Petunia's on the Platform for an "Aha!" Moment

I love those “Aha!” moments. The kind of moments that only come because you know the books so well that you've got the seventh novel running in the back of your brain as you read the first one again.

Not that I want to be aggressively critical of J.K. Rowling. In fact, I think it's because she makes so few “continuity errors” over the course of these seven incredibly complex books that I actually feel joy when I find one. The fact that it's taken me about 20 readings of the novels to spot this one makes it even more amazing.

Take the following passages from Chapter 6 of The Philosopher's Stone:

    [Harry] pulled the ticket Hagrid had given him out of his pocket.

    “I just take the train from platform nine and three quarters at eleven o'clock,” he read.

    His aunt and uncle stared.

    “Platform what?”

    “Nine and three quarters.”

    “Don't talk rubbish,” said Uncle Vernon, “there's no platform nine and three quarters.”

    “It's on my ticket.”

    “Barking,” said Uncle Vernon, “howling mad, the lot of them. You'll see. You just wait.”

And later...

    “Well, there you are, boy. Platform nine – platform ten. Your platform should be somewhere in the middle, but they don't seem to have built it yet, do they?”

    He was quite right, of course. There was a big plastic number nine over one platform and a big plastic number ten over the one next to it, and in the middle, nothing at all.

    “Have a good term,” said Uncle Vernon with an even nastier smile. He left without another word. Harry turned and saw the Dursleys drive away. All three of them were laughing.

 Reading those two sections, you would believe that Aunt Petunia is as incredulous over Harry's claim that there is actually a platform nine and three quarters at King's Cross Station as Uncle Vernon is. No, Petunia doesn't actually say anything but she does first “stare” at Harry when he first introduces the idea of platform nine and three quarters and then joins in the derisive laughter when the Dursley family drives away, leaving Harry lost and stranded at King's Cross.

So we are given to believe that Petunia has never heard of platform nine and three quarters and is as skeptical as her husband regarding the possibility of its existence.

Now read this passage from Snape's memory montage in Chapter 33 of The Deathly Hallows:

    And the scene reformed. Harry looked around: he was on platform nine and three quarters., and Snape stood beside him, slightly hunched, next to a thin, sallow faced, sour-looking woman who greatly resembled him. Snape was staring at a family of four a short distance away. The two girls stood a little apart form their parents. Lily seemed to be pleading with her sister; Harry moved closer to listen.

    “...I'm sorry, Tuney, I'm sorry! Listen -” She caught her sister's hand and held tight to it, even though Petunia tried to pull away.

What's this? Aunt Petunia actually visited platform nine and three quarters with Harry's mother? She's been there and knows it exists? So why is she acting like the idea of a platform called nine and three quarters is ridiculous twenty or so years later?

My colleague suggests that Aunt Petunia might just be acting in The Philosopher's Stone, that she remembers platform nine and three quarters but has trained herself to act like she knows nothing of the magical world, especially when she's around her husband.

Maybe. But I don't think so. I'd be more ready to believe it if Rowling described Aunt Petunia as looking down, glancing away, looking solemn or something like that. But in both cases where Petunia is described in these passages, she is responding exactly the same way Vernon is: first staring, then laughing. When Rowling wrote The Philosopher's Stone, she intended to convey that both Harry's Aunt and Harry's Uncle thought the idea of a platform nine and three quarters at King's Cross was absolutely ridiculous.

And then forgot that when she came to write The Deathly Hallows.