"Could
I -- could I say good-bye to him, sir?" asked Hagrid. He bent his
great, shaggy head over Harry
and gave him what must have been a very
scratchy, whiskery kiss.
Then, suddenly, Hagrid let out a howl like a
wounded dog.
"Shhh!"
hissed Professor McGonagall, "you'll wake the Muggles!"
"S-s-sorry,"
sobbed Hagrid, taking out a large, spotted handkerchief and
burying his face in it.
"But I c-c-can't stand it -- Lily an' James dead
-- an' poor little Harry off
ter live with Muggles -"
"Yes,
yes, it's all very sad, but get a grip on yourself, Hagrid, or
we'll be found,"
Professor McGonagall whispered, patting Hagrid gingerly
on the arm as Dumbledore
stepped over the low garden wall and walked to
the front door. He laid Harry
gently on the doorstep, took a letter out
of his cloak, tucked it
inside Harry's blankets, and then came back to
the other two. For a full
minute the three of them stood and looked at
the little bundle; Hagrid's
shoulders shook, Professor McGonagall
blinked furiously, and the
twinkling light that usually shone from
Dumbledore's eyes seemed to
have gone out.
"Well,"
said Dumbledore finally, "that's that. We've no business staying
here. We may as well go and
join the celebrations."
"Yeah,"
said Hagrid in a very muffled voice, "I'll be takin' Sirius his
bike back. G'night, Professor
McGonagall -- Professor Dumbledore, sir."
Wiping
his streaming eyes on his jacket sleeve, Hagrid swung himself
onto the motorcycle and
kicked the engine into life; with a roar it rose
into the air and off into the
night.
"I
shall see you soon, I expect, Professor McGonagall," said Dumbledore,
nodding to her. Professor
McGonagall blew her nose in reply.
Dumbledore turned and walked
back down the street. On the corner he
stopped and took out the
silver Put-Outer. He clicked it once, and
twelve balls of light sped
back to their street lamps so that Privet
Drive glowed suddenly orange
and he could make out a tabby cat slinking
around the corner at the
other end of the street. He could just see the
bundle of blankets on the
step of number four.
"Good
luck, Harry," he murmured. He turned on his heel and with a swish
of his cloak, he was gone.
A
breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and
tidy under the inky sky, the
very last place you would expect
astonishing things to happen.
Harry Potter rolled over inside his
blankets without waking up.
One small hand closed on the letter beside
him and he slept on, not
knowing he was special, not knowing he was
famous, not knowing he would
be woken in a few hours' time by Mrs.
Dursley's scream as she
opened the front door to put out the milk
bottles, nor that he would
spend the next few weeks being prodded and
pinched by his cousin
Dudley... He couldn't know that at this very
moment, people meeting in
secret all over the country were holding up
their glasses and saying in
hushed voices: "To Harry Potter -- the boy
who lived!"
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
The author who has inspired me the most, throughout my entire writing career, has to be J.K. Rowling. At seven years old, my older sister read the first Harry Potter book aloud to me as we sat in our shared bedroom late at night. I don't know if it was how well she portrayed her world, my sister's passion and connection to the words she was reading, or the atmosphere of reading a book about witches and wizards in a dark room at night when we should have been asleep, but J.K. Rowling captured my mind and hasn't let go since. The first time I sat down at a desk with a red crayon and a piece of printer paper to write a barely legible, thirty word story about a dog eating chips; I sat down with the thought of writing something just like Harry Potter.
Today, I can re-read the beloved series and acknowledge what about the way J.K. Rowling portrayed Hogwarts really got inside my head and compelled me to write every day for almost 12 years in counting: the world itself. It isn't the way she writes or the story she tells, to me it was the world she created that drew me in. The idea that one could just create their own world and make it feel so real was alien to me, and that's what made it so interesting. I wanted to mimic her. I wanted to write my own story with my own world that would one day capture the hearts of children and parents alike.
To this day, that is still my inspiration whenever I sit down to write a story or develop an idea. I want to take two sisters, bored with Barbies and matchbox cars and give them a portal into an entire world--and an entire lifetime--of magic.
As per my assignment (for which this was written), J.K. Rowling uses standard punctuation throughout.
Here are a few links relating to J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter.
Excellent job here. You picked a great snippet of the text, one rich in the energy and charm of the series. As for the quotations--all standard (as I assume you know) and you've recorded them faithfully.
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