When I was a small child, I read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (“Sorcerer’s Stone” for you Americans out there). Like many other children at the time, I was swept up in a wondrous world where magical children attend a boarding school filled with secrets and adventure.
Back then, we didn’t realize that Harry Potter’s wizard school exploits also normalized imperialism and slavery. And we certainly didn’t know Rowling was a transphobic bigot—even those few of us who knew what the word “transgender” meant. For my part, I’m ashamed to say I knew nothing.
Getting Darker
I and many others felt like we were growing up alongside Harry and his friends, who got older at around the same time we did. The story got darker, too, as author J.K. Rowling tried to keep up with the changing tastes of her original audience.
I was somewhat younger than eleven when I first started reading Harry Potter—perhaps six or seven—so for most of that time I was considerably younger than Harry was. I was certainly too young to see some of the more toxic themes of the story, but I began to lose my taste for Rowling’s work all the same.
When Problems Began
When I first read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, I loved it. From students and teachers being petrified one-by-one to the diary of Tom Riddle, from the comedy of Gilderoy Lockhart to Harry’s battle with the basilisk, it was by far the most engaging and thrilling of the series. Well, it was back then, at least.
I realize now that the worst of Rowling’s crimes against literature began in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and the books had some truly vile themes from Book One. But as far as that bookish young boy was aware, the problems started with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Harry Potter and the Transphobic Author
Before I discuss the subpar storytelling in her work, I want to make one thing absolutely clear: J.K. Rowling is a transphobic bigot who routinely spreads dehumanizing messages to her numerous fans. I am done playing nice with the Harry Potter series because people love it. The information is out there, and she’s still spewing hate.
I’m writing this in June 2020 so please forgive me if there are any examples of Rowling’s bigotry that I missed.
Firstly, Rowling has a long history of liking transphobic tweets and following known TERFs. She also wrote a mystery novel called The Silkworm, where she dehumanized a trans woman. Also, the novel shows a clear disdain for Rowling’s own fans and anyone who aspires to be like her. The transgender character receives the brunt of the author’s disdain.
The main characters, whom we’re meant to identify with, regard trans people as deluded. A central theme in The Silkworm is that a family that includes a trans person is not a real family—only a pathetic imitation of one. The hero of the story casually threatens a trans woman with prison rape, and we’re meant to side with him.
Even in the Harry Potter series, Rowling included a character called Rita Skeeter, described as having “man hands.” Rita is a shape-shifter who uses her powers to violate the privacy of Rowling’s cis heroes. I’m not saying Skeeter was necessarily meant to be a trans woman, but it’s a distinct possibility.
Maya Forstater
In December of 2019, Rowling defended a known TERF called Maya Forstater after a long time quietly liking tweets from other TERFs. TERFs are people who insist, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that trans women are “men in dresses infiltrating feminism.” It’s a vile, hateful ideology that harms the trans community immeasurably.
Dress however you please.
Call yourself whatever you like.
Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.
Live your best life in peace and security.
But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill
J.K. Rowling on Twitter
If you’re used to TERF rhetoric, it should come as no surprise that Maya Forstater wasn’t fired for saying that “Sex is real,” whatever that means. No one is saying that biological sex doesn’t exist; what scientists are saying is that a trans person really isn’t the gender they were assigned at birth.
In reality, Forstater was let go for consistently bullying her trans co-workers. Imagine if someone repeatedly called their cis co-worker by the wrong gender; they’d likely be fired for harassment. Why should it be any different if the victim is trans?
Tara Wolf
More recently, in May 2020, Rowling responded to a child’s fan art with some random transphobia. In her bizarre non-sequitur of a tweet, Rowling misgendered a trans woman called Tara Wolf who was fined for a crime. Does it matter what Wolf did? No. It doesn’t. One’s gender is not a privilege to be revoked. End of story.
I love this truly fabulous Ickabog, with its bat ears, mismatched eyes, and terrifying bloodstained teeth! In court, Wolf claimed the Facebook post in which he’d said he wanted to ‘f**** up some TERFs’ was just ‘bravado’. #TheIckabog.
J.K. Rowling on Twitter
I have included the original tweet, as Rowling later edited it to cover her tracks.
