#hp meta

[velvet4510]

It’s so interesting how everybody - from Narcissa to Snape to Dumbledore to even Voldemort himself - is convinced that Draco CAN’T kill Dumbledore. Yet they’re all wrong; Draco disarms and corners Dumbledore successfully, and if he were a true Death Eater at heart, that would’ve been Dumbledore’s demise. But the truth is that Draco WON’T kill him. He stalls for as long as possible, and then ultimately starts to lower his wand - even though he knows that literally everything dear to him is at stake if he doesn’t do this. Even Draco’s own mother never suspects that he’ll have any personal qualms about killing; her fear is rooted in his lack of skill/experience and her knowledge of Dumbledore’s power. However, in the end, Draco fails to complete his mission because of a strength, not a weakness.

[in-flvx]

You just know hagrid wreaked absolute havoc on the local ecosystem with all the giant invasive predators he adopted and even genetically modified himself just to set them free in the Scottish country side. Like, we only know about the spiders, the one Charlie took away, fluffy, and the blast ended skrewts for sure. Oh. And grawp of course.

Who knows what else he introduced to the grounds of hogwarts. For all we know the giant squid is also one of his babies (30y are enough for the merpeople to build statues of them fighting it. Even 10y are)

[trothplighted]

I think part of the problem at the root of the “straight vs gay” reads of various HP characters (particularly Lupin, though certainly also true for someone like Bill Weasley who was a very popular slashfic staple post-OotP and pre-HBP) is that Joanne is just… utterly terrified to write her male characters expressing any kind of desire for women beyond chaste courtly love hero-worship or the absolute vaguest allusions to sexual arousal

the first is seen especially in Snape’s love for Lily, which Joanne definitely sees as a central brilliant redeeming factor of his personality that changes everything and makes him noble. He is, in many senses, the ultimate Safe Man - below the woman socially, physically less attractive and charismatic than she is, bad at traditional masculine signifiers of gender like sports, ostracized from manhood and picked on/dismissed by other men, totally devoted to the object of his affection, and totally incapable of ever materially impacting her life or touching her or changing her.

(Additionally, I think a significant factor in Snape’s continued complexity is that these character traits - particularly the obsession with one specific Nerd Girl Who Likes Nerd Things - have a remarkably different context in 2025 than they did in 2007. We’ve had over a decade of incel movements and fashy alt-right introverted nerds who were radicalized into violence and disgusting misogyny and racism as a direct result of being unlucky in love in exactly the ways Snape is unlucky in love, and it’s hard for me to blame readers who come away upset with him because real life has shown us way more about how these kinds of men tend to think and act and what they’re motivated by than we had when DH was published. I’m also sympathetic to Snape fans whose interpretations of the character are purposefully separate from IRL context, people who’ve felt consistently the same way about him since publication - it’s really hard when massive cultural shifts forever change the way a character is going to be read, especially because you can’t un-ring that particular bell. But since you can’t un-ring it, I think any sympathetic analysis of Snape has to begin from the starting point that his critics are often speaking from places of personal experience with kinds of stochastic right-wing extremism that parallel what he was actually exposed to in canon. But that’s sort of its own post.)

The second is seen mostly in Harry and Ron and to a lesser extent in James - point of view or central supporting characters who express interest in girls Because That’s What Boys Do, or whose personalities include some element of desiring a girl for reasons that aren’t really explored or explained at all. Harry thinks Cho is pretty, and they kiss, but Harry at no point feels anything for Cho that could be described as sexual desire (though, as @wisteria-lodge points out in a recent post, Harry is probably intended to be read as having physical attraction toward Cho that motivates most of his desire to date her). Ron obviously lusts over Lavender, and to a lesser extent Fleur, when you read GoF and HBP through adult eyes, but we never see him talking about how he feels or what he sees, only that he looks and gapes like a Tex Avery cartoon character. Joanne positions this behavior from both Harry and Ron as immature, not only in terms of them having to earn access to Hermione and Ginny but also in GoF when Arthur teases the boys at the World Cup about being bewitched by the Veela. Worth pointing out that Arthur is in the happiest and most stable relationship we see in the entire series (excluding Bill/Fleur and Andromeda/Ted because we barely see them) and he’s married to a woman who’s described as not particularly attractive - the ideal man, then, can be read as someone who looks for an equal partner who isn’t a beauty queen. Beyond that, Molly is a force to be reckoned with, running her house and her family - Arthur often embodies the henpecked husband stereotypes. A good man is a safe man, and a safe man is one who is to some extent automatically submissive to his wife.

James is in an interesting place here, because his interest in girls and showing off for girls goes hand in hand with the Worst Memory, and therefore he becomes a worse person by becoming someone who’s obviously sexually interested and romantically interested in Lily. His flirting and bragging and brash pursuit of his romantic desires is contrasted with Snape’s quietly heroic love and adoration, and the latter is what Joanne ultimately uplifts as brave and noble and worth pedestalizing.

Remus and Tonks are in the same position - he actively avoids her, she must pursue him, and they only get together because she essentially begs him for it and argues him down. Vernon and Petunia appear to be relative equals, but Petunia still makes a number of decisions that dominate affairs on Privet Drive and Vernon lets her do what she likes and never expresses any desire for her in ways that Harry registers. We know nothing about Alice and Frank, or Lucius and Narcissa, or the Lestranges. And even as Merope is badly badly badly treated by the narrative, her power over Tom Sr. is the most important aspect of their relationship.

This shows a remarkable nervousness around male attention period, even in the abstract, even from “good” characters. She can’t write a man who’s good and heroic and also openly and frequently desires women. She seems kind of incapable of it. Harry’s infamous Chest Monster is an outgrowth of this - she writes his lust for Ginny and his interest in her like something he doesn’t understand, can’t understand, because she doesn’t understand it and (possibly) because her trauma from her domestic abuse prevents her from examining how she feels.

So we get people like Harry (nominally interested in women, is frequently documented staring at Draco or Sirius or Bill) or Lupin (interest in women only confirmed in an interview but never in the text, closest relationship is to a man, marries a queercoded shapeshifter who is a blood relative of that man after his traumatic death) or Bill (canonically GNC by Wizard standards to a degree that makes Molly uncomfortable, romances Fleur entirely off the page until they’re very seriously involved). We get Dumbledore’s queercoding (canon, per author) and Sirius’s queercoding (ambiguous). We get men who are deeply psychosexually fixated on another man to a point of utter devotion (Quirrell and BCJR on Voldemort) while their female counterpart (Bellatrix) is a canon sexual partner of the guy they’re all obsessed with who talks and behaves the same way.

And this really only becomes remarkable when you notice how it compares to other middle-grade and YA fiction.

Daine and Numair (Tamora Pierce’s The Immortals) are the central romantic couple in a series of books with HP’s target audience, and both of them are problematically horny for one another. Rachel Berenson and Tobias (K.A. Applegate’s Animorphs) have long passages of age-appropriate text describing their attraction and desire across multiple books, even though their romance is less important to the plot than the romances in HP. Talia and Dirk (Mercedes Lackey’s Queen’s Own) date and have sex with other people before getting together while both desiring each other, and their appearances as older adults in later books show they’re comfortable with physical intimacy and flirting. There’s more examples that I can think of, but the point stands - Rowling’s male characters are unusually terrified of being horny for members of the opposite sex, and so it’s not surprising that many fans look at that and go “oh so you’re queer and closeted”.

