To think Dumbledore was a massive cheater?

[Slytherine]

Just finished watching the first Harry Potter film on TV and forgot about the injustice for the Slytherins at the end. I have changed my name in solidarity.

So the Slytherins get the most House Points (presumably fairly as most of the professors at Hogwarts could barely hide their disdain for Slytherin House so wouldn’t have been dishing out points to them for no reason) and are sat there enjoying their win of the House Cup, and celebrating with the room decorated in their House colours, and then former Gryffindor Dumbledore just decides (even though the school year was officially over!!) to throw out an unreasonable amount of points to Harry, Hermione and Ron drawing them level with Slytherin, and then a further 10 points to Neville pushing Gryffindor over the edge and into the win. And then, just to rub salt into the wound, publicly humiliated them by casting a spell to replace all the Slytherin colours with the Gryffindor colours and gives them the award instead and they all celebrate, including him and most of the teachers, and Slytherin has to sit there and just accept it??

AIBU to think WTAF and that was very unfair and he was biased by doing this and it’s no wonder the Slytherins were openly hostile and dismissive of him after that!? I’d be fuming if I were a Slytherin student and if I were a parent of a Slytherin student I’d be marching up to the school myself and having a word with the head.

@Aroundtheworldin80moves

Also, Voldemort prefers to only try to kill him at the end of the school year so Harry can study throughout the year. He cares deeply for Harry's education.

Lord Voldemort, the caring, education-obsessed villain, concerned that the Boy Who Lived should pass his OWLS.

Except History of Magic!

I still think my slice-of-toast-portkey idea would have achieved the same result without all that messing about with Merpeople and whatnot. One minute Harry’s eating his breakfast, then he’s gone. No one would be any the wiser. Voldemort tops him, hides him in a wheelie bin or something, then tells everyone when he does decide to reveal himself.
I don’t know why I’m not as rich as J.K. 😆

The scariest Umbridge is Stephen Fry reading her in the audio book. I always listen to HP at night (on half speed) to help me get to sleep and I often have to skip bits of OOTP because she is just too frightening as read by him.

Conversely I am currently listening to Chamber of Secrets and his reading of Lockhart makes me la

Oops. Lockhart makes me laugh too much to be able to sleep.

@Practicebeingpatient

The scariest Umbridge is Stephen Fry reading her in the audio book. I always listen to HP at night (on half speed) to help me get to sleep and I often have to skip bits of OOTP because she is just too frightening as read by him.

Conversely I am currently listening to Chamber of Secrets and his reading of Lockhart makes me la

I don’t know how Stephen Fry’s reading of the audiobooks relates to when the films were made? I assume his reading of Hagrid is based on Robbie Coltrane’s performance, accent etc, and his Lockhart is very Kenneth Branagh (and very funny, I agree). He’s bad at women’s voices, I think — his female characters nearly all sound much the same.

(When I used to read HP aloud to DS, I dreaded any time people had conversations with Hagrid — I found the way JKR wrote his speech a real drag to read.)

I think the early Fry narrations preceded the films but not sure about the later ones

He definitely recorded the first audiobook before the second book was even out, so definitely before the films.
He was on the graham Norton show last week and talked about how after he’d finished doing the first one (or maybe at some point during the recording of it) he met JK and told her how good he thought the book was etc, and she said “well, actually, I’ve written a second one” and he said “oh well good for you!”
(He told this story with embarrassment at his slightly patronising “good for you” comment)

I do like Stephen Fry’s version of Tonks with the Jane Horrocks accent. I also found his version of Dobbie much more endearing than the version I had in my head.

@IVflytrap

It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities - Dumbledore in The Chamber of Secrets

I think the importance of personal choice is a huge theme throughout the books and would explain why a lot of the characters ended up in a certain house over a more obvious one.

I wish the importance of choice had been reflected better in the last books, with more made of some Slytherin students choosing to stay and fight at Hogwarts, for example, and perhaps at the end with the house system either being abolished, or changed so that students choose outright which house they want to be in, without the Sorting Hat's involvement.

Yes I really agree re the choice point and it’s why I disagree with the idea of Dumbledore as a villain. The books show Harry exercising “free will” in a series of situations, guided but not compelled by Dumbledore, leading up to his choice to die in the forest - and, just like Aslan in an almost identical situation, he can’t be confident of success because that would make his sacrifice empty. The series is very thematically consistent.

Hermione literally tells us in the first book why a witch who can do NEWT-level magic before she’s even sat her OWLs is in Gryffindor even though her Ravenclaw peers think she belongs with them; the sorting hat considered putting her in Ravenclaw; & variations on the “brightest witch of her age” theme litter the series.

“Hermione’s lip trembled and she suddenly dashed at Harry and threw her arms around him.
‘Hermione!’
‘Harry – you’re a great wizard, you know.’
‘I’m not as good as you,’ said Harry, very embarrassed, as she let go of him.
‘Me!’ said Hermione. ‘Books! And cleverness! There are more important things – friendship and bravery and – oh Harry – be careful!’”

