“Never – Never Tell” – In Defense of Albus Dumbledore (2.0) – Part 5

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Here’s the conclusion to the series… discussing some consequences of the secret Snape made Dumbledore swear to keep.

You can find the 1.0 version here.

‘But they were our kind, weren’t they?’

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The last time I wrote on this very dense chapter, it took me three posts to cover what I wanted to say:

My brilliant guest author AnnieLogic later contributed this post on Draco:

Guest Post: Draco dormiens nunquam titillandusa

This time, I’m hoping to use a single post to cover a discussion of Draco and Slytherin from Diagon Alley to The Sorting Hat, but it won’t be this one. :)

Instead, it struck me this morning that there’s one line in this chapter that encapsulates the underlying cause for the unrest currently engulfing the U.S. Of Harry’s parents, Draco asks:

But they were our kind, weren’t they?

As Draco’s question very directly illustrates, we see each other often in terms of our tribal identity.

So far, Harry has experienced this sort of division mainly between himself and the Dursleys. They don’t view him as family but as a member of a different tribe (he’s some Wizard “weirdo,” and they are “perfectly normal, thank you very much”). Now that Harry has entered Diagon Alley and begun to experience the world of Wizards, he sees the same sort of tribal identification from the opposite direction.

It’s tempting to pin this sort of thinking on a Malfoy or a Slytherin, since the Malfoys have a long family history of hating Muggles and Muggle-borns, and Salazar Slytherin became a Pureblood Supremacist. But really, the tribal thinking is embedded into the very House structure at Hogwarts. Harry’s own prejudice against Slytherin begins with Draco and is reinforced by Hagrid’s claim that it would be “better” for him to land in “Hufflepuff than Slytherin” because according to Hagrid,

There’s not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn’t in Slytherin. You-Know-Who was one.

It’s true that Voldemort was in Slytherin. It’s not true that being in Slytherin is a requirement for going bad. And it’s certainly not true – as Hagrid implies – that being in Slytherin is an indicator that the student is drawn to darkness and is morally corrupt. (Merlin, anyone?). It takes Harry years to overcome this prejudice, but ultimately even Draco has a unicorn-tail-hair at his wand’s core.

The Wizarding World often reflects our world, and as in the Wizarding World, we tend to see our fellow citizens also in terms of tribes – whether those tribes are racial, subcultural, religious, or political. I wrote on how this phenomenon played out during the Jack the Ripper killings in 1888 and how it nearly caused riots then.

Not surprisingly, different tribes have different narratives about truth and justice. Though we, like Harry, are encouraged to adopt the perspective that Wizards of all backgrounds should be welcome at Hogwarts, the side that hates Muggles and Muggle-borns has its own narrative designed to “justify” its prejudice. The anti-Muggle-born narrative remembers a time when Muggle oppressors slaughtered witches and wizards (True! two of the Hogwarts ghosts died in the slaughter), and so the opponents of Muggle-borns mistrust the children of Muggles as a result. Over the centuries, these opponents have embellished their narratives, eventually claiming that Muggle-borns stole their magic, but regardless of the mindless bigotry that we see manifest in the 1990s, the initial prejudice against Muggle-borns was born out of fear that Muggle-borns would infiltrate the Wizarding World and serve Wizards up to their parents, not serve the Wizarding World.

What are some of the narratives we create or tell about the people who are not part of our own tribe(s)?

At-Home Video Reading: If you want to hear / watch this chapter read by Simon Callow, Bonnie Wright (Ginny), and Evanna Lynch (Luna), check out Chapter 5: Diagon Alley at Wizarding World.

A Letter from Hogwarts

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The last time I wrote about this chapter, I focused on Harry’s interaction with Hagrid and on Hagrid’s explanation of Harry’s magic:

I really don’t have much to add, except that in this chapter, in the hut on the rock, Harry finally gets to read the letter that has been following him around for the past week. In contrast to Hagrid’s air of familiarity and intimacy, the letter itself is pretty straightforward and unsentimental:

Dear Mr. Potter,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.

Term begins on September 1. We await your own no later than July 31.

Yours sincerely,

Minerva McGonagall,
Deputy Headmistress

I think we can assume that Lily’s letter was pretty much the same, though we don’t know who signed it. We do know, though, that Lily’s letter set Petunia off. As Petunia recalls:

Oh, she got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that — that school — and came home every vacation with her pockets full of frog spawn, turning teacups into rats. I was the only one who saw her for what she was — a freak.

