Concussions can lead to good things

A recent severe concussion left me warned off reading, watching TV, listening to music... thinking for two weeks. After that, I was permitted to read but only very simple books, only children's literature.

For some people, that restriction would be an absolute curse but, when you're a huge Harry Potter fan, it's more like a blessing. I was basically told that I couldn't go to work, I couldn't do any work around the house; I just had to sit around and read Harry Potter. What a nightmare!

So, in the next four weeks, I read the entire seven-novel series over once again, from Philosopher's Stone to Deathly Hallows.

An amazing experience. A testament to the greatness of these seven books and their author.

And I noticed some things this time around (I have read each of the seven books at least 20 if not 30 times), things about which I will have to write future Potter Thoughts posts:

1. J.K. does an amazing job of creating voices for her different characters -- this leapt out at me while re-reading The Chamber of Secrets with the newly introduced Gilderoy Lockhart and Colin Creevey especially;
2. The books have some laugh-out-loud moments -- the scene where the Weasleys get trapped behind the fireplace insert at 4 Privet Drive, for example, and many others;
3. Albus Dumbledore is unfailingly polite in all situations, a practice I would do well to imitate, even if his politeness sometimes hides humour;
4. I'm not sure if Rowling remembered how she designed Number Twelve Grimmauld Place in The Order of the Phoenix by the time she came to write The Deathly Hallows -- there seem to be too many inconsistencies and discrepancies.

 I also picked up the third of the illustrated versions of the novels -- The Prisoner of Azkaban. Like the first two in this fabulous series, this one is fantastic. Beautiful. Gorgeous. Surprising!

A film's disdain for subtlety and beauty

Every time I watch the films that were made out of The Deathly Hallows, I feel a little sick.

Sometimes, I want to take a bath, to wash away the gross and icky feeling the movies leave me with.

Other times, I want to sit down and read J.K.'s original novel from cover to cover immediately, just to remind myself of how great her book is, to remove the disgusting taste that horrible film adaptation left in my mouth.

Even as I watch them, feeling more and more sick, disappointed, resentful, I can recognize that there are actually some pretty good scenes in the films. Some brief moments where David Yates and Stephen Kloves actually got it right and did credit to Rowling's original.

For example, I quite like how the Part 1 opens, with brief shots of Harry at Privet Drive watching the Dursley's pack up and go, of Hermione at her home obliviating her parents and their photos to remove any trace of herself, of Ron, standing pensively with the Burrow in the background, looking out over the fields, thinking of what is to come.

I think they do some of the bigger action scenes quite well: the assault on the Ministry, for example, and the escape from Hogwarts.

Emma Watson has some nice moments, as I've written here before, such as her smirk when the freshly returned Ron "votes" to go to see Mr. Lovegood or when she tosses Harry the sword in the Estrange vault.

I quite love the artful way they render the story of the Three Brothers. It's creative and lovely.

But then I am smacked in the face again with the bigger problems of interpretation that plague these movies, with Kloves' and Yates' apparent disdain for the subtlety and beauty of Rowling's deep psychological and emotional tale.

This disdain comes out in many different ways, in numerous decisions they made as to how to present the story, both large and small.

Among the small ones: did you notice that Harry does not liberate Mad-Eye's magical eye from Umbridge's office door at the Ministry? did it bother you that Harry, Hermione and Ron don't spare a moment's feeling for Mr. Lovegood's fate after he summons the Death Eaters? did it phase you that Harry does not mend his own wand before dealing with the Elder Wand nor make the last visit to Dumbledore's portrait in the headmaster's office nor explain why he chooses to dispose of each of the Deathly Hallows in the way he does?

Does it bother you that, in the film version at least, NO ONE except the small group of fighters within Hogwarts joins the battle against Voldemort and the Death Eaters, not the parents of the students, not the people of Hogsmeade, not the Centaurs, the House Elves nor even Grawp?

Does it not drive you absolutely crazy that, while the Hogwart's fighters die simple human deaths, both Bellatrix and Voldemort evaporate into the ether when they die?

That Rowling's single most basic point -- in the end, we are all human and we all are born, live and die just like everyone else, no matter who we are and how powerful we are during our brief stay on earth -- is completely lost in the film?

The great leap that is The Goblet of Fire

What happened in Jo Rowling's life between the time she finished book 3 and began book 4?


As I have said before, I LOVE The Prisoner of Azkaban. It is my favourite of the seven Harry Potter novels (though The Deathly Hallows comes a close second). It is deep and dark and beautifully told, with a tightly drawn plot and an amazingly suspenseful climax and conclusion.


But there is something about the opening chapters of The Goblet of Fire that suggests, to me at least, that Rowling started writing the fourth novel in a fit of joyous confidence, in complete control of her craft, finding delight in the mere application of pen to paper.


