So, actual question; it looks like you have some tangents you want to cover in the moment and others you want to give later. Given that, and given the fame and age of these books, do you want to attempt a spoiler policy?
I don't particularly mind spoilers, my personal rule of not going into too much detail about later events is for structure more than anything. And so I don't use up all my good jokes early.
Also, another vague compliment for the author; she does a good job of making Harry Potter feel like a believable boy. As pointed out, he has a good amount of being hesitant and self-doubting, but also having dealt with enough shit to know that being meek and servile doesn't actually make it better. However, there are also a lot of...points of focus, or lack thereof, that drives home that Rowling is, in fact, a woman; the whole Secret Princess trope, the fact that when Hagrid confronts the Dursleys, both his actual strength and the gun aren't actually used, the fact that we don't get any scenes of Harry nursing a bruise or other small injury from a scrap with Dudley...and all of these things are fine. None of them are strictly bad, but they're reminders of the perspective that the books were written under.
I will point out Hagrid does at least bend the gun with his bare hands, but this is a good point.
We will be discussing this much more in later books (inshallah), but one of the other things that gets grudging respect from me is when an author accidentally writes against their stated ideology because they are committed to telling a good story and show how, in keeping things plausible and truth-y, one side versus another is pretty clearly right. And the wizarding world in one in which children have what can clearly be lethal weapons given to to them at pre-middle-school ages, are taught to use them, are told "We have a zero-tolerance policy for fucking around with magic that could turn one of your classmates to air.", and have that both mostly work, and for it to be a plot point when the forces of evil try to interfere with those tools and training.
The wizarding world is fun because, if you're looking at it through the lense of the left-right political spectrum (which to be clear, is often not a great lens for art of any type) because it's kind of all over the place. In wizarding Great Britain, every adult citizen walks around armed, but the majority of the population seems to work for the state. Primary education for young witches and wizards is completely up to their parents, and many seem to go for something like unschooling, but virtually all secondary aged children are educated at one boarding school, which must make for an incredible level of homogenisation. And yet, as Iridium here alludes to, said school fiercely resists state interference, and when homeschooling is outright banned in book 7, it's treated as evidence of tyranny.
The wizarding world's deeper foundations are a bit shonky, but it does come off as an interestingly textured
culture.
Ron has lost more friends to duels than you've had hot breakfasts.
He used to have way more brothers.
"Funny story, they won't let you out of the nurse's until you can recite your full and legal name. On a related note, the remembrall isn't red any more. What sort of name is Perpugilliam anyways?"
Named for his mother of course. His father is very proud of him:
Flying carpets seem to also carry all the risks of brooms with no notable upsides. In The Black Company they’re stretched taut over a wooden frame in order to support any weight, and are only ever successfully, magically, controlled by wizards of great magnitude. In that other series starring a wizard named Harry they still carry the massive risk of falling to your death and are only ever used, again, by a wizard of great power.
At least you can sit comfortably.
Anyway, mwahahahaha, boils and ghouls, it's Halloween at Hogwarts! I probably should've spaced these out so this chapter actually fell in October, but fuck that.
Malfoy couldn't believe his eyes when he saw that Harry and Ron were still at Hogwarts next day, looking tired but perfectly cheerful. Indeed, by next morning Harry and Ron thought that meeting the three-headed dog had been an excellent adventure and they were quite keen to have another one. In the meantime, Harry filled Ron in about the package that seemed to have been moved from Gringotts to Hogwarts, and they spent a lot of time wondering what could possibly need such heavy protection.
Rowling does have a pretty good grasp of the eleven year old male mind.
Ron: That sick mate.
Harry: Fuck yeah it was.
Hermione was now refusing to speak to Harry and Ron, but she was such a bossy know-it-all that they saw this as an added bonus.
It's funny, we're officially halfway into the book, and it's still just Harry and Ron, not Harry, Ron and Hermione. It's like she's the Kryten or Nurse Crane of the group. They come into things relatively late, but once they do, they're indispensable.
All they really wanted now was a way of getting back at Malfoy, and to their great delight, just such a thing arrived with the post about a week later.
Harry: It's a gun!
