SS Chapter 2

The Vanishing Glass

Summary:

Fast forward just shy of 10 years, and we find Harry awoken by Aunt Petunia demanding that he tend to breakfast for Dudley’s birthday. He gets out of his spider-stroon cupboard under the stairs, which serves as his living quarters, and begins what almost seems like a daily task; cooking eggs and bacon for everyone. The table is covered in birthday gifts for Dudley, but Dudley can’t bear to do with fewer presents than he received his previous birthday. Of course his mother promises to buy him more and his father laughs at his persistants. Problems arise when Mrs. Figg, the lady who takes care of Harry when the Dursleys go out, has broken her leg and is not able to watch him. 

The Dursleys have no choice but to take him along with them and Dudley’s friend, Piers, to the zoo. Before they depart, Harry is told that if there is anything out of the ordinary on this outing, that he’d be punished severely. The family arrives at the zoo and Harry has the best day of his life, until they go to the reptile house. Harry sympathizes over a boa constrictor as Dudley and Uncle Vernon pound on the glass of the snake’s enclosure. The snake begins to acknowledge Harry’s presence and, to Harry’s astonishment, it seems as though the snake was able to communicate with and understand him.

When Piers notices, he and Dudley push Harry out of the way, and without warning, the glass vanishes and the great snake begins to slither out from his enclosure, thanks  Harry and slithers out of the reptile house! Unable to explain what had happened Harry was stuck in his cupboard for a long time. In his cupboard, he sometimes tried to think of the “accident” that killed his parents, and often dreamed and hoped that there was someone out there that would come to take him away from the Dursleys.

Initial Thoughts:

The first thing that comes to mind is that there is a day and night difference between the way Harry and Dudley grew up. Dudley is spoiled beyond belief, and is celebrated for his lust for material things. It wasn’t just toys and knick knacks, food was also never denied Dudley. When his “knickerbocker glory” didn’t seem to have enough ice cream, his father purchased a new one, even though he had an ice cream upon entering the zoo. Then we look at Harry’s treatment. He is talked to/about with such hostility that it is a wonder that he has not become a bully or wild child. He is forced to do all the chores, is punished for doing things that are out of his control, and is forced to wear hand-me-down clothes from Dudley that are at least 3 sizes too big. 

Secondly, we start to see that Harry, despite all of the Dursleys’ efforts, begins to notice that strange things have happened to him without any explanation, including strange people coming up to him in public that he’s never seen before. While he sees these instances as freak accidents, the Dursleys see it as Harry making abnormal things happen in their ordinary lives. 

Lastly, we find quite a bit of recurring elements in this chapter. We have instances of accidental magic, we have snakes, we have a secret sinister power, and much more!

The Cupboard Under The Stairs:

For nearly 10 years, Harry lived in conditions that can only be assumed as being terribly unfair and full of neglect. Our first experience with Harry’s situation is with Aunt Petunia waking him up in his cobwebbed, dusty, and dark cupboard under the stairs. All of his possessions are contained in the small space, and he sleeps there every night. This space also served as a sort of holding cell for Harry to serve his punishments on the occasions that he accidentally produces magic.

At the end of chapter 2, Harry is put into the cupboard for the incident with the snake at the zoo. In the next chapter we will find Harry moved to a bedroom due to some mysterious letters addressed to him, with the distinction that he lives in the “Cupboard Under the Stairs.” After this book, however, we do not revisit the cupboard under the stairs until Deathly Hallows, when Harry tours the empty Number 4 Privet Drive prior to his final departure from the place. 

Accidental Magic:

A witch or wizard will start showing signs of magic from a young age, and, usually by 7 or 8 years old, they would have produced some uncontrolled magic. Harry recollects the experiences in which “strange” occurrences happened that had no real explanation and these situations resulted in long periods of time in his cupboard. We are told just before the family heads to the zoo about Harry magically growing his hair back after his haircuts, the shrinking of the ugly sweater that Petunia tried to force on him, and the “big jump” onto the roof of the school. Many of these instances were due to Harry losing control of his emotions or when he was afraid, which gets him into a predicament later in the series as well.

In Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry is listening to his Aunt Marge making horrible (and untrue) accusations about his parents. As his anger begins to consume him, he unexpectedly causes her to inflate and begin to fly away. It wasn’t an intentional use of magic, and he is scolded by the Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge, for using underage magic. This is in violation of the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Under Age Sorcery, which is monitored by the Improper Use of Magic office at the Ministry of Magic. We see Harry accidentally use magic in one other book, but it was nothing compared to the intentional magic he used prior to. In Order of the Phoenix, after Harry saved Dudley and himself from the Dementors down the alleyway with a Patronus, Harry received the letter of his expulsion from Hogwarts. While he was trying to think things through, Uncle Vernon continued to pester Harry and, in a burst of anger, he sent sparks out from the tip of his wand. Luckily this did not count against him, but from then on, he resigned to keep his temper in check to avoid any more accidents.

Harry is not the only person that this happens to. Witches and wizards all over the world have problems with controlling their magic during their youth. For this reason, the British Ministry of Magic devised a department called the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad to help with fixing issues caused by unintentional and under aged magic. This ranged from containment of enchanted objects, to memory modification in the case of muggles, which is carried out by the Oblivators. Members of the AMRS came to the aid of Aunt Marge in Prisoner of Azkaban, reversing the inflating charm and modifying her memory so that she did not remember the incident. 

Mrs. Figg:

Oh man, Mrs. Figg! Arabella Figg is a woman that lives on Wisteria Walk in Little Whinging. She was the go to babysitter for Harry when the Dursleys planned a fun outing or anytime they would leave the house and didn’t want to leave Harry alone. Harry hated spending time at her house; it smelled strongly of cabbage and Mrs. Figg had a habit of showing him pictures of all of her cats. Harry was sent there anytime the Dursleys went on holiday, and he always had a miserable time. Little did he know that there was more to Mrs. Figg than meets the eye.

Mrs. Figg was not there by chance. Arabella Doreen Figg was a squib, someone who is born to magical parents but who does not have any magical ability themselves. She was a member of the Order of the Phoenix and she was placed in Little Whinging in 1981 on Dumbledore’s orders, in order to have a contact watching Harry at all times. She purposefully made Harry’s time with her unenjoyable because she knew that if they knew Harry liked spending time at her house, that she would no longer be able to watch him. 

Mrs. Figg is mentioned a handful of times throughout the series, but her most noteworthy appearance is in Order of the Phoenix. Immediately after Harry fights off the two Dementors in the alley between Magnolia Crescent and Wisteria Walk, Mrs. Figg appears and tells Harry not to put his wand away and that she cannot help fight any more Dementors off if they come back. She reveals to him who she is and that she has been watching him for Dumbledore. She makes sure that Harry makes it back to Number 4 Privet Drive safely, and then proceeds to keep an eye on him from her home until the Advance Guard comes to retrieve him. Later on in Order of the Phoenix, she comes to Harry’s trial as a witness to the event of the attack of the Dementors in order to clear the charges against Harry by the Wizengamot. 

Not much else is known about her except that she was a cross breeder of cats and kneazles. She was potentially a part of the Order of the Phoenix during the First Wizarding War, but played her part the best she could in the Second Wizarding War. She was not a part of the Battle of Hogwarts, but she was useful to the Order by way of tailing Harry and keeping tabs on his whereabouts during his time in Little Whinging. It is believed that she continues to crossbreed her animals after Lord Voldemort fell again.

The Snake and the Glass:

At last, we get to the iconic scene of the snake and the vanishing glass! The snake that Harry finds in the enclosure is a boa constrictor; this was changed in the film to a burmese python, which is larger in size. Snakes continuously grow all their lives, and this particular boa would have been able to reach length of about 12-18 ft long, meaning that this snake must have been around 10-15 years old with another 5-10 years of life left to live. But I digress.

