The year of behaving badly

I have written over and over again on the subject of how hard I find it to read The Order of the Phoenix. This is a gloomy, claustrophobic novel in which no one... and I mean no one... behaves well.


Of course, the antagonists -- Dolores Umbridge, Draco and Lucius Malfoy, Cornelius Fudge, even Percy Weasley, Voldemort -- are insufferable. That's to be expected.


But even the so-called "good guys" are not at their best.


Mundungus Fletcher leaves his post and permits Harry to be attacked by Dementors.


Sirius Black is childish and moody throughout most of the book. putting his own unhappiness ahead of the interests of his godson, Harry.


Mr. and Mrs. Weasley treat the teenagers like toddlers and refuse to let them in on what's going on with the Order of the Phoenix. Further, they fail entirely to prepare Harry adequately for the trial at the Ministry.


Professor McGonagall seems oblivious to Harry's suffering while at Hogwarts, continually chastising him for letting Umbridge upset him rather than helping him, counseling him on why his suffering is necessary and how he can better endure it.


Professor Dumbledore's behaviour is inexplicably abhorrent. He literally abandons Harry in his hour of need and leaves Harry to suffer the horrors of Umbridge without any support whatsoever. Okay, Dumbledore worries that Voldemort will use the connection between his mind and Harry's to try to spy on Dumbledore so the Headmaster doesn't want to interact with Harry face to face... but why not send him a series of letters, explaining the concerns, outlining what's happening and guiding him as to how to proceed?


You would think that, through all this, Ron and Hermione at least would behave appropriately. But Ron spends the book caught up in his own Quidditch-inspired malaise while Hermione... well, Hermione is awe-inspiring in her insipidness.


Every time the young people get a chance to speak to an Order member and obtain much needed reassurance and guidance, Hermione loses focus completely and goes off on Elf-rights tangents. She knows Harry is desperate for counsel from Sirius and yet, when Harry's godfather appears one evening in the common room fire, Hermione makes the whole, time-limited interaction about how Sirius shouldn't be taking risks and how Sirius should be treating Kreacher better.


It doesn't seem to occur to her that Harry really really really needs to talk to his godfather.


Sirius' own petulant pouting during that conversation is also way over the top.


Hermione is at her worst in Umbridge's Defence Against the Dark Arts classes. While Harry must be faulted for his own inability to control his temper in the face of the obnoxious Ministry hag, Hermione is the one who set matches to gasoline by challenging Umbridge in not one but two consecutive classes.


What is she thinking? What can she possibly be thinking? Hermione is smart enough to understand that the only way she, Harry and the rest of the students can possibly survive Umbridge and the Minister's interference is to keep their heads down and stay quiet. Yet, she goes out of her way to create conflict and confrontation and then has the unmitigated gall to admonish Harry for getting caught up in the fire she herself has created.


There are times I wonder if J.K. Rowling went too far in this book, if she let the narratorial imperative of isolating and abusing Harry in the first half of the novel cause her to undermine the consistency of her carefully established central characters.


The fact of the matter is, Dumbledore is not the insensitive clod that he is portrayed as in The Order of the Phoenix; Hermione is smarter and more sensible than the character who appears in this book.


It is possible that, in her understandable campaign to put Harry into a terrible, lonely, vulnerable and suffering situation in his fifth year at Hogwarts, Rowling lost track of who her characters really are?

Why does no one blame Harry for Cedric's death?

I hereby apologise to J.K. Rowling for all of the nitpicking in which I indulge in this blog. She has created a remarkably complex, fascinating and consistent world in the seven Harry Potter novels and, considering the intricacy of the many plots and subplots, she leaves surprisingly few holes for detail-oriented people with all the time in the world (like me) to exploit.


That being said, let me ask this:
1) if the official stand of the Ministry of Magic is that Harry Potter and Cedric Diggory were not transported to the graveyard, that Cedric Diggory was not murdered by Peter Pettigrew in that graveyard and that Voldemort did not return to full power at the end of The Goblet of Fire; and
2) if the Ministry wishes to discredit Harry Potter for claiming that Voldemort has, in fact, returned; and
3) if Cedric Diggory died at the end of Tri-Wizard Tournament when the only person, according to the Ministry's version of events, who was near or with him was Harry Potter;


WHY HASN'T THE MINISTRY BLAMED HARRY POTTER FOR CEDRIC DIGGORY'S DEATH?


Fleur Delacour had already been removed from the maze. Victor Krum had been stunned and was out of action. It would seem an easy thing for the Ministry to lay the blame for Cedric's death at the feet of Harry, the only other person then inside the maze.


