Someone just linked me to The Setup Wizard, the tumblr of some poor Muggle tasked with introducing the internet and other handy Muggle inventions to Hogwarts. I thought some of you might appreciate it.

Quote: "Please. If you need something fixed send me a text, not a bird."

I don't know if anyone on here heard about it, but Rowling is writing a new series of sorts called the History of Magic in America.

Not only does she seem to have done barely any research at all on American history (if there are any Americans on here, check it out and have a laugh!), but she also seems to have caused a bit of controversy as many Native Americans have found her portrayal of them to be backwards and offensive.

Can't say I'm surprised, I've always felt that in Potter fans could reread the books without their nostalgia goggles on they'd find the series has a lot of unfortunate implications and overall nastiness. Without the protective shield of nostalgia, it seems that people are starting to see the many of the faults of Rowling's writing that this community has been pointing out for years.

I posted this on Snapedom in 2008 or so; my apologies to those who have already read it.

A comparison of Pride and Prejudice and JKR’s romances between James/ Lily and Severus/Lily.


Like many fans, I assumed before DH (back in my innocent youth, when I was willing to accept what JKR said about her characters, rather than minutely examining what she showed) that James as a boy might have been a bully and over privileged jerk, but that he’d grown out of it before Lily accepted his suit.  I assumed that Snape’s Worst Memory had been James’s nadir, that the werewolf “prank” followed it, and that the realization that he and his friends had almost killed someone had sobered James.  (I’d also assumed that James had in fact rescued Severus at least in part because, like Harry with Dudley and the Dementors, he was too decent to stand by and let even an enemy die when he could do something.  Remus’s assurance that James had rescued Snape “at great risk to his life” had assured that parallel for me—until years later when I realized that James had always had the option of turning into his stag form and saving himself.) 

So I accepted what I thought was Rowling’s line about James:  that pre-prank, James had been a bullying idiot, but that post-Prank, James straightened up, stopped hexing people for fun, and became responsible and virtuous enough to merit being made Head Boy and winning Lily’s love. 


Then JKR decided to destroy that reading by making SWM follow the prank.


So if the Marauders’ near-manslaughter had no effect whatsoever on James’s attitude and behavior, to what were we supposed to credit his supposed reformation?  Why did Rowling expect us to believe that a sadistic bully whom she showed us torturing someone for giggles and whom she told us repeatedly endangered the lives of innocents for thrills became a hero worthy of Saint Lily?  What did she think the mechanism of his change was?  And Rowling is obviously confident that she did show us enough to make James’s reformation plausible; she expects her readers to just ‘get’ that James became one of the heroes of his age. 

Well, I think we’re supposed to understand that James, like Severus (too late), was Reformed by the Love of a Good Woman.  And JKR thinks that she showed us the endpoints of the process and gave us the model she followed, so that her readers should just connect the dots. 

JKR has mentioned being a fan of Jane Austen.  I think that James was supposed to be a rewrite of Austen’s best-known hero, Mr. Darcy, and that (lower-born, but it’s SO rude to harp on that) Lily’s rejection of him in SWM was supposed to be James’s Pride and Prejudicemoment. 

“The turn of your countenance I shall never forget, as you said that I could not have addressed you in any possible way, that would induce you to accept me….  By you, I was properly humbled.  I came to you without a doubt of my reception.  You shewed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.” (Mr. Darcy, P&P, Volume III, Chapter XVI)

The Lizzie-Darcy romance, shorn of Austen’s sparkling prose, is:  Proud rich boy meets lower-born (but still acceptable to all but the worst snobs in his class) girl.  Boy alienates girl with his arrogance.  Girl is impertinent in response; boy falls for her.  Boy proposes.  Girl rejects boy with stinging criticism.  Girl finds out that her own prejudice had led her to wrong boy.  Boy, humbled, changes his arrogant behavior; girl is touched and flattered by the change.  Boy secretly saves someone he despises for the sake of girl’s peace of mind.  Girl falls hard for boy, who still loves her.  He approaches her again, this time without presumption.  And they both live happily ever after. 

*

Or, at any rate, they marry.

*

Mr. Darcy’s flaw was unregulated pride; the misbehavior resulting from that flaw was behaving with no consideration to those he considered beneath him.  His reformation occurred off-stage; his turning point came not when he heard Lizzie’s criticism, but when he finally accepted it and applied himself to changing his ways.  “Your reproof, so well applied, I shall never forget: ‘had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner.’ Those were your words. You know not, you can scarcely conceive how they have tortured me—though it was some time, I confess, before I was reasonable enough to allow their justice.”(Mr. Darcy, P&P, III: XVI)

Here is Darcy’s full confession to Lizzie of his errors, after months of self-examination:

“I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.  As a child I was taught what was right, but I was not taught to correct my temper.  I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit.  Unfortunately an only son, (for many years an only child) I was spoilt by my parents, who though good themselves, … allowed, encouraged, almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing, to care for none beyond my own … circle, to think meanly of all the rest of the world, to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own.” (P&P, III:XVI)


So.  Was James Potter supposed to be a modern Fitzwilliam Darcy?  Spoiled only son in a rich and well-born family, check.  Blessed in addition with above average looks and talents, check.  “Taught what was right… given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit,” check, per JKR.  (James was, after all, always on what JKR assures us was the “right” side regarding those delicate questions of sorting into Gryffindor vs. Slytherin, pureblood politics, and Dark magic, even while he strutted around Hogwarts felling other children left and right with his hexes.)   Surprised and chagrined when the lower-born girl turned him down, check.  Secretly saved someone he despised who was connected to the girl (James knew full well that Severus at least had been Lily’s friend), check.  Changed his behavior for the girl’s sake, check.

And Lily’s equally obviously modeled on Lizzie.  She’s both of lower birth than her suitor and nominally his equal according to all but the worst snobs (she’s a powerful witch, if a Muggleborn, as Lizzie’s a gentleman’s daughter); she’s easily superior to her “better-born” rivals in talent and intelligence (Head Girl).  Lily’s manners, like Lizzie’s, were sportive, lively, playful—and impertinent, but charmingly so. 

“Now be sincere: did you admire me for my impertinence?”  “For the liveliness of your mind, I did.” (P&P, III: XVIII)

“Vivacious, you know.  Charming girl…. Very cheeky answers I used to get back too. (Slughorn on Lily, HBP, IV)

And, of course, both Lily and Lizzie rejected their suitors with the utmost disdain, as though “insensible to the compliment of such a man’s affection.” (P&P, II: XI)

Here’s Lizzie refusing Darcy, and his reaction:

“You could not have made me the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it.” Again his astonishment was obvious; and he looked at her with an expression of mingled incredulity and mortification.  (P&P, II: XI)

And here’s Lily refusing James, and his reaction:

“I wouldn’t go out with you if it was a choice between you and the giant squid,” said Lily. 
…

“What is it with her?”  said James, trying and failing to look as though this was a throwaway question of no real importance to him.  (OotP, SWM)

Rowling’s language is markedly less elegant than Austen’s, but the parallel is exact.

So I think Rowling gave us the beginning (or middle) in SWM, gave us the ending (“Reader, I married him,” to quote another classic), told us through Sirius and Remus that James had “deflated his head” to win Lily, and just expected us to fill in the gaps.  The hero was humbled; the heroine realized that the hero had been a better man all along than she’d been willing to give him credit for.  Every reader already knows this storyline.  So Rowling felt no need to SHOW us James’s reformation, or what made Lily decide that James was a better person than she had previously thought him to be.

Moreover, since Lily did decide in James’s favor, so too should the readers.  We all know, after all, that Lizzie’s prejudice against Darcy had led her astray in judging him; her reassessment (once Darcy had deflated his head a bit) that he was a worthy partner was correct.  So Rowling didn’t need to show us James becoming a good and virtuous man:  his winning Lily was all the proof we should need.

Finally, if Lily is supposed to be Lizzie, that makes sense of Rowling’s interview assertion that Lily could possibly have loved and chosen Severus.  Because Lizzie, in canon, acknowledged but was unmoved by Darcy’s wealth, good looks, social status, and even intelligence (though she could not have loved someone she disdained as her intellectual inferior).  Instead, Lizzie’s first preference was for a talented man of inferior birth to her own and no money at all.  She was weaned of that preference only when she became convinced that her first choice, Wickham, held moral standards that were unacceptable. 

If Lily were a Lizzie, then, so too must Lily have been unswayed by James’s surface attractions, and been attracted only when James had established his MORAL superiority to her other suitor.  And Lizzie’s reason for coming to love Darcy (well after she’d decided that Darcy was worthy of her general approbation) was explicitly her gratitude for his loving her enough to change in response to her criticisms:

“But above all, above respect and esteem, there was a motive within her of good will which could not be overlooked.  It was gratitude.—Gratitude, not merely for having once loved her, but for loving her still well enough to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations accompanying her rejection….  Such a change in a man of so much pride, excited not only astonishment but gratitude—for to love, ardent love, it must be attributed.” (P&P, III: II)

So had Severus (James’s equal in being “a man of so much pride,” if not in wealth, looks, or social status) changed in time, attended to Lily’s criticisms instead of giving up after her stinging rejection and allying himself with the Death Eaters, obviously Lily might have loved him instead. 

Indeed, Severus in canon might even have been Lily’s Wickham, her lower-born but talented first choice—though there’s little canon support for the contention that Lily ever found Severus sexually attractive (one blush when he looked at her “intently”, which might as easily have been embarrassment as reciprocal sexual awareness).  Still, he was at least her acknowledged “best friend” during the period that she was overtly scorning James.   If so, like Wickham, Severus insisted on proving himself unworthy of her. 

There’s a further parallel between Wickham/Severus and Darcy/James besides that both Wickham and Snape proved themselves ultimately unworthy of a good woman’s affections.  Darcy had to save Lydia’s good name to save Lizzie’s reputation and peace of mind.  He forced the marriage between Lydia and Wickham, paid up Wickham’s debts and settled money upon her, and left Lizzie’s happy sister to “all the claims of reputation which her marriage had given her.”  (P&P, III, XIX)

Darcy did this with absolutely no wish whatever of saving Wickham.  But save Wickham he did: from debtor’s prison and from permanent infamy.   Helping Wickham was the unpleasant consequence of saving others: Lydia from the consequences of her impulsive folly, Lizzie from an unmerited on her part, but overwhelming and probably permanent, loss of family reputation.

Similarly, James Potter saved Severus from the werewolf, not for Severus’s sake, but because James had to in order to save those he DID care for.  Saving Severus was a unfortunate side effect of saving Sirius from his impulsive folly in setting Snape up to be killed, and Remus from being exposed as a werewolf.  And James clearly scorned Severus as much (or more) after the rescue as before—as Darcy did Wickham.

[In one particular, however, Severus is more like another Austen villain, Willoughby of Sense & Sensibility, than Wickham.  Austen’s readers never see Wickham mourn his (deserved) loss of Lizzie more than casually.   Willoughby, on the contrary, betrayed his love Marianne—and then grieved (though not as extravagantly as the Half-Blood Prince) over his self-inflicted loss, readers are told, to the very end of his days.  And when Willoughby believed that his betrayal had brought the woman he still loved into danger of death, he took himself to his enemy to confess and to make what poor amends he could:


“Tell me honestly”—a deeper glow overspreading his cheeks—“do you think me most a knave or a fool?” (Willoughby in S&S, XILIV)

Severus’s fans and detractors are still debating that question regarding Snape’s joining the DE’s.

*

So that’s the model Rowling was following, and she thought the parallels were perfectly plain.

Sorry, the post was too long and I had to split it.


Yet if that was Rowling’s intent, why didn’t it work for me once I looked more closely at the characters?  Why did her assertion that Lily could possibly have chosen Severus fall flat, and why do I have trouble believing in James’s reformation?

*

The problem is, James Potter was no Darcy.  Nor was Severus another Wickham.  And that in turn made Lily no Lizzie when she chose the one over the other.

The first issue I have with reading James as Darcy could, if it stood by itself, simply be an example of Rowling’s recurring “tell don’t show” problem.  Seeing is believing.  Austen showed us Darcy’s reformation; she showed him exerting himself to be polite to people whom previously he would have ignored or scorned.  Austen showed too Lizzie’s astonishment at the change:

“Why is he so altered?  From what can it proceed?  It cannot be for me, it cannot be for my sake that his manners are thus softened.  My reproofs at Hunsford could not work such a change as this.  It is impossible that he should still love me.” (P&P, III: I)

Rowling, in contrast, had James’s two best friends (hardly unprejudiced witnesses) assure Harry that James had changed—but we readers were never shown ANY example of James’s “after” behavior that solidly demonstrated James’s newfound humility and maturity.  In fact, the prequel instead showed James and Sirius behaving much the same as ever. 

That, if it stood by itself, could just indicate that Rowling expected us to take her (or Sirius and Remus’s) word for it.  Which, way back when I felt I could trust Rowling’s moral judgment, was okay if artistically unsatisfying.  However, once I realized I was dealing with an author who thought using the Cruciatus could ever be excused as gallant (IOIAGDI), that didn’t work so well.  I wanted to see how post-reformation James had ACTED, to judge his behavior for myself.  And she didn’t show us.

The second problem can’t be explained away as artistic misjudgment on Rowling’s part.   Austen’s Darcy changed his behavior, not in hopes of influencing Lizzie, but because he accepted her reproofs as justified.  He expected never to see Lizzie again.  Darcy altered his behavior rather in the hope of making himself a person who would in principle merit Lizzie’s esteem, than in the hope of changing Lizzie’s actual opinion. 

Darcy explicitly said as much to Lizzie.  However, readers were not required to take Fitzwilliam’s word for this.  Darcy had earlier tried (to Lizzie) to excuse his incivility to strangers as being due to innate lack of ability at seeming interested in their concerns—and Lizzie had retorted that she didn’t blame her lack of mastery of the piano on lack of ability, but on not taking the trouble to practice enough. 

So the mere fact that Darcy was able to demonstrate mastery of the art of conversing politely with the Gardiners in front of Lizzie proves that he must have been at pains at practicing the uncongenial exercise ‘being polite to strangers’ during the intervening months when he’d expected never again to see her. 

Darcy didn’t change to impress Lizzie.  He changed because he acknowledged that Lizzie’s rebukes had been well-founded, and he wanted to be a better man, to live up to Lizzie’s standards.  Even though Darcy thought that Lizzie would never learn of his changed behavior, and thus would never alter her previous (and justified) bad opinion of him.

James, however, did the EXACT opposite.  He changed his behavior in front of Lily (and in front of authorities whose reports on his behavior might get back to Lily), but his friends admitted that he continued his previous misbehavior behind her back. 

It is canon that James continued hexing at least one person, Severus, and concealed this from Lily when she believed that he’d stopped entirely.  As others have pointed out, the Head Boy had no need to resort to hexes to defend himself from Snape’s attacks, if the problem were simply that Snape had started egregiously attacking James.  The Head Boy could simply have taken points from the offender, and let Slytherin House put pressure on the miscreant.   So even if Severus were instigating their brawls by then, James was hexing by preference, not necessity. 

Moreover, the fact that James COULD conceal his hexes so entirely from his girlfriend suggests that it was, at least much of the time, the person who had an invisibility cloak, the Marauder’s Map, and a rat Animagus lookout, who picked the fights.  Severus had neither any motive nor any known means of keeping their continued hex-war a secret from Lily.  In fact, had Severus known Lily admired James for having stopped hexing others, that she thought that this showed maturity and restraint on James’s part, he had a strong motive for the exact opposite, for making sure that Lily had occasion to see James preferring to resort to violence instead of point-taking when provoked. 

But if James was picking the venue of their “fights,” he had to have been the instigator, at least some of the time.  At the best, he might have been “maturely” taking points from Snape in public when Snape hexed him—and then privately “getting him back” later.  (As Lupin admitted,“… you couldn’t really expect James to take that lying down, could you?”  (OotP, XXIX))  At the worst, James might have been continuing to instigate most of their encounters as he did with the one we witnessed in OotP: using the map and cloak to ambush Snape, possibly with benefit of superior numbers, and enjoying Snape’s furious and humiliated attempts to defend himself against superior firepower.   While letting Lily think that James had given up all such pleasures.

