schmirius | [5 days] Sorcerer's Stone re-read.

This was actually my third time re-reading Sorcerer's Stone in the last 9 months, which is the highest frequency of re-reads in such a time period since I read the thing seven times in sixth grade.

For posterity's sake, I'm going to go ahead and stick the lj entry/book review I started writing last fall with this newer one.

November 2006

A little more than halfway through Sorcerer's Stone again-- it makes wonderfully calming bedtime reading. Passing thoughts:

Another reason JKR does lousy romance: Harry's awkward adolescent dating experiences don't even remotely correspond to mine. Where are the awkward friendcrushes? How come Harry never looks at Hermione (the only girl he really knows on a personal level) and wonders "do I like her...?" and then has Awkward Love Triangle Hijinks? See: my ninth grade year when, among two guys and two girls, the four of us had four heterosexual affairs before running out of partners of the opposite sex and realizing that none of us were exactly romantically attracted to each other anyway.

Seriously, why didn't Harry Ron and Hermione have this problem? Am I wrong in assuming it happens to lots of people in their teenagehoods? Do people actually do like Harry does with Cho and chase after people they don't know at all only to be cruelly disappointed after finding out they're just emotionally unstable pretty faces? JKR's pretty good at remembering what it's like being a teenager in almost every other respect (she writes Harry's PoV so charmingly); it's disappointing that Harry's love life is such a fairy tale.

Another component of this problem: WHY OH GOD WHY are Harry & Ginny and Ron & Hermione going to end up with each other for ever and ever? They were each others' first teenage crushes! The probability of finding twue love like that at age thirteen is SO. LOW. let alone its happening to two separate couples.

Or three, if you count James & Lily. Maybe we could pretend it's some interesting social phenomenon that occurs among wizards due to the fact that there's no higher education after Hogwarts-- have to find your spouse early, right? Correspondingly: they live longer than Muggles but they mate earlier? What.

This is starting to sound dangerously like I care about continuity and logic again, so I'll just place this train of thought quietly on the shelf next to the I Hate Lupin/Tonks Express.
Required classes: Astronomy, Charms, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Herbology, History of Magic, Potions, Transfiguration.

Later electives: Ancient Runes, Arithmancy, Care of Magical Creatures, Divination, Muggle Studies.

There are very, very few classes on either list that seem to be teaching anything more than the practical skills of using magic. Which makes Hogwarts... a trade school, in a way. All they do is learn the craft of magic.

Harry's question on the train to Ron is a good one: what do wizards do after graduating Hogwarts? What are they getting all this training for? We've seen plenty adults who work for the Ministry in one way or another (as bureaucrats, as curse-breakers, as Aurors); adults who work at St. Mungo's; adults who work at shops in Diagon Alley, or Hogsmeade; Quidditch players, bus drivers, barkeepers, reporters; gentlemen, convicts, housewives, thieves.

Where is the exhortation to use this unique and terrible power they have within them for something great? Who gives the students those rallying speeches?

Or is that too Purebloodish in this modern, enlightened, Dumbledorian Hogwarts?

EFF THAT I SAY.

(7/16: We've seen professors, sure, but there's no indication that McGonagall is doing ground-breaking Transfiguration research on the side. More likely she's dealing with students out of bed and preparing for her classes with every student in the school and trying to look after the well-being of all her Gryffindors.

The only people who ever get to do anything great are Nick Flamel, Dumbledore, and... Voldemort. Only motherfucker pushing the limits of magic. Really, it's not hard to see why someone championing the greatness of Having Powers would gather so many followers in this world.)

July 2007:

It appears she introduced us to Horcruxes even before the diary in CoS. Harry talking to Dumbledore in the hospital wing, Chapter 17:

"Well, Voldemort's going to try other ways of coming back, isn't he? I mean, he hasn't gone, has he?"

"No, Harry, he has not. He is still out there somewhere, looking for another body to share... not being truly alive, he cannot be killed."

The ability to name the act of magic that caused this liminal state of being removes some of the awe from the contemplation of this phenomena, to be sure; thinking about Horcruxes, however, makes this passage on the next page very interesting.

"But why couldn't Quirrell touch me?"

"Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing Voldeort cannot understand, it is love. He didn't realize that love as powerful as your mother's for you leaves its own mark. Not a scar, no visible sign... to have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever. It is in your very skin. Quirrell, full of hatred, greed, and ambition, sharing his soul with Voldemort, could not touch you for this reason."

