vernon.
“Mr Dursley stopped dead. Fear flooded him. He looked back at the whisperers as if he wanted to say something to them, but thought better of it. He dashed back across the road, hurried up to his office, snapped at his secretary not to disturb him, seized his telephone and had almost finished dialling his home number when he changed his mind.”
Now it feels like Vernon was one conversation with a surprisingly knowledgeable drunkard away from being a Lovecraft protagonist. Disliking the Potters is one thing, and totally understandable if James even slightly resembled his Grade A Dickhead self that we saw in Order of the Phoenix. Vernon, however, is scared shitless of the possibility that the strange people being possibly connected to the Potters. He tries to convince himself that ‘Potter’ was a common enough name and his nephew might not even be named Harry. As he returns home determined to avoid mentioning anything to his wife.
After additional reports of strange occurrences in the news, Vernon tries to broach the topic of today’s weirdness to Petunia. Much to his chagrin, she confirms that our heroic protagonist and his nephew is indeed named Harry. Strangely enough, Vernon seemed quite afraid of his wife when he was trying to bring up the Potters. I guess Petunia too can be scary if she wants to. To make things even worse, the cat from the morning is still outside his house. Vernon lies in bed later that night with Y̷o̷g̷-̷S̷o̷t̷h̷o̷t̷h̷, I mean the Potters invading his thoughts. As he uneasily drifts to sleep, a man teleports outside his house.
This strange man with long beard, sweeping robes, and most importantly, fucking high heeled buckled boots is Albus Dumbledore, full name Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. The Brian part will never not be funny. He’s also a few belts away from dressing like a Final Fantasy character and is supposed to be the mentor figure for this story. We’ll see how good he is at that as we get through the story. He uses this amazingly named ‘Put-Outer’ to turn off the streetlights in the area. Given the tone of Deathly Hallows, I can see why she had everyone call it the Deluminator later on.
Dumbledore greets McGonagall, who is surprised to be recognized in her cat form. It seems like Dumbledore was expecting her to be celebrating rather than sitting here all day. After a brief conversation about the carelessness of those who are celebrating that day, McGonagall asks if Voldemort was really defeated. Dumbledore confirms and proceeds to comfort her about James and Lily’s deaths.
‘What they’re saying,’ she pressed on, ‘is that last night Voldemort turned up in Godric’s Hollow. He went to find the Potters. The rumour is that Lily and James Potter are – are – that they’re – dead.’
Dumbledore bowed his head. Professor McGonagall gasped.
‘Lily and James … I can’t believe it … I didn’t want to believe it … Oh, Albus …’
It is a pretty big contrast to her usual demeanor throughout the book and makes for a good way of showing that despite being the ‘strict authority figure’, she does really care. When asked how exactly that happened, he more or less just shrugs and goes “dunno”. As the conversation went on, we see that McGonagall doesn’t really approve of putting Harry with the Dursleys.
‘You don’t mean – you can’t mean the people who live here?’ cried Professor McGonagall, jumping to her feet and pointing at number four. ‘Dumbledore – you can’t. I’ve been watching them all day. You couldn’t find two people who are less like us. And they’ve got this son – I saw him kicking his mother all the way up the street, screaming for sweets. Harry Potter come and live here!’
While I agree that Dursleys wouldn’t really be a good family for Harry, her reasoning just feels kinda odd. She could have said something to the effect of ‘they’re shit people’ or ‘they aren’t even doing a good job of rearing their own child’ but seems to be going with ‘‘they’re too different from us’ instead. The Dursleys are assholes of course, as Harry will soon find out, but it doesn’t really feel like they’ve done enough to deserve this indignant response from McG.
On that note, it does feel odd that the book is trying to portray Dudley as a spoiled child. He’s about a month older than Harry, so it’s not like throwing tantrums at that age is somehow unprecedented or a sign that he’s personality is set in stone as a shithead. It’s one thing to judge Petunia and Vernon for failing to properly manage his tantrums but this feels somewhat unfair. Like Dumbledore said in Half-Blood Prince, Dudley was also a victim of the Durselys, albeit in a different way than Harry.