So James, unlike Darcy, never felt that his initial behavior was truly wrong and that he ought to live up to Lily’s standards—just that it was impolitic to let Lily observe him behaving in certain ways. 

He didn’t truly change; he manipulated Lily into thinking he’d changed, in order to manipulate her feelings about him.

He assumed the semblance of virtue, rather than becoming virtuous.  Which is rather more the behavior of a Wickham than a Darcy.

Or to invoke another literary reference—consider Les liaisons dangereuses. The wicked Vicomte de Valmont decided to seduce a virtuous [rigidly moral yet very tenderhearted] woman, so he started ostentatiously to behave in a manner that led her to conclude that the Vicomte had secretly reformed his behavior under the influence of his overwhelming, unrequited love for her….  No, I don’t actually think that James was that cynical.

The third problem I have is, in P&P both protagonists have a moral journey to make before they can meet as lovers.  Darcy’s half was to admit that he had not been behaving as a true gentleman ought, and to regulate his pride and temper and start treating his ‘inferiors’ better.  We saw that James did not truly do that—he just cheated and said he had.  But Austen’s Lizzie had her part, too:  to swallow her own pride in her superior intellect/judgment and admit that her prejudices had led her previously to misjudge Darcy.  

The problem here is, Austen very carefully established that Lizzie HAD previously misjudged Darcy, that Darcy was in truth a better man than Lizzie had originally given him credit for.  First there was the letter, overturning all Lizzie’s ideas about Darcy’s treatment of Wickham—and establishing further that his motives in separating Jane and Bingley were more creditable than Lizzie had supposed.  (If Darcy had been right [which he was not] in his reading of Jane’s character, that she was encouraging Bingley’s courtship without feeling a reciprocal passion, then Jane would have been accepting Bingley’s attentions from the exact motive that made Charlotte accept Mr. Collins’: “a pure and disinterested desire of an establishment.”  What friend would let his best friend marry such a woman without trying to stop him?)

But further, Austen established that Darcy, outside of Lizzie’s view, was both conscientious in the performance of the duties his privileged position gave him and consistently kind to those in his power.  He was a responsible landowner, a considerate master to his servants, and a caring guardian to his sister.  His position gave him power over others (servants, sister, tenants), and he wielded that power carefully and with attention to the feelings of those who would have been nearly helpless had he chosen to abuse his position.  Not only his friends, family, and housekeeper said so; Mrs. Gardiner’s disinterested (in fact hostile-to-Darcy) sources affirmed that Darcy “was a liberal man and did much good among the poor.”(P&P, III, II)

So Lizzie had been wrong about Darcy’s general character, even if his behavior in front of her had been rude and inconsiderate, fully earning her disapprobation.  Austen showed us that Darcy was in substance good, even when his arrogance and inconsideration had led him to act in a manner unworthy of his better self.  So for Lizzie to forgive him, admire him, and come to love him, was a merited reward.  And it required her first to get over herself, to give up her mistaken belief in the infallibility of her own ‘First Impressions’.

So:  had Lily been misjudging James, accusing him unjustly, and did it show her better judgment when she came instead to accept and love him? 

What, precisely, did Rowling tell us James was doing outside of Lily’s view?  How was James using his position and his talents?  Like Darcy, James had unusual power and privilege; how did he use it?

Er.  Um.

James used his illegal Animagus ability to loose a werewolf on unsuspecting villagers—getting his thrills out of endangering the lives of strangers.  If one accepts the Prequel as canon, he used his magical abilities to lead the police on a wild-goose speeding chase (endangering them and every Muggle on the streets that night), then taunted them and destroyed their property.  He used lethal force against his broom-riding pursuers—with that trademark Marauder overlay of “humor”.  Wasn’t it FUNNY to see the people chasing him smash at high speed into the fat, stupid policemen’s car?  That was straight out of the Roadrunner cartoons.  (Of course, outside of cartoons such an impact would break the pursuers’ necks and/or smash their skulls.  You’ll note that James and Sirius didn’t pause to examine the bodies of their victims.)

And we know that James used his position as Head Boy to continue his sport of Snape-baiting—possibly even Snape-hunting. 

We never once are shown James using his position as a wizard or a rich man to help those he considered “beneath” him.  We are told (not shown) that he did help his closest friends.  What we were shown, however, repeatedly, was James enjoying inflicting pain and humiliation on lesser beings, and endangering friends, enemies, and bystanders for his own entertainment.   (Loosing the werewolf endangered his friend Lupin as well as the villagers—at the very least, it made it much more likely that Lupin’s secret would be guessed.)

We don’t ever see James the teen acting kindly, or responsibly, or considerately, when out of Lily’s view. Or, indeed, at all. 

Now consider how people spoke of James to his son.  He was a hero/martyr in the fight against Voldemort; there is a statue to the Holy Family in Godric’s Hollow, for crying out loud.  So what did people say about him?  How did they praise the young hero to his orphaned son?  Who came shouldering up to Harry in the Leaky to brag about being at school with the great James Potter?  Who took on Augusta Longbottom’s role with Neville, reminding Harry that he ought to try to live up to his martyred father’s memory?

Well, er, no one. 

They tried not to bring him up, most of them.  Nil nisi….  Minerva told Harry, once, that James had been a great Quidditch player and would have been proud to see Harry the same.   Out of Harry’s earshot (she thought) she described James as bright but a great troublemaker, and called him the “ringleader” of a “gang”—the same words used by Dumbledore of Tom Riddle and by Harry of Dudley. 

Should the reader find these reassuring parallels?

Note too that Sirius and James were described as a matched set—and that while people were shocked that Sirius should have betrayed his great friend James, no one had any trouble at all believing Sirius capable of the mass murder of innocent bystanders.

We know that what Dumbledore told Harry about James was wholly disingenuous, deliberately intended to mislead without overtly lying.    (In comparing the Snape/James enmity to the Harry/Draco one, he knew that Harry would NOT take from the comparison the thought that James might have been an arrogant pureblood who had gathered a gang to pick on his halfblood rival unremittingly.  And the version of the Prank Dumbledore gave Harry first year was an absolute masterpiece.)  Since Dumbledore was encouraging Harry to mold himself into what Harry chose to believe his father to have been (brave, flinging himself into danger without counting the cost, loyal, and self-sacrificing), we can’t count on anything Dumbledore said as reflecting his real opinion of James.

Sirius and Remus, of course, whitewashed James’s behavior (and their own) and tried to excuse it when Harry revealed that when he’d actually seen an example of his father’s behavior, he found it unacceptable. 

Hagrid was the only non-Marauder to wax (nonspecifically) enthusiastic over James—and as Hagrid was also the one we watched cooing to a (female) baby dragon spitting flame at him, “Norbert!  Where’s Mommy?” Hagrid’s judgment must be deeply suspect. 

So readers are not given anything to base Lily’s turnaround on, except that James, according to his best friends, “deflated his head.”  The only other possible explanation from canon is that Lily, like Lizzie, melted towards her arrogant suitor when she realized he’d undergone significant unpleasantness to rescue someone he despised—for (perhaps) her sake.  

Perhaps Lily took James saving her friend Severus’s life to be a noble, courageous, and unselfish action.

Only problem with that is, we the readers, unlike Lily, know that Prongs risked nothing in doing it.  He could have transformed into his deer form and been safe from Moony—true, Prongs could not have run in the tunnel as described, but he didn’t need to—Moony didn’t attack Animagi in their animal forms, only humans.  So it required no courage or self-sacrifice on James’s part to enter that tunnel. 

Furthermore, we know—as Lily very evidently did not—that two of James’s closest friends were at risk of expulsion or Azkaban had Sirius’s “joke” succeeded in killing Severus.  (That’s assuming, charitably, that Severus was wrong in thinking James had had a hand in planning the “joke” with Sirius;  if Severus was right that James were an accessory before the fact, then if proved, James might have joined Sirius in expulsion and wand-breaking, and/or a life sentence to Azkaban. Setting a lethal monster upon fellow students, when known, isn’t taken lightly.) 

Moreover, any serious investigation (say under Ministry Veritaserum) would most likely have revealed James’s own independent criminal activities (being an unregistered Animagus is a criminal offense, and loosing a Class XXXXX creature upon Hogwarts and Hogsmeade is, in fact, the very crime for which fourteen-year-old Hagrid had been expelled from Hogwarts and had his wand broken).  So we the readers know that saving Severus was probably in James’s own self-interest, and was certainly necessary to protect both Sirius and Remus.

So the only incident that JKR actually gives us that could have significantly changed Lily’s impression of James, would have been based on Lily’s FALSE interpretation of James’s motivations.  And on her refusing to listen to her supposed “best friend” when he tried haltingly to enlighten her. 

Lizzie’s re-evaluation of Darcy was based on her realization that she’d previously misjudged him; Lily’s of James, quite possibly, on starting to misjudge him.  Opposites, in fact.

*

Which takes us to the next problem in comparing James and Darcy, the biggest of all:  how do James’s flaws compare to Darcy’s, and Lily’s reproof to Lizzie’s?

Lizzie accused Darcy of two specific offenses.  The first was that he had been “the means of ruining, perhaps for ever, the happiness of a most beloved sister,” (P&P, II:XI) the second that he had “in defiance of honour and humanity, ruined the immediate prosperity and blasted the prospects of Mr. Wickham.” (P&P, II: XII)

But Lizzie made also the following general criticism:

“… your manners impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form that ground-work of disapprobation, on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike….”  (P&P, II: XI)

Darcy could refute the specific accusations, but her general criticism he eventually accepted: “For, though your accusations were ill-founded, formed on mistaken premises, my behaviour to you at the time had merited the severest reproof.  It was unpardonable.  I cannot think of it without abhorrence.”

Darcy’s fundamental flaw was improper pride, and the misbehavior which he subsequently corrected was lack of consideration for the feelings of those he felt to be beneath him.  (Note that his supposed crimes against Jane and Wickham both fell into this category:  Lizzie thought that he broke Jane’s heart, and ruined Wickham’s life, because he thought them socially beneath him and because he could.  Instead, Darcy mistakenly thought Jane, and correctly judged Wickham, to have no feelings that could merit his—or anyone’s—consideration.)

JKR seems to think that this was James’s fundamental flaw as well.  On those occasions when she allowed James to be criticized by any character in text the key word was always arrogant:  Snape (“as arrogant as your father” PoA), Lily (“arrogant toerag”  OotP, SWM, and DH, TPT), distraught Harry (“judging from what he had just seen, his father had been every bit as arrogant as Snape had always told him.”OotP, SWM)

Now, no reader could deny that James in SWM exhibited “arrogance,… conceit, and …selfish disdain of the feelings of others.”

But were those the only, or worst, flaws that James there exhibited?

Here are Lily’s criticisms of James:

“You think you’re funny,” she said coldly.  “But you’re just an arrogant, bullying toerag, Potter.”

“You’re as bad as he is.…”

“Messing up your hair because you think it looks cool to look like you’ve just got off your broomstick, showing off with that stupid Snitch, walking down corridors and hexing anyone who annoys you just because you can—I’m surprised your broomstick can get off the ground with that fat head on it.  You make me SICK.”  (OotP, “SWM”- XXVIII)

The problem here is that Rowling and I seem to disagree on what were the worst flaws James Potter really exhibited in SWM (and elsewhere). 

And that Lily apparently agreed with Rowling fatally diminishes Lily in my eyes.

Trying to look cool, showing off with the snitch, hexing people “because he can”—what made Lily “sick” was apparently that James was a conceited show-off who had the gall to expect her to be an automatic member of the Potter fan club.

Not that James was a sadistic jerk who was “using his magic against other people, to frighten, to punish, to control” [HBP, “The Secret Riddle”].

James Potter’s “instincts for cruelty, secrecy, and domination” [ibid.], were nearly as marked as those of an earlier dark-haired Head Boy-to-be.  And that didn’t bother JKR, and it apparently didn’t bother Lily.

Now, Lily didn’t know all of James’s misbehavior.  She didn’t know, as we do (and as JKR does), that James, like Tom Riddle, repeatedly let loose, for his own amusement, a monster which could kill most people it encountered (but which HE could control).  Lily didn’t know that James was an illegal Animagus.  She didn’t know that James was the creator of the Marauder’s Map, which enabled the holder to ambush other students and to evade authority figures.  She didn’t know that James had an invisibility cloak, or think how that could be used, again, to set ambushes and escape detection in wrongdoing.

She didn’t know that James, like Tom was the leader of a gang which was attacking people on the quiet, under the radar of the authority.

But what she did know, what she witnessed for herself, she criticized for the wrong reasons.

Let’s put this in context. 

Suppose I, at age sixteen, witnessed a gang of my schoolmates (led by a pair of rich, upper-class jocks) publicly beat up a loner from the wrong side of the tracks.  They overwhelmed him with superior numbers, immobilized him, stripped him to his underwear and threatened to bare his genitals, and held his face in a bucket of soapy water while he fought, gagged, and struggled to breathe.

My first condemnation of the gang leader (assuming I had had the courage to try to intervene—perhaps not a justified assumption) would not have been, “You think you’re funny,” nor my final judgment that the gang leader had a “fat head.” 

I would have thought the gang leader a sickeningly brutal little thug.  Arrogant, yes, that too:  he clearly thought that Daddy’s wealth and influence and his own popularity would let him get away such an attack in public.  And in the actual case in question James was, of course, absolutely correct in thinking this.  But what would have bothered me far worse than the arrogance would have been the viciousness—the indulgence of those obvious instincts for cruelty and domination.

Furthermore, Lily was, after all, the queen of judging (and discarding) people by the insults they used under stress.  So what insult did she use to/of James, twice, in canon?  “Arrogant toerag.”  That’s actually a fascinating epithet to apply to James, because “toerag” denoted someone too poor to afford shoes, a vagrant or criminal who had to wrap their feet in rags.  A lower class person.  So the worst insult Lily could think of to hurl (as Severus’s was “Mudblood”) was to accuse someone of being lower class—an epithet utterly worthy of Petunia’s sister. 

That insult was clearly misapplied to James in a literal sense:  his social status was as high as it could be in the WW, much higher than hers.  It’s worth noting, however, that if social standing were what Lily cared most about, as her choice of insults seemed to indicate, Severus was quadruply inferior to James:  in the Muggle world for being “from Spinner’s End” rather than rich, in the general WW for being (like Lily) the son of a Muggle, among the Hogwarts students for being an unpopular geek rather than a Quidditch star, and in the eyes of Lily’s Gryffindor housemates for being a stinking Slytherin (JKR carefully shows us three generations of Gryffs telling each other that Slytherins are innately inferior:  Hagrid to Harry, James on the train, and the Trio to Neville). 

But of course the flip side of Lily’s calling James a toerag was:  there is an upper-middle-class sensibility which does regard (excessively overt) parading of oneself as déclassé.  So one might read “you’re an arrogant toerag” as modern slang for the reproof “you are behaving in an ungentleman-like manner.” 

So Lily’s criticisms (like Lizzie’s to Darcy) gave James pointers on what he would have to do to win her approbation:  stop expressing his overweening self-satisfaction so openly and tone down on the showing off (both with the Quidditch-star posing and the hexing). 

But unlike Lizzie’s criticism of Darcy, there was nothing in there at all about starting to show consideration for the feelings of others. 

And yet James, unlike Darcy, had shown himself to be a sadist, keenly savoring humiliating and physically hurting others. 

Canon Darcy was rude and cold to people he considered beneath them, but we never saw him physically attack anyone.  Moreover, his wit was exercised at other people’s expense, but not, apparently, expressly for the purpose of hurting their feelings.   

Contrast Darcy to Severus in this—Snape (like James) appeared to Harry to register and relish the reaction of his targets.

