Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: First Impressions

Chapter 6

Harry returns to the Dursley home. He notes that sweet Aunt Petunia no longer ventures into his room, most likely because she got all murdered. It is just as well, as he describes his room as littered with animal corpses, which he blames on his pet owl, but we know better.

Harry stays in his room, never being bothered by the Dursleys, as they are all murdered, but he comes down to ask for a lift to the train station. This is the part I am not clear on. I do not know if he merely hallucinates seeing old Uncle Vernon in the chair, or if Harry has him propped up like Norma Bates in the basement.

Now here is the part that chaffs my pig-tailed ass. "Uncle Vernon" says they have to take Dudley to the hospital because of what "Hagrid" has done. Now, there are three options: One is that Dudley is imagined, while another is that Dudley is in surgery after whatever Harry had done to him in the kill shack. However, let us take the literal reading of the story. IF there really was magic in this world and IF Hagrid was real, then that means he mutilated a child who now has to go under the knife to have something cut off his body. Can you imagine what having a tail growing off a little kid would do to his psyche? Even if it caused no physical hurt, the psychological damage would be enormous. If someone in our world surgically attached a tail to a child against his or his family's wishes, that person would be reviled as a monster and sent to prison for decades. Here, it is brushed off as lighthearted fun.

Harry ends at the train station, where Uncle Vernon (the cab driver) removes his luggage from the car and drives away. Harry imagines the family staring at through the window, but we know this isn't true. At the station, he sees a guard and several crying families that wave good-bye to their kids as he and the rest board a train. On board, a lot of kids marvel at his scar on his head and leave to whisper among themselves.

I didn't understand the scar before; now with some context into Harry's character, I do. A "lightning bolt" would be three lines shaped like a backwards Z. Harry obviously tried to cut a swastika into his forehead like Charles Manson, bitched out in the process, and only got halfway through, but the other children know what he was going for.

Harry takes a seat in the train carriage with a rat-carrying kid named Ron, and the two moan and complain about how poor they were. More kids show up; someone named Neville and a girl. Harry once again doesn't introduce himself until everyone else greets him first. Harry appears as famous among the children as he did in the wizard world. Later, Draco appears again, trying to be nice and shake Harry's hand while offering advice on the school. Harry starts a brawl and the others leave. They are informed they need to put on the robes they were given for their first day. The train eventually stops and they are loaded onto boats where they are heading off to a "special school" called Hogwarts.

I admit, I didn't get this whole section at first until the mouse. The only other person I know of in fiction that owned a mouse was a prisoner from Stephen King's The Green Mile, with four characters on Death Row. This chapter also focuses on four characters that share the same boat; Harry, Ron, Neville, and What's-Her-Name, the annoying one. The Green Mile was released over a year before and probably was a source for the story.

This chapter was a flashback to when Harry was a kid. After the massacre, he was arrested and sentenced to a prison or mental institution for youths. He is left at the "train station" (transfer facility), where there are guards and families saying good-bye to their young children. He is loaded on a train (prison bus) and seated in groups of two, forced to change into "robes" (prison garbs) and sent to the "school for special children" (asylum for criminally insane young'ens). Everyone recognizes him because his family execution made the news and he is known as "The Boy Who Let No One Live!" Obvious, really. Onto the next part.