Even if they didn't want to charge him with murder (and face the possibility of being forced to admit they could not prove the charge), at least they could use the power of the press and the power of public opinion to suggest that he was in some way to blame. And to suggest that Harry's insistence that Voldemort has returned is simply an attempt to throw the blame for Cedric's death elsewhere.


I don't recall a single moment in the fifth, sixth or seventh books when anyone (friend, foe or Death Eater) even implies that Harry might be responsible for the death of Cedric Diggory. I wonder why.

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.

Umbridge a Death Eater?

This will show you how really attentive a reader I am -- I just realized, as I re-read the first chapter of The Order of the Phoenix for the 20-somethingth time, that Dolores Umbridge sent the Dementors to Little Whinging to kill Harry Potter on that hot summer night.


She wasn't playing around. She took it upon herself, without any consultation with Cornelius Fudge or anyone else, to send the most heinous of magical creatures into Surrey to kill an innocent 15-year-old boy who had committed no crime but witness the rebirth of the Dark Lord and return to tell about it.


Woweee.


I mean, these Dementors meant business. They arrived, attacked and were ready to perform the Kiss on Dudley, an even more innocent bystander in all this, without wasting any time at all.


We only learn at the end of the novel that it was Umbridge who, on her own initiative, sent them to attack Harry but, in retrospect, this action says a great deal about this delightful lady.


She could not have known that Harry was so capable with the old Patronus Charm. We can't give her the benefit of the doubt by arguing that she sent the Dementors to force Harry to perform magic so that the Ministry would then have some grounds to snap his wand and expel him from Hogwarts.


She was trying to kill him.


Why? For upsetting Fudge? For making him look bad?


Is it possible that Umbridge is actually a Death Eater who is simply never identified as such? That she is acting on the Dark Lord's orders, trying to kill the Boy Who Lived after Voldemort failed to do so in the graveyard?


If she isn't a Death Eater, Doesn't her decision to try to have the Dementors kill Harry seem like a bit of an over-reaction under the circumstances? To kill Harry just because he represents the only real evidence available that Voldemort has returned?

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.

Spare parts and Diggory's death

Death is a part of Harry Potter. We all know that. The entire series of novels is set into motion by the brutal murder of Lily and James Potter and an almost unspeakably ruthless act -- the attempt to murder an infant, just over a year old.

I would argue, however, that it is the matter-of-fact, entirely needless murder of Cedric Diggory at the end of book four that provides the series its most brutal moment.

Diggory does not need to die. Rowling could have spared him simply by having him touch the Tri-Wizard Cup a split second later than Harry and get left behind in the maze while Harry is hurtled hundreds of miles to the graveyard to face the Dark Lord. Voldemort could have spared Diggory simply by ordering Wormtail to stun him and forget about him, rather than kill him. Wormtail could have refused to kill him, could have chosen to stun Diggory simply because his murder is such a brutal, needless, cruel act.

Diggory's death is not necessary to the rest of the plot of The Goblet of Fire. After Harry brings his body back to Hogwarts, we see one immediate scene as the shock of Diggory's murder spreads through the crowd and sends his father into grieving hysterics, but no plot point, no future development hinges on Diggory being dead.

Diggory's death is important, however, and perhaps my comment above that "Diggory does not need to die" is not entirely accurate. Cedric dies because Rowling needs to send a clear, ruthless message -- to the characters who are on the side of good in the books and to us as readers -- that Voldemort is back and as brutal as he ever was. With this scene in the graveyard, everything changes.

We are no longer reading simple young-adult fiction where, if death occurs, it occurs off stage, it is crucial to the plot and it occurs for a reason. No, we're reading stories about the most evil sorcerer the world has ever seen, under whose rule death is a common-place, everyday thing, death occurs as often and as casually as the arrival of the owl post, the teaching of classes, the eating of meals.

When Voldemort, still in his almost powerless, infant form, hisses to Wormtail, "Kill the spare," the universe changes. We, as readers, learn that Rowling will pull no punches from here on out. Evil will be evil in every sense of the word. And we learn that Voldemort's cruelty knows no bounds. He will kill with impunity, almost without thought, certainly without remorse. And finally, we learn that Voldemort's followers will carry out his most cruel, most senseless orders without question, without consideration of morality.

And the word "spare" is important. It hits us like a hammer. In the Dark Lord's mind, Cedric Diggory is not a young man, filled with hope of a bright future, kind, funny, handsome, beloved by his family and his friends... he is a spare part to the story, an accidental element that must be swept aside for Voldemort to achieve his goals.