Darcy amused himself by passing sarcastic comments on his inferiors, but in indifference of the reception of his insults.   Darcy’s barbs often, like Mr. Bennet’s to his wife, went over his victims’ heads:
“[Darcy]  paid me the compliment of saying, that he was so well convinced of Lady Catherine’s discernment as to be certain she could never bestow a favor unworthily.” (Mr. Collins exulting in Darcy’s reception of him, P&P, I, XVIII). Or Darcy would insult someone absent with no expectation (or intention) that the insult might be relayed.  “She a beauty!—I should as soon call her mother a wit.” (P&P, III, III)

And certainly in his first proposal to Lizzie Darcy didn’t expect that his “honest confession of the scruples that had long prevented my forming any serious design” might be received by his intended as showing “so evident a design of offending and insulting me.”(P&P, II, XI).

Darcy, in short, showed “disdain of the feelings of others,” as Lizzie charged. But he didn’t set out specifically to hurt others for his pleasure.  Others’ humiliation was a side-effect of the exercise of his wit (one he could be trained out of—“If he did roll his eyes, it was not until Sir William was absent”), not his goal.  Lily’s two suitors, James and Severus, in contrast, showed active relish in hurting the feelings of others—both apparently enjoyed verbally attacking others, and James also clearly relished inflicting physical pain and humiliation.

So Lily, unlike Lizzie, apparently found a cruel streak to be acceptable in her suitors.

Indeed, the ethos of Gryffindor house seems to be that hurting people is not just acceptable, but commendable—so long as the victims could be claimed to “deserve” it.   Look at the vicious way Fred and George treated Dudley at the beginning of GoF, and Draco and his friends at its end.

Or consider the fallout from Sectumsempra in HBP.  McGonagall told Harry that he was lucky not to have been expelled, and Pansy Parkinson vilified Harry far and wide (but who cared about her opinion?).  But Harry’s housemates?  They were angry that Harry had done something that gave Snape an excuse to ban him from the final Quidditch game.  And that did seem to be the light in which they, and Harry, regarded attempted evisceration.  Ginny even said that Hermione “should be glad Harry had something good up his sleeve!” (Because Expelliarmus, Stupefy, and Impedimenta are so ineffective at neutralizing an opponent without harm, yes.)

Others have commented what it says about Hogwarts if, as JKR would have us believe, a mere few days after Harry had almost killed Draco everyone was more interested in gossiping about his love life than his crime.  “After all, it made a very nice change to be talked about because of something that was making him happier… rather than because he had been involved [as perpetrator] in horrific scenes of Dark Magic.” However, given that Harry was Bubble Boy, who the year before didn’t even RECOGNIZE, still less know the names of, some of his (thirty—really not an excessive number) classmates from other houses, all that we can really infer is that GRYFFINDORS found Harry’s love life more interesting than his crime against Draco.  (The only gossiper mentioned by name was Romilda Vane, Gryffindor.)

Now let’s circle back to consider Lily—who (unlike Hermione, who objected to the Prince’s humor) was placed instantaneously in Gryffindor.  And whose sister (family members often share the same underlying values) clearly felt that neglecting and verbally abusing a child was an acceptable thing to do, so long as the toddler “deserved” it (in Harry’s case, for being a magic-wielding freak). 

What was it that Lily asked James, again, at the very beginning of her gracious intervention in SWM?  Oh, yeah.  “What’s he done to you?”

Wait a minute.  Saint Lily the prefect has just witnessed several students gang up to attack another who’d previously been doing nothing except quietly reviewing his test answers.  This gang disarmed the other student, viciously insulted him, immobilized him, stripped him nearly naked, and waterboarded him.  The gang, moreover, was already notorious for attacking “anyone who annoys you … just because you can”.  Yet Lily’s response was to imply that if James could give her an answer that established to her satisfaction that Sev “deserved” it in some way, she would just walk away and leave the Marauders to their fun?

Well, yes. 

After all, that’s exactly what she DID do when Sev insulted her, didn’t she?   The prefect flounced away after getting her own verbal dig in at the victim, leaving the criminals free to do anything they wanted. 

So cruelty and violence are, in fact, entirely acceptable to Lily, so long as she can argue that the victim ‘deserved it’. 

She’d undoubtedly have approved of Harry’s Cruciatus.  He’d finally come into his own as a True Gryffindor, chivalrously torturing the deserving.

I somehow cannot see Eliza Bennett approving of someone torturing an immobilized victim, even one who had grievously insulted her.  (Lizzie insisted that Darcy reconcile with Lady Catherine, after all.)  As for Mr. Darcy, we know that rather than dueling his reprobate rival Wickham after Wickham had seriously injured Elizabeth’s peace of mind and her family’s reputation, he resorted (with great distaste) to bribing him.

Lily and James were no Lizzie and Darcy. 

*


In some ways it’s actually Severus who better mirrors Darcy—but without the reward of getting the girl in the end.

Darcy’s original crime, remember, was rudeness—which was born largely from his arrogance.   Pre-reformation Darcy didn’t waste social niceties on people he didn’t care for or respect, and he exercised his wit at their expense.  Yet at the same time he protected those to whom he felt he owed care.  Does that sound at all like anyone we’ve met in the Potterverse? 

Severus Snape had no reason to be arrogant about his birth, looks, or wealth, but, like Darcy, he WAS arrogant about his superior intelligence, talent, and competence.  When Snape berated a victim, it was almost always for stupidity, lack of talent, laziness, or incompetence—or for presumed “arrogance” over unearned advantages. 

Darcy talked of those who had “a real superiority of mind” making it quite clear that he considered himself one of them.  He analyzed himself for Lizzie in volume one:  “I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding.  My temper I dare not vouch for.—It is I believe too little yielding—certainly too little for the convenience of the world.  I cannot forget the follies and vices of others so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself.  My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them.  My temper would perhaps be called resentful.—My good opinion once lost is lost for ever.”

“That is a failing indeed!”—cried Elizabeth.  “Implacable resentment is a shade in a character.  But you have chosen your fault well.—I really cannot laugh at it.  You are safe from me.”

“There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.”

“And your defect is a propensity to hate every body.”(P&P, I: XI)

Note that Darcy values the possession of intelligence above good temper and social skills (“[My faults] are not, I hope, of understanding.”).  Is there anyone in the Potterverse who seemed to prefer to be resentful and resented than a dunderhead?  Anyone who was ever accused of having “a propensity to hate every body”?  And who yet, once he truly allowed himself to love someone, somehow excluded his loved one(s) from his “implacable resentment,” from his ongoing mental tally of“follies and vices … [and] offenses against myself”?

For Severus, like James and like Darcy, continued to love even after being rejected stingingly (and he thought, irrevocably).  And Darcy, like Severus and James, continued to love even after being grievously insulted by his loved one.

Further, Snape’s pro-Slytherin bias could be read as a version of the flaw Darcy admitted after deeper self-reflection:  a tendency “to care for none beyond my own … circle, to think meanly of all the rest of the world, to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own.”(P&P, III: XVI)

Indeed, it might be partly the Darcy parallel that misled so many fen into thinking, pre-HBP, that the Snapes must have been a wealthy Pureblood family (the WW equivalent of gentry).  Snape Manor might be the fan version of Pemberley.

And finally, SEVERUS was the one who, we find out, truly paralleled Darcy’s reformation—once we place very firmly at the front of our minds the fact that Lily, unlike Lizzie, never reproved her suitor(s) for, um, incivility. 

The behavior that Lily insisted was wrong in Severus was supporting Voldemort and echoing blood prejudice.  And we know that whatever else he did not change, Snape did eventually—with Lily in mind, but with no faintest hope of any reward from her, nor even of her ever knowing—reverse course in those two particulars. 

So Severus was the one who, albeit too late to win Lily, took Darcy’s path of making a true change, not James’s manipulative, cosmetic one.  

* Sorry for the recent posting hiatus, I was travelling abroad and unable to get to a computer.

* “Harry had never believed he would meet a boy he hated more than Dudley,” who had mercilessly bullied and abused him for an entire decade, “but that was before he met Draco Malfoy,” who’d talked about quidditch once and been a bit snobbish to one of Harry’s friends.

* Interesting that the Malfoys know what helicopters are. Maybe they’re not as anti-muggle as Harry thinks. Or else Malfoy’s flying stories are actually true.

* “Ron couldn’t see what was exciting about a game [football] with only one ball where no one was allowed to fly.” I, meanwhile, can’t see what’s exciting about a game where only one player really matters, and success or failure is often as not determined by who has the better broomstick.

* I love the way Malfoy’s been opening his care packages in such a way as to try and make Harry jealous. It’s horrible, but it’s also such a kid thing to do.

* Also, the fact that Malfoy receives regular care packages from home is pretty good evidence against the abusive!Lucius found in certain sections of fandom.

* Hogwarts really ought to get better brooms for its pupils to learn on. An institution where people eat off of golden plates has no excuse to skimp on buying important educational equipment.

* Riding a broomstick must be pretty uncomfortable. I think I preferred the film idea of giving them little seats and stirrups.

* Neville’s accident is a perfect illustration of how Hogwarts completely neglects the safety of its pupils. It would have been quite easy to set up a net or spell to catch pupils when they fall, or else they could have used special training brooms that don’t go too far above the ground.

* I’m surprised Neville didn’t just bounce when he hit the ground.

* I doubt anybody would actually be able to fly perfectly on their first try. Even if you had a natural aptitude for it, you’d still need to know, e.g., how hard to pull up your broom when you want to stop, how far to lean forwards to accelerate at the speed you want, and so on.

* Coming up next: Harry gets into a car for the very first time and “knows, somehow” how to win a race against somebody who’s been driving for years.

* If McGonagall saw Harry flying, she’d surely have seen Malfoy too, so why doesn’t he get into trouble? Oh, right, quidditch > discipline and student safety.

* “I shall speak to Professor Dumbledore and see if we can’t bend the first-year rule.” Oh, Minerva, don’t be so coy. We all know that there’s no rule on earth which can’t be bent for the Boy Who Lived.

* Gryffindor hasn’t won the Quidditch Cup since Charlie left, which when you work out the timeline turns out to be... last year. Oh dear, mathsworldbuilding maths and worldbuilding.

* I’m half-surprised Malfoy doesn’t slap Harry over the face with a glove when he challenges him to a duel.

* Hee, I love Hermione sitting there in her pink dressing-gown, ready to tell the boys off.

* “Harry couldn’t believe anyone could be so interfering.” Just you wait, Harry – by the end of the series you (or at least the readers) will be longing to have the old Hermione back.

* Bloody stupid of Gryffindor to have an entry system that makes it literally impossible to get in when the portrait decides to go walkabout.

* Is that “Curse of the Bogies” Ron mentions the same as the Bat-Bogey Hex for which Ginny will later be famous?

* Malfoy’s tricking Harry like this, whilst dishonourable, is nevertheless a suitably Slytherin-ish thing to do.

* It’s rather reckless of Dumbledore to make the forbidden corridor enterable with a simple Alohomora spell. It seems like pretty much anyone could just wander in.

* Rowling tells us that the duo soon managed to find “a way of getting back at Malfoy”, because that phrasing makes their rôle sound much better and more active than “a totally undeserved gift literally fell into Harry’s lap” would.

* I like the way McGonagall says “I don’t want everybody knowing you’ve got a broomstick or they’ll all want one”; presumably “I’ve blatantly violated the rules to favour you but don’t let the peons know or they might complain” was considered too blunt.

* Of course, Harry will totally forget this scene come CS, when he gets all superior and self-righteous about Draco’s father buying brooms for the Slytherin team.

* Malfoy feels Harry’s package and works out it’s a broomstick. Because apparently, its being the size and shape of a broomstick wasn’t enough to clue him in.

* Why is Flitwick happy at Harry’s new present? If anything he should be annoyed because McGonagall’s just broken the rules to favour a rival quidditch team.

* I know it’s been said here many, many times before, but it really is ridiculous that catching the golden snitch nets your team 150 points. IMHO the muggle quidditch rules are much more sensible when they make it only worth 30.

* About the only explanation I can think of is that quidditch originally involved only the seekers, but people got bored looking at people just hovering around until the snitch appeared, so the other players were added as a kind of on-pitch entertainment to give the spectators something to watch in the meantime. But because quidditch was really just a game of seekers and people didn’t want to change this, they made sure that the snitch was worth such a vast number of points that the seekers were still the only players who mattered.

* Having those bludgers flying around sounds rather dangerous. Aside from the risk of concussion or broken bones, it’s a wonder there aren’t more injuries from people getting knocked off their broomsticks, especially since there doesn’t seem to be any netting or magic spells to break their fall.

* “I think the record is three months, they had to keep bringing on substitutes so the players could get some sleep.” Well, obviously that game didn’t involve the Gryffindor team, because they never bother with substitutes. Sleep is for the weak!

* I’m surprised that wizards have heard of anything so mundane as golf balls.

* “His lessons, too, were becoming more and more interesting now that they had mastered the basics.” Not that we’re ever given any indication as to what “the basics” might consist of – pretty much all magic in this world seems to consist of pointing your wand and saying a few mock-Latin words, with no real sense of connexion or progression between the different spells.

* Also, if I were at Hogwarts, I reckon I’d find even the basics of learning magic to be pretty interesting. Y’know, because I’d be learning actual magic spells.

* “Seamus got so impatient that he prodded [his feather] with his wand and set fire to it – Harry had to put it out with his hat.” Sadly his hat was now too charred and burnt to be wearable, which is why it never appears in the series again.

* Watch out, people, there’s a troll in the dungeons! Man, Hogwarts must have really good Wi-Fi if they can get a signal all the way down there…

* I’m half-surprised Harry and Ron don’t leave Hermione alone with the troll, as punishment for screaming like a coward. Come on, girl, face death like a Gryffindor!

* Given that the troll is supposedly twelve feet tall, Harry must have jumped very high to end up clinging onto its neck. At least we know that, if the auror job doesn’t work out, he can always find a career as a professional high-jumper.

* So the troll is twelve feet tall, and there’s enough space between it and the ceiling for the club (which is presumably several feet long itself) to build up enough momentum to knock out the troll on impact. This room must be unusually large for a toilet cubicle.

* Why on earth does Hermione feel the need to lie about what happened? Just tell the truth – that she was in the toilet so Harry and Ron came to warn her about the troll and take her back to the dormitory. No rule-breaking or recklessness of any kind, and the boys still get to look heroic for saving her.

* “Hermione was the last person to do anything against the rules,” until the latter half of the series, when she’ll be kidnapping, blackmailing and scarring people with wild abandon.

* “‘Good of her to get us out of trouble,’ Ron admitted.” Very true, Ron, albeit with the slight difficulty that Hermione didn’t get you out of trouble at all, rendering her lie completely pointless.

* Actually, come to think of it, isn’t compulsive lying one of the symptoms of psychopathy? Is this chapter actually evidence for psycho!Hermione?

* “There are some things you can’t share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them.” But forming a secret society in opposition to a sadistic and dictatorial government official isn’t. Sorry, Zacharias.

I just saw this video and I think it touches on a lot of the same things covered in this comm.

For anyone who's curious, the plot of the play has been discussed in spoilery comments at the following links:

Source 1

Source 2

Source 3UPDATE: Snitchseeker took down their spoilers as JKR called out another website for doing the same and TPTB have been contacting people to request they don't post any details. *eyeroll*

But never fear, Andrew Sims of Hypable (whom JKR called 'Wormtaily' for betraying the secret, lmao) linked to a cohesive recap of the entire two-part play.

When I first read about this, I thought it was someone trolling, but there's multiple sources? Either there's a conspiracy afoot or it's legit, IDK what to believe!

What kind of crappy fanfic, lmao! A Time-Turner plot, seriously? To save CEDRIC DIGGORY, of all people, wtf?

How shitty that anti-Slytherin prejudice is still going strong to the point that Albus is ostracized for being sorted into Slytherin. :/

Cackling at Ron & Hermione never getting together as a result of the temporal shenanigans, hehe. But I'm pissed that her being single results in her becoming a bitter Hogwarts teacher as opposed to happily married Hermione being the Minister of Magic, the implications there are pretty gross.