Rowling Responds to Backlash
In response to the ensuing criticism she received, Rowling claimed that TERF was a misogynistic slur. This coming from the woman who liked a tweet calling trans women “men in dresses.” The tweet is as follows:
‘Feminazi’, ‘TERF’, ‘bitch’, ‘witch’.
Times change. Woman-hate is eternal.
J.K. Rowling on Twitter
Just days before I wrote this, in June 2020, J.K. Rowling doubled down on all her transphobic rubbish. In the following two tweets, the creator of Harry Potter tries to justify her biological essentialism with what she seems to think is feminism. Notice how she keeps using the misleading and irrelevant phrase “Sex is real”:
If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth.
The idea that women like me, who’ve been empathetic to trans people for decades, feeling kinship because they’re vulnerable in the same way as women – ie, to male violence – ‘hate’ trans people because they think sex is real and has lived consequences – is a nonsense.
J.K. Rowling on Twitter
J.K. Rowling’s Excuses
Rowling’s excuses for consistently supporting transphobes ranged from “I was holding my phone incorrectly” to “I accidentally pasted someone else’s tweet into my own,” despite the transphobia being sandwiched perfectly between the main part of her tweet and her Ickabog hashtag. I don’t buy it, given the consistency with which she dehumanizes the trans community.
Harry Potter and the Transphobic Manifesto
Not long afterwards, on the 10th of June 2020, the creator of Harry Potter published a four thousand-word manifesto on her personal blog. In this manifesto, she argues without evidence that trans women are somehow a threat to cis women having an identity, and she even goes on to push the right-wing narrative of trans women sexually assaulting cis women in bathrooms.
I’ve read all the arguments about femaleness not residing in the sexed body, and the assertions that biological women don’t have common experiences, and I find them, too, deeply misogynistic and regressive.
J.K. Rowling
I didn’t know one could jam this many fallacies into a single sentence outside of a PragerU video. Basically, once you sort through all the evasive language, the gist of it is that J.K. Rowling thinks trans people existing is a threat to her identity as a cis woman and thus misogynistic. Again, it’s typical TERF rhetoric based in deep-rooted and likely incurable transphobia.
Trans women existing is not misogyny, despite the lies that TERFs want you to believe. This manifesto also praised a known antisemite as “an immensely brave young feminist,” so we can add that to the list, too.
Harry Potter and the Launch of “Troubled Blood”
In September 2020, the creator of Harry Potter published yet another long, transphobic manifesto. This time, Rowling felt the need to stretch it out over a nearly 1000-page detective novel called Troubled Blood. The killer is a man who dresses as a woman so as to sneak up on his unsuspecting female victims who think he’s a trans woman.
Troubled Blood is a story about how abortion is murder™, trans women are “feigning” femininity, and “fourth-wave feminism” exists to allow these “men in dresses” to sexually assault “real” women. By this point, J.K. Rowling’s writing style has become almost indistinguishable from that of Russian-American author and cult leader Ayn Rand.
Bile—pure, unadulterated hatred for everyone J.K. Rowling considers beneath her—drips from every page of Troubled Blood. The woman who created Harry Potter treats trans people with nothing but cruelty and contempt, always insisting that the trans women have “stolen” something that is rightfully hers.
As an article by Constance Grady for Vox pointed out, Rowling routinely and increasingly writes about womanhood “as if it were a disability.” J.K. Rowling writes like an alt-right blogger, pretending to be rational while distorting the facts, wielding emotional arguments and misleading buzzwords, and demonizing society’s most vulnerable.
From Harry Potter to the Alt-Right
There are numerous examples of Rowling’s transphobia, including but not limited to citing several articles by TERFs, incorrectly conflating menstruation with being a woman, and implying trans women aren’t discriminated against. But really, what more do you need? J.K. Rowling is a bigot, and her fame gives her a huge audience for her bigotry.
Because of J.K. Rowling’s tweets, a lot of ordinary Harry Potter fans are going to type “Is J.K. Rowling a TERF?” into the YouTube search. Without a doubt, they will find videos by alt-right personalities defending Rowling—people like Carl Benjamin and Blaire White. And some of those Harry Potter fans will be radicalized to the alt-right as a result.
There’s nothing like defending someone’s favourite piece of media for getting them on your side. This is what fuelled Gamergate, a hate campaign against the presence of women on the Internet. J.K. Rowling, whether she realizes it or not, has caused some portion of her fanbase to drift into the alt-right.
