Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Chapter One:
Dudley Demented

Synopsis by Maureen Knight
Notes and links by Michele L. Worley and Steve Vander Ark

U.S. hardcover edition: pages 1 - 19
U.K. hardcover edition: pages 7 - 23
U.K. paperback edition: pages 7 - 27
Timeframe: Monday, 2 August, 1995 [Y15]

In which Harry is angry and picks on Dudley, Dudley is attacked by Dementors, and their neighbour Mrs. Figg returns.

Interesting facts and notes about the text of this chapter:

The chapter title has been very cleverly selected to be apt without giving away too much on a first reading. The word "demented" means "insane", but it also seems like a good word to use to describe someone who has suffered a Dementor attack. Notice that in the next chapter, when Dudley describes the effects of the Dementors on him (they made him hear voices, for instance), his parents fear for his sanity.

The action of each of the first three books began on or before (in PS' case, long before) Harry's birthday on 31 July. In this book as in GF, the story begins in August.

the use of hosepipes had been banned due to drought

This story starts on August 2, 1995. Coincidentally, the summer of 1995 did in fact bring a severe drought to much of Britain, and water control measures were in effect.

The only person left outdoors was a teenage boy who was lying flat on his back in a flowerbed outside number four.

...the pinched, slightly unhealthy look of someone who has grown a lot in a short space of time.

When Harry first entered Hogwarts at the age of 11, he was described as being unusually short for his age. The growth spurt mentioned here helps explain how, in OP28, Harry can observe that he is within an inch of his father's height at the same age, when James Potter was a tall man.

'Glad to see the boy's stopped trying to butt in.

Notce that Vernon and Petunia do not mention Harry by name. He is simply "the boy."

"Where is he, anyway?"
"I don't know," said Aunt Petunia, unconcernedly. "Not in the house."

"Watching the news..."

Harry has had the sense to take a leaf out of Dumbledore's book, and like the headmaster is following the Muggle news to look for hints of what Voldemort is up to.

like to know what he's really up to

No, Vernon, you reaaly don't want to know. In a couple of hours, you'll be learning more than you ever wanted to about the return of Lord Voldemort, and your reaction will be less than controlled:

'...You're not staying here if some loony's after you, you're not endangering my wife and son, you're not bringing trouble down on us. If you're going the same way as your useless parents, I've had it! OUT!' (OP2)

"Dudley hasn't got a clue what's going on; doubt he knows who the Prime Minister is!"

Dudley, as Vernon so aptly puts it, "hasn't got a clue" about the most basic information of the world around him. And to his father, this is apparently a good thing.

If anything had happened, it would surely have been the first item on the news; death and destruction were more important than stranded holidaymakers.

Harry is quite right in this assumption. The following summer, as the war heats up into open violence, the Muggle news is filled with stories of msterious murders, destruction of a bridge killing a number of Muggles, and a freak hurricane in the West Country. When Voldemort attacks, everyone knows that something is up, even the Muggles.

...he watched Mrs. Figg, a batty cat-loving old lady from nearby Wisteria Walk, amble slowly past. She was frowning and muttering to herself.

Things are not as they seem. Mrs. Figg knows that Mundungus is present under an Invisibility Cloak, and is telling him (as she reminds him loudly in the next chapter) not to leave his post to pursue one of his "business opportunities".

Mrs Figg had recently taken to asking him round for tea whenever she met him in the street.

She's desperate to find a way to give him contact with the world to which he belongs. He just doesn't realize who she really is. Poor Arabella...what a difficult thing it must have been for all those years, pretending to be uncaring and strange when she knew who he was and what a rough life he was living. Okay, so she wasn't really pretending to be strange. We'll learn soon enough that she is pretty strange, in a lovable sort of way. Remember when you first read this passage? The speculation that Mrs Figg was actually part of Dumbledore's "team" was running rampant, but we had nothing to go on, and reading this chapter was a delightful experience, full of "A-ha" moments as we learned that what we'd all suspected was true. Rowling still managed to surprise us, though: Arabella Figg is not in fact a witch but a Squib.

They had swallowed all his dim-witted lies about having tea with a different member of his gang every night of the summer holidays.

...then a helicopter that had almost crashed in a field in Surrey...

A loud, echoing crack broke the sleepy silence like a gunshot

...a cat streaked out from under a parked car and flew out of sight...

