Mark Re-Reads ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’: Chapter 5

In the fifth chapter of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry visits Diagon Alley for the first time and we all fall in love with Rowling’s world again. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to re-read Harry Potter.

This truly is some magical shit. Do you get the pun do you get it. It’s really hard not to have a huge smile plastered on your face while reading this chapter. It’s Harry’s first real introduction to the magical world AND it’s littered with so much foreshadowing and character introduction by Rowling that it’s like a gift that simply keeps on giving. Forever.

He sat up and Hgrid’s heavy coat fell off him. The hut was full of sunlight, the storm was over, Hagrid himself was asleep on the collapsed sofa, and there was an owl rapping its claw on the window, a newspaper held in its beak.

Harry scrambled to his feet, so happy he felt as though a large balloon was swelling inside him.

I definitely didn’t pick up on this the first time around, but this moment signifies something huge for Harry: It’s the first time he feels hope. Hope that he will be able to escape the world the Dursleys have given him and hope that there’s more to life than what he knows. I’m reminded of the day I woke up and realized I was moving away to college, away from all the people in my hometown who I hated and away from a city so far from where I wanted to be. It opens up a world before you and, as I said before, is a truly magical sensation.

Ok, no more magical puns, I swear.

Hagrid’s coat seemed to be made of nothing but pockets—bunches of keys, slug pellets, balls of string, peppermint humbugs, teabags…finally, Harry pulled out a handful of strange-looking coins.

Hahahaha oh man, I love Hagrid. Also I wish I could carry tea with me at all times.

If you quizzed me, I would absolutely fail at attempting to explain Wizarding money. I’m still rather proud of that image I used in my original “Diagon Alley” review of Diddy being perplexed by a one dollar bill because even in this chapter, as Knuts are introduced and later explained, I have the exact look on my face. Like, stick with the metric system, wizards. Don’t try to rebel like the United States did and create a system NO ONE ELSE USES that makes LITTLE TO NO SENSE IN MOST CONTEXTS.

This chapter also serves the purpose of us living through Harry and I don’t think I ever commented on how neat it was that Rowling tackled so many different mystical creatures and tropes from the fantasy world. Goblins and witches and werewolves and vampires and basilisks and…well, you get the picture. Obviously, she invented some of her own (OMG DEMENTORS), but it’s neat how she managed to stick so many of them into the series.

I also didn’t notice that Hagrid steals the Dursleys’ boat and I don’t believe it’s ever explained how they get off that island. OH WELL, THEY DESERVE.

“But what does a Ministry of Magic do?”

“Well, their main job is to keep it from the Muggles that there’s still witches an’ wizards up an’ down the country.”

“Why?”

“Why? Blimey, Harry, everyone’d be wantin’ magic solutions to their problems. Nah, we’re best left alone.”

Kind of an interesting reason. It’s so brief and I completely ignored it the first time around. Makes me wonder: Do wizards think they shouldn’t intervene at all if there isn’t something to do that could save a Muggle? I wonder how far their tenets stretch in terms of how much magic is allowed in specific situations. I guess it doesn’t really matter, but it’s one of those things where I just want to know more about the world of Harry Potter.

Harry had never been to London before. Although Hagrid seemed to know where he was going, he was obviously not used to getting there  in an ordinary way. He got stuck in the ticket barrier on the Underground, and complained loudly that the seats were too small and trains too slow.

Oh, Hagrid. You are so very special never change. Also, I would have had a very public breakdown had he died in Deathly Hallows because I love Hagrid forever.

It was a tiny, grubby-looking pub. If Hagrid hadn’t pointed it out, Harry wouldn’t have noticed it was there. The people hurrying by didn’t glance at it. Their eyes slid from the big book shop on one side to the record shop on the other as if they couldn’t see the Leaky Cauldron at all. In fact, Harry had the most peculiar feeling that only he and Hagrid could see it.

So how does this work? Do wizards put an enchantment on the place so that only other wizards can see it? How does this work for Harry since he’s never willingly done magic before? PLZ ANSWER BECAUSE YOU CAN.

The scene where the entirety of the Leaky Cauldron has a heart attack is still pretty awesome, only now I know OMG QUIRRELL WATCH OUT HARRY.

Harry grinned at Harry.

“Told yeh, didn’t i? Told yeh you was famous. Even Professor Quirrell was tremblin’ ter meet yeh—mind you, he’s usually tremblin’.”

That is probably not why he was trembling, Hagrid. JUST AN FYI.

“Is he always that nervous?”

“Oh yeah. Poor bloke. Brilliant mind. He was fine while he was studyin’ outta books but then he took a year off ter get some firsthand experience…They say he met vampires in the Black Forest, and there was a nasty bit o’ trouble with a hag—never been the same since. Scared of the students, scared of his own subject—now, where’s me umbrella?”

What you mean to say is that he TOTALLY FOUND VOLDY OUT IN THE ALBANIAN FOREST. Oh shit guys.

I still maintain that the first moments we step into Diagon Alley are among the finest moments in the entire series. Rowling loves detail, but not in a manner that weighs down passages for inordinate amounts of time. She tells us enough to give us a picture in our mind, but has no problem moving on when she’s ready.

