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?

The wonders of chocolate

We need to take a moment here to thank Joanne Rowling for one more thing and I think it is a really important thing:


She has given us one more reason to love chocolate.


According to Rowling, chocolate is an absolute must for a person who has suffered an encounter with a Dementor. In fact, chocolate is not just considered a nice thing to eat to make you feel better after you've been colded by a Dementor; it is the appropriate medical response to such an encounter. Even Madame Pomfrey confirms this fact.


I won't go so far as to suggest that Rowling, who has described the Dementors as her attempt to create a physical embodiment of Depression, thinks of chocolate as a form of anti-Depressant but she certainly does endorse it as a contributor to ongoing happiness and warmth in our lives.


So, the next time someone accuses you of enjoying too much chocolate, remind them of its benefits for health and happiness... and for recovery from Dementor encounters!

"Harry Potter and Me" offers insights

In a 2001 interview with the BBC, Jo Rowling tells the story of how, after the publication of The Chamber of Secrets, she received a stern letter from a parent who basically told her the violent and scary ending of the second book was unacceptable and that the parent expected better from Rowling in the upcoming third novel.

Rowling's reaction is wonderful. She becomes very angry, even though several years had passed between the incident and her recounting of it to the BBC.

"I'm not taking dictation here," she says after a moment. "Do I care about my readers? Profoundly and deeply. But do I ultimately think they should dictate a single word of what I write? No. I am the only one who should be in control of that."

This is a pretty important statement for me as a Potter fan. It tells me that Rowling committed herself, early on, to remaining true to her own plans for the Harry Potter books and to avoid being influenced, dictated to even, by outside forces, be they her readers, her editors or even the films made of her books.

Two other highlights from this BBC interview, filmed between the publication of the fourth and fifth books:

1. Jo Rowling makes it clear that the film version of her books were, at least to that point, entirely outside her control. No matter how carefully she kept control over the writing of the books to herself, she was clearly willing to turn over complete control over the film versions to others.

She says, "The closer the viewing [of the film version of The Philosopher's Stone, the first novel] came, the more frightened I became, to the point where, where I actually sat down to watch the film, I was terrified because I thought 'oh, please don't do anything that's not in the book; please don't take horrible liberties with the plot'."

She concludes by saying of the first film: "I liked it, which was a relief, as you can imagine."

This may just mean that I can absolve Jo Rowling of any blame for the ridiculous liberties the film makers took with the plots of the later books, the devastation they wrought on The Half-Blood Prince and The Deathly Hallows especially. I can't imagine Rowling emerging from any of the last three films thinking that they had stayed true to her original books.

2. By that point at least, Rowling had written the Epilogue for Book Seven. She actually holds up the file folder for the camera, calls it the Epilogue and says, "In the Epilogue, I basically say what happens to everyone after they leave the school, those who survive."

That doesn't prove conclusively that she had the final plot completely figured out but it does indicate quite clearly that she spent a lot of time early on planning out where the novels would go.

On Dale's reading and Rowling's writing

The awesome Hogwarts Model on the Warner Brothers Studio Tour

An excerpt from my Writer's Blog entry for today:

I have spent all of my available spare time over the past couple of weeks listening to the audiobook versions of the Harry Potter novels. I have already listened to The Philosopher's Stone, The Chamber of Secrets and the first part of The Prisoner of Azkaban and I am very much enjoying the experience.

Yes, there are some things about the Jim Dale version of the audiobooks that are not so great: I hate the fact that Scholastic Books "Americanized" some of the language in the books; I find that Dale tends to make the younger female characters (especially Hermione and Ginny) sound much too whiney; and I find that, although Rowling often overuses adverbs to describe dialogue, Dale often ignores her descriptions when he reads.

For example, as I have noted in my Harry Potter blog, one of J.K. Rowling's few weaknesses as a writer is that she seems to lack confidence in the quality of her dialogue, not trusting what a character says to indicate the manner in which they say it. When a character says, "I'm frightened,", Rowling has a tendency to add the tag "he said fearfully". The adverb "fearfully" is not required. There are entire passages of dialogue where Rowling includes unnecessary adverbs as part of every tag and it drives me a bit mad.