Ron: Not just any gun, Harry, it's a Mark VII Desert Eagle!
Harry: I'm surprised you know so much about guns, Ron.
Ron: My dad's really into Muggle stuff!
DO NOT OPEN THE PARCEL AT THE TABLE.
It contains your new Nimbus Two Thousand, but I don’t want everybody knowing you’ve got a broomstick or they’ll all want one. Oliver Wood will meet you tonight on the Quidditch pitch at seven o’clock for your first training session.
Professor M. McGonagall
This is a fascinating study of the difference between prose and film. Here, McGonagall is perfectly open about buying Harry the broom, and quite sensibly requests him not to open his high-end sports vehicle in the middle of breakfast. But film is a visual medium, and we want to show off the prop, so there's no such warning, and Harry opens the parcel right there and then. McGonagall also doesn't sign her note, so instead we get this cute shot McGonagall and Harry sharing a knowing smile. To be clear, I don't think one version or the other is better or worse, it's just an example of how differently things play out between mediums.
Harry had difficulty hiding his glee as he handed the note to Ron to read.
‘A Nimbus Two Thousand!’ Ron moaned enviously. ‘I’ve never even touched one.’
I remember my mother remarking that, for all Harry's money, people seem to love giving him expensive shit. One way to keep your wealth in the family, I guess.
They left the Hall quickly, wanting to unwrap the broomstick in private before their first lesson, but halfway across the Entrance Hall they found the way upstairs barred by Crabbe and Goyle. Malfoy seized the package from Harry and felt it.
‘That’s a broomstick,’ he said, throwing it back to Harry with a mixture of jealousy and spite on his face. ‘You’ll be for it this time, Potter, first-years aren’t allowed them.’
Why, though? I mean, yeah, they're dangerous, but magic wands are much more so. At least your average wizard kid probably has experience with a broomstick prior to coming to Hogwarts.
Ron couldn’t resist it.
‘It’s not any old broomstick,’ he said, ‘it’s a Nimbus Two Thousand. What did you say you’ve got at home, Malfoy, a Comet Two Sixty?’ Ron grinned at Harry. ‘Comets look flashy, but they’re not in the same league as the Nimbus.’
‘What would you know about it, Weasley, you couldn’t afford half the handle,’ Malfoy snapped back. ‘I suppose you and your brothers have to save up, twig by twig.’
I kind of want to see a half-blood who gets really into broommaking, but starts applying the enchantments to vacuum cleaners and shit like
Hocus Pocus. Flitwick wanders by and confirms Harry is in fact allowed to have a broomstick, much to Draco's horror.
If he hadn’t stolen Neville’s Remembrall I wouldn’t be in the team …’
‘So I suppose you think that’s a reward for breaking rules?’ came an angry voice from just behind them. Hermione was stomping up the stairs looking disapprovingly at the package in Harry’s hand.
Yep.
‘I thought you weren’t speaking to us?’ said Harry.
‘Yes, don’t stop now,’ said Ron, ‘it’s doing us so much good.’
Hermione marched away with her nose in the air.
Man, I forgot just how much they didn't like her early on.
As seven o’clock drew nearer, Harry left the castle and set off towards the Quidditch pitch in the dusk. He’d never been inside the stadium before. Hundreds of seats were raised in stands around the pitch so that the spectators were high enough to see what was going on. At either end of the pitch were three golden poles with hoops on the end. They reminded Harry of the little plastic sticks Muggle children blew bubbles through, except that they were fifty feet high.
Do find it interesting Harry's already thinking about it in terms of "Muggle children."
‘Right,’ said Wood. ‘Now, Quidditch is easy enough to understand, even if it’s not too easy to play. There are seven players on each side. Three of them are called Chasers.’
‘Three Chasers,’ Harry repeated, as Wood took out a bright red ball about the size of a football.
‘This ball’s called the Quaffle,’ said Wood. ‘The Chasers throw the Quaffle to each other and try and get it through one of the hoops to score a goal. Ten points every time the Quaffle goes through one of the hoops. Follow me?’
‘The Chasers throw the Quaffle and put it through the hoops to score,’ Harry recited. ‘So – that’s sort of like basketball on broomsticks with six hoops, isn’t it?’