[chilledcitrus]

There are two types of Draco I often see in fanon: the one where he's icy and stoic, and the one where he's pathetic, whiny, and emotional. Yes, it might sound out of character at first, but neither of these interpretations is completely wrong because both sides exist in canon. And this is what I mean when I say Draco has multiple layers to his personality.

The problem arises when people reduce him to just one version and ignore the rest. That’s what makes him feel off. His character isn’t one or the other—it’s both. For me, good Draco characterization is when writers embrace all aspects of his personality, not just the ones that fit a certain narrative. He’s layered, and that’s what gives him depth. Choosing only one version of him flattens his entire character.

[pangaeaseas]

idk if it's because of marauders vs snape discourse that focuses on the first war to the exclusion of all else or evil dumbledore discourse that often frames snape as like, the good guy in dumbledore's camp and makes dumbledore the root of all evil or WHAT but this fandom is really sleeping on snape/dumbledore parallels. brilliant but lacking in high positions in society, seeming like outsiders, and possessing high ambitions, both had close intense friendships as kids/teens that shaped their lives, both explored dark magic, and both killed people they loved in the pursuit of ideals they later decided were evil, and then dedicated the rest of their lives to counteracting the harm they had caused at the expense of any kind of personal life--dumbledore's whole life is mostly wrapped up in hogwarts, he lives not far from his brother but barely talks to him, while snape still lives in the town he grew up in, hates it but cannot move on, they don't really have close friends who know anything about them. they also treat their redemptions as often very theoretical: they do harm in the course of trying to do good, and focus on the abstract greater good rather than the specificity of being kind to others. they both believe the end justifies the means. and are distant from their past while obsessed with it. and of course schoolteachers! though dumbledore is a better teacher--not as much though because he kinda treats tom riddle like a young grindelwald just as snape treats harry like young james. they treat other people like pawns and inconveniences, they devote themselves to spy games and manipulation, they both do agree to killing voldemort at the potential expense of harry's life (snape protests but doesn't actually stop it! he gives harry the memories that convince harry to sacrifice himself, acting out dumbledore's desgins even in death). they are experts at legilimency! they have arcane knowledge of magic. they are both important mentor-type figures for harry in their different ways. and of course snape essentially replaces dumbledore in DH, literally as headmaster but also as the instrument of dumbledore's last plans and as someone in possesion of extra information that the order fears--just as dumbledore held cards no one knew he had in every other book, snape is thought of by the order and the characters as someone with extra knowledge (like how they're afraid he'll show up at grimmauld) and then does play the same role as dumbledore at the end as the revealer of secret, plot-crucial knowledge. and of course they are the two most important mystery-box characters, where 'what is up with snape' and 'waht is up with dumbledore' are the two most crucial character questions of the series. the revelation of their secret pasts even happens in the same book! not very far away from each other! and they are two of the most controversial characters in the series in terms of fandom reception. i don't like the name albus severus, but it does make sense as drawing a parallel between two characters who harry previously saw as opposites but comes to see as quite similar...

[dufferpuffer]

Love the catch that Harry was being pretty cold to Cho in the same book - for experiencing grief in a different way to him.

But he see's Severus suffering - a man he hates - and he immediately validates it as horrible. Sickening. His reaction to it is visceral. He goes and barks at Sirius and Remus about it - and feels betrayed by how they try to brush it off. Because 'they were just kids'.

In that moment they are indirectly defending Dudley's mistreatment. It is wrong. It is framed as wrong. Their indifference to Severus' suffering is something they die with - something Harry surpasses.

Accepting and understanding Severus in ways nobody else bothered to - when he himself hadn't bothered to for a long time - is a core part of Harry's growth and a fundamental part of his character.

You know, I've been thinking. It's interesting that when Harry watches Snape's worst memory, he feels more compassion towards him than Lily did. I mean, Harry has every reason to hate Snape and even he could make no excuses for what happened. He recognized that it was wrong no matter what, that Snape didn't deserve it. And Lily, the best friend, who used to love him, decided to leave him in that situation, with no regrets, like it was his just deserts.

Because Harry knows what it’s like to be violated. Harry knows what it’s like to be abused. Harry knows what it’s like to be cornered by a group and bullied. Harry knows what it’s like to be humiliated. Harry has been abused and mistreated his entire life by the Dursleys, and to him, Dudley is his bully. Not Draco. He sees Draco as an annoying prick he argues with at school, a rival , but Dudley is his bully.

And when he sees his father behaving like that, Harry compares James’s actions against Severus to what Dudley used to do to him. He doesn’t see James and Severus as rivals, or what’s happening as some dumb playground scuffle. He recognizes it as something that could’ve happened to him. Something Dudley could’ve done to him. And of course, he’s horrified, not just because of what’s happening, but because it’s his father doing it, with all the emotional weight that carries.

People keep insisting that scene “isn’t a big deal” or that James and Severus were just rivals, or that “well, Snape attacked too” and they don’t realize how ridiculous they sound, because there’s something that directly contradicts those shitty victim-blaming takes, and it’s the actual damn narration. Harry Potter himself. Because in that scene, Harry is horrified. And he’s horrified because, through Severus, he’s reliving his own trauma with Dudley, and it leaves him in shock.

And let’s be clear, a Harry is a character who shows very little external empathy for people. In that same book, he thinks Cho is annoying for crying, for example. He tends to respect people more when they don’t openly show vulnerability, because when they do, it makes him uncomfortable. But when he sees that memory of Severus and his father, he instantly empathizes. He connects completely. He takes it personally. That’s the text’s way of telling us that, yes, that scene is an absolute horror.

And here’s the thing: Harry empathizes and connects because he sees himself in that scene. Lily doesn’t. Lily has never experienced violence (which makes it absurd when people treat her like this perpetually fragile victim, because there’s literally no basis for it). On the contrary: she’s the youngest child, the only one with magic, adored by her parents, treated like she’s the most special person in the world, even above her sister, which is what actually causes problems. She gets sorted into the “cool kids’ house,” everyone considers her a catch, she supposedly has loads of friends, the teachers love her, and the most popular, wealthiest guy in school is constantly validating her socially.

Her whole life is a string of privileges. She doesn’t know what it’s like to have it hard, she doesn’t know what it’s like to survive day to day, she doesn’t know what it’s like to live in fear. The worst thing that’s ever happened to that girl is that some guy called her a Mudblood. Can you even imagine how privileged you have to be for that to be the most unforgivable thing someone’s ever done to you? The level of delusion and bubble you’d have to live in?

Harry doesn’t come from that. Harry comes from a place of absolute precarity. Same as Severus. That’s why Harry doesn’t even care that Severus calls his own mother a Mudblood: because Harry is like Severus, and emotionally and psychologically, he connects with him, not with her.