In the French translation, Voldemort hisses "Tue l'autre". This translates, as far as I understand, as "Kill the other". It makes sense, sure, but I'm not sure it has the impact of "Kill the spare." I'm not sure it sends the same ruthless message.

Decisions, descisions: what if Harry had failed at the second task?

J.K. Rowling writes suspense scenes very very well. Even after more than 20 readings, there are still sections of her books that I simply cannot force myself to read slowly. I get so caught up in the suspense, I just fly through the section.


One such passage is the part in The Goblet of Fire where Harry, Hermione and Ron rush to figure out a way for Harry to gain the ability to breathe under water for at least an hour for the second task of the TriWizard Tournament. As you will recall, the three work desperately together in the library for about a month, then, the day before the task, Hermione and Ron are called away and Harry continues to research, even as the final hours before the task fly past.


Finally, Dobby saves the day, first by waking Harry in the library ten minutes before the task is to begin and second by providing Harry with the magic plant gillyweed, that gives him gills.


After dashing through the section, however, and forcing myself to start to get ready for work, it occurred to me: what if J.K. had decided to let Harry fail on this task? Would it have made any difference at all to the outcome of the book?


As a writer of middling success, I am fascinated by the writing process of talented and successful authors. I am amazed at the number of decisions writers have to make with almost every paragraph of their books, decisions that will have a significant impact on the rest of the novel.


So we have Ms. Rowling, planning out her fourth Harry Potter novel, and deciding: Harry has to be successful in all three tasks; he has to be the fastest to get the egg from the dragon; he has to show his moral fiber in completing the second task; and he has to agree to a tie with Cedric Diggory at the end of the third task.


The book is fantastic so I have no quibble with these decisions but... how would the book have changed if J.K. had decided to have Harry fail in task one or two or both?


The structure of the third task is such that even a failure in one of the two earlier tasks does not eliminate a champion from the competition. Fleur does not complete the second task but the result is only that she is penalized in having to wait to enter into the maze for the third task until some time after the competition leaders, Harry and Cedric, have already gone in.


Fleur still has a chance to win.


Dobby comes through and saves the day for Harry in the second task. But what if he had not done so? What if Harry had been forced to go to the lake, stick his head under the water and yell at the MerPeople to release Ron, as Ron had suggested earlier?


Clearly, we would lose Harry`s demonstration of moral fiber in deciding to sacrifice time at the bottom of the lake in order to save all of the captured kids. But we would also lose the questionable decision of the judges to award him extra points for his moral fiber, since the rules of the Tournament never mentioned anything about the possibility of such extra points being earned. Who knows, if Cedric or Viktor or Fleur had known that such points were available, they might have approached the task differently.


I have never been comfortable with this arbitrary awarding of points in the second task so, from my point of view, it would have been nice if it could have been avoided.


Had Harry failed in the second task, he would have been the last to enter the maze for the third task. He would have followed Cedric, Viktor and Fleur into the bushes. But is that so big a deal? He would still have been able to make up the time, especially since Viktor falls victim to a spell and Fleur falls victim to Viktor. All Harry would have had to do was catch up to Cedric. No problem in a maze of this kind.


I would think further that, had Harry failed at the second task, the pressure would have been on Barty Crouch Junior to be even more aggressive in intervening in the third task to make sure Harry got to the Goblet-Port Key first. That might have made the third task even more exciting.


My best guess is that Rowling treated each task as a separate little plot that required its own conflict, its own rising action and suspense, its own crisis point and its own climax. Further, she must have felt that, given the extremely unhappy resolution to the entire novel (Cedric is dead and Voldemort has returned to full power), she wanted to have the first two mini-plots resolve in positive ways (Harry is successful in each of the first two tasks) so as to make the final scenes in the graveyard and Harry`s ultimate failure (to save Cedric and to stop Voldemort) that much more surprising and effective.


It`s a brilliant strategy -- as the novel develops, Rowling puts a series of significant obstacles in Harry`s way and permits him to overcome them successfully, creating a false sense of security and positive energy entering the final task and the triumph of evil over good in the graveyard scene.


Still, I wonder if Rowling ever considered letting Harry fail at one of the early tasks, of ramping up the pressure on him (Fleur would feel vindicated in her belief that he was too young, Cedric supporters would be even more aggressive, Slytherin people even more nasty, Rita Skeeter would have had even more about which to write, Harry`s supporters would have been even more under pressure to buoy his spirits and Barty Crouch Junior even more desperate to get Harry to the finish line).


That`s the wonderful, challenging thing about the creative art of writing -- every decision the writer makes impacts the novel in significant, often unexpected ways.