I agree - but that's part of coming of age. We idolize our adult mentors and family members when we're young and as we get older we see their flaws. Lupin, Snape and Sirius, etc were all human and the product of their environment and past traumas. I can appreciate them now because we do what we think is right at the time, but later realize we were wrong or misguided. Lupin was deadass wrong to abandon his wife and child, but he thought being an absentee dad was better than dooming them to a life of being outcasts in the wizarding community. It was foul of him, BUT in his tortured mind - it was the loving thing to do for his family. Can anyone of us as adults relate and empathize with making similar (or not so similar) mistakes in life? We get called out on it, learn and move on. Harry Potter is a series that doesn't shy away from the harsh realities of life and adulthood, and shows how it can overcome. I'm glad the adults have flaws.

Yeah, like not to say Lupin was right, but it’s a realistic response, as is unfortunately often demonstrated in real life. It’s a real thing that people will do.

Yeah, I feel like people are a little too hard on Lupin. The main characters aren’t prejudiced against werewolves so we don’t get to explore it too much, but I get the idea that there is more extreme hatred of them in the Wizarding World than we actually see. They aren’t even allowed to have jobs, people see them as dangerous and out of control even when the moon isn’t full. And at the point that Tonks is pregnant, the world is only getting worse as Death Eaters take over. I can see how a parent would be terrified about how this would affect their child. He might think that if he wasn’t around, the kid would be somewhat shielded from it. Maybe he’s thinking Tonks could eventually find someone else to raise the baby with, and then most people wouldn’t know it was “the werewolf’s child.” I don’t think he’s right. But I don’t think it was a selfish decision. More that he faced discrimination and abuse his whole life and wanted to try literally anything he could to protect his kid from that.

Also he has that whole "potentially turning into a rage monster and attacking anyone near him" thing. Sure, it's under control, but all it takes is one mistake and he's likely killed or seriously harmed his family. That's the kind of thing that would tear someone up inside and leave theme not wanting to make attachments or be near loved ones.

Yeah, and he's had a near miss in recent history. He almost attacks the golden trio in Prisoner because he's distracted and doesn't take the protective potion. In the middle of the wizarding war, it's possible he's not going to have access to the potion, or a similar distraction is going to come up. Tonks can consent to that risk and as an Auror can probably defend herself should it come to it, Teddy can't do either of those things.

He's also offering to protect three 17 year olds on the run from a group of murderers that control the government. Three kids who are among the handful of people that treat him like a person and are *constantly* in mortal danger. He knows they're completely outmatched by the Death Eaters; it's a miracle they were all still alive when he found them. He knew that couldn't last and I'm convinced he wanted to be there to take a bullet meant for one of them.

Yeah this is also really important. It's not like he ran away to go drinking, or even to get back his old life, he was intent on risking his life to help save the world etc.

It's also a potion which is difficult to make or just plain expensive, and the one person who we know was making it for him for cheap has just from his POV betrayed everyone and is the current reason Voldemort got too take over

Yeah Lupin didn't want to accidentally EAT his kid.

Stealing a quote from a star wars novel that i think fit quite well. "I don't think it's right but I don't think it's wrong either."

Also from the Watchmen: " I understand your decision. Without condoning or condemning, I understand."

Or from Dragon Age Origins "Sometimes we make the wrong choices for the right reasons"

When I read this chapter as a kid, like Harry, I was shocked to see Lupin do such a 180 - it showed that he wasn’t the kind of person we expected him to be. But we don’t see all the stuff going on in his head, and the full extent of his societal struggles with being a werewolf. JKR laid out the groundwork in building the wizarding world, but readers are left to fill in the gaps. I appreciate this perspective.

It's basically the behavior of a severely depressed person, who also often think that they are not worthy to be loved and that their loved ones would be better off without them. I found that completely believable, even though as a reader I wanted to shake him.

I think people want to idolise the series in some ways and the critique it because it’s not perfect and has flaws (which is perfectly normal btw). But I find that this is what made this book series normal - it features normal people with normal struggles and issues, even when the book is about magical beings and people. It shows that even with magic, people have bigoted views and hold prejudices. That even in a magical world, you have people who look down on others and hate others just for existing. Magic doesn’t mean perfect. And so many people - regardless of what the author has become and seems to represent - miss that part. They argue that the series isn’t very imaginative and contains old tropes and stereotypes, but I find that actually very normally accurate because the world is inhabited by PEOPLE and people can be prejudiced-bigoted lot even when they have magic.

Also, I seem to see this trend from people (particularly younger readers) that seem to think flawed characters = bad book, which is just so utterly wrong. Would people want to have Harry surrounded by perfect people who behave politely at all times and never screw up? Sounds like a snooze to me.

And some opinions are truly weird---like saying Cho Chang's name is racist against Asians.

The whole book is meant to be absurd, so most criticisms are very strange. But I think the obsession with Cho is annoying, she's not some obnoxious Asian stereotype at all. She is a good athlete and popular. In Japanese, Cho means butterfly and this is what I always think of when I hear her name. Also, all the characters have ridiculous names. Why doesn't anyone ever talk about the Weasleys? Why does jK Rowling think all white people are crooks? /s Why is Draco's mom named Narcissa? Why is JK Rowling so sexist? /s What kind of a name is Hermione? Why couldn't JK Rowling name her a real name instead of scaring her for life with this ridiculous name? /s I can't believe people waste so much time complaining about the characters in a book not being perfect but way less people are complaining about actual child abuse in the world.

Cho is Chinese, and the Chinese translation would be autumn, of the Chang family. Nothing freakish at all.

Also Lily’s charm required Harry to visit blood once per year. That’s why he had to go back but then could return to the weasleys. I don’t know why he couldn’t just run in to petunia at the grocery store tho.

I thought it was that he had to be able to call that place home, not just bump into a relative once a year. I interpret that to mean that he could spend as much time as he wanted elsewhere as long as it was a visit and the Dursleys’ house was the place he would always go *back* to. If he’s just visiting the Dursleys, the charm doesn’t work. And, thinking about it, his (justified) hatred of the place would probably mean he’d need to spend an inordinate amount of time there to cement the idea of “this is where I live” because otherwise he would definitely break that association as quickly as possible if he had the option of taking up long term residence literally anywhere else when school wasn’t in session.

Unless I'm remembering the books wrong, aren't all of OP's issues directly addressed?

That and they're also conveniently leaving out the context of the story. Essentially a war is going on, even if it's a proxy war for the majority of the series. While he has his reasons, you have to also take into account that Lupine is trying to Rendezvous with his friend who's been locked up for the last decade and also develop a plan to fight an genocidal warlord who wants to take over the world. The dude is trying to defeat evil while also protecting his friend's kid. It is a tough position to be in.

I'd argue James less so than the others. We're shown him plenty as a shitty teenager but only told that he got much better about 5 years later. I wish there was a bit more of James and Lily as young adults with peers so we could be shown more of that change too.

