Anyway, Ron is like, “What do they think they’re doing, keeping a thing like that locked up in a school?” and it does seem like a significant liability just to protect a rock that Dumbledore could easily keep in his underpants.
Oliver Wood teaches Harry the rules of Quidditch in his turtleneck. Is that what cool clothes and hair were like in 2001? Can I have all my crushes back?
They go to Charms class and we meet Professor Flitwick, the only professor who matters, who should be making a billion galleons a year but instead is only ever referred to as “tiny Professor Flitwick.” Charms is basically ALL SPELLS. Name one useful thing they learn in Transfiguration! Oh, finally, a solution to my teacup surplus / mouse shortage!
Hermione is (rightfully) condescending about “wingardium leviosa,” so Harry and Ron hurt her feelings and she goes to cry in the bathroom. Professor Quirrell comes running into the lunchroom screaming that there’s a troll in the dungeon, so Dumbledore sends all the kids to their dormitories to hide. Harry and Ron remember that Hermione doesn’t know about the troll because she’s boo-hooing in the shitter! They race to get her and discover that somehow in the maddening, thousand-room maze that is Hogwarts Castle, the troll has wandered into the random girls’ bathroom where Hermione is crying. Sure, okay!
Why does a troll wear a loincloth? It can’t talk, but it feels shame about its genitals?
Harry and Ron defeat the troll by sticking Harry’s wand up its nose and into its brain, and then Ron wingardium leviosas the troll’s club so it knocks him out—yet another instance of Hermione saving everyone’s ass by being the only competent person in the building. Not only that, then she does them a huge solid. In the toilet!!!!!!! Just kidding, she does them a huge solid by taking the blame for hunting down the troll while being children. And McGonagall awards them points for it, yet another example of the completely destabilizing systemic inconsistency allowed to flourish at Hogwarts! (This is why Harry never goes to an authority figure about any of his many outrageous and deadly problems. What does authority even mean in such a context?)
It’s time for Harry’s first Quidditch match of the season. Snape approaches him. “Good luck today, Potter. Then again, now that you’ve proven yourself against a troll, a little Quidditch match should be no problem, even if it is against Slytherin.” Dude, you’re an ADULT. GO TO THERAPY.
Harry and the Gryffindors square off against Marcus Flint and his magnum dentures. If Quidditch were real, every single one of these Quidditch players would be dead. In the middle of the match, Harry’s broom—a.k.a. a stick that a child is riding in the sky—goes rogue and tries to throw him off. Hermione spies Snape (seemingly) muttering a curse in the stands, so she sets him on fire, the only recourse available to a student at a school where chaos is king! Then Harry catches the golden snitch in his mouth and wins.
Yeah, there are technically Black characters in Harry Potter, but tell me one thing about Dean Thomas.
The kids visit Hagrid and trick him into telling them the deal with Fluffy. “Bought him off an Irish fellow down the pub.” Wait, you believe in Ireland? Why would wizards care about Muggle borders? Hagrid, bumbling, says that Fluffy is there to guard something “between Dumbledore and Nicolas Flamel.” This is great news for Harry, Ron, and Hermione, who are always looking for some fucking beeswax that’s none of theirs!
Now it’s Christmas at Hogwarts! What the fuck is Christmas! If you’re a wizard! Wizards! Are! Christian! I! Guess!
Harry gets presents for the first time in his life, and now I want presents.
An anonymous gifter sends Harry his dad’s old invisibility cloak, which the kids quickly realize they can use to sneak into the restricted section of the library under cover of night to research Nicolas Flamel. OR, you could…ask Madam Pince, the literal full-time librarian? Did you ever think that maybe she’s a bitch because no one has ever engaged her help on a research project (i.e., respected her enough to let her do her job)?? Instead of doing that, Harry gets a lantern and the cloak and creeps over there himself.
Again, I know that magic is “better” than technology, but maybe the Wizengamot could revisit the no-computers thing? There’s no internet, so these kids can’t google Nicolas Flamel, and there’s apparently not even a library catalog? You just have to pull books off the shelves at random? And you don’t even have a fucking flashlight? You have to bring fire into the library?
Harry finds no information (OF COURSE) and nearly burns down the building. On the way back to bed, under the invisibility cloak, he encounters Snape threatening Professor Quirrell. “You don’t want me as your enemy, Quirrell.” Okay, so, what does Snape know here? Does he suspect that Quirrell is working with Voldemort at this point? HOW? And if so, don’t just wedgie him in the hallway, man—Floo powder 911!!! (I apologize for the bone-chilling granularity of this parenthetical, but the only explanation that makes any sense is that Snape just thinks Quirrell is trying to steal the Sorcerer’s Stone for non-Voldemort-related reasons, but then what about the part when Quirrell was trying to murder Harry during the Quidditch match? Who did Snape think was doing that? Also, why was there no formal investigation into that ATTEMPTED CHILD MURDER?? And why didn’t Snape just tell Dumbledore that Quirrell was
