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citrusdarling7 · 4 years ago

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Dumbledore's Villainhood

description- an essay i wrote when i should have been doing actual course work

warnings- mentions of abusive households, spoilers for the HP series, mentions of death, and dumbledore slander. (duh)

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I have read the Harry Potter books around twenty times, along with dozens of fanfictions based off of the series. My friends and family have suffered through hour-long rants on subjects such as Snape being the worst character, racism in the writing, and how characters such as Fleur and Lavender are a projection of Rowling’s own internalized misogyny. (Warning: spoilers for the Harry Potter series below!)

The Harry Potter series by J.K Rowling is arguably one of the most well known book series in modern times. With over 500 million copies sold worldwide, these books have been read by millions of people. The story follows orphaned main character Harry Potter as he learns he is a wizard and has a mortal enemy that he will consequently face every book. Harry begins to study at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, which is presided over by Headmaster Albus Dumbledore. Dumbledore was written to represent the Mentor character that is so commonly found in any Hero’s Journey type of story; however I do not believe Dumbledore deserves any praise. I believe that Albus Dumbledore was the true villain of Harry’s story.

Before I dive into the prompt, I would like to first clarify that this is actually not how Rowling had intended for her character to be interpreted. Although she has to be accredited with the fascinating world-building of her series, I don’t like to provide her with any unnecessary praise. Rowling has shown through her social media that she is transphobic, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and racist. Her judgment is incredibly flawed and therefore reflected in her work; Rowling truly believes that Dumbledore should be praised.

In the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, young Harry is sent to live with his non-magical Aunt and Uncle proceeding the murder of his parents. While standing on the end of the street and conversing with Professor McGonagall, Dumbledore says, “It’s the best place for him— His aunt and uncle will be able to explain everything to him when he’s older. I’ve written them a letter.” (pg 14.) The Dursley’s were incredibly neglectful towards Harry, border lining on the edge of abuse. Harry often went days without meals and spent weeks locked inside the cupboard under the stairs. In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, book number six, Dumbledore finally explains why he allowed a child to grow up in such horrible conditions. Since Lily Potter sacrificed herself to protect Harry, that protection would continue as long as he spent at least one day a year with her blood relatives. Dumbledore could have easily found a magical family to take Harry in, and have the boy visit his aunt and uncle once a year. It was completely unnecessary for him to be raised by them, yet Dumbledore simply did not care.

Throughout the series, Dumbledore manipulated nearly everyone around him in a variety of ways. One example of this was his relationship with Rubeus Hagrid. In the year 1945, the Chamber of Secrets was opened by Tom Riddle, (young Voldemort.) During a flashback scene, a suspicious Dumbledore has a conversation with Tom Riddle and asks, “Is there anything that you wish to tell me?” (pg. 245) regarding the Chamber. Dumbledore already knew that Riddle was the one to open in, yet he stood aside and did nothing when Hagrid was later blamed. Once Dumbledore was appointed as Headmaster of Hogwarts, he allowed Hagrid to become a gamekeeper for the school. Poor Hagrid views Dumbledore as his savior, which the old man uses to his advantage. Dumbledore was constantly having Hagrid risk his life and freedom by running errands for him. On page 59 of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Hagrid performs magic after Uncle Vernon insults Dumbledore. After his expulsion from Hogwarts, Hagrid was banned from doing magic. He is so blindly devoted to Dumbledore that he is willing to break laws to “defend his honor.” When the Chamber of Secrets is opened again in book two, Dumbledore stands aside and allows Hagrid to be taken to Azkaban, the wizard prison, even though he knows Hagrid could not have opened the Chamber.

Dumbledore is consistently described as a great and powerful wizard. Readers are meant to believe that there is nothing the man can not do. It is true that Dumbledore was extremely talented. We know this because of his part in defeating Grindelwald in the 1940’s, the various awards given to him by the Ministry, and him being appointed Headmaster of the school. Yet Dumbledore did very little to help defeat Voldemort, instead opting to use two generations of child soldiers. The Order of the Phoenix was an organization that he started in the 1970’s, which was made up of mostly 18-20 year old's that were fresh out of Hogwarts, Harry’s parents included. During the May 2nd 1998 Battle of Hogwarts, the majority of the fighters were teenagers. And where was Dumbledore? Well, he was conveniently dead by then, after plotting with Snape in the previous book to have him be “murdered.” Dumbledore was selfish and careless when he essentially raised Harry to be a sacrificial lamb, knowing that he was Voldemort’s 7th horcrux all along.

“Help will always be given at Hogwarts, Harry, to those who ask for it.” Dumbledore loves to emphasize how Hogwarts can essentially be a home and family for those who do not have one. That is, if they are in Gryffindor. Although Rowling paints members of Slytherin house to all be evil and conniving, that is not at all true. (Not that Rowling considers Snape to be the only redeemable Slytherin, which I completely disagree with.) Horace Slughorn and Regulus Black are examples of Slytherin characters who bravely fought against evil in their own special ways. In Regulus’ case, he sacrificed his life to further hide one of Voldemort’s horcruxes. Slughorn was able to put past his sense of pride and divulge vital information to Harry, even though it embarrassed him. But Dumbledore believes that being sorted into Slytherin House is like having the world EVIL branded across your forehead. When a young Tom Riddle was sorted into Slytherin, Dumbledore no longer made any attempts to help the boy. Much like Harry, he was a half-blooded orphan who had no idea of his heritage before coming to Hogwarts. Seeing as Harry was a Gryffindor, he was given extra favors and help from Dumbledore that prevented him from becoming evil, which was a very real possibility. Even after his time as a student at Hogwarts, Tom Riddle returned to the castle seeking out a job as a teacher. Dumbledore refused him the job, which would have been an excellent opportunity to keep Riddle in check and prevent him from becoming the monster that is Lord Voldemort. But Dumbledore turned him away, and is therefore responsible for the man he later became.

Although the Harry Potter series is marketed towards elementary school children, I have realized that as you mature, there is so much more that you will take away from the book series. Rowling’s intended themes are one of love, death, and friendship. Looking deeper, you realize that the story is essentially the story of two boys. By the neglect and manipulation of Dumbledore, one became the greatest villain, and the other the greatest hero.

#harry potter #dumbledore slander #anti dumbledore #anti jkr #tom marvolo riddle #harry potter analysis #character analysis #fanfic writing #writing #albus dumbledore #slytherin #hufflepuff #ravenclaw #gryffindor

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sophieoverett · 4 years ago

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Disruptions of Ritual and Inciting Incidents

I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of a creative development series lately which has come with a lot of great advice and guidance on storytelling, from the extremely specific to the really broad and sweeping. It’s covered everything from character motivations to specific genre structures to audience expectation to interpersonal conflict, but one of the things that has come up over and over again has been the idea of disruption of ritual as pivotal to the establishment of a story.

It’s been interesting to hear it articulated this way, because when I’ve taught creative writing in the past, and when I’ve thought about my own writing, I’ve always talked about this concept as the world we leave behind. It’s the pre-inciting incident stuff – the introductory grounding stuff – whether that be Harry’s life before Hogwarts, or the Bennet’s home before Mr. Bingley moves in next door.

You establish a world – or a ritual – and then you break it open.

It’s in the schism, in the disruption, where your story finds it’s legs and starts to move.

It’s had me thinking a lot about the relationship between the disruption of ritual and the inciting incident of a story, because in a lot of ways, that disruption of ritual directly sets up the latter. A story like Bridgerton has the disruption of ritual in Phoebe making her debut – a change for the whole family – but the inciting incident is really her collision with Simon Hastings and their mutual decision to fake a courtship. Similarly (but differently), Harry Potter has the disruption of ritual when the owls start descending on the Dursley home in the lead up to Harry’s birthday, but the true inciting incident is when Hagrid tells Harry he’s a wizard. Neither of these inciting incidents could’ve happened without the disruption to the character’s lives that got us there.

When we talk about inciting incidents, we’re ultimately talking about the point of no return for your protagonist. Where they either make a choice, or have a choice thrust upon them, it’s one they can never go back from.

How the disruption of ritual lays the groundwork for the inciting incident though is important. It’s not just creating the first bubbles of conflict to pop, but it’s a key part of establishing who your character is and what world they exist in.

But what does that look like? Generally speaking, I find it’s useful to think of this sort of pre-inciting incident (or disruption of ritual world) in three categories:

Change of Circumstance

Change of Environment

Change of Information

So let’s break that down a little!

Change of Circumstance

I think this one is probably the most common.

I’ve watched a lot of new movies lately and I think change of circumstance is at the heart of all of them – in Nomadland, Fern’s husband has passed away and she’s had to move into a caravan out of financial necessity; in The Father, Anthony’s daughter is moving to Italy and so she tells him he’s being moved into an aged care facility for his dementia; in Those Who Wish Me Dead, Hannah, a firefighter, has been benched after freezing during a fire which lead to the death of two teenage boys.

While all these changes are environmental too (which I’ll come back to in a second), they’re more punctuated by the impact these circumstances have on these characters – Fern is grieving, Anthony is losing his agency and independence, Hannah’s role in a job she loves has been diminished.

These changes to circumstance create the context for which the inciting incidents begin and ground the characters within their own emotional arcs. The inciting incident in Those Who Wish Me Dead is when Hannah finds another teenage boy in the woods who’s being chased by assassins; in The Father, the inciting incident comes when Anthony’s daughter hires a new nurse that reminds him of his other, dead daughter, in Nomadland, Fern connects with a seasonal worker at an Amazon factory who in turn connects her to the nomad lifestyle.

In this sense, the disruption of ritual starts a conversation that the inciting incident can either build off or interrupt or both. The examples above are all pretty big, but these sorts of circumstantial disruptions can be anything. They can be as simple as a promotion at work, a pregnancy, a new neighbour; or hell, you can go the other way, and get even bigger – start a war, go on the run, discover a new planet! What’s important though is that initial change of circumstance creates context for your protagonist and builds towards your inciting incident.

Change of Environment

This one is still pretty common, but I’d say it’s often used most efficiently and effectively in horror and fantasy.

Moving house or exploring new territory, whether that be campsites or cave dives or new planets or planes, is a natural way of putting your characters off-kilter and building environmental tension. This tension is really steeped in the unknown of the space your protagonist is interacting with, and in the promise of conflict within it. Movies like The Descent, Hush, Lord of the Rings and Star Wars are all fundamentally steeped in their opening acts involving drastic shifts to their environments that build conflict, whether that be because an environment becomes something to protect (Hobbiton in Lord of the Rings), or something that the protagonist needs to be protected from (The Descent), or that environment being invaded (Hush) are all factors that are essential to the story overall.

In these stories, these environments aren’t just a stage for the character to move across, they’re deeply interactive and often allegorical to the character’s circumstances.

My Neighbor Totoro is one of my favourite examples of this – Satsuki and Mei’s move to a new home whisks them into a magical world with soot spirits and forest creatures, but these spirits and creatures are an escape from the reality that they moved because their mother is sick in a hospital nearby. The environment they’ve moved to is them clinging to a child’s world as they live ever closer to their trauma.

The most important thing to think about with environmental change is to ask why? Environmental change isn’t about simply presenting a stage for your characters – all stories have that – but that that environment be a motivator in your character’s overall arc. After all, Nomadland might deeply love the American landscape, but Fern’s story is driven by circumstance, not environment, as I mentioned above.

Change of Information

Probably the least used of these three, an information disruption is often reserved for stories about whistleblowers or journalists. Spotlight, Bombshell, All the President’s Men, hell, even The Bourne Identity all rely on a transfer of knowledge as pivotal to creating the conflict that the story builds on.

Change of Information involves a character learning something that they didn’t know before, and the information could seem incidental in the first act (the journalist in Citizen Kane for instance learning that Kane’s final word was ‘rosebud’, or Adrian Toomes realizing there’s alien tech in what he’s been assigned to clean up in Spiderman: Homecoming), or it could be left as a landmine for our protagonists to discover (Spotlight did this by opening with the cops in the 1970s talking about the child molestation charge that our protagonists would start investigating in 2001), or be the overall driver for the film (Min-hyuk telling Ki-woo about the Park family in Parasite).

I think Change of Information set-ups though can also be broadened out to tie pretty closely with Change of Circumstances set-ups to the point that I actually almost considered condensing the two, but I do think they’re different enough to be untangled. Parasite of course straddles all three in its brilliance as the information Min-hyuk gives Ki-woo of the Park family creates both a change in circumstance and environment too, and Midsommar is a movie I’d consider to be all three too – knowledge changing hands is essential to that film overall, and the focus in the first act of Dani finding out that her sister’s commit suicide is pivotal to everything that follows. Her change of circumstances and environment hinges on her grieving her sister, yes, but the weight of the opening act is on the discovery of that more so than it is on Dani’s circumstances changing. Life goes on is, in many ways, pivotal to that first act.

Change of information, to me, is about a character’s awareness of something creating that initial disruption overall, and that new knowledge being the ultimate plot and character driver for the rest of the story. It’s the new knowledge or awareness that creates story mobility, environment and circumstance can just come along with it.

What are you talking about, Sophie?

Right, sorry, haha.

Disruption of ritual is ultimately the shift in the story that allows for the inciting incident to happen. It’s what creates the perfect storm of circumstance, environment and information which fuels your characters, but what you choose to prioritise and emphasise is going to impact the direction of your story and provide your readers or audience with the context that shapes their experience overall.

What drives your characters is what determines their path throughout the story you’re telling, and considering circumstances, environment, and the information they do or don’t possess is an important part of shaping that. You don’t have to pick one, of course – as I mentioned above, a lot of great stories embrace two or all three! – but thinking about each and asking yourself why and working out what’s the priority for your protagonist might just help you articulate the crux of your story and give you an opening act that resonates.

#Writeblr #writing #writing advice #sophie's writing posts

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loloooowrites · 3 years ago

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Hi there writers!!!!

This is my first post about writing fanfiction. The topic of these posts isn't to tell you what you're doing wrong, but rather to give you a new lens to see your writing through. Sometimes, all it takes is a new perspective to get over the writer's block that plagues us all. Check out this rant below:

Improve Your Story by Connecting Your Character's Traits With Their Goals

We all have those special characters that we’re connected to, and that's part of why we're here. There was something that captured you enough to write a story using your OTP, main hero, or even the side characters you're including. But what is it specifically that makes these characters so appealing to us? What can you do, as a writer, to create that connection with your readers through your characters?

A well rounded protagonist needs goals and traits that contribute to the plot. Figuring out these things for your character is essential for your story. That doesn’t mean that the reader should necessarily know all of these things from the first page of the book, but you should have an idea about what your character's goals are (what do they want out of the world?), their character traits (How do they react to the world around them?), and how this all contributes to driving your plot forwards.

What are character traits?

Your character's traits are their personality. How do your characters react to the world around them? Are they mean, generous, empathetic, pious, apathetic? Would they save the drowning villager, or let them drown in pursuit of the enemy? Do they maintain a chill exterior, but care deeply for others on the inside? These inherent qualities of our characters are their traits!