I can't even process everything I just read. Wow. JKR should be fired from her own world, just what even.

* “As they entered November, the weather turned icy cold,” but the students had to shiver through it because for all their sense of superiority wizarding society still hasn’t invented a proper central heating system, or even a spell people can use to keep themselves warm.

* If Gryffindor win this next match, they’ll be second in the house points league. Apparently. Given that we never really get to follow who’s in the lead except in random snippets of information like this, it’s kind of difficult to care about it all that much.

* I presume the “last-minute quidditch practice” is for the benefit of the other people on the team. Obviously the Chosen One is perfect already, and doesn’t need any practice.

* The facts in Quidditch Through The Ages are nice and fun for a light-hearted children’s story, but don’t really make much sense when read through the lens of the supposedly more grown-up later books. (What, so referees keep vanishing? Why? Are players just hexing them? Couldn’t they just ban players from bringing their wands on-pitch? Wouldn’t this be much better than having your ref vanish occasionally and turn up somewhere in North Africa?)

* Apparently Hermione’s much nicer now that she’s more relaxed about breaking rules, although I’m not sure what this is meant to mean since we haven’t actually seen the Trio break any rules since the troll incident. Maybe Rowling just means that Hermione’s been doing their homework for them.

* “[Harry] pushed the [staff-room] door ajar and peered inside – and a horrible scene met his eyes. Snape and Filch were inside, alone.” Hah, the slash jokes practically write themselves.

* Not sure why Snape’s sitting in the staff-room with the door unlocked and chatting to Filch about trying to get past Fluffy – seems like anyone could wander in like Harry, hear what he’s talking about and get suspicious.

* Seamus tries to get Harry’s appetite up by telling him “You need your strength. Seekers are always the ones who get nobbled by the other team.” Got that Gryffindor lack of people skills down to a tee there, Seamus.

* Some of Harry’s friends have made him a large banner saying “Potter for President”, whatever the heck that means.

* Great speech there, Oliver. Positively Shakespearean in places.

* “Harry thought Flint looked as if he had some troll blood in him.” Is that actually possible? It seems that mating with an ugly, stupid, twelve-foot-tall monster would be rather difficult, even if the DNA was compatible enough for fertilisation, although I suppose Hagrid’s dad managed to impregnate a giant, so who knows what’s possible in this crazy universe.

* I’m surprised none of the female players ever complain about Lee Jordan’s commentary. Having to listen to him rating your attractiveness in the middle of a quidditch match must be pretty annoying.

* So Alicia Spinnet was a reserve player last year. Apparently Gryffindor have since discontinued the practice of having reserves, maybe because with Harry’s broom to rely on they don’t really need them.

* Does Hagrid come to watch any other games after this? I don’t remember him doing so, but there seems no reason for him to just watch from his hut when he can come and sit in the stands with everyone else.

* So, for those of you who are keeping track, having a superior broom which lets you out-fly everyone else on the pitch = fine and dandy, blocking another player from getting a ball = evil cheating.

* “They oughta change the rules, Flint coulda knocked Harry outta the air.” Well, if that’s the concern, maybe they ought to reconsider having small cannonballs zooming around the pitch and crashing into people’s heads. That seems far more dangerous than anything Flint’s done.

* As if to prove the point, Harry almost gets hit by a bludger just a few seconds later.

* It’s taking Quirrell a remarkably long time to get Harry off his broom.

* The misdirection re: Hermione knocking Quirrell over on her way to set fire to Snape is well done, though.

* “Neville had been sobbing into Hagrid’s jacket for the last five minutes.” Are we really sure this boy’s meant to be in Gryffindor?

* It’s a good job Rowling’s editor was still doing their job at this point, and saved us from having to read about Hedwig swooping in and catching the snitch for Harry.

* Hagrid reveals that Nicholas Flamel’s involved with the thing in the forbidden corridor, because he’s unable to keep his mouth shut and Dumbledore’s a fool to trust him with sensitive information.

There's a video on YouTube that postulates that Dumbledore might actually be the personification of Death itself. Here it is:



So what do you think? Does this theory make sense, or not? Anyone have anything to add that might help it make complete sense?

Also, you'll be pleased to know that I have another project in the works! I'm not entirely sure when it will be ready, but I think you'll like it.

The Cursed Child

Its finally here! I still haven't read the whole thing through, I've just been flipping between pages and scenes trying to disbelieve my lying eyes that this garbage fire is real.

My first impression of the play is how bad the writing is. I mean JK did have a spark, once upon a time, but this writing is just shoddy. Borderline unreadable. The characters genuinely come off as trite, sound-bite spitting idiots. For all the money that went into the production, characterisation (as well as an editor) was an unaffordable luxury. Cardboard so flimsy I genuinely have to wonder if actual people put these actual words in their actual mouths on a real stage. Honestly, if I went to see this thing in London I'd have to go up on the stage and flick the actors to see whether or not they fell over. At least they're being paid not to die of embarrassment for bringing this thing to life.

Just to reassure myself that a plot this bad is conveyed through writing this awful, would the comm mind if I put a scene by scene commentary here? The writing is so bad that I need somebody else to tell me that they're seeing the same words on the same pages. Please. Is that all right? Or am I being a nuisance?

(if its not cool then I'll delete this post but otherwise lets dive in to this mess and try not to imagine how many trees died for our sins)

Part One Act One Scene One (Kings Cross)

- Before we get to the goods, a reservation of rights clause: the play may not be performed without express permission of the rights holders. Considering how many special effects are required to pull this off, I doubt many smaller theatre companies would want to, even if there wasn't the risk of being sued. Well, JK can't stop me from giving impromptu live readings of the more execrable bits of dialogue to my dogs, and she can't stop me from writing this commentary either, so here we go!

- looks like we pick up directly from where we left off in the DH epilogue. Back to JK's sugar fun world where the goodies solved all the problems, erased all the oppression, turned the world into their personal funhouse utopia, etc etc etc --- or did they???

- Harry accompanies his handcrafted happy ending family to the train platform. The children he named after dead people, primarily his parents in order to glorify himself. Ginny doesn't get to name the children. She's just the wife.
The staging directions say "two large cages rattle on top of two laden trollies" Laden with what? The cages? Do they have bags? Are the bags on the cages? Are the cages in lieu of the bags? Whats in the cages? Owls? Did Ginny get to name the owls? Now we wait until our mistress JK sees fit to tweet their insufferably twee owl names from on high, and pretend they were an important part of the story all along. Gosh I can't wait I'm so excited.

- Sounds like James has been teasing Albus. Parent!Harry is on the scene to put a stop to it. Sounds more like Ginny does the job of reassuring the children - she sounds like she's more involved with the children than Harry. Whats the bet she wrote the letters three times a week to James and just got Harry to sign the bottom. Or else did Harry write long, meandering self-involved letters to James that were just speels about his old Hogwarts glories. I hope not. Even Sirius did better than that.

- Ginny tells us how to get onto platform 9 3/4. Thanks Ginny. Lily tells us she's excited. Thanks Lily. Thats enough exposition out of the females now. Be quiet, Albus is about to start his important boy journey of self-discovery. No girls allowed.

- The family crowd around James and Albus' trollies and disappear into magic land.

The second instalment of this literary masterpiece. It took a while to write because every time I looked at the page

But before we do that, check out this scientific graph of why this play sucks
http://probablydavid.tumblr.com/post/148572276325/harry-potter-and-the-cursed-child-number-of

love that #data.

Act One Scene Two (Platform Nine and Three Quarters)

- the platform is busy, filled with witches and wizards trying to work out how to say goodbye to their "progeny" (quote unquote). Progeny sounds like something a scientist would say to describe a fertilised embryo, so maybe start by not calling them that.

- The family Potter encounters Ron, Hermione and Rose. They seem to have left half their progeny behind. Run, Hugo, run!!! Ron does a bad nose stealing trick on Lily, proving that Movie!Ron the idiot has been sent up from casting instead of an actual character. He'll be here a while :/

- Rose and Hermione are both certain that Ron only managed to pass his driving test by confunding the examiner. This is fine because muggles are a lesser species, so you don't have to not mess with their heads or follow their laws, while their roads, train stations, etc are at the disposal of your (superior) segregated society.

- Albus tells Harry he's worried he might be put in Slytherin. Harry, in only the first of many instances of good parenting we will encounter, meets this test of fatherhood by demonstrating to Albus that he never completely grasped the subject-object distinction so he thinks its fine to reassure his walking tombstone child that one of the two people (who are dead) Albus serves as a mobile epitaph for was in Slytherin and was a brave person and saved his bacon and so Harry has no problem with Slytherin so neither should Albus so stop worrying about it. nailed it.
Harry tells Albus that Hogwarts "will be the making of him," as it was for himself, omitting that "the making of him" was orchestrated by the other half of Albus' walking tombstone, was for the purpose of making him a disposable suicide bomber and nothing else, (a "pig to slaughter") and ultimately made him into a prick.
Ok so this play is largely about two boys (Albus and Scorpius) and their bad fathers and they go on a quest to save another boy who doesn't matter, which serves as a proxy a) for the fathers to relive their trauma through their sons and b) for the sons to accept their identity as sons. A lot of the spork is going to be taken up with pointing out how poorly conceived and executed this theme is, so if you think I'm harping on Harry the bad father, and Albus the ungrateful son, thats because everything else is just a backdrop to this. The point here is just that Harry is relating to Albus as an extension of himself rather than a unique individual. He'll do that a lot.

- Harry tells James to stop teasing Albus and that they both better get on the train. Lily tells us she's going to chase the train as it leaves (re-enacting Ginny in PS)

- Hermione tells Rose to say hello to Neville for her. Hermione comments that Rose is worried whether she'll break the Quidditch scoring record in her first or second year, and how early she'll be able to take her OWLS, and what colour dress she should wear when she gets a medal for inventing a cure for lycanthropy, and whether seventh year students will take orders from their shrimp sized head girl, etc, etc, etc. I get it she's perfect please stop. Ron comments that he has no idea where Rose's ambition came from. Neither do I but being ambitious and obnoxious is going to be 3/4 of her character, for the time when she exists at all, so we gotta deal with it.

- Ginny asks Harry how he'd feel if Albus was sorted into Slytherin. The most important thing about Albus' sorting is how Harry feels about it (just so you know). Ron comments that they always suspected that Ginny would be sorted into Slytherin. "Fred and George ran a book" no they didn't. Why must JK peddle lies in my house? For Fred and George to have taken bets on whether Ginny would or would not be a faithful maidservant of the Gryffindor OBWHF Ginny would had to have had a character before emerging as a sparkling flawless butterfly in OOTP, so I'm calling bullshit on that one. Also the extremely astute sporker of HBP noted how JK "re-fashioned" Ginny as a Cool Girl by associating her with Fred and George, a trend that continues here. Fred's dead, JK. I didn't even like the guy, but can he not RIP in peace??

- Hermione wants to leave, because everyone's looking at them. Ginny says that happens a lot with those three. She sounds jealous. Well, it might have happened with you, Ginny, but you never had an actual character or character arc, so honestly I think you should be grateful you were allowed to gestate the next protagonist and the other two walking tombstones, and that we let you talk occasionally. Thin ice, Ginny. Thin ice.

(they leave)

Act One Scene Three (The Hogwarts Express)

- Albus and Rose are on the train. So is the Trolley Witch (we'll meet her again later). While Albus wants a chocolate frog, Rose is already plotting her future popularity. Their future popularity. "I'm a Granger-Weasley and you're a Potter - everyone will want to be friends with us, we've got the pick of anyone we want." What a snotty little brat. What is she, the child of some aristocrat? I bet Draco thought the exact same thing when he was riding the train for the first time. Rose is going to find a whole bunch of silent lackeys (like Crabbe and Goyle) to carry her around on a palanquin and peel grapes for her. Who put these ideas into her head? Hermione? Was it you?
Honestly, there was a girl in my year like this at school, her mother was a famous barrister or something and she thought it entitled her to be the Queen of the friendgroup and get people to shun each other based on some imagined slight and it took a concerted ignoring effort from everyone to disabuse her. But this isn't Rose's story, so we don't get to watch her chill out (I'll be surprised if we find out the names of her friends tbh) so she needs to tip herself in the garbage can ASAP so Albus can get on with being the protagonist.

- The co-protagonist is hiding in one of the compartments. He's the best character in this garbage pile, but seeing as everyone else is so terrible that's not really saying very much. He doesn't meet Rose's lackey standards though. He offers them some sweets, and Rose gives us the backstory that everyone already knows (his dad was a death eater, their parents didn't get on, his mum for all intents and purposes doesn't exist [sorry Astoria]), and then makes it so much worse.

- The rumour about Astoria and Scorpius is just so stupid I'm not going to dignify it by typing it out. Its not even a good piece of misdirection for Delphini or a good forewarning of time travel. Its just dumb. Astoria joins Ginny as a walking womb :/

- Rose tells Scorpius it's probably rubbish "I mean.... look, you've got a nose." If only JK had made her antagonist actually threatening, then we wouldn't have had to sit through that ghost of a joke.

- Scorpius: "Father-son issues, I have those." Yes and this play is going to consist of little else, so its best you start mentioning them early and often.

- Rose turns up her nose and leaves, leaving the two co-protagonists together to deal with their important boy issues together. No girls allowed.

Act One Scene Four

- Ok so in lieu of a series of events that develop characterisation and provide some conflict (a "narrative" and "drama" respectively) Scene Four is just a slew of random scenes thrown together. The characters are largely static over the course of the play (if they develop its not obvious to me) but here we see them get sorted and do broom flying lessons. The only notable bits here is that Rose says "thank Dumbledore" when she gets sorted into Gryffindor (ugh) and Albus and Scorpius go into Slytherin, although all traits that make Slytherin Slytherin have been stripped from the house so instead of it being a conflict about blood, or society, or history or anything its just about the colour of their ties. Anyway Rose has been shunted off to Gryffindor, and Albus is in Slytherin with Scorpius, so no girls allowed in Slytherin I guess.
After Albus gets sorted Rose comments that "this is not how its supposed to be" which bugs me for reasons I can't quite elucidate - like Rose is aware of the fact that there's a script for the Potter Granger kids to be following, and the kids of Ron, Harry and Hermione are just pawns to re-enact their parents' glory and Albus hasn't quite got the memo, but then Albus and Scorpius will literally re-enact their parents glory anyway, and Rose isn't a part of that, so its not like any of this matters. Like I get that they're characters reading from a script, but Rose pointing out that there is a script, and then going on to be ignored as Albus and Scorpius re-enact it anyway, it just feels really hollow. Almost fake? I don't know. Like I really like stories where characters are aware of their authors intentions and fight against it (as opposed to just hearing a prophecy, which is being used as an easy way to plot by the author, and doing everything it says) but here even if Rose is aware there's a plan, she's not a part of it anyway so who cares.

- Anyway once Albus is done failing at broom holding he meets his father back at the station after Christmas. Albus doesn't want Harry to stand too close to him, while Harry does autographs and tells Albus not to worry, that people are staring at Harry and not him. Anyway, Albus begins the thing where he's a disappointing ungrateful son, and Harry does the thing where he only conceives of his son through the prism of his own egoism, and it's just as awful as I'm describing it here. James tells the Slithering Slytherin to stop dithering and get on the train, which is a nice bit of assonance. Maybe elucidation skips a generation, because he didn't get it from Harry or Ginny. Scorpius tells Harry that he doesn't need Harry's version of friends (aka a new iteration of Ron and Hermione), he's already got a friend, so that's that.

- Draco emerges from the crowd. He wants help from the ministry about the rumour thats too stupid to be typed. Apparently Astoria isn't well and the rumour isn't helping. Actually, Astoria isn't well because she's got invisible-itis, as well as having her name permanently mis-spelled, so the rumour thing is probably pretty low on her list.

