Chapter Two:
The Vanishing Glass
Synopsis by William Silvester
Notes and links by Steve Vander Ark and Michele L. Worley
US hardcover edition: pages 18 - 30
UK paperback edition: pages 25 - 38
Timeframe:
Saturday 23 June,
1991
[Y11]
In which is related the sad circumstances under which
Harry has lived for the past
ten years and of a trip to the
zoo that goes awry.
Interesting facts and notes about the text of this chapter:
The zoo they visit is not in
London (since it is stated
in PS5 that
Harry had never been to
London before). The zoo
they most likely went to is Chessington World Of Adventure theme park in
Surrey which
is home to a family of gorillas and also has a reptile house. Of course, Chessington is also a theme park and it seems odd that this fact wasn't mentioned and that if Dudley were bored after a morning of looking at the animals his mother and father didn't take him on the rides instead. There are other zoos in the Surrey area, but none of these have both a reptile house and gorillas. So Chessington is must be.
Harry does "wandless"
magic here, the same sort of magic that he does to
Aunt Marge in
PA2. This is magic that comes from strong
emotion and is unfocused and random in nature.
Ten years ago, there had been lots of pictures of what looked like a large
pink beach ball wearing different-coloured bobble hats -
He rolled onto his back and tried to remember the dream he had been having.
It had been a good one. There had been a flying motorcycle in it. He had
a funny feeling he'd had the same dream before.
Harry was used to spiders, because
the cupboard under the stairs was full of them...
Uncle Vernon chuckled.
"Little tyke wants his money's worth, just like his father. 'Atta boy,
Dudley!" He ruffled
Dudley's hair.
...Harry and
Uncle Vernon watched
Dudley unwrap the racing bike, a
video camera...
Every year, Harry was left behind
with Mrs. Figg, a mad old lady who
lived two streets away. Harry
hated it there.
The whole house smelled of cabbage
Tibbles,
Snowy,
Mr. Paws, and
Tufty
"We could phone Marge,"
Uncle Vernon suggested.
"Don't be silly,
Vernon, she hates the
boy."
"And come back and find the house in ruins?" she snarled.
Piers was a
scrawny boy with a face like a rat. He was usually the one who
held people's arms behind their backs while
Dudley hit them.
Next morning, however, he had gotten up to find his hair exactly as it
had been before Aunt Petunia had sheared it off.
...the smaller it seemed to become, until finally it might have
fitted a hand puppet, but certainly wouldn't fit
Harry.
On the other hand, he'd gotten into terrible trouble for being found on the
roof of the school kitchens. Dudley's
gang had been chasing him as usual when, as much to
Harry's surprise as anyone else's,
there he was sitting on the chimney.
The snake suddenly opened its beady eyes.
...the glass front of the boa constrictor's tank had vanished.
When he had been younger,
Harry had dreamed and dreamed of
some unknown relation coming to take him away, but it had never happened;
the Dursleys were his only family.
A tiny man in a violet top hat had bowed to him once while out shopping...
A wild-looking old woman dressed all in green had waved
merrily at him once on a bus.
A bald man in a very long purple coat had actually shaken his
hand in the street the other day and then walked away without
a word.
Characters introduced in this chapter:
Characters returning in this chapter:
Characters mentioned in this chapter:
Settings and locations introduced or returning in this chapter:
Settings and locations mentioned in this chapter:
Exceptional character moments:
We learn that the one form of exercise
Dudley likes is
to punch people, something that will help him defeat
his weight problem later on.
The Dursleys have punished
Harry by locking him in his
cupboard in the dark more than once: for the hair-thickening
incident, the school roof incident, and the boa constrictor,
to name three. The way they treat him is at best neglect:
they almost never call him by his name, talk about him
as though he weren't a person with feelings, and on and on.
About the one virtue they possess in that area - and a
very minor, negative sort of virtue it is - is that they
didn't try to pretend they loved him while treating him
that way; he's not been messed up by being told he's
loved when he knows he's not.
Harry has no 'proper family', as
he himself puts it later, and has no friends because nobody cares enough
about him to brave Dudley's gang.
He's had to deal with his own problems all his life, because he had nobody
else he could trust.
Spells:
Links and Resources:
Memorable lines:
Aunt Petunia often said
that Dudley looked like a
baby angel--Harry often said that
Dudley looked like a pig in a wig.
Dudley thought for a moment.
It looked like hard work.
Dudley began to cry loudly. In
fact, he wasn't really crying--it had been years since he'd really cried--but
he knew that if he screwed up his face and wailed, his mother would give him
anything he wanted.
Strictly British:
Timelines/Calendar:
The entire action of this chapter takes place on
Dudley's eleventh birthday, which is Saturday, 23 June, 1991. How do we know it's the 23rd of June? We'll pin down this date in the notes for the next chapter.
| Sun |
Mon |
Tues |
Wed |
Thur |
Fri |
Sat |
June 17 |
June 18 |
June 19 |
June 20 |
June 21 |
June 22 |
June 23
Dudley's 11th birthday
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|
W
H A T ' S N E W
| E S S A Y S
| F O R U M
| S T O R E
| F A Q
| H E L P
| T E X T
| S E A R C H
JKR