Our character's traits usually connect with what we already know about them. For example, if I'm using Naruto as my protagonist in a Star Wars bounty hunter AU, it's true that his world is different, but the way he reacts to the world should remain similar-ish in order to maintain the integrity of the character. One of his main traits is that he remains loyal. Specifically, he is loyal to his friends and would sacrifice himself to save them, so that might be a trait that I focus on to help him be pushed towards (or away from!) his goal, whatever that ends up being.

Your character’s traits should have consequences (positive and/or negative) when it comes to their goals. For example, one of Harry Potter's character traits is that he is brave. Harry's bravery causes him to strive to protect those who are close to him, no matter what the cost. He is forced into action as a result of this several times throughout the series. For example, Harry rushes to Sirius’ aid in the department of mysteries when he believes Sirius is being tortured by Voldemort. At first, he refuses the help of his friends because he is brave and he does not wish to put them in danger. However, this notion is overruled and Harry decides, begrudgingly, to go along to the department of mysteries with his possy in tow. After all, he still has to save Sirius.

Character goals: How do they fit into the plot?

Let’s take another look at Harry Potter. In the beginning of the first book, the readers learn that the Dursleys, Harry's adopted family, are horrible people and neglect Harry's emotional needs. He's dressed, watered, and fed, but he lacks a sense of family and a sense of belonging. Therefore, before the plot really gets going, readers understand that one of Harry’s goals, or needs, is to feel like he belongs and that people care about him.

This goal is part of what pushes Harry to leave with Hagrid. Harry is touched that Hagrid cared enough to break down a door to bring him a cake for his birthday, and that he was honest enough to tell Harry how his parents really died. It makes him feel like he belongs and is cared for. It is part of what makes Harry trust Hagrid enough to lead him into a world he knows little about, away from what he has known his whole life: The Dursleys. Without an understanding of Harry’s goal, readers may wonder why Harry trusted Hagrid enough to leave the Dursley's care at all.

How do my character's traits connect to their goals?

Harry's goal to feel like he belongs isn’t the goal that takes him to the end of the story, but it does play along with one of his main traits: his bravery. This results in Harry's habit of protecting those who care about him and make him feel like he belongs. This goal and subsequent trait of Harry’s pops up many times throughout the series, and is even a source of insecurity for him when danger arrives and his friends are in the mix. It also gives him something to lose, which makes the reader root and care for him.

Let's connect back to this Naruto bounty hunter Star Wars AU I mentioned to put this practice in the context of crafting fanfiction:

1. Goal: Perhaps a goal of Naruto's is that he plans to make as much money bounty hunting across the galaxy for as long as possible before dying.

2: Traits: Loyalty is one of his traits. In the beginning, he is loyal to himself and his goals only.

We have a goal and a trait, now, enter the plot: While on a bounty hunting job, he lands on a planet in the throes of a civil war. Somehow he finds himself in the middle after hearing the pleas of the oppressed citizens who wish to end the violence. Initially he agrees to fight because they are paying him a large amount of credits, but goes through some internal change and ends up caring for the people. This leads to some dramatic confrontation at the end with a main antagonist. Because I'm in a good mood I'll let Naruto win this story, saving the oppressed people. Because he's changed, maybe he doesn't accept the money and abandons that selfish goal he maintained from the beginning. His trait also plays a role, as he is now loyal to the people he has saved. Yay intrinsic rewards!

Anyway, the point here is to show you how goals and traits can be connected to one another. Viewing your work through this lens can help you drive your plot forwards, keep it interesting, and maintain the integrity of your character. All good things!

So what can you do?

Some exercises to help you find how your character’s goals and traits mix together:

1. List some character goals:

2. List some character traits:

3. Answer one or both of these questions:

a. How do my character’s traits move them along the plot and towards their goal(s)?

b. How do their traits cause issues for my character/push my character away from their goal(s)?

*Remember that some traits will only serve to move your character towards your goals or vice versa. There also may be goals that do both.*

I hope you found this helpful! If you did, feel free to share or follow. See you next time!

#writers #fanfic #favorite characters #writing goals #writing #writersblock #fanficadvice

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cassieschaosdimension · 4 years ago

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Now that I'm thinking about it...

Here are my thoughts on Dumbledore...

When I was younger, I used to think he was the next best thing to happen to Harry and everyone living in the Wizarding World. Now that I'm older I'm realizing that this guy was an absolute scumbag to the next level. I mean... He let Harry go to his Muggle aunt and uncle's because "he should be raised away from our world". BRO... Sirius and Remus would have been AMAZING at raising little Harry!

That was his first mistake when it came to Harry. His second one was literally keeping him in the freaking dark his first year in the hospital wing! Harry deserved to know!

Just the way he handled the whole Harry situation NO NO NO NO!!! He should have been raised in the Wizarding world because then he wouldn't have been thrown into the deep end and literally not know what he was doing! Plus not telling him about the prophecy and ignoring him in order of the phoenix.... Ummmm what?! No thank you! The whole thing of not telling Harry ANYTHING! Boi.... This is the savior of your world. Shouldn't he know what he's doing?!????

Also the treatment of Remus and Sirius..... Didn't even TRY to help them out! Gave James and Lily protection and then just THE MANIPULATION!!!! I'm sorry I have issues with the manipulation he goes through throughout the series! Hagrid being the biggest one. He believes that Dumbledore is the best thing in addition to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them or Charlie Weasley.

I'm sorry big guy, but he's literally up there with Grindelwald in regards to manipulation at least in my book. I feel like, the more I reread the series, the more faults I find out about Professor Dumbledore...

I have so many issues that I don't want this to get too long but AAAAAAGGGGHHHHHH! He makes me so mad! He manipulated Hagrid into thinking he's the best thing ever. He manipulated the entire Wizarding world into thinking he's so amazing. He manipulated practically everyone into trusting his judgement. But I have so many issues with his judgement...

Taking Moody out of retirement when the Triwizard tournament is happening.... Giving Remus a job when his best friend is on the loose and believed to be a convicted murderer.... HIRING UMBRIDGE WHEN VOLDEMORT CAME BACK....

I'm just so angry as I type this. I'm so sorry this is all over the place right now! But yeah that's my rant on Dumbledore and how awful I think he is. I'm not done, but I'm so ticked right now that's all you're getting from me.

#harry and dumbledore #harry potter #professor dumbledore #i have some words about him that need to be addressed #cassie rambles about books #og content

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carewyncromwell · 4 years ago

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5, 13, and 20 for the potter asks?

Pro or anti Marauders?

Pro overall, but let’s break this down by characters --

Remus Lupin is my favorite male character in the entire book series. He not only reminded me of my best teachers growing up, but I felt so, so much for him as a character too. I always felt kind of marginalized and different from my peers growing up, so it’s kind of unsurprising that I’ve had a soft spot for “outcast” characters since I was very little, and Remus is no exception. I completely understood why his friends meant so much to him and therefore felt SO much for him that, in the end, he had to lose all three of them and end up alone. Even his flaws, showcased best in the Snape’s Worst Memory chapter of OOTP and especially in Deathly Hallows, only serve to make him more real and human -- it broke my heart when he considered leaving Tonks and Teddy to help the Trio with their Horcrux hunt, but Remus wanting to “bury himself in his work” (which, honestly, this was -- he was a member of the Order, after all!) rather than face his worst fear of possibly dooming another person (namely, his son) to live a life like his made perfect sense with the characterization established, however horrible and wrong of a choice it was. It made me side with Harry so much in scolding Remus, yet I also felt compassion for the feelings behind Remus’s initial impulse. And of course, I was so proud of him when he overcame that fear and stood by Tonks and got to know his son before he died. I’m still not over the fact that my bb Remus had to die, AUUUUUGH, he and Sirius and Harry should’ve lived together as one happy makeshift family togetherrrrr. DX

Peter Pettigrew...that bloody rat. >> I’m sure just about everyone feels a lot of justified resentment toward Peter for what he did to the Potters, and I definitely agree with that sentiment...but at the same time, there’s still a part of me that finds him very interesting. Mainly because...I’d love to see him at his best, now that we’ve seen him at his worst! He was a Marauder, same as Sirius, Remus, and James, and we should never forget that -- he might have been a bit of a tag-along, but none of the other three, Lily, or anyone else thought that Peter would ever have been the type to turn on his friends. McGonagall disparaged Peter for his magical talent, but she openly grieved for him when she thought Sirius had killed him. Everyone was ready to believe Sirius -- who clearly adored James -- could be the traitor, before suspecting Peter. Sirius even suspected Remus before Peter...and this is when their connection in the books is so strong that HP fans have shipped Wolfstar since POA was first published back in 1999! Even when you read the books, you can see flickers of remorse in Peter at points, if you’re reading carefully. In Goblet of Fire, Peter seems noticeably uncomfortable around the rest of Voldemort’s supporters -- his efforts to bring Voldemort back to his body really seem to be out of obligation rather than any kind of enthusiasm. And of course, as we see in Deathly Hallows, Peter even as a Death Eater still retains enough honor to hesitate when Harry reminds him that he owes him his life. Gryffindor house does preach chivalry as well as courage, and in a twisted way, one could read Peter’s “loyalty” to Voldemort not just being about desperation as his friends now want nothing to do with him, but also because Peter’s standing by the choice he made...not unlike how Percy stood by the Ministry as long as he did, rather than by his family. This doesn’t justify what Peter did at all -- he is a despicable coward who destroyed so many lives and is responsible for bringing back the Dark Wizard whose return resulted in even more deaths -- but it does give his characterization as a villain interesting nuance. There’s a well-established internal logic to how Peter behaves, one I would frankly LOVE to see more of in a future Marauders-centric property.

Sirius is arguably the most polarizing of the Marauders, but honestly? I love him to pieces. He is a very, VERY flawed character -- he’s got a real mean streak, a hot temper, and more aggression than the average person. Him encouraging Snape to “go after Remus” was an indisputably terrible, stupid, callous thing to do, not just because of the endangerment to Snape’s life, but the flagrant betrayal of Remus’s friendship. The way Sirius treated Kreacher was completely uncalled for, regardless of how much the elf reminded him of his terrible home life. Sirius also can be really immature and can get really surly and passive-aggressive when he’s upset. But despite all of this, I love Sirius anyway. In a lot of ways, Sirius reminds me of my father, who I also love a lot despite his many flaws. Sirius lacks empathy for those different from him, but he’s also the only member of his immediate family who rejected the idea of pureblood superiority and fought in the Order of the Phoenix against Voldemort. Sirius was a bully and even as an adult could be incredibly petty and mean-spirited, but he also was the first person in Harry’s life who really felt like family to him -- who he could write to for help when he was sad, afraid, or insecure. Sirius was a hot-tempered, rash person who rarely thought through the consequences of his actions, but he also would’ve done absolutely anything to protect the people he loved. He without question loved James, Lily, and Harry more than his own life. Despite being raised in a cold, hate-filled, prejudiced, unaffectionate, abusive home, Sirius understood unconditional love, and he understood his godson in a way no one else could, not just because he was such close friends with the parents he’d lost at such a young age, but because he’d lived Harry’s experience as a neglected, unloved child himself.

And now we come to the often maligned James Potter. Honestly, this guy gets such a bad rap in the fandom, almost exclusively based on Snape’s memories, and I don’t think it’s really fair. Snape is really the only person who has a sour image of James, and even if we disregard the testimonials of fellow Marauders like Sirius and Remus, people like McGonagall, Dumbledore, Mad-Eye Moody, and even Cornelius Fudge had nothing but nice things to say about James, and those people don’t have reason to speak well of James at Snape’s expense. And of course, even Snape’s perceptions are bound to have their own slant to them. Pensieve memories are just that: memories. A Pensieve is not a pocket dimension that perfectly recreates the past, hence why Slughorn was able to badly modify his memory, Hokey the house elf’s memories were tampered with by Riddle, and even in Snape’s own memory, we follow Snape throughout the memory and we’re only able to hear what the Marauders are saying because he was close by. And if we judge James solely based on his no-doubt worst moment in Snape’s Worst Memory, we’re bound to get an incomplete picture -- just as we did for Hagrid, after seeing Tom Riddle’s memory of him confronting Hagrid for supposedly opening the Chamber of Secrets. Would we judge Harry solely for Malfoy’s recollection of the Sectumsempra incident, or Hermione solely for Marietta’s recollection of the time Hermione hexed her face to read “SNEAK” across it? Of course not. James was a bully and what he did in Snape’s Worst Memory was no doubt horrible -- but this is also a young man who without hesitation gave Sirius a home after he ran away from his terrible family, who supported Remus financially when he couldn’t find work, and who selflessly put himself between Voldemort and his family just to give them a chance to escape, even though he didn’t even have his wand on him. I would frankly love to learn more about James and see more of the arc he must’ve gone through as a character for someone like Lily to have fallen in love with him and for people like Remus and Sirius to feel such strong platonic love for him themselves, if a Marauders-centric property was ever created.

Who was the bravest character in Harry Potter and why?

Oh gosh...hm...that is a real challenge. There are a lot of very brave characters! Harry, Ron, Hermione, Remus, Sirius, McGonagall, Hagrid, Dobby, Cedric...but I think I’m going to nominate Neville. While Hogwarts was taken over by Snape and the Carrows and the students were no doubt being brainwashed a la the Hitler Youth to regurgitate blood-purist talking points rather than learning anything that could defend themselves against the Dark Arts or that was even remotely true about Muggles, Neville decided to face that undeniable hopelessness -- worsened all the more by the students’ lack of independence and freedom while being housed in the castle’s walls without their families and the threat of losing both their families and all hope for a future constantly dangled over their heads -- head-on and reform Dumbledore’s Army with Ginny and Luna to stand against it. Then, even as his group’s members got picked off one by one and were forced to hide in the Room of Requirement, he stuck to his guns and kept resisting because he knew -- as a Pureblood -- he was in a position he could use to fight for others and wasn’t afraid to stand up for those who couldn’t stand up for themselves and others. It was only when his grandmother was forced to flee and the Carrows realized that Neville was too much of a threat to keep in check that he went into hiding himself. Then, when everyone thought Harry was dead and many others would’ve despaired, Neville fearlessly and fiercely stuck both by Harry, his parents’ memory, and his own convictions and refused Voldemort’s offer to join him, even keeping his head enough after getting burned by the flaming Sorting Hat to fulfill his promise to Harry and kill Nagini. And this was the kid who people said shouldn’t have been Sorted into Gryffindor at all, in his first year! What a beautiful transformation.

Favourite Death Eater?

*cringes* Mmm...well, character-wise, I’d say I’ve always found Lucius a very compelling character, in the books. The Malfoy family in general struck me as interesting anti-villains, since they are indisputably unpleasant, prejudiced, awful people, but their one silver lining to me is how deeply and sincerely they love each other. That aspect is really lost in movie!Lucius, since the films try to portray him much more two-dimensionally bad and that interpretation has since colored the fandom’s view of Lucius as an abusive father when there is NO textual evidence of that in the books. And I kind of find it a shame, because as much as I adore Jason Isaacs in his role, it did serve to make Lucius a bit less complex and interesting in the films than he was in the books. Admittedly as well I have a bit more of a soft spot for Lucius after taking on the challenge of writing the guy and his family a redemption arc in my way-too-long AU fic Harry Potter and the Lack of Lamb Sauce. XD

HP Ask!