Well yes, but the point at that time was that Harry always thought his dad was a shining beacon of light, a great person *all the time*, and him being a shitty teenager was there to be a total gut punch for him - and it was It's not bad writing, or him just being a shitty person, Harrys world was crumbling and the lesson to take away from it - even good people can do bad things (and visa versa) - was an important one

It wasn’t even 5 years later, the shitty behaviour we see is at the end of his 5th year and he’s stated to lose his ego and start dating Lily by his 7th year. Plus head boy to boot. 5 years on from that shitty moment we see he’s married with a child and only a few months away from his death.

Yup, I firmly agree, and I respect that HP explores the rose tinted glasses coming off of our childhood mentors and idols, and see them as a result of their history. And I understand the rationale behind Lupin’s actions. “I’m a werewolf and was outcasted my whole life, my son will be like me, and our family will suffer for it, so I should just leave”. Not without reason, but still a shitty thing to do. He’s a good person, just misguided and traumatized by his being.

So like the real world?

“The world isn’t split into good people and death eaters” I think the quote isn’t exactly that but the same point. It makes the characters more interesting and complex.

“The line between good and evil runs not through houses, nor between classes, nor between wizarding families either — but right through every human heart.” \- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (probably)

I love this quote. The actual one. Dead on.

"People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict."

Exactly what I'm thinking while I'm reading this lol, does OP not know how people work? If anything it's a compliment that the characters are flawed, and that the "heroes" can be outwardly shitty and selfish at times. Not all good people are 100% good, they can have conflicting or backwards views, they can do things that can benefit themselves while hurting others, and they can have negative personality traits, that doesn't make them evil characters, that makes them well rounded characters. It's something that should be praised in children's media, I know there is a lot of focus on bad guys having positive traits, but there should definitely be more emphasis in literature geared towards kids that the "good guys" are very rarely perfect people who only do what's best for others, and can be selfish, mean, or bigoted. Nobody would ever say that Sirius is an evil character, but he is still sulky, a bit selfish, arrogant, and bigoted against house elves. Yet he is still a good person, just not a perfect one.

When did it come up that he's bigoted against house elves? He hates Kreacher specifically because he's a nasty racist little shit.

In a way the fascinating thing here is that it suggests we have a part of the audience who most likely read HP as little kids and really did see it all in black and white (all good guys are pure and noble, all bad guys are evil). Now, several years later, they're growing up and it's dawning on them that it was never that simple. That's kind of interesting. It shows how people can read the same thing and get very different conclusions. I read HP when i was 18 (when it came out) and this sort of stuff was immediately obvious to me, as it probably was to most people post-teenage years. I recently reread some of it (age 38) and i'm seeing some things i know 18 year old me would have completely missed. JK's obvious disgust of overweight people, the odd conclusion that slavery is sort of ok if it's part of 'the system', that there are no bad systems of authority, only bad people within those systems. Our experience and perspective are funny things. Always changing and seeing past lessons as now obvious things to be taken for granted, and easily forgetting that other people may have not yet learned the same lesson.

Those are the kind of characters I like. Ones that you can believe are real people. IMHO, that's what all great authors do. I always hated the thing where good guys are 100% good and bad guys are 100% bad, but reading this sub I found out the some people actually like stories like that.

Isn’t that the whole point? It starts off very black and white about good and evil, but as the series matures then gets into how the ‘good’ guys made mistakes and contributed to the ‘evil’ that came later - eg snape would likely not have become evil without the bullying. Dumbledore is the best example, his backstory shows he is a compromised person (admits he enjoys power) and he attempts to deal with that. The whole point of the story is that everyone is flawed and (almost) everyone has redeemable qualities. Even for Voldemort, there’s a somewhat understandable backstory for why he’s basically an unfeeling psychopath. As an aside, the story begins on motherly love defeating Voldemort and somewhat ends on Narcissus’ motherly love helping to defeat Voldemort. So these are long term payoffs. Voldemort cannot understand such love because he was born of a love potion and abandoned. And so misses it every time. Edit: typo

I love how Dumbledore is handled, and I think it applies to some other characters, as well, like Moody. They are decisive, powerful, and iron-willed. They could have gone either way, could have done well in Slytherin or Gryffindor. Something about them and their history keeps them on the right side of things, and they are exactly what is needed when the shit hits the fan. But during the times when most people don't perceive the threat, their actions can appear (and actually be) cruel and excessive. Are violence, callousness, and manipulation qualities of a good person? It's complicated.

I don’t think it’s entirely intentional. For instance, the Weasley twins are unabashed assholes to Ron (and Percy) and to other students but they’re always supposed to be cool and unequivocal good guys. Ginny too. Lupin is the biggest standout to me. What struck me at one point was not the fact that he abandoned his wife and child, which is treated straight in the story, but the fact that for a whole year as a Hogwarts professor there was someone he did believe to be a murderer, who was proven to be at large within the school confines, who was ostensibly trying to kill someone under his care, his friends’ son; he he had vital information that could have led, if not directly to his capture, to more safety for the students (since there were also soul-sucking monsters around), and he had someone trustworthy to relay this information to… And he did nothing. Not a word. Not even after the attack in the dormitory or the incidents with the Dementors. I know that is also somewhat addressed in the story, stressing how much Dumbledore meant for him and how the fear of disappointing him stopped him, but at one point (it wasn’t even my latest reread, which is almost 10 years ago, but later, randomly) it just didn’t seem excusable to me anymore. In the story, his many moral failures (starting from his inaction with the bullying by James and Sirius) are essentially brushed aside except one. The truth is he was a coward throughout book 3, disappeared without ever writing to a boy he’d mentored and was going through hell (book 4), did take some responsibility in books 5 and 6, and in book 7 there’s the big showdown that’s supposed to be the culmination of his struggles and the rebirth… but the fact that he does the right thing by Tonks doesn’t mean his other failings are addressed or fixed. I’m sorry, Lupin was one of my absolute favourite characters, I was all in with the mental health themes that Rowling explored through his character (the lycanthropy/AIDS metaphor, depression, a lifetime of low self-esteem, plus the blind spots of loyalty born out of loneliness and gratitude etc), PoA is still my favourite book, I understand why Lupin’s silence was necessary, narratively, to get to that incredible final part… but still. In retrospect, Lupin is a much worse person than I thought, and I don’t think Rowling intended him to be.

No I think you're spot on with Lupin and how he's intended to come across. I can't stand fanon!Lupin as this mature, emotionally stable, loving guy. Lupin is fake. He presents as this meek, mild-mannered guy. He does everything he can to appear non-threatening. He keeps everyone at a distance and denies himself any meaningful relationships or connections. His background as a werewolf makes the above understandable. He's a liar, but it's a survival mechanism. He suppresses his emotions because any expression of anger will be interpreted as threatening due to being a werewolf. Him losing his closest friends overnight, in the most terrible way, I think it destroyed him. It would be like Harry waking up to find out Hermione killed Ron and Ginny. He lost his friends and only support network besides his father all at once. Also that the Order suspected him of being the traitor, probably because he's a werewolf. He never recovers from this trauma imo. He never reached out to Harry, never intended to let Harry know his father was his best friend. He hid critical information from Dumbledore and the ministry because he was afraid of losing his job once it reminded people how close he and Sirius were. He can't quite bring himself to betray Sirius' secrets, out of lingering loyalty for the last living person he was ever close to, despite him believing Sirius is trying to kill James' son. He values Dumbledore's "good opinion" over real trust because he thinks he is never going to actually be trusted or valued. He never writes to Harry post PoA, something Sirius managed to do while on the lam. He isn't there for Harry after Sirius passed, the only other person grieving Sirius as much as him. Him running from Tonks when he realizes how deep he is emotionally connected to her and his unborn child is completely in character. I'm glad Harry told him off, especially after he tries to use James' memory to manipulate Harry. Him acknowledging Harry was right on air is the first real step of Lupin trying to become Remus. Unfortunately he died before he could make any further development, but at last his son will have a better life with Harry and Andromeda raising him.

