“listen… harry’s in trouble, and we could tell mum and dad, but I reckon we should just steal the flying car and go kidnap him in his muggle neighborhood, even though I’m 12 and you’re both 14 and this is a crime and the three of us cant drive”
“excellent”
This is bullshit.
Nobody in Harry’s life – no ADULT – ever did anything about the abuse he suffered at the hands of the Dursleys. Nobody did anything when they were told he was being starved, that there were bars on the windows, that they. Albus Fucking Dumbledore didn’t do anything about it.
Nobody in canon, or JKR herself in interviews or on Pottermore, even uses the word “abuse”. It’s all about how “the Durlseys treated him badly”. Nobody says abuse.
What Ron, Fred, and George did was nothing short of heroic. That they needed to do it is an indictment of every adult in Harry’s life, magical and non-magical alike.
@deadcatwithaflamethrower Need some back-up here because I’m hitting that point of “I want to set something on fire.”
I thought you did a pretty good job, actually. Even when adults are told about the conditions Harry was found in (literally IMPRISONED: remember, folks, the Dursleys were not going to let him go back to Hogwarts in book 2) nobody does anything. Nobody acts on the fact that a family literally imprisoned a child.
Someone I used to follow on LJ/DW was literally imprisoned by their parent. Nobody ever did anything. No one would believe them when they told other adults. No one wanted to believe it.
This shit happens and adults do nothing because it might interfere with their worldview that everything is just fuckin’ peachy…or someone in *power* that they respect/fear has told them not to interfere for the good of some cause/reason or another. That is one of the most terrifyingly realistic aspects of JKR’s books, but it’s glossed over by everyone who doesn’t believe that could ever possibly happen in real life.
And hey: there is more than one way to imprison someone.
(Aside from the fact that my mother locked the door and literally stood in front of it in an attempt to keep me from leaving the house once. Afterwards she pretended it had never happened.)
JK is actually on record (a radio interview, I think, but don’t quote me) as saying she doesn’t think the way Harry was treated by the Dursley’s was abuse.
That was the moment I lost all respect for her.
I do not care that she donated millions to charity, I care that she clearly thinks starvation and swinging a frying pan at a child’s head is an okay thing to do. That it’s okay to put bars on a child’s window to keep them in, and bolts the door shut.
@jabberwockypie Now I feel like setting something on fire too. *passes the chocolate and marshmallows*
Just … *SCREAMING* So. Much. Screaming and FIRE.
See, when I learn things like this, I also become somewhat Concerned about the person’s children. (Jude Watson has a daughter and considering the Jedi Apprentice stuff, I’m ALSO worried there.)
Do I think JKR would lock her kids in their rooms with bars on the window? Probably not, but if you’re not willing to admit that withholding food and is abuse, if you’re not willing to address emotional abuse and gaslighting AT ALL, trying to make a child hate themselves (like with what the Dursleys do with magic). I’m extremely concerned about what you think appropriate parenting looks like.
Frankly I also think it’s extremely irresponsible when your intended audience consists of children and teenagers. At some point somebody needs to say “This thing that happened to this character was wrong”. Because children who are being abused? we don’t KNOW. Or we don’t necessarily process it that way. It’s “not that bad” or it’s “It’s not like they’re beating me.” and every time it gets worse (the time my mother gave me a black eye), you move the goalposts of Not That Bad “It’s not like it’s ALL THE TIME”.
Tag: j k rowling
What if, when Petunia Dursley found a little boy on her front doorstep, she took him in? Not into the cupboard under the stairs, not into a twisted childhood of tarnished worth and neglect—what if she took him in?
Petunia was jealous, selfish and vicious. We will not pretend she wasn’t. She looked at that boy on her doorstep and thought about her Dudders, barely a month older than this boy. She looked at his eyes and her stomach turned over and over. (Severus Snape saved Harry’s life for his eyes. Let’s have Petunia save it despite them).
Let’s tell a story where Petunia Dursley found a baby boy on her doorstep and hated his eyes—she hated them. She took him in and fed him and changed him and got him his shots, and she hated his eyes up until the day she looked at the boy and saw her nephew, not her sister’s shadow. When Harry was two and Vernon Dursley bought Dudley a toy car and Harry a fast food meal with a toy with parts he could choke on Petunia packed her things and got a divorce.
Harry grew up small and skinny, with knobbly knees and the unruly hair he got from his father. He got cornered behind the dumpsters and in the restrooms, got blood on the jumpers Petunia had found, half-price, at the hand-me-down store. He was still chosen last for sports. But Dudley got blood on his sweaters, too, the ones Petunia had found at the hand-me-down store, half price, because that was all a single mother working two secretary jobs could afford for her two boys, even with Vernon’s grudging child support.
They beat Harry for being small and they laughed at Dudley for being big, and slow, and dumb. Students jeered at him and teachers called Dudley out in class, smirked over his backwards letters.
Harry helped him with his homework, snapped out razored wit in classrooms when bullies decided to make Dudley the butt of anything; Harry cornered Dudley in their tiny cramped kitchen and called him smart, and clever, and ‘better ‘n all those jerks anyway’ on the days Dudley believed it least.
