Surprise!

I'm gonna blog a little bit about - you guessed it! - Harry Potter before I get to bed. I started rereading Sorcerer's Stone a couple days ago. I'm only a hundred pages in, and already it's a totally magical experience. It's so fun to pretend like you have no idea what happens, and it would be amazing if that could really be so and we could live through the experience again. However, just waiting years to reread your favorite book puts you in this position where you are forced to read the same exact words differently. It's possible to make different judgements about characters and situations than you did last time because from the last time you picked that book up and dusted it off, you've more than likely been through life experiences that have changed you just in the slightest.

That being said, it's such a beautiful read this time around - all over again, and totally differently. I don't think I've ever laughed so much at a Harry Potter book as I've laughed at this one, whether actually "lol"ing or just chuckling to myself. I'm going to hope that this is some sign that I've lightened up in the past five or six years or so. Yeah, okay, so it's been too long since I've read Sorcerer's Stone. I'm ashamed. However, I used to be the biggest hard ass in junior high and the beginning of high school and I brushed aside most of the humor Jo would put in her books. I did this less toward the end of the series because I suppose I related to the humor more, or maybe there was just less of it. But little things like Hagrid sitting on and breaking the spindly legged chair in Mr. Ollivander's, Uncle Vernon's futile attempts to force Hagrid to leave the hut, the fact that Uncle Vernon actually was stupidly ridiculous enough to take the time to search out the hut in the first place, and just the way Harry back talks his relatives is awesome to me now. Not that I didn't appreciate these things before, but now that I know how the plot will lay out, the little things become more precious to me.

Right now I'm reading the part in which Harry meets Ron for the first time and I'm already super excited for him to get to Hogwarts. I'm trying as hard as I can to see this as a first time reader. People who see me reading Harry Potter (which I haven't really done in a while) may scoff and go "the same thing is going to happen, you know", but if I knew that, I wouldn't reread it. Of course the major plot points are going to be the same, but the actual things that go on are always slightly different. I hope I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Inevitably, there are some things that still make me wonder, some vocabulary I still don't quite feel the incentive to go grab a dictionary to understand, and some questions that still arise while I read. Where do you get a ticket for the Hogwarts Express? There can't be a special number you dial because wizards don't use telephones. Is there a box office or what? Hagrid got it in advance, so I'm assuming it's special delivery of some sort. And what if Uncle Vernon refused to drive Harry to King's Cross? I feel like that would've been a much bigger, at least a more dramatic, step in keeping Harry from attending Hogwarts. Also, WHY does Ron have dirt on his nose? Was he degnoming the garden right before his family left for King's Cross?

Also, the amount of foreshadowing is intensely enjoyable. Hagrid reminds Harry so many times that he'd be mad to rob Gringotts that I wonder how I didn't suspect something all those years ago. Oh yeah, because I was just enjoying the book for the moment and didn't think about the little things that might be important. Wooh. I love rereading. Also, I adore the Gringotts warning inscribed on the silver double doors when you enter for some reason. I'm just gonna copy it here because I feel like it. Enjoy the flashback!


"Enter, stranger, but take heed
Of what awaits the sin of greed,
For those who take, but do not earn,
Must pay most dearly in their turn.
So if you seek beneath our floors
A treasure that was never yours,
Thief, you have been warned, beware
Of finding more than treasure there."