Rereading Harry Potter as an adult and finding it difficult

[Dasisr]

Obsessed with Harry Potter as a teenager but finding it a difficult read as an adult. How badly he is treated by the Dursleys. How deprived of love he was and in later books how he was kept away from his friends/family. All the death of loved ones he had to witness. Honestly finding it tough to get through. AIBU or anyone else the same?

There are more evil thin people overall. The vast majority of the Death Eaters( Bellatrix, werewolf dude, the Malfoys etc) for example. Even James and Sirius are quite big arseholes and Remus follows along. Tom Riddle of course. The various ministers and minister workers.Barty Crouch JR. That's just off the top of my head.

plus there was the problem of who exactly the implied reader was -- a child? A young adult? Someone who had grown up along with the series? It's mirrored in the twee Disneyish Chris Columbus early films, and the much darker tone that Alfonso Cuarón introduced.

This is a valid point, but judging by the unusually large age range of people who have read HP (for themselves rather than, or as well as, to their children), it doesn't seem to have been a problem. My dc started reafing them about age 7, which was a bit early really, and I had to hold them back from moving onto the later ones too quickly. They re-read them multiple times into their early teens.

I still enjoy re-reading the early ones just as much as the later ones. It feels kind of vicariously nostalgic - as if you're seeing little Harry through older Harry's eyes. I was an adult when the first book was released, so I didn't grow up with them.

A lot of great fanfics are 'fix its' where Harry (1) is taken in by a loving family - Remus/Sirius/Weasleys/Mrs Figg/Snape or (2) where Petunia LTB and looks after Harry properly or (3) where the Dursley family is prosecuted for abuse and neglect.

So yes, op, a lot of people feel the same and have rewritten the story for a happier outcome.

Mind you, back when I was more attuned to fandoms, those stories were substantially outweighed by the numbers of angst-ridden ones where Harry and Draco were tormented lovers, or Lupin and Sirius Black like getting it together in a mildly S and M way the dungeons, or where Snape and Hermione are forced to get married in a dystopian take on the universe when the Ministry starts a pureblood eugenics programme.

There was a BNF (who later turned to writing commercial YA under her real name) with a harrowing fic where Draco is in Azkaban and Harry has to race against time to prevent him getting the Dementor's Kiss, but fails and then brings post-Kiss zombie Draco home to live with him.

Then again, there is David Cameron/Ed Miliband slash out there. People are dark.

@OriginalBliss was that Cassandra Clare? Or another BNF I haven't heard of?!

I know what you mean OP it is amazing how we see things so differently once we get older i have this with songs books and movies i have re watched in my twenties and thought oh my goodness it wasn't the fairy-tale my mind made it to be.

Me too. I am at hogwarts universal studios as we speak and there are a lot of hard-core fans here!

I haven't read the books for some years but saw the films again recently and it struck me afresh what a great imagination JKR has, and what a wonderful message runs through the series about loyalty, the power of love and good overcoming evil. There is a powerful scene in one of the later films where the students stand shoulder to shoulder, wands raised at the sky, united in their determination to defeat a common enemy despite tremendous risk.
Harry saving his enemy Draco's life, Snape's mixed feelings for Harry - he clearly loathed him because he looks like his father but he protects him too because he loved his mother, the development of Neville from a bumbling schoolboy to a hero...characters are complex, and not black or white.
I don't think they're badly written but I do think the later books needed a darned good editing.
Oh and Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson were terrible actors, especially in the first few films!