Who wrote the Goblet of Fire?

Who wrote Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire?

Sounds like a silly question, doesn't it? Of course J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Her name is right there on the cover, she has publicly claimed it and accepted credit for it.

But I am not sure that the J.K. Rowling who wrote the four Harry Potter book was the same person as the J.K. Rowling who wrote books one, two, three and five.

The Rowling who wrote most of the Potter books is a master story teller, a clear and technically perfect writer, a person who cares about the details as much as she cares about the grand themes of her work.

The Rowling who wrote The Goblet of Fire, on the other hand, seems to me at least to have been a different person: a person in a rush, under pressure to take advantage of the building success of her first three books and publish book four as soon as she could. 

The first three Harry Potter books were published in consecutive years -- 1997, 1998 and 1999 -- and each came in at between 200 and 300 pages. That's a remarkable creative pace but, considering the relatively brevity of the books and the simplicity of their plots, eminently reasonable. And these books are masterpieces, technically perfect in the details and creatively impressive in their overall achievement.

Goblet comes in at a whopping 636 pages but was still published only a year after The Prisoner of Azkaban. And, if you read it carefully, it is a sloppy sloppy book.

At a macro level, the plot is hyper-convoluted and nonsensical: once Voldemort manages to place Barty Crouch Jr. at Hogwarts with access to Harry, the entire Triwizard Tournament is rendered unnecessary. Crouch could simply port-key Harry to the graveyard on any one of the many occasions he had access to our young hero and, in the process, Crouch himself would not have had to be sacrificed.

Further, as I have pointed out elsewhere, there are significant problems with key points in this book, problems that should have been caught by Rowling in the writing:

1. Wormtail killed Cedric Diggory with his own wand and yet, when Harry's wand forces Voldemort's wand to regurgitate its most recent spells ("priori incantatem") in reverse order, Cedric emerges as if Voldemort's wand had killed him;

2. In the same "priori incantatem" scene, Harry's parents emerge from Voldemort's wand in the wrong order: it is made clear throughout the books that Voldemort murdered James Potter first, then was forced to murder Lily Potter in order to get to infant Harry, and so Lily should have emerged from Voldemort's wand first -- but James does; and

3. Rita Skeeter must have overheard the entire scene involving Harry, Dumbledore, Fudge, Snape, McGonagall, Sirius Black and the others in the Hospital Wing at the end of the book, including the confrontation between Fudge and Dumbledore -- once Hermione catches her at the very end of that scene, Skeeter could have been forced to write and publish the entire true story immediately so as to force Fudge to admit the truth. And render much of the plot of Book Five unnecessary.

Even so, it is in the details of the writing that the sloppiness becomes unhappily apparent.

I have chronicled in previous posts how skilled Rowling is at providing the reader background information from previous books in interesting ways while still moving the plot of the current book forward effectively. In Chapter 2 of the Goblet, however, she simply slaps it all into the story in long expository paragraphs. This continues in Chapter 3 and, despite a promising opening chapter, we are almost 40 pages in before the main plot even begins.

The book is also rife with the kind of small grammatical errors (for example, subject-verb disagreements, especially when she uses collective noun such as "group of students" but then uses the verb in its plural form "group of students were") that Rowling usually avoids, with run-on sentences (... and ... and ... and ... but) and with examples where she tells us something rather letting us discover it through action and dialogue.

For example, I opened the book at random and came up with this quote as an example of a run-on sentence:

'Lovely,' said Rita Skeeter, and in a second, her scarlet-taloned finger's had Harry's upper arm in a surprisingly strong grip, and she was steering him out of the room again and opening a nearby door.

 It is possible, of course, that the failure is on the part of Rowling's editors -- perhaps all of her draft manuscripts arrived at the publisher's office replete with errors and the editors whipped them into shape.

Whoever it was, the fourth Harry Potter book fails to live up to the exceptional quality of writing of the other six. And I think it's because Book Four was a significant rush job. Even though it is a mammoth tome, neither Rowling nor her publishers saw fit to take the time necessary to make sure it was of the same quality as her earlier novels in their rush to publish it for their adoring and lucrative public.

What is Harry's crime in the Half-Blood Prince?

There is something that has always bothered my about one of the key scenes in The Half-Blood Prince.

As you will no doubt recall, in the later stages of the novel, Harry sees on the Marauders Map that Malfoy is in a boys bathroom with Moaning Myrtle. Harry enters the bathroom and finds Malfoy leaning over a sink, crying, while Myrtle attempts to soothe him.

Harry takes no action, other than to stand looking at Malfoy. Malfoy pulls himself together and looks up into the mirror. He sees Harry standing behind him, draws his wand and casts a spell at Harry. That spell misses and a duel ensues.