- Albus and Rose only need to keep up the pretence of being friends until the train leaves. I'm not really sure what the beef is, here, only that Gryffindor and Slytherin are still enemies, because problems never get solved, or because Rose is determined to perpetuate house rivalry, or because Albus isn't lackey material, or what. Its a good thing that Rose is only a girl, so I don't have to waste the energy explaining why her problems don't matter. Oh she's now the best chaser ever in the entire world so don't pretend girls don't matter.

- Albus and Scorpius keep sucking at potions. I wonder who the potions master is?? Anyway both boys get bullied pretty heavily here, but by total non-entities, about totally ridiculous things, so its very hard to take it seriously.

- Anyway we flash-forward to third year Hogsmeade forms. Albus doesn't want to go because he hates the student body for bullying him. Harry tells him he's been owling the headmisstress - Albus is surly, uncooperative [not "being bullied" I note - is McGonagall blind or just going ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ in her office?] Albus says a whole bunch of stuff about not being able to change himself into a perfect son via magic and then runs off.

- he runs off to find Scorpius, whose extremely upset because Astoria died to give him bad feelings about it. Maybe the invisible-itis was too much for her.

- This year Lily is sorted into Gryffindor, and the scene ends with Albus saying that he didn't choose to be Harry's son. Well, unfortunately, the hack of a playwright chose to write a play about this issue, instead of other, actually interesting things, so we're both stuck, aren't we?

Act One Scene Five

(The Ministry of Magic)

- Ok so here we are with actual adult characters. Unfortunately the actual adult characters are going to behave like how a precocious child thinks adults should behave (or like adults who never properly grew up, which is more likely). It reminds me of https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3682339/1/The-Golden-Age, where Harry and Hermione basically just assimilate themselves/ are assimilated into the power structure of the Ministry and just start conforming as hard as possible. Like what if this play was a fanfic that was good??? It would look more like that honestly.

- Anyway Harry brings Hermione the plot device. Theodore Nott's being arrested, on charges of what I don't know, maybe Hermione made "being evil" a crime. He's bleeding from a cut on his cheek because he's the man who takes charge, but all the duels he'll be in on stage he'll lose really badly so he's competent, but only when there's no one around to check.

- This plot device is even better than the one in PoA. "Apparently wizardry has moved on since we were kids" well mentally you're both probably still eleven, so, young in mind, young in body I guess.

- Hermione chides him on his paperwork. Apparently his papers disclose that evil is afoot. Hermione can tell its evil, because she's using her nineteenth century imperialism!glasses, through them she can see that its the British ministry's responsibility that mountain trolls are riding graphorns through Hungary (question 1. could Harry or Hermione find Hungary on a map? 2. could they have a conversation with a Hungarian where they treat the Hungarian as an equal or a psuedo-English almost person like Krum? 3. Are there that many mountains in Hungary for the trolls to have a rodeo in? I thought it was mostly a plain? Has anyone been there to check?), mountain trolls with winged tattoos are walking through the Greek Seas (its August and they're on vacation and they got tattoos because they're rad af leave them alone) and the werewolves have gone underground (so pumped Remus died so werewolves could continue to exist on the margins of society). Anyway, the trolls, graphorns, giants, werewolves, etc are evil. Hermione says they're "allies of darkness, people and beasts that fought alongside Voldemort" and because she's an incredibly clever adult she hasn't realised that they had genuine grievances about a society that oppressed them that only he promised to address and after he lost I guess the ministry (and Hermione and Harry) just pretended that actually they were just evil and savage this whole time.

- Now that she's the person giving the orders, Hermione's rebelling against her parents (the brain-meddled, Australian ones) by eating toffee. That's probably something for a psychoanalyst, honestly.

- Hermione and Harry commiserate about being absentee parents. Imagine how much damage these two could do if they were more involved. Also her secretary is called Ethel (what a cute name it sounds like something out of the worst witch) and because she never appears and has to deal with Hermione as a boss I've decided that she is the best character and Delphi's girlfriend and her and Delphi run off to France together with Teddy as a ménage à trois.

- Harry leaves via the guest entrance of the Ministry (the phone box), the staging directions telling us that he "has the weight of the world on his shoulders." But seeing as he already fixed all the problems in society, along with Hermione, that weight probably isn't all that heavy. Maybe its magic.

Ok I'll leave it there. Next time we'll get more into the "plot" (such as it is) and also the Trolly Witch will re-appear, and my personal favourite character (Delphini) will emerge from the sludge of this mistake, rich and compelling female characters both, so look forward to it :)

* I bet muggle children feel so inferior now, when they compare the draughty, ice-cold Hogwarts castle to the central-heated hovels they live in back home.

* “Ron and his brothers were staying too, because Mr and Mrs Weasley were going to Romania to visit Charlie.” Ginny, presumably, has to fend for herself over Christmas.

* I’m not sure why Dumbledore is making Hagrid carry the Christmas trees inside, given that any of the teachers could just levitate the trees and take them in quicker and more easily.

* Then again, Albus does also make Filch clean the castle by hand, when any magic-user could vanish the rooms clean in a trice. Maybe he just gets off on seeing people struggle.

* Harry hates both Malfoy and Snape, inaugurating the long tradition of him trying to work out whom he hates the most.

* The trio have “been through hundreds of books already” without finding Flamel, because apparently card catalogues aren’t whimsical enough for the wizarding world.

* I’m surprised they haven’t yet found any reference to Flamel, though. Even if they’ve only been looking through books of recent magical history, you’d have thought at least one of them would have referenced him, if only in passing.

* Madam Pince seems a bit OTT, kicking inoffensive students out of the library. It’s not like Harry was damaging the books or disturbing other library users.

* Actually, couldn’t Harry ask Madam Pince if there are any books mentioning Nicholas Flamel? He could tell her it’s for a piece of History of Magic homework or something.

* Harry and Ron immediately lose interest in looking for Flamel once the holidays start, because even at this early stage they’re a pair of layabouts who can’t do anything without Hermione nagging them.

* Ron starts teaching Harry wizard chess. This is exactly like muggle chess except more sadistic, and therefore better.

* I hope Ron enjoys beating Harry at chess, because it’s the only thing he’ll be allowed to beat Harry at, at all, ever.

* Ron’s pile of Christmas presents is much bigger than Harry’s. Just to remind us that Harry’s the underdog here, in case his free broom, rule-bending place on the sports team and private hoard of gold have caused us to forget.

* Ron’s fascination with Harry’s 50p is a bit OTT, especially for a kid whose father is supposedly obsessed with muggle artefacts. What, so Mr. Weasley never once brought any muggle money home with him?

* It’s a pity they don’t study Classics in the wizarding world, otherwise Dumbledore might have read about the Ring of Gyges and realised that giving an eleven-year-old the ability to essentially do anything and get away with it is almost certainly going to be a very, very bad idea.

* Harry’s jumper is better than the others’, because Mrs. Weasley obviously makes more of an effort if you’re rich and famous not family. I wonder how her real children feel about this.

* Not only is Ron’s jumper worse than Harry’s, it’s in a colour he hates. No wonder he ends up so insecure.

* The Hogwarts Christmas dinner sounds kind of wasteful – we’re not told exactly how many people stayed for the holidays, but it’s almost certainly not enough to eat “a hundred fat, roast turkeys”.

* The narrative voice pauses for a bit to express contempt for the “feeble Muggle [crackers] the Dursleys usually bought”, because obviously crackers which send live rodents flying through the air are far superior.

* The fact that we need to be specifically told that the balloons in Harry’s cracker are non-explodable says a lot about wizarding society.

* Despite allegedly being a normal human male, teenage Harry never once considers using the Invisibility Cloak to spy on the girls’ changing rooms.

* Dumbledore’s been spying on Harry looking at the Mirror. Because that isn’t creepy at all.

Act One Scene 6 - 11

[kneels down and puts hands on shoulders] delphinus potter, you were named after a dolphin in the sky how fucking sick is that. there’s a dolphin in the sky.

(its Delphi she's here I love her) Her plan is to get Albus to steal the plot device from Harry so she can go back in time and do a bunch of dumb stuff that will cause her to rule the world. Just adding that Bellatrix picked Delphi's name in accordance with the Black constellation theme, so I hope you're all taking notes on what happens when the women get to pick the names. That means you, Padma.

Act One Scene 6 (Harry and Ginny Potter's House)

We open with Harry speaking to an elderly Amos. Albus, in the grand Potter tradition of "your privacy is my prerogative" is eavesdropping on the conversation from the top of the stairs. Amos is berating Harry for dodging his appointments; looks like the Ministry is still playing silly buggers with people they'd rather avoid, and Harry comes off like a coward hiding behind his secretaries. Its such a reversal from the Harry of OOTP, HBP and DH who fought the Ministry's bureaucratic dictates, their oppressive and pointless laws to which he was subjected (remember Amos used to be a ministry worker?) that I can't help wonder if its intentional. Well, Harry's the man now. Let's see how he deals with the plebs.

What Amos wants is his son back, using the plot device mentioned last time, and he's willing to harangue Harry to get it. Everything Amos is saying is calculated by Delphi (who has him under the imperius) to play to Harry's sense of a) grandeur and b) guilt so keep that in mind, but Harry is such a fathead that he actually buys it. "There's plenty you're responsible for""Voldemort wanted you not my son""How many people have died for the Boy Who Lived? I'm asking you to save one of them." You have to give Delphi credit: these overtures completely ignore the fact that people could have died for reasons other than Harry's personal salvation (aka its flattering), they play right into Harry's hero complex/self-indulgence that he never got over even though he's a middle aged bureaucrat who doesn't do his paperwork, its melodramatic, its sentimental, as a piece of social engineering, its perfect. Delphi, my beautiful schemer you see that? Hook, Line, Sinker.

Sucker count: 1. One sucker down, one to go.

Delphi interrupts Albus's eavesdropping. She's "a twenty-something, determined looking woman" Albus asks her who she is, considering this is his house, he's the protagonist, this is his spotlight, no girls allowed, etc.

She says she's a thief, come to steal everything he owns. His gold, his wand, his chocolate frogs. My heart. Actually she's Delphini Diggory, here to shepherd Amos around as his dutiful nurse. They commiserate over being bullied about their names before Amos dragged Delphi away back to St Oswalds Home for Elderly Witches and Wizards (where their sons and daughters stick their old people so they can get their inheritances early, probably), Upper Flagley. She's posing as Amos's niece, who took the job as a nurse to look after him. She tells Albus that "its not easy to live with people stuck in the past" before inviting him to visit some time.

Amos calls Delphi away, flippantly introducing Harry as "the once-great Harry Potter, now a stone cold Ministry man" (its so true feel that burn Harry what happened to the outlaw revolutionary you pretended you were when you were 17??) before leaving. "Albus watches on, thinking carefully"

Sucker count: 2.

Act One Scene Seven (Albus' Room)

Ok this is the scene in which Harry's shitty parenting skills are put on full display. I always knew he'd be a bad father, considering he could never emotionally relate to someone unless their problems were an exact mirror of his, but this is *kisses hands in the chef gesture* perfect. Harry is exactly the sort of parent who wants to impress his trauma all over his kids (hence the walking tombstone names), he is exactly the sort of parent to smother his kids with his own issues by way of a mouldy blanket, he is exactly the sort of parent who relates to his kid by talking solely about himself and his suffering, and this is the scene that proves it.

Honestly some other people were saying that Harry in this scene is OOC, but honestly, to me, this nasty father who wants his kids to join in the glorification of his own life story, thats who he is. To me, at least. Like how abuse victims perpetuate the cycle of abuse by abusing others? Thats him. Its not that he's being abusive here, I mean, this play is what, PG-13, its just that the way his character was presented over the course of seven books makes me think he'd be a bad father in exactly the way he's being a bad father here.

Anyway, James is throwing a snit fit because his hair's turned pink after Ron sent him a gag comb that turned it that way. He says he'll have to use his invisibility cloak to hide it, and Ginny appears telling him that thats not why Harry gave him that cloak. I thought the accepted canonical trivia tidbit was that James stole it, but the gift is now a sentimental thing (continuing the Peverelle tradition of giving the cloak to the eldest). Lily's sentimental gift are fairy wings that probably look pretty cool on the stage (she says she loves them and they flutter), even if they make me worry that the Potters are pressing 1950s gender roles on their kids too hard. Like what if she wants monster trucks? Or a broom? Like a broom that Ginny never got?

Albus got a gift of love potion from Ron (Albus "okay. a Love Potion. okay") And superficially we know (even if none of the characters appear to have realised, even Ron, who took that dose from Romilda) that love potions are bad because they hijack people's emotions, try to control them into making them feel a certain way and act on it, I think its here ~dramatically to highlight how Harry is attempting to make Albus empathise with his own trauma and bad childhood feels.

Ginny, who was present in this scene chasing after James, "softly walks away," leaving the special boys to have their important emotional boyfeels together. No girls allowed in the central conflict of the play, we're all about the father/son relationship here.

Harry presents Albus with "the last thing I had from my mum. The only thing. I was given to the Dursleys wrapped in it. I thought it had gone forever, and then, when your Great Aunt Petunia died, hidden amongst her possessions, Dudley, surprisingly found this, and he kindly sent it on to me, and ever since then - well, anytime I've wanted luck I've found it and tried to hold it, and I wondered if you -" (wanted to hold my mouldy trauma blanket as well)

Albus touches the blanket, for luck, but only briefly (when was the last time it was washed? sensible, imho), and says Harry should keep it, but Harry isn't done expositing about his childhood trauma. "I think - I believe - Petunia wanted me to have it, and thats why she kept it, and now I want you to have it from me. I didn't really know my mother - but I think she'd've wanted you to have it too. And maybe - I could come find you - and it - on All Hallows' Eve. I'd like to be with it on the night they died - and that could be good for the two of us..."

See what I mean about re-enacting his trauma using his own kids as props? Its right there. Its right there. This is something he really needs therapy for, honestly. Not to drag his kid into a dramatic re-enactment of his grandparents' murder. Like don't deal with your issues by throwing them all over your children. Dude, you're an adult. A parent. Your problems come second to that of your kids now. Thats how it works. Like Sirius could man up enough (almost) not to burden Harry with James' ghost, its time to put your grief aside. Save it for the therapist man, come on.
Also I note how he's imputing motives to two female characters here, his mum and his aunt, and yet Ginny (his wife) is barred from having any important lines in this scene. Women are so much easier when you can just imagine what they feel instead of having them there and having them actually tell you.

Albus, who is not a therapist, tries to shut this thing down as tactfully as possible, by pointing out that Harry probably has a lot of Ministry work to do (true we know he doesn't do his paperwork), but Harry is determined to make his problems Albus' problems, so Albus has to shut him down, and if he can't do it the easy way he'll do it the hard way.

Harry is "desperate to reach out" but he keeps relating to his son, as I said before, through the prism of his own egoism. It goes about as well as you'd expect.
Harry: "Do you want a hand packing? I loved packing, leaving Privet Drive and going back to Hogwarts, I know you don't love it -"
Albus: "I know, for you its the greatest place on earth, the poor orphan, bullied by his aunt & uncle, traumatised by his cousin, blah blah blah, the poor orphan who went on to save us all - do you want me to curtsey?"
Harry says he never wanted gratitude. Albus says he never wanted a mouldy blanket. Harry's offended by Albus calling the blanket mouldy. Well, when was the last time it was washed, Harry? Do you do the laundry in this house?

Then we get to the bit where Albus, in a pretty typical bit of teenage melodrama, says that he wishes Harry wasn't his dad. Harry, in a typical (for him) bit of adult bad parenting says, yeah, well maybe I wish you weren't my son. (Harry Potter the boy who lived to be a bad parent - who'd've guessed it?)
Honestly, its not even as if Albus' tantrum is that unwarranted. He's having a hard time at school, being bullied (which neither his father nor the teaching staff gaf about), his grades are bad, his besties' mother is dead, etc, and Harry wants to live-action roleplay a) his own parent's death (creepy) and b) happy families perfect funhour. Like Harry doesn't even ask his kid whats going on in his head or in his classroom, he just says "I'm done being made responsible for your unhappiness. Because at least you have a dad. I didn't" when Albus has reasons that don't involve Harry for being unhappy, Harry has to put himself not only at the centre of his own universe, but at the centre of his son's.

