Rereading Harry Potter - Chapters 1 and 2

I read my first Harry Potter book when I was five. It was the first real book I read and the one who made me realize I wanted to be a writer. It taught me to be strong, to help my friends, to be tolerant. I liked rereading them as I grew older because there were so many things I'd missed. Today, I've decided to put together eleven years of anotations on the margins of my torn down copy, analyzing every single aspect of it. Please keep in mind that this will naturally be very spoiler-heavy,




So it's the night after Hallowe'en. How cool is it that Harry's parents died on Halloween? Well, not for him, of course, but for us it is. Moving on.

The Dursleys are very boring. Joanne procceeds to tell us all about Vernon's boring day. Boring, boring, boring. I don't know if you've noticed how the writing style from the first chapters of each book is different from the rest of the book. This is an example of good writing, because she really wants us to loathe the Dursleys, so she makes the narration really slow.

Good writing. Yes, I'm talking to you, Stephenie Meyer!

Vernon Dursley hears Harry's name, and he freaks out. He goes to bed.

Enter Dumbledore. He looks really cool, really 90's style. Or drag queen style, whatever. He wears a long purple cloak and high heel boots. Joanne mentions his nose is crooked, as if it had been broken. Take a mental note of this. Or write it down. Or whatever. His nose is something he doesn't like to talk about. (Click and drag to read the spoiler.) After all, he broke it in a fight with his brother during his sister's funeral. Tough stuff.  Guess who he encountered. Professor McGonnagall. She's a cat! No, wait. She's not. She turns into a person. But Dumbledore wants to make sure nobody sees them, so he uses theput-outer. Why do I enfasize so much the word put-outer, you ask? Well, for two reasons. Number 1, it's going to be important. Number 2, I like how it sounds. They have an awkward conversation which shows the contrast between the two professors - Prof. Dumbledore's jovialness against Prof. McGonnagall's stiffness. Also, Dmbledore likes lemon sweets. Did you know there's a book called Sucking a Sherbet Lemon about a gay boy in a boarding school? I really doubt this was foreshadowing, but it's a nice coincidence.
Some Voldemort guy is dead, but McGonnagall is so afraid of him she calls him You-Know-Who. Man, this is iconic! Now, everytime people are upset with other people, they call the You-Know-Who or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

"Albus Dumbledore is the one person Voldemort is afraid of," McGonnagall says.

"Neville Longbottom is the one person Dumbledore is afraid of," the reader jokes to herself. But remember those two sentences, they're very important later. Lily and James Potter are dead, but Harry, a toddler, is alive and has somehow managed to kill the most dangerous wizard of all times. Since Harry's parents are dead, he'll have to live with his uncle & aunt from now on. McGonnagall disagrees: these people are horrible! I agree: he'd have been better off with Remus, however dangerous it might be that he was living with a werewolf. They're waiting for Hagrid: Dumbledore would trust Hagrid with his life. Then Hagrid appears with Harry on a flying motorbike. The motorbike is Sirius Black's, which means he knew all along that Sirius was innocent.

They deposit Harry there. End of chapter 1.

The first chapter is called The boy who lived. The second chapter is called The glass who dissapeared. I don't know wether the parallelism is intentional or not, but I love it. Since both chapters are ten years apart from each other, the parallelism creates a connection.
I'm shocked at how abusive the Dursleys are. Siriusly (pun intended), the boy lives in a cupboard. WITH SPIDERS. Meanwhile, Dudley is being terribly spoiled, "But last year, last year I had thirty-seven!" LISTEN TO ME, YOU SPOILED BRAT! WANNA KNOW HOW MY SWEET 16 WENT? WELL, THE ONLY PRESENT I GOT FROM MY FAMILY WAS A CHEAP BRACELET! IT WAS WORTH THREE EUROS! OF COURSE, MY BROTHER GOT AN IPAD FOR HIS BIRTHDAY! BUT THAT'S NOT ALL! I GOT EFFING PARASITES IN MY ROOM SO I HAD TO BE IN THE NURSERY ALL DAY TO MAKE SURE I WASN'T INFECTED AND I DIDN'T INFECT THE WHOLE SCHOOL! AND ON MY 15TH BIRTHDAY? WELL, QUITE SIMILAR, ONLY MY UNCLE DIED! I REALLY HOPE YOU GET BLOOD-DRINKING PARASITES LIKE I DID!
...

...I'm sorry. Birthdays trigger my Berserk Button. Anyway, Mrs. Figg (remember this woman) calls the Dursleys to tell them that she can't take care of Harry, so they have to take him to the zoo with them, and there's one of the most famous scenes from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone: Harry setting free a boa constrictor.
This rumour is awesome, but it's false. I'm sorry. Nagini's not a boa. I can't recall what she is, but she's a venomous snake, and boas aren't. Well, that's the end for today.