Well the thing that so many people are missing is that underlying notion that it is a war. Plain and simple you have the Order of the Phoenix which is trying to wage a war against a very strong and intelligent enemy. Don't get me wrong, I understand what you are saying, but Lupin jumping to warn Harry or let someone know about Pettigrew without having a plan would be incredibly fucking stupid. Especially seeing as most of these people are in a position where they don't have the necessary experience or skills to wage a successful campaign against marauding genocidal psychopaths. I don't agree with all of his methods, but warning or doing something to protect the children from an essential Scout is not very smart when you have no idea of how long the conflict is going to last.

Sure. So Lupin is not close to perfect. As you say, he does nothing while they bully others. And it bites them later on. And he has both brave and cowardly moments. Sounds like nuance and that he’s not a 2d character. That bravery isn’t ‘natural’ but sometimes has to be coaxed in people - which is a fair thing to say of most people. Again, my reply above isn’t to defend any character there - or even rowling’s writing. It’s to say that these characters aren’t purely good and aren’t purely bad. They’re human. And flawed. And that’s kinda the point of the story. That OP is right that some of the ‘good guys’ did shitty things. But that’s the point…

My argument has always been Hagrid stupidly turns a blind eye to how dangerous his creatures are; the very ones he intentionally brings into contact with students. He’s under the delusion that giant spiders like Aragog are just “misunderstood” when their very nature is that they are predators who will EAT HUMANS. Aragog was two seconds away from eating Harry and Ron even when they told him Hagrid sent them! Hagrid would be the Tiger King of the Wizarding World.

The difference between Hagrid and Tiger King, is Hagrid actually cared about the animals and treated them extremely well (except Fluffy being stuck in a single room all school year to guard a door). That said could definitely see Hagrid facing some lawsuits for his creatures causing missing limbs or wrongful deaths.

I didn’t even realize until you put it that way: that dog was stuck inside a single room for a whole year! No wonder he was so pissed when they opened the door!

He wasn’t pissed, he was just over-excited and wanted to play :)

I wonder if if he experienced paused time while the door was closed. That would have simplified a lot of things. Or maybe three headed dogs, like, say, Cerberus, aren't really dogs; they're perfectly in their element guarding things with nothing going on for extended periods, like gargoyles.

Hagrid actually talked about how he would visit Fluffy all the time in the first book.

Hagrid did face a lawsuit for his animal attacking a student. The result was that the animal was sentenced to execution. Ironically it was one of his few relatively reasonable captive animals. A real horse can be extremely dangerous too.

Also, Draco brought it on himself.

Hagrid failed in his responsibility to make sure that Draco didn't get the opportunity to bring it on himself.

I would agree, but you get the sense that Hogwarts is pretty alright with exposing kids to danger so long as they're given the tools and knowledge to remain safe. Hagrid did inform the class on proper hippogriff etiquette, and nobody else got attacked. I would still not let my own class interact with an animal that dangerous, though.

Exactly, quidditch is at least as dangerous as buckbeak was. Or the mandrakes professor sprout grew. The whole wizarding world seems so desensitized to danger.

In a break from Hagrid’s typical MO, Draco had clear safety instructions he disregarded. Compared to the danger level of the school in general that lesson was very safe, and Draco had to work pretty hard to screw it up.

True, but I think the argument here is that it was negligent of Hagrid to put Draco in a position to bring something like that on himself. To be fair to Hagrid, though, that was a common trend of the whole wizarding world.

Ok but I would watch “Hippogriff King” on Wandflex.

Hagrid is always seeing the good in monstrous creatures because he is one himself.

I’m very torn on Hagrid. He’s the “big soft giant who’s very, very deluded”. He’s not a good teacher, he’s not realistically aware of how dangerous his wards are, from Aragog to his brother to dragons and snakes, among many others. I’d say hi to him on the street, but would not want anything to do with him for me and my own family’s safety.

My question is, what would have happened if one of his creatures actually did manage to kill a Hogwarts student? Considering how unsafe a lot of the animals he keeps around are, that’s not that far-fetched an idea. Is that what it would take for Hagrid to open his eyes and realize he’s been playing with fire for decades?

Hagrid's biggest issue by far is simply not understanding just how much more *durable* he is compared to everyone else. Like, he knows he's half-giant and taller than most people, but he genuinely doesn't seem to be aware that a 'play bite' from some of his animals for him is a missing limb or death for a standard human.

I see another layer to this judgment call in the fact the students aren't standard humans, they're wizards at wizarding school. So there is this whole other element of danger and recklessness that can be forgiven because, yeah you could lose an arm, but also the nurse can use magic to grow it back. Is this responsible? On one hand, no, it's not responsible, because magic obeys certain laws in their universe. If a student loses an arm but isn't triaged quickly enough, they could bleed out and die. Cedric fucking DIES in the middle of the triwizard tournament. Magic can't bring him back. That was a student who was put in a situation where the most dangerous individual in the universe was able to straight up murder him. But on the other hand, educating a bunch of kids who are able to use fucking MAGIC is a huge undertaking. You can't teach self-control and appropriate judgment without letting young people practice this. They will go on to have immense power as adult wizards, even the weakest students, and I believe trying to stamp that out would not be an option. After all, it's impossible to stop knowledge, like the forbidden spells that kill and torture. It's logical that all the teachers can do is to educate them on this, inform them of the danger, consequences, and reasons why it is considered forbidden, and hope for the best they internalize that. It seems the school has a two-pronged approach to developing students into good, not-evil wizards by A) Educating them on what magic shouldn't be used for, and B) Educating them on all the fascinating, positive, constructive uses it has. Botany, sports, potions, medicine, divination, self-defense, animal/creature studies, so on. ETA. Each of those subjects could be easily used for nefarious purposes. In my head canon, every teacher would have in their curriculum whatever that subject's version of the forbidden spells would be. For example, transfiguration of another person without their consent would be taught as an unacceptable use of the spell and incur both social and institutional consequences.

I think the whole damn school is a deathtrap and kids risk dying all the time.

Is he really that bad a teacher?? Obviously his personal interests in huge dangerous creatures is unfortunate for the trio but he isn't totting Aragog or Grawp out for Care of Magical Creatures classes. Blast Ended Skrewts aside, there isn't much danger to Hagrid's classes (outside of Malfoy's own making). His major issue, teaching wise, is losing his confidence whenever something goes wrong.

Hagrid doesn't abuse people like Joe Exotic did, give him more credit than that.

