HP book 1, ch.3 & 4

[melreads]

Spoilers very possible!

Random thoughts & questions (increasingly sort of doing my own narrative as we go along) for chapter 3 of Sorceror's Stone:

• Harry's never been to the zoo?? I know not everybody has parents who take them to the zoo, but do British schools not do field trips?
• I'm guessing "knickerbocker glory" is an ice cream sundae
• Harry has a dream about a flying motorbike (does he remember riding with Hagrid long ago??)
• I assume the "tiny man in a violet hat" would be Diggle, right?
• "secondary" school starts at 11. (I have no real understanding of British schools at all, if I haven't already made that obvious!) - anyway, Harry is meant to go to Stonewall High while Dudley goes to Smeltings

So, the letter:

Mr H Potter
The Cupboard Under the Stairs
4 Privet Dr
Little Whinging, Surrey

• Yellowish parchment and emerald-green ink - I assume that's Prof McGonagall's favorite ink color there. The coat of arms (in purple wax) has a lion, eagle, badger, & snake - with an H, of course.
• The Dursleys apparently don't want anybody to know that Harry has been sleeping in the closet all this time?
• It bothers me that we're told that Dudley threw his tortoise through the greenhouse roof, but not whether the tortoise is ok (which I'm guessing means that it is not okay)
• And I also want to know who can see inside the house the next day, so that they can address the second letter to "The Smallest Bedroom" rather than the cupboard? (house-elves, maybe?)
• 3rd day - Harry gets three letters, & he steps on his uncle guarding the letter-box; later it's nailed shut
• 4th day (which is Friday) - 12 letters, all in different places, but his uncle still finds them and burns them
• 5th day - 24 letters, all inside the eggs
• 6th day (Sunday) - there's no post so this is when they come down the chimney.

Now they go "away" - they drive all day Sunday and get a hotel room in "a big city" - apparently this is Cokeworth*, or at least that's what the 100 letters he gets say. They drive the next day, too. "Daddy's gone mad, hasn't he?" says D. It's now Monday, which means that the next day is Harry's birthday. They end up on a tiny island in the sea.

• At midnight there's a BOOM. (D. says, half-asleep, "Where's the cannon?") I love that Hagrid knocks the door down but then puts it back.
• Unlike in the movie, he knows which kid is Harry.
• The final letter says "Mr H Potter, The Floor, Hut-on-the-Rock, The Sea"
• Rubeus Hagrid's title is Keeper of Grounds and Keys
• Things he takes out of his coat: kettle, sausages, poker, teapot, mugs, a flask (at least that's what I assume it is - a bottle containing "an amber liquid")

I mentioned elsewhere that the concept of an extension charm was not introduced until later in these books, explicitly, and maybe this is a failure of imagination on my part, but while I assumed something magical was going on, I still sort of imagined all this stuff squashed into his coat and that the magic part might be that it flattened and unflattened as needed, or something. (Admittedly, I didn't actually think this through very well!)

• Hagrid is stunned to lean that Harry knows nothing about Hogwarts or magic or how his parents actually died
• Dumbledore's titles, as given in the letter: Order of Merlin, First Class; Grand Sorcerer; Chief Warlock; Supreme Mugwump, Int'l Confederation of Wizards
• (what on earth is a mugwump, anyway?)
• Hagrid especially didn't expect to have to explain Voldemort - and also, he can't spell it, he says
• Harry's parents were Head Boy and Girl
• Harry sleeps that night under Hagrid's coat (which may have a couple of dormice in it)

*Addendum: "Cokeworth" sounded somehow familiar to me so I never bothered to look it up all this time, but apparently it's not actually a real place - it's the fictional industrial city where Lily's family and Snape's family are supposed to have grown up!