#hp ask #opinion #ooc #lucius malfoy #sirius black #remus lupin #james potter #peter pettigrew #neville longbottom

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under-the-lake · 4 years ago

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‘I enjoyed the [DA] meetings, too. It was like having friends.’ - Luna, Friendship and Loyalty: Why She is NOT a Manic Pixie Dream Girl

This quote from Half-Blood Prince, Chapter Seven, is one of the blunt yet calm and non-judging statements Luna can come up with occasionally, and that usually startle people because of their accuracy and/or bold honesty. While Luna can be very Berkeleyan in her conception of reality, her friendship once given seems to be given forever. Contrary to many characters in the Harry Potter series, she’s loyal to people before being loyal to her House. Luna has also been deemed to meet the requirements for being a Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG). I beg to disagree with that statement. Maybe she ticks some of the boxes, but many of her traits and actions stand in opposition to that. So I’ll also explore that side of her here. These two short paragraphs already showcase Luna as ambiguous. Exciting, right?

Loyalty, Friendship, Empathy and MPDG

I’ve been asking people around me what they thought of Luna. Many put her loyalty, friendship and empathy forward. First it might be useful to define those terms. I know we all have some idea of what they are, but I was thinking of a more academic point of view (still wondering why Louhi was not sorted in Ravenclaw). I’ll try and make it short (I can hear you snort…).

Loyalty

Loyalty has been a theme running throughout the series from the very first chapter. Mr Dursley’s loyalty to the family principle of not mentioning the Potters is tested a few pages into the first book (Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter One). Dumbledore’s loyalty to the Potters is shown straight in as well (PS, Chapter One). I mean why would the headmaster bother bringing a baby to their foster parents himself if there was not a good reason? Harry’s loyalty to the Dursleys is settled rapidly as well, and further into the book (PS, Chapter Two), Hagrid’s loyalty to Dumbledore is stated by the gamekeeper very soon after he meets Harry (PS, Chapter Four). Loyalty as a virtue is associated with Gryffindor House by the Sorting Hat in each of its three songs (PS Chapter Seven; Goblet of Fire, Chapter Twelve; Order of the Phoenix, Chapter Eleven). It is therefore associated straightaway with the hero of the story, and by default, and tacitly, slyness and unreliability are associated with the ‘enemy’ that are Slytherins. None of these traits is mentioned in so many words, but Gryffindors are the ‘brave at heart’ whilst Slytherins ‘use any means to achieve their ends’ (PS, Chapter Seven) and that doesn’t change throughout the books.. Luna is a Ravenclaw. So what then?

What is loyalty? I mean we all have a sense of what it is, of course. Supporting our friends, our family, fly high the values we share with a society, support them whatever the circumstances, swearing allegiance to a master or an institution (sometimes even to social constructs). Loyalty is a virtue, albeit, as many point out, a complicated one, because it puts the person in front of hard choices, for instance telling their friends the truth or being bold, or honest, or doing things that they wouldn’t normally do, or acting against their own inclination. Some say loyalty is only a feeling because it’s always grounded in some sort of attachment for a person/institution/society. There’s no denying that loyalty cannot be affectless, but it doesn’t follow that the feeling is a positive one. You can be loyal out of fear, for instance. Take Wormtail. Of course one can question the very use of the term ‘loyalty’ in his case, but it ticks most of the boxes. What are the boxes, then? After reading the ‘loyalty’ entry of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Kleinig, 2017), I decided to make the boxes as follows: a) there needs to be some strong form of attachment that can go as far as devotion via professional commitment (like for a lawyer), b) this attachment makes the person want to secure (or at least not to jeopardize) the well-being/interests of the person/object/concept they are loyal to, c) this attachment makes the person put their interest and well-being after those of the object of loyalty, and d) there might be an interest for group survival (either genetic or other). That last one is one of the boxes that relate to family relationships, friendships, house loyalty etc…

The question is, how does Luna relate to loyalty? I reckon she’s one of the most loyal characters in the whole Harry Potter series, because she doesn’t question the concept. Her friendship, therefore her loyalty, once given, is given forever. Whilst she can be very Berkeleyan in many ways, Luna is full black or white when it comes to friends.

Friendship

Aristotle (him again) devoted a big part of his thinking to what friendship might be. Peoples (or some people among the peoples) have been discussing the topic of love and friendship as something fundamentally human (I don’t think I agree with that, but that’s not the point here). Ancient Greeks and Romans put friendship above romantic love in their scale of feelings (and I must say I do agree with that): it’s philia, friendship-love (Deavel & Deavel, 2010). That’s why there’s such a canyon of difference between the words ‘pal’ or ‘mate’, and ‘friend’. It has to do with the level of intimacy you share with the person (mentally and/or physically), but also with how much you embrace that person with all their qualities and faults, not trying to change them for your or their sake, but also being able to tell them truths in their face that nobody else would dare utter without fear of losing them.

If we go back to Aristotle, he defined three types of friendship (which, for him, is a kind of virtue, meaning people must constantly work on it): friendship for use, for pleasure, or complete friendship (Aristotle, in Mogg & Tully, 2012). It is easy to understand the first: the person whom the ‘friendship’ is bestowed on is only a means towards an end. For instance, take Peter Pettigrew. He never loved his three Marauder companions, but he used them to get protection. In the second type of ‘friendship’, the person who bestows his ‘friendship’ on someone wants to derive something pleasant out of it, still not considering the feelings of the other. That could be, for instance, the kind of relationship Romilda Vane would like to have with Harry, or again Pettigrew and the Marauders. A complete friendship means that the person desires positive things for their friend, for their sake and not their own. It’s valuing the friend for themselves, and not as a tool. Usually, in analysis of the Harry Potter series, only the friendship between Harry, Ron and Hermione is viewed in this light (Mogg & Tully, 2012). That might be because it indeed develops over seven years, involves living together not only in the comfort of Hogwarts or the Burrow, but in a tent (granted, with all comforts as well), on the run, on a mission, not really knowing where they are going. As Mogg & Tully put it, the evolution of friendship in Harry, Ron and Hermione goes from being a working group of complementary units to sharing and learning from each other and supporting each other’s psychological development.

Yet, I question this exclusivity in the sense that Luna’s character makes her a good candidate for that kind of friendship. She might not tick each box, but I’ll explore the concept, as well as try and state that Luna is NOT a MPDG among other reasons because of her take on friendship and loyalty. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe not. That’s the excitement of research, isn’t it?

Empathy

Empathy is a fashionable word nowadays, so it tends to be used to convey many things. However, primarily, it means the ability one person has to feel ‘in the stead’ of another, to step into their shoes and feel ‘with’ them. It is a central concept to the building of human societies, because it allows people to create bonds with one another. Empathy can lead to altruistic motivation, meaning that one who feels empathy towards others might want to help them. In the Sandford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stueber (2019) says that according to one of the philosophers who currently studies empathy, Batson, the predominant trait of empaths is selfishness (sic), that the altruistic bit of empathy is not the most common, and what determines if a person will help another or not depends on how strong they are personally, and what the cost of helping the other would be. To be truly altruistic, moreover (and quite obviously), the helping behaviour must not be directed towards a personal goal. That’s sort of logical, given the name is ‘altruistic’, but again, there are different forms of help. Other researchers (Ciladini et al., in Stueber, 2019) state that when in extreme conditions, this altruistic behaviour stems from a sense of oneness between the actors, the emergency or extremity of the situation leading them to behave as one body, therefore saving limbs rather than individuals. Empathy could go that far.

Of course I chose to mention those bits of the article because they serve my purpose, my question being Luna and empathy. I guess one could write books about all those three topics, but what is given here will be enough to shed some light on Luna.

A Manic Pixie Dream Girl?

For those who are into sociology and pop culture, the term is familiar. For those who are not, it requires a definition. The phrase was coined in 2007 by Nathan Rabin (in Nilson, 2020) but this type of characters actually were always there in pop culture in various forms. However, Rabin said that since this character was growing more and more common in films, it might be useful to coin a concept, and so he did: a Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) is a female character whose only role in the plot is to guide a soulful young male character towards embracing life and its mysteries. My inner feminism starts at such a phrase and all sorts of arguments come to mind to destroy it. After all, I am Louhi, The Witch Of Pohjola. However, it is true that MPDG characters exist and must be taken into account. Now the question is, what defines a MPDG?

A MPDG is a character who, at first, seems to have none. She stands out of the crowd, and represents something mythical or otherworldly at first, for the males around. That makes the MPDG attractive, along with some sort of dreaminess. Among the other ‘symptoms’ of the MPDG (Pasola, 2014) are innocent bluntness, lack of self-consciousness, and a propensity to desert conversations she doesn’t find interesting. There is even a ‘test’ (Bechdell-Wallace test) to assess MPDG-ness in a female character, and it consists of three statements: 1) the plot must contain at least two women, 2) who talk to each other and 3) discuss something else than men. This test has apparently been widely used to analyse films and culture (quick google scholar search… didn’t have time to read) since its appearance in 2005. Bechdell says that if a female character fails that test then she can be deemed a MPDG. I think it is a bit too straightforward.

Appearances… can be misleading. Therefore, while Luna fails the test (Pasola, 2014), there’s more to see than meets the eye, and Luna is worth the analysis. So, my stance is that Luna is NOT a MPDG, however much she looks the character at first sight.

Luna: what about her, then?

Luna is sort of vapoury, has a mythical or mystical je-ne-sais-quoi about her, conveyed by her waist-long blonde hair, protuberant eyes that give her ‘a permanently surprised look’ (OoP, Chapter Ten), and her rather peculiar choice of jewellery (butterbeer-cork necklace or radish-earrings). In the films, this effect is carried on further by Evanna Lynch’s voice, which gives Luna an ethereal quality. Therefore she physically sort of fits the MPDG trope. Moreover, according to literature, as said before, she fails the Bechdell test.

BUT. I don’t agree Luna is anywhere near a MPDG.

Let’s start with the definition of a MPDG. According to it, Luna should be a sort of muse to a man and guide him to embrace life and its mysteries. Well. Er… aha. There’s already a problem here. Because Luna guides nobody to embrace life and its mysteries. She sometimes says things that are just plain true and takes a rather original stance when it comes to relationships with others. She doesn’t guide anyone. She never seeks people to help them or offer any kind of advice. If she happens to be there at a moment when she can say something that seems relevant to her, then she’d do it. That’s not guiding. It’s a chance meeting. At least that’s how I see them. You could argue that she guides Harry. Why yes, but the bias is that we see the whole story from Harry’s point of view, so there’s no way we can be sure Luna doesn’t give the odd piece of her mind to anybody outside Harry’s presence. She doesn’t act like a muse either. Harry doesn’t daydream about her, his thoughts don’t get back to Luna every now and then. He basically doesn’t give a damn about her, at least at first, and if he occasionally does, it’s either by chance or for lack of a better option, like when he invites her to Slughorn’s Christmas party, or when he has no choice but to take her along to the Ministry. After that last adventure, though, his attitude towards Luna changes, she has grown on him, but in no respect is she a muse to him. He’s too much entangled with his love life, his loyalty to his parents, the Order and Dumbledore, and his need to save the world every now and then, to care much about others. To add to this, nowhere in papers analysing MPDGs do the words friendship, empathy and loyalty appear to describe the characters. And Luna can feel all three, and shows them throughout her appearances in the Potter saga.

Luna is empathetic, though in her own way. She can sense how others feel and offer comfort, yet it’s not the usual kind. ‘You’re just as sane as I am’ (OoP, Chapter Ten) is not exactly comforting at first to Harry, when he thinks he’s being mental, seeing the Hogwarts carriages being pulled by winged skeletal horses. He has just seen how unusual Luna is, reading the Quibbler upside down and believing the cock-and-bull stories her father prints about Fudge’s army of Heliopaths. However, at the end of the same book, they discuss Sirius’ and Luna’s mum’s deaths, and ‘as [Harry] watched her go, he found that the terrible weight in his stomach seemed to have lessened slightly’ (OoP, Chapter Thirty-Eight); Luna sort of comforts Harry in spite of herself with her optimism, and she couldn’t do that without being empathetic. In Deathly Hallows Luna is the one person who keeps Ollivander alive while both are imprisoned in the cellar at Malfoy Manor, as he acknowledges to her on leaving Shell Cottage: ‘I’m going to miss you, Mr Ollivander’, said Luna, approaching the old man. ‘And I you, my dear,’ said Ollivander, patting her on the shoulder. ‘You were an inexpressible comfort to me in that terrible place.’

Luna doesn’t seem to ‘need’ friends. As in, she’s not actively looking for friends. She probably has a whole world in her head that fills her. That doesn’t mean she’s not happy having some friends, as the mural in her bedroom at home is proof enough of. When she acknowledges friends, then she’s loyal to them. Had she not been so, she wouldn’t have stood alongside her dad and advocated Harry’s interview to be printed in the Quibbler. She wouldn’t have fought with Neville in the renewed Dumbledore’s Army in Deathly Hallows. She wouldn’t have stood to the Malfoys while being held captive. In return of her loyalty, one of the next offspring in the Potter family is called Lily Luna. I think we can reasonably say, along Aristotle in Mogg & Tully (2012), that when Luna bestows her friendship on someone, it is a complete one. She doesn’t want to change people, doesn’t want to use them, just wants the best for them, whatever the cost for her.

Luna doesn’t question her feelings. What she gives, she does fully. To the Trio, Neville, Ginny, and also Ollivander and Dobby. That leads her to not talk about her friendships, and therefore, maybe, people to think that she doesn’t have any. However, she expresses them in sometimes odd ways verbally, like when she agrees to go ‘as friends’ to Sulghorn’s Party with Harry (HBP, Chapter Fifteen), and sometimes in hidden ways, like in that ceiling painting she did in her room back home, and that the trio discovers when visiting Xenophilius during their hunt for clues about the Hallows (DH, Chapter Twenty-One).

Luna doesn’t forgive. She doesn’t need to. She’s so detached that it sounds like she’s not hurt by people being mean to her. A fine example of this is the finale of OoP, when Harry meets her on his non-way to the End-of-Year Feast, and Luna is looking for her possessions (OoP, Chapter Thirty-Eight). She doesn’t hold a grudge towards her fellow Ravenclaws for being mean to her. Therefore, she doesn’t need to forgive either.

Some people have suggested Luna could have autistic traits (Belcher & Stevenson, 2011; Guha, 2020). There are indeed traits that could lead into that direction, and the web is full of people discussing that possibility. However, Rowling has denied that (it’s all over the web, but I cannot get my hands on the place I read that bit of interview…). Luna is just… Luna, the moon girl, whose name is maybe only the moon, or, as Le Callet (2018) suggests, a tribute to an Assyrian satirist from the 2nd century AD, Lucian of Samosata, who wrote A True Story, a fantastic tale about creatures like tree-women, or Selenites living on the moon and grilling frogs (moonfrogs, ring a bell?), breathing the vapour that wafts from them. He was also a known critic of the belief in the paranormal and of religious superstitions. Then part of him stands in opposition to Luna’s: she does believe in weird stuff, has odd superstitions (Nargle infested mistletoe and all that), which she eventually has to give up (like Crumple-Horned Snorckacks). Luna’s name might also be a tribute to Cyrano de Bergerac, the French 17th century author of Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon which is a classic in the field of early French science-fiction (see illustration below, by Henriot, 1900, Cyrano in front of the Moon). After all, Rowling is learnt in French and French literature, so we cannot rule this hypothesis out. In this book, Cyrano travels to the Moon using rockets powered by firecrackers… The inhabitants of the Moon are four-legged creatures who have talking earrings which are used to teach children.