"Soul." Was Quirrell a person-crux? What features of a Quirrell-model Horcrux would map onto a Harry-model?

Come to think of it, how does Voldemort's possessing creatures work at all? What about all those snakes he hung out with in Albania-- were they Horcruxes too, or did he just sort of float by and swim down their throats or something? An important question to consider when trying to use Voldemort's possessing Harry at the Ministry (OotP) as evidence for Harry's being a Horcrux.
Firenze and Harry in the Forbidden Forest, ch. 15:

"Harry Potter, do you know what unicorn blood is used for?"

"No," said Harry, startled by the odd question. "We've only used the horn and tail hair in Potions."

"That is because it is a monstrous thing, to slay a unicorn," said Firenze. "Only one who has nothing to lose, and everything to gain, would commit such a crime. The blood of a unicorn will keep you alive, even if you are an inch from death, but at a terrible price. You have slain something pure and defenseless to save yourself, and you will have but a half-life, a cursed life, from the moment the blood touches your lips."

[...] "But who'd be that desperate?" he wondered aloud. "If you're going to be cursed forever, death's better, isn't it?"

I'd forgotten about this early bit of immortality magic. Same general formula as Horcruxes: rob creature of life, damage your being, acquire feeble life for yourself. Why is our other piece of immortality magic, the Stone, morally okay? Because we're just mixing potions? Hell, I guess that also buys redemption for Snape.

Was also surprised to think about how many different ways Voldemort tries to cheat death. Pushing the limits of magic may be, but he's doing so for entirely selfish reasons: a long time ago when he was fifteen, he decided never to die and so he's bent his entire will and considerable power on this one stupid goal.

Book 1 is all about seeking life; book 7 is presumably about ways in which that quest fails.
(For Voldemort. For Harry. For the wizarding world and its habits and culture.)
Miscellaneous character notes:
- Percy - has always been an indefinite old-ish age in my mind. I counted this time and realized he's only fifteen in this book, some horrible dorky tenth grader trying to pretend he has some sort of control over his life. Correspondingly, he's only nineteen or so in Goblet of Fire when he's got his first job interning at the Ministry (senior assistant to the regional manager¹), and he's only twenty when he decides he's never talking to his family again. Hey, I'm almost twenty!
- Hagrid - Not that dumb, all things considered. He's quite capable: takes Harry on a variety of errands at Diagon Alley, tells an appropriate story to an eleven-year-old who's just finding out his parents were murdered, devises and implements a logical plan to find a unicorn-killer in the Forbidden Forest. Maybe it's just that Harry gets to be a keener judge of character and takes better stock of Hagrid's limitations as he gets older; in this book, he messes up only when dragons and alcohol are involved.
  
  Actually, it might be fairer to say that Hagrid performs well as long as he's got a clear task defined for him by Dumbledore: bringing baby Harry to Privet Drive, bringing the Stone back to Hogwarts, introducing Harry to the wizarding world. He's Dumbledore's man to a different degree than Harry is, owing all of the best opportunities in his life to the man and working in many ways as Dumbledore's loyal manservant. Don't suppose he'll know what to do with himself very well in Deathly Hallows; maybe it would make sense for him to die.
- Dumbledore - How did he change from this eccentric, cheerful wiseman to the rambling and annoyingly omnipotent old man who dies in HBP? There's an irritating change in both the flavor of characters' praise of Dumbledore and the style of the man's dialogue itself that happens in book after book, but I'mma wait to pinpoint that until I've re-read more.
Distressingly, I still couldn't read a lot of the end without hearing particular strains of John Williams' score, or flashing to well composed shots, or remembering Richard Harris's line delivery in the hospital wing scene. Two or three years since last seeing the movie and I still can't recall how I felt when I first read the book. Stupid movies.

Stray thought not strictly related to book discussion: The answer to "what was this character like at fifteen" seems to provide a good indicator of fundamental personality and moral character. Nnnnot sure how I'd stand up to such a test. :)

Stay tuned for (possible) rehashing of 2-6, a little bit considering the relationship between Harry and Voldemort, and Deathly Hallow predictions for the record. It appears I am bored or maybe searching for meaning in this stupid series I spent most of the last eight years thinking about.