Another summer, another dreadful return to the privations of 4 Privet Drive. We are then reminded of the (Reasonable) Restriction on Underage Wizardry, as Harry blows up his aunt and goes on the run, ruminating on his options as an outlaw. The detection and enforcement of this Decree, however, is somewhat murky. In Chamber of Secrets, Harry receives a warning from the Ministry of Magic due to the use of a Hover Charm, specifically one cast by a desperate house-elf. However, we later establish that house-elves are more innately magical rather than strictly magic ‘tool users’ like wizards and witches. For example, they do not need wands to cast spells - such as Dobby’s repulsion of Lucius Malfoy - and can perform magic that is otherwise prohibited by safeguards, such as their ability to Apparate within the Hogwarts grounds (which is blocked for human magic-users, per Hogwarts, A History, as frequently cited by Hermione in exasperation). So wouldn’t the Ministry be able to distinguish between an innate levitation effect from a house-elf, vs a proper Hover Charm? Likewise, Harry manages both to shatter Aunt Marge’s brandy glass as well as to inflate her to balloon proportions, all without a wand, any spoken or somatic components, or even conscious intent. He subconsciously generates a magic effect out of emotional extremis, just as he had before even learning he was a wizard (regrowing a haircut, escaping bullies, vanishing the glass in the reptile house, etc). Again, this is distinct from a proper Engorgement Charm or equivalent that might be used intentionally to create a human balloon, but rather an instinctive, defensive act. If the Decree is really meant to extend to that extreme, it would almost seem to qualify as a ‘thoughtcrime’ in degree, albeit for a thought taken literal form. Perhaps this is how wizard justice distinguishes between levels of malicious magic, since almost any kind of charm, curse, or hex committed with a wand would seem to be automatically premeditated while a ’spell of passion’ might be a result of sheer will under pressure.

In his first interaction (although second meeting) with Cornelius Fudge, Harry learns more of this flexible nature of law enforcement in the wizarding world. Despite his prior warning, Fudge laughs off the notion of punishment, saying “we don’t send people to Azkaban just for blowing up their aunts!” Compare this with both the aforementioned ‘hover charm’ warning following Dobby’s intervention, and Fudge’s own justification for jailing Hagrid the year before, “the Ministry’s got to act!” We find other examples of this political approach to law enforcement (justice is never voiced as a primary concern) later in the book in how Sirius Black’s planned punishment after his subsequent recapture is handled, as well as the entire case of Buckbeak - a trumped-up charge by the scion of a major political contributor and the forthright manipulation of the Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures. This cloud of coercion will hang heavy over the side of Good in future events, particularly book 5.

Harry also has his first encounter with Cho Chang during the Quidditch match against Ravenclaw. After she smiles at him before the kickoff, he feels “a slight lurch in the region of his stomach that he didn’t think had anything to do with nerves.” Apart from the mandrake ‘pot swapping’ and Percy’s having a secret girlfriend in Chamber of Secrets (and excluding infatuations like all the giggling over Gilderoy Lockhart and Ginny’s fixation on Harry as a first-year), this is our first real depiction of attraction between the sexes. It’s laudable that Harry, Ron and other male students are never described in the first two years as having any aversive opinions of girls typical of pre-teens. Indeed, no explicit mention is ever given of witches not having an equal position of respect among wizarding society (although it is called ‘wizarding’ instead of ‘witching’, natch). While the current Minister of Magic and Headmaster of Hogwarts are both wizards, Hogwarts has a large population of witch faculty, and the Ministry appears likewise to employ witches throughout its departments. In a world riven by blood mania and species bigotry, a semblance of gender equality is welcome. And of course we have Hermione, the wunderkind, a paragon of academic achievement; even when Draco expresses his consternation at her achievement, it is always framed in the context of her ancestry, not that she’s ‘just a witch’ or anything similar. We will also discover through later installments of Harry’s interactions with Cho, as well as other Hogwarts relationships, that girls appear to hold the reins in these pairings, as well as understand their feelings in much more complex fashion than the boys ever seem to muster.