While talking to the snake, he asks where it is from and the snake points at the placard next to him, which is interesting. This poses the question, can animals read in the magical world? He references the board again when Harry asks if it is nice in Brazil to show that he was bred in captivity. We see the same behavior with owls later in the series. Can they read the names on the letters that they deliver? Even in Order of the Phoenix, Harry tells Hedwig that although the letter he attached to her says “Snuffles,” he really means Sirius. I think we will revisit this in a theory post!

The snake is looking at Harry, and all the while, Harry sees himself mirrored in the snake’s predicament. He too was stuck inside a cupboard, noisily woken awake by Aunt Petunia’s pounding on his door. He too did not know a life outside of “captivity.” With all of that in mind, the moment that Piers and Dudley pushed Harry away from the glass, Harry’s subconscious willed him to free the snake, as he longed to be free of the Dursleys. The snake also leaves, but not without thanking Harry, which also begs another question. How did the snake know that Harry had removed the glass? Do all animals understand or recognize magical beings?  For that, more research is needed and, again, this topic will be revisited!

Parseltongue:

Biggest topic of this chapter: PARSELTONGUE! At this point in the story Harry is unaware of the gift that he has in the ability of communicating with snakes. We even see his surprise when the snake seems to understand him at the zoo. But as the series moves on, we see just how important Parseltongue becomes.

Parseltongue is the language of serpents, both magical and non-magical, that is infamously connected with dark wizards. Almost all notable parselmouths are descended from Salazar Slytherin, founder of Slytherin House, with two exceptions: Harry Potter and Herpo the Foul. Herpo the Foul was an Ancient Greek wizard who was infamous for his work in the Dark Arts. As the earliest known parselmouth, it is unsupported, but very possible, that he was the first wizard to learn this skill. He also invented many awful curses and experimented in the darkest magic. Herpo the Foul’s work will come to light later in the books and we will address them as they appear throughout the series!

Returning to the most prominent parselmouth, Salazar Slytherin used a serpent as his house symbol in honor of his close ties with the creatures themselves. After Hogwarts was created and Slytherin’s views on only teaching Pureblood wizards, he devised a plan to eradicate the muggleborn witches and wizards in the school. This involved the Basilisk (a giant snake with murder eyes) and the Chamber of Secrets, but more on that in the next book. Slytherins descendants all seemed to possess his natural ability to speak to snakes, and the power was passed down through his bloodline all the way down to the Guant family. Merope Guant. who bewitched the young muggle  Tom Riddle Senior, became pregnant and passed the trait to her son, Tom Marvolo Riddle. We of course know that he sheds his muggle father’s name and renames himself, Lord Volemort. 

Voldemort was an accomplished parselmouth, being able to control the great Basilisk in his 5th year at the age of 16 and being able to have an unusually close connection with his snake, Nagini. This latter is more because of the part of his soul contained in the great snake, but it is still incredible. On the night that Voldemort went to kill Harry, a piece of his soul and some of his own powers were transferred to Harry, which gave him the ability to speak to snakes. This power was thought to have died with the piece of Voldemort’s soul in Deathly Hallows, but nearly 20 years later, it appears that he still had the ability to speak parseltongue in his adventures in Cursed Child.

Wrap It Up:

Again, I could go on forever on things that can be referenced throughout the story in this chapter, but alas, it will always lead me down rabbit hole after rabbit hole. The Vanishing Glass is a great chapter that builds more of how Harry’s 10 years must have been like with the Durselys and, as sad as it is, we get to see Harry have his first  happy day in a long time that is cut short with a punishment waiting for him. We see the magical world coming closer and closer, and soon the Dursleys will be having a harder time with putting off Harry’s questions!

If you noticed anything else that wasn’t addressed, leave a comment and we can talk about it further! Subscribe below for email updates when we have new posts!