PS3: The Letters From No One

"*Daddy's gone mad, hasn't he?*"
— Dudley Dursley

Dudley gets his new uniform and a letter arrives for Harry which Uncle Vernon destroys, prompting a veritable deluge of letters over the next few days. Uncle Vernon then attempts to outrun the delivery of the letters and eventually takes his family to an abandoned hut on an island in the ocean.

## Calendar and Dates

 At the stroke of midnight Harry knocks on the door.

## Interesting Facts and Notes

The severe stress Vernon suffers at the onslaught of the Hogwarts letters via owl post probably has a lot to do with his extremely hostile reaction to the various owls who arrived at number four on the night of the Dementor attack four years later.

**By the time he was let out of his cupboard again, the summer holidays had started...**

Dudley's birthday, as we are about to discover, is 23 June, so the school summer term was almost over anyway. We don't know the exact date when Harry was released, however, since the next date we're given is for "One day in July..." in paragraph six.

**One day in July...**

This day is the 23rd. We know this because we learn in a few more sentences that the next day - the 24th - is when the first letter arrives from Hogwarts for Harry. Since July 31 is a Tuesday, as we'll learn at the end of this chapter, we can count back and determine that "One day in July" is actually Monday, 23 July, 1991. Harry stays with Mrs. Figg.

**Harry saw a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a lion, an eagle, a badger and a snake surrounding a large letter H.**

This is the Hogwarts crest, of course. The animals represent the four houses: the lion for Gryffindor, the badger for Hufflepuff, the eagle for Ravenclaw and the snake for Slytherin.

**"Marge's ill," he informed Aunt Petunia. "Ate a funny whelk-"**

A whelk is a type of marine mollusc with a spiral shell, usually eaten with vinegar. The flesh is usually scooped out with a pin, so it's not the sort of thing a sophisticated lady would eat. This indicates that Marge is rather common in her tastes.

**His face went from red to green faster than a set of traffic lights. And it didn't stop there. Within seconds it was the greyish white of old porridge.**

This is the first example of one of the TERF Queen's little writing quirks: people's faces changing colour to indicate emotion.

**"Er - yes, Harry - about this cupboard. Your aunt and I have been thinking... you're really getting a bit big for it... we think it might be nice if you moved into Dudley's second bedroom."**

This is the first time any of the Dursleys have been shown addressing Harry by name. The charitable view here would be that the Dursleys, realising that somebody out there is keeping an eye on Harry, have decided to treat Harry a little better in their own interests. (This would seem to be supported by Harry's observation that Vernon seems to be trying to be nice to him at breakfast the next morning). However, it seems likely that they were trying (foolishly) to prevent delivery of further Hogwarts letters by invalidating the address.

**Next morning at breakfast, everyone was rather quiet.**

It's the next day, so now it's Wednesday, 25 July, 1991. Note once again that while this day and date is inescapably canon, it does not match the actual day of the week on which July 15 fell in 1991. The calendars in Harry's reality just don't match those in ours.

**"Oh, these people's minds work in strange ways, Petunia, they're not like you and me...**

This statement by Vernon Dursley is true on many levels. For example, a wizard sees nothing unusual about a tent that is small on the outside but holds the equivalent of an entire cottage inside.

**On Friday, no less than twelve letters arrived for Harry... on Saturday, things began to get out of hand... on Sunday morning...**

The days go by and the number of letters gets larger and larger. this is Friday 27th, Saturday 28th and Sunday 29th of July. It's interesting to speculate who was actually doing all these odd spells... inserting letters into empty eggs, forcing them through boarded up windows and the like. Are the letters themselves bewitched to try to get past barriers? Was this the work of McGonagall, having a bit of fun thwarting Vernon Dursley's feeble attempts to deny that magic exists? Was Dumbledore orchestrating this whole circus?

**... his father had hit him round the head for holding them up...**

One of the few examples of actual physical abuse from the Dursleys. Dudley is having a very difficult week. So is Vernon, for that matter.

**... while he tried to pack his television, VCR and computer in his sports bag...**

When this phrase was written in the mid-1990s, all of these items would have been ludicrously large to pack into a car for a trip. However, technology is changing and future readers will be visualising portable DVD players, smart phones and handheld computers and wondering why Uncle Vernon was having such a problem with this.

**Of course, his birthdays were never exactly fun - last year, the Dursleys had given him a coat hanger and a pair of Uncle Vernon's old socks.**

But the socks come in handy starting in Harry's third year, when he uses them to muffle his Sneakoscope, and in his fourth year when he uses them as an emergency Christmas present for Dobby (who loves *any* socks).

## Exceptional Character Moments

The first Hogwarts letter is used to emphasise how very alone Harry is - that he has no friends and no other relatives; he never even gets junk mail.

Under very severe stress, Vernon pulls out tufts of his own moustache.

From the state of the books in what was once his "second bedroom," it seems that Dudley doesn't like to read.

## Memorable Lines

> "*They also carried knobbly sticks, used for hitting each other while the teachers weren't looking. This was supposed to be good training for later life.*"
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> "*... he didn't belong to the library, so he'd never even got rude notes asking for books back.*"
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> "*oh, these people's minds work in strange ways, Petunia, they're not like you and me...*"
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> "*By nightfall Dudley was howling. He'd never had such a bad day in his life. He was hungry, he'd missed five television programs he'd wanted to see, and he'd never gone so long without blowing up an alien on his computer.*"
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