[antebellum13]

After hours and hours of work I have finished my first digital painting! I’ve learned quite a lot about Procreate and there’s several things I can carry over to my composite rendering skills. This is a labor of love. I really wanted to depict Severus as he was prior to turning to the light and the Order. This is Sev around the age of 20, prior to his “Big Mistake”. Now I share it with all of you! 💕

Pose was inspired by Ivmaruva’s Death Eater Draco! Go check it out!

[velvet4510]

One incredible detail in the deleted Drarry wand toss scene is that, even though the BTS camera angles aren’t the clearest, when Draco runs away from his parents toward Harry, you can see Lucius step forward, trying in vain to stop Draco, but Narcissa doesn’t. She’s just risked everything by lying to find her son, yet part of her already knows that Draco will betray the Death Eaters at the moment he realizes that Harry is still alive. So when it happens, she doesn’t resist it. Her son is a man now. He makes his choice and she lets him go.

Honestly a much more profound arc for both of them than what they got in the finished movie, or even in the books. Too bad JKR’s hatred of character development and her control of the production deprived those characters of their full potential.

[s0lifuge]

bicultural hermione. hermione who doesn’t let her knowledge of muggle culture and science and art stagnate. hermione who makes muggle friends all her life, and doesn’t spend every conversation wishing they were magic too. hermione who understands history in both the muggle and wizarding worlds, well enough to see the lessons each can learn from the other. hermione who can see, as biculturals do, how everything socially imposed within a culture can be different - how the world could be different if only more people saw it like her. hermione who breaks the statue of secrecy in private protest. hermione who never forgets who she was before she got her first ever owl. hermione who pays for harry’s cellular plan just so she can text him memes. she’s the only number in his contacts & it takes him 3 days to remember to check it but he does. hermione who gets really into The Sims 2. bicultural hermione. bicultural hermione!!!

[chameleonsd1sh]

"harry had one spell and a dream" "harry only uses expelliarmus" "learn a new spell"

he did not only know expelliarmus. this gets exaggerated by the fandom bc in-universe it's uncommon to use it in extreme situations, so other characters took note of it, expressed surprise, and "fans" ran with that, and eventually started to take it literally. it used to be a joke but people forget that now, so it's become overused and unfunny

if you pay attention he knew tons of interesting spells, literally taught them to DA members, but NOT fighting fancy is key to his character... he wants to survive, not impress. this is very much the same line of thinking that led him to latch onto being an auror — it's suggested to him and he never has to consider another career because being an auror is fine, it will help him survive. he can't think of another career he'd want anyway... everything he does is about survival. this loss of interest or pleasure in most or all normal activities can be connected to his clinical depression

that's the point. expelliarmus is effective. it's simple. it's saved his life countless times. he's fully capable of fancier magic, but chooses to keep it simple to survive. he has nothing to prove

in fact, he uses fancier spells every time he duels draco malfoy bc then he's a kid, not a martyr, and wants to impress. in those moments, he has something to prove. all other times he dgaf because he's tired, he just wants to live.

[hollowed-theory-hall]

your post on harry’s handwriting was an eye-opener for me! ik his writing resembled his mother some and is decent overall, but i’ve never seen pics of it!

idk where the horde of fanfic writers came up with the weird notion that harry has bad/chicken scratch handwriting, which triggers me every. time. they make out his handwriting to be messy, his eating habits sloppy, his speech behaviour bumbling, his appearance unkempt, and that he’s rather messy as a person. which boggles the mind, because he’s used to cleaning up after the dursleys and probably enjoys an orderly space, if not super spic and span??? is it only certain fandoms, cuz they make the other character(s) all elegance personified and well-mannered? like, harry already is a well-mannered boy, otherwise petunia would’ve been tutting, clucking, and dying of shame even more before the nieghbours lmaoo. idk whether to cry or laugh, and sometimes it’s such a turn-off that i choose to rage quit fics.

please, if you have the time, i would love a thorough breakdown/meta on how harry actually comes across as a person!

Okay, I have so much to say about this. And omg, Harry's chicken scratch handwriting is one of my pet peeves in fics (here's the handwriting post, btw). Harry's characterization when done wrong in general, tbh is a huge turn-off for me. Becouse I love Harry, he's my boy.

So, what we're gonna look at is how other characters in the books perceive Harry, how he comes across in universe to people who can't read his mind (like we can, as the readers).

I'll start with a general note about how most characters in the books don't really know Harry. This is mostly because Harry, contrary to fanon interpretations, is a very private person and rarely talks about himself/his feelings/his thoughts out loud. This is a habit I believe was ingrained into him by the Dursleys.

Like, I mentioned in the past Harry doesn't talk as much as other characters. Scenes of the trio usually consist of mostly Ron and Hermione talking, for example. This is not becouse he doesn't have thoughts (he's quite judgmental inside his head, and we know he has a lot to say), but becouse he's used to not voicing a lot of them thanks to the Dursleys.

This essay turned out pretty long, but here we go:

How do others see Harry?

Harry comes off as confident. Harry is a defiant and courageous person, and this often comes off as confidence to other people. It's why Snape thinks Harry is arrogant and why most students are always sure Harry meant to do what he did. They think he has shit together because he comes off like he does:

Harry stayed silent. Snape was trying to provoke him into telling the truth. He wasn’t going to do it. Snape had no proof — yet. “How extraordinarily like your father you are, Potter,” Snape said suddenly, his eyes glinting. “He too was exceedingly arrogant. A small amount of talent on the Quidditch field made him think he was a cut above the rest of us too. Strutting around the place with his friends and admirers . . . The resemblance between you is uncanny.” “My dad didn’t strut,” said Harry, before he could stop himself. “And neither do I.”

(PoA, Ch14)

Snape sees Harry as arrogant, when in fact Harry is just defiant and intelligent.

“But you’ve been too busy saving the Wizarding world,” said Ginny, half laughing. “Well ... I can’t say I’m surprised. I knew this would happen in the end. I knew you wouldn’t be happy unless you were hunting Voldemort. Maybe that’s why I like you so much.”

(HBP, Ch30)

Ginny (and other characters) believe he likes to save the wizarding world. That he is this confident hero and savior. I mean, they believe her lie about the tattoo, which says a lot:

and all Romilda Vane does is ask me if it’s true you’ve got a hippogriff tattooed across your chest.” Ron and Hermione both roared with laughter. Harry ignored them. “What did you tell her?” “I told her it’s a Hungarian Horntail,” said Ginny, turning a page of the newspaper idly. “Much more macho.”

(HBP, Ch25)

Harry doesn't see himself as leader material, but it's clear everyone else does:

“I think we ought to elect a leader,” said Hermione. “Harry’s leader,” said Cho at once, looking at Hermione as though she were mad, and Harry’s stomach did yet another back flip. “Yes, but I think we ought to vote on it properly,” said Hermione, unperturbed. “It makes it formal and it gives him authority. So — everyone who thinks Harry ought to be our leader?” Everybody put up their hands, even Zacharias Smith, though he did it very halfheartedly. “Er — right, thanks,” said Harry, who could feel his face burning.

(OotP, Ch18)

Neville Longbottom, who gave a roar of delight, leapt down from the mantelpiece and yelled. “I knew you’d come! I knew it, Harry!”

