There are some minor
examples of this, like the popular wizard sport, Quidditch. Quidditch was introduced as a way to give
Harry a genuine talent in the magical world from the get-go. Being on a sports team gave him an identity
at the school and foreshadowed a solution he would later use to pass one of the
obstacles to reach the Sorcerer’s Stone.
Yet, in the earlier novels, only one game was written in each, and this
got a little frustrating. After all, I
liked Oliver Wood, Harry’s captain, and his fellow teammates as well, and I was
starting to wonder why this game was introduced if the heroes never got to
accomplish anything in it.
Prisoner of Azkaban gave us an entire season of Quidditch, actually
further the plot and Harry’s character development along, and expanded Harry’s
sphere of friends. (I’ll admit, I had
nurtured some hope that in the final novel, Harry’s old Quidditch team would play
a greater role in helping his fight against Voldemort. But, oh well.) And as an added bonus, which has nothing to
do with this being part of a trilogy, Quidditch is where we were introduced to
Cho Chang and Cedric Diggory, both of whom played a much bigger role later in
the series.
Another promise
fulfilled was Harry’s conquering of the Dursleys. Their abuse of Harry is such a downer at the
beginning of every book and even though Harry always has some hope he’ll
overcome them (in Sorcerer’s Stone,
Harry is banking on the fact they don’t know he’s can’t do magic over vacation)
but it always bites him hard by the next installment. With Prisoner
of Azkaban, Harry finally has leverage over the Dursleys and can expect no
more physical abuse anymore.
But the real reason it
works as the final installment of the trilogy is that we learn more about Harry’s
past than in any other novel. Details
would be filled in later, but this is the book where we get our foundation on
who Harry’s dad was, who his friends were, what happened the night his parents
died, and why Snape hates Harry so much.
The revelations are stunning and the mystery is once again fun (I can
see Rowling writing detective novels; she follows the formula from the Mystery
genre more than she does any Fantasy formulas.)
And then there are the
things I thought Rowling did especially well, and they’re a little odd but
brilliant.
Rowling does an
exceptionally good job with pets. Most
authors don’t touch this aspect of life, and those who do either make them too
shallow or go so far as to make the animals heroes of the story. Rowling, though, gives the pets personality
while keeping the focus firmly on the kids.
We love the animals for themselves.
Hedwig is very dignified and stern; Crookshanks determined, impulsive,
yet always doing the right thing; and Pigwidgeon is way too energetic and full
of himself to the point it gets annoying.
Remus Lupin was my
favorite character for a long time, and he’s still my No. 2. What I love about him besides the fact that
he was the most competent teacher the series had, he is the only person who has ever managed to
discipline Harry. And I mean the only
one.
One of the things I
realized in this novel is that Harry has no concept of what the rules are or
why he should follow them. You can’t
blame him much; the Dursleys were abusive and their rules arbitrary that he
never learned much about right and wrong from them; he just reached personal
concepts about what was fair and unfair.
So as the series progresses, Harry does what he wants unchecked; his
heart is in the right place (mostly) but he’s as stupid as he is brave and
doesn’t often learn from the consequences of his actions.
Nobody really guides
him. Professor McGonagall is strict, but
she treats him the same as she does any other student; no personal relationship
to vouch for there. Professor Dumbledore
is Harry’s hero, but Dumbledore is a distant mentor rather than parent and he
encourages Harry’s bad behavior more often than not. The Weasleys are Harry’s family and they love him, but Molly and Arthur will not
discipline him. When Harry and Ron crash
the car in Chamber of Secrets, Ron is
the one who got the Howler. Harry felt
bad, but the discipline was never directed at him. Sirius Black might be his godfather, but they
barely know each other in this book, or really, for the rest of the series.
When Harry sneaks out
to Hogsmeade and gets caught, Lupin crushes his childishness with just a couple
sentences: “You parents gave their lives to keep you alive, Harry. A poor way to repay them—gambling their
sacrifice for a bag of magic tricks.”
This is the first time that anything a grownup says that sinks into
Harry’s soul. Lupin should have been the
one to raise Harry.
And lastly, poor
Hermione. Even when she joined Ron and
Harry in the circle of friends, she was a pretty flat character until this
novel, and it took breaking up the friendship briefly to do it. We know she’s smart and cares about keeping
the rules, but it’s in this book where we see how much she cares. When Harry gets a Firebolt for Christmas from
an anonymous giver, Hermione worries that it might be a cursed in order to
secretly kill Harry. Given the
circumstances in this novel, that’s not an unfair call. She knows doing the right thing and getting a
teacher to take it away from Harry for inspection will make the boys angry at
her, but she does it anyway. Like Neville
in Sorcerer’s Stone, Hermione proved
it takes more bravery to stand up to your friends rather than your enemies, and
she paid a heavier cost for it. Just
this act alone and everything that followed after, she proved to be the best
person of the three of them.
It also made me want to
slap both Ron and Harry. You can tell
they’re hitting puberty at this point, because all the adults are grateful that
they aren’t their kids.
No comments:
Post a Comment