It has been a very long time since I first read the first two Harry Potter books, so I can not remember exactly what my expectations were as I was reading the books. Iser says that expectations are rarely fulfilled due to the text continually modifying itself. This is not only true for books but for all stories, real or fictional. As you read a book, every new detail gives you a new detail to build upon your expectations, which in turn subtly changes your expectation. In the case of Harry Potter the story is written as a mystery, so clues and red herrings are intentionally placed in the prose to build certain expectations. In the first Harry Potter book Snape is built up as the villain of the book, but at the end you find out that while Snape is not a very nice person, he was actually fighting the real villain through out the course of the book. Red Herrings like this are very common in these first two books. Quirrell is pictured as a quivering coward of a man, Tom Riddle appears to be a hero of Hogwarts, and Harry seems to be a descendent of Slytherin. The danger of setting up these false expectations is that all the actions that initially seem incriminating must make sense when the twist finally occurs.
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