The two are well-matched (surprisingly so, considering Harry's experience and training, but I wrote about that in an earlier post). After several shots back and forth, Malfoy attempts to cast the Cruciatus curse on Harry but Harry is a shade quicker, hitting Malfoy with the mysterious Sectum Sempra spell that he found in his potions text.

Malfoy collapses to the floor, bleeding profusely and dropping his wand. The duel is over. Harry takes no further offensive action but merely stands by as Myrtle screams and Snape thunders into the room to render aid to the bleeding Malfoy.

From what I can tell, Harry did nothing wrong. He walked into a public bathroom. He watched a schoolmate cry. He responded to an attack by that schoolmate. He avoided being tortured by that schoolmate (who was attempting to use an Unforgiveable Curse on him). He took effective action to render his attacker incapable of continuing the attack, without actually killing his attacker. He took no further aggressive steps once his attacker was incapacitated.

Where is the crime? Why is he punished? Why is he subjected to such significant vilification from Professor Snape, Professor McGonagall and even Hermione?

Malfoy cast the first spell and started the duel with no more provocation than that Harry happened to be standing there watching him cry. Malfoy escalated the duel by attempting to cast an Unforgiveable Curse. Harry defended himself once attacked and stopped once he had rendered his attacker incapable of continuing to attack.

Malfoy was forgiven for attacking Harry and forgiven for casting an Unforgiveable Curse.

Harry was found guilty of defending himself effectively from an unprovoked, serious, perhaps deadly attack.

Okay, I can understand that Snape, who hates Harry immensely for a variety of perhaps understandable reasons, might see this an opportunity to get at Harry. Fine.

But McGonagall? Once she heard Harry's story and interviewed Myrtle, wouldn't she intervene in support of Harry? Wouldn't she demand that Malfoy, once recovered, be punished (and likely expelled) for launching an unprovoked attack on a schoolmate and for attempting to hit that schoolmate with an Unforgiveable Curse?

And Hermione? Sure, she doesn't like the Half-Blood Prince's book. And sure, she quite properly chastises Harry for using an untried curse on someone like this. But why does she so thoroughly condemn Harry for his actions?

From a narrative perspective, on the other hand, I can understand this scene and its outcome. It provides action in the middle of a fairly static plot. It permits the duel between Malfoy and Potter that we have been hoping for since book one. It creates a reason for Harry to be forced to miss the final Quidditch match and sets up the climax of the Harry-Ginny romantic build up.

And, of course, if Malfoy were punished or expelled at this point, the climax of the entire novel would be impossible -- with Malfoy kicked out of school, there would be no way for Dumbledore to be trapped by Death Eaters on the top of the tower that fateful night.

So I see the value in the duel and Harry's punishment to Rowling as a writer but... the outcome of the duel still does not make any sense in the world of the novels.

Rowling would likely have been better to have the duel start less decisively -- Malfoy and Harry square off, trade words, then begin to duel together. And she should never have had Malfoy attempt an Unforgiveable Curse. It doesn't have much impact in the course of the action scene, it is unsuccessful and it creates the problem of Malfoy getting away with attempting to cast it.

Then, Harry could legitimately face punishment for using a curse without knowing what it did and, perhaps, for responding to Malfoy's less nasty attack with a ferocious spell that endangered the life of a schoolmate.

These are not major changes I am suggesting but I think they would make the outcome make much more sense and not seem so contrived.

Ah, the stories Bellatrix's wand could have told!

So I'm reading The Deathly Hallows in French and I have come to the scene at Shell Cottage where our hero trio are about to apparate to Diagon Alley to attempt to break into Gringott's.

Hermione expresses her horror at having to carry the captured wand of Bellatrix Lestrange. Harry tells her it should help her live the part. Ron tells her to imagine all the powerful magic that has been done with that wand.

Ron's comment only serves to make matters worse as Hermione points out, with absolute disgust, that  Bellatrix had used that exact wand to torture Neville's parents into madness and then to kill Sirius Black.

Harry's immediate reaction is one of revulsion. He expresses the wish to throw the wand away, to get as far from it as he possibly can.

It's too bad he didn't remind himself of Priori Incantatem, the spell that forces a wand to reveal the spells it has previously cast in reverse order.

We saw Priori Incantatem in the graveyard in The Goblet of Fire when Voldemort returns to bodily form -- Harry's wand forces the Dark Lord's wand to spit out shadows (albeit talking shadows) of its most recent victims, including (I believe erroneously) Cedric Diggory and Harry's parents -- and, earlier in the seventh novel, Harry reminds Hermione and Ron that, by using Priori Incantatem on Hermione's lost wand, the Death Eaters will soon learn that Harry's original wand had been broken.

In that graveyard scene, remember, the shadows that emerged from Voldemort's wand of his recent victims were actually able to speak to Harry and to take steps to protect him as he made his escape. In a way, while simply shadows of spells past, they were also thinking beings.