(DH, Ch28)

“Look who it is! Didn’t I tell you?” As Harry emerged into the room beyond the passage, there were several screams and yells: “HARRY!” “It’s Potter, it’s POTTER!” “Ron!” “Hermione!” [...] “Are you all right, Harry?” Neville was saying. “Want to sit down? I expect you’re tired, aren’t—?” “No,” said Harry. He looked at Ron and Hermione, trying to tell them without words that Voldemort has just discovered the loss of one of the other Horcruxes. Time was running out fast: If Voldemort chose to visit Hogwarts next, they would miss their chance. “We need to get going,” he said, and their expression told him that they understood. “What are we going to do, then, Harry?” asked Seamus. “What’s the plan?” “Plan?” repeated Harry. He was exercising all his willpower to prevent himself succumbing again to Voldemort’s rage: His scar was still burning. “Well, there’s something we—Ron, Hermione, and I—need to do, and then we’ll get out of here.” Nobody was laughing or whooping anymore. Neville looked confused.

(DH, Ch29)

Everyone expected Harry in DH to have a plan of attack the moment he arrived because that's how he acts. Even in the above scene, he's in terrible pain from his scar, but the others don't see it. What they see is a Harry who looks exhausted but says no to rest because there's work to be done and they expect this of him. They see someone fearless and capable with a plan who could lead them, but this isn't what we see because we're inside his head.

How Harry doesn't speak much and acts overall quite distant, as in, he actively avoids the girls who fancy him:

Then he blinked and looked around: He was surrounded by mesmerized girls. “Hi, Harry!” said a familiar voice from behind him. “Neville!” said Harry in relief, turning to see a round-faced boy struggling toward him

(HBP, Ch7)

And he only has two close friends and barley knows the other students in his year. Most students only know Harry Potter from the stories, rumors, and Dumbledore's end-of-the-year speeches about his heroism. They have no clue who the real Harry is — so they expect the hero they do hear about.

He stands his ground a lot (again, defiance):

Harry turned to McLaggen to tell him that, most unfortunately, Ron had beaten him, only to find McLaggen’s red face inches from his own. He stepped back hastily. “His sister didn’t really try,” said McLaggen menacingly. There was a vein pulsing in his temple like the one Harry had often admired in Uncle Vernon’s. “She gave him an easy save.” “Rubbish,” said Harry coldly. “That was the one he nearly missed.”

(HBP, Ch11)

And more often than not, he does so coldly and calmly. A lot of his more fiery anger is a sign of trauma with Harry, his baseline anger reaction is cold.

All of this adds to him appearing to others as controlled, confident, and like he has everything together and could never have any issues. He comes off as this bigger than life person to most people. Snape isn't the only one who reads Harry's behavior as confident. But it's actually far from the truth.

We, as the readers, see how depressed Harry is. How lowly he thinks of himself and how much he doesn't think of himself as anything special when he very clearly is. But the fact he doesn't say any of it and has mastered the skill of acting cold and like everything is fine when he literally wants to die at the age of 5, no one knows. Even Ron and Hermione didn't truly realize the full extent of Harry's low self-worth until 5th year.

The other students are shocked to see Harry as angry as he is in book 5 because he's often way more controlled and well-mannered than that. They're used to seeing him cold and quiet, not firey. Most of his fire stays inside his head unless he's really angry or emotional in general (or traumatized):

Professor Umbridge sat down behind her desk again. Harry, however, stood up. Everyone was staring at him; Seamus looked half-scared, half-fascinated. “Harry, no!” Hermione whispered in a warning voice, tugging at his sleeve, but Harry jerked his arm out of her reach. “So, according to you, Cedric Diggory dropped dead of his own accord, did he?” Harry asked, his voice shaking. There was a collective intake of breath from the class, for none of them, apart from Ron and Hermione, had ever heard Harry talk about what had happened on the night that Cedric had died. They stared avidly from Harry to Professor Umbridge

(OotP, Ch12)

The shock of the other students, I believe, is because of what he's saying, yes, but it's also because Harry is behaving very unlike him here. He usually doesn't shout at teachers or anyone, really. He rarely speaks in classes actually.

And regarding his confidence, everyone, Ron and Hermione included, was sure Harry is super skilled and that that's how he evaded Voldemort:

“You don’t know what it’s like! You — neither of you — you’ve never had to face him, have you? You think it’s just memorizing a bunch of spells and throwing them at him, like you’re in class or something? The whole time you know there’s nothing between you and dying except your own — your own brain or guts or whatever — like you can think straight when you know you’re about a second from being murdered, or tortured, or watching your friends die — they’ve never taught us that in their classes, what it’s like to deal with things like that — and you two sit there acting like I’m a clever little boy to be standing here, alive, like Diggory was stupid, like he messed up — you just don’t get it, that could just as easily have been me, it would have been if Voldemort hadn’t needed me —” “We weren’t saying anything like that, mate,” said Ron, looking aghast. “We weren’t having a go at Diggory, we didn’t — you’ve got the wrong end of the —” He looked helplessly at Hermione, whose face was stricken.

(OotP, Ch15)

They didn't for a second think he wasn't confident in his own abilities because Harry acts in a way that comes off as confident and capable. It's why everyone so easily accepts him as a leader under various circumstances. He acts level-headed while he's terrified, so everyone thinks he knows what he's doing except Harry (and the reader). Ron and Hermione had zero doubts Harry's skill was a big part of why he survived book 4, it's only Harry who doesn't think that.

The fact Snape bothered to extract his own memories during his Occlumancy lessons goes to show how he thinks Harry is talented, contrary to his words. He feared Harry would reverse the connection and see into his mind, otherwise he wouldn't have taken these precautions.

Think of Voldemort’s resurrection even. Inside his mind, we know Harry's terrified. We know he has no idea what he's doing.

But imagine being a Death Eater in the crowd and you see this 14-year-old kid stand up after being Crucio-ed by their lord, and he stands up, resists the imperius, and shouts at your lord like he thinks of himself as equal to him — or, perhaps, better than him:

“I asked you whether you want me to do that again,” said Voldemort softly. “Answer me! Imperio!” [...] I WON’T!” And these words burst from Harry’s mouth; they echoed through the graveyard, and the dream state was lifted as suddenly as though cold water had been thrown over him — back rushed the aches that the Cruciatus Curse had left all over his body — back rushed the realization of where he was, and what he was facing. . . . “You won’t?” said Voldemort quietly, and the Death Eaters were not laughing now.

(GoF, Ch34)

That's pretty badass. Harry comes off like a confidant badass. And he gets more badass and confident as he matures (even if he isn't actually as confident as he appears).

Even in the DoM, Lucius Malfoy, who was in the graveyard, takes Harry seriously:

“Don’t do anything,” he [Harry] muttered. “Not yet —” The woman who had mimicked him let out a raucous scream of laughter. “You hear him? You hear him? Giving instructions to the other children as though he thinks of fighting us!” “Oh, you don’t know Potter as I do, Bellatrix,” said Malfoy softly. “He has a great weakness for heroics; the Dark Lord understands this about him. Now give me the prophecy, Potter.”