‘What’s basketball?’ said Wood curiously.
I wonder if Harry was into basketball back at Privet Drive.
‘I’m going to show you what the Bludgers do,’ Wood said. ‘These two are the Bludgers.’
I assume "bludgers" (which is British and Aussie slang for lazy people, i.e "dole-bludgers") being the most energetic balls in the game is a bit of deliberate irony on Rowling's part, possibly springing from when she quit her job and lived off welfare while writing this very book. Or it's a reference to the original meaning of the term, which referred to pimps who'd rob their girls' clients, i.e, by
bludgeoning them.
He showed Harry two identical balls, jet black and slightly smaller than the red Quaffle. Harry noticed that they seemed to be straining to escape the straps holding them inside the box.
‘Stand back,’ Wood warned Harry. He bent down and freed one of the Bludgers.
At once, the black ball rose high in the air and then pelted straight at Harry’s face. Harry swung at it with the bat to stop it breaking his nose and sent it zigzagging away into the air – it zoomed around their heads and then shot at Wood, who dived on top of it and managed to pin it to the ground.
‘See?’ Wood panted, forcing the struggling Bludger back into the crate and strapping it down safely. ‘The Bludgers rocket around trying to knock players off their brooms. That’s why you have two Beaters on each team. The Weasley twins are ours – it’s their job to protect their side from the Bludgers and try and knock them towards the other team. So – think you’ve got all that?’
That's right, an important part of Quidditch is two lead balls that fly around trying to maim players while they're flying dozens of feet in the air.
‘Er – have the Bludgers ever killed anyone?’ Harry asked, hoping he sounded offhand.
‘Never at Hogwarts. We’ve had a couple of broken jaws but nothing worse than that. Now, the last member of the team is the Seeker. That’s you. And you don’t have to worry about the Quaffle or the Bludgers –’
‘– unless they crack my head open.’
‘Don’t worry, the Weasleys are more than a match for the Bludgers – I mean, they’re like a pair of human Bludgers themselves.’
Now, the fact that bludgers are part of a game we let little children play is insane, but it does make sense within the general cultural madness of wizards. As we'll see, wizards have a... liberal attitude towards things like physical safety. It kind of makes sense: wizards can heal pretty much any gross physical injury, and they seem to be at least a little bit innately tougher than Muggles. The next ball makes much less sense:
Wood reached into the crate and took out the fourth and last ball. Compared with the Quaffle and the Bludgers, it was tiny, about the size of a large walnut. It was bright gold and had little fluttering silver wings.
‘This,’ said Wood, ‘is the Golden Snitch, and it’s the most important ball of the lot. It’s very hard to catch because it’s so fast and difficult to see. It’s the Seeker’s job to catch it. You’ve got to weave in and out of the Chasers, Beaters, Bludgers and Quaffle to get it before the other team’s Seeker, because whichever Seeker catches the Snitch wins his team an extra hundred and fifty points, so they nearly always win.
And by "nearly always" we mean "the one time it happens in the series, people think the characters who bet on it somehow rigged the game."
Man, imagine how demoralising it must be for the Chasers and Keepers. You could play the game of your life, be up a hundred points to nothing, but still lose because the guy who's been scratching his arse all game happened to spot the Snitch. At least the Beaters get to work out their frustration. The Seeker is obviously a role custom made for Harry as the protagonist, and I'm shocked it caught on in-universe:
"Hey guys, what if there was a position where one player does nothing for most of the game, but they almost complete decide every game and get all the credit for winning?"
Forget witch-hunters, your mates would burn you at the stake itself. And yet, from a narrative standpoint, I don't think it's a particularly great role for Harry. As I alluded to above, it kind of leaves him divorced from the action of the actual game, waiting for him to make his move. It's not surprising Rowling herself admitted she found Quidditch scenes hard to write and largely avoided them. Personally, I'd have had the kids do live-action dungeon crawls, sort of like a lower-stakes version of the third task in
Goblet of Fire.
That’s why Seekers get fouled so much. A game of Quidditch only ends when the Snitch is caught, so it can go on for ages – I think the record is three months, they had to keep bringing on substitutes so the players could get some sleep.
