Hermione Granger, age 11 headcanon Portrayed by Quvenzhané Wallis
“‘Has anyone seen a toad? Neville’s lost one,’ she said. She had a bossy sort of voice, lots of bushy brown hair, and rather large front teeth.” Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone, page 105
India’s Academy of Sorcery boasts an impressive display of flashy colours, from enchanted saris that shift colours sporadically throughout the day, to the lavishly painted exterior of the academy which is situated in a nondescript location along Ganges River. Due to the frightening rate at which the school’s ancient mango tree (jokingly nicknamed “Mammoth Mango Machine”) produces mangoes, students have to endure the perpetually evolving art of mango cuisine at least five days a week. Every year, to the students’ great enjoyment, classes are halted for Diwali to make time for various competitions that take place: firework flourishes and charms for upper-year students (bonus points if it doesn’t set any part of the school on fire), and lantern designing for lower-year students (use of animals, alive or dead, is forbidden).
i can’t believe jkr doesn’t know remus lupin is queer do you think someone should tell her
once in an interview someone asked her if charlie weasley was gay and she gave them this look and said DUMBLEDORE’s gay like there’s only room for a single queer in the wizarding world
While I do love that whoever made this did a good job matching actors to characters, the one issue I have is that Hogwarts is in England and what founded several centuries ago. I’m not saying that there wouldn’t have been blacks or asians in England at the time, but it’s still a historical inaccuracy to depict them as anything other than white Englishmen, since the culture of England at the time wouldn’t have had room for blacks and asians as anything other than slaves or traders.
Please don’t take this as me being racist, this is just me with a debilitating and incurable need for historical accuracy.
So let’s see. The Sorting claims it’s origins about a thousand or so years ago in it’s song, which implies the 1000s. JK Rowling described them as “medieval,“ which is about 500 to 1500, again agreeing with our 1000 date. So let’s work with that. We’ve got a pretty decent timeline to work with here.
There have been black people in Scotland since “classical times,” and black moors present in James IV’s royal court in the 1500s, plus there’s St. Deiniol in Wales in the 500s, implying black people were also in the religious court instead of all just slaves and servants. Therefore, could a strong and fearless future-Gryffindor have ancestry native to the Isles? Hmmm.
Hannibal of Carthage was definitely not white (at least not in the modern sense). As a matter of fact, many Mediterranean descended people are mixed with Central Asians, South Asians, and North Africans so… But anyway, in 1555, black men were learning to be interpreters in London to help with trading in the Ghanian region. Here’s a coat of arms with black people on it dated 1616. Also, literally how do you not know about Dido Elizabeth Belle, an aristocratic lady of Scotland from the 1700s???
The Romani migrated out what is now modern day India and Pakistan in about the 1000s, so add in that they’re wizards who can fly and all that jazz, they could’ve easily gotten there within a year or two and settled in Scotland once they learned white people weren’t treating them very kindly. There you go, that’s how a South Asian Slytherin made it to Scotland just in time to found Hogwarts.
Here’s desi people of color from the Indian subcontinent, called Lascars, who had been sailing in Europe from as early as the 1400s, possibly earlier, still fitting that there could’ve been wizards in the British Isles about a hundred or so years earlier. Art from the 1600s showing brown men in turbans. Here’s an Indian man who in the 1700s ran a successful restaurant in England and taught white people to shampoo their hair lol.
Japanese emissaries came to Europe as early as 1584 and observed there were already Chinese and Japanese slaves among the overwhelmingly black slaves, something blamed on Christianity, which was part of the reason why Japan vehemently became isolated from that point.
Also about East Asia, Mongolian Genghis Khan made it to about Poland-ish in the 1200s, so it’s not a far bet to say the Chinese (who were also conquered by Khan on his way to Europe) could’ve found their way to Scotland around that time or a few hundred years earlier. Along with a smart cookie who would go on to be the founder of Ravenclaw.
Native Americans, of course, have been present in Europe for a while. In the 1500s, Manteo and Wanchese arrived in London. There’s evidence the Vikings and Indigenous Americans werefriendlylongbeforewhen Columbus blah blah, and there’s even evidence of Native Americans in Holland that’s like 2000 years old. Could a kind and loyal future Hufflepuff be one of those mixed race indigenous American-Africans?
ALSO considering the fact that Binns (the history professor at Hogwarts) specifically stated that witches and wizards were being persecuted and Hogwarts was built out of sight of Muggle eyes, it’s completely possible that POC came to Scotland and built the castle happily for other magical humans to have a safe place. Since HP universe is a fantasy anyway, readthesearticlewhile you’re at it.
So yeah, I understand your implication that you don’t want to be racist or anything like that (bc being called racist is ofc so much worse than actually being ignorant), but POC were not just traders and slaves in the British Isles, they were a fuckton of other things your history books aren’t telling you (or trying to intentionally steer you away from). So me having an all-brown cast for a location in a dominantly-white place I’m sure is irking the fuck out of you, and that makes me so glad to see you confronted with that “incurable” need for historical accuracy you have.
