Mark Reads ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’: Chapter 11

In the eleventh chapter of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry plays his first full match of Quidditch. Teamed against Slytherin, we’re surprised that the main antagonist is not, in fact, Draco Malfoy. (STUPID UGLY TROLL hate.) It’s Snape, and he casts a powerful spell that nearly kills Harry during his game. But is all this enough to be interesting? If you’re intrigued, then it’s time for Mark to read Harry Potter.

CHAPTER 11: QUIDDITCH

I don’t like this chapter.

Now, before you light your torches and get your pitchforks and come storming down to the Buzznet offices, I still like Harry Potter. I just don’t like the execution of this chapter. It feels like such a large turning point in Harry’s character and in the plot was sort of…glossed over?

Look, let me explain. Shall we?

• As they entered November, the weather turned very cold. The mountains around the school became icy gray and the lake like chilled steel.

I like how this is written, but there are few things that peeve me more than writers sloppily dealing with the passage of time. Especially starting off a chapter like this. I know it’s necessary to move things along. But uuuuggggggggggggghhhhhhhhh I hate reading this.

I suppose this wouldn’t have bothered me so much if there weren’t, like, 20 instances of this in this specific chapter.

• The Quidditch season had begun.
• On Saturday, Harry would be playing in his first match after weeks of training…
• Hardly anyone had seen Harry play because Wood had decided that, as their secret weapon, Harry should be kept, well, secret.
• It was really lucky that Harry now had Hermione as a friend. He didn’t know how he’d have gotten through all his homework with out her, what with all the last-minute Quidditch practice Wood was making them do.
• Hermione had become a bit more relaxed about breaking rules since Harry and Ron had saved her from the mountain troll, and she was much nicer for it.

OK, so it’s only five instances STOP JUDGING ME. But still. It caught me off guard because up until this point, Rowling has spent a great deal of time on character development. And all of these developments seem like large character opportunities for many people in this book.

So why the rush? I have to keep reminding myself this is supposed to be a children’s book. This is become increasingly difficult for a number of reasons. The obvious one is that this, for the most part, simply doesn’t read as a children’s book. Rowling is pretty talented at using a sentence or two to convey some pretty significant descriptions or developments and certainly hasn’t strayed from large words or complicated ideas.

So I’m stuck in this weird place. If I revew this as a children’s book, I’m ignoring a lot of the more complex issues at hand. If I review it strictly as an adult, I’m obviously going to find faults because I’m not the intended audience.

I’ll just whine a bit instead.

Harry becomes more and more nervous as the day of his first match quickly approaches. But then Rowling does the same thing the first two pages of chapter 11 suffer from: she includes a huge plot twist and only spends a page ruminating about it. Snape takes Quidditch Through The Ages from Harry under the (fake) grounds that you can’t take a library book outside the school. The night before his game, Harry feels he’ll be much calmer than he is if he simply asks Snape for his book back. So he attempts to confront Snape in the teacher staffroom when:

• “Snape and Filch were inside, alone. Snape was holding his robes above his knees. One of his legs was bloody and mangled. Filch was handing Snape bandages.

  “Blasted thing,” Snape was saying. “How are you supposed to keep your eyes on all three heads at once?”

  Harry tried to shut the door quietly, but —

  “POTTER!”

  Snape’s face was twisted with fury as he dropped his robes quickly to hide his leg. Harry gulped.

  “I just wondered if I could have my book back.”

  “GET OUT! OUT!

  Harry left, before Snape could take any more points from Gryffindor.

Aside from a brief moment that night when Harry wonders about Snape, nothing happens. I find it incredibly strange that this is so quickly glossed over or that Harry wouldn’t tell Hagrid or anyone. It’s odd. But even if a character doesn’t act rationally, it doesn’t mean the writing is bad. But how quickly this happens? It bothers me.

The thing is, the Quidditch scene suffers from the exact same thing. I expected the Quidditch match to be this epic, 20 page affair. (And perhaps I’m premature in my judgment because I’ll learn more in the coming chapters, but the whole Quidditch scene was…underwhelming?

And I mean that in the way it was written, not what happens. Plotwise, this scene greatly advanced the world of Hogwarts and outright confirmed that Snape’s got it in for Harry. Actually, most of Slytherin appears to hate Harry.

• “Now, I want a nice fair game, all of you,” she said, once they were all gathered around her. Harry noticed that she seemed to be speaking particularly to the Slytherin Captain, Marcus Flint, a fifth year. Harry thought Flint looked as if he had some troll blood in him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the fluttering banner high above, flashing Potter for President over the crowd. His heart skipped. He felt braver.

This leads me to wonder something else. The entire Slytherin house seems so…evil. Why keep them around? I suppose this will be answered in later books, so I’ll just move along.

Rowling chose an interesting way to narrate the action of Quidditch: Lee Jordan, a good friend of the Weasley twins, does commentary and large parts of the narrative is just his words. It’s kind of fascinating, but since the action is filtered through a single person, I didn’t feel the sense of excitement and grandeur I thought I was supposed to.

Maybe it’s because Quidditch is such a complex game. To be honest, I kind of feel it’s a scene that would be best suited in the medium of film. (OH YEAH I AM TOTALLY EXCITED TO SEE THE FIRST MOVIE.)

But let’s just get to the point. During this game, as Harry sees the Snitch and goes after it, but is violently hit by Marcus Flint. And then events, like most things in the Harry Potter world, just get weird.

I like weird.

• It was as Harry dodged another Bludger, which went spinning dangerously past his head, that it happened. His broom gave a sudden, frightening lurch. For a split second, he thought he was going to fall. He gripped the broom tightly with both his hands and knees. He’d never felt anything like that.

As Harry’s broom takes a life of its own, everyone seems to think that Harry is merely losing control of his broom, since he’s a first-timer to Quidditch, except for Hermione:

• “I knew it,” Hermione gasped. “Snape–look.”

  Ron grabbed the binoculars. Snape was in the middle of the stands opposite them. He had his eyes fixed on Harry and was muttering nx under his breath.

  “He’s doing something–jinxing the broom,” said Hermione.

OK Snape you are most certainly a dirty ugly bumface.

But here’s what I don’t understand. I really love that Hermione returns the favor Harry gave her by saving his life via a magic wand and some fire to Snape’s robe. What I don’t get is how neither her nor Ron actually tell anyone what’s going on while it is happening.

Plotwise, though, the scene is integral to the story. Snape is getting bold in his determination to thwart Harry, so much so that he’s willing to do it in public. Harry, Hermione, and Ron are getting closer as friends. And Harry almost swallows the Snitch and manages to win his first game of Quidditch.

It’s even more frustrating when the three of them confront Hagrid and reveal what Snape was doing during the game AND that he had tried to get past the three-headed dog and Hagrid is still unconvinced. Awesome.

By the way, the dog’s name is Fluffy THIS IS FUCKING WONDERFUL.

I’m intrigued to see what’s next. But this isn’t my favorite chapter. It’s ok. Also HOW IS SNAPE IN LIKE 6 MORE BOOKS IF HE’S ALREADY BEING A DOLTFACE.

omg don’t tell me