Even more frustrating is when Dale, in his reading of the passage, ignores the adverbs and the content of the dialogue in his vocalization: ""I'm fine", Harry muttered darkly," Rowling might write and then Dale reads the "I'm fine" in a bright, cheery voice, capturing neither the fact that Harry is described as muttering nor that he said the line "darkly".

Putting that aside, however, I am finding the experience of listening to someone else reading these much loved books an eyeopening one. I have come to the realization that I read the Harry Potter books much too quickly when I read them for myself: I get so caught up in the plots that I skim entire passages and miss many many subtleties in the writing. It might take me about four hours to read the first Harry Potter novel myself; with the audiobook, I spend almost eight and half hours listening to the story being read to me.

Dale's reading is clear, well-paced and entertaining. And, because it's him reading, I can't skim anything. I am "forced" to hear every detail, every nuance, every word. And it's been something of a voyage of discovery for me. I am becoming even more aware of Rowling's skills as a writer, the care she put into planting seeds early that don't flower until later, the subtlety of her development of her characters and her plots.

I'm loving every minute of it. Sure, I get teased at work for carrying around an ancient CD Walkman but the opportunity to listen to these audiobooks has made my daily walks to and a from work a very enjoyable experience. And my appreciation for J.K. Rowling's skill as a writer continues to grow.

Respecting the intelligence of young readers

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have started searching the internet for early interviews with J.K. Rowling as part of my effort to understand her writing process. I am interested in understanding both how she approached planning and writing such a complicated story (broken down, as it was, into seven separate novels) and to what level of detail she had actually planned the seven-book arc in the early years.


It's been an interesting experience, as much because there are really very few interviews available from the early days -- before or as, say, the second book was written -- as because of what I am learning from the interviews themselves.


For example, I confirmed what I had long suspected: the books are published under the name "J.K. Rowling"  because the British publisher worried that young male readers would not pick up a book written by "Joanne Rowling", a clearly female writer


Although it seems clear that she now finds the publisher's request that she use her initials silly and potentially problematic, Rowling has admitted that, at the time, she was so grateful that someone was going to publish The Philosopher's Stone that (as she told the New York Press Club in 2000), "I would have let them call me Enid Snodgrass if they published the book so I really wasn’t that bothered with it".


I love that comment for two reasons: one, it exemplifies what a fun and funny person Jo Rowling is and, two, it gives me a potential approach to understanding other questionable decisions that were made with regard to the Harry Potter books and films. For example, take Scholastic Books' decision to Americanize the books for the US audience and any number of the decisions made by the makers of the films.


Is it possible that J.K. did not feel she was in a powerful enough position to oppose Scholastic when it decided to rename the already successful first book The Sorcerer's Stone out of fear that American youngsters would not understand or be interested in a "philosopher's" stone?


That decision was made very early, apparently in conjunction with the awarding of a significant advance to Rowling for the American rights. It was made, in fact, before Joanne Rowling was JOANNE ROWLING, the international star writer with significant personal wealth. Is it possible she disagreed with the proposed Americanization but didn't feel like she was in a position to resist it?


From what I've seen, Rowling has a great deal of respect for young people and their intelligence. In that NY Press Club appearance, she actually chided the host for making a less than kind comment about the handwriting of one young person who had submitted a question. I cannot imagine that she would have agreed with Scholastic's contention (whether stated openly or not) that American youngsters would be scared off by the word "philosopher" in the title.


And then there is the decision to eliminate Snape's "test" from the film of that first book. I found it bad enough that screen-writer Stephen Kloves was permitted to make what I consider to be inexplicable decisions to change the Devil's Snare test and the winged key test (I don't think the film versions were any more vivid or visual than Rowling's originals); why eliminate entirely the logic test that Hermione solves?


Was it again because film viewers weren't considered smart enough to follow the test? Was it because they didn't think the riddle with the bottles could be translated onto film in an interesting way?


To me, Snape's logic puzzle was a key moment in the book, both in terms of the excitement of the moment (Hermione is able to keep a cool head under intense pressure) and in terms of promoting the characters and themes of the book.


