One morning in mid-December, Hogwarts woke to find itself covered in several feet of snow. The lake froze solid and the Weasley twins were punished for bewitching several snowballs so that they followed Quirrell around, bouncing off the back of his turban.
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Even In the Darkest of Times
“Very nice, dear,” said Neville’s grandmother in a falsely cheery voice, patting his mother on the shoulder. But Neville said quietly, “Thanks Mum.”
His mother tottered away, back up the ward, humming to herself. Neville looked around at the others, his expression defiant, as though daring them to laugh, but Harry did not think he’d ever found anything less funny in his life.
“Well, we’d better get back,” sighed Mrs. Longbottom, drawing on long green gloves. “Very nice to have met you all. Neville, put that wrapper in the bin, she must have given you enough of them to paper your bedroom by now.…”
But as they left, Harry was sure he saw Neville slip the wrapper into his pocket.
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
If One Only Remembers to Turn on the Light
Hermione had taken his hand again and was gripping it tightly. He could not look at her, but returned the pressure, now taking deep, sharp gulps of the night air, trying to steady himself, trying to regain control. He should have brought something to give them, and he had not thought of it, and every plant in the graveyard was leafless and frozen. But Hermione raised her wand, moved it in a circle through the air, and a wreath of Christmas roses blossomed before them. Harry caught it and laid it on his parents’ grave.
With the announcement of the Harry Potter TV series, you will be made aware of the people in your social circle who are excited about it.
Now is a good time to stop knowing them.
The play here is fairly blatant.
Hire new 12 year olds that haven’t condemned JK Rowling’s horrendous views
Aggressively condemn the inevitable people who say shit about said 12 year olds online to take the moral high ground
Turn it into a show that people hate watch for maximum revenue
Friendly reminder that JK Rowling is the executive producer for this show. So in addition to benefiting monetarily from its very existence, she will be an active participant in creating its narrative. I won’t be watching it and I encourage everyone else to ignore its existence as well.
if you want to protect children - a noble goal - you need to first figure out what actually works to protect them, and not just do whatever feels right.
the thing is that a lot of people have the same goal, and some of them have done studies and built up strategies that actually work towards that goal, and you can research that if you want to help
sometimes strategies that feel right are significantly worse and provably so compared to ones that feel wrong. if you’re in it to make yourself feel good and righteous you can make things worse, actually, and it’s not okay that you’re doing that.
A quick note on the new HP game: I see a lot of people saying “Just pirate it, then!”
And that makes me… Really, really uncomfortable.
Yes, piracy keeps some money out of her pocket… But it still keeps her relevant. And more important than that… Well…
If you still want to play Harry Potter and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion after hearing about its plot, its gamergater dev team, and the gameplay footage of your character’s pet slave and room full of taxidermied Jew goblin heads…
Then, as a Jew, I don’t fucking trust you.
This should repulse and disgust you. It should make you actively hate the idea of playing it. The fact that you’re totally okay with it as long as it’s not funding transphobia? Speaks volumes to how little you understand Jewish issues or care about Jewish people.
You shouldn’t be trying to find loopholes so you can consume antisemitic content.
Though no man, no matter how great, can know his destiny, some lives have been foretold, Merlin…Arthur is not just a King-he is the Once and Future King. Take heart, for when Albion’s need is greatest, Arthur will rise again. It has been a privilege to have known you, young warlock-the story we have been a part of will live long in the minds of men.
did hogwarts students have to feed their owls? was there a school rattery? if not, how did the ecosystem around hogwarts support a concentrated population of hundreds of predators? did the owls pair-bond. did they fuck. were they distressed and defensive about being crowded together with so many rivals in a small territory.
Subversive house-elves were thrown to the rookery
Tbh I just like the idea that Hogwarts is just SWARMING with rats. Just a constant battle against an unending tide of rodents.
Students aren’t allowed to go in the forbidden wing of Hogwarts because somewhere in that wing is a portal to the Starving Rat Dimension that no wizard can close. Three students are killed by it per year
✨ Harry Potter Rewatch 2021 ✨
↳ “Your aunt and uncle will be proud, though, won’t they?” said Hermione as they got off the train and joined the crowd thronging toward the enchanted barrier. “When they hear what you did this year?”