This is a good example of how the two tones of
Harry Potter sometimes clash badly. Don't get me wrong, I can laugh at the wizarding world's bizarre refusal to just use a clock, and that tie-in book mentioned earlier has a lot of fun with Quidditch as this nightmare sport played by and for mad people. If the books remained at roughly this level of whimsy throughout, I wouldn't have a problem with this bit at all. If wizards were more like old school Planeswalkers than flesh and blood people, or the wizarding world was a post scarcity utopia, I could believe them being willing to waste three months of their lives on a stalled Quidditch match. But basically the whole premise of the series is that wizards and witches aren't all that different from Muggles. They have jobs, politics, school, children to care for.
Perhaps it was because he was now so busy, what with Quidditch practice three evenings a week on top of all his homework, but Harry could hardly believe it when he realised that he’d already been at Hogwarts two months. The castle felt more like home than Privet Drive had ever done.
I assume Hogwarts has many, many spiders.
His lessons, too, were becoming more and more interesting now that they had mastered the basics.
What are the basics? Fuck you, Muggle, you don't get to find out.
On Hallowe’en morning they woke to the delicious smell of baking pumpkin wafting through the corridors. Even better, Professor Flitwick announced in Charms that he thought they were ready to start making objects fly, something they had all been dying to try since they’d seen him make Neville’s toad zoom around the classroom.
We did not ask Neville first. And I would've thought levitation would be one of the most basic magical tricks.
Harry’s partner was Seamus Finnigan (which was a relief, because Neville had been trying to catch his eye).
There's a fanfic where Seamus becomes a serial killer for the IRA, sacrificing people to the Old Gods, and that isn't even the weirdest thing about that particular series.
Ron, however, was to be working with Hermione Granger. It was hard to tell whether Ron or Hermione was angrier about this. She hadn’t spoken to either of them since the day Harry’s broomstick had arrived.
‘Now, don’t forget that nice wrist movement we’ve been practising!’ squeaked Professor Flitwick, perched on top of his pile of books as usual. ‘Swish and flick, remember, swish and flick. And saying the magic words properly is very important, too – never forget Wizard Baruffio, who said “s” instead of “f” and found himself on the floor with a buffalo on his chest.’
I genuinely have no idea how magical incantations work in this series. In some stories, magical incarnations are more about focusing the mind than anything, with some stories (like
Dresden Files) explaining that wizards use archaic or rare languages in order to aid compartmentalisation, lest a wizard end up setting shit alight every time they say the word "fire." In other works like
Eragon or
Earthsea (both works of equal literary merit, I'm sure we all agree) spells are cast in a special, magical language. Sometimes, this language is Enochian, the language Elizabethan court magician John Dee claimed was the language of God, which Adam used to name the beasts of the Earth.
In
Harry Potter... who knows. It seems like the actual words do in fact matter, because saying them wrong causes
Bewitched style magical mishaps. We later find out it's possible for a wizard to cast a spell without knowing what it does, as long as they know the incantation and the motions. So, does it just so happen that Latin sounding gibberish is of great cosmic importance? Well, no, because later on, Hermione invents a spell (with such a simple and obvious function I'm shocked no one got to it before her) whose incantation is simply "Point me!" But again, it's not merely a focus thing, because while wizards can learn to cast spells without speaking, and even wandlessly, they still seem to need to know the magic words. Except, we've already seen that young wizards can do some pretty serious magic reflexively, without even the framework of a spell. It's a opaque mess, is what I'm saying.
It was very difficult. Harry and Seamus swished and flicked, but the feather they were supposed to be sending skywards just lay on the desktop. Seamus got so impatient that he prodded it with his wand and set fire to it – Harry had to put it out with his hat.
I can never picture these kids walking around with witches hats day-to-day.
Ron was in a very bad temper by the end of the class.
‘It’s no wonder no one can stand her,’ he said to Harry as they pushed their way into the crowded corridor. ‘She’s a nightmare, honestly.’
Someone knocked into Harry as they hurried past him. It was Hermione. Harry caught a glimpse of her face – and was startled to see that she was in tears.