She is exceptionally clever and a truly gifted witch - but she doesn’t agree that “Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure.” so she doesn’t belong in Ravenclaw. (Also, there is a certain bravery simply in choosing to join Gryffindor where she risked being - & indeed initially was - misunderstood & miserable.)

Harry's only a teenage boy, and he hero worships Dumbledore. I'd argue that his free choice is largely more of an illusion than Harry actually calling the shots. There's a reason why we watch relationships between children and adults so closely for safeguarding purposes - children often think they are making their own opinion up, but are being manipulated by people older and more experienced than them.

I have a lot of respect for Professor McGonagall though, who I think always actually had the best interests of all the students at heart, not just Harry. She was fiercely protective of her Gryffindors, but I think she would have died protecting any student, TBH. Out of all the teachers, she's my absolute favourite.

I don't think she fully understood the complex roles that Dumbledore and Snape played in the war, but I think that's because she was too good to. Although she spied herself as an animagus and she was a skilled duellist, I think she was fundamentally too wholesome to understand how someone could be a double agent as it's not something she could have personally done.

Although I think Snape finished up on the right side for the right reasons, I won't deny that he made some horrible, questionable decisions to get to that point, and sometimes was doing the right thing for less honourable reasons. Professor McGonagall I think was always doing the right thing just because it was right.

I still think one of the greatest moments in the films that wasn't in the books is Professor McGonagall calling on the stone suits of armour to fight. It shows how clever and powerful she is, whist revealing a bit of personality there - she's one of the most fundamentally good characters, but she's also only human.

Does anyone else think that alot of the Voldemort stuff wouldn't have happened (or at least Voldemorts takeover in the last book wouldn't have been so swift and all-emcompassing) if

A) young wizards were actually taught critical thinking, questioning of those in power and not to blindly believe what's written in the Daily Prophet

B) There was an effective police force / justice system where not every crime involved your soul being slowly sucked out of you and dangerous prisoners were not guarded by creatures who who would release them and go over to the dark side en masse when given the chance

C) Defeating the dark wizards did not rely entirely on a child and an old man to whom alot of people were almost unquestioningly devoted (see A above). Seriously, no other leadership figures or anyone mounting a serious, realistic resistance.

@LesterKnopf

Does anyone else think that alot of the Voldemort stuff wouldn't have happened (or at least Voldemorts takeover in the last book wouldn't have been so swift and all-emcompassing) if

A) young wizards were actually taught critical thinking, questioning of those in power and not to blindly believe what's written in the Daily Prophet

B) There was an effective police force / justice system where not every crime involved your soul being slowly sucked out of you and dangerous prisoners were not guarded by creatures who who would release them and go over to the dark side en masse when given the chance

C) Defeating the dark wizards did not rely entirely on a child and an old man to whom alot of people were almost unquestioningly devoted (see A above). Seriously, no other leadership figures or anyone mounting a serious, realistic resistance.

In fairness though, that's pretty realistic in terms of how the world really works (magic aside).

E.g. Death sentence just causes more harm to society and is not even a deterrent yet multiple countries continue it. The world is full of prisons where the officers perpetrate monstrous acts against the prisoners for a kick and do so with impunity / quite happily align themselves with the 'criminal side' given the chance.

It's pretty realistic in terms of how the real world is tbh. We're busy making all the same dumb mistakes, so why wouldn't they? Surely that's the whole point.

I just find it curious that we pick apart a story for dysfunction that's actually entirely representative of our own everyday real life dysfunction.

@theworldsastage Is there not a scene in the last film where McGonagall tells the status to go out and do their duty to protect Hogwarts?

Ignore me! Sorry, I read that the other way around!

It is, fiction. It doesn't matter. Get over it...

@Mirw

It’s a discussion forum you bellend.

If it doesn’t appeal, go and find a discussion on something you find useful or interesting. Might I suggest one on how not to be a petty irrelevant twat or, better still, improving literacy? I notice your sentence construction is quite poor and lacks the correct grammar, so that might be a good one for you.

@Mirw, do you not place any value upon literature and the discussion of literature?

It really is a quite important aspect of society.

[quote WheelieBinPrincess]@Mirw

It’s a discussion forum you bellend.

If it doesn’t appeal, go and find a discussion on something you find useful or interesting. Might I suggest one on how not to be a petty irrelevant twat or, better still, improving literacy? I notice your sentence construction is quite poor and lacks the correct grammar, so that might be a good one for you.[/quote]
This

@Mirw

It is, fiction. It doesn't matter. Get over it...

It is an internet discussion forum. It doesn't matter. Get over it...

@Mirw

It is, fiction. It doesn't matter. Get over it...

😆🤣 So you've never discussed a book with anyone, ever?

If you haven't, I feel genuinely sorry for you!

@Mirw

It is, fiction. It doesn't matter. Get over it...

And there goes every literature degree everyone’s ever taken….