Unfortunately the rest of the play will go on to validate Harry being at the centre of his own universe, his son's, his wife's, the wizarding world's, etc, because the main conflict involves Voldemort who cared about killing Harry to the exclusion of pretty much all else in DH, but I still have to applaud Albus for attempting to have a life outside Harry's family melodrama.
Even if it doesn't last.

Act One Scene 8 (Hut on the Rock)

This scene is just an extremely self-indulgent Harry dream scene in which he re-imagines the scene when Hagrid told him he was a wizard. Petunia's dialogue is different from that in PS, as in, Petunia is more overtly verbally abusive towards Harry, but Hagrid's dialogue is pretty much exactly the same. You're a wizard, you're the most special wizard ever, etc, etc.

Anyway I think this dream scene is interesting because right at the moment when his kid has an actual problem that relates to him being an actual person and not just a replica of his father or dead grandparent Harry's subconscious chooses to have a re-enactment of his own childhood drama and resurrect his own childhood nemesis.

Act One Scene 9 (Harry and Ginny Potter's House)

Harry wakes up from his nightmare. I wonder if Ginny ever gets nightmares from her year in DH and Harry has to comfort her? Nah.

Anyway, Ginny is on hand to sooth Harry's wounded soul or whatever the fuck. She says not to blame himself over what Amos said, but Harry's feeling persecuted here, Ginny, and honestly he's starting to like it. She also knows about the mishap with Albus and the blanket. She says "it was a nice try" when the actual reality was it was a stupid bad idea from a self-indulgent bad father. They then go on to have a conversation that purports to be about Albus when it is actually all about Harry's self image and his image of Albus. Observe:
Ginny: [I know that] when the time is right, you'll say sorry. That you didn't mean it. That what you said concealed... other things. You can be honest with him Harry. That's all he needs.
Harry: I just wish he were more like Lily or James
Ginny: maybe don't be that honest.
Harry: No, I wouldn't change a thing about him... but I can understand them, and
Ginny: Albus is different and thats a good thing. And he can tell, you know, when you're putting on your Harry Potter front. He wants to see the real you.
Harry: "The truth is a beautiful and terrible thing and should therefore be treated with great caution."
Ginny: Dumbledore left a child in an abusive home and this bit of pseudo-profundity of his is not pertinent to the situation.

Ok, the last bit was me, but in this bit of dialogue Harry is still not considering that his kid has problems that don't revolve around him. He's being bullied and only has one (1) friend, Harry you moron. "the real you" was the bit where you got mad at him for not playing along with your stupid orphan saviour re-enactment fantasies. You know, the ones you're having right now.

Ginny: A strange thing to say to a child
Harry: Not when you believe that child will have to die to save the world.

^^^^^ those fantasies, Harry.

Act One Scene 10 (The Hogwarts Express)

We're heading back to school, so its time for us to be reminded of Rose's existence. Here she is, on hand to attempt to bestow some pity friendship upon poor Albus.
Rose: Its the start of a new year for us, so I want us to be friends
Albus: We were never friends
Rose: Thats harsh! We were friends when we were six.
Albus: That was a long time ago.

Well, it would be nice if Rose was here to be friends/ an integral part of the plot but actually she's just here to dispense the latest on the plot device. Its at the Ministry after Harry's raid on Fort Nott. Shame that the character people were hoping would be a protagonist could be replaced by Albus reading the newspaper to find out plot critical information, but thats how it is (when you're a girl).

Albus needs to extract himself from the girl cooties and get to Scorpius ASAP. They have a plot to enact! Anyway the kicker is that Rose is only making the effort because his mum owled her dad (see how Ginny is trying to help Albus (offstage) while Harry is only thinking about himself?) and Albus is naturally displeased to be the object of pity of adults and tries to shake her off only to run into Scorpius, whose attempts at seduction are as follows:
Scorpius: Hello Rose, what do you smell of?
Rose: What do I smell of?
Scorpius: No I meant it as a nice thing, you smell like a mixture of fresh flowers and fresh bread -

Its not unique in this series when boys/men describe women as a cluster of attributes (smells) that remind them of other objects, but its especially annoying that Scorpius is growing up to be a troglodyte like every other man who gets the spotlight in this series. This is what passes for romance in this series, woman as nice-smelling object. Anyway that's as far as Rose's character gets developed so now its time to tip her back in the garbage bin so the boys can get back to work.

By back to work I mean they hug to say hello, a purely platonic hug now that the heterosexual credentials have been sufficiently brandished. And then they get back to work. Albus has ~plans. ~Plans that involve getting off a moving train.

He explains the plan to Scorpius. The plan is to deal with his son-father issues through the proxy of Amos and the dead Cedric. They're going to need the plot device to do it. Some people have been asking why Cedric's memory was tarnished as opposed to any of the other dead characters, but its just because of the father-son connection, as in Harry and Albus need a reflection of Cedric and Amos to realise their noble father-son bond, so we just need Amos and Cedric to awkwardly stand in the background and re-enact the main story while they do it. They're not actually part of the story, ie characters in their own right, they're just moving set pieces. Kind of callous, imho, but if thats all the author is capable of conjuring up in the way of drama, that's what it will have to be.

But first we have to get off this train.

Act One Scene 11 (Train Roof)

Anyway they're on the roof of the train and Scorpius has some banter that would be cute if he were capable of talking to Rose like she's a person instead of a perfume, and then we encounter...

The terminator... (its the Trolley Witch)

Trolley Witch: People don't know much about me. They buy my cauldron cakes but they never really notice me. I don't remember the last time someone asked my name.
Albus: What is your name?
Trolley Witch: I've forgotten. All I can tell you is that when the Hogwarts Express first came to be - Ottoline Gambol herself offered me this job...

Yeah its bad. The mention of Ottoline Gambol (I'd never heard of her - turns out she's one of the Headmistresses of the past, who definitely existed, much like the female Ministers that were being strong women occupying positions of power in the Wizarding World, but not during the course of the main story so we didn't have to listen to their whiny female voices) sent me to Pottermore, which suggests that JK is doubling down on one half of her Pottermore stuff, while removing and contradicting the other half (the time-turner article was removed).
Oh, that reminds me, there are three new books coming out; I think its just the pottermore stuff but in ebook format and you have to pay to read it??? Maybe Ottoline Gambol will reappear there?

Anyway, there's no salvaging the trolley witch. It gets worse, her pumpkin pastys turn into grenades, her hands turn into spikes, Sirius and the Twins get name-dropped (please leave them out of this). Like you know sometimes when someone else is doing something embarrassing you get second hand embarrassment watching them do it that gets worse when they don't realise they're doing something embarrassing? That was me this entire passage. I really wish they'd just left the Trolley Witch alone as one of the lower class set dressing pieces to bolster the nostalgia of the text because turning her into some kind of inhuman terminator is really rubbing me the wrong way, honestly.

Anyway with Albus and Scorpius off to badger Amos after jumping off a train, I'll leave it there until next time.

I know that there are some excellent snarky Cursed Child sporking, reviews and reactions already. And I fully plan to read them and comment on them. But I wanted to wait until I read the blasted Cursed Child thing.

However I won't be finishing this book. As much as I hate leaving books half read; this is just too much for me. And for my blood pressure.
Still, I would like to rant discuss the part that made me see red and give up on this mess.


"HERMIONE: But still ignored. You know, there’s some interesting stuff in here . . . There are mountain trolls riding Graphorns through Hungary, there are giants with winged tattoos on their backs walking through the Greek Seas, and the werewolves have gone entirely underground"

Let us unwrap this.

- There are "mountain trolls riding Graphorns through Hungary".
Well, my first reaction was that we should be thankful it's not Albania again. But it still makes no bloody sense.
Even the most basic Google search would have served to show JKR (or whoever did most of this thing) that Hungary is not some Überwald like, high mountains covered country.
Yes, there are mountains there. But mountains that would allow for bands of mountain trolls (each weighing over a tonne) to ride Graphorns through them? And without anybody noticing this?
Without people seeing trolls (who won't even attempt to conceal themselves) ridding big (for the sake of my sanity; I'm going to assume that they must weight more the trolls), purple, beasts with golden great horns?
Oh, and those animals are trying to shake loose* the trolls. So there's absolutely nothing stealthy or hard to notice about any of this?
Yeah, I sincerely doubt it.

- There are "giants with winged tattoos on their backs walking through the Greek Seas".
Okay, first off; just what are "Greek Seas" supposed to be?
Again, even a cursory look at a map would have showed them this:


And lets not forget the Mediterranean Sea

That's a pretty big area to cover.
So, where are those giants supposed to be? All over the Mediterranee, Aegean, and Ionian Sea? Or in just one place?
I guess we should count ourself fortunate that they hadn't added something about giants sinking ships.

Still, giants? Weren't we told that there's not many left of them? And that they prefer living in colder mountains in the North?
So what are they doing in "Greek Seas"? And also how did they get here? They had to walk over half of (densely populated parts too) Europe to get to Greece. So how come nobody noticed them?

Also; "winged tattoos on their backs"?
Are we to assume that this is Augurey / Delphi connection? And if it is: why?
Why would Delphi want to give some "Darkmarks" to giants? And as the giants are resistant to most magic, how did she tattoo them? More importantly, considering just how much courting DE had to do to get giants on their side (and just how little came off of it) just how did Delphi get them on her side? And why did she send them there? Or are we to think they are running away from her?
Or, if the tattoos are not her doing, is this just random nonsense that have nothing to do with anything?

- There are "werewolves (that) have gone entirely underground".
Considering that apparently Harry&co have done nothing** to make their life easier; isn't that understandable?
WW society have been trying to eradicate or make them disappear for years and years. What is so shocking about them keeping their heads down and trying not to be noticed?

Now let us talk about imperialism.
"HARRY: Great, let’s get out there. I’ll get the team together."

If JKR only had H and Hr reading reports and discussing things that are happening "abroad" the whole thing wouldn't be so bad. Sure, it would still be a serious geography fail and it would still be condescending and patronizing.
But this line?
Harry would be ready to form a team and invade or just descend on foreign countries / Ministries?
Just wtf? Why would anybody in Hungary or Greece let him do that? Are we to believe that they can't deal with their own problems? Or do our "heroes" just don't think that those people can deal with this? Are we to accept that Hungary and Greece need Harry to fix things for them?

. . . I can't even with this.
Seriously, JKR was always terrible with writing "foreigners". And the "History or Northern America" showed that she only got worse and more offensive.
But other people have been involved in writing "Cursed Child". Did they to fail to notice just how insulting and imperialistic this is?

Are they setting out to insult everybody who's not of (white) British middle-class? And even then only non socially aware parts of British middle-class?
For all that she enjoy painting herself as a liberal; JKR really doesn't shows that in her (non Twitter) writing.

Also, this:
"HERMIONE: I’m busy enough with my own. These are people and beasts that fought alongside Voldemort in the great wizarding wars. These are allies of darkness."

Just look at that. Hermione (she of the House Elf crusade, she who was Lupin's friend, and she who, supposedly, is still friendly with Hagrid) the Minster of Magic is lumping all those people and beings into EvilTM category.
This is years and years after the war, in the "All was well" era with out heroes in power: and absolutely nothing have been done.
All old prejudices are still going strong. Nobody cares.

Also, aside from being morally wrong, this is also just plain wrong.
Trolls? They have IIRC never been on Tom's side. In fact we had security trolls employed by the Ministry and DD.

Giants? Sure, some of them supported Voldy. But Grawp was on their side. Do Harry and "Hermy" see him as being part of "allies of darkness" thing? And what about Hagrid? Is he tainted too?

Werewolves? Remus Lupin was somebody they, supposedly, loved and respected. And he was a werewolf. Is he supposed to be the "only good one"? Are we to accept that all others are evil? Only Greyback was on DE side and fought in the Battle of Hogwarts. Where are those other evil werewolves who supported Voldy? Is this another example of Jo forgetting what she wrote?
Also, considering just how much praise she got for the way she treated Remus Lupin, and the whole thing about condemning the way WW is acting toward people with lycanthropy? And metaphors involved?
Yeah, this really doesn't sound good.

One more thing, I find it very interesting that Dementors weren't mentioned at all.
They were on Voldy's side (they even make trouble for our "heroes" in this play itself) and are closest to pure evil creatures we have seen.
Yet they weren't mentioned. Why?
Are they still torturing prisoners in Azkaban? Are our "heroes" okay with that?
Or did they find a way to destroy them? Is Azkaban Dementor free?
Seriously, I would really like to know this. Not enough to read more of this dreck, but enough to Google it. And maybe I'm not looking at right places, but I don't think they bothered to answer that in this book.

The most I found was this from the hp wiki:
"Shacklebolt disbanded the Dementors as guards of the wizard prison. It is unknown where they went or what they did without their only known application. After the Dementors were removed from the prison, Aurors were placed in the prison as guards. "

So, yeah.
It's important to track trolls and giants but it's not important to know where the hell Dementors are?!!!
Like, really think about this. WW let them go. They just sicced them on the rest of the world and don't even care to know what they might do.
The one thing that might make rest of the world's Ministries actually ask for help with (or you know reparations for letting those horrors wander as they please) of British wizard; and they aren't mentioned.
I don't even know what to say about that.

*HP wiki tells me that Graphorns hate being ridden. And that they fight the trolls.
Btw, what is with JKR and her apparent love of things and people trampling all over free will of others?
**Way to go JKR. I'm really feeling those "All was well" warm fuzzies.

I and other souls much wiser than me have spoken at some length about the determinism prevalent in the Harry Potter books, and how whether you're good or evil in this series has little to nothing to do with your actions and everything to do with whether the narrative designates you "good" or "evil." One of the most popular explanations is that the series is a reflection of Calvinist theology, with Harry and his friends making up the "elect" in their world. However, I'd argue that this explanation, while not altogether wrong, is insufficient. I say this because moral determinism is actually pretty common in bad works--by now I've seen it employed at least two separate times in bad media, including by American authors with no obvious Calvinist ties. Maybe they're just copycats of Rowling or some other work; but I'm now wondering if determinism isn't a form of wish-fulfillment in and of itself, just like the magic and the quidditch and the triumph of "good" over "evil."

Think about it: in the real world, being a good person is really hard work. You have to actively guard against all manner of behaviors which, if indulged long or often enough, or at the wrong time or places, could make you a bad person. Virtues like "compassion" and "forgiveness," which carry so much currency, often take years, even an entire lifetime, to cultivate fully. By the same token, you also can't dismiss someone else as evil or not belonging just because they have different opinions or ways of doing things. And you have to keep all this up, even in hard times when morality may seem to be the least of your worries, because you can't take as much credit for good behavior when everything is going well as when things are going badly.

When you put it like that, it's easy to see the appeal of a determinist fantasy fable. If goodness and badness aren't the result of our actions, but are just immutable elemental properties, then you can be good without making any effort. How do you know that you're good? Well, you spend most of your time doing good things, like loving your family and respecting your friends, right? So, you must be good. On the other hand, the person you got into a heated argument with has different opinions and behavior than you, so if you are good then they must be, by definition, bad.

By the same token, if you are good, then no matter what you do, it will be good, even if from an objective standpoint it harms way more people than it helps. Sadism can be its own wish fulfillment, and the Potter books are no exception (see Terri_Testing's article "Vengeance is Thine" for one such example). But sadism is hard to reconcile with being a good person. However, from a deterministic standpoint, it doesn't matter. If you're innately "good" and your actions aren't what make you "good," then you can kill or brutalize as many people or sentient creatures as you want, without any effect on your innate "goodness." Furthermore, everyone who is "bad" deserves whatever punishment you and your "good" friends care to dish out--and since goodness and badness are innate and immutable, then a "bad" person can never be rehabilitated and therefore deserves whatever they have coming.