For the first time in the series, Rowling spends an extended period of time away from Harry Potter at the start of the fourth book. She takes us to Little Hangleton, the mystery of the Riddle house and the plight of poor Frank Bryce. She flexes her authorial muscles in moving her writing up a level, into a more adult narrative voice and approach, creating scenes that seem to leave behind the childlike innocence of the first three novels.


The story of the Weasley's visit to 4 Privet Drive and Harry's time at the Burrow is told with unbridled joy, bringing with it laugh-out-loud moments and crystal clear characterizations.


Then, almost as if she were arriving at a party that she had been eagerly anticipating for several years, Rowling bursts into creative delight with the scenes at the Quidditch World Cup. This is Rowling at her best, as if she had been waiting all her life to write about this event.


This is also where she first begins to show us the depth and detail of the magical world she has created and her absolute mastery of it. She demonstrates her ability to control much more complex plots and much larger casts of characters, creating spellbinding scenes which, we find out later, are literally littered with little, seemingly throwaway details, that will become very important as the stories develop through the fourth, fifth and following novels.


My guess is that, after book two succeeded beyond her wildest dreams and book three also showed the same promise, Rowling sat down to write The Goblet of Fire with a new sense of confidence that she would be able to carry out her planned seven-book journey. Whether she felt more relaxed, because the pressure to prove herself was now off, or more tense, because she suddenly had the expectations of the entire world placed upon her, Rowling seems to have hit her stride at the start of Book Four, to have committed herself to her exquisitely detailed overall plot, to have given herself permission to explore more thoroughly her characters and themes, to have learned to trust herself and her instincts as she moved forward.


It's a pretty awesome thing to witness, even now as I read the books again for perhaps the 20th time.

In real life, the Dursleys would be considered child abusers

A scary story appeared today on the CBC News website (cbc.ca) on May 30, 2014 under the headline: 

London, Ont., couple charged after boy, 10, found locked in 'squalid' house

Boy's aunt and uncle face charges of forcible confinement

For fans of Harry Potter, the story sounds eerily familiar:

A couple in London, Ont., face charges of forcible confinement and failing to provide the necessaries of life after their 10-year-old nephew was found malnourished and locked in a bedroom of a house that police describe as "filthy" and "squalid." Police said they found the boy locked in a bedroom that has an ensuite bathroom. Police believe the boy had been confined there for 18 months to two years. The boy, who police say was underweight and suffering from malnutrition, was taken to hospital. He has since been released from hospital and is in the care of the Children's Aid Society. The couple facing charges have a biological child who was also living in the house at the time. That child, whose age and gender have not been released, is also now in the care of the CAS. Police said there is no evidence that the couple's biological child was confined inside the house.

How often was Harry left locked in his tiny bedroom by his uncle and aunt, with only short breaks to go to the bathroom and with only the most basic of meals provided through a flap in the door, while his cousin Dudley enjoyed complete freedom?

Now, granted, Harry was only confined for a couple of days at a time, not for 18-24 months like the poor child in the news story but, when you think about it, locking a child in a bedroom for any extended period of time is abuse and a pretty serious offense.

It's a wonder none of the neighbours in Little Whinging ever called the authorities on Vernon and Petunia Dursley!

A brutal, brutal experience

I'm in the middle of reading The Order of the Phoenix. I find this one of the most difficult books to read that I have ever encountered.

J.K. had gotten us well-hooked by the time she wrote this, the fifth book in the series, and we have learned to care very deeply for her characters, especially Harry, Hermione and Ron.

So it's really tough to read a book where Harry in particular is so battered and abused, so isolated and alone, as this one. And J.K. pulls no punches. Not only does Harry suffer so badly in The Order of the  Phoenix, she also makes sure he is very well aware of the unfairness of it all.

In North American football, we'd call it "piling on".

First, there are the Dursleys. Not only is Harry stuck in Little Whinging, alone with the a family of the worst kind of Muggles, he is also completely isolated from a wizarding world that he knows must be changing as a result of the return of Lord Voldemort.

And yet, for some reason, no one from that wizarding world is bothering to contact Harry or keep him informed.

Then come the Dementors, the revelation that Dumbledore has arranged to have Harry watched (without telling Harry about it), Harry's expulsion from and later re-instatement to Hogwarts and finally his rescue from Privet Drive. But he's not taken to his beloved second home, The Burrow; he's taken instead to a dingy row house in London that is completely foreign and unwelcoming.

Things don't get any easier. Harry finds out he has been undermined and attacked by the Ministry and the Daily Prophet, that he has been deliberately kept in the dark on what's going on with Voldemort, that his god-father is desperate and lonely and potentially no longer trustworthy to have Harry's best interests in mind, and that his mentor is completely avoiding him.

Things will be better when I get to Hogwarts, Harry tells himself.

Not so fast, young man. At Hogwarts, he comes face to face with the fact that known Death Eaters who are actively supporting Voldemort are still at large, their kids have been put into positions of authority over him at school, and the Ministry itself has installed its own operative into the school, seemingly for the sole purpose of torturing him both physically and psychologically.

