CHAPTER DISCUSSION: PS/SS 2, The Vanishing Glass

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 187755

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "potioncat" <willsonkmom at ...> wrote:
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Carol:
My post got interrupted by a thunderstorm last night, so I'll resume now. I've deliberately avoided reading anyone else's responses.

> 3.	Petunia says she doesn't want to leave Harry alone because she'd come home to find the house in ruins. Harry says he won't blow up the house. Just how much does Petunia know about Lily's death? What is she really concerned about?

Carol:
On my first reading, long ago, I thought she was just exaggerating, but since she later says, "Then she went and got herself blown up," I think she knows that the house (or at least the part that Harry and Lily were in) was in ruins after LV tried and failed to kill Harry. I doubt that she knows it was a failed AK that rebounded on Voldemort, but DD may have told her about the protective magic from her self-sacrifice that saved Harry and will extend to her and her family if she takes him in. Otherwise, he'd be appealing only to her humanity and her love for her sister, a risky proposition at best. When she tells him she doesn't want to find the house in ruins, she's not implying (as Harry clearly thinks) that he'll blow up the house. She may actually be thinking that bad Wizards could come after him and do what LV did at Godric's Hollow. But phrasing it as she does makes it look to Vernon as well as to Harry as if her concern is solely for the house. Of course, she *doesn't* want to find the house in ruins, but it has nothing to do with Harry blowing it up himself, IMO. (I doubt that she thinks fifteen-month-old Harry accidentally or deliberately destroyed the cottage at Godric's Hollow.)
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> 4.	Why does Petunia treat Harry so badly--jealousy or resentment or something else? Does Harry's accidental magic remind Petunia of her childhood with Lily and Sev? Now that you know about the childhood of this trio, how do you feel about the way the Dursleys and Snape treat Harry?

Carol:
I think she sees Harry as an extension of Petunia who makes her relive her unhappy childhood as the envious sister of a talented witch, so it's probably both jealousy (or envy) of Lily/Harry and resentment of the burden that DD has imposed on her by making her take care of her sister's child. Part of her may secretly be glad that Lily is dead, but I think part of her still grudgingly loved Lily. Either way, she'd be angry with Lily for "getting herself blown up" and leaving the burden of caring for her son to her sister. There's also the sour grapes factor, which we see later in "The Prince's Tale"--what she can't have wasn't worth having anyway; Hogwarts is just a school for "freaks," and Wizards and Witches are weirdos who endanger or impose on "normal" people. This view would, of course, be reinforced by Godric's Hollow and its aftermath and later by such incidents as Dudley's pig tail and the Ton Tongue Toffee. Petunia would exaggerate the abnormality and the fear that people will talk about the family if they know about Harry as an aspect of her feelings that Vernon can understand and share. She can't expect him to understand that she once wanted to go to Hogwarts herself; most likely she suppresses that memory and denies her jealousy even to herself. Meanwhile, she and Vernon both try to suppress Harry's magic to force him to be "normal" like them and Dudley; perhaps she exaggerates her overindulgence of Dudley, which began before she and Vernon took Harry in, in response to Harry's presence--if Dudley can't be a Wizard like Harry, at least she'll give him everything he wants and more (while simultaneously denying Harry comforts and luxuries) to compensate for his lack of magical powers (which she would perhaps see as rewarding his "normality." At any rate, Petunia's psychology is much more complex than Vernon's, which, IMO, she helped to shape, and she keeps secrets from him (including "that awful boy" and her correspondence as a young girl with DD).  
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> 5.	Piers Polkiss, a rat-faced boy, attends Dudley's birthday outing. He usually holds victims while the other gang members hit them. Who does he remind you of? Any comparisons between Dudley's gang and other gangs we'll see in the series?

Carol:
It's pretty clearly a reference to or foreshadowing of a certain pointy-nosed Animagus who transforms into a rat. Piers is more overtly a bully than Peter was; he seems mainly to have cheered James (and possibly Sirius) and egged him (them) on by admiring their bullying. Piers also resembles Crabbe and Goyle in being an active participant in the bullying, but in the WW, where Magic is Might even in normal times, the muscle-bound thugs are accomplices rather than the leader of the gang. Maybe JKR is saying that bullying takes many forms, from teasing and tormenting to beating up or subjecting to embarrassing or painful spells. (We can judge for ourselves to what extent Harry himself, Hermione, Hagrid, the Twins, Snape, and Dumbledore become bullies based on Dudley's gang, MWPP, and the ultimate gang of bullies, Voldemort and the Death Eaters (yea, it sounds like the name of a band) and their thug accomplices in DH, the Snatchers.
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> 6.	The narrator describes the boa constrictor as "the largest snake in the place. It could have wrapped its body twice around Uncle Vernon's car and crushed it into a trash can
." How does this snake compare to the basilisk or to Nagini? In Deathly Hallows (ch 13), Tom Riddle says that snakes find him and whisper to him. How does this affect your reaction to Harry's conversation with the boa constrictor?