(OotP, Ch35)

Bellatrix makes fun of how Harry gives the other kids orders as if they're going to fight, but Lucius knows better, he knows Harry is going to fight, and I think, he's scared of what would happen when he does. Even Bellatrix quickly starts taking Harry more seriously:

“Oh, he knows how to play, little bitty baby Potter,” she said, her mad eyes staring through the slits in her hood. “Very well, then —”

(OotP, Ch35)

And she changes her tone completely after he casts a Crucio at her:

“Never used an Unforgivable Curse before, have you, boy?” she yelled. She had abandoned her baby voice now.

(OotP, Ch36)

His aura is one of competence and confidence even when he's frightened and has no idea what he's doing. Especially when he's frightened and has no idea what he's doing.

And for the most part, he doesn't come off nearly as judgmental as he actually is, because he doesn't say a lot of what he thinks. We only see him start to actually speak his mind and be more sassy out loud around 5th and 6th year. And even then, his highly judgmental physical descriptions stay part of his narration, they aren't spoken:

“That’s the bell,” said Harry listlessly, because Ron and Hermione were bickering too loudly to hear it. They did not stop arguing all the way down to Snape’s dungeon, which gave Harry plenty of time to reflect that between Neville and Ron he would be lucky ever to have two minutes’ conversation with Cho that he could look back on without wanting to leave the country.

(OotP, Ch12)

Ron and Hermione banter while Harry feels done with them, but he doesn't really say anything or complain. He keeps a lot of his thoughts inside his head.

If we look at how Ron, Hermione, and Sirius see Harry, they're the closest to who Harry actually is as these three know Harry best. (They're also more objective than Harry who looks down on himself)

After the book 5 conversation I mentioned above, Ron and Hermione are more aware of Harry's insecurities, but they find them silly. They see Harry as incredibly capable and skilled:

“Did he?” said Harry. Behind him he felt rather than heard Hermione passing his message to the others and he sought to keep talking, to distract the Death Eaters.

(OotP, Ch35)

“What are we going to do with them?” Ron whispered to Harry through the dark; then, even more quietly, “Kill them? They’d kill us. They had a good go just now.” Hermione shuddered and took a step backward. Harry shook his head. “We just need to wipe their memories,” said Harry.

(DH, Ch9)

When danger comes, everyone's instantly following Harry's lead. Harry's the planner when the situation is dangerous, he calls the shots, not Hermione. Hermione and Ron look to Harry for a plan when things get tough, and Harry always figures something out. Now, we see Harry thinking he has no idea what to do:

He could not think what to do but to keep talking. Neville’s arm was pressed against his, and he could feel him shaking. He could feel one of the other’s quickened breath on the back of his head. He was hoping they were all thinking hard about ways to get out of this, because his mind was blank.

(OotP, Ch35)

But Ron and Hermione don't. No one does. They just see Harry coming up with a plan to save them. Every time. They don't see him wracking his brain for a way to keep everyone alive.

Hermione never considers Harry stupid, not even in first year:

“I’m not as good as you,” said Harry, very embarrassed, as she let go of him. “Me!” said Hermione. “Books! And cleverness! There are more important things — friendship and bravery and — oh Harry — be careful!”

(PS, Ch16)

And Ron clearly doesn't expect stupid behavior from Harry. He's surprised and shocked when Harry does something he considers stupid:

“What the hell,” panted Ron, holding up the Horcrux, which swung backward and forward on its shortened chain in some parody of hypnosis, “didn’t you take this thing off before you dived?”

(DH, 19)

Both Ron and Hermione trust Harry's opinion and they trust him to know what to do when shit hits the fan. When things are dangerous, both Ron and Hermione (and everyone else) turn to Harry to know what to do becouse that's the aura he has:

“I’d tell him we’re all with him in spirit,” said Lupin, then hesitated slightly. “And I’d tell him to follow his instincts, which are good and nearly always right.” Harry looked at Hermione, whose eyes were full of tears. “Nearly always right,” she repeated.

(DH, Ch22)

Hermione agrees with Lupin's assessment here. Dumbledore did too, he's the one who told Kingsley and Remus to trust Harry's instincts. Harry doesn't give the impression he's messy and bumbling, quite the opposite. Yes, Harry and Hermione have their doubts, they don't agree with Harry on everything, especially when he has no evidence for his claim except his intuition. But, it's telling Harry can make claims based on gut feeling and Ron and Hermione ask him why he thinks that instead of just instantly rejecting the claims.

Like I mentioned above, he looks like he has his shit together even when he really doesn't. He's an expert in keeping a mask on and bottling up his feelings.

Sirius, also sees Harry as mature and capable for his age. It's why he's so insistent on telling him things while Molly wants to cuddle Harry:

“I don’t intend to tell him more than he needs to know, Molly,” said Sirius. “But as he was the one who saw Voldemort come back” (again, there was a collective shudder around the table at the name), “he has more right than most to —” “He’s not a member of the Order of the Phoenix!” said Mrs. Weasley. “He’s only fifteen and —” “— and he’s dealt with as much as most in the Order,” said Sirius, “and more than some —” “No one’s denying what he’s done!” said Mrs. Weasley, her voice rising, her fists trembling on the arms of her chair. “But he’s still—” “He’s not a child!” said Sirius impatiently.

(OotP, Ch5)

Between them, Sirius sees Harry more accurately. Harry is incredibly mature and capable and wants to be in the know. He'd be better off in the know. Sirius understands Harry's curiosity which Molly seems unaware of. Lupin also remarks on how Harry is going to find out things anyway, he's aware of how curious and determined Harry is. Sirius considers Harry capable even during PoA and GoF:

I know better than anyone that you can look after yourself and while you’re around Dumbledore and Moody I don’t think anyone will be able to hurt you.

(GoF, Ch18)

Molly, on the other hand, never really sees Harry's capabilities. Molly only ever sees a polite, intelligent kid. In the early years at the Weasley, Harry barely talks to Molly and Arthur because he doesn't really know how to talk to them. So they talk to him, the other Weasleys talk around him, and he's polite in turn:

“I don’t blame you, dear,” she assured Harry, tipping eight or nine sausages onto his plate. “Arthur and I have been worried about you, too. Just last night we were saying we’d come and get you ourselves if you hadn’t written back to Ron by Friday. But really” (she was now adding three fried eggs to his plate), “flying an illegal car halfway across the country — anyone could have seen you —”

(CoS, Ch3)

Harry acts around most adults like this, especially when younger. It's clear he acted this way around his teachers too:

“You see what you expect to see, Severus,” said Dumbledore, without raising his eyes from a copy of Transfiguration Today. “Other teachers report that the boy is modest, likable, and reasonably talented. Personally, I find him an engaging child.”

(DH, Ch33)

Snape got it a bit different. Because Harry is defiant and sassy — it's how he responds to the Dursleys, and this is how he responds to threats he can't do anything about in general. Sass. It's why we see Harry do this with Umbridge, Snape, and Scrimgeour:

Who do you imagine wants to attack children like yourselves?” inquired Professor Umbridge in a horribly honeyed voice. “Hmm, let’s think . . .” said Harry in a mock thoughtful voice, “maybe Lord Voldemort?”