So it's too bad that Harry doesn't think to perform Priori Incantatem on Bellatrix's wand so as to get a chance to speak, at least briefly, to his godfather. I'm not sure what good it would have done any one, to be honest -- it's not like Sirius would have any great insights into the Deathly Hallows or how to break into Gringott's or what the last three Horcruxes were -- but it might have given Harry, Hermione and Ron a welcome moment with their beloved mentor.

The imperfect choice for Prefect

Help me figure something out. I'm re-reading The Order of the Phoenix and I've just come to the part where Ron and Hermione receive their Prefect badges from Hogwarts.

A big deal is made about the fact that Harry was not chosen instead of Ron -- everyone thought he would be -- and, if I recall correctly, Dumbledore will eventually explain to Harry, at the end of the book, that he didn't want to put any more pressure on our hero than he was already facing.

Good enough.

But tell me why Dumbledore would name Draco Malfoy a prefect for Slytherin. The headmaster is well aware that Draco's dad is a confirmed Death Eater. He knows that Draco is Harry's nemesis and that, with the powers of a Prefect, Draco would have a great deal more power to bother, upset and harass Harry throughout the year.

So why, if Dumbledore is worried about putting too much additional pressure on Harry, does he name Draco a Prefect? Why not someone else? Even Crabbe or Goyle would be a better choice, since they are too stupid to be really harmful to Harry. Even if Draco is telling them what to do, their thickness would provide something of a buffer and the fact that Dumbledore refused to recognize Draco as a Prefect should make Harry feel a little bit better about being passed over.

The only think I can think of is that the Ministry intervened in these choices as well. Maybe Lucius paid Fudge to force Dumbledore to name Draco as Prefect. We see Draco's dad and the Minister of Magic together at the start of the book -- perhaps that's when the demand was made and granted.

I simply cannot believe Dumbledore would make this choice on his own.

Casting aspersions -- Race and the Cursed Child

Some people on social media don't seem to like the idea of a black Hermione.


As you are no doubt aware, when J.K. Rowling's new post-Voldemort play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, debuts in London's west end this summer, it will feature respected actress Noma Dumezweni in the role of the adult Hermione Granger.


The uproar is because of the colour of Ms. Dumezweni's skin. They have taken to social media to express their outrage that a black actress has been cast in the role. Hermione, the complainers state, is white -- she is described as white in the books, she's portrayed as white in the films, that means she's white.


As "proof", they point out that, in one scene in the books at least, Hermione's face is described as having "turned white" in response to a shock, which they feel is definitive proof that the character is written as being white.


Rowling rebuts the assertion that the Hermione of her canonical novels is described as white by pointing out that physical descriptions of the character in the books lend themselves to any number of racial makeups, not just white. Further, she points out that she never once states categorically that Hermione, or any other character for that matter, is Caucasian.


If I recall correctly, some segments of social media were also outraged when actress Willow Smith, an African-American, was cast as the character Rue, an angelic and highly sympathetic young girl, in the first Hunger Games movie.


The whole argument makes me very sad, both that people out there have to get up in arms about these casting decisions and that Rowling herself feels the need to wade in to take them on.


I wish I could believe that the people who protest having Noma Dumezweni in the role of the adult Hermione or Willow Smith in the role of Rue were expressing their outrage because they are genuinely concerned with the sanctity of canon, genuinely interested in ensuring that the new versions stayed true to the original books.


After all, I myself get hung up sometimes in how the stories I love are changed, and not often for the better, when they are adapted to the movie media. It's never on the issue of the race of the actors cast, mind you, but still, I do resent when film adaptations make changes to the original simply for the sake of change.


But it's not loyalty that I see here. After all, I didn't see the same uproar when the filmmakers made hundreds, nay thousands of changes to the original Harry Potter books in making their eight movies. We didn't see protests about how Neville was changed, or what happened with Luna, or Snape or Dumbledore or... Well, you get the picture.


What seems to me to be going on here is, as Rowling recently said, racism pure and simple.


The issue does not seem to be that a character who was, whether legitimately or not, thought to be white in the original book is portrayed by a black actor/actress. The issue seems to me to be that a beloved, noble, admirable, sympathetic, leading character  who was, whether legitimately or not, thought to be white in the original book is portrayed by a black actor/actress.


Further, I wonder if the mere fact that the character in question was a beloved, noble, admirable, sympathetic, leading character didn't actually influence these readers into believing, despite significant evidence to the contrary (in the case of Rue) or no real evidence either way (in the case of Hermione), that the character was written originally as white.


In other words, if we love the character, she must be white. If we find her noble, admirable or sympathetic, she can't be black.


Others have presented this question even more starkly, suggesting that the people complaining about the casting of Rue as an African-American were thinking: "I cried when this character died -- I would never cry at the death of a black character, therefore she cannot be black."


It gets scary, doesn't it?