The rise of Quidditch in prominence through the series reaches its zenith in Prisoner of Azkaban. Structurally, this makes perfect sense. First, when Harry begins at Hogwarts, he is a boy without any background in learning magic, and for balance needs to find something in the wizarding world he can enjoy instinctively (as he clearly struggles with many of the lessons). This turns out to be flying a broomstick, a natural talent inherited from his father, which also gives us an opportunity to explore the culture of sports within the magical community. And we know the importance of this from the Princess Bride, where the grandson whines as he first enters its magical world, “where’s the sports?” But while Harry can be allowed to join the team at an impressively young age, and even win a game with daring feats of flying in the first book, the Quidditch Cup is withheld for two years. To this end we have interruptions in play from jinxed brooms, cursed bludgers, and now dementors - plus absences due to other trials in Harry’s life - so that the Cup can stay out of reach without Harry actually having to lose a game in the normal fashion. This prolongs the rivalry with Slytherin, and particularly Draco, who in a sense buys his way onto the team as Seeker by offering them mechanical steroids (the Nimbus 2001s). This raises the bar for Harry, who has had the advantage of a superior broom due to McGonagall’s investment towards a Gryffindor victory. After the dementor attack results in the Whomping Willow reducing the Nimbus 2000 to matchwood, we up the ante with the mysterious Firebolt, previously seen only in prototype form in Diagon Alley. This in turn leads to a calculated victory in a brutal game against the cheating Slytherins, capturing the Quidditch Cup for Gryffindor in Oliver Wood’s final year and at the expense specifically of Draco, who Harry beats to the Golden Snitch. So Harry has in only three years already managed almost all of the potential achievements in the sport (he gets the captainship later), and thus at this apex it is set up for gradual decline in both accomplishment and import over the reminder of the series. From book 4 on, it will no longer have the prominence it has held thus far.

Meanwhile, the treatment of Professor Lupin demonstrates the stigma of lycanthropy. A blood-borne ailment, transmitted through accidental means or risky behavior, and only recently treatable (but not curable) by the means of a complex potion…the werewolf in this world suffers like early victims of AIDS. The issues raised of a “were-positive” individual in a public environment, specifically school, are a near mirror of those explored in the first Mock Trial I participated in. I played the plaintiff, a boy who contracted HIV through a blood transfusion and wanted permission to attend regular school and participate in activities like sports. But ignorance, misinformation, and general hysteria turned parents of other students against the school and they demanded that their children be protected from any theoretical exposure (e.g. I was supposed to have suffered a nosebleed during gym class). Poor Remus, however, seemed almost destined to be cursed as a werewolf, given his unusual name - Remus referring to one of the two legendary founders of Rome, who were raised by wolves; and Lupin, being both derived from ‘lupine’ aka ‘wolflike’ and from a French variety of werewolf characterized by shyness, in contrast with the aggressive ‘loop garou’ exemplified in the series by his attacker Fenrir Grayback (the latter also being the naming inspiration for the band Loop Guru). Nevertheless, he suffers from the popular view of werewolves as unrepentent, dangerous, and certainly unfit for any kind of profession. Only through the extraordinary intervention of Dumbledore is he first able to be educated at Hogwarts, with the refuge provided by the Shrieking Shack and Whomping Willow; and then teach for a year until Snape’s enmity boils over after Sirius’ escape, resulting in his being ‘outed.’ As with his patronage of Hagrid, who also gains employment at Hogwarts despite being expelled and (as we find out later) his mixed-giant parentage, Dumbledore shows great accommodation for those at the edges of accepted wizard culture. Even Trelawney benefits from his largesse of spirit, retaining a post as Divination teacher despite having had perhaps only two accurate predictions.

Not much more need be said about the actual divination lessons given to Harry. Hermione and Professor McGonagall both show disregard for their usefulness, while Dumbledore explains after their return from using the Time Turner that “the consequences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed.” This is just as well, since a world prone to predictability is almost certainly one with a dearth of free will. For an exhaustive examination of the widespread effects of prophetic vision on society, consult the original six volumes of Dune. It is, nevertheless, somewhat amusing that Hermione is so dismissive of divination while a great admirer of arithmancy…which is simply another form of divination based on numerology (such as the Hebrew Gematria) instead of symbology (seeing patterns in crystals, palms, tea leaves, entrails). Arithmancy has the advantage of being a more rigid, reproducible system which gives the practitioner a reassuring sense of correctness, but that just means it can produce precise but wrong predictions rather than vague but wrong ones.

