The Sorcerer's (Philosopher's) Stone: The Vanishing Glass

Note: there may be spoilers

We now catch up with Harry ten years later. I like how the sun shinning in the morning leads us through the living, through the pictures, and finally to Harry.  We get a recap of what his life was like, being bullied by Dudley, being shunned by his aunt and uncle, and the kids at school, wearing hand-me-downs (know that feel bro), not having an actual room, and owning almost nothing.  Over all, it feels fairly abusive, but it could be worse (meet me back here in book two).

We also learn about his strangle talent for having things happen under certain circumstances, his hair growing back over night, him ending up on the roof, etc.  This chapter also covers my favorite of these occurrences, hence the title of the chapter.  It's so satisfying to see Dudley and his terrible friend get nipped at by a boa.

It's really interesting thinking to the first time you read/watch something, and they reference something/someone, and you don't catch it, because you don't know it's important.  Then you get back to re-reading/watching it, and suddenly you know their importance to the story, like Aunt Marge or Mrs. Figg.  I'm reading these names and thinking, "Oh yeah! I didn't know they were introduced this early!"

So, this actually has been brought up recently (at least, I've seen it more recently), on whether the snake Harry releases is Nagini.  Re-reading this, I actually thought so too, for a few minutes.  I forgot what exactly made me think not, whether I read something online, or just thought it through.  I really like how it seems this is just another "weird wizard" moment for Harry, like talking to animals is a magical thing, but we learn in the next book that he "inherited" it from Voldemort.

I always thought that the green light in Harry's memory could've been explained as a stop light, and never understood why Harry never made that connection.