‘I think she heard you.’
‘So?’ said Ron, but he looked a bit uncomfortable. ‘She must’ve noticed she’s got no friends.’
Earlier I pondered some reasons why a lot of weirdo HP fans dislike Ron so much, and I think this might be another--because for two months when they were eleven, Ron and Hermione did not like each other. Because I guess some grown adults are too immature for this book written for little kids.
Hermione didn’t turn up for the next class and wasn’t seen all afternoon. On their way down to the Great Hall for the Hallowe’en feast, Harry and Ron overheard Parvati Patil telling her friend Lavender that Hermione was crying in the girls’ toilets and wanted to be left alone. Ron looked still more awkward at this, but a moment later they had entered the Great Hall, where the Hallowe’en decorations put Hermione out of their minds.
A thousand live bats fluttered from the walls and ceiling while a thousand more swooped over the tables in low black clouds, making the candles in the pumpkins stutter. The feast appeared suddenly on the golden plates, as it had at the start-of-term banquet.
So much guano. It's a shame Hogwarts doesn't seem to go in for Halloween costumes, because I'd love to see what these kids come up with. I bet Ron would dress as Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle, but what about Harry? Judge Dredd, maybe? Friend of the thread Gary Sparrow?
Seen here with the two great ladies he doesn't deserve.
Hmm, he's probably too young to have read
Warrior, so V and Marvelman/Miracleman are probably out, but if he reads 2000AD, Zenith is a possibility:
Or for something a bit more kiddy, Bananaman from the
Beano?
Fun fact, a common idea in fanfic is that, while present day wizards seem to celebrate a pretty standard Christian calendar of festivals, they were actually originally pagans who celebrated things like Yule, Beltane, or Samhain. They then changed the names and started celebrating Christmas, Easter, and Halloween "in order to make the Muggleborns feel welcome." And that's why pureblood supremacists don't like Muggleborns, not because they're racist snobs. This is of course a silly idea without any textual evidence, but it does kind of sound like something the modern Anglican Church would do.
Harry was just helping himself to a jacket potato when Professor Quirrell came sprinting into the Hall, his turban askew and terror on his face. Everyone stared as he reached Professor Dumbledore’s chair, slumped against the table and gasped, ‘Troll – in the dungeons – thought you ought to know.’
He then sank to the floor in a dead faint.
Kiwi Farms is so persecuted, Josh had to resort to buying server space in the dungeons. Dumbledore doesn't really approve, but he does think free speech and freedom of information is important. Plus, he's a big fan of the Wogglebug thread, having met Frank L. Baum at a party back in 1910.
‘How could a troll get in?’ Harry asked as they climbed the stairs.
‘Don’t ask me, they’re supposed to be really stupid,’ said Ron. ‘Maybe Peeves let it in for a Hallowe’en joke.’
They passed different groups of people hurrying in different directions. As they jostled their way through a crowd of confused Hufflepuffs, Harry suddenly grabbed Ron’s arm.
‘I’ve just thought – Hermione.’
‘What about her?’
‘She doesn’t know about the troll.’
Ron bit his lip.
‘Oh, all right,’ he snapped. ‘But Percy’d better not see us.’
I just hope it's not a
Berserk troll.
‘Percy!’ hissed Ron, pulling Harry behind a large stone griffin.
Peering around it, however, they saw not Percy but Snape. He crossed the corridor and disappeared from view.
‘What’s he doing?’ Harry whispered. ‘Why isn’t he down in the dungeons with the rest of the teachers?’
‘Search me.’
I love that neither boy even suggests telling a teacher Hermione is unaccounted for.
‘Can you smell something?’
Harry sniffed and a foul stench reached his nostrils, a mixture of old socks and the kind of public toilet no one seems to clean.
And then they heard it – a low grunting and the shuffling footfalls of gigantic feet. Ron pointed: at the end of a passage to the left, something huge was moving towards them. They shrank into the shadows and watched as it emerged into a patch of moonlight.
