Hagrid and Harry after the Hut-on-the-Rock...

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 144272

Geoff:

After replying to the post on Hagrid at the Hut-on-the-Rock, my 
thoughts went back to various questions which have crossed my mind 
about this scene. Although I have been a group member for two and a 
half years, I do not recall seeing these queries addressed. If they 
have been in the dim prehistoric past, my apologies.

Perhaps when JKR first wrote "Philosopher's Stone", she did not 
anticipate the intense and microscopic scrutiny to which they would 
be subjected by fans of the books and so did not think these matters 
through... However, to satisfy my curiosity, have any of the group 
got their own ideas?

1. When Hagrid and Harry leave the island, they take the boat. So, 
how do the Dursleys get back to the mainland? Harry was only with 
Hagrid for one day and I presume that, when he got back after his 
train journey, they had returned to Privet Drive.

2. On the subject of the train journey, how did Hagrid know that 
Harry was going home on the train from Paddington? He is not very au 
fait with Muggle matters. 

3. In addition, where did Harry get the money for his ticket? I think 
he will only have got a pittance for pocket money (if any) and that 
wouldn't buy a rail ticket.

4. We are told that, for the next month, Vernon and Petunia tried to 
avoid speaking to him, behaving as if he wasn`t there. Presumably he 
said nothing more to them until the 31st August when he broached the 
subject of reaching Kings Cross with his uncle. So where did "Harry's 
huge, heavy trunk" (PS "The Journey from Platform Nine and Three-
Quarters" p.68 UK edition) come from? He wouldn't need a trunk 
because he never been anywhere and had had nothing to pack in the 
past.

And if 4 Privet Drive is one of these twee little houses on little 
culs-de-sac which spring up like toadstools(?) around major towns in 
the UK, I can't imagine there being room to store a trunk in a loft 
or whether Vernon could be bothered to lug it down for HP.

Any bids to deal with my inquisitiveness?