Carol:
In contrast to the other snakes, this "Muggle" snake seems benign. It doesn't even harm the Muggles it terrifies by escaping. Interestingly, the snake doesn't actually talk to Harry, only indicating its responses with its tail and so forth. Maybe Harry isn't speaking Parseltongue here (Piers and Dudley don't indicate that he's hissing). So the incident foreshadows an affinity with snakes but not much more. It doesn't appear that snakes seek Harry out (as they do Tom Riddle and, apparently, Morfin), probably because he doesn't naturally speak Parseltongue--it's not an inherited trait for him, only a power he acquired when the soul bit lodged in his open cut. He can only speak it when he's face to face with a snake (or a symbol of one) and understand it when he hears it. Again, it's not clear whether he's actually speaking Parseltongue here. If he is, he doesn't know it, and the others (or at least Piers, who may be the only one who hears him) reacts to it merely as odd behavior, not understanding its significance or associating it with magic, Dark or otherwise (in marked contrast to both students and staff at Hogwarts). This scene is another instance of JKR giving the reader partial information that will later be expanded on and proven significant. If Harry is indeed speaking Parseltongue, the scene is misleading since he appears to be speaking English, which the snake somehow understands. To answer your last question, the only way in which my reaction changes is that I'm better informed, which paradoxically raises additional questions. My emotional reaction to the slapstick comedy, which I never found funny, and to Harry himself, doesn't change as the result of this knowledge. 

> 7.	Vernon sends Harry to the cupboard after they return home. There he thinks about strangers who have spoken to him on the street-- a tiny man in a violet top hat; a wild-looking old woman dressed all in green; a bald man in a very long purple coat. How did these witches and wizards recognize Harry? Is it just coincidence that they're there? Can we identify any of them?

Carol:
We know that one of them is Dedalus Diggle, whom we first meet in the Leaky Cauldron. The others must also be Order members who, like Mrs. Figg, secretly keep watch on Harry. Possibly they only recognize him through his resemblance to James and his scar, but I think they must have been secretly spying on the Dursleys for ten years.

> 8.	The chapter ends with this paragraph, "At school Harry had no one. Everybody knew that Dudley's gang hated that odd Harry Potter in his baggy old clothes and broken glasses, and nobody liked to disagree with Dudley's gang." What do these sentences tell us about gangs and odd kids? How does being "odd Harry Potter" affect the way Harry will treat the odd people he'll meet in the coming years? What do you think it was like to go from being odd Harry Potter to the Boy Who Lived?
 
Carol:
Great question. For me, the primary significance of "odd Harry Potter" is that those experiences enable him to empathize with Snape, at first only briefly after the illicit visit to the Pensieve (SWM) but later, more profoundly, in "The Prince's Tale." Both are poor, perceived as odd, and victims of bullies. (The identity of the bullies in SWM of course provides an added shock.) He also sees similarities between himself and Tom Riddle, first in CoS and again in the last two books, similarities that serve mostly to point out the differences (both young Riddle and young Severus are foils to Harry in these scenes). I think any kid already knows about bullies and most will identify with Harry, the Cinderella hero, in some respect. I don't know whether kids who bully others would recognize themselves in Dudley and the other bullies. Probably, those kids wouldn't be reading the HP books, anyway. On another note, we immediately see Harry's empathy with Ron, another poor kid who's teased for his appearance (red hair, hand-me-down robes)--a huge difference between young Harry and young James, who comes across as the Draco of his generation. I think Harry's experiences helped him relate to Hagrid, too. (A drunk and sobbing Hagrid points out these similarities, I forget where--both orphans, both outsiders--not to mention Hagrid's exceedingly odd appearance.) Eventually, this capacity for empathy extends to two other "oddball" outsiders, Neville and Luna. Had Harry been a "pampered prince," I doubt that he would have developed this trait or at least not to the same extent.

> Potioncat, who would like to thank Carol for her help.

Carol:
You're very welcome. It was fun.

Carol, who has a cold and would stay home from work today if she didn't work at home!