And check out this rad blog: Racebending Harry Potter.
how come the only time people mention the enslavement of black people in Europe is when they want to deny our presence in fantasy fiction?
And that’s what it really boils down to pretty much every time.
Because someone couldn’t deal with a single photoset with characters of color in a FANTASY setting. None of the “fact checking” is really necessary, because that isn’t really the issue. Fantasy fiction isn’t something that should be subject to “proof”, but when it comes to racial diversity, it invariably is every time.
It’s my hope that with Medievalpoc, this endless quibbling about what is and is not “historically accurate” can be done away with, and Toni Morrison’s quote here can become creative people of color’s realities:
When I saw the first comment I was going “Oh, I hope medievalpoc will tackle this!”
Was she going to slap you because you never in any way made him gay in the actual books, taking zero risks/doing absolutely nothing for gay characters in literature, and only announcing your “authorial intent” afterwards for a cheap shot at looking like an ~ally~
^^^
Gay people are just normal people. We are not told about any of the Hogwarts professors love lives, other than Snape, and it would be completely out of character for Dumbledore to walk around telling everyone about his sexuality.
Did you want her to make him dress in glittery platform boots, a crop top, and decorate his office in rainbow flags to make it more obvious for you? Would that be enough of a stereotype to appease you people? Or what? Please tell me. I’d like to know how you think a gay character is supposed to be portrayed.
And did you miss the Grindelwald chapters in the ‘actual books’? Or was that also not obvious enough for you? Did Dumbledore need to whisper “always” wistfully in order for you to connect that he had romantic feelings for Grindelwald? Maybe you are American and need them to gaze longingly into each others eyes with awkward close ups of their fingers almost grazing each other that Hollywood thinks means ‘true love’.
It didn’t fit into his relationship to Harry to ever say “I’m gay”, and so it was not stated explicitly (you might have noticed the book was told from Harry Potter’s perspective).
The point is though, that he is a homosexual, well respected, powerful, and very loved wizard- and his sexuality doesn’t matter because no one else thinks it matters. a.k.a. no one care that he loves men, and that is wonderful.
Yeah, but the fact still stands that people try to give JK Rowling LGBT Ally Points for it when she should be getting none.
All it would’ve taken to make this canon was one throwaway line while discussing Grindlewald with Harry, something like “I loved him.” Just casually thrown in there. Easy to miss. AND HE WOULD HAVE BEEN CANONICALLY GAY. Or hell, even have Aberforth mention something about how he thought Albus was sweet on him or something. That would have at least been better than what we got.
I’m sorry but Word of God after the fact, in the case of representation? Means absolutely fucking ZILCH to a great many queer people, myself included.
Also wow glittery platforms? Stereotypes? takealookatyourlife you should examine your url and apply it because that is a really fucking insulting paragraph and it actually makes me want to punch a wall a little bit from how asinine and bigoted it is. NO ONE was asking for stereotypes or even non-stereotyped IN YOUR FACE SEXUALITY. We’re saying that retroactively (from the POV of a reader who has not been privy to your unmentioned worldbuilding) making a character gay does NOT do anything for representation and should not earn you ally cookies.
Also, what I find problematic with Dumbledore being the character she chose to make gay is that he has one relationship, one romance, and his life goes to shit. His lover turns out to be evil, his sister dies, and Dumbledore goes, “woah, shit, okay, CELIBATE FOREVER IS THE ANSWER.” So any positive is vastly outweighed by the negative of Dumbledore being punished and punishing himself for his entire life for falling in love with a boy when he was young. The message queer kids take away from the story of Dumbledore is one of internalised homophobia, self-censorship and heartache, not that of a role model who became the most powerful wizard and was also queer. To become that powerful person, it’s heavily implied that Dumbledore’s chance at a relationship, love and companionship had to be sacrificed. Dumbledore is not a positive gay role model, because to make him gay, JKR had to castrate him, and then, only show him through the eyes of others – the friend who loved him, unrequitedly, from afar, and the tabloid press, who burned him in effigy.
Oh, and further, I have seen a comment floating around that she thought about making Dean/Seamus canon but ‘thought it would detract from the main characters/story’. No. It wouldn’t. A line about them going to the ball together. A kiss when they reunite in the Room of Requirement. A sentence about them standing on Platform 9 ¾ with Junior Thomas-Finnegan, waving him off to school. Any of these things would have taken a few sentences at most, but would have given queer kids representation, and couple of characters they had grown to know and love that they could now identify with. What JKR means when she says ‘detract’ is that she chose, deliberately to a) practice erasure and b) conform to heteronormative standards as to how we portray children before they are of sexual majority, to which I say fuck you.
i like to imagine that after the war ends & everything gets cleaned up, the three of them get a flat together while they recuperate & try to figure out where to go from there. and they all have a tough time of it at first, but eventually they create someplace all of them can call home.
knitting in the dark 