Mrs. Figg identifies the "cat" later as Mr. Tibbles, whom Harry had to look at in pictures many times as a child when Petunia left him with her. Mrs. Figg's cats are actually part-kneazles; she makes a good living breeding them (JKR).

then, as the pain in the top of Harry's head gave a particularly nasty throb, Uncle Vernon yelped and released Harry as though he had received an electric shock. Some invisible force seemed to have surged through his nephew, making him impossible to hold.

This is a fascinating passage. In essense, Harry repels his Uncle's grip with some sort of wandless, non-verbal, even unintentional magic. What's interesting is that the spell appears to be connected to the pain in Harry's head. We know that Harry is at this point connected to Voldemort more closely that he realizes. Is this magical force perhaps an involuntary reaction from the Dark Lord himself? This is all wild speculation, of course. Harry himself certainly has the magical power to perform this kind of magic.

Another interesting thing to consider the connection between this event and the evidence elsewhere in the books that Wizards are not as easily injured as Muggles would be. The most compelling evidence of this is that as a boy, Neville was accidentally dropped from a second floor window and "bounced all the way down the garden." Are we perhaps seeing this same automatic magical defense in action for Harry here under the Dursley's living room window?

Harry was sure that Dobby did not know how to become invisible.

Really? Just because Harry has never actually seen him do it? I wouldn't put anything past Dobby, whose magic is far more powerful than anyone guesses. What's a little Invisibility Spell compared to closing the magical barrier to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters or tampering with a Bludger, which can't be all that easy or people would do it all the time.

Tomorrow morning he would be woken by the alarm at five o'clock so he could pay the owl that delivered the Daily Prophet - but was there any point in continuing to take it? Harry merely glanced at the front page before throwing it aside these days...

In fact, he was so angry with [Ron and Hermione] that he had thrown away, unopened, the two boxes of Honeydukes chocolates that they'd sent him for his birthday. He'd regretted it later, after the wilted salad Aunt Petunia had provided for dinner that night.

It was bad enough that he kept revisiting the graveyard in his nightmares, without dwelling on it in his waking moments too.

Nevertheless, it was quite galling to be told not to be rash by a man who had spent twelve years in the wizard prison, Azkaban, escaped, attempted to commit the murder he had been convicted for in the first place, then gone on the run with a stolen hippogriff.

When he reached the swings he sank onto the only one that Dudley and his friends had not yet managed to break, coiled one arm around the chain and stared moodily at the ground.

In the meantime, he had nothing to look forward to but another restless, disturbed night, because even when he escaped the nightmares about Cedric he had unsettling dreams about long dark corridors, all finishing in dead ends and locked doors, which he supposed had something to do with the trapped feeling he had when he was awake.

In the past, his scar hurting had warned that Voldemort was getting stronger again, but now that Voldemort was back they would probably remind him that its regular irritation was only to be expected...nothing to worry about...old news...

Even Harry's preconceptions about the unpleasant parts of his life will be shattered, so that he will have to see even his pain in a new light. He will learn more about what his scar pains now mean in later chapters.

And his reward was to be stuck in Little Whinging for four solid weeks, completely cut off from the magical world

This remark refers us back four weeks to the end of June, when Harry was recovering from his ordeal in the graveyard, and the end of the previous book. Interestingly, a passage at the end of book four harkens forward to this passage in book five:

When he looked back, even a month later, Harry found he had only scattered memories of the next few days.  It was as though he had been through too much to take in any more.  The recollections he did have were very painful. GF37)

For fans, however, the break between the end of book four and the beginning of book five was far more than four weeks. After cranking out a book per year for the previous four years, Rowling took three years to write book five. I remember well how strange it was to read this passage after all that time of anticipation and to realize that the events being described were not taking place years after the events at the end of the Triwizard Tournament.

He did not know how long he had sat on the swing

Actually, it was about an hour. Contributor Elanor Isolda informs us:

The only terrestrial channels which have the news on at seven are Channels 4 and 5.  Channel 5 didn't launch until 1997, so assuming the Dursleys are on terrestrial TV, it will be the Channel Four News, which lasts 55 minutes.  This is a little odd though, as the Dursleys don't strike me as a Channel Four News type family.  Also, the tone of the programme - especially of the budgie bit - doesn't match Channel Four.  Still, there you go... Sunset in London in early August 1995 was 8.40 - 8.50pm. (email, 4-September-2006)

We know from the evidence given at Harry's hearing that the Dementor attack took place shortly after 9 pm, a half-hour after sunset.