“Proud?” said Harry. “Are you crazy? All those times I could’ve died, and I didn’t manage it? They’ll be furious…” HarryPotterandtheChamberofSecrets (2002) dir. Chris Columbus
People keep searching for ways to argue that JK Rowling has always been a horrible person deep down as a way of explaining her recent behaviour.
But here’s the thing: that’s probably not true at all.
Pretending it is discounts the harsher, scarier truth: that even decent, well-meaning people can be radicalised by dangerous, hateful, predatory groups, and given enough time they can become truly hideous versions of their former selves.
It can happen to me. It can happen to you. It can happen to any of us, given the right mix of circumstances. And over the past few years, we’ve seen it happen to one of the most famous children’s authors of our age.
Nobody is immune.
So you’re saying that The Clown wasn’t always… outright evil?
No one is born evil
Well…
Good point, but prejudice is best installed at a young age. Why is why I assumed the said Clown was just evil since some early part of their life.
What I’m saying is that JKR, like so many average people, very likely started off in a place of well-meaning ignorance. Then she started exploring new and different ideas being shared online. Some ideas resonated deeply with her experiences as an abuse survivor, so she began exploring them deeper. Then, wham, public backlash. Her trauma is triggered - but so is her curiosity. After all, if something she did or said set people off, maybe she’s onto something. So she starts exploring more. Starts asking more questions. And when she does this in public, there is always backlash. Meanwhile, however, in private, her new friends are telling her “See? This is proof we’re right. This is proof that the world wants us silenced, because they’re scared of the truth, and they really hate women that much.” And what do you know, what they’re telling her starts sounding more and more reasonable, especially since the outside world is becoming more and more hostile.
And round and round it goes, until you have a radical.
This is absolutely how radicalization works. I started out “I could never be a feminist, they hate kinksters” (yes, this was a massive oversimplification) and within, oh, i think two years? i was saying “well, i don’t like the overtones of ‘radical feminist’ but what’s so wrong with saying you’re a radical AND a feminist? we need to make sure there’s space for traumatized women who really do legitimately hate and fear men.”
When you become an extremist, you become UNRECOGNIZABLE even to YOURSELF.
And it is something everyone should be careful of. It can happen to you, and also you are doing it to other people. The right gain recruits by acting reasonable when the left are shouting. No one just wakes up one day and decides to be an extremist. But they wake up one day and ask a question out of ignorance that received a backlash of people telling them they’re horrible. Meanwhile someone slips round and goes “hey, it’s ok. They’re being unreasonable. Here is the explanation you wanted. Come with me and I’ll tell you more.”
It’s how Nazis are on the rise. It’s why Trump Supporters still support him now even with all the issues. It’s why Terfs are splitting up the community. Cause when there is conflict you can find people who are upset. You walk up to them and go “isn’t it horrible that they’re hurting you? How are you supposed to know all this stuff? You’re not. They’re making it up to hurt people like you. They are predators. You have to defend yourself and people like you.” And when you are upset someone bring nice to you sounds so reasonable you believe them.
And once you are in you can’t get our because everyone outside hates you, and everyone inside knows you. There is nowhere left for you to go except forward.
The left aren’t immune to this either, btw. They dress it up different but it’s the same bullshit with a different terminology.
But yeah, when JK wrote Harry Potter she probably didn’t have a single thought in her head about trans people for example. She probably never thought about them, or their place in society, and if you mentioned them to her she’d probably have to make up an opinion on the spot. That doesn’t mean problems aren’t there. But it’s ignorance, not malice.
She’s still acting like a piece of shit now but let it be a warning cause if you’re not critical it could happen to you too.
one thing that always seemed unrealistic to me, when I was first reading HP, was how fast things went to facism both under Umbridge’s Hogwarts reign and when Voldie came back.
I now stand corrected.
I mean to some degree it has been slow in the real world, groundwork laid over decades! But also fast. And in HP , it was a return (as far as Voldie was concerned) to a previous norm. Harry grew up in a weird lull because Voldie Part One ended when he was a baby and Voldie Part Two took off when he was 16-17. So the Wizarding World (of Britain anyway) still remembered what it was like before and we’re still recovering from Part One when the other shoe dropped. So it was regressing to a previous, known and established state.