Harry Potter and the Disjointed Plot
Now that we all know what J.K. Rowling is like as a person, it’s time to take a good, hard look at her magnum opus: the Harry Potter series. Specifically, we’re going to examine the flaws in Rowling’s stories that we’ve all been ignoring. Because Rowling’s bad ideas aren’t just on Twitter; they’re baked into every book she’s written.
Harry Potter and the Genre Shift
In Book Four, Harry’s nemesis Voldemort succeeds in gaining a new body, heralding a new Wizarding War. There was just something off about it. The first few books were almost entirely episodic: stories about Harry repeatedly defeating Voldemort and preventing him from restoring his former powers. They weren’t much different from many other children’s books in that regard.
I know now that this is what we call a shift in genre, and it’s not always a problem. But in Harry Potter, it is. J.K. Rowling’s (questionable) talent as a storyteller seems strongest in stories like Philosopher’s Stone or Chamber of Secrets. The later books’ attempts at “adult” fantasy clash with the inherent childishness of the Wizarding World.
The world Rowling imagined exists to fulfil a fantasy: what if I were the most important person in the world? What if I were secretly famous, gifted with innate magical powers, and rich beyond my wildest dreams? Harry even enters a world where he never has to interact with mere mortals again, where he’s the only person who matters.
Episodic Stories
J.K. Rowling’s overarching story was constantly marred by her transparently episodic writing style. Concepts are introduced for a book and then forgotten about. The books make a big deal of every minor character’s death, and yet most of them only exist in relation to Harry. Indeed, a surprising number of them die protecting the great Harry Potter.
More so than the individual books, the overall plot of Harry Potter is almost laughably predictable. The plot twists are all either completely obvious or feel like they come out of nowhere. There’s also a vaguely pretentious air that becomes prominent in the later books. This is especially true at the end, with Harry’s rebirth as a christ-figure.
Off-Page Deaths
Pretentiousness isn’t even the biggest flaw in J.K. Rowling’s writing. Far worse is her inability to provide proper buildup or payoff across multiple books, which likely stems from an inability (or unwillingness) to adequately plan her series overall. Also, most of the stuff that should be interesting happens off-page, and character relationships are woefully underdeveloped.
We’ll leave the horrendous morality of Harry Potter till later in the article, but don’t worry; I’ll get to that.
Let’s start with the first of these problems: lack of buildup and payoff in the Harry Potter series. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is the way the author kills off characters. Most of the time, they die off-page. While this is technically realistic, the fact is that realism does not matter or even exist in fiction.
Killing off this many supposedly-important characters off-page is simply not a recipe for a strong narrative. The decision to tell the whole story almost entirely from Harry’s perspective just wasn’t the right one for a story like this. In fact, so much of the story happens off-page that it becomes difficult to care about what one is actually reading.
Luna Lovegood
Throughout the Harry Potter series, characters and concepts are routinely introduced just before they become important. Rarely does J.K. Rowling plant or sow any “seeds” in her story. Most of the time, she’ll introduce a concept only to abandon it in the following book.
The character of Luna Lovegood is a perfect example, entering the story at the start of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and then fading into the background just as quickly.
Introducing Bellatrix Lestrange
Bellatrix Lestrange, despite a few passing mentions in the previous book, is another character whom Rowling throws into the story with almost no buildup. In fact, she’s probably a better example than Luna! Mere pages after we first meet her, Bellatrix kills a supposedly-important character and then serves as just another Death Eater for the rest of the story.
Although on its own it wouldn’t be a problem, the manner in which Rowling kills off her characters forms a pattern when you factor in the generally poor planning in Harry Potter. Sirius Black is built up as an important character over three books. Bellatrix is introduced when she kills Sirius, signalling that she will be important, but she’s not.
Bellatrix and the Art of Emotional Payoff
After doing almost nothing of note, Bellatrix is killed by Molly Weasley, whose son Fred was killed shortly before. This would have been a weighty payoff had Bellatrix been the one to kill Fred, but he died in an explosion presumably caused by an unnamed Death Eater.
Of all the characters who have a grudge against Bellatrix, not one of them duels her in the final battle. There’s no buildup and no payoff.
Spoilers for The Lord of the Rings!