...Dudley Dursley, wending his way home, accompanied by his faithful gang.

Magnolia Road, like Privet Drive, was full of large, square houses with perfectly manicured lawns, all owned by large, square owners who drove very clean cars similar to Uncle Vernon's.

Harry preferred Little Whinging by night, when the curtained windows made patches of jewel-bright color in the darkness and he ran no danger of hearing disapproving mutters about his 'delinquent' appearance when he passed the householders.

"Bye, Dud!"

"What about 'Popkin' and 'Dinky Diddydums', can I use them then?"

"Another ten year old? I know you did Mark Evans two nights ago."

Characters introduced in this chapter:

• Fletcher, Mundungus (present and heard, but not seen; we meet him properly in the next chapter)

• Gordon (first actual appearance)

• Malcolm (first actual appearance)

• Tibbles, Mr. (first actual appearance)

Characters returning in this chapter:

• Dursley, Dudley (as Dudders, Big D, Dud, ickle Diddykins, Popkin, Dinky Diddydums)

• Dursley, Petunia Evans

• Dursley, Vernon

• Figg, Arabella

• Polkiss, Piers

Characters mentioned in this chapter:

• Black, Sirius

• Buckbeak

• Bungy the budgie

• Diggory, Cedric

• Dobby

• Dorkins, Mary

• Dumbledore, Albus

• Evans, Mark

• Fletcher, Mundungus

• Gordon's parents

• Granger, Hermione

• Next Door, Mr.

• Number Seven, Mrs.

• Polkiss, Mrs.

• Potter, James

• Potter, Lily Evans

• Riddle, Tom Marvolo (as Voldemort)

• Weasley, Arthur

• Weasley, Molly

• Weasley, Ron

• (unnamed) Dudley's 16-year-old opponent

• (unnamed) famous actress (Muggle)

• (unnamed) famous actress's famous husband (Muggle)

• (unnamed) newsreader (Muggle)

Settings and locations introduced or returning in this chapter:

• number four, Privet Drive

• Magnolia Crescent

• Magnolia Road

Settings and locations mentioned in this chapter:

• Azkaban

• the Burrow

• graveyard in Little Hangleton

• the Five Feathers in Barnsley

• Honeydukes

• Wisteria Walk

Exceptional character moments:

• Dudley, whose activities with his "gang" now involve vandalism and beating up much younger children. His parents did Harry few favours in bringing him up, but they've done almost as badly by Dudley in letting him think that he can do anything he likes without paying a price.

• Harry, yanking Dudley's chain about all the gooey nicknames Petunia has for him. Harry himself seems to be aware that he's using Dudley as an outlet for his frustration and stress, but justifies it by thinking of what Dudley put him through when they were younger.

Spells:

• Apparation (mentioned)

• defensive charge

• Expecto Patronum

• insect jinx (mentioned)

• Lumos

Links and Resources:

• Bestiary

  • Dementor

  • hippogriff

  • house-elf

  • kneazle

• essays

  • Echoes of the Past: Street Names of Little Whinging

  • Food and Drink in the Potter Universe

  • How Safe Is Privet Drive?

  • In Search of Little Whinging

  • The Number Twelve

• Harry's dreams

• items and devices, magical: Invisibility Cloak

Memorable lines:

• Harry Potter's appearance did not endear him to the neighbours, who were the sort of people who thought scruffiness ought to be punishable by law....

• If they had reached water-skiing budgerigars, there was nothing else worth hearing.

• Nevertheless, it was quite galling to be told not to be rash by a man who had spent twelve years in the wizard prison, Azkaban, escaped, attempted to commit the murder he had been convicted for in the first place, then gone on the run with a stolen hippogriff.

• "This is night, Diddykins. That's what we call it when it goes all dark like this."

Strictly British:

• bin

• budgerigar

• cheek

• holiday

• holidaymakers

• hosepipe

• ickle

• newsreader

• popkin

• shut it

• tosh

• trainers

Timelines/Calendar:

The date of the action of this chapter is given during Harry's disciplinary hearing on the 12th of August, in OP8. Since chapter 6 specifies that the 11th of August was a Wednesday, the 2nd of August was a Monday.

July-August 1995