Sprained ankle and Harry Potter

[osprey_archer]

Somehow in my revelings yesterday I managed to sprain my ankle, or rather my foot - I say "somehow" but actually I know exactly when it happened: my ankle rolled rather dramatically when I was carrying the books up to mending at the library. The only thing puzzling about it is that it didn't start to hurt until a few hours later, and in the meantime I had felt perfectly fine and taken a walk to the ice cream parlor.

So I spent the yesterday evening icing my foot and rereading the first Harry Potter book, which I still remember in surprising detail despite the fact that I haven't reread it in at least ten years. Although even though I remember most of the actual events, it's fascinating to reread it as an adult: the Dursleys feel much more menacing than when I was a kid (it's really a miracle that Harry is as well-adjusted as he is), while Voldemort - who seemed menacing as all get out to my eleven-year-old self - feels a little cartoonish.

Also I appreciate Neville much more now. <3 <3 <3 Not that I was ever anti-Neville, but I think the first time around he seemed like something of an incompetent non-entity to me, as indeed he does to Harry and Ron. POOR NEVILLE, he tries so hard and yet he's always getting everything wrong.

The scene where he talks about bouncing after his uncle dropped him out of a second-story window is so heart-breaking: he talks about how everyone was crying afterward and he's so sure that it's because the bouncing shows he has magic, not because they're happy he's, you know, ALIVE.

(No wonder Argus Filch is such a nasty human being who hates all Hogwarts students. It must be absolute hell growing up in the wizarding world without being able to use magic.)

And Neville seems so isolated! Does he have any friends? I like to think he has friends, perhaps from the other houses?, and Harry doesn't notice because he's a bit distracted by the whole Sorcerer's Stone thing.

Comments

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

Oh, no! I hope your foot is better soon. :(

Poor Neville. He has lots of friends, as far as I'm concerned -- they're just all in Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff and are hardly ever in class with him. He took an advanced Herbology seminar and did really well!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I hope he has lots of friends somewhere. He doesn't seem to have anyone in Gryffindor and it makes me so sad to imagine him rattling around Gryffindor tower, tripping over things and feeling lonely.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to hear about your ankle! Hope it's feeling better soon.

I thought that about Filch when we first learn he's a squib (was that the term for a non-magical child of wizards?) The wizarding community is so dismissive of (or hostile to) muggles, the implication is that they'd look down mightily on squibs, too. Plus, just how miserable making to grow up around people who can do things that you can't. ... I could see a Harry Potter universe story about someone who makes a full and satisfying life for themself, despite being a squib, the way people in the nonwizarding world come to terms with being born without the use of their legs, or blind, or whatever.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

It's all better now! I spent the better part of a day with it propped up, and that seems to have done the trick.

Yeah, squib is the word for a non-magical child of wizards. I think many of them just end up leaving the wizarding world (Ron mentions an uncle who is an accountant... and the fact that the family doesn't talk about him), but Argus Filch not only stayed, he stayed in the absolute epicenter of it, watching generations of wizarding children grow up to use an ability he'll never have.

[artemis_wandering]

Oh no! So sorry about your ankle. I hope it heals quick!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

It's had a few days to heal, so it's all better now!