All in all, all well considered, there is not much to back up the idea of Luna being a MPDG, and I am quite relieved to see that my small researches and musings have led me to that conclusion. You could say I am biased, wanting my conclusions to fit my hypothesis. Who wouldn’t? However, it is reassuring to find that one’s mind goes not astray, somehow. I find, after all this thinking, that we can learn a huge lot from Luna, even if she appears only sporadically in the story: human values that make people strong in a moral sense: resilience, trust, loyalty, friendship, self-confidence.

Now this has been done, I want to delve further into Luna’s character by exploring the job of Magical Naturalist (that appeals to me a lot, being a biologist myself, with specialisations in botany, zoology and ecology), as well as exploring her relation to Death, comparing it to how the other characters embrace it (or not). But these are completely different stories.

Thanks to Little My, Purple, Andromeda, Kikimora, Dawn, and Thetis, for sharing their opinion of Luna with me.

Sources:

https://www.wizardingworld.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/the-original-forty

https://www.wizardingworld.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/thestrals

http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2007/0730-bloomsbury-chat.html

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/the-resiliency-of-luna-lovegood

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian

Belcher, C. L., & Stephenson, B. H. (2011). Entering the Forbidden Forest: Teaching Fiction and Fantasy in Urban Special Education. In Teaching Harry Potter. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. 121-142.

Chaillan, M. (2016). Harry Potter et Berkeley. In Harry Potter à l’école des philosophes, Philosophie Magazine, Hors série n°31, novembre - décembre 2016. 70-71.

Granger, J. & Bassham, G. (2016). Just in Your Head? J.K. Rowling on Separating Reality from Illusion. In Bassham, G. (2016, Eds.). The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy, Hogwarts for Muggles. Wiley Eds. 185-197

Guha, S. (2020). Luna Lovegood or Loony Lovegood? - Reading Luna Lovegood as a victim of Asperger’s Syndrome. In P Barry, N Pederson, L Kang (2020, Eds.) Proceedings of the Two-Day Conference: Questioning Attitudes and Labels: Mental Health Versus Madness, St. Mira’s College for Girls, Pune, 45-48.

Kleinig, J. (2017), “Loyalty”, in Zalta, E. N. (2017, Ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/loyalty/

Le Callet, B. (2018), Le Monde Antique de Harry Potter, Stock, Paris.

Pasola, K. (2014). The Integrity of Luna Lovegood: How JK Rowling Subverts the ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl’ Trope. In Martín Alegre, S. (2014, Ed.). Charming and Bewitching: Considering the Harry Potter Series. 153-161.

Mogg, J., & Tully, K. (2012). Harry gets by with a little help from his friends: An Aristotelian reading of virtue and friendship in harry Potter. Reasons Papers, 34(1), 77-88.

Nadal, C. (2014). Magical Science: Luna Lovegood’s Beliefs, Discoveries and Truth. In Martín Alegre, S., Arms, C., Blasco Solís, L., Calvo Zafra, L., Campos, R., Canals Sánchez, M., … & García Jordà, L. (2014). Charming and bewitching: considering the Harry Potter series. 148-153.

Nilson, M. (2020). A Magic Manic Pixie Dream Girl?: Luna Lovegood and the Concept of Postfeminism. In Jarazo-Alvarez, R. & Alderete-Diez, P. (2020, Eds.). Cultural Politics in Harry Potter: Life, Death and the Politics of Fear. 32-41. Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.

Rowling, J. K. (1997). Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Bloomsbury, London.

Rowling, J. K. (2000). Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Bloomsbury, London.

Rowling, J. K. (2003). Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Bloomsbury, London.

Rowling, J. K. (2005). Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Bloomsbury, London.

Rowling, J. K. (2007). Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Bloomsbury, London.

Rowling, J. K. (2007). The Tales of Beedle the Bard, Bloomsbury, London.

Scamander, N. (2001; 2018; [1927][J.K. Rowling]). Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Bloomsbury, London, in association with Obscurus Books, 18a Diagon Alley, London.

Stueber, K. (2019) Empathy, in Zalta, E.N. (2019, Ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2019/entries/empathy/

#Louhi #Luna #LunaLovegood #J.K. Rowling #Philosophy #Sociology #HarryPotter #Aristotle #Empathy #Friendship #Loyalty #MPDG

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peripetual · 5 years ago

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the order of the phoenix is just, so good?? i will never understand people who hate it for being “too long” because it is Packed Full of fantastic content.

it is absolutely the best HP book, for three primary reasons:

for the sake of everyone who never asked for this (read: everyone) i’ve put it all under the cut ;)

1. CHARACTER WORK. you get new characters like Luna, some amazing development for old characters like Neville, Ginny, Fred & George, and even side characters like Dean and Seamus. Hatred-inducing though she is, Umbridge is one of the most compelling villains in the series. McGonagall is as iconic as ever, Snape starts becoming *slightly* less one-dimensional. A healthy dose of moral ambiguity for the Marauders, which is perfect considering that Harry is at just the right age where people tend to start seeing the flaws in the adults around them. Even better? For the first time we get to meet adults who aren’t just Harry’s teachers. Tonks, Kingsley, (the real) Mad-Eye, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley in the context of them being members of a secret society instead of just Ron’s parents. Which leads me to-

2. WORLD EXPANSION. We started getting a little bit of it in GoF with the Quidditch World Cup and the introduction of Durmstrang and Beauxbatons, but OotP takes us into the actual world of Wizarding adults and answers so many of our questions as to how their world actually works. We explore the Ministry and St. Mungo’s, we learn about all the different careers that Hogwarts students can pursue, we learn more about the first war and the people who fought on both sides of it. Other tidbits of magical history like the introduction of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black just add to the goodness.

3. COMPLEXITY. The themes of these books steadily increase in complexity throughout the series, and OotP is no exception. It’s still founded primarily on notions of friendship and resistance and courage, but it’s not so clear-cut anymore. Harry’s friends follow him into a trap, and they make that oh-so-realistic teenager mistake where the adults failed to give them all of the relevant information, and instead of blindly trusting their instructions the kids thought that they knew better and plunged headfirst into a situation that ended in someone they care about dying. They resist Umbridge’s grip on Hogwarts, and this manages to both be as hilarious as ever and genuinely unsettling. There is a crisis of authority; until now, Hogwarts was a haven of safety under Dumbledore’s protection, but now they’re not just fighting Dark wizards on the horizon, they’re fighting to survive in their own school. Umbridge (and Fudge) may not be practitioners of the Dark Arts, but their ignorance and political power are just as dangerous. A third side emerges in the conflict; like Sirius says, the world isn’t divided into good people and Death Eaters. And these people, buoyed by corruption and fear, pose a much more real threat to the Order and any hope they have of defeating Voldemort. Moreover, this is a threat that we as an audience can connect with far more than we can with the threat of Death Eaters. And finally: the courage of these six teenagers isn’t enough anymore. The war has very much begun, and it’s clear that they’re in over their heads. This isn’t just Ron versus a wizarding chess set, or Hermione cleverly solving a logical potion puzzle. It’s not even Harry defeating an evil serpent with a magical sword. This is Neville facing down the escaped convict who tortured his parents into insanity, who then brutally defeats her Auror niece in a duel and turns right around to murder her own cousin, laughing all the while. While GoF detailed Voldemort’s rise back to power, he still didn’t pose much of a tangible threat. He may have murdered Cedric, but it was a single incident, and in the graveyard when it is just him and Harry he still felt like a single threat to be apprehended. In OotP, we see the full scope of the havoc he will wreak: devoted, sadistic, and highly skilled Death Eaters like Bellatrix, connections in the Ministry to twist the government to his will, complex and in-depth plans that prove his intelligence and all-consuming dedication. The revelation of the prophecy at the end of the book seals the deal; it takes everything that has happened up to this point, contextualizes it, and sets up HBP to continue along these themes of raising the stakes and examining Voldemort’s own schemes and motivation.

I absolutely adore HBP as well, and while I read OotP I can only marvel at all the ways in which it set up the former for success. HBP deepens these themes and further explores these characters and this world.

I’ll admit there are points where the book suffers from its length. The situation with Hagrid and Grawp is highly skippable, and the whole ordeal with Cho is, frankly, draining. Angsty Harry can be grating at times, even though we know it‘s a side effect of the ever-increasing control Voldemort has over him and the lingering psychological effects of GoF. But with the rest of its 860 pages, OotP manages to raise the stakes in this world while fleshing it out more clearly than ever, making us love the characters more deeply while creating new ones as well. More importantly, perhaps, it manages to do all of these things while remaining as funny and delightful as ever, making it the perfect balance between the more lighthearted action of the first four books and the frightening and weighty drama of the last two.

#harry potter #hp #order of the phoenix #ootp #sorry about this #let's just say i'm going through a bit of a phase #hermione granger #ron weasley #minerva mcgonagall #nymphadora tonks #remus lupin #sirius black #bellatrix lestrange #goblet of fire #hp analysis #neville longbottom #dolores umbridge #you get the idea

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whumpster-fire · 5 years ago

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Harry Potter and the False Double Standards

You know, I hate to get involved in Fandom Discourse or anything, but I’m getting really sick of reading people’s takes bashing Harry, Ron, and Hermione because of various actions throughout the series, and the latest is someone claiming the fandom is judging poor little Draco unfairly and calling him evil because he didn’t like Harry Potter when the trio were actually just as bad.

Okay, I’m legitimately pissed about this one because of how ridiculously far off the mark it is. Let’s tally their main sketchy actions throughout the series, shall we? Long wall of text ahead. In this essay I will

Harry and co, year 1: Assorted sneaking out at night, mostly looking for information or to try to stop a mass murderer from returning to life. One count of dragon-smuggling… for the purpose of putting that dragon in the hands of a professional dragon-tamer who was equipped to care for it properly. Hermione lit a teacher’s robes on fire… during a Quidditch Match where Harry’s life was in imminent danger due to a broom that was very obviously being jinxed and said teacher, who had a history of abusive conduct towards Harry, was very obviously doing some sort of magic targeted at Harry. Hermione also hexed Neville, which is way more questionable, but again the trio had a reasonable belief that Snape, who at the time they still had good reason to believe tried to murder Harry, was trying to bring another person who had tried to murder Harry and successfully murdered his parents and many many other innocent people, from returning to life. I’m putting the blame for this squarely on the entire Hogwarts staff, especially Dumbledore, for never communicating with the three 11–12 year old children, who had already been put in a life-or-death emergency just two months into term (troll incident), at ALL about someone trying to murder Harry. Snape’s role in the order had to be kept secret, I know, but Dumbledore literally just let Harry and his friends believe that a person in a position of supposed trust and authority had tried to murder him and that no one was going to believe him or do anything to protect him.

Draco, year 1: Tries to befriend Harry, is told to fuck off because he can’t go five minutes without being a classist asshole. Proceeds to be a complete asshole to… it sounds like pretty much every Gryffindor in his year, special mention to bullying other students for poverty (Ron) and possibly having a learning disability (Neville).

Harry and co, year 2: Harry and Ron start the term with the admittedly extremely stupid and irresponsible theft of a car. There was kind of a precedent set when said car had to be used to literally break Harry out of his abusive relatives’ home because he was being imprisoned and nearly starved. Next comes the big incident everyone loves to rag on the trio, especially Hermione, for: stealing potions supplies and tricking a “teacher” (airquotes because it’s Lockhart) to make a restricted potion to spy on other students… to investigate a series of racially targeted murder attempts against other students, and a group that Hermione’s part of.

Draco, year 2: Steps up his bullying to throwing around racial slurs. Turns out not to be behind the attacks, but he was cheering them on. When he had a sympathetic audience he was saying he hoped his schoolmates would be murdered.

Harry and Co, year 3: Assorted petty sneaking around, physically attacked a teacher… who was about to kill a potentially innocent person. Used a time travel device in a questionable way to save an innocent person and animal from being killed.

Draco, year 3: Intentionally disobeyed a teacher’s safety instructions, got hurt, milked his injury to try to get the teacher fired because Draco was racist against said teacher.

Harry and Co, year 4: Don’t remember anything particularly irresponsible they did… oh, I guess Hermione imprisoning and sort of blackmailing Rita Skeeter into... stopping slandering her and Harry.

Draco, year 4: Vocally supported the racist hate group attacking a sporting event and assaulting people, vocally hoped for Hermione to be sexually assaulted. Proceeded to spend half the year helping slander Harry and Hermione, tried to suckerpunch him with an unknown spell, and in the immediate aftermath of the return of a mass murder and one of his schoolmates dying, again vocally supported the terrorist group and mocked his fellow student’s death. This was literally the equivalent of a school shooting.

Harry and Co, year 5: Started a secret club to teach students to fight because the DADA “teacher” was literally refusing to do her job, the government was covering up the fact that there was about to be a war and literally torturing Harry and trying to have him assassinated for speaking out. The trio were also at this point semi-inducted into the grown-ups’ secret resistance organization. This cannot be emphasized enough. Marietta Edgecomb wasn’t a normal schoolkid ratting troublemakers out to the teacher situation. Umbridge was dangerous. Hermione should probably have warned people that they’d be hit with a massive fucking curse if they betrayed the DA, and made it a little bit clearer that this wasn’t some fun after-school club and ratting them out to the enemy wouldn’t end well, but fundamentally the curse was a result of Hermione treating a situation that was really on the boundary between a school and a war zone at that point like an actual war, and branding a traitor as a traitor.

Malfoy, year 5: Is somehow made a prefect, proceeds to abuse his power against younger students. Also cozies up to Umbridge, and ramps his classist bullying against Ron WAY up when he makes the Quidditch team.

Harry and Co, year 6: Harry panicked and used an unknown spell marked “for enemies” in self-defense against a death eater who was attempting to use an unforgivable curse on him. Note: Malfoy had already started the year by curbstomping a paralyzed Harry and throwing the invisibility cloak over him so he wouldn’t be found. Malfoy came damn close to murdering him by causing him to choke on his own blood. Harry also knows exactly what the Cruciatus Curse does. I wouldn’t have judged Harry even if he did know what Sectumsempra did.

Malfoy, year 6: Again, Malfoy’s little nosebreaking stunt could EASILY have been fatal. He left someone who was paralyzed and unable to move lying on the ground, bleeding heavily in his fucking airway, and actively hid him from view to prevent him from being seen and receiving medical attention. Harry is expected to have figured out what Sectumsempra does from the Latin, but I guess nobody expects Draco to be aware of, like... Step 1 of first aid for someone who’s unconscious being turning them on their side for this exact reason. Anyway following this, Malfoy has at this point kind of been roped into trying to murder Dumbledore, and in fairness he gets cold feet once he’s actually expected to help commit the Death Eaters’ atrocities instead of just being in the cheerleading squad, and it seems like he might have changed.

