Word Count: 3400

Reading Time: 25 Minutes

In Part 1, we explored the strengths of the first Harry Potter novel as a children’s book. But there are problems both within and without the series that also need to be addressed.

The Tragedy of JK Rowling

It’s impossible to talk about Harry Potter without acknowledging the writer J.K. Rowling and her radicalization. She casts an incredibly long shadow over the series that chills the room whenever discussion starts. Many people will be aware of Rowling’s post-Harry Potter allegiance to “Trans-Exclusive Radical Feminists,” a group of political opportunists who promote regressive gender roles and beauty standards under the guise of “protecting women” from trans people, cis men, the concept of freedom of choice, et cetera. They saw all the same feminist stereotypes I did growing up but… identified with them, I guess.

But Rowling’s problems began long before that.

A surprising amount of valid criticism toward Harry Potter can be summarized as “the author puts a lot of her hang-ups into the series.” Rowling was happy to insist people could read Hermione as a black girl while herself openly mocking Hermione’s attempts to do anything about slavery in the magical world. Characters have names like “Cho Chang” and “Kingsley Shacklebolt” and “Seamus Finnigan”—first draft material from someone who has never opened a history book. She sneers at criticism of her favorite character Professor Snape, a man who physically and verbally abuses children, and who only worked with the heroes for selfish reasons.

Then she also sucks up all the air in the room with demands to be idolized. YouTuber Verilybitchie deconstructs Rowling’s corporate story in a video discussing how much of a manufactured success Harry Potter has always been. Rowling wants to be seen as inspirational, so she pretends to be a better writer than she is, pretends to have faced more struggle than she did, and speaks over anyone who knows more than her. Her Twitter, for as long as it remains up, feels like the ravings of a cornered animal on hallucinogens. One could be forgiven for assuming she’s a narcissist based on how she responds to criticism, questions, and whatever facts don’t agree with her.

There but for the grace of God go I, they say, but I call this the tragedy of J.K. Rowling because a tragedy is (in a literary sense) a disaster that was completely avoidable but entirely inevitable. Rowling had every opportunity to change where her path led, but for her to do so, she would have needed to be a different person. Her childish worldview held her back once fans started growing up; I don’t think anybody would have even noticed if she’d just stuck to writing children's books.

Some Things in This Book are Just Bad

Narrative Cruelty

In the first chapter from Harry’s perspective, he mocks the idea of his cousin Dudley wanting a racing bike because of how fat he is, describing him as a “pig in a wig” and directly comparing him to a gorilla. But Dudley has all the power in these scenes. Rowling didn’t have to make him fat, but there’s nothing unrealistic or unrelatable about a ten-year-old boy making fun of a bully as a coping mechanism. It would have been nice if someone explained to him that it’s wrong to do, but it's undersandable that he did it. The real problem is that Dudley exists as a thematic character, a symbol that represents the book’s condemnation of both abusive parenting and consumerism. Him being fat while Harry is malnourished isn’t an innocuous coincidence.

Other characters are mocked for being fat or stupid too. Malfoy’s friends Crabbe and Goyle are “thickset and look extremely mean,” not even worthy of two separate descriptions, and they express that malice in one event by trying to steal food from Harry and Ron because they’re still hungry after eating. Goyle in particular is singled out as “almost as stupid as he was mean” late in the story. This doesn’t have the weak thematic justification that Dudley did, and they are non-agents in the story who are only there to be made fun of. Molly Weasley, who we the audience are supposed to like, is described as “plump”—a neutral term bordering on positive—but Professor Sprout is mentioned four times total and described as “dumpy,” decidedly not a kind word to call someone.

The discomfort continues. Everyone has opinions about the goblins in Harry Potter, but the historical context of that is well beyond the scope of this article and my personal knowledge. The depictions of human characters is upsetting enough. Professor Snape has “greasy black hair, a hooked nose, and sallow skin.” We could dismiss this as Harry’s own shallow thoughts except for lines that make it clear he and the narrator are separate entities: “Harry thought Flint looked as if he had some troll blood in him.”