In the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, when the Witch-King killed Théoden, there’s a reason it was Éowyn and Merry—not Pippin and Beregond—who battled the Lord of the Nine, avenging the king.
Éowyn was Théoden’s niece, and Merry had formed a bond with the old man during the hobbit’s stay in Rohan, during which Théoden bestowed the title of esquire upon him. In other words, they were both invested in what happened to Théoden. The impact would have been greatly diminished otherwise.
As far as I could tell, Bellatrix was just another Death Eater from Molly’s perspective. Imagine if Bellatrix had duelled Neville, Hermione, or even Harry! She’d wronged each of them in various ways, torturing Hermione and robbing both Neville and Harry of the people who would have been their parental figures.
All Bellatrix Lestrange did to Molly was taunt her about how her son was killed by somebody else. Also, Molly rips off one of the Alien films…
“Not my daughter, you bitch!”
Ellen Ripley, AliensMolly Weasley, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Most of the characters who die in the Battle of Hogwarts were one-note background characters who were either never important or had fallen from prominence several books previously.
Severus Snape, the one remaining character who’s even remotely interesting (at least till you examine his motivations and realize they make no sense), is killed in an entirely forgettable scene. He doesn’t redeem himself, but Rowling seems to think he has. As a result, his death feels manipulative.
Contrasting Characters
Returning to the subject of Bellatrix Lestrange, Rowling has said that she always intended for Molly Weasley to kill Bellatrix Lestrange. Supposedly this is because she wanted to contrast Molly’s love for her husband and children with Bellatrix’s sick love for Voldemort. But that connection is incredibly vague at best.
If Rowling wanted to contrast two characters, she would have had to actually contrast them somehow. She didn’t do this—at least not in any way that would cause any of this to work on any level. Molly has no connection to Bellatrix, and saying in an interview that they’re foils of one another doesn’t change that.
Spoilers for The Lord of the Rings!
Example: Théoden and Denethor
If you want to contrast two characters without having them interact, I recommend you read The Lord of the Rings—and pay attention this time. The most obvious example is that of Théoden and Denethor, who are heavily contrasted even though they don’t share a single scene. Tolkien constantly drew parallels between them, and he did so in the text.
From their fealty ceremonies to their treatment of their respective heirs Éomer and Faramir, Tolkien draws our attention to how different Théoden and Denethor are from each other. Thus, when Denethor arguably kills Théoden indirectly, his death is more impactful than any of Rowling’s character deaths. That’s what proper buildup and payoff can do for a story.
When you’re writing a story, try to ensure you actually bother to communicate whatever’s in your head. Don’t just say you contrasted two characters; make an effort to actually do it. Rowling never does this, instead choosing to reveal all-important plot details on her website, leaving the text of her books without much meaning or detail of its own.
Disjointed Examples
Numerous characters, concepts, and other plot elements in Harry Potter are treated this way: introduced out of nowhere and either resolved without emotional payoff or forgotten altogether. Speaking for myself, this quickly robbed me of my ability to care about what befell the surviving characters at the end.
The romance between Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley both began and ended in Book Six, and then they get married some time between the last chapter and the epilogue. As mentioned, both Sirius Black and Remus Lupin are built up as important characters only to die unceremonious deaths that do little to advance the plot.
I lost count of how many magical concepts Rowling brings up in one book or other, only to introduce a contradictory idea in a later book. Characters like Draco Malfoy and Neville Longbottom aren’t built up at all until it’s far too late to build anything up. Predictably, neither contributes much in the end.
Rowling’s unwillingness to tell a coherent story across more than a single book makes the whole Harry Potter saga feel like something of a disjointed mess. One book has little to connect it to previous volumes in the series; even the genre just changes without warning between the fourth and fifth book!
Harry Potter Is a Bad Protagonist
As a character, Harry Potter isn’t very interesting. This wouldn’t necessarily be a huge problem, but the vast majority of the story revolves around him. As I said earlier, he’s literally the most important person in the magical world. All the other characters are fully aware of this, and many sacrifice their lives for him without a second thought.
Harry has few character flaws outside of Book Five, where his teenage angst only makes him more unlikeable than ever before. Starting in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, so many more interesting characters die to protect him that I ended up hating Harry for it.
