You think your day was surreal? Try mine.
This is a flash-forward to later in the chapter.
It's exactly like saying 'phlogiston' or 'elan vital' or 'emergence'
or 'complexity'!"
Phlogiston is an old explanation for why things burn with little predictive power (they burn because they have phlogiston in them). Elan Vital is a similarly meaningless explanation for what makes thing alive. Harry "emergence" and "complexity" are hand-wavy explanations sometimes used by people discussing artificial intelligence, and in particular the nature of consciousness.
Bag of Holding
D&D reference.
A syringe of what looked like liquid fire, which was supposed to
drastically slow circulation in a treated area while maintaining
oxygenation of the blood for up to three minutes, if you needed to
prevent a poison from spreading through the body.
Harry uses this when Hermione is dying from the troll attack
(89/syringe of glowing orange liquid).
White cloth that could be wrapped over a part of the body to
temporarily numb pain.
Harry uses this when Draco tortures him (23/Numbcloth).
Feather-Falling Potion
This is used as part of Harry's plot to make Draco think of Hermione
as a person (41/Feather-Falling Potion). It's also a D&D reference.
One of my classmates gets bitten by a horrible monster, and as I
scrabble frantically in my mokeskin pouch for something that could
help her, she looks at me sadly and with her last breath says
Hermione eventually has her legs bitten off by a troll, and Harry
scrabbles frantically in his pouch, and eventually finds the first-aid
kit (89/syringe of glowing orange liquid).
Harry didn't like himself when he was angry.
Hulk reference.
"I had a pet rock once. It died."
Dumbledore smashed the rock (119/I smashed a rock that was on your windowsill) as part of his prophecy-threading project.
Harry, I've seen many abused children in my time at Hogwarts, it would
break your heart to know how many. And, when you're happy, you don't
behave like one of those children, not at all. You smile at strangers,
you hug people, I put my hand on your shoulder and you didn't
flinch. But sometimes, only sometimes, you say or do something that
seems very much like... someone who spent his first eleven years
locked in a cellar.
This is the remnant of Tom Riddle in Harry's mysterious dark side.
"I don't know," she said. "But it's possible that something could have
happened to you that you don't remember."
Harry can't access Voldemort's memories, but he has a remnant of a personality shaped by those memories.
Sometimes you just don't seem eleven years old or even all that human.
Part of him is much older than 11, and it's a common trope that Voldemort underwent so many dark rituals that he was no longer truly human.
"It is very curious indeed that you should be destined for this wand
when its brother why, its brother gave you that scar."
That could not possibly be coincidence.
Remnant of Voldemort, blah blah blah.
Harry's mouth was moving as he chewed hard on his lip, and someone
watching closely would have noticed a tiny spot of blood appear.
This is Harry leaving a sign to himself in case he is obliviated.
As sometimes happened when Harry got sufficiently angry, his blood
went cold, instead of hot, and a terrible dark clarity descended over
his mind, mapping out possible tactics and assessing their
consequences with iron realism.
mysterious dark side
to sprout small clawed tentacles from its bottom and squirm after its
owner
Possibly a reference to the Luggage from The Color of Magic.
And that must include courtesy and obedience from you to all
professors.
Ironic forshadowing! Harry doesn't have much courtesy or obedience for Snape.
This woman might well be the sanest adult Harry had ever met, despite
her lack of scientific background. Harry was even considering offering
her the number-two position in whatever group he formed to fight the
Dark Lord, though he wasn't silly enough to say that out loud. Now
what would be a good name for that...? The Death Eater Eaters?
A reference to the Order of the Phoenix from the original books.
As his hand touched the back door's handle, he heard a last whisper from behind him.
"Hermione Granger."
"What?" Harry said, his hand still on the door.
"Look for a first-year girl named Hermione Granger on the train to Hogwarts."
"Who is she?"
There was no answer, and when Harry turned around, Professor
McGonagall was gone.
It is less than clear that this whisper came from Professor McGonagall.
Remember that Professor Quirrell is in the Leaky Cauldron (3/That was Professor Quirinus Quirrell). Quirrell later demonstrates the
ability to make his whispers carry magically (74/a whisper, carrying through the door as though no door were present).
Another hypothesis is that Dumbledore is there, invisible, and whispered this to Harry as part of his prophecy-threading project. This seems more likely, since arguably a Harry who never met Hermione would be much more likely to have accidentally destroyed the world, and Quirrell has no obvious reason to introduce the two.
There is some evidence that Dumbledore is spying invisibly on Harry:
-
In the aftermath of this chapter, he doesn't actually need Minerva's report, which would be consistent with is having observed everything himself.
-
Later (12/
entire game of Quidditch), he casually mentions something Harry said when he wasn't around in order troll him.
TODO: "the best way to break out of Azkaban would be not to go there in the first place"