Body-shaming is a huge motif throughout the book, but it usually affects villainous characters. The most uncomfortable thing for me to read was the way Hagrid acted when he was trying to take care of a baby dragon that thrashed around like a wild animal. “Bless him, look, he knows his mommy!” Hagrid says as soon as the newly-hatched Norbert bites at him. Using baby talk on an animal is normal, but Hagrid seems completely blind to the reality of the situation, treating it like a “fluffy little bunny rabbit” even as it poisons Ron and sends him to the hospital wing. For one chapter, Hagrid is strangely and completely infantilized, losing any sense of adult reasoning and forcing three eleven-year-old children to not only plan but actually smuggle a dragon out of Hogwarts for him. It doesn’t make Hagrid look well-rounded, just incompetent in a way that’s hard to sit through.

The characters are also pretty mean in a way that can usually be contextualized as schadenfreude. During detention in the Forbidden Forest, Harry shows concern for Neville’s safety but explicitly does not care if Malfoy is physically harmed; Ron hopes that Snape’s injured leg hurts a lot. These are directed at people who are pretty awful—Snape’s abuse is even ignored by other authority figures in the school—and never in real danger. But then we get lines like “[Dudley had] thrown his tortoise through the greenhouse roof” and “it was the dearest ambition of many [students] to give [Filch’s cat] a good kick.” Sudden animal abuse may come across as funny if you’re seven, but the thought that an adult put these moments into a book thinking they were jokes creates a cold pit in my stomach.

Hermione Doesn’t Deserve This Treatment

Hermione doesn’t start as Harry’s friend the way Ron does. I like this because it means the status quo changes more over the course of the story, but in practice, she’s treated very poorly by both other characters and the narrative as a whole. While Neville is often the butt of the joke, Hermione is the subject of direct ire from Harry and Ron before and after they become friends.

Her introduction on the train to Hogwarts describes Hermione as having “a bossy sort of voice,” and she’s established as coming from a non-magical family but obsessed with learning everything she can about the magical world. Functionally, Hermione’s role in the series is as a walking encyclopedia. She outperforms other students in class but is a stickler for the rules and pushes others to take their lessons seriously in a way that offends Ron’s ego. His mockery ends up driving her to crying in the girl’s bathroom during Halloween, forcing Harry and Ron to save her and win her friendship, finally allowing her into the central plot.

But both Harry and Ron are so unreasonably cruel toward Hermione that it makes them less likable. Telling her that it’s none of her business when she warns them against wandering at night is normal childlike behavior, but it escalates from there. They are overjoyed that “such a bossy know-it-all” gives them the silent treatment when she’s mad, and it feels bad to read Ron say she “must’ve noticed she’s got no friends” no matter how uncomfortable he supposedly looks while doing it. If Malfoy said these things, the audience would be expected to find it reprehensible, but Ron and Harry’s actions are implicitly justified because they're the heroes.

Harry and Ron do save Hermione, recognizing that it’s their fault she’s even in danger, but they hardly turn over a new leaf. They’re not grateful that she lies about what happened to keep them out of trouble. The first thing Harry notes about his new friendship with her is that she helps him do his homework—not helping him study to do better in class, just getting through his homework in addition to his own. They aren’t friends in the way Harry and Ron are friends.

Lying about the troll doesn’t even make sense in context. Hermione claims she sought out the troll and had to be rescued, but the truth is innocuous: They knew she hadn’t heard about the danger and came to warn her. The very next chapter tells us that she becomes “more relaxed about breaking rules” and “much nicer for it.” It makes sense that she would become more like them as they become better friends, but why is it a one-way street? Why can’t Harry and Ron see the value in taking studying more seriously? Later, she “wheedles” Harry to eat before a Quidditch match. Between having to mommy the two of them over food and homework, then deferring to them when it comes to breaking rules, Hermione is more of an accessory to the male leads than their equal.

August 31, 2024: I can't believe it took nearly twenty full years for me to maybe realize why Hermione lied about going after the troll. I believe the intention is that she chooses not to tell McGonagall that the two boys upset her enough to not attend dinner, which may have gotten them into trouble, and instead lied and made herself look like a troublemaker as a symbolic gesture to show the boys that she is on their side. The message is "I am like you; we can be friends." It still feels unnecesssary, especially as Ron and Harry don't acknowledge or appreciate the action. An interesting idea, poorly executed.

