01 HP Prisoner of Azkaban

[chantaldormand]

And now we are back to regular program.

According to one of my relatives I filled out my vulgarity and dick-jokes quotas for this month. Me, being over-competitive jerk had to take it as challenge. So this chapter is Work Safe-ish?

Ch1 Owl Post

Comments

[aikaterini]

/Jo loves sending mixed messages. In the previous book she made a big fuss over not doing magic around muggles and shown us that muggles can be at least semi effective in confrontation with wizard. In this book not only Harry doesn’t get as much as slap on wrist for harming family member with magic, but also gets to write an essay on pointlessness of muggles resisting wizards/

How effective Muggles are around wizards really seems to depending on what the situation in the story is. The Muggle boys who attacked Ariana are able to frighten and hurt her so badly that she's left traumatized, but Tom is able to terrorize the other children in the orphanage. Morfin and Marvolo are sent to Azkaban for hexing Tom Riddle Sr., but Hermione can Obliviate her parents without any repercussions.

/I’m perplexed by Ron shouting at phone. Wizards don’t shout when they talk through Floo, right?/

It was just there so that Ron could be comic relief and Harry could be isolated from his friends again. I think that someone brought it up earlier, but if Harry wants to get away from the Dursleys and spend time with his friends so badly, why doesn't he ask Hermione if he can stay with her and her parents whenever they're home for the summer? They're Muggle dentists, so why would the Dursleys have a problem with them? If anything, they might hope that spending time with the Grangers would make Harry more 'normal.'

It's probably for the same reason why JKR never told the readers anything about the Grangers to begin with: they're Muggles, so they're boring, so what would Harry do all summer with them? But that's the problem with the whole Dursley setup to begin with. Harry has friends now and at least one of those friends has a family who would be happy to take Harry in, so why does he have to stay with people who clearly don't want him around? The blood protection arrangement doesn't hold water when he's at Hogwarts for most of the year anyway and it doesn't stop any of the Death Eaters from hurting Harry if they want. Harry has an escape hatch from the Dursleys; in fact he gets another one when Sirius shows up, but the narrative doesn't let him take it. The whole arrangement with the Dursleys seems to be more thematic than logical: he stays with the Dursleys because they're oppressive and boring and represent the oppressive and boring normal world, so he's eager to go back to the magical world of Hogwarts when the school year rolls back around.

[sunnyskywalker]

Well, Harry does admit in GoF that spending time with just Hermione isn't much fun... But if the other option is the Dursleys, he ought to jump at the chance. I think we're down to (a) learned helplessness--he's spend so many years really having no way to escape the Dursleys that he hasn't yet adjusted to the idea that he isn't so helpless anymore, and/or (b) Dumbledore meddling behind the scenes because keeping Harry isolated with the Dursleys and having no adults who know enough to ask awkward questions serves his purposes.