We learn from it to respect the different abilities that Hermione and Harry bring to the table: moments earlier, Hermione had dismissed her own "cleverness" in deference to Harry's qualities of "friendship" and "bravery"; Snape's test serves to show how important Hermione's intelligence, her cleverness, her level-headed rationality truly is in pressure situations.


Sorry, I digress. I just wonder if, in those early days, Joanne Rowling felt she could challenge some of these decisions with which she must have, in some way, disagreed.

A new source for clues to an long-considered question

I'm a little disgusted with myself, to be honest.


As anyone who has read this blog will know, I am fascinated by the process by which J.K. Rowling wrote the seven Harry Potter novels, by how her planning for the series developed over time and was (or perhaps was not) influenced by other factors, such as the success of the early books, the making and release of the early films, and input from media and fans.


To date, I have limited my search for clues as to that process solely to the books themselves. And there has been plenty of evidence there.


But, today, for some reason, I stumbled upon a new source of information on this issue that so strongly interests me, a source that has existed and been available to me almost since the day I started this blog. I had simply never thought of accessing it.


The source is early interviews with Rowling herself. Interviews that were written or recorded while she was still in the process of writing the books.


I know, I know, I have also long proclaimed that I am not particularly interested in what Rowling has had to say since the books were released on how to interpret them or what happens to the characters after the time period covered in the books is over.


That's still, for the most part, true.


But I think I have been a bit of a fool not to avail myself of the mountains of information available in these early interviews when it comes to coming to an understanding of the process of planning and writing and the impact other factors had on the yet-to-be-written books.


For example, I found today this fantastic video on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn7nlfoMcwQ.


It features an interview conducted in a Scottish coffee shop with J.K. Rowling after The Philosopher's Stone had become a success in England but before it had actually appeared on book shelves in other European countries and in North America.


In the interview, J.K. talks with some awe at the size of the advance she has just received from Scholastic Books in the U.S. for that first novel -- I wonder if she knew at that point that Scholastic would require so many ridiculous changes to The Philosopher's Stone (including to the title) to make it more palatable to American readers?


She mentions her hopes that the book will be popular in Finland and she talks about how she is currently in talks with film studios about doing a movie version.


Most importantly to me, she makes several comments about her plans for the Harry Potter series. She says she has already completed the second book (The Chamber of Secrets), that she is working on the third (The Prisoner of Azkaban) and that she envisions the series as comprising seven books, with Harry ultimately achieving the status of being a fully trained wizard.


And she admits that the success of the first book, and the massive interest in it in the United States, caused her to develop writer's block for a month while she was writing the second novel. That's the kind of impact by outside factors that interests me. I also wonder: how much did her vision of Harry Potter, the other characters, the plots and the magical world, change as a result of those outside factors as she continued to write the books?


I have to watch this video a couple of more times to glean from it all that I can. And then I have to scour the internet for more interviews (whether in print or in video format) with Rowling that were conducted while she was still writing the books, when the completion of the series was still in the future.


It's an exciting thought. I can't wait to start on that journey.

Dumbledore's a crack apparator

Dumbledore's Study at the Harry Potter Studio Tour

When Dumbledore apparates to Privet Drive in the first chapter of The Philosopher's Stone, he does so "so suddenly and silently you'd have thought he'd just popped out of the ground".

When Mundungus Fletcher apparates away from Privet Drive at the beginning of The Order of the Phoenix (leaving Harry unprotected in the face of the Dementors), his disapparition is marked by a "loud, echoing crack [that] broke the sleepy silence like a gunshot". Later, J.K. writes that "Harry was sure the cracking noise had been made by someone Apparating or Disapparating."

In fact, the loud noise becomes closely associated with the act of Apparition throughout the remainder of the books.

So how can Dumbledore do it silently?

I would guess that, as the long-time Hogwarts Headmaster is a wizard of exceptional skill and talent, he likely solved the problem on his own to allow himself to appear and disappear silently. This would be a definite advantage to him when dealing with an enemy.

What do you think?