One other thought related to futurism is the alternate future as offered by Sirius during the brief period between his being revealed as an innocent man and his return to fugitive with the escape of Wormtail. Harry has the chance to imagine a different life, a home away from the Dursleys with Sirius as both a caring guardian and someone who knew his parents. Whether that idyllic scene would have endured, given the immaturity shown by Sirius in later books, is unknown. But in a multiverse of parallel worlds, bifurcating with each possibility event, perhaps we can conceive of a splinter existence where that came to pass. Sadly the fates of the series seem set on progressively depriving Harry of adult guidance, stripping away his parents first and now depriving him a happier life imagined. More will follow.

Time travel, and its nemesis in paradox, show up with only two chapters left. We of course are given clues throughout that something is afoot given Hermione’s impossible schedule and occasional lapses. Yet when the Time-Turner is produced, the only guideline for its use is provided by Dumbledore’s insisting they “mustn’t be seen.” No prohibition on interference is given, and clearly they are meant to act to affect events during their ‘three hour tour’ in the past. Hermione does note the potential for the Grandfather Paradox, stating that time-traveling wizards have managed to kill their past or future selves, but no suggestion is given as to what effect this has on time/reality/etc. Their subsequent actions during their own trip conform to the Novikov self-consistency principle, using time loop logic to solve the varying predicaments of Buckbeak’s survival and thus Sirius’ escape from a locked tower window. Just like Ted’s revelation regarding his father’s keys in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Harry realizes that it was himself casting a corporeal Patronus to drive away a throng of dementors from extracting his younger-self’s soul, so therefore he has the confidence to produce it. This narrowly avoids the ontological paradox, since it is only the knowledge that he can produce the Patronus that is carried within the time loop, not the ability itself which was already demonstrated during the fake dementor attack by Draco et al. All of this demonstrates the finesse required to employ any time travel device, and why it represents such a Pandora’s box for writers. This must act as the latent deterrent for why the Time-Turner is not employed more regularly in the series; thus far it has made only one other appearance, in the Department of Mysteries, and then only as window dressing.

Finally, we have Wormtail’s blood debt.

“Pettigrew owes his life to you. You have sent Voldemort a deputy who is in your debt…When one wizard saves another wizard’s life, it creates a certain bond between them…This is magic at its deepest, its most impenetrable, Harry. But trust me…the time may come when you will be very glad you saved Pettigrew’s life.”

This is primarily a wait-and-see, although it amuses me that the first parallel I recall is a 70s Disney movie called The World’s Greatest Athlete. I only read the novelization, like several others of its ilk (Gus, C.H.O.M.P.S., Condorman, and Unidentified Flying Oddball), but still remember the title character being discovered in a jungle by a sports coach. After observing his amazing physical acuity, the coach conspires to lure the wonder boy back to civilization to become a sports star. This is accomplished after learning from the local witch doctor about the ‘life debt’ that is incurred whenever you save someone’s life - except in this case, rather than the saved being beholden to the savior, the savior would become responsible for the saved person’s life forever after and so must follow them. The agent feigns a life-threatening illness, and asks jungle boy to fetch some aspirin. Voilá, he is cured, and off they go to play basketball. That doesn’t really give us any insight into Wormtail’s future, though.

One last great line from Dumbeldore: “You think the dead we loved ever truly leave us? You think that we don’t recall them more clearly than ever in times of great trouble?” This is in response to Harry despairing at not having seen his father (when he conjured the Patronus at himself), although given events to come, we can certainly wonder if it has a more wide-spanning significance.

Vital Stats
Pages: 435 (Scholastic Hardback)
Chapters: 22
Starts: 4 Privet Drive
Defense Against the Dark Arts Teacher: Lycanthropy/Resigned
Dumbledore Explains Everything In: Professor Lupin’s Office
House Cup: Gryffindor
Exams: Yes
Ends: Platform 9-3/4

Final Score: Harry - 3, Voldemort - 0