On Fri, 16 February 2001, "Amy Z" wrote:

> I noticed a reference on last Sunday's chat to a widespread belief that Hagrid's character has changed a lot over the four books.  I'd be really interested in hearing about this--I hadn't particularly picked up on it myself.  Do any proponents of this belief want to expand a little?

Widespread?  Nope, not really.  In fact, I think I'm the only one who felt this way.  I've been re-re-reading all of the books - backwards this time.  I'm finally on PS/SS.  And it totally struck me how, in the first book, Hagrid was much more assertive than in the later books.  The argument against this was that Harry didn't *know* Hagrid yet, and that's the way he saw him.  But I'm not so sure.  Take some of these examples:

"Budge up, yeh great lump."
"Ah, shut up, Dursley, yeh great prune."  
"DURSLEY!" he boomed.
A braver man than Vernon Dursley would have quailed under the furious look Hagrid now gave him; when Hagrid spoke, his every syllable trembled with rage.
"Ah, go boil yer heads, both of yeh."
He threw a dirty look at the Dursleys.

I could go on citing more examples, but you probably get the picture now.  In the later books, Hagrid doesn't boom, roar, tremble with rage or even give anyone a dirty look.  He's so much more mild - heck, he's rather a marshmallow quite often on the verge of tears.

Now, I'm not saying that I don't like Hagrid.  On the contrary, I adore him.  It just felt to me that Jo gave him a different personality between books one and two.

Jeralyn, the Voicelady

"Never trust anything that can think for itself if you 
can't see where it keeps it's brain!"

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