Determinism is seductive, in other words, because it's easy, and also because it puts no demands on the reader, as long as they can classify themselves as "good." It's easy to see how some people might be into that considering how morally complicated the world we actually live in is. Doesn't make it a good artistic choice, particularly in a series that bleats on and on about how it's "showing the world as it really is."

I’m baaaaaaaaaaack!

So, in light of the new information about the Cursed Child debacle, I’ve decided to pick up where my abridged series has left off. I’m going to be giving the story of the Cursed Child the same treatment as I gave the books when I was doing Harry Potter Abridged…only instead of waiting until I’ve read the script, I’m going to use only the outline of the plot, and details from other people’s postings about it. So there’s going to be a lot of guess work and improvisation, but hopefully it’ll still be funny. I decided that it would be easier to get it onto paper while it was still fresh in my mind, and I thought adding my own spin on the proceedings might be more fun. Since I don't know the acts, I've broken it up based on whatever stopping points I thought were most convenient. I’ll probably track down a copy of the script at some point, and do something with it; but for now, enjoy!

In practice this has turned out to be less funny than I thought it would be. But hopefully it’s still at least a little funny.

[It all starts when Rose, Albus, and Scorpius board the Hogwarts Express for the first time…]

Rose: So, anyway, Al, aren’t you excited about going to Hogwarts?

Albus: I suppose so….

Rose: Oh, don’t be that way! We’ll have so much fun, and I know we’ll all be good Gryffindors together because I mean we were kids together and the descendants of the greatest heroes of our generation and why would the Sorting Hat break up a set?!

Albus: I suppose.

Rose: Say, do you think you’re going to end up as my bridegroom someday?

Albus: What?! Where did you get that from?!

Rose: Well, you know, you’re a him, and I’m a her, and we were kids together, and the descendants of heroes, and the same age. I mean, it would just be perfect, you know?

Albus: But…aren’t we cousins?

Rose: Cousins have gotten married before now, and will continue to get married.

Albus: But still….

Rose: Oh, cheer up!

Albus: Yeah, yeah. I need some time to myself to think. [Strides off]

Rose: Hmph! He isn’t any fun at all!

[However, all the compartments have someone in them already. Eventually Albus resigns himself to sitting with Scorpius Malfoy]

Scorpius: It’s you! What are you doing here?!

Albus: There was nowhere else for me to sit.

Scorpius: Nowhere else for you to sit but the same compartment as the son of your father’s sworn archenemy?

Albus: Now now, I know your father and mine have a history, but surely they were never—

Scorpius: Did you hear? Rumor has it I’m actually the son of Voldemort!

Albus: What?! No way!

Scorpius: That’s what they’re saying, anyway.

Albus: But…didn’t he die years before our parents had even met?

Scorpius: They’re saying time travel might have been involved.

Albus: Time travel?! But that’s ridiculous! Time travel doesn’t work like that!

Scorpius: I didn’t think so either, but that’s what they’re saying.

[The two boys get so absorbed in talking they don’t even notice the train pulling into the station]

[They go to the Great Hall…]

McGonagall: Alright, children, it’s time for you to step up and be Sorted into the House that will determine your entire life’s destiny for evermore!

Albus: That does not sound good!

Rose: Oh, please—only stupid slimy Slytherins need to fear the Sorting!

[Rose is Sorted into Gryffindor and Scorpius into Slytherin…]

McGonagall: Alright, Albus Severus Potter? [to self] That poor child….

[Albus steps up to the stage and the Sorting Hat is placed on his head]

Sorting Hat: I detect an affinity for the Slytherin boy. Maybe I should put you in his same house?

Albus: No! I was afraid something like this might happen!

Sorting Hat: What’s the matter? You don’t want to be with the Malfoy boy? He just might end up as the love of your life.

Albus: But I’m only eleven years old!

Sorting Hat: And how old do you think your father was when he met your mother?

Albus: But…my father had said that I could choose my House!

Sorting Hat: Your father told a lie. I let HIM choose his House because he was the Chosen One.

Albus: And I’m not the main character of this story?!

Sorting Hat: This is a different matter.

Albus: Please! All I want is to be a good Gryffindor like everyone else in my family!

Sorting Hat: Too bad! You’re in Slytherin!

Albus: [Cries]

[Albus goes to take his seat at the Slytherin table, next to Scorpius]

James: Ha ha! My brother’s in Slytherin! What a loser!

Albus: [Cries some more]

[So the school year begins. Albus goes to Transfiguration…]

Transfiguration instructor: Today we will learn how to transfigure a rat into a teacup.

Albus: [Attempts to transfigure rat]

Rat: -_-

Albus: Transfigure, dammit!

Rat: [Bites Albus’s finger]

Albus: Owww! [Cries]

[Later, at dinner…]

James: Ha ha, small animals hate my brother!

Albus: [Cries]

[He goes to Potions…]

Slughorn: Today I’ll be teaching you how to make a simple draught, designed to—

Albus: [Raises hand] Professor, Professor! Did you by any chance write a play about a Japanese emperor when you were younger?

Slughorn: No, I’m afraid you must have confused me for someone else.

Albus: Awww…

[Later, at dinner…]

James: Ha ha, my brother is a stupid geek who likes old Muggle history movies!

Albus: [Cries]

[He goes to Herbology…]

Neville: Remember, children—you must show love to your plants….

Albus: [Raises hand] Professor, Professor!

Neville: Yes?

Albus: Is your name pronounced Neville or Navel?

Neville: [Facepalm] Like father like son.

[That night at dinner…]

James: Ha ha, my brother is so stupid he can’t even remember his own teacher’s name!

Albus: [Cries]

[He goes to Charms…]

Professor Flitwick: Alright, today we will learn how to levitate feathers.

Albus: [Points wand at feather] Wingardium leviosa!

Feather: [doesn’t move]

Rose: Wingardium leviosa!

[Rose’s feather lifts up off the ground. It then glides over to Albus and starts tickling him]

Albus: [Giggles] S-stoooooooooooop!

[That night at dinner…]

James: Ha ha! My brother is super ticklish and also sucks at charms!

Albus: [Cries]

[He goes to flying lessons…]

Madame Hooch: Alright, mount your brooms…

[Albus attempts to mount his broom, which immediately lifts off the ground and starts zooming around everywhere]

Albus: HELP! SOMEBODY SAVE ME!

[Albus eventually falls off his broom and is so badly injured he spends that night in the hospital wing]

Scorpius: Albus! I brought you some tasty chocolate frogs!

Albus: Oh, thank you so much! [Takes gifts]

Scorpius: By the way…your brother has been talking about what happened in flying class all day.

Albus: How does he know so much?! We don’t even have the same classes yet he knows all my misfortunes as if he were there!

Scorpius: You have to ask?

Albus: Rose?

Scorpius: Yup.

Albus: That traitor! And she had the gall to declare me her future husband! [Sits up too fast] Owwww…

Scorpius: This is going to be a long seven years.

I've spent some time archive binging recently and got to thinking about what the new conclusions meant for old issues that weren't directly addressed.  In particular, I was reminded of all the old complaints about Lily's sacrifice being held up as exceptional even though most parents would die for their children.  And if sacrificial magic is as ancient, wild, and Dark as it is claimed, without needing any channeling incantations or rituals, there should be thousands, if not millions of people throughout the history of humanity clearly benefiting from such sacrifices.  Yet canon says there aren't.  Few people are even aware of the possibility that it could happen, let alone happen reliably.  Why not?

Well.  What is one of the most essential things we learn about the Dark Arts?

You have to mean them.

And that was just in reference to such highly domesticated spells as avada kedavra and cruciatus.  (They have incantations!  They give consistent results!  And people want to call those Dark?  Puh-lease.)  I suspect that the further back you go, the more vital will and intent becomes to any manipulation of magic.

So of course most parents would be WILLING to die for their children, but how many would WANT to?  Would PLAN on it?

Of all the mothers who ever threw themselves between their children and an assailant, how many intended to die then and there, and how many were praying that the attacker would show mercy at the last moment, or some savior would miraculously appear, or that any wounds be at least non-fatal?  Of every soldier who threw themselves on a grenade, how many wanted to die to save their friends, and how many prayed that this one is a dud and they'd all survive to laugh about this incident later?

I think the lack of intent to sacrifice their lives explains why most sacrificies don't result in such absurdly noticeable effects as we see in Harry.

Does that mean that the intent to gamble their lives means nothing?  Canon suggests yes.  Mere desire to achieve a result isn't enough to trigger magic.  No matter how badly you want to someone to writhe in agony, they're going to be just dandy until you point your wand at them and say, "Crucio."  The closest we see is children's accidental magic, but even that requires an emotional jolt, and there's no control over what will actually happen - only that it will somehow mitigate the immediate emotional threat.

So.  What does this say about Lily's state of mind when she was bargaining with Voldemort?

Well Terri Testing's Liberacorpus offers one answer:

http://terri-testing.livejournal.com/7569.html

But I don't think we necessarily have to go that dark.

Canon doesn't explicitly support the idea that risking yourself can produce power in the same manner that sacrificing yourself can, but it doesn't contradict it either.  I'm quite fond of the fanon theory that Felix Felicis is so tricky to make because the process requires the brewer risk injury, or even life, to make it correctly.   Even concentrated into a potion though, the effect is rather short lived, only several hours, not life-long as Harry seemed to enjoy.

Still, let's try this on for size:

According to canon, James charged Voldie without even his wand, trying to buy time for Lily to take Harry and go.  Even as arrogant as he was, he must have known that his chances of surviving, let alone winning, were infinitesimal.  Though I'm sure he was also convinced they weren't zero.  Regardless, he was at minimum willing to put his life on the line.  For the purpose of allowing his wife to save their son.

His sacrifice wasn't powerful enough to grant Lily a miracle.  They still had no secondary escape plan.  No last minute savior appeared to whisk her away.  No clever bit of spellwork occurred to her that would allow to escape or defeat an opponent far stronger than her.  She had nothing to bargain with... except her life.  When Voldie confronted her less than 5 minutes after James sacrificed himself.

And here's where the sacrificially generated luck found an opening.

We know from Harry's use of Felix that it can alter the behavior of those around you in ways that will allow you to reach your goals.  Is there any other explanation for why Slughorn allowed himself to become drunk around Harry, when he had been assiduously avoiding the boy because he'd been hounding him for his memory of Tom?

James died so his wife could save their son.  It didn't matter that Lily didn't know about sacrificial magic.  It was enough that it existed.  The luck magic caught the thought that she could save her son by giving her life and reinforced it, giving her conviction that it would work if only she could get Voldemort to accept the trade.  But that was the sticking point.  Voldemort had to agree.  Here's where the second part of James' sacrifice comes in, twisting Voldemort's sadism into a form that would allow his wife to save Harry.  Not only did Voldie act like a complete idiot by killing rather than incapacitating her, he ritualized her sacrifice by offering her the chance to save herself three times.  Three is a powerful number.  No wonder Harry was so powerfully protected.


--------------


Which leads me to one more rather depressing conclusion.  Sacrifices of love may be the most powerful force in the HP-verse, but sacrifices of pain and terror are probably more consistent in their outcomes.  This goes back to willingness vs. desire.  There are far more people who are willing to die for their cause, their city, their country, their family than there are those who actively want to martyr themselves for the same.  For every person who volunteered to sacrifice themselves, how many were able to sustain such a desire to the very end?  I suspect that any wavering, any doubt or hesitation, drastically weakens the magic generated, leaving a far less potent, and far more temporary, effect.  Sacrificing unwilling victims doesn't require them to cooperate.  Actually assumes they won't, and are structured to compensate for that and draw out as much power as possible.

Act One Scene 12 - Act Two Scene 5

Ilvermorny/Fantastic Beats update
https://www.reddit.com/r/harrypotter/comments/4zd5o8/ilvermorny_plagiarism_results_in_new_logos/
Looks like the keen eyes of /r/harrypotter noticed that all the ilvermorny house logos were plagiarised and as a result they've been changed.

Act One Scene 12

(Ministry of Magic Grand Meeting Room)

Harry's bad dream is a matter of national urgency so Hermione's convened a meeting. Draco, Ron, and Ginny (in order of their importance to the plot) are here as well. Hermione's speech as the Minister gives a tiny glimpse into how the wizarding world has changed since DH.
I thought it was weird that the meeting is called an "Extraordinary General Meeting" given that that is usually a meeting for shareholders of a company, rather than members of a society. Kinda gives it a bit of a dystopic feel.

Hermione: The wizarding world has been living in peace now for many years. It’s twenty-two years since we defeated Voldemort at the Battle of Hogwarts, and I’m delighted to say there is a new generation being brought up having known only the slightest conflict. Until now. Harry.

Harry: Voldemort’s allies have been showing movement for a few months now. We’ve followed trolls making their way across Europe, giants starting to cross the seas, and the werewolves — well, I’m distressed to say we lost sight of them some weeks ago. We don’t know where they’re going or who’s encouraged them to move — but we are aware they are moving — and we are concerned what it might mean. So we’re asking — if anyone has seen anything? Felt anything?

Ok, I get it, generic evil creatures that no one cares to include in society are on the move, but that's not the real cause for concern - Hermione literally convened a meeting because Harry's scar is hurting.

Hermione: Fine, and — gravest of all — and this hasn’t been the case since Voldemort — Harry’s scar is hurting again.

The incredibly competent ministry duo then ask any former death eaters if their marks are hurting.

Draco, who is my actual favourite in this scene bells the cat by saying that our heroes Harry Hermione Ginny and etc (sorry Ron) are basically riding their lives on the coat-tails of Harry's celebrity. He says Hermione only got her position as Minister because she's Harry Potter's friend, Ginny, Harry Potter's wife is printing rumours about Voldemort in the paper, and basically the whole thing is a beat up to prop up Harry's flagging star and get his face in the papers and in the course of this his son Scorpius gets further slandered. Lol Draco ilu. He stages a walk-out of the meeting.

Act One Scene 13

(Saint Oswald's Home for Old Witches and Wizards)

Ok Albus and Scorpius turn up at the old folks' home to find Amos and meet Delphi.

Act One Scene 14

(Saint Oswald's Home for Old Witches and Wizards)

Amos is less than impressed to be visited by Albus and Scorpius. He's still under the imperius (I think) so this is mostly just Delphi negging them via Amos to get them to do their Brilliant Plan (tm). Amos calls Albus out for eavesdropping, points out that he already knew that Harry was lying about not having the time turner and says he doesn't want the help of a pair of undersized baby slytherin dark wizards.

Albus says he wants to help wash the blood off his father's hands and correct one of his mistakes, demonstrating that none of these people learnt anything about the war that was purportedly fought in the main series (in that it wasn't just for the ego gratification of Harry Potter - or was it???). Anyway thats his only (stated) reason for wanted to do the Bad Idea; its not really sufficient motivation for the whole plot but that's all we've got.

Amos threatens to get nuclear with his wand on the two brats before Delphi sweeps in to take their side of the argument, pointing out how useful it would be to have people on the inside at Hogwarts and what an injustice it was that Cedric was killed, etc. Honestly Scorpius seems more reluctant to do the Bad Idea but he's buying it as well so I think I should update the sucker count.

Sucker count: 3.

Act One Scene 15

(Harry and Ginny Potter's House, Kitchen)

Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny are eating. They're talking about Draco, who is a much more interesting and compelling character than any of them at this point. They're talking about him like they're already friends and know him really well, which is a point they never really got to with anyone outside the charmed Gryffindor circle in the main series, so its weird like they think they know him. Anyway Ginny says she wrote to him after he lost Astoria asking if there was anything they could do. Ginny, I don't think the Bat Bogey Hex works on grief and that's all you're really capable of so maybe you should not try and help. Anyway they all agree he's a grieving mess.

Ron points out that all this hysteria could be over nothing, "The trolls could be going to a party, the giants to a wedding, you could be getting bad dreams because you’re worried about Albus, and your scar could be hurting because you’re getting old." That would be nice, then we could stop this mistake right here and go to bed, but unfortunately Albus and Scorpius are about to stuff everything up. They get an owl from McGonagall that says that Albus and Scorpius are missing.