What Petunia does not tell Harry or Hagrid (and what Harry won’t know for another 7 years) is that Petunia begged Dumbledore to allow her to go to Hogwarts alongside Lily. Petunia did not see Lily as a freak until Petunia felt left out. Lily’s letter, in other words, created the rift between the sisters, a rift that we do not see on that swingset in Snape’s memory of Cokeworth. Her own envy created it. Harry receiving his letter can only exacerbate that envy and the resulting rift.

The Hogwarts acceptance letter, though, is not supposed to cause so much drama (and trauma). It’s supposed to be a source of joy for the family. I got to have a bit of fun a few years ago writing the response of a different family when their half-blood daughter receives her letter. The entry was for contest called “A Year in the Life of a Hogwarts Student.” You can find the story originally posted here. Have fun…

The Secret Spell

The letter arrived just as mum started the seventh song in her step routine.

“RIGHT-KICK-2-3-4!
LEFT-KICK-2-3-4!
Now LEFT-ELBOW – RIGHT KNEE – 3-4.
RIGHT-ELBOW – LEFT-KNEE – 3-4.
FIST-PUMP LEFT – 3-4.
FIST-PUMP RIGHT – 3-4.”

When the owl emerged from the chimney, it connected with her right pumped fist, sending feathers flying. The startled bird screeched, dropped the letter, and darted back up the chimney to escape the Mad Muggle!

When mum saw the emerald-green ink on the envelope, she collapsed in a heap on the floor. “It’s your letter,” she blubbered. “Your letter from Hogwarts.”

She was such a sight that I barely had the presence of mind to run over and rip the letter out of her hands before she smudged the ink with tears!

Mum knew our world. She’d mingled with the witches during promotional tours for the Quidditch World Cup and heard dad do interviews about the fabled Battle of Hogwarts. The Daily Prophet called him a war hero, but he never thought he did anything special (“just what was needed to defend the castle”). Still, he had been the one to cast the secret spell.

Dad was the youngest survivor – the 4th year who snuck back in with Professor Slughorn and hid behind the rubble. When he emerged at the start of Voldemort’s one-hour truce, Professor McGonnagall found eight befuddled Death Eaters lying prostrate beside his hiding place, unable even to remember their names. So she allowed him to remain. Not one of those Death Eaters has since recovered enough of his wits to stand trial, and they are all still rotting in the prison ward at St. Mungo’s.

Dad never told the Ministry what spell he used, and they never asked specifics. He called it “Just something Professor Snape taught me a couple weeks before Dumbledore died, during a detention for casting a JellyLegs on that Malfoy prat in the Common Room.”

That’s why he gets interviewed every year on the anniversary by The Daily Prophet and even got recruited to appear in the first “Battle of Hogwarts Heroes Tour” when he was 17. That was the one where the Wizarding Wireless brought the Castle Defenders together to retrace the steps of Harry Potter in the wilderness and interview them on how it felt to “Walk where Harry Walked on (roughly) the Days that Harry Walked There.” Dad said it was a load of rubbish. Just publicity for the Wireless. But that’s how he met my mum – on the Heroes Tour, on Boxing Day, in a village beside the Forest of Dean.

She was an innkeeper’s daughter. He was a Pureblood Wizard whose family hadn’t spoken with him since the Battle. She taught him about Muggles. He taught her about Wizards. And he’d prepared her for my letter since the day I made the television turn on from two rooms down the hall.

“She’ll get a letter from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry when she’s eleven years old,” he’d declared nearly once every week since then. And then he would turn to quiz me on all the House colors and mottoes before adding proudly: “It’s addressed in emerald-green ink – like the colors of Slytherin House.”

He always found the ink color amusing since his own letter had been addressed in Slytherin-green by the Head of Gryffindor. Mine would be addressed by someone else.

He wasn’t much help, though, when I asked why mum got all teary-eyed over my letter. He’d floo’d in from Glastonbury during an outreach to “At-Risk Pureblood Youth in the West Country” after his Hogwarts contacts told him that my owl went out. Mum’s eyes were puffy when he walked out of the fireplace, and I was in the kitchen with my head down, asking why she couldn’t just be happy.

Dad thought it must be because of something the Muggles called “empty-nest syndrome” (he got that idea from her telly). But that explanation made no sense since my little sister and brother weren’t going anywhere!

Finally, I just asked her.