(OotP, Ch12)

“Do you remember me telling you we are practicing nonverbal spells, Potter?” “Yes,” said Harry stiffly. “Yes, sir.” “There’s no need to call me ‘sir,’ Professor.”

(HBP, Ch9)

“...You may wear that scar like a crown, Potter, but it is not up to a seventeen-year-old boy to tell me how to do my job! It’s time you learned some respect!” “It’s time you earned it.” said Harry.

(DH, Ch7)

Harry appears confidant and arrogant not only to Snape but to Scrimgeour too (I think other students at Hogwarts see Harry as arrogant too. His demeanor can come off as arrogant if you don't know what he's thinking. It's why they could believe the Daily Prophet, it fit what they got to see). It's because he is rude and sassy when speaking his mind. It's because he acts more confident when he's terrified. It's because he's cold, distant, and uncaring towards most people and actively avoids talking to most.

And even that's mostly when he's older. In 4th year, he responds to Snape by glaring at him silently and wishing he could cast a Crucio at him:

Harry sat there staring at Snape as the lesson began, picturing horrific things happening to him. . . . If only he knew how to do the Cruciatus Curse . . . he’d have Snape flat on his back like that spider, jerking and twitching. . . .

(GoF, Ch18)

Harry is overall really quiet, which does create the impression of him being put together. More than he thinks of himself, for sure. It also adds to why many students feel as comfortable talking about him as they do because he feels distant to them. His quiet makes him feel mysterious, unknown, and far away. Like a symbol rather than a person.

Something I want to note, specifically with Umbridge, is this scene:

Harry looked around at Umbridge. She was watching him, her wide, toadlike mouth stretched in a smile. “Yes?” “Nothing,” said Harry quietly. He looked back at the parchment, placed the quill upon it once more, wrote I must not tell lies, and felt the searing pain on the back of his hand for a second time; once again the words had been cut into his skin, once again they healed over seconds later.

(OotP, Ch13)

Part of why Harry comes off as such a put-together badass is that he doesn't let others see his pain. He doesn't show he's in pain to others, especially when it's people he doesn't like. He acts though, constantly.

He hates crying in front of others becouse Harry does everything he can to not appear weak:

Harry suddenly realized that there were tears on his face mingling with the sweat. He bent his face as low as possible, wiping them off on his robes, pretending to do up his shoelace, so that Lupin wouldn’t see.

(PoA, Ch12)

And it works, people see him as confident, and capable, and heroic. Most people don't see the struggle because Harry keeps bottling it in.

Even with Hermione, he tries not to let her see how upset he actually is. We know in his head, that he is devastated by his wand breaking, that he's mourning it like it was a dead loved one, but this is what he's willing to show Hermione:

“It was an accident,” said Harry mechanically. He felt empty, stunned. “We’ll—we’ll find a way to repair it.” [...] “Well,” he said, in a falsely matter-of-fact voice, “well, I’ll just borrow yours for now, then. While I keep watch.”

(DH, Ch17)

All this means, we, as the readers , see Harry's pain, his struggles, his vulnerability — but the other characters almost never do.

The only character who is consistently aware of Harry's struggles is Sirius who Harry confides his weaknesses to more than any other character:

“Never mind me, how are you?” said Sirius seriously. “I’m —” For a second, Harry tried to say “fine” — but he couldn’t do it. Before he could stop himself, he was talking more than he’d talked in days

(GoF, Ch19)

Harry is so used to saying his fine and bearing his burdens in silence. It's what he does. It's what he did for years. Most characters think Harry is unshakable because that's how he acts.

Even when Harry tries to lie so Sirius won't worry, Sirius sees through it:

Nice try, Harry. I’m back in the country and well hidden. I want you to keep me posted on everything that’s going on at Hogwarts.

(GoF, Ch15)

As for his room and appearance, he is a little messy actually when he has the chance to be in seventh year:

Harry had spent the morning completely emptying his school trunk for the first time since he had packed it six years ago. At the start of the intervening school years, he had merely skimmed off the topmost three quarters of the contents and replaced or updated them, leaving a layer of general debris at the bottom—old quills, desiccated beetle eyes, single socks that no longer fit.

(DH, Ch2)

As in, his trunk is a bit of a mess. But this makes sense, I think. He allows himself to be messy when he doesn't have the Dursleys over his head. It's like a sort of freedom he didn't have before, so he indulges in it. I think the mess in his trunk is also a result of him actually living from it for 6 years, as he couldn't really leave everything at home with the Dursleys, could he? Still, his room and belongings are nowhere near as messy as Ron's.

As for his appearance, the only thing mentioned to be messy is his hair:

His jet-black hair, however, was just as it always had been — stubbornly untidy, whatever he did to it

(PoA, Ch1)

But from other characters (including Hermione) thinking Harry's hot:

“Oh, come on, Harry,” said Hermione, suddenly impatient. “It’s not Quidditch that’s popular, it’s you! You’ve never been more interesting, and frankly, you’ve never been more fanciable.”

(HBP, Ch11)

We can conclude Harry's messy hair comes off as cool and attractive and not like a bird's nest.

We also see from Hermione and others that Harry looks scary. He is 5'11 by book 6 with an intimidating glare and that he looks like he can throw a punch, (and can definitely throw a punch when he wants to). So he has a physical intimidation factor when older:

“Well, it’s like Hagrid said, they can look after themselves,” said Hermione impatiently, “and I suppose a teacher like Grubbly-Plank wouldn’t usually show them to us before N.E.W.T. level, but, well, they are very interesting, aren’t they? The way some people can see them and some can’t! I wish I could.” “Do you?” Harry asked her quietly. She looked horrorstruck. “Oh Harry — I’m sorry — no, of course I don’t — that was a really stupid thing to say —”

(OotP, Ch21)

Harry was not aware of releasing George, all he knew was that a second later both of them were sprinting at Malfoy. He had completely forgotten the fact that all the teachers were watching: All he wanted to do was cause Malfoy as much pain as possible. With no time to draw out his wand, he merely drew back the fist clutching the Snitch and sank it as hard as he could into Malfoy’s stomach — “Harry! HARRY! GEORGE! NO!” He could hear girls’ voices screaming, Malfoy yelling, George swearing, a whistle blowing, and the bellowing of the crowd around him, but he did not care, not until somebody in the vicinity yelled “IMPEDIMENTA!” and only when he was knocked over backward by the force of the spell did he abandon the attempt to punch every inch of Malfoy he could reach. . . .

(OotP, Ch19)

To summarise

Harry bottles up a lot of his emotions and tends to be quiet, this creates the often wrong impression he is confident and has his shit together.

He doesn't show pain and weakness to others and doesn't cry or show he's upset to basically anyone (except Sirius). This means basically no one sees his struggles or how depressed and traumatized Harry actually is. It even surprises Ron and Hermione in book 5.

He is defiant and rude to people he doesn't like, especially when scared, the result is that he appears like a very capable and confident badass especially when under pressure.

He can be intimidating with his glare alone and once he's older he is a physical presence. He's not someone who can disappear in a crowd post-book 5.