Anyway, getting to my point: Is Draco Malfoy a product of his environment? Yes. Is his portrayal somewhat biased because the books are from Harry’s perspective and... no, NOT because Harry hates Draco, because Harry only really pays attention to Draco when he’s being an asshole, which seems to be every single time they actually interact.

But you can’t say he wasn’t a terrible person throughout the events of the series. Maybe he changed afterwards, but there’s not really much shown of it other than him becoming a functional adult and being somewhat civil towards his former enemies. Which I guess isn’t that different from James and Sirius. But even they were... they were total assholes, but again, Malfoy was a racist who was vocally cheering on murder attempts and later an actual murder of his schoolmates. That’s at another fucking level.

And there’s also a MASSIVE difference between their actions. Prior to sixth year, there’s a very clear pattern. Harry, Ron, and Hermione frequently break the rules and do things that are stupid, irresponsible, and occasionally hurt people, while trying to protect themselves, their loved ones, or other innocent people. And while the effects of the traumatic events they’ve been through aren’t always that obvious, I really do think events like that very first Quidditch match had a serious long-term psychological impact: their ability to fully trust adults and authority figures to have their backs or even look out for their physical safety was severely damaged from their very first term at Hogwarts. Malfoy hurt people, intentionally, for his own amusement from the very first term. Not to mention that he was almost always “punching down.” Prior to Sixth Year, pretty much every single person he targeted was based on institutional power dynamics: Ron was poor, Hermione was Muggle-born, Neville was possibly disabled (and it turns out actually insecure due to being abused), and the one person in any position of power over him he really started shit with, Hagrid, was subject to institutional discrimination for being a half-giant and Malfoy used his rich family’s influence against him. Again, as opposed to Harry and Co who most of the time were actively defending themselves or fighting back against their abusers, and the only real power dynamic that you can really say they had working in their favor was Harry and Hermione being scarily good at the kinds of magic that can fuck people up compared to any of their social peers.

But you know what? There is one similarity between them: things only escalated to the level that they did because every single supposedly competent teacher at Hogwarts (i.e. not Snape or every single DADA teacher except Lupin) didn’t do their fucking jobs.

In the trio’s case, by (a) not doing jackshit about Snape’s behavior, and (b) keeping the kids in the dark and not even bothering to come up with a plausible cover story for them and just letting them think a teacher had tried to murder Harry and nobody was doing a single goddamn thing about it. Harry. The kid who already had serious issues with trusting authority figures because of the horrific emotional abuse he was subjected to since infancy which the multiple Order members in Hogwarts Staff had also been completely negligent about. And, y’know, Hermione, who was nearly killed by a troll her first year and saved not by a teacher but by her fellow first-years, then nearly killed by a basilisk her second year after several months of the staff failing to figure out the string of hate crimes against muggle-borns like her, and only surviving because she, the second-year starting from a massive disadvantage in terms of general cultural knowledge of things in the wizarding world, was the only one who did the research and figured out what the monster was, and only survived because she came up with looking around every goddamn corner with a mirror. And Ron, whose sister was possessed, kidnapped, and nearly killed, and the only adult who was supposedly “helping” him and Harry tried to put him into a vegetative state and only failed because of Ron’s shitty broken wand (which had been causing problems all year and the same staff that bought Harry a top-of-the-line broomstick last year spent the entire term doing absolutely nothing about the fact that one of their students was failing due to having to use a wand that was literally taped back together). How the fuck was it surprising to anyone when these teenagers continued to take matters into their own hands in increasingly dangerous ways?

In Malfoy’s case, because his bullshit should’ve been nipped in the bud way, WAY earlier. He should not have had the opportunity to do any of the shit he did in Year 6 because he should have been expelled long before that instead of the teachers letting him bully and abuse other students and basically do the equivalent of having a Hitler poster in his dormitory for five years.

#not whump #fandom discourse #rant #Harry Potter #Hogwarts teachers are all incompetent #wizarding culture is toxic

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headcanonsandmore · 6 years ago

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Hello. Hope you're having a good day 😀. Do you write fanfics or have any fanfic recs? I'm dying for some good HP fics that treat Ron with the respect he deserves.

Hello! Yes, I am; hope you are too!

Yes, I do write fanfiction! I have a Fanfiction.net account, and an AO3 account.

Ron x Hermione fanfiction;

April Fool by A is for Amy. Six year one-shot The other Gryffindors conspire to trick Ron and Hermione into admitting their feelings for one another. Rated K.

Mental by Penny in the sky. Gryffindor celebrates its Quidditch Cup victory. But while Harry’s not there to ponder the influence of dimly lit rooms and Butterbeer, Ron and Hermione are. And they experience this influence first-hand. Set during ‘Half Blood-Prince’. Rated T.

Kiss of the Fire by Star.Flash.17. Romione one-shot set in the summer before book 7. Rated T.

The Last Summer by HurricaneRosie. Hermione struggles to control her feelings for Ron in the summer before the seventh book. Rated K+.

The For and Against List by Pinky Brown. Hermione tries to talk herself out of liking a particular boy (no prizes for guessing which one) the way teenage girls have been doing since time immemorial: she makes a For & Against List. Rated T.

In this Firelight by Oppugnorhr12. A missing moment from book 7 about how Ron and Hermione ended up falling asleep holding hands. Rated K.

Eye Flirting by RonaldandMione. Ginny convinces Hermione to try something to get Ron’s attention during their stay in Grimmauld Place before fifth year. K+.

Not Just Handsome by HPLives. Hermione gets confused over her feelings for Ron after she overhears the other Gryffindor girls rating their male classmates by attractiveness. Rated T.

Seven Simple Years by HalfaSlug. A collection of Romione missing moments from all seven books. Rated K+.

Chapstick by TMBlue. Hermione intervenes with chapstick when she notices how chapped Ron’s lips are. Set at the start of sixth year. Rated K+.

Kiss the Girl by Weasleyismyking540. Romione AU confession. Rated K+.

Freckles, Cats and Candy by OrangeLovePerson. Ron and Hermione visit Hogsmeade in third year. Rated K+.

The Love In His Eyes by LovingNerdLife. Over the years, Ron Weasley has developed the habit of staring at Hermione Granger while she reads. While doing so, he reflects on how it came to be, without being aware that someone has noticed what he’s doing. Rated K+.

Late Night Snack by AloeMilk. Whilst staying at the Burrow after the second war ended, Ron goes to get food during the night, and finds Hermione in the kitchen. Adorableness ensues. Rated K+.

Seven simple years by Half A Slug. A collection of Romione missing moments from throughout the book series. Several of the chapters are from Ron’s perspective. Rated K+.

“Of Hearts and Heroes” by Emmilyne. Canon-divergent Romione fic that has the two teenagers grower closer in the summer between fifth and sixth year. Treats Ron with more respect than most fanfiction written in the 2000s did. It subverts a lot of the tropes about the character that were common-place at the time (for example, Ron’s apparent “dumbness” being a clever ruse used by him to get out of tough situations). Rated M, but (if you’re like me) you can easily skip over the saucy bits and not miss any plot threads.

@diva-gonzo‘s The Ron Weasley Chronicles, which is Ron centric but also not focused on his relationship with Hermione but as related to his work as an Auror, with Harry and other Aurors.

Tangled, by @burgundydahlia. A plot to bring down one of the Wizarding world’s prominent business leaders brings two friends back together after years of separation. But will their reunion be bittersweet? And what will happen when they realise nothing is as it seems? It’s not completed just yet.

Not as a last resort (parts 1 and 2) by Arabella. An AU Romione fanfic about Ron and Hermione having to spent the night inside Hagrid’s cabin due to a snowstorm, and having to share a bed (one of my favourite fluff tropes), as well as discussing the upcoming 2nd Yule Ball. Not rated, but I’d give it a K+ to a mild T.

@hillnerd‘s “The Wonderful Won-Won”. Being a teenager is difficult at best- but throw in a dose of flirtations, insecurity and snogs- well that makes it even worse. Ron is torn about his emotions regarding Hermione. For now he throws himself into Lavender. Starts off with that pairing, but is firmly Romione. Rated M, but several of the chapters are ace-safe (and I do believe Hilly made a version of the series that is completely ace safe throughout, so I’d suggest asking them as well).

Ron x Harry fanfiction;

‘Engaged’ by I’mdeadsothere. All around Harry everyone is getting engaged, leaving Harry to wonder if he’ll ever have the same honour. Especially when the one person he truly loves, well, it’s complicated. Rated T. Contains strong language.

‘Beds’ by I’mdeadsothere. Now that the war is over Harry treats himself by buying a nice big fluffy bed. Only it’s too nice, too fluffy, and WAY too big. Ron has the perfect solution, but it’ll change a lot more than just how Harry feels about his bed. Rated T. Contains strong language.

“Harry Potter And The World That Went Bloody Insane” by The Slice. “I know something you don’t know” is, apparently, the essence of Harry Potter’s love life. Harry’s certain that the world has been reading one too many romance novels, but then, Harry’s always been a bit oblivious. Featuring Protective!Attentive!Caring!Ron and Oblivious!Harry in their stinky flat and everyone shipping Harry/Ron. It’s awesome.

(Harry x Ron) + (Ron x Hermione) fanfiction;

(WARNING- FLAGRANT SELF-PROMOTION) There’s also my own ‘Having trouble sleeping?’, which is about Ron being the crush of both Hermione and Harry. It doesn’t have Ron choosing one person over the other, but focuses more on why Ron is so loveable. Rated T.

Ron x Luna fanfiction;

‘Energy’ by RoseyAshes. Ron has a certain energy about him that Luna can’t help but pick up. Ron/Luna one shot, all fluff! Allusions to explicit scenes.

‘Buns in the oven’ by KateKintail. Some Ron/Luna domestic fluff.

Other pairings that have Ron as a side character;

(WARNING- FLAGRANT SELF-PROMOTION) A Bond Between Us by Headcanonsandmore. Ginny Weasley is struggling to control her growing crush on Luna Lovegood. However, after a charm goes wrong in class, the two of them are joined together for a day. Will Ginny be able to keep her feelings for her friend in check? Find out in this adorably fluffy fic, full of blushes, bashful looks and hand-holding. (Romione as a side pairing, rated T just in case)

Ron x Neville fanfiction;

There for You AU after OotP. For his own safety, Neville has to spend part of his summer at Grimmauld Place with the Weasleys. In Harry’s absence, Neville and Ron start to form a friendship…

Hope you like these, anon! Thank you for the ask!

#ask #anon #fanfic recs #fanfiction recommendations #romione #ronmione #romione fanfiction #romione fanfic #harry potter fanfiction #ronarry #harron #rarry #runa #luron #linny #ronville #nevron #ronnev

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tessimagines · 6 years ago

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After All This (Bill Weasley x Reader) - Part One

Pairing: Bill Weasley x Moody!Reader

Summary: (Y/N) Moody and Bill Weasley are counting down the days until their wedding, but before it can happen, they must take the risk of attack and help the Order of the Pheonix in the transportation of Harry Potter.

You can find the series masterlist in my bio!

Warning: Angst, fighting, death, grief and swearing... a lot of swearing.

Wordcount: 3k

A/N: Ahhhhhh! The first chapter! I’m so excited about this series. Please let me know what you think of it! Also, for the scene where Moody is going over the plan, some lines I took from the book & movie but most of it I just wrote myself.

July 27th, 1997

“This is it then,” Bill Weasley said, his hand sitting snuggly on your hip as you looked towards the ordinary house of 4 Privet Drive. The cool breeze in Little Whining was rustling Bill’s long, ginger hair as you looked up at him, his face sternly set on the mission you both had at hand.

You wrapped your grey trenchcoat tighter around your body, trying to keep the breeze from making you too cold. Bill was now tending to the large Thestral that had delivered you both to this small town. It had been an uncomfortable trip, the boney and hard frame of the thestral had made sure of that. But it wasn’t the trip here that you were worried about, it was the trip back. So much planning had gone into this one mission, and now, so many people were putting their life on the line. All you could hope was that it all went smoothly, with Harry Potter and every other Order member delivered to the Burrow all in one piece.

“Are you nervous?” You asked your boyfriend of ten years, his tall and slim body coming to stand next to yours again.

“Of course I am,” he said, giving you a quick kiss on your forehead, his arm hung loosely around your shoulder. “But we make a good team, so as long as we’ve got each other's backs, we’ll be fine.”

You smiled up at him and took his hand before making your way over to Harry’s house together, the rest of the Order heading the same way. Hagrid’s stomps could be heard throughout the street as he trudged along beside you, flashing you one of his large and warm smiles. “Ah, (Y/N), and Bill. It’s nice ta see you two ‘ere. I see that you two are attached to the hip. It’s not long now ta the Weddin’ day, is it?”

“Not long at all,” Bill smiled, looking down at you. “Five day’s and we’ll be married.”

You laughed, “Don’t speak too soon, Weasley. I still have five more days to change my mind.”

“I don’t think ‘ere was a person at Hogwarts who didn’t see the two of you comin’,” Hagrid laughed as he thundered along. “You’ve always been so close, I’m surprised that the two of you aren’t already married.”

“Quit the chatter!” Roared an all-too-familiar voice from the doorway of number 4 Privet Drive. Your father, Alastor Moody stood there, his wooden staff held tightly in his fist. “We don’t have much time.”

“Oh, calm down, Dad,” you nudged him as you walked past. “We were just talking about the wedding.”

“You can talk about that stuff later, (Y/N). There’s a more important task at hand.” His electric blue eye zapped to each of your faces as you walked past him and into the hallway of The Dursley’s house. It was impeccably clean, nothing compared to any family home you had ever stepped foot in. You saw Harry in the corner, watching as members of the Order entered his house and shook his hand. You couldn’t help but throw your arms around him when you reached him.

“Harry.” You said, stepping back and allowing Bill to shake his hand. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“Yeah, It’s nice to see you two as well.” You gave him a refreshing smile before entering the main room, already full to the brim with members of the Order. The room was full of noise as people discussed aspects of the plan as well as new developments in their personal life. You watched as Tonks flashed the gleaming silver band on her hand to Harry before your father stomped his way to the front of the room, Bill’s hand naturally slipping into your own. It was something that the two of you had grown so used to over time that sometimes it was hard to notice that his hand was even there.

“Alright, alright, enough of the cozy-catch up!” Moody growled, “Let’s get right into the plan.”

The room grew silent as Moody began to talk. “Potter, you’re underage which means you’ve still got the trace on you.”

“What’s the trace?” Harry inquired, his eyes remaining on Moody.

“If you sneezed the ministry would know who wiped your nose. But the point is, we need to use means of transport that the ministry can’t detect, brooms, Thestrals, the like. We’ll go in pairs, that way if anyone’s out there waiting for us and I reckon there will be, they won’t know which Harry Potter is the real one.”

“The real one?” You could already tell that Harry was beginning to dislike the plan, it was plain and simple in his voice.