“Oh, love, I am happy for you!” she replied, getting weepy once again. “And proud,” she smiled through the tears. “And excited!

“I’ll go with you and dad to Diagon Alley for your school supplies,” she added with a kiss. “And to the Platform to catch the school train,” she brushed the hair out of my eyes with her fingertips. “And I’ll try very, very hard not to embarrass you again with any tears. But it’s just that you’re the first to go, and you’ll be gone such a very long time.”

Once mum’s eyes dried, the blonde woman from the Daily Prophet arrived at our doorstep, demanding to interview the “Halfblood girl about how exciting it must be to follow her father’s footsteps.”

No sooner did the reporter start asking if I already knew any secret spells than my dad yelled “Not my daughter, you lying witch!” and disarmed her Quick-Quotes Quill with one of his own secret spells. He was threatening to stomp any beetles found on the property when we heard the pop. Dad said she “just apparated back to whatever rock she crawled out from.”

Dad had sheltered the family from his notoriety since before I was born, but that part of my life was clearly done.

“I’m afraid Hogwarts will be hard on you,” he warned me that night. “People will try to get close to you and learn more about the secret spell. And they’ll ask why Professor Snape entrusted it to me. That’s something I don’t even know! Maybe he used Legilimency, to find out where my loyalties really lay. No matter, though. You’ll be under a lot pressure. Do you still want to go? We could send you to Beauxbatons.”

“Oh daddy!” I cried. “I’ve been waiting for Hogwarts forever! To live inside the castle and learn magic where you learned it! What’s a little pressure? And now I’ve got my letter! Please don’t take it away from me!”

Then I hesitated before continuing, “But there’s still one thing I’d like to know.”

“Yes?”

“Did Professor Snape give you the counter-curse?”

Dad twisted his mouth into a mischievous little grin. “Now, that, my dear, would be telling.”

At-Home Video Reading: If you want to hear / watch this chapter read by Simon Callow, Bonnie Wright (Ginny), and Evanna Lynch (Luna), check out Chapter 5: Diagon Alley at Wizarding World.

“I WANT MY LETTER!” he shouted.

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Harry finds his voice

In the previous chapter, Harry seems largely cowed by the Dursleys. He had learned not to ask questions and regretted being open about his motorcycle dream. In this chapter, though, we begin to see glimpses of the bold young man Harry will become. Here’s how he responds at three different times to not being given his first letter.

Harry was on the point of unfolding his letter, which was written on the same heavy parchment as the envelope, when it was jerked sharply out of his hand by Uncle Vernon.

“That’s mine!” said Harry, trying to snatch it back.

After Vernon consults with Petunia:

“I want to read that letter,” he said loudly. “I want to read it,” said Harry furiously, “as it’s mine.”

“Get out, both of you,” croaked Uncle Vernon, stuffing the letter back inside its envelope.

Harry didn’t move.

“I WANT MY LETTER!” he shouted.

Later that night:

“Where’s my letter?” said Harry, the moment Uncle Vernon had squeezed through the door. “Who’s writing to me?”

“No one. It was addressed to you by mistake,” said Uncle Vernon shortly. “I have burned it.”

“It was not a mistake,” said Harry angrily, “it had my cupboard on it.”

Throughout his life, Harry has been told he is nothing, worthless, that nobody could possibly be interested in him. Yet he tenaciously and single-mindedly demands his letter when the letter’s very existence unmasks the Dursleys’ lie. This tenacity and demand for justice will follow him to Hogwarts.

Because the letter addresses his cupboard, Harry finally gets a real bedroom, yet

Harry sighed and stretched out on the bed. Yesterday he’d have given anything to be up here. Today he’d rather be back in his cupboard with that letter than up here without it.

And he devises his first elaborate plot (or at least the first we hear about):

Harry walked round and round his new room. Someone knew he had moved out of his cupboard and they seemed to know he hadn’t received his first letter. Surely that meant they’d try again? And this time he’d make sure they didn’t fail. He had a plan….

He was going to wait for the postman on the corner of Privet Drive and get the letters for number four first.

Even though Uncle Vernon thwarts his plot, Harry’s determination to get that letter and his willingness to devise a plan foreshadows all sorts of Hogwarts behavior – from trying to prevent Snape(!) from stealing the philosopher’s stone, to finding a way into the Chamber of Secrets, to ultimately breaking into a Hogwarts crawling with Voldemort allies.