What is there to say about Harry Potter as a character? Not much, it turns out. All his traits outside of Book Five are things like “selfless,” “brave,” and “loyal.” And unlike some brave, loyal, selfless characters such as Samwise Gamgee, Harry doesn’t have meaningful flaws to round out his character.
The “Choices” of Harry Potter
“It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
As nice as that quote sounds, it is swiftly contradicted by almost everything from the following book onwards. It really is Harry’s abilities that make him who he is. He makes few meaningful choices, as Dumbledore arguably planned out his whole journey for him.
Even the prophecy predicting his fateful battle is worded in such a way as to make Harry’s character traits pretty much irrelevant. By the time Harry faces Voldemort for the last time, the boy wizard has become further purified as a christ figure. Thus, he doesn’t have to overcome any personal flaws to fulfill his destiny.
By contrast, if we look at the example of Samwise Gamgee, the chief protagonist in The Lord of the Rings, we see a character who saves the world by overcoming his character flaws.
Harry Potter vs. Samwise Gamgee
Like Harry Potter (well, not Harry as he really is, but the things Rowling tells us about Harry), Samwise Gamgee is brave, loyal, and selfless.
But unlike Harry, Samwise has a number of character flaws that make him an interesting protagonist. The most important of these is his lack of compassion for the corrupted hobbit Gollum.
Spoilers for The Lord of the Rings!
When Frodo decides to spare Gollum’s life, Sam interprets this as “blindness,” as we see in this passage:
It had always been a notion of his that the kindness of dear Mr. Frodo was of such a high degree that it must imply a fair measure of blindness.
The Lord of the Rings (Book Ⅳ, Chapter Ⅲ)
Viewing Frodo’s mercy as a sign of some weakness is, as I think we can all agree, a meaningful character flaw.
And this belief has real consequences, with Sam’s hostility sabotaging what hope there was that Sméagol might recover his sanity.
After Gollum betrays them by leading the two hobbits into the lair of a spider demon, Sam even briefly forgets about Frodo’s peril, desperate as our hero is to kill Gollum.
Believing that Frodo is dead, Sam’s first impulse is to hunt down Gollum and take revenge—before even considering taking up the Ringbearer’s quest. In the end, however, Sam resolves to destroy the Ring himself.
Only when Samwise himself has carried the One Ring for a day and felt the temptation of ultimate strength does he begin to understand why Frodo, Bilbo, and Gandalf all felt such compassion for the wretched creature.
After carrying Frodo up Mount Doom, Samwise Gamgee once again fights Gollum. After overpowering his enemy, the hero’s first impulse is to kill the creature as he begs for mercy. But as he’s now experienced some tiny fraction of the power that drove Gollum mad, Sam can no longer bring himself to kill Gollum.
Sam spares Gollum’s life, and when Frodo fails to destroy the Ring, Gollum bites off Frodo’s finger and takes the Ring for himself before falling into the fires of Orodruin. In other words, the One Ring was destroyed as a direct result of Sam overcoming his own greatest flaw.
It is only by growing as a person
Harry, on the other hand, succeeds because Dumbledore had the better plan: one so convenient that I wonder if the headmaster read the books first. Harry never had any meaningful flaws to overcome, and he defeats Voldemort because… he stole a random wand from Draco Malfoy or something?
Harry Potter and the Gringotts Goblins
Throughout the story, Rowling ensures that Harry Potter and his friends needn’t get their hands dirty. Troublingly, even when they conspire to cheat and steal from Griphook the goblin, our heroes are absolved when Griphook betrays them first.
Also, the goblins are greedy bankers with large noses who only care about money, and they have a different concept of ownership than we do. The wizards use the goblins’ concept of ownership to exploit them. The goblins are the bad guys. I’ll leave you to interpret the antisemitism and colonialism here.
Voldemort: Dead by His Own Curse
This is a relatively minor grievance when compared with the others, but in keeping with the theme of Harry and his friends always ensuring their hands remain clean, Harry Potter doesn’t even kill Voldemort at the end. Now, in some stories, the hero refusing to kill the villain is in service to some theme or other, but not here.
Voldemort’s death is of the sort we’d expect of a Disney villain. In other words, the hero doesn’t have to get his hands dirty, because Voldemort does himself in. This blatantly contradicts the prophecy that the whole story is built on:
The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…
born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies…
and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not…
and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives…
the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Notice the part where one of them has to die “at the hand of the other” there? Yeah… Voldemort ties by his own curse, so that’s out the window.