Act One Scene 16

(Whitehall Cellar)

Albus and Scorpius are expositing about polyjuice potion (because we don't all already know). Albus calls Scorpius an "übergeek and Potions expert" which is weird because I thought they were both trash students but I guess studies aren't important when your heart is pure so who cares. Scorpius has bigger concerns:

Scorpius: Do either of you know what Polyjuice tastes of? Because I’ve heard it tastes of fish and if it does I will just vomit it back up. Fish doesn’t agree with me. Never has. Never will.

Darling, when you grow up I'm sure you'll find tastes more suitable to your palate. Not in this play though.

Anyway despite the fact that there's no indication they stole the requisite bits from Ron, Harry and Hermione they take the potion and Delphi transforms into Hermione, Albus into Ron and Scorpius into Harry. Scorpius gives us an impression of what Harry has sounded like this entire play:

Scorpius/Harry (full of drama — he’s really enjoying this): Go to your room. Go straight to your room. You’ve been an incredibly awful and bad son.

Act One Scene 17

(The Ministry)

Harry, Hermione, Ginny and Draco are worried about Albus and Scorpius. The Trolley Witch and Ottoline Gambol get namedropped again, which means I got reminded of their existence in this play again (unpleasant)

Hermione says they're asking the muggles for help, well actually she says she informed the Prime Minister, as opposed to any other appropriate liason person, of the two missing people (demonstrating in the process that despite the fact that she was born to two of them she knows very little about them - honestly maybe magic does stunt the brain). Draco says that this is probably all the fault of Albus because Scorpius has no spine.

Anyway then Harry has to fess up he said a mean thing to Albus which probably caused him to run away. Instead of a parent he sounds like a child forced to make a confession in front of the grown-ups, but the staging directions says he "bravely" makes eye contact with Draco. Whats brave about looking another grown man in the eye? Or is this a bad parent looking into the face of a good parent and seeing his own inadequacy? Who knows but this is what he says:

Harry: And I told him that there were times when I wished he weren’t my son.

Draco recognises bad parenting when he sees it. He threatens Harry that if anything happens to Scorpius he'll be the one to pay.

Ginny: Don’t throw around threats, Draco, please don’t do that.
Draco (roar): My son is missing!
Ginny (an equal roar): So is mine!

Yes Ginny, but as I've been endeavouring to explain to you, you're a girl, and we're doing the father-son conflict here, not the "girls involved in story" conflict so please keep your voice down and stop pretending like you're an actual character.

Anyway Draco gets the best line to end this scene.

Draco: I don’t care what you did or who you saved, you are a constant curse on my family, Harry Potter.

True.

Act One Scene 18

(Ministry of Magic)

The Scene opens with Scorpius and Delphi trying to pretend like they're Ministry functionaries to fool the guard. Honestly, its sort of cute:

Scorpius: Yes, Minister, I definitely think this is a matter for the Ministry to ponder at length, yes.
Guard (with a nod): Minister.
Delphi: Let’s ponder it together.

Cuties.

Anyway the plot device is in Hermione's office but they're interdicted by the real Harry and Hermione. Scorpius and Delphi delegate Albus as distraction duty. Things get gross quickly here: Albus kisses Hermione while pretending to be Ron (yuck) and then brings up the Bad Thing Harry said about Albus:

Albus (Ron): Oh, you’re talking about how Harry said sometimes he wished I — (he corrects himself) Albus weren’t his son.
Hermione: Ron!
Albus (Ron): Better out than in, that’s what I say . . .
Hermione: He’ll know . . . We all say stuff we don’t mean. He knows that.
Albus (Ron): But what if sometimes we say stuff we do mean . . . What then?
Hermione: Ron, now’s not the time, honestly.
Albus (Ron): Of course it isn’t. Bye-bye, darling.

Anyway Hermione tries to get into her office and Albus blocks her and the grossness continues. Its obviously supposed to be a light hearted comedic moment but given that Albus actually kissed his aunt in the guise of his uncle for me its not anything other than a "yuck" moment (also its funny when you kiss girls and they don't know its you - that seems about the level of humour the playwright operates at, and its gross and sexist as hell).

And then he tries to seduce her like how a 14 year old would by saying he wants another baby or a holiday or both or a drink at the pub or something and its not cute or fun how a) he's hitting on his aunt like this and b) Ron is apparently the sort of husband who hits on his wife like this and c) Hermione actually buys all of this even though she's used the potion several times before and should actually be able to distinguish her husband from an idiot child impersonating him. But Ron has the character of an idiot child throughout the whole play so maybe I shouldn't judge her too hard.

Act One Scene 19

(Hermione's Office)

Scorpius points out how weird it was that Albus kissed his aunt like a million times. Weird is kind of an understatement. Sexist and gross is what I would have said but whatever.

Delphi tries keeps the mission on track and starts looking in the bookshelf for the timeturner. But Scorpius is more concerned with the true mission of the play... the mission of friendship. He asks Albus if Albus wants to talk about the Bad Thing (tm) his dad said.

Scorpius: I know the — Voldemort thing isn’t — true — and — you know — but sometimes, I think I can see my dad thinking: How did I produce this?
Albus: Still better than my dad. I’m pretty sure he spends most of his time thinking: How can I give him back?

I wish these two could have had a plotline that didn't involve obsessing over their fathers and their father's images of themselves, largely because its boring, self-involved navel-gazing, but their friendship here is quite nice.

Anyway Scorpius notices that Hermione's bookshelf is carrying some pretty heavy stuff. The book titles are interesting, in a tepid world-building sort of way, that this play has largely been ignoring: Magick Moste Evile. Fifteenth-Century Fiends. Sonnets of a Sorcerer [...] Shadows and Spirits. The Nightshade Guide to Necromancy. The True History of the Opal Fire. The Imperius Curse and How to Abuse It. And Also My Eyes and How to See Past Them by Sybill Trelawney.

Anyway the books are part of Hermione's riddle based password protection system for the Plot Device (Delphi says "she's weaponised her library"). It makes me wonder what the expected age range for people seeing this play is supposed to be, because this sort of stuff was cute in PS, when the characters and the readers were both 11 but its not really cute that an adult grown up woman uses a talking book riddle system to protect her stuff in her adult grown up office, or that the adult grown up audience is supposed to think this is reasonable. I get they included it because its a good thing to show ~dramatically on a stage but if anything it just breaks the immersion for me.

Anyway the bookcase tries to eat Delphi, and she solved a clue with an anti-man crack (I get it she's an evil girl who hates men god this play's attempt at foreshadowing is bad)

Scorpius: The second is a disease of the egg, the less fair of those who walk on two legs . . .
Delphi (effusively): Men! De-men . . . tors. We need to find a book on dementors. (The bookcase pulls her in.) Albus!

Anyway the riddles get more urgent, the bookcases get more voracious and the whole thing turns into a moment for Albus to ~prove himself, or it would if it weren't incredibly stupid. Honestly it seems like (from the positive reviews I've read) that the redeeming feature of the play is the special effects but without them its just bad dialogue and contrived plots.

They beat the library and obtain the plot device.

(End of Act One)

Act Two Scene 1 (Number 12 Privet Drive)

Its time for another of Harry's self-indulgent trips down memory lane. Unlike the last time, its not a scene ripped from canon (its pre-PS), and here Petunia is portrayed as obviously verbally and physically abusive, so I'm in two minds about whether the play is re-writing canon to make Petunia and Vernon into the patently abusive guardians that they never had the guts to be in canon or if Harry is re-imagining his childhood as the saintly orphan victim of abuse. Its probably the first one but honestly no-one ever took Harry's childhood abuse seriously in the course of the main series (often including Harry himself); Petunia and Vernon were presented more as cartoons than anything else, and if Harry's childhood really was that bad in a way the reader has never been forced to acknowledge before now why did he not get therapy at all??? I dislike it because its guilt tripping the audience, trying to provoke an emotional reaction out of them that the author has never demanded before and honestly its kind of over-egged the pudding so I'll spare you the description of the scene.

Blah blah blah poor persecuted orphan Harry etc etc etc and then Albus & Voldemort appear whispering in portentous parseltongue so also the dream is ~prophetic for some reason (the reason is to make me roll my eyes)

Act Two Scene 2

(Harry and Ginny Potter's House, Staircase)

Good thing Harry had that bad dream so he can get some sweet emotional support from his loving wife, Ginny. We know who's the crutch in this relationship! Anyway although it wasn't described in the text in the ~prophetic dream Harry says Albus was "wearing Durmstrang robes" so consequentially Harry knows where he is.

I'd just like to point out that that doesn't actually make any sense.

Act Two Scene 3

(Hogwarts, Headmistress's Office)

Anyway now Harry and Ginny have gone to harangue Prof McGonagall because Harry had a bad dream. He says they're in the forbidden forest (again that doesn't really follow) and McGonagall offers Prof Longbottom "whose knowledge of plants might be useful" (how?)

And then Hermione enters. Ginny said she "put an add in the paper looking for volunteers" (so we know she does abuse her position at a newspaper for personal gain) and also Ron shows up for a bid of ill-timed, ill-characterised comedic relief (he enters "wearing a gravy-stained dinner napkin") and then Draco shows up and they head to the forest.

Act Two Scene 4

(Forbidden Forest)

Delphi is teaching Albus to duel.

Albus: Expelliarmus!
Delphi's wand flies through the air.
Delphi: You’re getting it now. You’re good at this. She takes her wand back from him. (In a posh voice.)“You’re a positively disarming young man.”

It reminds me of the bit in GOF where Harry learns spells and gets encouragement from the death eater pretending to be Moody and then takes the advice he got to heart and becomes an auror because of how susceptible to insincere flattery he is. Like father like son. Anyway Delphi continues to butter him up because she's only in this play to be an evil female entrapping young men (it seems like the guy who wrote this play has some seriously retrograde ideas about women but that's a rant for another time)

Scorpius appears at the back of the stage. He looks at his friend talking to a girl — and part of him likes it and part of him doesn’t.

Sweetie when you're older you can get a smartphone and a grindr account and your friend interacting with a girl will seem like nbd I promise but for the mean time take your queerbaiting stage directions and shove a sock in it please.

Anyway Delphi asks Albus if they're friends and he says yes and then she says Wizzo! to that which I have never heard anyone actually say, even on a tv period piece on the 1910s or when-ever so just know that the dialogue continues to be as terrible as ever.

Anyway they outline the Plan. the Plan (courtesy of what the directions inform us is the "Albus-Delphi double act with which Scorpius is not impressed) is to stop Cedric from winning the first task which he does against a dragon by transfiguring a stone into a dog. So the plan is to disarm him to stop that from happening. The obvious point here is that if it were a sensibly run tournament the officials would just assume some saboteur from another school was cheating by disarming Cedric so they'd do another run because of outside interference and not disqualify him but this play has only a loose relationship with logic so I won't bring it up.

Anyway Scorpius has two points of contention, in that he's worried that Cedric might get hurt, which is a rare event in this series, some one worrying about some one else in physical pain, and that they might not be able to go forward in time. He does not object to the plan on the grounds that its a bad idea, and an even worse one to base an entire play around so my respect for him goes down a little bit.

Delphi gives them the Durmstrang robes, and says that she could maybe pretend to be a dragon tamer since she's too old to be a student. She sounds enthusiastic about the pretending, and honestly she's pretty good at acting, being a nurse at St Oswald's, a friend of these two idiot brats, the one the queen of my heart etc, but Delphi, has no-body told you? This is a boy play. No girls allowed. Delphi you're not allowed to go back in time.

Delphi: Then go. But — just know this . . . Today you get an opportunity few are given — today you get to change history — to change time itself. But more than all that, today you get the chance to give an old man his son back.

She smiles. She looks at Albus. She leans down and gently kisses him on both cheeks. She walks away into the woodland. Albus stares after her

Act Two Scene 5

(Forbidden Forest)

Harry has an encounter with Bane in the forest while looking for his son. Bane points out that he's trespassing on centaur land. Harry points out that two legs is better than four legs so shut up. Actually what he says is almost as offensive but not quite:

Harry: I have always respected the centaurs. We are not enemies. You fought bravely at the Battle of Hogwarts. And I fought beside you.

Bane: I did my part. But for my herd, and our honor. Not for you. And after the battle, the forest was deemed centaur land. And if you’re on our land — without permission — then you are our enemy.

Shockingly, Bane had a reason for fighting in DH that didn't revolve around Harry's personal grandeur. Its an outrage I tell you. An outrage. More-over the entire exchange is conducted in this psuedo-profound formal language like how an idiot child thinks adults speak to each other so I'll spare you the rest of the tortured dialogue. Bane says he's seen Albus in the movements of the stars (because none of the Potters ever have problems that aren't celestially prefigured so thats why their heads are all so fat. Somewhere else in the sky, an alignment of planets discloses that James Jr's lost his sock again). Bane says "There is a black cloud around your son, a dangerous black cloud." but we never get clarification on what it is (spoiler its Delphi cause she's evil) and if Albus is in trouble all of it seems to be of his own making so honestly who cares. Bane out.

* The trio look for mentions of Nicholas Flamel by “skimming through books”, because apparently wizarding publishers still haven't invented the index.

* I’m not sure why Harry would end up tired out after quidditch training, he spends most of the game sitting on his broom looking around.

* I do kind of miss the carefree early books where a potentially biased quidditch referee was treated as the height of evil. Although part of me suspects that JKR so stunted her characters than even in Book VII everybody would be freaking out about Snape giving unfair penalties to Hufflepuff.

* Why am I not surprised that Hermione only ever gets beaten at a board game with no wider plot or characterisation relevance?

* Gryffindor have no reserve seeker, because only wimps display common sense.

* Malfoy’s been looking for someone to practise his new curse on, just like Harry in HBP.

* Harry, Ron and Hermione are all so stupid they can’t find out who Flamel is unless somebody literally hands them the answer written on a piece of paper.

* Still, the foreshadowing with the chocolate frog card on the Hogwarts Express is quite good, so points for that.

* Less good is the way in which Hermione completely forgets about how she’s recently read about Nicholas Flamel, before suddenly remembering now that the plot requires her to deliver a bit of expository dialogue on the matter.

* Harry’s American doppelgänger has every reason to be confused here, seeing as how there’s no such thing as a Sorcerer’s Stone.

* “‘And no wonder we couldn’t find Flamel in that Study of Recent Developments in Wizardry,’ said Ron. ‘He’s not exactly recent if he’s six hundred and sixty-five, is he?’” Well… no, but I’d still expect his name and work to come up occasionally when discussing younger wizards who’ve built upon his work on alchemy. Kind of like how I’d expect Charles Darwin to be mentioned in a textbook on modern biology.

* As the big match commences, the narrative voice gets a brief attack of vertigo and falls off Harry’s broomstick onto the stands where Ron and Hermione are sitting.

* “‘The whole school’s out there!’ said Fred Weasley, peering out of the door.” I’m not sure why they wouldn’t be; it’s not like there’s much else to do as a Hogwarts student.

* Oh, that biased meanie Snape, penalising Gryffindor just for lobbing bludgers at him!

* This quidditch game seems a little… anticlimactic. “The trio felt a prickle of anxiety every time they thought about Snape’s sudden, sinister desire to be a referee. This would put Snape in an ideal position to make an attempt on Harry’s life. Ron and Hermione learnt extra spells to defend their friend, but at their last parting all three knew that this might be the last time they ever met alive. Then the match started. Snape gave Gryffindor a couple of fouls and Harry caught the snitch. The end.”

* I’m not sure why Snape wanted to meet in the Forbidden Forest, given that he lives in a castle chock-full of abandoned classrooms, hidden passages and assorted secret hiding-places. Maybe it’s just the Slytherin love of drama shining through.

* Fred and George celebrate their victory in true Gryffindor style, with a bit of petty theft for the kitchens.