Dudley walked Harry to school and back, to his advanced classes and past the dumpsters, and grinned, big and slow and not dumb at all, at anyone who tried to mess with them.
But was that how Petunia got the news? Her husband complained about owls and staring cats all day long and in the morning Petunia found a little tyke on her doorsep. This was how the wizarding world chose to give the awful news to Lily Potter’s big sister: a letter, tucked in beside a baby boy with her sister’s eyes.
There were no Potters left. Petunia was the one who had to arrange the funeral. She had them both buried in Godric’s Hollow. Lily had chosen her world and Petunia wouldn’t steal her from it, not even in death. The wizarding world had gotten her sister killed; they could stand in that cold little wizard town and mourn by the old stone.
(Petunia would curl up with a big mug of hot tea and a little bit of vodka, when her boys were safely asleep, and toast her sister’s vanished ghost. Her nephew called her ‘Tune’ not ‘Tuney,’ and it only broke her heart some days.
Before Harry was even three, she would look at his green eyes tracking a flight of geese or blinking mischieviously back at her and she would not think ‘you have your mother’s eyes.’
A wise old man had left a little boy on her doorstep with her sister’s eyes. Petunia raised a young man who had eyes of his very own).
Petunia snapped and burnt the eggs at breakfast. She worked too hard and knew all the neighbors’ worst secrets. Her bedtime stories didn’t quite teach the morals growing boys ought to learn: be suspicious, be wary; someone is probably out to get you. You owe no one your kindness. Knowledge is power and let no one know you have it. If you get can get away with it, then the rule is probably meant for breaking.
Harry grew up loved. Petunia still ran when the letters came. This was her nephew, and this world, this letter, these eyes, had killed her sister. When Hagrid came and knocked down the door of some poor roadside motel, Petunia stood in front of both her boys, shaking. When Hagrid offered Harry a squashed birthday cake with big, kind, clumsy hands, he reminded Harry more than anything of his cousin.
His aunt was still shaking but Harry, eleven years and eight minutes old, decided that any world that had people like his big cousin in it couldn’t be all bad. “I want to go,” Harry told his aunt and he promised to come home.
a.k.a. how the yule ball would have gone if i had written it
Facts from the 2014 UK Editions of Harry Potter
- Before the Hogwarts Express, some young wizards and witches made their way to Hogwarts on broomsticks and in enchanted carriages
- There are other fractional platforms at King’s Cross station. Try 7 1/2 for a trip to wizard-only villages in Europe.
- It took five and a half minutes for the Sorting Hat to decide whether to place Minerva McGonagall in Gryffindor or Ravenclaw
- Several Hogwarts students have caused mayhem at King’s Cross by dropping suitcases full of newt spleens or biting spellbooks all over the Muggle Station.
- Peeves the poltergeist caused a three-day evacuation of Hogwarts in 1876 after escaping a trap set for him armed with several dangerous weapons.
- The one exception to the general magical aversion to Muggle technology is cars. Even the Ministry of Magic owns a fleet, modified with various useful charms.
- Many wizards were unhappy with the invention of the Muggle-like Knight Bus, and refused to use it when it first hit the streets.
- Headmasters and headmistresses of Hogwarts can teach their magical portrait to act and behave exactly like themselves.
- Sir Cadogan’s most famous encounter was with the Wyvern of Wye, a dragon-like creature, whom he accidentally killed with his broken wand.
- Only one non-magical person has ever managed to get as far as the Hogwarts Sorting Hat before being exposed as a Squib.
- Of the Eleven wizarding schools in the world, the African school of Uagadou is the only one to select pupils by Dream Messenger, leaving a token in the child’s hand whilst they sleep.
- The 1809 Quidditch World Cup final turned into a human versus tree battle when one of the players managed to jinx an entire forest to attack the stadium.
- The Hufflepuff ghost, the Fat Friar, was executed after senior churchman became suspicious of his ability to cure the pox by poking peasants with a stick.
- Every year St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries treats at least one injury caused by homemade Floo powder.
- Before she became a teacher at Hogwarts, Minerva McGonagall used to work for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement at the Ministry of Magic.
- Part of the process of becoming an Animagus requires you to carry a leaf from a Mandrake in your mouth for an entire month.
- A Dark wizard called Raczidian was devoured by maggots that appeared from his wand when he unsuccessfully attempted to cast the Patronus Charm.
- Any part of a person’s body can be added to the Polyjuice Potion to allow the consumer to take their form, including hair, toenail clippings, dandruff or worse…
- Remus Lupin’s father, Lyall, was a world-renowned authority on magical creatures like poltergeists and Boggarts.
- It took 167 Memory Charms and the largest mass Concelment Charm ever performed in Britain to modify a muggle steam engine and create the Hogwarts Express.
- Students from the Russian Wizarding school, Koldovstoretz, play a version of Quidditch where they fly on entire, uprooted trees instead of broomsticks.
Yes, these are all canon. Thought I’d type it up to have it as a text reference. Enjoyyy.
I LOVE EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE FACTS!