While McG may not necessarily be right about that, she is definitely right that Dumbledore’s plan to leave a letter is stupid. She’s also not a fan of trusting Hagrid to deliver Harry, which isn’t exactly unreasonable to be fair. From what we’ve seen of her so far, she feels like a more cynical foil to the whimsical Dumbledore, with possibly better decision-making.
Before any additional argument could ensue regarding Hagrid’s capabilities, the man himself enters the scene on a loud flying motorbike. Well not exactly a man, as we see from his description.
He was almost twice as tall as a normal man and at least five times as wide. He looked simply too big to be allowed, and so wild – long tangles of bushy black hair and beard hid most of his face, he had hands the size of dustbin lids and his feet in their leather boots were like baby dolphins. In his vast, muscular arms he was holding a bundle of blankets.
I think it’s fair to say that Hagrid is an absolute unit. Forget Harry, Dumbledore, and all the prophecy nonsense. A solid uppercut from Hagrid would probably vaporise Voldemort’s upper body. Also, just how fucking big was Sirius’ bike? Twice as tall and five times as wide gives us something like this:
After name dropping Sirius Black as the owner of the flying bike, Hagrid states that he brought Harry straight from the wreckage of his house. With that piece of information in mind, I’m going to try and establish the time frame.
Sometime in the morning, McG learns from Hagrid that Dumbledore was going to be at Privet Drive so she decides to wait for him there. Word gets around about Voldemort’s defeat and wizards start celebrating. Hagrid arrives at the destroyed house before the ‘Muggles started swarmin’ around’ and takes Harry away. By Vernon’s lunchtime excursion, wizards seem to have realized that Harry was somehow involved with Voldemort’s defeat. At midnight, Dumbledore arrives at Privet Drive after ‘passing a dozen feasts and parties’ on the way, followed shortly afterwards by Hagrid.
The thing that stands out about this is that Dumbledore doesn’t really come off as being actually invested in Harry’s whole situation. I can’t think of anything that could possibly take priority over getting Harry to safety but he just sends Hagrid of all people. How long would it had taken him to teleport there, check if everything is OK and then find an infant-friendly way to transport Harry. I suppose a part of his day could be spent on confirming that Voldemort was gone and whether or not Harry would be protected by Lily’s sacrifice at the Dursleys. Even so, there’s still too much time unaccounted for and he just comes off as way too nonchalant here given that he was talking about passing by several parties and feasts on the way to Privet Drive.
Another thing is the fact that people somehow knew that Voldemort was defeated by Harry by midday. It doesn’t really seem that there were many avenues for that information to be leaked. Hagrid also seems to have taken his sweet time to reach Privet Drive. All in all, the time frame is wonky as hell but let’s not get too bogged down in that.
Upon noticing the famous lightning bolt scar, McG asks Dumbledore if he could do something but it. Dumbledore says he can’t (and won’t) and decides for some godforsaken reason that it was the perfect time to flex about a scar on his knee that resembles the London Underground. I wonder if he carves himself up to make sure that its up to date. Anyway, they leave Harry on the doorstep of number four Privet Drive with a letter after goodbyes and go their separate ways. I’ve heard people complain about the health risks of leaving a child outside in November but I suppose Dumbledore would have done some magic to prevent that. Of course, that doesn’t make the idea to leave a letter any less stupid. One would think that the news of a dead family member along with a huge addition to her responsibilities would entitle Petunia to a personal visitor along with an explanation.
There’s a lot of fairy tale logic to this chapter along with the expected early installment weirdness. We’re introduced to some of the key characters in the story and both the protagonist and the antagonist have been set up. Not a lot of information about the world but that’s for Harry to discover I suppose. There isn’t a lot that was different from what I remember reading as a child. Let’s see how things go from here.