The racism seems to be so deeply ingrained that at least some of the people complaining about the black Hermione might not even recognize the racist roots of their feelings.


I don't really have any hope of seeing Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, with Noma Dumezweni in the role of the adult Hermione, but I really wish I could. I expect the play to have a fantastic run in London's west end and I hope to see it mounted, with diverse actors, in Canada soon.

Is Snape good or evil? Is he even really one character?

Is Snape good? Or is Snape evil?


According to a report on the CNN website, that argument has again erupted, this time in the Twittersphere and this time focusing on why Harry and Ginny would choose to name their son "Albus Severus", honouring both Harry's biggest mentor and guide in the wizarding world, a man who was almost without fail kind and fair with Harry, and the man who was, for most of the seven-book series, sadistically abusive of Harry and his friends.


Even our favourite author, J.K. Rowling, entered the heated fray.

After what sounds to have been a long and surprisingly vitriolic debate, Rowling tweeted: "There's a whole essay in why Harry gave his son Snape's name, but the decision goes to the heart of who Harry was, post-war."

And further: "In honouring Snape, Harry hoped in his heart that he too would be forgiven. The deaths at the Battle of Hogwarts would haunt Harry forever."

And finally: "Snape is all grey. You can't make him a saint: he was vindictive & bullying. You can't make him a devil: he died to save the wizarding world."

Now, you can go back through my earlier posts on this blog and find snippets here and there that might help you understand my own interpretation, my "take" on this debate and on Rowling's approach to it (and I would encourage you to do so -- I've had a lot of fun writing all these posts and I hope you will be willing to invest some time in reading them) but allow me to summarise my thoughts on the subject here.

First, I agree in some ways with Rowling: Snape is an amalgam of good and evil. Shaped by his early personal experiences, he is a proud, angry, vindictive man. We know that his father was abusive and his parents fought all through his childhood. We know that he was bullied by James and Sirius and their gang and we know that, in the midst of all that, he fell very deeply and irrevocably in love with Lily Evans, one of the few major characters in the books who is presented as being without fault.

But I also think it is important that, while Snape turns out to be fighting on the side of good, he was also a brutal, nasty, horrible person in situations where such egregious behavior was not at all necessary. Nothing required him to bully Neville throughout his years at Hogwarts; nothing required Snape to pick on Ron and Hermione either.

Even if we buy the argument that Snape's terrible relationship with James Potter in some way explained and excused his behaviour toward Harry, I doubt very much it can possibly excuse just how awful he was to our boy hero. Not even the argument that Snape needed to convince and re-convince Voldemort that he was not an agent for Dumbledore could explain away just how unnecessarily cruel Snape was to Harry and his friends.

Further, even if we accept that Snape is a good guy, he did help bring about the deaths of two other of the good guys: Emmeline Vance and Sirius Black.

How does that fact impact the argument with regard to Snape? As I have written before, at its heart, this is a moral question. Is it morally acceptable to sacrifice at least two lives in hopes of avoiding the deaths of many many more? And, if we can forgive Snape the deaths of Vance and Black simply because Snape turns out to be willing to sacrifice himself to help defeat Voldemort, can we forgive him his earlier behaviour toward these children, when he was in the role of teacher, for the same reason?

I think our analysis of Snape has to take into account the evolving complexity of the books, the characters and their situations, from The Philosopher's Stone (which is a children's book) to The Deathly Hallows (which is a fully adult novel).

In the early books, Snape was basically a cardboard figure who represented evil. He was only and utterly Harry's nemesis. Whether or not Rowling had fully fleshed out, when she wrote the first three books, the complex and contradictory role Snape would eventually play in the later novels, Snape is presented early on as a flat, mysterious, horrible character.

More importantly, he was the key to one of the earliest examples of one of Rowling's favourite narrative strategies: misdirection. In The Philosopher's Stone, for example, Snape had to be presented as irredeemably evil in order to draw the reader's attention away from Quirrell, one of the two true villains of that story.

I would argue that, as the novels progressed and increased in depth and complexity, Rowling added more depth and complexity to her characters. She added shades of grey, to use that now horrible expression, to what had been black and white, flat, stock characters.


You see this most specifically with regard to Snape and Dumbledore, though Dumbledore's shades are mostly added only after his death in The Half-Blood Prince.


If I had to state things bluntly, I would say that the Snape of the first four books (especially books one and two) is not the same character as the Snape of the last three (especially the final one). To hold the actions of the early Snape against the later Snape is almost unfair.


In the end, this is not a question of Snape's personality or moral goodness; this is a question of Rowling's narrative strategy.

Nicholas Flamel was a real guy

I haven't had the chance to do much Harry Potter reading lately, what with the release of my own new book of children's stories and the reading requirements of my alt-sci-fi-fantasy book club, but that doesn't mean I'm not thinking about J.K.'s magical world.