(n.b. naturally, remus lupin’s dad was also called “wolf.” nothing like tempting fate for two generations in a row, huh?)
ugh okay but now i want a squib who did make it through hogwarts;
a squib who spent her childhood pretending to magically start accidental fires with the lighter up her sleeve; who got her bemused little sister to grow her hair long overnight after a bad trim; a squib who shook all through shopping at diagon alley and who was so relieved that her parents were almost suspicious when they said that there wasn’t enough money that year to get her a new wand from ollivander’s— she’d have to take great-aunt jenny’s hand-me-down, eight and a half inches of oak and unicorn hair;
a squib who made it to platform 9 3/4, who made friends with some shy kid in the back of the express, who made it across the lake and up the stairs and through the great hall doors and by the great long tables and onto the wobbly old stool—
until the hat drops over her eyes
well what do we have here?
she’s got a forged hogwarts letter with penmanship that’s perfect down to the ink splatter; she’s got a complicated string of owls, only half of them forged, from parents to administration to ministry that’s so complicated her name ended up on the first year roll call anyway. she’s got ten arguments, four pleas, and one smothered threat on the tip of her mental tongue for why the house that comes out of this hat’s brim better not be squib
she’s got a lighter up her sleeve and an eight and a half inch wand in her belt that will never, ever work for her.
well, says the hat, better be slytherin then
she finds the room of requirement in her second week, because she has always been a hallway-pacer, her head always ringing with i want i want i need i need i will do this. the room of requirement gives her books of muggle magic tricks, sleight of hand, chemical ways to turn ‘water’ into ‘wine.’
she bribes another first-year slytherin to wingardium leviosa her feathers in flitwick’s class. her shy friend from the train, a hufflepuff and a muggleborn, buys her a new lighter for christmas without being asked. when a gryffindor finds her scrubbing at tears in the back of the library and guesses what’s the matter (he’s seen her classwork), she tells him the story, tells him what it’s like to be denied a whole world because they think different means broken— she expects him to tattle, but instead the gryff transfigures her needles for the rest of her academic career; and she whispers hints to him when his black thumb keeps making him fail herbology.
(the first thing she’d said, when she realized he’d guessed her secret, had been ‘you should’ve been in ravenclaw’ and he had looked at her gravely until she apologized)
the room of requirement gives her books and books on potions, arithmancy, herbology— these things are not about magic. these things are not about power that lives in your bones. she knows power, knows the way sparks fly from her little sister’s wand when they take her to ollivanders, knows the way it flicks under her quill when she practices mcgonagall’s signature and sends home disciplinary letters to the parents of every student who ever bullied her friend from the train.
she waters nightshade and re-pots mandrakes, can tell poisonous mushrooms from magical (…also poisonous) ones by a glance. she drops in just the right amount of unicorn horn powder in potions class (.025 g more than the instructions suggest) and when making sleeping draught stirs for half a stir extra.
this is about power that you make.
she studies and invents, schemes and lies and excels. she holds potions tutoring in the slytherin common room when her friend from the train suggests it, then moves it to the room of requirement after it gets too large and someone stains the green-and-silver upholstery. (her arithmancy sessions are much less well attended).
she keeps her lighter, her little packets of carefully measured powder, her jokeshop tricks up her sleeve—she keeps the names of people who she can trust, who she can call on for distraction, for help, for a needed lie on the tip of her tongue—she keeps her gryffindor’s heavy wand and quick wit close at hand; keeps her hufflepuff’s steady patience closer; keeps her own bright improvisations at her fingertips.
her bemused little sister ends up in ravenclaw, and they all eat at the hufflepuff table for breakfast because (she says) slytherins weren’t meant to follow rules and because (her sister says) how stupid is this seating thing and because (her shy friend says) didn’t you hear the hat? helga said she’d take them all, so hold your tongue, macmillian, scoot over, and pass my friends here the hashbrowns.
when she graduates, she heads for the ministry. she has plans, and she has brave, smart, true, cunning friends to back her up.
power should never be something born into your bones.
ok that went somewhere fabulous.
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.
See, Rowling largely operates Harry’s generation in a clear system of parallels to the previous generation, Marauders and all. Harry is his father—Quidditch star, a little pig-headed sometimes, an excellent leader. Ron is Sirius Black—snarky and fun, loyal to a fault, mired in self-doubts. Hermione is Remus Lupin—book smart and meticulous, always level-headed, unfailingly perceptive. Ginny is Lily Evans—a firecracker, clever and kind, unwilling to take excuses. Draco Malfoy is Severus Snape—a natural foil to Harry, pretentious, possessed of the frailest ego and also deeper sense of right and wrong when it counts. And guess what? Neville Longbottom is Peter Pettigrew.
…
Neville is a perfect example of how one single ingredient in the recipe can either ruin your casserole (or stew, or treacle tart, whatever you like), or utterly perfect your whole dish. Neville is the tide-turner, the shiny hinge. And all because he happens to be in the same position as Wormtail… but makes all the hard choices that Pettigrew refused the first time around. Other characters are in similar positions, but none of them go so far as Neville. None of them prove that the shaping of destiny is all on the individual the way he does.
knitting in the dark 