His rudeness oftentimes stays in his head except when someone really annoys him. This makes him appear defiant, but overall polite because he keeps most of his mean comments to himself.

When younger, he is very polite and quiet, especially toward adults. When he's older, he gets a little sassier (as in, he says some of his internal monologue out loud). But he is a polite, well-mannered kid for the most part.

The character who has a messy room, is a bit of a slob, has chicken scratch handwriting, and is lazy with schoolwork, is Ronald Weasley, who I love dearly, but these descriptions have nothing to do with Harry and everything to do with Ron.

The only unkempt thing about Harry's appearance is likely his Potter hair, which is more messy hot than messy bad (if all the girls' reactions are anything to go by).

[fandoomrants]

Most jegulus fics:

James' POV: Omg, he's so smooth and collected and mean and hard to impress, I have to work very hard to win his heart.

Regulus' POV: GAY PANIC, GAY PANIC, GAY-

[trothplighted]

I was going through some of Rowling’s old interviews and came across one in 2004 where she spoke of Sirius:

“I am so proud of the fact that a character, whom I always liked very much, though he never appeared as much more than a brooding presence in the books, has gained a passionate fan-club.”

This wasn’t the only time she expressed surprise that Sirius became a fan favourite, and it’s honestly baffling to me??? He had an entire book named after and primarily revolving around him, and is canonically the closest thing to a parent that Harry, the protagonist of the series, ever had. Even if we disregard everything else we know about Sirius and his storyline, there’s no way in hell he wasn’t going to be popular. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said that a character like that was specifically designed for fan service (I mean...he's hot, has a flying motorbike, and is literally named after a star, lol). It’s bizarre that Rowling seems to have had no idea, and that she believed he was / intended him to be nothing more than a “brooding presence” in the series – which is at any rate an appalling and deeply unsympathetic way to describe his trauma and depression.

It made me think of how there's such a major disconnect between authorial intent and authorial execution when it comes to his character as well, especially in Order of the Phoenix. Characters like Molly or Hermione call him irresponsible/reckless/immature, claim he confused Harry and James, that he treated Harry like a friend rather than a godson, that he was biased against Snape, etc. Rowling’s interviews confirm that she intended to characterize Sirius in such a way and that Hermione and Molly are meant to be viewed as her mouthpieces. But Sirius’s actual behavior and relationship with Harry does not correspond with any of this and his actions + dialogue are for the most part very reasonable and sympathetic. (There’s also Kreacher’s storyline, which made me dislike Sirius a lot when I was younger, but upon my reread comes across as almost entirely nonsensical, contradictory, and seems specifically designed to paint Sirius in a bad light to the point where he’s compared to VOLDEMORT of all people by Hermione - who, in the process of criticizing Sirius, dehumanizes house elves entirely by claiming that none of them are capable of individual morality or have any ethical agency of their own. It's frustrating because she's 100% right that house elves should be freed but the way she infantalizes them is...pretty shitty and not the way to go about it. But I digress.)

Rowling seems to have done a complete 180 degree turn on how Sirius is presented by the narrative between Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix, and I can’t really understand why.

I get the sense that the creation of Sirius’s character in particular was, at the very least, partly accidental on Rowling’s part. She didn’t expect him to blow up the way he did, and I get the sense that she doesn’t seem to have been thrilled by how much the early HP fandom liked/valorized him. There was an interview where she was asked if she liked him, and she said that she did, only to immediately list down all his alleged flaws and emphasize that “I do not think he was wholly wonderful” (which character in the series is wholly wonderful, lol? Sirius came across as a great deal better than most to me). There have been so many other interviews where she’s done the same thing despite the fact that Sirius's faults or perceived faults had absolutely nothing to do with the questions at hand. It’s such a startling contrast how she talks about pretty much everyone else from his generation, all of whom she seems considerably warmer and more sympathetic towards in varying degrees.

As I haven’t been back in the fandom for very long, this is the first time I’ve come across her interviews - I’m not sure if I’m reading too much into them or not. I wondered if you agree/disagree, as you’ve been in the fandom for much longer and I love all your metas about the series. Thanks :)

You’ve hit upon my personal Rage Point for the entire series, anon.

I want to start by pointing something out about Sirius and Kreacher, which is that in GoF Sirius tells Ron and Harry (and Hermione, though he brings it up to compliment her observational skills) that Crouch Sr.’s mistreatment of Winky is an indicator of his character. (“If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”) This is, somehow, the same man who one book later is egregiously dismissive of and abusive toward his family’s house-elf, to the point that this dismissal causes his death (oh, and Albus blames him for dying, too.) Despite Sirius expressing two wildly different viewpoints from book to book, we’re intended to take that as his true self, as the authentic expression of his beliefs and position.

I’ve spoken before more than once about other drastic character shifts that happened as a result of the Three Year Summer, both as a writing break and as a paradigm shift in the notoriety of and ubiquity of the series thanks to the movies being released starting in 2001. I was in elementary and middle school while the books were being published, and OotP was the first book I remember seeing large-scale advertisement for in my school outside of a book fair - there was a big larger-than-life poster teasing the book cover with a release date during the summer to get us all hyped up for it. I’d obviously heard of Harry Potter before that, but that was the moment when the books went from “famous book series” to “cultural phenomenon,” at least in my mind. And I think that we can trace this shift in opinion on Sirius Black back to the Three Year Summer, too.

In my opinion it’s obvious that Joanne really liked Sirius, when she first developed him. I don’t think she’s telling the truth when she says she doesn’t think he’s wholly wonderful - when she first came up with him she absolutely did. He’s got pride of place as a Cool Character in all the ways she loves to lavish attention on someone. He’s set up with a phenomenal entrance in PS chapter one and then he spends all of PoA in the spotlight. He has a dramatic reveal of his true allegiances and his innocence, and he’s Harry’s best and most supportive parental figure throughout GoF who consistently gives good advice and who risks his own life and liberty to make sure his godson is safe. He considers coming back to England and living in a cave and eating rats to be his duty as a godfather, and while Harry feels responsible for his circumstances he’s always really clear that he (1. doesn’t care about the risks to his health and safety (2. will gladly sacrifice comfort and stability if it means being able to protect this boy (3. will not let Harry feel guilty.

These aren’t the actions of a man who confuses Harry with James - throughout GoF he continues to insist that his decisions are his own, made as an adult trying to parent and support a kid who desperately needs a stable presence in his life. Harry’s used to taking the blame for the actions of adults (my heart is still rent asunder by his expectation that Lupin is going to gaslight him about denying him the chance to face the boggart in their first DADA lesson) and he’s also used to feeling like he has to manage the emotional state of a household (see: all the times he plans out what to say or not to say to the Dursleys to get them to do what he wants), and Sirius doesn’t let him sink into either of those pits. He also prevents Harry from bottling up his feelings or concealing his distress, and never lies or twists the truth. He’s being very deliberately written as someone who serves as a positive role model and positive mentor figure for Harry, and then suddenly come OotP he’s moody and immature and subject to a number of very strange smear campaigns from characters the author confirms are intended to reflect her real opinions.