“Polyjuice potion,” Moody said, pulling out his flask from his dark brown overcoat. “I believe you’re familiar with it.”

“No!” Harry shouted, looking around at the numerous people in the room. “I’m not letting you guys do this. It’s way too dangerous.”

“Everyone here is overage, Potter. They’ve all agreed to do it even with the risks.”

“Well, actually, Moody,” said, Mundungus Fletcher stepping forward from his place at the back of the room. His voice was high and irritating, causing you to roll your eyes at the very sound of it. “Not everyone.”

“Nip it, Mundungus!” Mad-eye roared, he took his eyes off the small man and moved them back to a pale looking Harry standing in the centre of the room. “Right, now some of your hair, Potter.”

Harry gave a sigh as he reluctantly stepped forward, pulling a bit of his hair out and adding it to the flask. It began to fizz immediately, bubbles appearing up near the top of the flask. “Now, I want all the Potters in a line,” spoke your father in his professional, imperious voice.

You looked up and flashed a smile at Bill before giving him a wink and going to stand at the end of the line next to Hermione. It didn’t take long before Bill decided that he was going to stand behind you anyway. No matter where you were, that always seemed to happen.

“And for those of you who have never taken Polyjuice potion before, beware, it tastes like Goblin piss.”

“Had much experience with that before, Moody?” Fred asked before taking a sip from the flask. You watched his face wrinkle with disgust before he passed the bottle to George. Moody followed the trail of the flask down the line before he came to stand in front of you.

“Be careful out there, (Y/N). I’d say that there are likely to be a few death eaters waiting for us.” You watched as your father’s normally stern face softened as he looked at yours. “Do your best to get to Muriel’s place all in one piece.”

“You don’t need to worry about me, Dad,” you smiled at him, stepping forward to wrap your arms tightly around him. “Plus, I have Bill with me. We’ll be fine. I’m more worried about you, you’ll have that rat with you.” Your eyes flicked over to the Harry Potter now dressed in Mundungus Fletcher’s clothes.

Moody’s arms wrapped around your body, his scared and large hand resting on the back of your head. It was a comfort to hold his only child in his arms before you both put your lives on the line. When he let go he turned to the tall and ginger-haired man standing behind you.

“Now, you keep her safe, Weasley,” Moody said, his face back to its usual stern expression. “You’re her protector which means that you protect her throughout the trip. I don’t care what happens, you get her there quick and safe.”

“You’ve got my word, Moody,” Bill said, giving his soon-to-be father-in-law a nod. “I’ll get her to Aunt Muriel’s as safe as I can.”

“Good.” Was all your father said before he passed you the Polyjuice flask.

“Right, then.” You said, looking up at Bill before down to your father. “Bottoms up, I suppose.”

As soon as the Polyjuice potion hit your tongue, you felt yourself gag. It wasn’t the first time you had tasted it, but it's not a taste that any person can get used to. You felt your face wrinkle up and your eyes begin to water as you passed the flask back to your dad.

You felt the change begin to happen immediately, each feature morphing into a body that looked completely different to your own. It was a weird feeling to describe, not painful, but it wasn’t entirely comfortable either. All you could do was wait until it was over and you looked like a flawless copy of the boy this whole mission was about.

“Okay, now that that’s done,” Moody said, thrusting a sack full of clothes on the ground in front of the numerous Harry Potters that all stood in a line. “You will all need to change.”

Nobody dared to muck around. Each person had stripped down in a second and was changing into identical sets of clothes. Harry looked around at each person, his eyes begging them to at least give him and all the replicas of his bare body some privacy.

“Right, now I shouldn’t have to say this but if anything is to happen to anyone, you fly on. I don’t care if someone dies, you keep flying on until you get to your set destination. We need as many people as we can get in this war. Have I made myself clear?”

Moody took the lack of protest as a yes.

“Good. Now, Fred, you’ll go with your father and George, you’ll go with Remus. Ron, you go with Tonks, Hermione with Kingsley and Harry, you’ll go with Hagrid on his motorbike. Bill, you’ll take my daughter and Mundungus, you’ll be with me. Now everyone to their places.”

Nobody dared to disobey. Each person quickly made their way out the door and to their set transportation, all muttering goodbyes to each other as they passed. You couldn’t help but smile at Tonks as she gave you a wink over her shoulder before she boarded her broom with Ron.

Your father nodded at you from his own broom as he watched you mount the Thestral, your arms going to wrap tightly around Bill’s waist in front of you. Moody’s expression eased when he saw you flash him a warm smile and turn to give one last look at the man you had your arms around. If he had to put the safety of his daughter's life in one person's hands, it would be Bill Weasley. He knew that he cared for you beyond anything, and that was all he needed to know that you would make it out safe and alive.

“I love you, Bill.” You muttered. It had become a ritual to say it before anything nowadays.

“I love you too.” He said, turning his neck to give you one last look before you set off into the sky.

“Good luck, everyone,” shouted Moody. “See you all at The Burrow. One… two… three!”

The Thestral flew immediately up off the ground and made its way toward the clouds. With each foot you rose into the air, you felt the wind whip through your hair and ruffle your clothes. You kept a tight hold on Bill’s waist as you continued to ascend into the already dark and gloomy sky.

As soon as you broke through the clouds, it was apparent that something was wrong. The sky was no longer a solid black, the green light of lethal curses had lit up the entire sky as dozens of death eaters now swarmed every Order member in sight.

In an instant, your wand was in your hand, pointing at whatever death eaters came close. You kept one arm tightly wrapped around Bill’s waist, the only thing that wasn’t keeping you from plummeting to the now invisible town of Little Whining below.

“Hold tight, (Y/N)!” Bill shouted, the only way to be heard over the staggering noise. “Merlin, they’re everywhere!”

“Just keep going!” You shouted as you managed to deflect a curse shot from Antonin Dolohov.

“Expulso!” You cried, watching as the expulsion curse hit Dolohov in the chest, it’s bright blue light sending him flying through the air and out of sight.

You caught a glimpse of Tonks and Ron just ahead of you, both of them firing spells at Bellatrix Lestrange in front of them. Over in the distance, Kingsley was shooting spells with his usual sharp precision, Hermione doing the same thing beside him. Wherever you looked you saw Death Eaters and Order members battling it out, sending spells and curses back and forth.

You saw Corban Yaxley fly past you, his wand outstretched and pointed directly at Bill in front of you. You felt your instincts kick in as you met his curse, disarming his wand from his hand. Bill did his best to fly on amidst the numerous swarming Death Eaters and the emerald green curses that lit up the sky.

As soon as you saw him, you felt your body freeze over, each and every drop of blood quickly turning to ice in your veins. It was Lord Voldemort, his black cloak swirled around him like thick and impenetrable smoke. His skin was a ghostly white colour, every vein appearing as a deep purple so close to the surface.

You watched him as she glided so quickly after your father on his broom. Moody knew this was going to happen. They were all bound to think that the real Harry would be riding with one of the best Aurors that had ever lived. Your father turned around quickly when he sensed the danger behind him, causing Mundungus Fletcher to turn his head.

As soon as Mundungus saw him, he apparated into thin air, leaving your father to gain back control of the broom. You watched as Voldemort raised his wand, and without any hesitation said the curse that he was most famous for.

“Avada Kedavra!” A blinding green light erupted from Lord Voldemort’s wand, striking your father directly in the chest. He stumbled on his broom when it hit him, his eyes looking up to find his only daughter in the chaos of the battle. As soon as his eyes met yours one last, final time, he slipped off his broom and began to hurtle down towards the town of Little Whining below.

“Dad! Dad!” The scream scathed your throat as it came out, adding to the already ear-piercing sound of the battle. “We have to save him! Bill!”

“We can’t! You know what he told us!” Bill shouted back. “To keep flying no matter what!”

You were casting spells without notice now, your hand doing the work your mind was too scattered to process. All you could see was your father’s still form before he fell from his broom and down into the darkness below.

“Bill! I can’t just do nothing!” You screamed. If there were tears on your face at that moment, you weren’t able to feel them. “Fucking turn around now!”

“I can’t, (Y/N)!” Bill shouted over the chaos of the battle. “He told me to keep you safe no matter what so that’s what I’m going to fucking do!”

The battle was still raging on around you, each and every order member doing their best to stay on their brooms and Thestrals. Your mind was struggling to process what was going on as you blocked yet another spell shot your way from Rookwood. Bill kept his promise to your father and did the only thing he had known since he had realised he loved you. There was no way that the world was going to lose two Moodys that night.

“Bill…” You couldn’t help but cry as he broke through the clouds and away from the battle.

“Merlin’s fucking beard, Bill! Just take me back now!” Your cries rang out around the empty field of the burrow as you apparated with a loud crack.

“(Y/N),” Bill said, doing his best to remain calm for you. He stepped forward, his arms outstretched as your voice became more hoarse with every scream.

“I need to find him! Do you think I’m just going to leave him there?” Each word was amplified in the quiet field as you shoved Bill’s outstretched arms away. Your heart was thumping rapidly in your chest, the image of what you had just seen on an unstoppable loop in your head.

“We will, (Y/N). When it’s safe.” Bill was doing his best to be gentle, to stop the shouting and screams that were coming from your throat, but nothing he said was able to stop it.

“I don’t care if it’s fucking safe, Bill!” Your screams had caught the attention of the people inside now, all their heads turning to look at what was going on through the windows. “I don’t care! I just need to find him now!”

Arthur, Remus and Kingsley began to make their way out of the burrow, their minds already grasping the reason for your screams. Bill looked over to them, his face panicked and sullen.

As soon as your knees hit the grass beneath them, Bill was beside you, wrapping his arms around your body and bringing you to his chest. He felt the cries rip through your body, each and every one causing a sickness to bloom in his stomach. The crying was uncontrollable as Arthur, Remus and Kingsley came to a stop in front of the two of you on the ground.

“What happened?” Arthur said, looking at Bill’s blanched face as he held you so tightly against himself. He looked like he was going to be sick.

“Moody’s dead.”

His voice cracked as he managed to get the words out. All he could do was hold onto you as you cried against him, each cry causing tremors to ripple through your delicate body in his hands.

He only hoped that the next cry wouldn’t be the one to shatter you into a million, tiny pieces.

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harrypotterfirsttime · 5 years ago

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Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: Movie

Once again prefacing that I am commenting as I watch, so comments might be all over the place. Spoilers ahead.

Scenes with Aunt Marge are even more dramatic than in the book and we jump into them faster, so at least your attention is grabbed faster. Harry’s also hit puberty, he’s doing a better job of holding his emotions in while still having understandable outbursts. Daniel Radcliffe seems to have a slightly altered personality for Harry than the book has, and I still prefer movie Harry.

The street scene after Harry leaves the Dursleys where he sees Sirius as a dog for the first time is done very differently, but both in the movie and the book it seems a little out of place and random, guess they both did the best they could. Loading the Knight Bus is iconic, the bus they chose is phenominal. Ernie doesn’t talk and there’s a shrunken head that’s not in the book, but it adds to the oddness of everything.

Odd that the movie chose a hunchback to collect Harry at the Leaky Cauldron, I don’t think it was like that in the book. Cornelius Fudge wears significantly less eccentric robes and hats in the movie, and I think that’s for the best, the aesthetic of the movie wouldn’t suit it with his book wardrobe.

Weird that in the movie Fudge got Harry’s books for him instead of Harry getting them himself in Diagon Alley, and the Monster Book of Monsters wasn’t a gift from Hagrid at home, instead was just among his school books at the Leaky Cauldron. Small changes that aren’t super significant to the plot, but wew fun when the book had the extra time to give us context like that.

The plot moves extraordinarily fast in the movie, but I only know that because I know how much theoretically happened between all these things. Hermione and Ron have matured like Harry in terms of looks, they all look significantly older. Hermione’s already got Crookshanks and the cat is already tormenting Scabbers.

In the movie Arthur Weasley tells Harry directly why Sirius is out of Azkaban instead of overhearing him and Molly talk about it. Makes sense to cut some time out.

The hands of the dementors are just as grey and creepy and scaly as the book describes. Somehow the scene in the movie feels like it lasts longer than reading the passage in the book, which is really really poor, and specifically why reading this part was so underwhelming.

Ah the first appearance of singing in the movies. At least it’s not as cringy as in the book. And the new Dumbledore makes me sad, but at least he fits the look.

Professor Trelawney’s classroom is much larger than described in the book, but she’s just as strange and eccentric as expected, and the teacups are stacked in the background just as precariously. Her reaction to the grim in Harry’s teacup was more dramatic but more believable honestly.

The movie had Hermione randomly appear instead of disappear to show the time turner’s effects. It was just as weird if not more and very effective.

The location where they meet Buckbeak is very different than described in the book, but much better. And I like that there’s only one instead of multiple. Buckbeak also takes Harry on a longer flight than in the book, probably for all the beautiful shots of Hogwarts we get from it, so I don’t mind at all. Draco’s just as dramatic as in the book, and it’s just as pathetic.

We jump pretty quickly into the Defence Against the Dark Arts class with Lupin, which is done differently than the book, but just as much if not more effective. This is the first time we actually see them doing some practical studies. Alan Rickman having to wear the ridiculous outfit as a Boggart was amazing. I was right that Harry gets a turn with the Boggart in the movie but didn’t in the book, and when Lupin jumps in front of him we get to see it turn into a full moon.

McGonagall is strict but sympathetic, which is very similar to the book, but I think Maggie Smith adds a bit more understanding and sympathy even within her strictness that makes her so easy to love. We jump to Harry hanging out with Lupin while everyone is at Hogsmeade. The scenes seem disjointed, but because it’s a movie it gets away with it.

After finding the Fat Lady and her revealing that Sirius Black was in the castle, the castle being “secured” wasn’t something done in the book. We jump to everyone sleeping in the Great Hall that looks much smaller without the tables. Dumbledore and Snape have a really similar conversation to the one they had in the book.

Snape teaching the Defence Against the Dark Arts class is eerie, and shows that he has the potential to be a good professor for the subject but obviously isn’t because he’s chosen to specifically teach a lesson hoping that people will figure out Lupin is one. The note sent to him in class is silly and shouldn’t have been included.

The Quidditch weather is terrible, like described in the book, but we don’t get to meet Cedric (it doesn’t even look like the correct actor). Harry wears goggles instead of glasses that look ridiculous, it was nice seeing Hermione charm them, but we definitely didn’t have the time. Harry seems to fly just into the sky, much higher than he should.

We jump straight from the hospital wing to Harry with Lupin again. The movie gets away with it because movies do that, but this movie is moving faster than the book even with leaving so many things out which is wild. At least we get to see Lupin often.

The Weasley twins giving Harry the map was really cute and almost exactly like the book, but left out some of the extra dialogue about the passages that aren’t useable. I forget how they get to the Shrieking Shack without the passage under the Whomping Willow.

Hermione and Ron starting to have some romantic tension, first with Buckbeak, and now when talking about going to the Shrieking Shack. Harry in his invisibility cloak tormenting Malfoy was funny, but his head didn’t show, so that wipes out that meeting with Snape, even though it was pretty useless anyways.