Plus school work piles up, Hagrid is nowhere to be found and Snape is even more vile toward him than usual.

Yikes and yikes.

I'm nearly three-hundred pages in and I don't think Harry has gotten a single break yet. Even his Quidditch captain is furious with him for receiving unjust detentions and missing practices and now he has to worry about his friend Ron falling to pieces as Gryffindor's new keeper.

It's like Rowling sat down to write this book and thought: My characters, and my readers, are now old  enough to deal with reality. In fact, they're old enough to deal with a world that is much more rotten than some people's reality.

And she doles misery out in massive proportions, especially to Harry.

It makes for a very, very difficult read. We suffer through every page with Harry and his friends. We experience the injuries and the injustices right along with him and we suffer with and for him.

It's an interesting choice by J.K., to be sure, to make us and her character suffer so. But, once the choice had been made, she certainly committed herself completely to it and wrote this book with an intensity that one rarely experiences in literature.

I find that I read The Order of the Phoenix very quickly, whenever I return to it, simply because I want to help Harry find a way out of all of this suffering as soon as possible.

It's a testament to Rowling's effectiveness as a writer, I think, and to her uncompromising dedication to making these books memorable.

Waffling on who wrote A History of Magic

I started re-reading The Prisoner of Azkaban yesterday on the plane back from Toronto and two things jumped out at me.

The opening scene of the novel has Harry hiding under the covers of his bed at Privet Drive, trying to do his summer homework without being discovered by the Dursleys. As you will recall, Harry's uncle and aunt have forbidden him from doing anything related to magic or Hogwarts in their house so we find him, in his room, blankets pulled over his head, quietly reading his text on the history of magic.

First thing that jumped out at me: who the heck is this Adalbert Waffling and when did he write a competing history text to challenge the great Bathilda Bagshot? My paperback copy of the novel clearly states that Harry is reading A History of Magic by Adalbert Waffling. Interestingly enough, it seems that J.K. corrected this error in later editions of the novel. Does that make my little book valuable? And what does that do to the sanctity of the canon if Rowling can publish a book, then go back and "correct" it like this.

I would point out, of course, that Harry's relationship with this particular book (whether written by Waffling or Bagshot) is strange: in book one, he finds the name for his Snowy Owl (Hedwig) in A History; in the third novel, Harry reads this text in order to complete his History of Magic homework; but in later novels Harry claims never to have to opened it.

The second thing that jumped out at me was this: in the original novel, Harry is clearly described as reading A History in the light of a "torch" (which is the English term for what in Canada we call a "flashlight") because he is not allowed to do any magic outside of school. In the film version, however, Harry uses his wand and the "Lumos" spell to provide the light to read the book: a clear breach of magical law. Yet he is never punished for it. He fears that his accidental use of magic (blowing up his aunt) will get him expelled from Hogwarts but feels no compunction about using magic to help him read.

Ahh, if we spent our days finding all the inconsistencies in the movies, we'd never get anything else done, would we? Still, it's fun to point them out when they arise!

Talking about Bill Weasley

Let's talk about Bill Weasley. One of Ron's older brothers, husband to Fleur, lunch date for Frenrir Greyback.

In the books, Bill is a likeable, capable character. He plays a decent-sized role and gets some useful scenes. I especially like the fact that he takes Harry aside at a key moment in The Deathly Hallows to talk to him about understanding Griphook's motivations and what drives Goblins in general. It's a good scene, a useful scene.

I also like the Fleur/Bill subplot in The Order of the Phoenix and The Half-Blood Prince. It's interesting and fun and ends with a surprisingly emotional scene after Bill is attacked where Fleur pushes Molly Weasley aside to tend to her scarred, future husband.

Because I quite like him as a character, I don't understand what they did to him in the films. And, oddly, I want to argue that Bill should actually get less screen time in The Deathly Hallows, rather than more. I mean, if you plan to diminish the character so far, then at least have the courtesy to reduce him to wallpaper completely.

Bill doesn't appear in any of the first six films but then, in the first part of The Deathly Hallows, Yates and Co suddenly feel they have to give him some air time. In what I consider to be one of the worst scenes in all of the eight films, Bill walks into Privet Drive and introduces himself to Harry, points out his scars and says he's looking for a chance to pay Greyback back one day.

It's a clumsy, ugly, unnecessary moment. I guess the film-makers would argue that they had to introduce Bill early so that the viewer would know who he is when the Hero Trio takes shelter at Shell Cottage at the opening of Part 2.

I don't agree. We recognise Fleur and we see Bill with her at their wedding. We see them together at Shell Cottage once Harry and his pals arrive there. We know who he is.

The damage Greyback did to him has no importance in the rest of the films and Bill is given no further lines in the film. He is merely another redhead fighting on the side of right.

So why include that ridiculous scene at Privet Drive? It's embarassing. It's awkward and silly. And it serves no real purpose.

If they didn't plan to do Bill justice in the films, Yates and Co should have left him alone completely.