In fact, sometimes I am disturbed at how deeply Harry Potter and his pals have penetrated my psyche.


Names that come up in general conversation are immediately mapped back to the characters of the seven books. If I hear or read "Hermione" or "Peverell" or even something as common as "Harry", I immediately think of the novels.


Places I encounter in my daily life get referred back to the Rowling books: Charing Cross Road? Oh, that's where Hermione apparated them in The Deathly Hallows, for example.


So imagine my reaction when I came across the following book at the local library's book sale: The Alchemyst: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, written by Michael Scott and published in 2007. Nicholas Flamel?? NICHOLAS FLAMEL????


I know that name. That's the guy in The Philosopher's Stone who had the last known Stone and who was good friends with Dumbledore. He had to permit the Stone to be destroyed in order to thwart Voldemort's efforts to steal it -- in essence, he had to sacrifice himself to stop the Dark Lord.


The Scott book referred to Nicholas Flamel as an "alchemyst" and said he had lived for hundreds of years. "Wow," I thought, "this Scott guy is borrowing liberally from Rowling. I trust he has credited her properly."


I scanned the book but found no mention anywhere of J.K. Rowling or the Harry Potter books. Scandalised, I put the offending book back on the shelf and returned to my office.


And did some research.


And discovered that Rowling hadn't invented Flamel and his story -- like Michael Scott, she had incorporated a real life person from centuries ago into her own story.


So I owe Michael Scott and apology. At least for what I was thinking.


And I come away even more impressed with J.K. Rowling (and Scott too) for the depth of their research and the scope of their creativity. In my own books, I have worked hard to mix historical fact with fiction, to mingle real people with my imaginary characters.


It's nice to see the Rowling and Scott have done the same, with such wonderful results.

Rowling shows great care in orchestrating her climactic scenes

As I finished reading The Chamber of Secrets (actually, La chambre des secrets, since I read it in French) the other day, it occurred to me that J.K. was very careful to ensure that Harry faced the final confrontation in each novel alone.

And, since I have been highly critical of the fact that the film makers did everything they could to make the ending of the final movie, The Deathly Hallows, Part 2, a duel between Harry and Voldemort with the fate of the entire world hanging in the balance (where I felt Jo made it very clear 1) that the battle was not Harry's alone and 2) that the tide was actually turning in favour of the defenders of Good before Harry duels the Dark Lord), I wondered why Rowling took such great pains to separate our hero from Ron and Hermione at the end of each of the first two books.

I doubt the following summary is necessary for anyone who is into Harry Potter enough to be reading this bug but, for anyone not familiar with Books 1 and 2, here is what happens:

In The Philosopher's Stone, Hermione and Ron are with Harry when he first sets out to get past all of the protections around the Stone to save it from the antagonist but Ron drops off after he gets injured in the chess match while Hermione solves the potions riddle for Harry only to be forced to turn back since there is only enough of the move-forward potion for one. Harry is, clearly, the one who must go on (as Hermione points out) so he is alone for the final battle.

Meanwhile, in The Chamber of Secrets, Hermione has already been petrified, leaving Harry and Ron to use the information she has collected to find the Chamber and save Ginny. But Harry loses Ron when Ron's wand backfires on Lockhart and causes a cave-in that can't be shifted in tie to save Ginny. Harry is past the wall of rubble; Ron trapped behind it with the befuddled Lockhart. Once again, Harry must face the final battle alone.

The question is: why?

Rowling makes it a clear point of focus as the novels move on that, while Harry is at the centre of the storm that is Lord Voldemort's return, the battle against the Dark Lord and his minions is shared by everyone. Hermione and Ron, in particular, show continued dedication to the battle throughout the rest of the books.

I thought about this question for some time and I think the answer is quite clear. And fairly simple.

When Harry finally faces Voldemort with a companion in tow (Cedric Diggory in the fourth book, The Goblet of Fire), Voldemort is cold-blooded about what he requires his disciples to do with anyone who shows up other than Harry. While the Dark Lord's instructions with regard to Harry are clear and consistent ("Leave him to me"), Voldemort does not hesitate in the graveyard in book 4 when Harry shows up with a friend: "Kill the spare," he orders and Diggory is summarily dismissed.

Rowling recognised in the first two books that it was in the Dark Lord's character simply to kill anyone who gets in his way. She could not permit Hermione or Ron to be there at the end because they would die instantly. Not only would that be an incredible waste of these wonderful characters, it would be a great deal too much for the young readers in the target audience to bear.

As a result, she arranged things to ensure that Harry met Voldemort alone in Books 1 and 2. Book 3 involved only the Dark Lord's henchman and not You Know Who himself, so Hermione and Ron could take part in the climax of the story.

Then, when Jo felt her readers were mature enough, she ends Book 4 with the death of Harry's companion at the climactic scene. And she makes darn sure it's not one of her readers' beloved inner circle.