They completely changed the scene where Harry overhears converastion about him in the Three Broomsticks. Instead of already being there with Ron and Hermione, he sneaks in with his cloak and Ron and Hermione are forced to stay outside. Harry doesn’t stay to hear everything and learns much less than he did in the book. I definitely preferred the book scene to the movie scene for this part.

Lupin teaching Harry to cast the Patronus Charm is really nice, and I like that in the movie they include Harry telling Lupin what he thought his happy memory was, and instead deciding to use one he’s not sure is real. He casts a successful Patronus with Lupin, which he doesn’t do in the book. I do like that in the book it’s more realistic in that he takes a lot longer to practice and get it.

The movie didn’t seem to include any of the time Harry and Ron stopped talking to Hermione. It does have that Crookshanks was accused of eating Scabbers, but other than that, it just jumps straight to Buckbeak being sentenced to death, which we know from the movie is when they made up. Harry still hasn’t received his Firebolt though.

I like that Harry spots Peter Pettigrew on the Marauder’s Map in the movie, something that definitely didn’t happen in the book. It’s a better way for him to get caught by Snape with the map. Better than him being caught coming back from Hogsmeade. Lots of scenes have been rearranged in the movie, and it actually works out really well this way. I think the times when this was happening were the chapters I was very frustrated with and felt weren’t going anywhere, and the movie fixed that by making it seem much more relevant.

Harry telling Lupin that he saw Peter Pettigrew is really funny, watching how confused Lupin gets.

Hermione punching Draco will always be an iconic scene.

Hagrid found Scabbers in his hut instead of Hermione, and I like that the stones being thrown were added to have them notice that people were coming down to the hut. Gives Harry and Hermione something else to do later.

So Ron is taken by the dog and dragged under the Whomping Willow like in the book, but instead of having a knot that turns the tree into marble, they have to fight their way into the passage. Maybe I don’t mind the marble, because being able to fight through it seems unlikely.

The actor for Sirius is very good, and the scene where Lupin and Sirius hugged was just as much a shock as the book. Hermione revealing he’s a werewolf is just as surprising too, but gets a bit lost in the chaos. Sirius’ iconic like of waiting 12 years in Azkaban is perfectly done and I’m shocked it wasn’t from the book. Snape showing up not in an invisibility cloak is nice, makes more sense, but he comes early and we don’t learn nearly as much as in the book.

The actor for Peter looks extremely rat like. He also only goes for Harry to convince him to not be killed. It feels so much more rushed without the long explanation, and we don’t learn why Peter was the one who caused the problems instead of Sirius 12 years ago. Peter tries to convince Ron and Hermione when they’ve gotten back to the Whomping Willow, which for some reason is just not attacking them.

The line “have you taken your potion tonight” makes sense to me now, but doesn’t without any other context that was given in the book. Snape actually protecting the three from Lupin as a werewolf is the kind of redeeming moment Snape needs, small moments throughout the series that show that he’s not just mean and evil to be that way. Unfortunate that the movie didn’t have these moments.

Harry alone runs after Sirius and Lupin, trying to protect Sirius. I forgot that someone howls to distract Lupin and pry him away from Harry so Harry can keep going after Sirius towards the lake where they run into dementors, alone, without Hermione, who was there with him in the book. Harry manages to cast a weak Patronus, but with so many dementors it’s just not enough.

The weird thing that looks like Sirius having his soul sucked out via a small glowing orb leaving his mouth was odd, instead of having a dementor actually kiss him. Then Harry sees the stag across the lake, the very strong Patronus, and the orb returns to Sirius’ mouth. Definitely different from the book, but not a bad rendition.

We don’t know from the movie what a dementor’s kiss is, so the line is meaningless to us. Dumbledore still comes and visits and believes them, and gives Hermione the cryptic instructions, along with an additional “retracing my steps seems to be a good place to start”. Interesting that going back in time takes them to 7:30pm, meanwhile in the book they go back 3 hours from 11:55, so it should be 8:55.

I feel like even though it was hinted in the movie, there wasn’t enough to make us wonder how Hermione is getting around. There likely wasn’t enough time, but the last movie was significantly longer than this one, I’m sure they could have included a few scenes.

Dumbledore somehow being aware of the fact that he needs to distract them to give them more time is amazing, and I’m glad that was carried over from the book. In this movie at least, Dumbledore’s actor has matched his book self very well. The addition of so many crows seems unnecessary.

In the movie a spell is what keeps the Whomping Willow from attacking Lupin when he follows them, I didn’t pick up on that the first time.

Buckbeak protecting Harry and Hermione from werewolf Lupin is a nice touch to show that Buckbeak has formed a bond with them. That’s made much clearer in the book than in the movie.

This time, when Harry’s down by the lake, he’s with Hermione, instead of her and Buckbeak being in Hagrid’s hut. Instead Harry has to make the realization that it wasn’t his father but instead him with Hermione there, which is strange but probably done so we can get some dialogue to help us figure it out. It jumps pretty suddenly to them riding Buckbeak through the night to rescue Sirius.

Dumbledore pretending to not know what Harry and Hermione are talking about is pretty funny, so are the few lines they exchange with Ron. I’m SO glad the movie cut out Snape wanting some award and blaming everything on Sirius, that tarnished his character in the book so much and was so frustrating.

Harry finally got his Firebolt, and had no note come with it except a feather from Buckbeak to show it’s from Sirius.

The ending of this movie is just TERRIBLE. What an odd scene to end it on.

Overall I think I liked bits of the movie more than the book and bits of the book more than the movie. If I had to pick just one, for the first time I would probably pick the book. I always remember this movie confusing me most when I watched it as a child because there was so much context left out that my mother had to fill in for me.

I think in my comments I highlighted the parts of the movie that I liked more than the book version, and if those parts were changed in the book, I probably would have enjoyed it much more. But the deep background that the book gives is definitely worth the boring parts. I really hope the next book is another improvement, though I’ve always loved the Goblet of Fire movie.

#harry potter #harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban #the prisoner of azkaban #harry potter book three #harry potter book 3 #book three #harry potter book one #movie

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dumbledore-and-grindelwald · 6 years ago

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'I loved you too Dumbledore.' 'I know.'

As one of Dumbledore's biggest fans out there I 've thought of his character and of his relationships a lot... and as a Grindeldore shipper I love the idea of Grindelwald being the love of Dumbledore's life and in a way, on a romantic and sexual level and in terms of partnership, he was. That said, from my point of view Dumbledore's REAL love-story in the HP series is between him and Harry.

We've seen different kinds of relationships when it comes to Dumbledore.

He loved Grindelwald as a partner in every sense of the word, but Grindelwald was unable to return that love in the same way and to allow it to be the light in his darkness and the sanity to his madness. And even if, as I've speculated, Grindelwald surrendered during the legendary duel and came to some realizations of his own, their timing was off.

He loved Aberforth, Ariana and Kendra (a familial kind of love) but Aberforth distanced himself after Ariana's death and the already existing cracks in their relationship were enhanced while the two women of his life died early and he was left alone and broken.

He loved Minerva and Hagrid and he did see them as friendsi n his way, but while both of them knew aspects of who he was (Minerva more so than Hagrid), neither had experienced Dumbledore's darkest parts. The ones that he was ashamed of and that defined his actions throughout his life.

And then there was Dumbledore's love for Harry. The love that snuck up on him; the one that he had not intended to feel. The kind of love that a father feels for his son, which he tried to deny...

DUMBLEDORE: Harry, don’t you think I wanted to fight him on your behalf? I would have spared you if

I could —

HARRY: “Love blinds us”? Do you even know what that means? Do you even know how bad that advice

was? My son is — my son is fighting battles for us just as I had to for you. And I have proved as bad a father to him as you were to me. Leaving him in places he felt unloved — growing in him resentments he’ll take years to understand —

DUMBLEDORE: If you’re referring to Privet Drive, then —

HARRY: Years — years I spent there alone, without knowing what I was, or why I was there, without knowing that anybody cared!

DUMBLEDORE: I — did not wish to become attached to you —

HARRY: Protecting yourself, even then!

DUMBLEDORE: No. I was protecting you. I did not want to hurt you . . .

DUMBLEDORE attempts to reach out of the portrait — but he can’t. He begins to cry but tries to hide it. But I had to meet you in the end . . . eleven years old, and you were so brave. So good. You walked uncomplainingly along the path that had been laid at your feet. Of course I loved you . . . and I knew that it would happen all over again . . . that where I loved, I would cause irreparable damage. I am no fit person to love . . . I have never loved without causing harm.

Dumbledore did everything he could to ensure Harry's survival but he also tried to timid his love because to his experience love tended to cloud his judgment and he ended up hurting and destroying the people he love. He tried to keep his distance and to be a mentor more than a parental figure; a failed fit because of Harry being starved for love, for being treated with respect by the adults who were responsible for him and of his appreciation of Dumbledore as a man worthy to look up to.

However, Dumbledore was wrong. This distance, this net of protection that he tried to keep in place was exactly what ended up hurting Harry and affecting him even as an adult:

HARRY: You would have hurt me less if you had told me this then.

DUMBLEDORE (openly weeping now): I was blind. That is what love does. I couldn’t see that you needed to hear that this closed-up, tricky, dangerous old man . . . loved you.

A pause. The two men are overcome with emotion.

HARRY: It isn’t true that I never complained.

DUMBLEDORE: Harry, there is never a perfect answer in this messy, emotional world. Perfection is beyond the reach of humankind, beyond the reach of magic. In every shining moment of happiness is that drop of poison: the knowledge that pain will come again. Be honest to those you love, show your pain. To suffer is as human as to breathe.

HARRY: You said that to me once before.

DUMBLEDORE: It is all I have to offer you tonight.

He begins to walk away.

HARRY: Don’t go!

DUMBLEDORE: Those that we love never truly leave us, Harry. There are things that death cannot touch. Paint . . . and memory . . . and love.

Dumbledore's last lesson is the thing that he did not manage to deal with his entire life: That pain, imperfection and one's mistakes were something to be dealt with rather than to be hidden from the world. Things that could be understood and overcome through the forgiveness that comes with love.

And ironically, this last lesson was taught to him by Harry himself; by Harry who saw his darkness, who saw the way that Dumbledore hurt him in and despite his bitterness and his trauma did not stop loving and trusting him. Harry who questioned him but never lost faith in him. Harry who carried him with him even when he was gone from the world.

HARRY: I loved you too, Dumbledore.

DUMBLEDORE: I know.

This line has been criticized by many as Dumbledore being smug. This is not the case though. Dumbledore has already expressed his love for Harry in this scene. What we have here is Dumbledore getting closure, or rather the reader/audience getting closure in terms of Dumbledore's story. Through the last fragment that represents Dumbledore in the living world we get the sense that, finally, Dumbledore knows that he is loved; flaws and all. Not just that he knows; but that he has been told so... that he lives on through Harry's unconditional love.

The immortality that this love provides him with is not by any means the character's absolution, but it is definitely his catharsis.

#Albus Dumbledore #Harry James Potter #harry potter #cursed child #hpcc #hp meta

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ashleyfanfic · 6 years ago

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Redemption arcs and Jonerys

So, I’ve had a few comments on my recent Tormund story that got me to thinking and I wanted to share this with you guys. I’ve had a few people ask me “how can you possibly put Jon and Dany together after he tries to kill her?” And I guess my answer for this comes from my shipping past.

Some of you may know by now that I was/am a Dramione shipper (Draco Malfoy/Hermione Granger - Harry Potter) from starting in like 2002/2003 and I wrote the most recent fic for them in 2017. I don’t actively write for that ship anymore but I do still read stuff from my favorite authors. But I’ve digressed.

So, all those years spent in the Dramione fandom I had to find ways to work around the fact that Draco Malfoy is essentially a bad guy and Hermione Granger is the golden girl. So, let’s look at their pasts. Draco was raised in a wealthy Pureblood family who believe that only Purebloods should be allowed to do magic. He’s a bigot. He’s a bully. He’s basically a shitty human being. Then you have Hermione who champions House Elf rights, helps Hagrid with his case for Buckbeak, is the smartest witch in an age and is the exact thing Draco grew up hating: a Muggleborn. But I shipped them because I saw little sparks of there being something more to Draco than meets the eye. We know Draco became a Death Eater, those who sought out Muggleborns and killed them, but there were so many interactions with Hermione that left you going ‘huh, maybe there’s something there’.

To be a Draco/Hermione fan, I had to find LEGITIMATE ways to work with the source material, which I usually did. I was one of those people who thumped my dog earred, comments in the margins books screaming that it was canon and the movies were someone’s interpretation. It was always about a redemption arc for Draco. Hermione would never be with him how he was, so there were things in the stories where he had to grow. That was always the fun part, exploring the growth.

All that being said, I think it’s why I can find a way for Jon and Dany to still be together. A this point, I’m going to put up the hide content thing cause I’m going to get into the spoilers for the last episode.

So, according to the spoilers, Dany is killed by Jon. She just committed mass genocide, and Jon kills her. While I think what Dany did was reprehensible, having Jon kill Dany is an enormous hurdle to climb in terms of suspension of disbelief. Could she ever forgive him for that? Could he ever get over what she did?

I’m approaching it thinking that there is a redemption arc on both sides. When Dany and co attack King’s Landing, she’s had a rough fucking time lately. The man she loves tells her that not only does he have a better claim to the things she’s worked and suffered for her entire life, but he’s pulling away from her because of the relationship (which makes no sense in a feudal system as aunts and nephews being icky is very much a Western thing). She’s losing her lifeline that she developed to cope with the new world she was living in. She lost a dragon to save his life, she opened herself up to him, fell in love with him, and he pushed her away. She might have been able to tolerate all the other heartbreak if she felt like she truly have one person on her side who still loved and believed in her. The man she wanted to cling to when it seemed like the world was crumbling down upon her. She lost her oldest friend in Jorah, who died in her arms after giving his life to protect her, she lost the intimacy she had with Jon, she lost another dragon (her child) and was helpless to stop it, and she lost her closest friend in the world, Missandei. All of those deaths were traumatic for her to witness. She’s seen trauma, but she had never experienced it to such a degree as she had these last few episodes. She lost her husband and child but walked out of the fire with three dragons. I’m not saying they are a substitute for a live, flesh and blood child, but they did bring her comfort and a purpose, as did the people that stuck with her.

I’ll also say that when she had it confirmed that Sansa told Tyrion about Jon, it confirmed that Jon had done the one thing she had begged him not to do. BEGGED. We’ve seen Dany pretty low in this series. She didn’t beg Khal Drogo not to rape her. She didn’t beg Viserys not to sell her. She didn’t beg in the House of the Undying or to the Dothraki. She was not a person who begged anyone for anything. But she begged the man she loved not to tell this secret that would not only ruin her claim but put her life in danger. He told someone she already recognized as her enemy, that he was naive enough to trust. Sansa didn’t tell Tyrion because she thought Daenerys was unjust. She told Tyrion for the very reasons that Daenerys said, she knew he would spread it without her having to tell anyone else. She knows Varys is plotting against her. She knows Tyrion has at least thought about it. The only other person she has to lean on is Grey Worm and he’s seething in rage and hurt just as she is. So, when Dany starts burning innocent people, it’s not Dany anymore. It’s a shell of Dany. The real Dany made points along the way about preserving the innocent and especially children. It’s easy to say, “Oh she snapped” but maybe she really did snap.