So… what happened, over the course of the Three Year Summer, to make her change her mind? We can’t ever know for sure, obviously, because Joanne hasn’t ever bothered to lay out how her feelings on each member of her cast changed and evolved, and she’s unlikely to do so at any point in the future because now when people talk to her they mostly talk to her about transphobia. But I have a theory.

See, between 1998 and 2003, the HMS Wolfstar set sail. While most of the seminal meta came out after OotP (see “The Case for R/S” as probably the one I and others my age are most familiar with as an introduction to the ship) and most of the really famous fanfics started trickling out around that time (The Shoebox Project started in 2004), there were fanfics before that point, a growing fan community, and a number of pieces of fanart and fancomics (check out the list of doujinshi in the linked Fanlore article, some of those date back to 2001). Edit: here is an archived humorous/gently snarky list of Wolfstar fanfic tropes created in 2002 - while I can’t personally remember the names of fics from before 2004 or so I want to point to this as evidence that there was an established fan community, even using the “WolfStar” name, prior to the publication of OotP.

Normally, I wouldn’t think that fanfic from prior to 2010 or so had much of anything to do with the author’s opinions on their work, because norms and fan culture around fanfic were much more focused around keeping these stories private and away from the prying eyes of The Powers That Be/TPTB.

I say normally, because Joanne was aware of fanfiction, and aware of fanfiction remarkably early in her career as a public figure.

Younger fans are almost certainly not going to know this, but one of the first real fandom divides in HP had to do with fanfiction, and specifically the question of how to treat fanfiction written by and for adults that featured sex scenes or other mature content. Since the books were children’s books (though there was an adult fandom since the start, especially online - the Harry Potter For Grown-Ups/HP4GU mailing list and its descendant communities still loom large in fan history as some of the early pillars of today’s digital scene) a lot of people didn’t know what to do or how to treat fanfic. This was also compounded by fanfic being a lot more subject to legal action or takedown notices - Anne Rice, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, and Anne McCaffrey all became infamous either for pursuing individual authors and archives until they took down their stories or instituting guidelines about what kinds of transformative works were acceptable, or both in McCaffrey’s case.

Rowling, however, was different. Rowling said that noncommercial fanfic was completely fine, that she wasn’t going to pursue any kind of legal action against fanfic authors, and that as long as adult-oriented fanfic was appropriately warned for and not shown to or targeted to children, she didn’t care if it existed.

This laid the groundwork for the founding of Fanfiction.net, for fanfic communities on LiveJournal, and eventually for Archive of our Own and the Organization for Transformative Works. In an era where legal disclaimers were common on fanfics as a mostly-useless attempt to prevent being shut down by IP holders, Rowling threw the doors open and democratized her stories in a way she - I would argue - ultimately came to regret.

I can’t prove that her sudden slander of Sirius was a result of latent unexamined homophobia and a desire for revenge against the fandom for daring to claim one of her favorite characters as a gay man. I can’t prove that his backstory of being kicked out of his house (for unspoken Family Drama reasons centering around him being filthy and disgraceful) only to be shoved back into it, or Trustworthy Adults suddenly painting him as dangerous to children and inherently irresponsible and reckless, or all of his trauma being ignored and painted over, or every scrap of his heroism being erased, has to do with Joanne deciding that if we’ve made him gay he shouldn’t get to be a character anymore.

I can’t prove it.

But I do believe it. I believe it because when you ask yourself “is this queercoded character being subjected to authorial homophobia”, suddenly everything about Sirius’s arc in OotP makes complete and total sense in the worst way possible. This is also why I think Tonks and Remus were paired off, why Tonks suddenly becomes more gender-conforming, and why Bill Weasley transforms into Normal Settled-Down Hetero William. It feels like her desperate attempts to take her characters and shove them back into a box that she controls. I don’t think she was at that point consciously and virulently homophobic, but I think her clear and evident discomfort with fans interpreting these characters who she wanted to be straight comes through in her writing.

I also believe it because she does the same thing to Albus, after his death. Someone who’s been uncomplicatedly heroic and praised by all parties and even used as her mouthpiece to pass judgment on Sirius suddenly becomes morally suspect and untrustworthy and shady and secretive, with enemies lining up as soon as he’s dead to slander him - and again, just like with Sirius, we’re meant to accept this as the correct version of events. He even confirms all of this to Harry himself in the King’s Cross afterlife. The old Albus can’t come to the phone right now, he’s dead, and only his critics remain. Coincidentally, Albus is of course the only confirmed gay character in the entire story. Funny how that works out, isn’t it?

I’ve been angry at her for 20 years for killing Sirius, and angrier still at her straightwashing efforts. I wouldn’t believe her if she said she wasn’t doing that, at this point.

It’s not as if I expected her to be a perfect ally as a center-left moderate cishet white woman in the late 90s/early 2000s, and I do think that Dumbledore being gay was revolutionary in a way that most modern audiences seriously fail to appreciate, but I wish she wasn’t so damned insistent that no one else could be queer in any way at any point. She’s also really evidently uncomfortable about any displays of affection between confirmed same-sex pairings - she was absolutely neurotic about the amount of physical contact between Mads Mikkelsen and Jude Law during FB3, to the point that she fought with David Yates about it. And her behavior contributed to the intense homophobia I and others experienced in our formative early years in fandom - no-slash mailing lists and archives, the immediate classification of all queer fanfic as inherently more mature or more sexual simply by virtue of having queer people in it, Wizards For Bush, etc. As a result, boycott or no boycott, I hope that Wolfstar is canon in the new series, I hope Mundungus stays the crossdressing icon that they are, I hope Tonks is canonically nonbinary, and I hope Joanne loses sleep over it.

[chilledcitrus]

There are many reasons why I think Draco is so interesting, but if I had to choose one that is most compelling to me, it would be his contradictory nature. He is an emotional and sensitive person, yet he is good at occlumency. He is mean-spirited and loves to antagonize people, but he is also averse to violence. He wants to seem cool and aloof, but his natural personality is expressive and reactive. There are so many layers to his character, which makes him really fun to explore.

But I also think his contradictions make him quite difficult to understand, even for those close to him. In a drarry context, I don’t think Harry would ever fully understand him either, and there would always be sides of Draco that surprise him, even after years of knowing each other. But that might be a good thing for them because Harry thrives on curiosity, and Draco being a puzzle would keep things interesting for him.

[fannedandflawless]

I keep wondering, what if Sirius Black hadn’t found James Potter on that first train ride to Hogwarts?

Instead, the door he slid open revealed not a boy with messy hair and an ego to match, but a quiet, guarded Severus Snape?

Just two boys, neither loved quite right, thrown into the same compartment before the world told them they were meant to be enemies.

Sirius flopped down opposite the first lone figure he saw—black hair, hollow stare, arms crossed as if daring the world to speak first. He grinned. “Hi. You look like you hate everything. I think we’ll get along.” Severus looked up, unimpressed. “You talk too much.” Sirius tilted his head. “And you look like you haven’t smiled since birth.” Smirk met sneer in silence. It wasn’t friendship, yet, but something had clicked. The corner of Sirius’ mouth twitched. “Yeah. We’ll definitely get along.”