I have been struggling with expectations (see what I did there :p). I’ve come to think of expectation as self-defense against the uncertainty of the future, It lays a foundation with which to tackle whatever might come next. I’ve been doing this a lot over the last couple of months or so, laying down expectations by researching the people I was to meet and the context in which I was meeting them for the endless fundraising season. It certainly gives me a start point to work on when the meeting takes a surprising turn of events. This made me identify with the surprise Harry Potter had to face after getting to King’s Cross, His instinct was to go back to his “experience” with the magic world and come up with the idea of tapping the ticket box with his wand as Hagrid did at Diagon Alley to open up the archway. Granted, It would not have worked out but, the expectation still stands and it was borne from the first impression of the wizarding world which leads’ me nicely to my second point.
The expectations we have of people and places are biased towards first impressions, they sometimes lead to self-fulfilling prophecies that are very hard to get out of. This chapter introduced us to a whole host of new characters and tracking Harry’s actions towards these characters and correlating them to his first impressions of them will be an interesting exercise.
FYI, My first impressions are Molly is caring, Fred and George are funny, Ron is overshadowed, Hermione is a show-off, Draco is arrogant, Neville is naive and Hogwarts is magical.