We Need to Talk About the Word “Muggle”

Ordinary people don’t know that magic exists in the world of Harry Potter. This is important for the core “it could happen to you” fantasy that appeals to children. But it also prompts the questions of why. Magic can seemingly do anything, so why isn’t it everywhere? Hagrid’s response is that everybody would want magical solutions to their problems, and wizards are best left alone.

This is a terrible answer. It’s boring and unsatisfying in a way that’s completely at odds with the inventiveness of much of the rest of the book. There are many reasons witches and wizards wouldn’t want people to know they exist, and Rowling doesn’t have to fully explore them to say something meaningful about difficult moral questions. Instead, the narrative doubles down on separating its wizards from the rest of us.

Harry Potter fans didn’t so much embrace the word “muggle” as they fused with it on a molecular level. For decades both on- and off-line, it was common to see fans of the series using the word as both a technical term to describe non-magical characters in the story as well as real-life people they found offensively bland or narrow-minded. Anybody with their Hogwarts house in their dating profile was liable to dismiss a “muggle like you” from whatever high horse they rode in on.

“I’d like ter see a great Muggle like you stop him,” he said.

“A what?” said Harry, interested.

“A Muggle,” said Hagrid, “it’s what we call nonmagic folk like them. An’ it’s your bad luck you grew up in a family o’ the biggest Muggles I ever laid eyes on.”

The very first time the word is uttered in the novel, it’s in the form of an insult. Hagrid doesn’t say “I’d like to see you stop him without magic.” Calling them “the biggest muggles” implies something inherently wrong with being one in a way that can be understood if not measured. And yet it’s the only word we ever see used to describe non-magical people in this setting. The last thing I want to do is sit here and compare fictional slurs to real-world bigotry. We don’t have the time, nor I the expertise, to compare and contrast the two in order to come to some deeper truth about the human experience. Put simply: having a term for people who are “less special” than yourself reinforces the idea that people can and should be looked down on.

When Harry’s uncle Vernon insults Dumbledore, a man Hagrid looks up to, Hagrid casts a spell on Dudley in an attempt to turn him into a pig but only ends up giving him a curly pig’s tail. Hagrid doesn’t reverse this; it has to be removed by a doctor in a later chapter. He punishes a child because another man said something upsetting, and he’s more concerned with getting in trouble for using magic when he’s not supposed to than the impact his actions actually had. Hagrid is able to use magic on a child with no moral qualms because Dudley is a muggle and therefore “less than” Hagrid.

This might go over the head of a small child, but any adult should be able to see the problem. If Hagrid had cast the spell on Vernon instead, it would still be bad, but children are exceptionally vulnerable even if they are bullies, and Hagrid had no right to inflict any kind of physical punishment on Dudley regardless of his or his father’s actions. If he had gotten into trouble for it, it would be a character flaw, but the narrative treats cruelty toward muggles with the same dismissive attitude it does cruelty towards animals. Yet people are so caught up in the fantasy of being a wizard that they’re okay with magic being used punitively on people who have no way to fight back even though, in the real world, that describes themselves.

Aging Out of Hogwarts

Harry Potter is so famous that it obliterated any public awareness of similar stories. In an interview for The Guardian in 2004, speculative fiction writer Ursula K Le Guin famously said:

When so many adult critics were carrying on about the “incredible originality” of the first Harry Potter book, I read it to find out what the fuss was about, and remained somewhat puzzled; it seemed like a kid’s fantasy crossed with a “school novel”, good fare for its age group, but stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited.

One of Le Guin’s most famous works is A Wizard of Earthsea, wherein a poor boy is discovered to have magical ability and whisked away to a wizard school to meet both rivals and friends before going on a fantastic adventure. Shortly before the book was published, a teenage Jill Murphy had already started writing what would become the first in a series of eight children’s books titled The Worst Witch about a clumsy girl attending a school for magic. The same premise would be revived by Yoh Yoshinari for his 2013 short film Little Witch Academia, which spawned its own franchise about a clumsy young witch trying to bring magic back into the world. The series even tips its hat to Harry Potter with the inclusion of a “sorcerer’s stone.”