It was a horrible sight. Twelve feet tall, its skin was a dull, granite grey, its great lumpy body like a boulder with its small bald head perched on top like a coconut. It had short legs thick as tree trunks with flat, horny feet. The smell coming from it was incredible. It was holding a huge wooden club, which dragged along the floor because its arms were so long.
Question, what exactly qualifies something as a magical creature to be hidden from Muggle eyes. Because from what we see, the troll doesn't seem to have any magical properties. Could just be some kind of weird hominid. Still, better than this one "magical creature" from Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which is literally just a dog with a funny tail.
The troll stopped next to a doorway and peered inside. It waggled its long ears, making up its tiny mind, then slouched slowly into the room.
‘The key’s in the lock,’ Harry muttered. ‘We could lock it in.’
‘Good idea,’ said Ron nervously.
They edged towards the open door, mouths dry, praying the troll wasn’t about to come out of it. With one great leap, Harry managed to grab the key, slam the door and lock it.
‘Yes!’
Well, that was easy--
Flushed with their victory they started to run back up the passage, but as they reached the corner they heard something that made their hearts stop – a high, petrified scream – and it was coming from the chamber they’d just locked up.
‘Oh, no,’ said Ron, pale as the Bloody Baron.
‘It’s the girls’ toilets!’ Harry gasped.
‘Hermione!’ they said together.
...Why does the girl's bathroom have a key? Or rather, what the fuck was it doing in the door? Was Filch trying to catch him a wife?
Harry then did something that was both very brave and very stupid: he took a great running jump and managed to fasten his arms around the troll’s neck from behind. The troll couldn’t feel Harry hanging there, but even a troll will notice if you stick a long bit of wood up its nose, and Harry’s wand had still been in his hand when he’d jumped – it had gone straight up one of the troll’s nostrils.
Howling with pain, the troll twisted and flailed its club, with Harry clinging on for dear life; any second, the troll was going to rip him off or catch him a terrible blow with the club.
Wouldn't it be great if Harry cast a spell right now and the troll's head exploded?
Hermione had sunk to the floor in fright; Ron pulled out his own wand – not knowing what he was going to do he heard himself cry the first spell that came into his head: ‘Wingardium Leviosa!’
Funnily enough, I don't think this is how you defeat the troll in the PC game, where for some reason it turns up after a stealth section near the end.
The club flew suddenly out of the troll’s hand, rose high, high up into the air, turned slowly over – and dropped, with a sickening crack, on to its owner’s head. The troll swayed on the spot and then fell flat on its face, with a thud that made the whole room tremble.
Harry got to his feet. He was shaking and out of breath. Ron was standing there with his wand still raised, staring at what he had done.
It was Hermione who spoke first.
‘Is it – dead?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Harry. ‘I think it’s just been knocked out.’
Not edgy enough, should've exploded its brains.
He bent down and pulled his wand out of the troll’s nose. It was covered in what looked like lumpy grey glue.
‘Urgh – troll bogies.’
He wiped it on the troll’s trousers.
The modesty of semi-sapient giant monsters must be maintained. I'm going to imagine they were fabulously flared like the Selfish Giant's:
The teachers rock up and react how you'd expect:
'What on earth were you thinking of?’ said Professor McGonagall, with cold fury in her voice. Harry looked at Ron, who was still standing with his wand in the air. ‘You’re lucky you weren’t killed. Why aren’t you in your dormitory?’
Snape gave Harry a swift, piercing look. Harry looked at the floor. He wished Ron would put his wand down.
Then a small voice came out of the shadows.
‘Please, Professor McGonagall – they were looking for me.’
‘Miss Granger!’
"Not actually much less dumb!"
Hermione had managed to get to her feet at last.
‘I went looking for the troll because I – I thought I could deal with it on my own – you know, because I’ve read all about them.’
Ron dropped his wand. Hermione Granger, telling a downright lie to a teacher?
Okay, I get not wanting to tell the teachers you were crying, but why make up a lie that makes you look way dumber. Just say you were in the bathroom when Quirrell raised the alarm.
Anway, McGonagall takes five points off Hermione for being stupid, but gives five each to Ron and Harry:
I kid, that line's not in the book.
But from that moment on, Hermione Granger became their friend. There are some things you can’t share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them.
Cast assembled!