Harry Potter vs. Neville Longbottom
I have a lot of issues with this prophecy. First, the whole thing is vague in all the wrong ways. Not only has everything in the prophecy been correctly interpreted by the time we hear it, but it also fails to tell us anything we didn’t already know about where the story was headed.
Interestingly, Dumbledore brings up the fact that Neville Longbottom could have been the Chosen One if Voldemort had “marked him as his equal.” Immediately after that, we’re told that there’s no doubt that it’s Harry. I’ve always wondered as to the point of this bit.
The obvious twist would be if Neville turned out to be the real chosen one in the end. Ideally, Harry could have not returned from the dead, leaving Neville to defeat the Dark Lord. But instead, everything proceeds almost exactly as the reader expects it to proceed, with Harry duelling Voldemort only for the villain to kill himself instead.
All Was Well
After Voldemort’s underwhelming death, Rowling adds insult to injury by skipping forward nineteen years. What follows is among the most vacuous and saccharine pieces of writing I’ve ever read. The epilogue honestly destroyed all my remaining goodwill towards the series.
Consider the fact that Hogwarts is a den of corruption where numerous schoolchildren died only nineteen years ago, a school that drowns its students for entertainment and pits children against each other with the House Cup. Well, the epilogue sees Harry and his friends as they’re sending their own children off to Hogwarts. Isn’t that nice?
Harry explains to his son (who’s named after his least-favourite teacher) that there’s nothing wrong with being a Slytherin. This flies in the face of everything the books have established up to this point. Every Slytherin in the text of the books has sided with Voldemort, with Horace Slughorn as the only possible exception.
Harry then tells his son that the Sorting Hat only put him in Gryffindor at his request, and we’re told that he’s never told anyone this before. First of all, why has he not told anyone before? Also, why is it relevant that he’s never told anyone? It’s never explained.
The book proceeds to tell us that Harry’s scar hasn’t hurt in many years, and the series ends on this line:
All was well.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Epilogue)
To be honest, I can’t think of a single sentence you could end on that would be more vacuous than this one. Why is all well? What does that mean? Readers shouldn’t have to visit Pottermore to find out. This information is essential to understanding the story, and Rowling dismisses all such questions with this final line.
My best advice when it comes to ending a story is this: don’t end your book with “All was well.” As far as I’m aware, it’s the worst line you could possibly end a book with.
Is Dumbledore Gay?
Life would be so much easier if saying “My books are diverse” in an interview made your books diverse. Unfortunately, Albus Dumbledore being gay is what we call paratext, as in “not text.” The text of the story is what’s in Rowling’s published works, and had Rowling made Dumbledore gay in Fantastic Beasts, it would be part of the text.
J.K. Rowling didn’t do that. Instead, she said “Dumbledore is gay” in an interview, and then the author wrote a screenplay where Dumbledore is never shown to be gay. Far from giving her fans a gay hero, Rowling gave them a coded-gay villain in Grindelwald. End of story.
Albus Dumbledore Is a Horrible Person
That aside, Albus Dumbledore as portrayed in the books and films is a truly terrible human being. All things considered, he’s really just a manipulative bastard who went from being a teenage Nazi to a puppetmaster willing to plot out the deaths of children years in advance.
Where the deaths of characters like Théoden in The Lord of the Rings were the result of Gandalf’s understandable inability to be in two places at once, Dumbledore plans seemingly every detail of the later books, including the deaths of almost every halfway-interesting character in Harry Potter.
Severus Snape
Severus Snape is a fan-favourite, and at first he does seem like the most interesting character in the books. Unfortunately, somewhere down the line, J.K. Rowling decided Snape was a sympathetic hero. Sadly, as we might come to expect from this author, she forgot to give Severus a redemption arc.
Severus Snape, when all is said and done, is an even worse character than Sasuke from Naruto. Both are characters whose arc supposedly ends in their redemption, but neither one is redeemed in any way. Sasuke just sort of gives up on his evil plans, hinting that he might turn evil again, but whatever…
Snape, on the other hand, goes from Death Eater to triple agent, and through all of it, he’s a child abuser. Whether it was his own bitterness that made him treat his crush’s kid like vermin or whether Dumbledore secretly ordered him to abuse Harry is immaterial. Both Snape and Dumbledore are deplorable; Pottermore can’t change that.