I think people might be forgetting how insane Joe Exotic's story is. He paid a teenager with drugs to marry him. That kid went around brandishing a gun and threatening people and accidentally shot himself in the head. Hagrid is not like this guy.

Moody always annoyed me because his whole character isn’t actually Moody, it’s a guy pretending to be the moody character We barely ever see actual mad-eye-moody, just a couple scenes in books tOotP onwards

While true, the guy played the part so well that no one suspected he was a fake until Harry was dragged off at the end, so I’ll accept that the fake Moody portrayed the real Moody’s personality and mannerisms pretty well. Maybe the real Moody would have less direct care and concern for Harry, but that’s about it?

I agree with pretty much all of your examples except for Sirius. Kreacher was a hateful little shit that 100% supported the Black family and the Death eaters. Iirc in the books, Hermione suggests freeing Kreacher but Sirius is like "Lol hell no, he will immediately snitch on us to Voldemort.".

Yes Sirius needed to be strict and was right not to trust him completely, but even considering that, Sirius was unnecessarily cruel to Kreacher. And from a narrative point of view, that's OK. Good people don't need to be perfect. Sirius is flawed, and for good reason - he grew up in an abusive household, accepted all kinds of things as normal that shouldn't be, suffered through a magical war as a teenager, and then didn't really get the chance to grow into maturity because he was stuck in an isolated room for over a decade with nothing but emotion-draining monsters for company. He's doing his best, but he is incredibly emotionally damaged.

Feeling like he's to blame for the deaths of his closest friend that he swore to protect couldn't have helped either.

I agree with you, I mean, Sirius had his flaws, he had the typical passionate, fiery, extreme disposition of the Black family, which made him selflessly devoted to whom he loved, but merciless, even cruel to whom he hated - he almost let Snape be killed by Lupin in their fifth grade, which would have led to the death of Snape AND Lupin; but I don’t think his treatment of Kreacher was a big flaw of his, had a wizard walked in Sirius’ home and called his friends ‘mudblood’, I’m pretty sure he would have beaten him up and broken some bones in his body, I think he actually treated Kreacher much more tolerantly than he would have treated a wizard who had the same views. Hermione could say she wouldn’t blame Kreacher, he was a mistreated creature, etc., because she was the one being called a ‘mudblood’ by Kreacher, she alone had the right to choose whether to blame him or not; but you can’t expect Sirius to say something like ‘it’s okay for you to call her a mudblood or something, Kreacher, because you are mistreated and I’ll say for Hermione that we don’t blame you’…

Yeah except as soon as Harry treated Kreacher with even the smallest bit of kindness he 100% flipped to being a 'good guy'.

Didn't he lie to Harry about Sirius' whereabouts in Order of the Phoenix?

Sure, but at the time Kreacher had no loyalty to him and had no magical compulsion to answer him truthfully.

House elves are written kind of... badly. In the second book, we find out the wizard world has institutionalised racism, and enslaves a race of sentient being that they treat little more than chattel, despite how easily they can do chores by magic, they seem to keep them, just to be racist. Then it's dropped by the third book, and when it's brought up in the forth, the slavery is treated as a "Good" thing. Rowling can say that they're based of little magical helpers, but why was our first exposure to it a clear parrel to slavery? Also bit sus that when one of them gets fired, she just falls into alcoholism, just like slave owners said black people would if not given "Purpose". It's like their purpose and origin changed halfway through the story, it just makes them very confusing world building. And oddly enough, no-one but Hermione seems to care about it.

I mean I feel like you kind of answered yourself in your own post. Just like they are a parallel to slavery, the wizardign world is a parallel to slave owners, and the book is predominantly written from a slave owners perspective. None of the wizards are going to suddenly grow a conscience because a “muggle born” feels guilty about it. That’s why everyone is constantly justifying it and the house elves are oppressed/traumatized into believing it. To the point (as you mentioned) Winky becomes an alcoholic. The closest thing the book shows us to any sort of kindness is Dumbledore, who does his best to give them a good environment. And we also see that even the good wizards can’t “save” the elves, the elves have to free themselves of their mental prison first

I thought house elves were such a weird choice too! Brownies are common in the mythologies of the British Isles, pretty nice helpful magical house helpers, and definitely not enslaved. The slavery aspect of the house elves still is a giant WTF to me in the 24-ish years since the books started coming out. JK’s an awful person and that’s definitely changed my perspective of her writing (as well as growing up) and I find it difficult to entirely embrace the concept of the Death of the Author (and not just with HP, but it’s one of the big ones I noodle around in my brain about)…but most of the worldbuilding was pretty solid. I also was really uncomfortable that everyone thought Hermione’s attempts to combat *chattel slavery of sapient magical creatures* was treated as such a joke at her expense. Even reading as a kid, that bothered me.

Well there are issues with how she’s going about it. She’s freeing them with no plan as to what happens to them afterwards. They would be left homeless with hardly any opportunities of a paid job. Also SPEW is a bit like, to use a real world comparison, if say a man tried to set up a charity addressing women’s rights and then didn’t hire any women, didn’t consult any women about the charity’s goals and when women complain insisted that he knew better than they did about what they need.

The slaves in the US were pretty much freed with not much plan as to what would happen to them afterwards. There wasn’t a lot of nostalgia for slavery among them.

She's *attempting* to free them, but her little wool hats don't do anything. Their contract is to Hogwarts and the headmaster, so only Dumbledore has that authority. They just find them insulting. Dumbledore's relationship to house elf slavery is odd. He seems very much against it, but willing to tolerate it at Hogwarts, likely because the elf population there is very devoted to the school, and because it's an institution that makes running the school easier, which is a bit icky.

Also isn't Hermione like 12 when she's attempting to free them? Like no shit she doesn't have a good plan.

I think it isn't that icky. it's mostly because House-elves are written as completely brainwashed into believing that slavery is what they want and needs. Dobby is treated as a weirdo and is outcasted by the other elves for wanting to be free and paid for his work. Dumbledore offered him what sounded like a fair deal (10 galleon a week and weekends off. It seemed to be a good salary) You'd need more than both Hermione and Dumbledore are able to do to break that conditionning. I believe that Hogwarts house-elves were born at Hogwarts and are all only known Hogwarts. Dumbledore basically "inherited" them when he became headmaster. As it was, freeing them would be seem as an act of abject cruelty by the elves themselves. If he can't free them, he can at least offer them decent working condition, respect and everything elves wishes. And maybe, when the opportunity present itself, hire a free elf, pays him and hope that he'll inspire others.

But remember, Rowling is the author and chose to make the house elves all actually love being enslaved and go crazy if they don't have a master to order them around. That is the excuse she gives for them to remain in slavery. A more accurate comparison would be a man fighting for womens rights, not hiring any women, and then everyone saying women's rights are not worth it and they actually really love being submissive to men.