Harry does not know yet that he is the “boy who lived.” He doesn’t know that his parents were murdered or that he was the target. He doesn’t know even that he is a wizard. But right here, with something as simple as waiting for the postman on the corner of Privet Drive, Harry begins to show the same resourcefulness that will see him through the Second Wizarding War and lead to Voldemort’s final downfall.

Previously in Chapter 3…

At-Home Video Reading: If you want to hear / watch this chapter read by Eddie Redmayne, check out Chapter 3: The Letters from No One at Wizarding World.

Previous posts on this chapter:

Holiday in Hell… uh, Cokeworth

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Before we get to Cokeworth, here are some previous posts on Chapter 3: “The Letters from Nowhere,” focusing largely on the chapter’s slapstick elements:

As we will soon see, it is thanks to Cokeworth that the Dursley parents rarely address Harry by name. To them, he is generally “you” or “the boy” or “one” (as in “one of them”). The Hogwarts letters don’t address him by name either. Instead, they use the more formal first initial but still give him the respected title of “Mr.” We can probably assume that Hogwarts addresses each 11-year-old letter recipient according to the same formula. Here are the addresses:

Letter 1 –

Mr. H. Potter
The Cupboard under the Stairs
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging
Surrey

Letter 2 –

‘Mr. H. Potter, The Smallest Bedroom, 4 Privet Drive —’”‘

Letter at the hotel –

Mr. H. Potter
Room 17
Railview Hotel
Cokeworth

Part of the joke of the chapter is that as Harry moves, the letters track his location and include it in their address. Though the Dursleys suspect they are being watched, the truth more likely is that the charm used in creating the letters is simply tracking Harry – and tracking him quite precisely from the “Cupboard under the Stairs” to “The Smallest Bedroom” to the “Railview Hotel.”

Let’s take a closer look though at that final location.

Cokeworth
Photo from Harry Potter Wiki

On first glance, Cokeworth seems just some throwaway place with no real significance. In reality, it hints at a rich backstory. The address tells us that the hotel has a view of a railroad in the fictional industrial town of Cokeworth – a place we will see later in Harry’s Occlumency lessons with Snape, in Chapter 2 of Half-Blood Prince, and in Chapter 33 of Deathly Hallows. In other words, Spinner’s End is in Cokeworth. So is the swingset where Lily first met her young wizard friend Severus Snape.

Somehow, whether by chance or instinct or even providence, Vernon’s random driving has landed him in “a gloomy-looking hotel on the outskirts” of one of the most important pre-Hogwarts locations in the Harry Potter series: the home-town of Harry’s mother Lily, his Aunt Petunia, and his Potions Master, Severus Snape. In the larger plot of the saga, this is the town where Petunia learned to hate magic – because her sister had it and she did not. It is the town also where Snape learned to despise Muggles – because his Muggle father treated his mother abusively and Lily’s Muggle sister held him in contempt. And likewise, young Severus’ disdain for Muggles feeds into Petunia’s hatred of magic. In other words, many of Harry’s struggles, both at home with the Dursleys and soon at school with Snape, link back to Cokeworth.

Earlier, on reading the first letter,

[Vernon’s] face went from red to green faster than a set of traffic lights. And it didn’t stop there. Within seconds it was the grayish white of old porridge. “P-P-Petunia!” he gasped.

And when aunt Petunia’s reads the first line of Harry’s letter,

it looked as though she might faint. She clutched her throat and made a choking noise. “Vernon! Oh my goodness — Vernon!”

Petunia’s childhood experiences in Cokeworth elicited these exaggerated responses and have brought them back, perhaps unthinkingly, to Cokeworth, on the run from the ghosts of Petunia’s past and Vernon’s fears of “that dangerous nonsense.”

Meanwhile, at their hotel in Cokeworth,

Harry stayed awake, sitting on the windowsill, staring down at the lights of passing cars and wondering. . . .

To be continued…

At-Home Video Reading: If you want to hear / watch this chapter read by Eddie Redmayne, check out Chapter 3: The Letters from No One at Wizarding World.

Note: J.K. Rowling has written about Cokeworth on Wizarding World, confirming the location’s significance. I’m not really sure when I first realized that Spinner’s End and the Evans sisters’ asphalt playground were in Cokeworth, but I think it was well before Rowling’s 2015 write-up because I was fairly surprised recently on re-reading my 2010 posts and realizing that I had not included that information then.