Then we have Jon. She still loves him. Know that he sold her out to Sansa, she still loved him and wanted to be with him. He was still her lifeline. So, now, that the rumor is that Jon kills her, is seized by Grey Worm and forced to take the Black, you also set up a redemption arc for Jon. Because while Daenerys did do something horrible, her death didn’t prevent her from doing it. It’s not like Jaime killing the mad king. This is if Jaime had killed him after the fact. We have Jon betraying Daenerys and killing her. Jon not only becomes a Queenslayer/Kinslayer, but he also becomes an Oathbreaker. That’s the biggest disservice done to Jon Snow besides making him virtually ineffective throughout this season. Jon Snow has proven to be an honorable man. He values that more than just about anything and to have him kill a woman he loves, his family, too, just feels like it goes beyond whatever feels right.

I think that’s the part people are taking issue with. How could Dany ever forgive him for trying to kill her? The truth is she probably shouldn’t. How could she trust that he would never do it again? The truth is she probably shouldn’t. But I think if these two found one another in a different time, in different circumstances, where they had both made mistakes, done things they regretted and hated, then it would change things drastically.

But I got back to a redemption arc. So, let’s assume Dany doesn’t die but lives through it, which if we believe what happens, Drogon takes her body and leaves. She could still be alive. She wouldn’t embrace him with open arms. That’s illogical. And no matter how she might have felt about him, there’s no erasing what he did for the “greater good”. And as for Jon, she’s not the woman he fell in love with. It would take them being isolated again. Jon and Dany always connected better diplomatically and otherwise when they were alone, without the counsel of others. I think that’s where you start. You have to make it realistic. You have to acknowledge what they’ve both done to bring them to that point.

Glossing over Dany's madness doesn't make what she did less terrible or make it not happen. Glossing over Jon killing Daenerys doesn’t make it less terrible or make it not happen. The point, for me at least and how I’m coping with this is how do they get beyond that? Can they? Is there a middle ground to be found? Is there a catalyst that brings them together? Is there something more than what meets the eye? It doesn’t have to end just because D&D lost their fucking minds and forgot who these characters are and their journeys. Instead, embrace what happened and write something compelling. Hell, they might not end up together, but there could be something more. Explore it. Roll around in it. Invest in it.

Now, I realize I’ve rambled but my ultimate point is I am a firm believer in redemption arcs. It’s why I grew to love Theon and Jaime(less Jaime now). People are capable of growing and learning from their mistakes, but these are more than just mistakes for Jon and Dany. They are huge milestones in their lives. Conscious choices each of them made that they will have to live with for the rest of their lives. And personally, I’m exploring that in my Tormund fic from his POV.

Anyway, that’s just my two cents.

#jonerys #jon x dany #jon snow x daenerys targaryen #jon x daenerys #8x06 spoilers #redemption arcs

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hillnerd · 6 years ago

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Why do you think Ron and Hermione fell in love with each other?

I think there are a ton of different reasons. (stole a ton of this from debates I’ve had) THIS IS LOOOONG

1-They enjoy spending time with one another

From the moment they become friends (after the troll incident) they are joined at the hips. Harry goes off on his own a lot (what with Quidditch practice and games, detentions, not allowed to go to hogsmeade, private lessons, dates) and every time he comes back, there are Ron and Hermione still hanging out.

Ron gets on very well with Dean Seamus and Neville. If he didn’t like Hermione, why would he spend all his free time with her? Hermione has made it clear she’d rather have no friends at all than bad ones (otherwise she’d have hung out with SOMEONE when she was on the outs with the boys)- and yet she chooses to spend all her free time with Ron. So we have them choosing to spend their time with one another, whether Harry is there or not.

They are in sync and enjoy one another’s company

The two of them not only spend time with one another, but they see eye to eye on most things. They’re known for squabbling- but as far as actual disagreements go they don’t have that many in the series. The two are a great team who work as a unit to support Harry, Hagrid, defend others, defend each other, and as early as PS/SS even have funny naturally flowing back and forths.

Harry told the other two about Snape’s sudden, sinister desire to be a Quidditch referee.

“Don’t play,” said Hermione at once.

“Say you’re ill,” said Ron.

“Pretend to break your leg,” Hermione suggested.

“Really break your leg,” said Ron.

But they straight up enjoy the company of one another. They are seen laughing throughout the series, ‘having the time of their lives’ in Hogsmeade (just the two of them), hanging out in the library, happily hanging out in the common room.

Ron makes Hermione smile/laugh more than anyone else

Ron is one of the only people in the series that can bring a smile to Hermione’s face- and it’s so important in any relationship, romantic or platonic, that you’re able to do that. Hermione is a rather serious character and rarely laughs. She barely laughs at the twins at all- but Ron? She laughs, smirks, smiles and finds real enjoyment from his wisecracks. He’s the only character able to get in there and help her have some real fun in the series.

2) They have the same values and admire one another

Honesty, loyalty, fighting for what’s right, valuing the same sorts of people, enjoying spending their downtime (When there’s no ‘activity’) the same way, the commitment they each have to helping the ‘little guy’, valuing intellectual stimulation (not just academically, but through wit, analysis, and people watching), shared ideas of what’s important in life, and the ability to tease/take the mickey with one another. They are both down to earth people who value the simple things in life above everything else, and their loved ones mean more to them than anything.

They admire each other’s compassion

In the 7th book in particular we see how Ron’s compassion for the cattermoles makes her look like she might kiss him- and then his compassion for house elves is what makes her actually jump him and snog him right in the middle of a battle.

But the two of them admire one another’s good heart throughout the series. He thinks she the best person he knows (says it so as well). Ron is more frequent in verbally praising Hermione than the opposite- so we have a lot of examples of him praising her character.

Both have equal disdain for artifice, cowardly actions, hypocrisy, and cruelty- They also see eye to eye on just what constitutes each of those traits the majority of the time.

You see throughout the series that Ron admires (and does NOT ONCE SHOW JEALOUSY OF) Hermione’s abilities. He compliments her on them in every single book. Hermione is also pushing Ron to live up to his potential (Which she thinks is large- because- hint hint- IT IS) and gushes over how brilliant he is towards the end of book 7.

3) They enjoy mentally stimulating one another

In the series Hermione is constantly trying to get people the engage with her when she wants to argue, or learn. People are happy to inform her of things, but most people shut her down immediately when she starts arguing. Ron is the only character who consistently will engage with her when she does this. He’s the only person who will go head to head with her when her ideas aren’t sound. When she’s going off about SPEW and is trying to FORCE the elves into freedom against their will by hiding socks/hats she knit, Ron is the only person to engage with her about this and question it.

And she LOVES arguing/discussing things. She does so with so many people throughout the series. She argues at the drop of a hat- To her it’s not arguing though- to her it’s just dicussing/qestioning/getting to the truth of the matter- but it drives most characters away- not Ron.

Hermione also does this for Ron. He’s nowhere near as argumentative as Hermione- but he also loves to sit down and discuss stuff- and frankly he’s been so overlooked for so long- it’s wonderful he’s found Harry and Hermione- two people who readily want his opinion, want his input, and enjoy discussing things with him.

Ron and Hermione are both people who crave mental stimulation- and give it to one another throughout the series. It’s not just about arguing- it’s about engaging with her. Most people won’t listen to her and talk about topics with her because she bulldozes others. He is not bulldozed and will engage. Instead of Hermione speaking into a void, or foisting opinions on an unwilling audience- she has Ron there. He is offering her companionship. She obviously LIKES this companionship- even before their friendship she relentlessly pursued him and Harry to ‘help them’ and ‘correct them.’ She is a willing participant in this- and with Ron finally has an audience for all her thoughts. She seeks him out. At first he did not want HER companionship- but they bonded and he changed his stance.

He’s not just a silent audience- he participates- sometimes he’s agreeing with her. Sometimes he’s debating with her. Sometimes he’s laughing as she gets outraged and stamps her foot. But he’s there with her- Hermione chose Ron and Harry as friends. Her choice speaks very loudly. She could choose to never speak to Ron and only be friends with Harry. When she was icing out Ron in DH for a bit she did just that! But throughout the books she engages with him and visa versa.

4) They are fiercely protective of each other and have a bond/trust there that few could compete with

I mean, this is something througout the series- they are always willing to make sacrifices and help each other out- facing things they might not for anyone else.

Ron is the only person to see to Hermione’s needs most of the time. He is the only one to push in third year to learn why she’s disappearing so often. He is the only one to volunteer to help with Buckbeak’s petition. He is the only one worried about her dating some dude they never met who is legally an adult (yes a lot of it is jealousy- but I’m shocked he was the only one to be like ‘Um, no one else finds this problematic???’)

He’s making sure she eats properly, defending her left and right (got tons of detentions from Snape for all his defense of Hermione, faced his worst fear for her (spiders in the woods with broken wand), slugs with Draco etc) When Hermione is crying over her parents, it’s Ron who immediately is by her side with a handkerchief holding her as she cries (same at Dumbledore’s funeral.) When Hermione is tortured, it’s Ron who carries her body away from their and gets her the medical care she needs (and who offered to take her place before the torture began.) Hermione is able to emotionally lean on him throughout the series and does- and Hermione looks out for Ron in this same way (though not to the same extent.)

When he’s being tortured with ‘Weasley is our King’ she is kissing him to distract him, when he’s hurt by his brothers she is standing up for him and helping him out (Percy’s letters, the twins being mean about his prefect status), they are entwined at Dumbledore’s funeral, and she’s holding him when he mourns Fred.

They intrinsically know how to be there for one another.

5) They are attracted to one another

This we don’t get as much insight on, as the two are so repressed it’s ridiculous- but the two of them obviously are attracted- they’re always vying for the attention of the other- are plagued by jealousy- and Ron even tells Hermione she looks great. The two blush at compliments and just are attracted.

6) They have a passionate reparte they can’t find with anyone else- where they complete the picture for each other

Each bring something different to the table- but they

Hermione offers her intelligence, hardworking nature, and drive

Ron offers cleverness, strategy, companionship, self-sacrificing, and loyal

They both offer honesty, passion, kindness, loving natures and companionship.

The two of them bicker- but we see in the books they are SHOCKED when people see them as ‘fighting’- as seen in OotP and Harry yells at them for fighting and look highly offended at being cut off and chastised like this.

The two of them keep each other honest, and have personalities that make a rumble everywhere they go. People like to think the two of them bring out bad qualities in the other- acting as if Hermione is a quiet sage intellectual who maturely goes about life until Ron comes into the picture. No. Hermione is unsubtle, pushy, abrasive, argues with a lamppost, and condescending. She’s also incredibly smart, passionate, and kind. She’s an emotional train-wreck a lot of the time who doesn’t have much in the way of interpersonal skills- she’s either quiet and kowtowing to authority figures, or pushing at people.

Ron on the other hand is not some chill dude until Hermione comes along. He’s passionate, always ready to throw down, is brash, and calls out anyone on their bullshit within a square mile. He’s also sensitive, loving, and self sacrificing.

The two are lions through and through with everyone- and that includes one another- but they work so well together because they enjoy passionately tearing into subjects, passionately loving one another, and taking on everything from monsters to parenting Harry. :P

Few people could deal with Hermione’s fiery nature- which again seems to be ignored in much analysis. People like to project and think of her as some lofty intellectual who is all cool logic, forgiveness, and objective. No. Hermione has never been that. Read the books and you can see how she is ruled by passion over her intellect.

I think people criticizing Romione a lot see relationships as something that should be all about shared interests, objective discourse, and perhaps some level of attraction. How very ‘Spock’…

They personally read arguments with any emotion/passion/loudness as negative. As a Latina, I gotta say- LOL. My poor poor husband. He comes from a very uptight white family where everyone is quiet and never expresses an emotion much at all. Like that John Mulaney bit- ‘I will keep all my emotions right here [points to chest] and then someday I’ll die.’ So the first time we had a debate and I was loud he was SHOOK. Now he knows- oh, wait, she’s loud all the time- like any time she’s passionate about a topic she’s loud. Ok! It’s like the ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ family. They just loud.

That’s how Ron is (and all his family are!) and that’s how Hermione is.

They genuinely like one another (as shown time and time again how they smile at each other’s actions, value the other’s opinions, admire one another’s actions) love one another (as shown by how VERY much they go to pieces when the other is in danger/hurt, how Ron even said it in the books) and bring out something good in each other.

Ron is coded with female traits, while Hermione is coded with male traits in the series- he’s the emotional caretaker (making tea, feeding people, putting pjs on an injured harry, allying the group with emotional enthusiasm), while Hermione is the brain (helps with exposition, spellwork, gives answers to solutions and riddles.) Together they are the perfect team.

The two of them are awkward humans at times, and they are able to make it work. Hermione is able to look past Ron’s flaws and deeply admire him, while keeping him honest and really bringing out his intellectual side that he’d probably neglect left to his own devices. He is able to look past Hermione’s interpersonal flaws and deeply admires her, is able to make her see other sides to equations she doesn’t think about, and brings out the fun side of Hermione she would DEFINITELY neglect without his presence.

Dating for Ron is hard due a bit to social awkwardness, but it mostly comes down to his insecurity due to his familial upbringing (That was continually reinforced at hogwarts- the message of ‘you’re not good enough,’ ‘you don’t matter.’)

Despite some differences and disagreements, Ron and Hermione understand one another. The respect they have for one another goes very deep (though I think Hermione has some growing to do in this department when it comes to verbal validations.)

You see throughout the series that Ron admires (and does NOT ONCE SHOW JEALOUSY OF) Hermione’s abilities. He compliments her on them in every single book. Hermione is also pushing Ron to live up to his potential (Which she think is large- because- hint hint- IT IS) and gushes over how brilliant he is towards the end of book 7.

Relationships aren’t supposed to be easy, but as far as Romione goes- their relationship IS easy the majority of the time. The upsets they have as teenagers are silly and fun for a plot and overblown, as are most of the interpersonal dramas in a fictional kids adventure book. Objectively, they have so much good and little bad- subjectively- they have passion and love.

Ron is one of the most multifaceted characters in the book. He’s not just passion/emotion/loyalty- he also has an incredible strategic mind, is instinctively brilliant with magic (always picks up on magical stuff the other two don’t like the taboo, or his ‘predictions’ about stuff that always come true, or how he broke gamp’s laws when he made a mushroom.) In some ways Ron is entirely confident in WHO HE IS, and refuses to bend or change for anyone- and in other ways he’s completely insecure and certain that he is hated. He’s brave, but anxious. He can be rude, but he also will fiercely protect. He wears his emotions on his sleeves, but never verbalizes his insecurities. He’s the fun guy- but also the one who will literally let himself get killed so you can survive. Like, Ron is such a great interesting multifaceted character. Just the sort of interesting, provoking individual to never let the ever passionate Hermione get bored with. She could never get bored with someone with so many different modes. She can sit and analyze situations with him for hours, but she can also laugh with him as they explore shops for hours. They are adaptable together.

#romione #Anonymous

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