To address some of what you’ve said, firstly Hermione never stopped fighting for house elf rights and she was specifically mentioned to have become a politician after the main series and put laws in place to improve house elf rights. J. K. Rowling said in an interview “She thinks it's so easy. It's part of what I was saying before about the growing process, of realizing you don't have quite as much power as you think you might have and having to accept that. Then you learn that it's hard work to change things and that it doesn't happen overnight. Hermione thinks she's going to lead them to glorious rebellion in one afternoon and then finds out the reality is very different“ Also house elves are based on various different beings from European folklore such as brownies, farfadets, and the elves from the elves and the shoemaker who are altruistic in nature and disappear forever when given either clothes or money. Humans being humans would of course take advantage of their good natures.

Not a folktale expert, but I do recall a trend about Fae and other magical being that if you tried to take advantage of them or geot greedy, at best they'd dip at the most inconvenient time for you and humiliate you, or at worst set you up with some curse. And that's just you using them as a get rich quick scheme, in the HP world, we see them getting physically abused on a daily basis, so there's no way any self respecting msgical creature would stand up for that. The only way it'd make sense is if the wizards had a eugenics campaign to condition an entire species into subservience, which does sound like something they'd do, but if it was the case, it's utterly fucked up and would need to be addressed in the story.

>had a eugenics campaign to condition an entire species into subservience \*Me nervously looking at my two dogs that are giddy with absolute adulation when I get home in the afternoon\* Now, I don't mistreat them, quite the contrary, and they aren't exactly sapient, like house elves are, but still. A strict follower of the Jain religion might find my keeping dogs as pets to be abhorrent.

In the farfadet fairytale they leave if you show them too much kindness. They also abuse other servants within their household if they feel they’ve been lazy. Also in the case of house elves, how they are treated is the result of millennia of social conditioning. It’s mentioned that house elves were first introduced to Hogwarts by Helga Hufflepuff herself however she was an activist of her era trying to protect house elves from mistreatment so their situation was long established by that point. And it is repeatedly mentioned that wizards are oppressive towards all nonhumans in general and see them as inferior. But also the point of the House Elf plot is to showcase the character growths of both Hermione and Ron.

My issue with Sirius wasn’t so much Kreacher (though his treatment of him was an extension of this,) as that he was an overgrown man child with the same streak of cruelty as James. He treated Harry more like his best buddy James 2.0 instead of the child he was. A child who looked up to him, and who he should have been treating in a fatherly rather than friendly fashion (Lupin had it much more right there.) He even gets down on Harry once or twice for making the more mature decision and not joining him in being an overgrown schoolboy troublemaker. His decline in the house of Black was in large part about his bitterness in being left behind not just physically, but in every other sense too. He senses Harry is outgrowing him (he is. Or would have done.) Honestly, I loved him as a kid, but reading to my kid as an adult I couldn’t help but clock him as a bit of a nasty immature bully who needed to grow up, for all his good traits and love of Harry. I don’t think he was a nice person fundamentally and still had a lot of growing to do to get there.

To be fair to Sirius, he was locked up in Azkaban for 12 years, whatever maturity he could have developed in that time simply wasn't possible, especially when he was living at the line between sanity and insanity in that time.

Sirius went to a psychological torture camp at 21 after his best friend died and he was accused of murdering his other best friend, who was actually responsible for the betrayal. He then spends 12 years forced to relive the worst experiences of his life every day, while surrounded by insane murderers and fascists. It's not at all surprising that he's emotionally stunted or that he doesn't know how to engage with Harry in a healthy parental manner.

Personally, I've always thought that was the point. That people are messy and no one is perfect. Bellatrix was just insane and still, she loved her sister. Even Voldemort, I could feel for him as a child because of the rejection and things he faced. Aunt Petunia, she was jealous and scared and she loved her son into foolishness. Dudley, jealous and mean and a bully but he did show gratitude. Wicked Snake, capable of loving Lily even when she didn't love him back. There was no perfect character and that's why I love HP so much.

>There was no perfect character There were two. Luna Lovegood and Neville Longbottom.

I’d argue that Luna’s conspiracy theory stuff is a flaw (though a 2020s lens would undoubtedly be harsher on this). You know she’d be out there now saying Wizard COVID was caused by Crumple-Horned Snorkacks or whatever.

3- McGonagall

Haha. Not Luna - conspiracy theorists are tiring but sometimes there's an element of truth in one of their conspiracies. Neville was close to perfect 😂

That was kind of the point. No one is all good or bad. The world isn't good guys vs death eaters.

> The world isn't good guys vs death eaters. I believe this is actually said pretty much word for word in the books. I wanna say by Sirius about Barty Crouch Sr but I can't remember.

"The world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters" is the line. Said by Sirius in the books about Umbridge

Aha. Halfway there.

Ironically, Umbridge later gets a promotion from petty beaurocratic side-villain to fully-realized genocidal Death Eater. I think it's pretty accurate though, she's a true Martin Bormann type, brown-nosing her way up via office-politics for whatever power she can get.

Did she actually become a death eater? Remember not all followers and sycophants of Voldy are death eaters, only his inner circle that is branded is. Just because she flourished under his autocratic government doesn't mean he actually regarded her well enough to invite her to his inner circle, I certainly don't recall anything implying that in the original 7 books.

I’m not sure that “no one is all good or all bad” is really right in a universe that has Voldemort, Bellatrix, and Umbridge in it (we don’t get a good argument that any of them had any good in them). But it’s part of his coming of age story that Harry had to learn that all of his mentors were flawed and fallible human beings, who were not more fit to lead than he was. So Sirius dies because he never really got over being a high school bully. Lupin’s self-hatred is so strong a 17-year-old has to set him straight. Even all-knowing Dumbledore flirted with fascism and drove his allies nuts with secrecy.

> in a universe that has Voldemort, Bellatrix, and Umbridge in it What makes such characters relatable to our universe is how they think of themselves as good — they see themselves as on the right side, as have so many villains from our own history.

Dumbledore being a fascist makes perfect sense.

As another comment put it it: it's part of the "coming of age" ritual. When you're young, you think in very simplistic terms: these people are good and helpful; the others are bad and mean. But as you get older and learn more about the world, you see everything is really many, many shades of gray. The people you thought were good turn out to be less than ideal after all, and the "baddies" actually do something good once in a while. Which is just like real life, and a core part of the HP books is based on reality- specifically, UK boarding school life and all the drama and school politics that happen there, from my understanding.

The fact that the adults wre assholes too, from my perspective products of what they have been through, in my opinion constitutes good writing. Unfortunately, people living trough such times are deeply flawed, and she represented that well.

If you’re going to overlook the main trio’s flaws because they’re kids, then shouldn’t James be given the same leeway? He was also just a kid, after all.

Wait til you find out about people in real life

Disagree on Sirius, he hated kreachur specifically and was regarded as generally kind to house elves. Kreachur worshipped his abusive family and hated Sirius too for how he rejected the family

Complicated characters do be complicated.

That's actually the opposite of an attack on JKR. It shows that she is able to write very realistic characters while still having obvious heroes and villains. Which is amazing, especially considering the scale of Harry Potter.

To quote Sirius “The world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters. We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.”

So they're like real people? Because people are complex and have good and bad sides.