I can’t imagine how many other stories use magical schools as a setting. Before Harry Potter, it was harder to find examples where attending school was the primary backdrop, but they’ve become increasingly common in its wake. The vast majority of these stories have one insurmountable advantage over Harry Potter, though: They know their demographic and stick with it.

Harry Potter was intended to grow with its audience, and while it was financially successful as a result of growing darker, more self-referencial, and increasingly complicated, I question the long-term sustainability. Now that the series is complete, older children will be put off by the childish early installments while young children aren’t going to be mature enough to fully engage with the later books. Rowling succeeded in raising the stakes as characters grew, but her writing style isn’t well-suited for adult fiction if reviews and sales of her more recent novels are to be believed. Moreover, the longer Harry Potter went on and tried to fill in the implications of its worldbuilding with hard facts, it became more and more noticeable how none of the Wizarding World made sense outside of the fairytale atmosphere of the first few novels.

Modern criticism of Harry Potter often treats it as though it were trying to be a world as verisimilitudinous as that in Game of Thrones or The Lord of the Rings. Characters, lore, and plot points are judged through the lens of an adult engaging with a piece of media that carries all the weight of a historical textbook. It’s a view that I believe Warner Brothers has encouraged and responded to in their attempts to make increasingly “realistic” movies and “immersive” Harry Potter experiences.

People who engaged with the series from primary school all the way to university were always going to outgrow it in one form or another, but the vitriolic backlash and counter-backlash is… unreasonable. Just as the legitimate problems in Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight franchise opened the door for bad-faith critics to openly preach misogyny, the flaws in Harry Potter and its writer became a motte-and-bailey for whatever negative stereotype about millennials or politics that people wanted to complain about, or even worse an entirely unproductive two-minute hate about neoliberalism and conservatives. Nowadays, some of the most ardent defenders of the franchise aren’t fans but transphobic political pundits who see its profitability as a “win” against whatever liberal agenda they’re mocking that day. Is this the legacy Dumbledore foresaw for the boy who lived?

Inna Final Analysis

As I read this book again, I found there were a lot more things I liked than I didn’t, and then over time that feeling inverted. I had to write the article backwards, starting with the stuff I could find no redeemable qualities for and ending with praise. Otherwise every positive thing I described would have needed three qualifiers and an asterisk. As it is, there were still a lot of hairs to split in places, particularly concerning anything to do with the Dursleys.

I don’t want to shrug off the positives and decide that Rowling is just a hack who accidentally had good ideas and executed them well. She has (or did have, once upon a time) some decent instincts as a writer, more so than a lot of novice novelists. As a children’s book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone has more good qualities than bad, but the negatives weigh it down so much that finishing the novel was a chore. I agree with Le Guin when she says it was “good fare for its age group,” but I absolutely get what she meant by mean-spirited.

Success was the worst thing to happen to Harry Potter. If it had been allowed to peter out, we would have gotten maybe half a dozen pretty good children’s books that don’t hold up. Instead we have a series that insists it needs to be treated with an adult level of respect and analysis. Nobody was asking for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and nobody was particularly happy with it either.

A September 2023 article from The Wrap revealed that the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, David Zaslav, believed that several of the company’s brands were being “underused,” including The Lord of the Rings, Superman, and Harry Potter. This came five months after HBO announced a plan to spend ten years developing a seven-season live action Harry Potter series for their streaming service. A Forbes article from earlier this year reports that J.K. Rowling is “thrilled” to be involved.

To be perfectly honest, I think a series is a step in the right direction. One of the biggest complaints aimed at the movies specifically is that at some point they cut so many little details that the story becomes impossible to follow if you haven’t committed the books to memory. But 2026 is too soon in my opinion. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore came out just two years ago and was exhausting. A nostalgic reboot will bring in views (I might even be curious enough to check it out briefly), but the series needs time to rest. The best thing for Harry Potter artistically is for it to be put to bed for a decade or two while the literary world develops a bit more, then gently pried from the hands of its possessive writers and given a hard reboot with new, touched-up worldbuilding that specifically appeals to kids but can be enjoyed by adults. Just like A Series of Unfortunate Events or She-Ra and the Princesses of Power got.

It should also be animated, but Hollywood are cowards.

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