A low, soft hooting came from a dark shop with a sign saying Eeylops Owl Emporium—Tawny, Screech, Barn, Brown, and Snowy. Several boys of about Harry’s age had their noses pressed against a window with broomsticks in it. “Look,” Harry heard one of them say, “the new Nimbus Two Thousand—fastest ever—“ There were shops selling robes, shops selling telescopes and strange silver instruments Harry had never seen before, windows stacked with barrels of bat spleends and eels’s eyes, tottering piles of spell books, quills, and rolls of parchment, potion bottles, globes of the moon…

What works so well here is the way Rowling drifts from object to object, person to person. It overwhelms us, just like it overwhelms Harry, and we too wish we had about eight more eyes.

They head to Gringotts, where Rowling sets out to drop many details that would become important throughout this book and the rest of the series. Hagrid picks up the Sorcerer’s Stone in vault seven hundred and thirteen, we meet Griphook for the first time, and she makes a point to note the complexity of Gringotts, which is going to be a conflict in Deathly Hallows.

Harry’s eyes stung as the cold air rushed past them, but he kept them wide open. Once, he thought he saw a burst of fire at the end of a passage and twisted around to see if it was a dragon, but too late—they plunged even deeper, passing an underground lake where huge stalactites and stalagmites grew from ceiling to floor.

Is it silly of me to think this might be the dragon they deal with when they rob the Lestrange vault? I can dream, right?

Griphook unlocked the door. A lot of green smoke came billowing out, and as it cleared, Harry gasped. Inside were mounds of gold coins. Columns of silver. Heaps of little bronze Knuts.

“All yours,” smiled Hagrid.

All Harry’s—it was incredible. The Dursleys couldn’t have known about this or they’d have had it from him faster than blinking. How often they complained how much Harry cost them to keep? And all the time there had been a small fortune belonging to him, buried deep under London.

Here’s an interesting thought: when Harry lives with the Dursleys, he is poor, but when he is at Hogwarts, he’s not. I can’t think of a book that’s ever dealt with that separation before. Harry clashes with Ron because Ron’s family doesn’t have a lot of money, but his suffering with the Dursleys is very, very real.

Just something to think about.

“Stand back,” said Griphook importantly. He stroked the door gently with one of his long fingers and it simply melted away.

“If anyone but a Gringotts goblin tried that, they’d be sucked through the door and trapped in there,” said Griphook.

“How often do you check to see if anyone’s inside?” Harry asked.

“About once every ten years,” said Griphook with a rather nasty grin.

I LOVE THE GOBLINS. Oh, why couldn’t we have more time inside Gringotts? It such an awesome place. I’d love to know what other measures they’ve taken to protect the vaults. (Well, we all know the TOTALLY FUCKED UP way that the Lestrange vault is protected.)

Let’s talk about Draco Malfoy, shall we?

Harry runs into him inside Madam Malkin’s shop. It’s funny that we’re not ever told his name and it’s even more interesting the parallel here to when Harry first meets Hermione. On first impression, Hermione and Draco both act like know-it-alls. But the key difference is that Hermione generally comes from a good place and has good intentions too.

Oh, and Draco is a bigoted dumbface. That too.

I think I still believe that Draco is a product of his environment, of being white and well-off and born into a pureblood family. It (sadly) makes sense why he turned out the way he did. Still, I don’t think that after all that happens to him, he’s all that redeemed in the end. It’s more a decision to be inactive on the part of his family (save Narcissa, who probably does more to attempt to redeem her family than anyone else.)

“And what are Slytherin and Hufflepuff?”

“School houses. There’s four. Everyone says Hufflepuff are a lot o’ duffers, but—“

“I bet I’m in Hufflepuff,” said Harry gloomily.

“Better Hufflepuff than Slythering,” said Hagrid darkly.

That’s right, the only thing worse than Hufflepuff is the house full of evil bigots. I laughed so hard at this. Even Hagrid is a Hufflepuff-hater.

After Harry gets Hedwig (!!!!!!! OH GOD ALREADY SAD), they head to Ollivanders, where Rowling sows the seeds for the complicated wandlore plot in Deathly Hallows and Goblet of Fire. (Well, not so complicated in GoF, but you get the point.)

The wand chooses the wizard, says Ollivander, so I wonder why he says this:

“I’m sorry to say I sold the wand that did it,” he said softly. “Thirteen-and-a-half inches. Yew. Powerful wand, very powerful, and in the wrong hands…well, if I’d known what that wand was going out into the world to do…”

Would you have not sold it? THE WAND CHOOSES THE WIZARD, DUDE. I’m kidding, but still. There’s nothing Ollivander could have done.

Harry’s wand fitting proves to be ironic, of course, because the wand that chooses him contains a phoenix feather from a bird that produced only one other feather, which went to Voldemort’s wand. We now know about the Prophecy we hear in Order of the Phoenix, so does this mean that this is just further evidence that the Prophecy is true? What kind of wand does Neville have? Or by choosing Harry all those nights ago, did he affect what wand Harry would end up with?

Just a thought.

When Harry bids goodbye to Hagrid at the end of the chapter, it’s much sadder than usual. I don’t know, I think it might be because I know he’s heading back to be with those miserable people when he could be at the Burrow and enjoying himself. HATE.

Onwards we go!