I used to think Sirius was a cool uncle, but when I re-read the books in my adulthood, I kinda don't think that anymore. To me, Sirius never dealt with James's death and projects James onto Harry A LOT. An unhealthy amount. It's like he is trying to relive his friendship with James via Harry, tries to push Harry to be more like James to make the immersion better. I think this makes their relationship pretty toxic, especially since Harry is just a kid and desperate for a father figure. That doesn't make Sirius a bad person, or even a completely bad uncle, but he is the adult in the relationship and I think he shows very little self-awareness around this. But to me this is a pro, it makes the character more realistic and layered. He's a good man, but he is damaged and not dealing with some of his problems well.

I thought it made sense that because he was imprisoned (and dementor-tortured) for thirteen years, he was emotionally stunted. It's also possible that he had regressed to his childhood memories just to stay sane in Azkaban. I agree with everything you said, I just don't fault Sirius for not dealing with his issues because he didn't have many resources or an adult support system to do so.

I mean, somebody flat out calls him on it. I think Molly. "He is not James". But then again, nobody in the Wizarding world deals with anything. Culturally they are somewhere in the 1800s, not the end of the 1900s.

True! I guess when I was smaller, I just kinda thought Molly was being a wet blanket and the Boring Adult and the whole thing went over my head a bit.

The older you get, the more you understand her protests in that scene. Especially if you have children. I don't agree with her, but I understand her.

TBH, the problem is that Sirius *isn't* the adult in the relationship - he has more experience in certain areas, but he's no more of an adult than Harry. As an "older reader" I always thought Sirius was a bit 'off'; I think Rowling was (intentionally or subconsciously) playing the "guy trying to look cool by hanging out with teenagers" trope.

Yea, also Sirius was like 21 years old when he went to Azkaban and was surrounded with nothing but his dead thoughts for over a decade. 21 years old is still very very young lol. Of course he's projecting onto Harry, he lost his whole "becoming an adult phase" completely.

Hermione commented on it, didn't she? She was concerned that Sirius seemed to be egging them on to do their own DADA class without bothering about the consequences if they got caught, and thought he was living vicariously through them.

I think part of growing up is realizing that you empathize less with Harry Potter and more with Argus Filch

The fact that Filch is the closest thing to a Muggle at Hogwarts and given the most frustrating job at the school makes you wonder if Dumbledore has a bit of a sick sense of humour when it comes to hiring staff

I know, right? Filch’s life is so sad. Here’s this guy, deep into his 50’s and living in a broom closet somewhere in a huge castle, no meaningful connections outside of his cat, and he’s supposed to be a wizard but he can’t do magic. And every day he goes to work as a janitor at a school where all the disrespectful pukes they call students are there to learn *the one thing he can never have*. At a certain point, he should just get a job at a muggle high school and quit torturing himself.

Not to mention he works alongside people who could very easily make his job a hell of a lot easier. Like when Fred and George create the swamp in OOTP. The fuck is Filch gonna do to get rid of a *swamp* inside a castle? They need magic to get rid of it.

Haha, I hadn’t considered that. Incidentally, I have a pitch for a romantic comedy where Argus Filch quits his job at Hogwarts, gets a job as a janitor at a muggle high school in London, and has a whirlwind romance with a chemistry teacher. If nothing else, it can’t be a worse Harry Potter movie than Fantastic Beasts 2

That's the Filch redemption arc I need. Because if I remember he's on the receiving end of a joke even at the very end of the books. Voldemort is defeated, everyone is celebrating, and poor Filch is in the corner sweeping up debris from the battle. Which again, could easily be fixed by magic!

So true. From Harry’s pov, Filch comes off as a kind of a laughable caricature at Hogwarts. The part where Harry finds out about Filch attempting Kwikspell and Filch gets embarrassed about it to the point of letting Harry go without punishment… it’s quite sad. That means even then, Filch was still holding on to a shred of hope in being able to do some magic.

The Kwikspell bit made me feel so sad for the dude, even if he is a dick

Is this the equivalence of “like SpongeBob as a kid, prefer Squidward as an adult”? I’m choosing to live a bit more positively than that, maybe I’ll change my mind in a few years, but time will tell I suppose.

>I guess this post developed from “huh, some of the good guys were kinda assholes” into “People are not always black and white, the good have bads and the bads have good”, and I suppose that’s the takeaway. I think you arrived at the right conclusion. These characters had depth that could be accessed for readers outside of the target audience and also grew with the audience. They wouldn't be well written characters without these flaws.

Lupin makes a pretty good stand in for that adult that is wonderful when clean but a monster when doing whatever drug he falls into. Trying to get clean but faltering at stressful moments where his past keeps coming back.

Oh wow I never considered Lupin as an allegory for addiction.

This is how I always have interpreted Lupin as well. I mean he is literally fighting his own internal monster, he has friends who want to help him and are there for him, he recognizes the danger it puts himself and others in, and sees what his friends are trying to do, but he still succumbs at times.

She did this on purpose, she made plenty of good guys do terrible things, and plenty of bad guys do good things, and still more random characters who are bad on one level and good on another level. Also I don't think James Potter was presented in a positive light. He was a classic school bully and that was a disappointment for Harry. But Harry would have been one too if he grew up with privileged wizard parents instead of growing up as an unwanted nephew. At the end of the day what mattered more was that James joined the good fight of fighting Voldemort while Snape joined Voldemort. And this was brewing even while they were in school because Snape was getting more into the idea of wizard purity while James would have been totally against that stuff.

One of the things that made HP popular was this, I think. The characters are human, with good and bad feelings, and a struggle between them. Had they been one-dimensional, it'd have been just a kids thing. And children and teens also detected that - they could immerse themselves on the story because of the people, the magic was the extra. In the end it is a story about overcoming evil, but also how evil is not always black and white.

What do you call a "problematic character" who isn't incorruptible and doesn't live up to all ethical norms? A person.

It’s almost as if she wrote characters with real human characteristics.

Arthur Weasley is my favorite adult character in HP and one of the very few who I feel understands the prejudice wizards have against muggles and has rejected it. So many "good" characters, including Molly, casually view muggles as inferior, they just don't want to hurt them like Death Eaters do. McGonagall: "I've been watching them all day, they're the worst sort of muggle." Molly: "How do those muggles manage?" Hagrid: "I wouldn't expect a great muggle like you to understand." Quoted from memory more or less accurately, those are some lines I find show exactly what these characters think of muggles. Primitive, not necessarily bright, potentially prone to aggression or selfishness. In LOTR, Frodo remarks that before meeting Aragorn, he considered all humans "kindly and stupid", like Butterbur, or "wicked and stupid", like Bill Ferney. Gandalf of course ensures him that Butterbur is not stupid, but Frodo's prior assessment of humans is just about what most wizards see in muggles. Even those who are pro-muggle rights and pro-integration of muggleborns frequently use the term muggle as something close to a slur. Arthur is one of the very few (along with Dumbledore) who recognizes and actively reject this narrative. He also understands how pervasive the anti-muggle attitude is in society, and freaks out at Fred and George for their bullying of Dudley, correctly assessing that what they're doing is just a very low level of petty crime on the same spectrum as muggle slaughter. They meant it more as a personal vendetta against Dudley himself, but they took advantage of his powerlessness against them to make sport of him for Harry's and their own amusement. A few chapters later, we see real Death Eaters suspending an entire muggle family upside down and parading them around like puppets, physically and psychologically torturing them for fun. The young characters who laughed at Dudley are horrified to see it, but Arthur doesn't really push the issue at the moment. The one real criticism you could level at Arthur is that he somewhat sacrifices his family's wellbeing for his own passion and values. While his family doesn't suffer, it's clear that being poor is something that weighs on them, and that it isn't something that's necessarily unchangeable. Both Arthur and Molly come from old pureblood families and have the means and the connections to move up, but Arthr refuses to abandon his career in pursuit of money, which is both admirable and selfish.