Those are some pipes!

Question: How big are the pipes that inhabit the walls of Hogwarts Castle?


Seriously, what is their diameter?


I'm currently re-reading The Chamber of Secrets (in French) and it has occurred to me that I have always simply taken it for granted that the Basilisk that lives in the Chamber makes its way around the school through the pipes, as Hermione deduces.


But think about it. That great big snake is described in the climactic scene of the novel as being massive. Fawkes, a fairly good-sized bird, flies around its head in an effort to blind it. Harry battles it with the Sword of Gryffindor, a pretty fair sized weapon in its own right, and kills it by thrusting this sword into the Basilisk's head.


That means that the pipes through which it travels must be fairly large themselves. Huge, in fact.


Does that make sense? Don't pipes need to be large enough to perform their function but small enough to fit within walls and floors, to keep the water that passes through them under enough pressure to be useful?


I don't know what the answer is. Maybe the Basilisk can make itself very long and thin. Or maybe the pipes really are ridiculously large.


But it seems strange to me, that's all.

Jo, you really should watch yourself (or at least listen)

If you have had enough of the Voldemort pronunciation issue, you may want to move on. Because I'm talking about it again.


The whole question arose, according to CNN, when one tweeter tweeted “the "t" is silent in Voldemort, according to @jk_rowling” and Jo tweeted back “but I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who pronounces it that way.”


One clever responder immediately pointed out that actor Jim Dale also pronounced Voldermort without the "t" in the audio books of the first two novels. Then, of course, he saw the movies and immediately starting saying "Vole-de-morte".


Since, however, I am a bit of a detail nerd, I decided to check to see if Jo Rowling really has always pronounced Voldemort with a silent "t". I headed to the internet and started watching as many of the interviews with the author as I could find.


The first thing that struck me, to be honest, was how seldom (if ever) she actually says the name at all. I watched interview after interview and, while she mentions Harry, Hermione, and Ron quite often, I still haven't found an interview in which she mentions the Dark Lord by his chosen name.


Is it possible that even J.K. Rowling has "fear of the name"?


That being said, I then decided a better approach might be to review videos of Rowling reading from the books themselves. Even if she avoids saying "Voldemort" when she is just chatting, there was no way she would bleep out his name when reading from a novel.


That's when I came across this video on Youtube. It's Jo reading the first chapter of The Deathly Hallows on the evening of the book's release. She is at the British Museum, reading to a huge crowd of children.


It's the perfect passage to test our question. After all, the entire first chapter of seventh novel involves Voldemort and his most trusted Death Eaters discussing plans to ambush Harry Potter.


And, as she reads her way through Chapter 1, Rowling says "Voldemort" with a very distinct "t" sound on the end. "Vole - de - morte".


Hmmm..... The person who claims to be the only person who pronounces Voldemort with a silent "t" actually pronounces the name with quite a strong "t" sound at the end. At least on this particular occasion.

Personal sacrifice, personal loss: Who suffered most?

A friend, who is also a bit of a Harry Potter fan, sent me this captioned picture today and it got me thinking: of all the characters in the Rowling world who themselves survived the entire situation, which one would you say suffered most as a result of the Voldemort's rise to power and the war to defeat him?

The caption would suggest that Hermione made the greatest sacrifice and I might be willing consider this possibility (that Hermione made the greatest sacrifice of all by erasing herself from her parents’ memories) if it weren’t reversible.

But she can reverse it.

What cannot be reversed are the Weasley family’s losses (one son dead, two sons injured), nor the losses suffered by Mrs. Tonks (her husband [Ted Tonks], daughter [Nymphadora Tonks], son-in-law [Remus Lupin] and sister [Bellatrix Lestrange] were all killed, leaving her alone with a half-werewolf grandson). 

And you have to figure that Hermione and Ron set out for Australia fairly soon after the war ended with Voldemort’s death to track down her parents, reverse the obliviate spells she cast on them and remind them who she is!

Note, in Chapter five (the last chapter I’ve finished) of The Way Forward, my fan fiction post-Deathly Hallows novel, I make it clear that Hermione and Ron go to Australia to retrieve her parents!

I will have to take some more time to think about this question as I am sure there are a whole cast of characters, minor or major, who suffered great losses as a result of the events of the Rowling books.

The "club-house leader" is Mrs. Tonks, by the way. But is there someone out there who sacrificed more?

Filmic regression: Lupin meets Granger in a strange world

So, Hermione Granger and Remus Lupin are together again!


I just caught the teaser trailer for the upcoming film Regression, starring the delightful Ms. Watson. It looks like a reasonably interesting thriller, with lots of eerie stuff, a chilling mystery and numerous dark and rainy nights.


From the trailer, I can't really tell what accent Ms. Watson uses in the film: English, as in Harry Potter, mid-Atlantic (as in The Perks of Being a Wallflower) or something else. She seems to do a lot of crying in the film, unfortunately. Did she ever give us a scene of outright weeping in the eight Harry Potter movies?