Child Abuse
This leads to another important point: a consistent and troubling theme in Harry Potter. Throughout the books, Dumbledore is established as a character who’s right about things, and he repeatedly states that it’s healthier for Harry Potter to grow up abused than to grow up famous. He then allows Professor Snape to bully Harry in a similar manner.
This all sends the explicit message that child abuse builds character. Harry is always framed as a good person who is all the better for having suffered. As someone currently living with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder due to abuse in schools, I can tell you that this all-important theme in Harry Potter is harmful to real people.
Harry Potter and the Morality of Slavery
In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, we’re introduced to the character of Dobby. Dobby is a house elf, house elves being a race of slaves who serve the wizards. If they “misbehave,” they are compelled to inflict self-harm, such as when Dobby burns his own hands with a hot iron.
If that’s not horrifying enough for you, when house elves get too old to work, their masters mount their heads on the wall. In the entire history of the Wizarding World, not one wizard has ever questioned the rightness of slavery. When we see muggles, whom we can assume oppose slavery, they’re nearly always portrayed negatively.
S.P.E.W
In Goblet of Fire, Hermione sees a house elf named Winky being abused. In response, muggle-born Hermione starts the Wizarding World’s first ever anti-slavery organization. It’s called the Society for the Protection of Elfish Welfare, or S.P.E.W., and it’s unambiguously portrayed as something naïve for us to laugh at.
Our “hero” Harry Potter, for example, regards Hermione’s abolitionism as pushy and annoying, and it’s clear we’re meant to share his views and laugh at her pathetic idealism. As we learn over the course of the book, Hermione is wrong about slavery, as most house elves like being slaves. Dobby, we learn, was just a “weirdo.”
We’re told and shown numerous times that the house elves “like being enslaved,” as Ron Weasley so callously put it. They “wouldn’t know what to do” without slavery. Rowling presents us with nearly all the arguments put forward by slaveowners in the American South and then asks us to agree with perhaps the worst institution in human history.
Hermione Granger Is Black
You may be asking, what could possibly be worse than a white author signalling to her readers that her only abolitionist character is silly, naïve, and wrong? I’ll tell you: a white author framing a black woman’s anti-slavery position as silly, naïve, and wrong! Because, as it happens, Hermione Granger is black!
Unlike Rowling’s big reveal concerning Dumbledore, I’m actually inclined to believe the author on this point (or at least pretend to), if only to prove my own point. Hermione’s skin is actually described as brown at one point in the books:
They were there, both of them, sitting outside Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlour — Ron looking incredibly freckly, Hermione very brown, both waving frantically at him.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
On many other occasions, Hermione is described as “white,” “very white,” and looking “like a panda,” after being hit in the eye. All this suggests quite convincingly that Hermione is, in fact, white. Again, saying your story is diverse doesn’t make it so.
There’s also something that appears to be Rowling’s own drawing of her main characters, and Hermione appears to be the same colour as her friends (whether or not that proves anything). However, if we were to accept that Hermione is undeniably black, then glorifying slavery would become more repugnant, not less.
So yes, I am going to take Rowling at her word here and ignore the possibility that she might be lying like she usually is. Let’s examine why, in making Hermione black, J.K. Rowling has actually managed to make her theme of “benevolent” slavery in Harry Potter even worse.
It’s not just because she describes Hermione as “prettier” when she shrinks her front teeth and later when she straightens her hair, although there’s definitely that. It’s because, as we’ve already discussed, Hermione—a black woman—is wrong about slavery in the context of Rowling’s moral framework. Indeed, Rowling treats her black heroine as an unworldly child.
Harry Potter and the Black Abolitionist
Let’s get right down to it; Hermione’s abolitionism suddenly makes a whole lot more sense. Unlike her white classmates, Hermione comes from a background where she’s had to live with the consequences of white people having enslaved her ancestors. These consequences disproportionately affect black people, to put it mildly. This includes Hermione.
As a result of suffering the effects of institutionalized racism and subconscious bias, Hermione understands what’s being done to the house elves on a deeper level than Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, or J.K. Rowling herself can ever comprehend. And when Hermione quite rightly campaigns against one of humanity’s utmost crimes, the author frames her as annoying and out-of-touch.