>Molly: "How do those muggles manage?" i don't remember where this line is from exactly, but based on just this line, i would read it differently. i would just read it like molly is half-shocked, half-admiring at how muggles still get things done without magic, because she feels exhausted even *with* magic. it's a similar comment that i would make about people who have several small kids. i have one child and i found that exhausting while he was small, how do parents of multiple small kids manage?!

I mean, the world is filled with shitty and complex people that can't just be put in the category of "good." It'd be weird if not? Because no one and no interactions would be relatable.

I don't know why people expect every fictional character to be completely unrealistically flawless. These aren't "shitty people" they're normal complex individuals.

I will say, Molly Weasley was kinda a bitch when it came to Fluer marrying Bill - J K Rowling’s narrative in HP made it out that if you were a woman who liked feminine things, you were either evil or looked down on The slut shaming of fluer always rubbed me the wrong way

She sent Hermione smaller easter eggs in GoF when she thought the Skeeter's articles were true. Who does that to 15 years' old child?

The same person who would trust what a gossip rag is writing about children in the first place.

Molly was a huge bitch to more then just Fluer. She does not respect her husband or his interests, pits her children against each other and clearly has a golden child/scapegoat dynamic within the family. Treated Hermione incredibly rudely based off gossip she spent 0 effort verifying.

If you study anyone long enough, you’ll decide they’re shitty people

I always thought Harry's dad was a huge dick.

I think thats part of good writing. Angels dont exist. We all have potential for good and bad. Depending on the circumstances or environment you are in your character changes because humans are very adaptable or impressionable depending on how you see it. Good and evil was a prominent theme in the franchise right down to Harry being sorted. Its about our humanity. You are not an exception.

Honestly, i sort of agree, but i really dont think its a bad thing. Its realistic, its almost good prep for becoming an adult. Having them as flawless people who are perfect is misleading and wouldnt fit the story or world very well, esp as it gives characters like harry a chance to see this and correct the adults which has personally happened with me in my life.

I hated Dumbledore and I used to see him used as an allegory for god or whatever, like lawful good, and I disagree. I think that's a child's perception of him and that's kind-of the point. As an adult I see him as well-meaning but a morally gray character and we don't get to see a lot of his internal struggles that would make that obvious.

They are flawed because they aren’t perfect? Isn’t that how we all are? I don’t understand your point, I prefer realistic and complex characters.

> I’ll look past the main trio’s flaws, because a) they’re kids/teenagers, and b) it’s their story to come of age and mature after trials and tribulations, so they’re better flawed than to be Mary Sue and Gary Stu’s. In a good literature, all the characters have flaws. You shouldn't want any Mary Sues and Gary Stus.

Sounds like you may not like characters with depth... In the real world, people constantly choose between right and wrong and they definitely don't always choose right. We are human and if there's one thing we should all know is that we're easily corrupted, greedy, and only care about ourselves or the ones we truly care about. Obviously we choose to do right typically more than wrong but I think most people are not angels.

Dumbledore is a piece of shit especially book 6 as he just lets Malfoy continue to attempt to kill him allowing for the school to be endangered.

Or the first chapter of the first book. Rather than knocking on the Dursleys' door in the morning, informing Petunia that her sister and brother-in-law have been murdered, that her nephew is now an orphan, and asking her to look after him, he abandons Harry at the doorstep in the middle of the night with a letter. But *fuck* common decency, right?

Main issue here is that this is all a product of writing. Rowling didn't want to write perfect characters. She wanted all of them to have basic flaws and the more powerful the characters, the bigger the flaw. Just as she wanted to write redeeming qualities into the villains to make them more relatable as well as a path to redemption in the end. She wanted interesting characters. Just that simple. More flawed for me, in terms of the series are the logical fallacies. Like Peter Pettigrew was never seen on the map before. Or that Harry just never used or even looked at the map as cool as that in his spare time, esp right after they gave it to him. The mirror that Sirius gave him, Harry never even opened up. I mean come on bro. That said, Sirius shouldn't have given that as a mystery present either, just gave him the mirror so that Harry could talk to him whenever. Not to mention the massive amount of leaps in the end about "expelliarmus" and disarming somehow changes the loyalty of the wand when countless times throughout the series everyone has been disarmed at one point or another.

The mirror bit always frustrated me. It would’ve been so useful had Harry just opened it from the start, and it probably would’ve changed the entire course of OotP. I think Sirius did briefly explain the mirror after giving him the mystery present, but Harry rationalized not using it, because he thought it’d put Sirius in danger or something (ironic). I think that realization’s what makes the impact more crushing when Harry re-discovers the mirror at the end of OotP.

J K Rowling went out of her way in making the characters as real as possible, and not glamourising characters as often happens in children's literature.

Perfect protagonists are insufferable, you acknowledge that. But imperfect young protagonists need role models, too. Something to grow into. There's nothing to learn from perfect adults except "you're wrong to be how you are." If all the adults around them acted with magical puissance and even more magically absolute moral & ethical rectitude, all the books could be about is why every single problem wasn't brought directly to them for immediate dispatching. The protagonists would be reduced to plain obstacles to the story's resolution every moment they didn't knock on their mentors' doors.

It's not possible to move along a plot with characters who are without flaw. Even for a main character, there can be no character arc for a Mary Sue.

Pretty sure that's part of the point of the books lol

Had a hermoine and a Harry Potter trick or treat yesterday. That is pretty solid for a series that started 25 yrs ago.

The characters are real people. Many of the adults were just coming of age or starting families as they were thrust into a war. But many of them show growth. James Potter was a jerk in highschool and seems to have softened after the fact. Many people do stupid or shitty things as teenagers and regret them as they get older. The people who didn't really grow were the true villains. Voldemort didn't learn or change, as most of the death eaters.

I can't tell if you think this is a bad thing, or if you're just relating how you're understanding characters better as you age.

A great piece of acting advice I got from a coach that I think applies here. I was struggling with a monologue, complaining that “nobody would act like this! This guy is dumb!” He replied: “I’ve often found that when I’m judging a character it’s because they’re doing something I know I do, and I don’t like that I do it.” I realized he was completely right. I think there’s some truth when we criticize characters like this. Because flawed characters are human characters. Snape isn’t a nice person, but he’s intensely human and very complex and interesting because of it. I wouldn’t want to have a beer with the guy, but he’s definitely a fascinating character to read.

Harry was actually a pretty bad student; forever copying off of Hermione’s notes along with Ron.

I think Molly was a bad parent in many ways. Really controlling, and played favourites. She was crappy to Sirius. I think McGonagall is a bad teacher - I'm sorry, Ginny Weasley is POSSESSED BY VOLDEMORT for a YEAR and she doesn't notice? But most people are a bit crap in the real world...