Ethan Hawke also stars but the big surprise was to find David Thewlis in a fairly major role. Now, I know Thewlis has been a busy working actor but, until he portrayed Remus Lupin in the magical movies, I had never really noticed him.


Now, he's back with Watson again in another supernatural film.


He's not in the trailer enough to make any kind of assessment of his performance but it will be interesting to see how he does. I always liked him in HP so I expect he'll be fairly strong.


It makes you wonder, however, whether casting directors worry about putting two major Potter actors in the same post-Potter film. Doesn't it seem like they're running a risk that movie-goers won't be able to get beyond the Rowling connection to enjoy them in their new roles?

Harry Potter and the Costco Cashier

In line at Costco. Making sure the cashier notices that I have a case of ginger ale in the bottom of my cart, hidden by the massive Costco bags I bring with me every week.


"Thanks for pointing that out," she says, scanning the code from the ginger ale. "You wouldn't believe the stuff people try to sneak out of here without paying."


Me, surprised. "Oh, does it happen that often?"


She nods, laughing. "It happens all the time but what is even more amazing is how often they're successful... with really really big items."


"Like what? Air conditioners and things like that?"


She nods again. "Air conditioners. TVs. It's really crazy. I don't know how they get these things past all the security."


And then she makes the comment that endears her to me forever.


"It's like they have an Invisibility Cloak or something!"


Awesome. Harry Potter and the Costco Cashier.


And, of course, I am immediately reminded of the fact that, when Hermione used the Invisibility Cloak to grab food from a grocery store in The Deathly Hallows, she took great care to deposit the money to pay for the items she was taking into an open cash drawer before she left.


If only we would all be as honest as the good Ms. Granger.

At last, a tiny impact of films on novels

I have often wondered if, in writing the later books, J.K. Rowling was at all influenced by the film versions of the earlier novels.

As the chart below shows, Rowling must have been in the process of writing The Order of the Phoenix at the time the first two films were released. Four films were already out by the time she was writing The Half-Blood Prince and The Deathly Hallows. The possibility of influence definitely existed.

Volume	Book Release	Film Release
1 – The Philosopher’s Stone	1997	2001
2 – The Chamber of Secrets	1998	2002
3 – The Prisoner of Azkaban	1999	2004
4 – The Goblet of Fire	2000	2005
5 – The Order of the Phoenix	2003	2007
6 – The Half-Blood Prince	2005	2009
7 – The Deathly Hallows	2007	2010
8 – The Deathly Hallows (2)		2011

To be honest, I have re-read the books several times with this question in mind and, until I listened to the audio books, I could find no evidence that she was influenced at all by the movies. I find that fact both remarkable and impressive. Jo must have had a very clear, unshakeable vision of her characters, her settings, her magical world to be able to resist adapting that vision to match the very vivid, very imaginative presentation offered by the films.

I say, "until I listened to the audio books", however, because, as Jim Dale read to me the chapter called "Gringott's" in the seventh book, I heard it... a very small, very minor bit of evidence that Rowling might just have been influenced, however slightly, by the films as she wrote the later books.

Don't get too excited. It really is a very minor example. And if it is the only example, it is practically meaningless. But interesting nonetheless.

It involves the presentation of the gateway to Diagon Alley located at the back of the yard of the Leaky Cauldron. Here is how Rowling describes the movement of the bricks and the formation of the gateway in The Philosopher's Stone (1997):

The brick he had touched quivered -- it wriggled -- in the middle, a small hole appeared -- it grew wider and wider -- a second later they were facing an archway...

Now imagine how this same scene was depicted in the first film in 2001. Hagrid touches the brick with his umbrella/wand and the bricks begin to spin and rotate out of sight. The archway takes several seconds to form as the bricks twirl. It's a wonderfully visual event and a brilliant way to introduce the splendours of Diagon Alley.

Now fast forward five years to 2006 as Rowling is in the process of writing the final novel. Harry, Hermione and Ron arrive at the Leaky Cauldron (suitably disguised, of course), on their way to breaking into the Lestrange vault at Gringott's, and Jo describes the opening of the gateway to Diagon Alley as follows:

Hermione... tapped a brick in the nondescript wall in front of them. At once the bricks began to whirl and spin; a hole appeared in the middle of them, which grew wider and wider, finally forming an archway...

In her initial description of the formation of the gateway, Rowling says that the brick "quivered" and "wriggled"; the film presents the bricks as spinning out of sight; in her final description of the formation of the gateway, Rowling says that the bricks "whirl" and "spin".

I know. I know. I know. It's nothing huge but... doesn't it seem like the filmic version of the event changed, however slightly, Rowling's description of the way the archway changed.

For some reason, this discovery delights me to no end.