Viewed through the lense of a black woman wanting to end the practice of chattel slavery, the case against Harry Potter seems all the more damning. The author, main character, and wise mentor all condescend to a black woman for hating slavery, because “slavery is good, and the black woman who wants to abolish it is just being bossy.”
Harry Potter is a Slaveowner
If you thought that was bad, I’m sorry; it gets worse. In Chamber of Secrets, Harry shows little or no empathy for Dobby until he realizes the house elf belongs to the Malfoys. At that point, even Harry’s successful attempt to free Dobby comes across as having been motivated by spite more than compassion.
Let us not forget the time Harry threatened to strangle Dobby, who was a slave at the time. We shouldn’t forget it, but the characters sure do. Dobby, for example, later appears to serve Harry and other slaveowners like a Confederate’s ideal former slave. Remember that for later.
Harry certainly never shows any desire for systemic change, let alone the abolition of slavery. Despite his muggle upbringing, he only joins S.P.E.W so Hermione won’t nag him. Remember that Harry Potter is supposed to be the hero. And he’s not alone; apart from Hermione, every character either owns slaves or aspires to own slaves.
And yes, that does include our “hero” Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, the Chosen One. In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry inherits a slave named Kreacher from his dead godfather. Let me say that again: Harry Potter is a slaveowner. Harry Potter owns a slave.
Kreacher
Kreacher, it turns out, was partly responsible for Sirius Black’s death, allowing Rowling to frame Harry as justified in how he treats his slave. When Harry begins showing him even the smallest degree of compassion, Kreacher begins to serve him as a loyal slave and even fights for him in the Battle of Hogwarts.
After defeating Voldemort, Harry’s first thought concerning Kreacher doesn’t pertain to whether or not the elf survived the battle (he doesn’t appear again in the books). Instead, good slaveowner that he is, Harry Potter wonders whether Kreacher might bring him a sandwich. So much for your favourite boy wizard being a good person.
Dobby’s Sacrifice
In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Dumbledore’s brother sends Dobby to rescue Harry and his friends from Bellatrix and the Malfoys. Just as they teleport out of Malfoy Manor, Bellatrix throws a knife that mortally wounds Dobby. Dobby dies, and his last words are “Harry Potter”:
“Such a beautiful place, to be with friends. Dobby is happy to be with his friend, Harry Potter.”
Dobby, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
In case you missed that, Dobby is a loyal former slave who sacrifices his life to protect a virtuous slaveowner. That slaveowner goes on to save the world from evil, and the wizards continue to own slaves indefinitely, hidden from the knowledge of the non-slaveowning muggles. Because muggles are moochers who’d just want “magic help” if they knew.
Hermione’s Future
After the defeat of Voldemort, Hermione goes on to work for the Ministry of Magic, having abandoned her past abolitionism. There, she helps to pass laws that encourage wizards to treat their slaves better, at least until she shifts her attention towards helping muggle-born wizards. All is well, supposedly, because most slaveowners are “good slaveowners.”
Hermione’s “arc” therefore involves her coming to accept that slavery is good and just. The solution, according to Rowling, is for everyone to just “treat their slaves well.” “Allowing” house elves to be slaves is portrayed as a kindness, which is all the more disgusting when you consider that the legacy of slavery is still poisoning the real world.
Harry Potter and the Power Fantasy
I think explaining the popularity of the Harry Potter series is relatively simple. Harry embodies a sick, twisted power fantasy, which readers can revel in. He’s a rich, famous superhuman in a world where only he matters, and this struck a chord with people—especially children. Viewed through this lens, it echoes the popularity of books like Atlas Shrugged.
I could talk about how the werewolves and giants are established as the targets of bigotry only for them to join Voldemort in the end, but I don’t think there’s much more I can say. If all this won’t convince you of how ethically, morally, and structurally broken the Harry Potter series is, I don’t know what will.
J.K. Rowling is a transphobic bigot who tweets TERF rhetoric at children. She writes disjointed stories about a heroic slaveowner, whom other characters constantly die to protect—including a former slave. More than that, the text of Harry Potter is blatantly and inherently pro-slavery. No amount of content on Pottermore will change that.
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