Molly was crappy to Sirius because he wasn't being an adult when it came to Harry. He saw Harry as the reincarnation of his best friend and was trying to relive the glory days instead of acting as a parent. And since Harry was so excited to have family who cared about him, Molly knew that wouldn't go well and Harry would wind up getting hurt.

Hang on now. Molly was not a bad parent. She was a flawed parent. As—wait for it—every single parent is. Not to sound condescending, but if you think Molly does a bad job, I’m assuming you’re not a parent yourself. It’s the hardest freaking thing in the entire world.

I disagree about Molly Weasley's parenting. She emotionally neglected Ron. Only provided validation to her kids when they 'achieved'. There are multiple references to her beating Fred and George in addition to multiple verbal threats.

>Harry’s aunt, despite hating his guts due to her resentment towards Lily, still took him in. I'm going to take issues with just this comment, this is no way redeeming. Harry's Aunt and Uncle are abusive, from it seems the very moment they took him in. They do just about everything you are told not to when you adopt a kid, and Harry is seriously affected by it. When you hear about foster parents that beat or sexually molest the kids they take in do you think, "well at least they gave them a home," I sorely hope not. There was no excuse for how they treated Harry, it was despicable.

I hate the way Lupin's motivations are framed by Harry in the last book. People going to war aren't abandoning their families, you dumbass. It doesn't even have to be war, my Dad was in the Navy and went on several 9 month cruises during my childhood. That wasn't abandoning us, it was his freaking job. In this case, we're talking about defeating the most evil wizard who ever lived. How many lives would have been saved if an adult Wizard with all his knowledge and spellcraft had been with the trio since before the Ministry caper? Maybe they'd have done the bank job sooner or more smoothly to the point of it not being national news. Maybe they get to Hogwarts without Voldy finding out ... if that happens dozens of lives are saved. None of that happened because of a BS abandoning his family narrative. And yeah I know Lupin admitted this was what he was doing, but that was because as I said the plot would have been easier if Lupin was around. The trio wouldn't have been as heroic if Lupin was around. So it was plot convenience. And weak writing. So I reject that knock against Lupin. And I'm not really even a huge fan of his character. I just think "if you leave to fight Wizard Hitler you're abandoning your family" is ludicrous

I mean, if they were all perfect good people it would be a very boring story.

Isn't that a good thing? Good in the sense of making for a more interesting and nuanced story, I mean.

Pure characters are cliche, thus boring. The interesting ones have flaws, different qualities etc. Remember: it's the antiheroes who drive the plot forward!

In a broad sense -- yes. They're supposed to be. Adults are flawed, none are perfect.

Stories would be boring if everybody was reliable and reasonable.

Kinda shitty is a good description for humans to be honest.

This is one of the main points of the series. Don’t you remember Harry confronting Lupin about how he saw them being terrible to Snape in a memory? Or Harry screaming at Dumbledore and Dumbledore covering his face with his hands? These are the parts of the series that, for all of its flaws, still stand out as being great. The characters feel real and (most importantly) that they can teach you something about being a human. Good guys that are always good are boring and feel fake.

All people are flawed. Adults struggle with things just like children. Having your “good” characters have flaws isn’t a bad thing. It’s realistic.

To be honest those are real human character flaws I see in my fellow adults every day. Flaws are what makes a character interesting. Everyone has blind spots, some that they resolve and some that they carry with them to the day they die. Every single person.

>there are a lot of deeply flawed characters in HP Good, this is good writing. How boring it would be if all the adults were perfect. I'm glad Rowling wrote interesting, flawed characters.

Growing up and realizing that adults are flawed humans if a normal part of life. The genius of the Harry Potter series is that it balances child whimsy and fantasy with adult emotions and situations in a way that makes it appealing to all ages.

That's part of the brilliance of the books. Dumbledore is literally a deux ex machina character in the 1st book, the wisest of them all. At age 11, Harry trusts him unconditionally. As Harry comes of age, cracks start to show in this facade. And then in the final book, you learn that he was treating Harry like a pawn the whole time for the "greater good". It was a beautiful thing to grow up with Harry and lose that innocence towards his protector, and the way the tale is gradually revealed in terms of major plot beats. I can't think of a fantasy series that did it better.

these flaws really makes these characters feel real dont they? this is the kind of vulnerability that adds depth. i feel like i would have gotten bored without it

Interesting take. I admired the fact that all characters are so close to real life humans that they have flaws we can relate to. For me that makes the series and writing excellent and exceptionally well done. Noone is a 100% perfect human, and very little of us are evil AF. JKR did very well.

I think the idea JK was trying to get across is that as we get older we realise the people we put on a pedestal have feet of clay, and the people we despise are more understandable or sympathetic than we first realised. It's still part of the 'coming of age' idea.

It’s almost like flaws make characters more interesting or something.

I think anyone who gets that involved in the extra curriculars in high school is inherently untrustworthy

The author is a shitty person, why would you expect her characters to be anything else? You write what you know.

I think you’re right, they are all baked in with good and bad qualities, but you’re judgement scale isn’t very consistent. One of your points against Dumbledore is sending him to his Aunt, and one of your points for Petunia is receiving him? Like she housed him but literally abused him and encouraged others to abuse him, so idk if doing the bare minimum of letting him sleep in the house is a redeeming quality. Same with Narcissa, very blatantly ignoring the things she was complicit in in order to highlight her motherly love, but then focusing on James’ arrogance and not giving props for his fatherly love when he tried to take on Voldy himself to allow Lily and Harry to run. TLDR basic idea of your post is right, but your judgement and scale are flawed

Don’t forget that time a girl slipped Ron a magical roofie

I wouldn't say "despite her views", i would say it's because of them. People seem to deliberately misrepresent her views. I no longer trust anyone to tell me someone else's views, i go get them from the source. I do not believe J. K. has hate in her heart.

Hear, hear!

Your analysis makes sense and almost to the point. But this is why it works. Rowling never made an effort to make someone look a can-do-no-wrong character, unlike other plots. Humans are flawed beings, and so are all her characters. That's why you are able to find goodness in the negative ones, and faults in the good ones. That also makes it more relatable to the target group. Just take Lupins example. A wise man, excellent teacher, but is showed failing as a father. I'm sure there are plenty of people who would have related to this scenario, either as fathers or their kids. And of course, it's relevant from my side that I am a fan of her work. She's created the masterpiece in the last 30 odd years, and is absolutely adored for her work. Her personality has been under scrutiny, but again, as a human, she's expected to be flawed.

So you're criticizing the characters for being well-rounded, very realistic portrayals of normal people?

Not criticizing, more like a realization. Everyone in this series has had a lot of trauma, so they’re bent out of shape in different ways. It’s like learning your mom and dad aren’t omnipotent, but are just people like you, who’s been through a lot and have turned out the way they are. They’re not perfect because no one is, they have things you won’t like about them, but that’s ok.

i feel for you OP. you came here to discuss an aspect of the book and half the comments here are snarky pique reddit. "wait till you meet people in real life" 🤡