Discovering another diadem

"Beneath her fingernails, the frost makes billions of tiny diadems and coronas on the slats of the bench, a lattice of dumbfounding complexity."

Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See, 2014 Scribner

One funny way that Joanne Rowling and the Harry Potter books have affected me is in introducing me to words and names in the English language, words and names of which I had never before heard nor read, words and names that now jump at me from the page when I encounter them in my daily life.

It's quite wonderful, really, for me. I already had a decent education in English Literature and the history of Western Europe and North America, through university and into grad school, and my career as a journalist and then a lawyer had exposed me to all kinds of different areas of study, of expertise, of knowledge. So my vocabulary was already pretty good.

That's why it is such a thrill for me to find an author who can expand my knowledge base even further, who can introduce me to names and words and phrases that I had never before encountered.

Rowling is one of those people. And so is Anthony Doerr.

"Diadem" was completely new to me when I first read of the Diadem of Ravenclaw in the Harry Potter books. I had to look it up in a dictionary to find out what it meant.

The second context in which I have found that word, lying like a gleaming jewel in the grass, is in Doerr's novel All The Light We Cannot See. And, amazingly enough, it is from the point of view of a blind character, Marie-Laure, that Doerr presents the word which, for me, has come to convey a sense of dazzling beauty.

"Hermione" is another such word, a name of which I had never heard until a buck-toothed, frizzy-haired little brainiac walked into my life in The Philosopher's Stone. I have already written about my later encounter with another Hermione in another context.

I wonder how long this will continue to happen to me. When I am 90, will I stumble across "diadem" in yet another book and be immediately transported into Rowling's magical world yet again?

For me, some words and names are Rowling's property -- she introduced me to them, she made me cherish them. Anyone else who uses them is merely borrowing them from Harry Potter.

Why is Hermione upset when she misses Charms?

A couple of months ago, I wrote in this space about the trap that is time travel. It seems at first like a pretty fun and clever device: create a way for your characters to travel back and forth in time and then watch the fun ensue.

But, if you look at the concept too closely, if you explore the possible consequences of time travel on your narrative, you really might want to think twice before you employ it.

As much as I love The Prisoner of Azkaban -- it is, in fact, my favourite of both the books and the films -- I still believe that the introduction of the possibility of time travel to the Harry Potter universe  in this third novel is an strategic and dramatic error on the part of author.

The following passage from about two-thirds through the book jumped out at me recently as I listened to the Jim Dale audiobook version of The Prisoner:

Hermione was sitting at a table, fast asleep, her head resting on an open Arithmancy book. They [Ron and Harry] went to sit down on either side of her. Harry prodded her awake. 

'Wh-what?' said Hermione, waking with a start, and staring wildly around. 'Is it time to go? W-which lesson have we got now?' 

'Divination, but it's not for another twenty minutes,' said Harry. 'Hermione, why didn't you come to Charms?' 

'What? Oh no!' Hermione squeaked. 'I forgot to go to Charms!'

Hermione laments this mistake for some time, to the point where she brings it up later, having found out that Cheering Charms might just be on the exam.

"So what?" you ask. "It's a fun scene. It's neat to see Hermione not quite in control for once!"

And yes, it is an interestingly little scene, intended both to show Hermione in a more vulnerable situation and to pique our interest: just what is up with our favourite witch?

But think about it a little more deeply. We learn later that Hermione is in possession of a time turner, which permits her to travel back in time to attend several classes that are scheduled at the same time. She has been using it all year. As we learn at the start of term, she uses it on one day each week so that she can attend Divination at 9 a.m., then go back in time to attend Muggle Studies at 9 a.m., then travel back in time again to attend Arithmancy, again at 9 a.m.

Once she learns she has missed Charms class in this scene, why doesn't she just excuse herself, travel back in time and attend the class? Rather than freaking out and feeling unprepared for the exam, why not use the time turner, as she has done all year, to travel back and go to Charms?

And then you have to ask yourself: why is Hermione so tired? With the time turner, she could easily travel back in time once she's finished her homework each evening in order to go to bed at an appropriate hour so that she is well rested for the next day.

Say she studies until 3 a.m.. Fine. At 3 a.m., she spins the time turner six times, goes back to 9 p.m., and goes to bed. A good night's sleep follows and all is well!

Of course, if Hermione were to go just that, if she were to re-live an average of eight hours every day in order to keep up with her classes, her homework and her sleep, she would end up significantly older (about four months older) than the others at the end of the school year. Would that make a difference in their lives? Would the others notice?

I'm not sure but, because of the introduction of time travel, these are questions that have to be asked.

And they are just minor questions, raised by the brief scene reproduced above. As I've mentioned before, why doesn't Hermione go back in time far enough to stop Voldemort in the first place? Or at least to the point where Peter Pettigrew/Scabbers is easy to catch?