I can't count how many times I've read it...
But Harry Potter still gets me thinking about something new and different every single time.
JK is an undisputed master of the long con. I re-read American Gods recently with Mark Reads and it was ridiculous fun to watch Mark completely miss every single clue to the novel's endgame dropped along the way by Neil Gaiman (and there is one about every other paragraph) until the very last chapter, when it all comes together. JKR is the same, but the sheer scale of the misdirection, clue-dropping and blink-and-you-miss-it world-building in HP absolutely boggles the mind. In each re-read, depending on where my own mind and life are at any given moment, different events, characters and threads of foreshadowing catch my attention, and by allowing my mind to sidle towards those thoughts in a slightly sideways and unfocused way, new ideas pop out at me like the hidden images in those white noise optical illusions. I don't think I could ever get tired of re-reading HP.
So, a few chapters into PoA again for the nth time, two things have leapt out suddenly:
First, a thing that always bothered me a little bit but not enough to think intently about it: that Harry seems to remember exactly what happened the night his parents died, despite being only one year old at the time, whenever the "worst experience of his life" is dredged up by a dementor. In The Wind in the Door by Madeline L'Engle she has a character posit that everything witnessed by a human being is stored in photographic detail in the mind, but that a human's ability to access that storage is limited and dodgy. That was fine and worked really well in the context of the L'Engle book, but even then the main character was only trying to remember something she'd overheard when she was five or six, I think, which is old enough to be forming long-term memories anyway. I never quite bought that Harry could be forced to "remember" the night of Oct. 31, 1981, in complete, accurate detail, including what James said, even though James was downstairs from Harry's nursery.
Suddenly, on this reading of Harry's first encounter with a dementor, the whole thing just inversed in my head, an optical illusion that I found the right angle to focus on which abruptly popped inside out. And it makes perfect sense and is about a million times creepier and oh god why. If a dementor makes Harry relive the worst experience of his life, then even though watching his parents die is plenty bad enough, wouldn't the experience of a bit of Voldemort's soul attaching itself to his own while Voldemort simultaneously experiences being hit by a rebounding Killing Curse be a thousand times worse? In DH, at Bathilda's, Harry finally experiences the complete "vision" of Voldemort's memory of that night, from Voldemort's point of view. What if this is the only way he's EVER been experiencing a "memory" of that night? What if it's never really been his own memory? What if when a dementor gets too close to him, it causes him to relive, not the simple experience of watching his parents die, but the experience of becoming a Horcrux and being imbued at one year old with the adult memory of killing his parents contained within Voldemort's soul? That is some Frank Herbert pre-born Abomination shit right there, and not only do I find it more likely than a one-year-old retaining a photographic memory of anything, I also find it more Fridge Horrifying and more likely to cause Harry to basically have seizures and pass out, which is what he frequently does. D:
Like, I'm sure other people have come to this conclusion long ago, but this is the first time it's clicked for me and aaaarrrrrgggghhhhhhh.
Now, second: werewolves. I don't know when JK decided that she was going to write werewolves as a metaphor for the marginalized minority of your choice (in her mind, she's said, the disabled or chronically infirm; in lots of fans' minds, GLBTQI). Maybe she knew from the start, or maybe she didn't decide that she was going to write them like that until she started on book 3 and developing the character of Remus Lupin. The fact that Remus is my favorite always makes me pay a good deal of attention to his arc and any discussion of werewolves, but this time I went into a re-read with a lot of new awareness of the role of privilege in the oppression of marginalized groups, courtesy of the extraordinarily patient, tolerant and articulate conversations that go on over at the Mark Does Stuff blogs. This time I wanted to pay more attention to the subtle detail that JKR built into her world regarding Fantastic Racism, pureblood privilege and those oppressed by it.
The reason I wonder about when she decided to write werewolves the way she does later is because of several offhand comments in books 1 & 2. First, when Malfoy realizes in PS/SS that they are going into the Forbidden Forest for their detention, he seems legitimately frightened at the idea, and the first thing he says is "We can't go in there at night - there's all sorts of things in there - werewolves, I heard." The moon is described as "bright" but whether it's full or not isn't specified; no one who brings up the possibility of werewolf attack in books 1 & 2 ever questions the phase of the moon at the time, which always bothered me, because Rowling's werewolves are consistently full-moon-only werewolves, one night a month. I could disregard this as Malfoy being unobservant. However, on the next page Harry asks Hagrid if a werewolf could be killing unicorns, and Hagrid replies only that "[they're] not fast enough," which does not address the factual (im)possibility of a transformed werewolf being present in the forest. Then he says he found another unicorn dead the previous week, which should utterly exclude the possibility of werewolf attack. I can't attribute this to Hagrid being unobservant, because he's the groundskeeper and you would think that he notices the sky, being under it nearly all the time. Also, being the expert on monstrous magical creatures that he is, you'd think he would be well aware of when werewolves might be around and wouldn't be any more bothered by them or consider them any more dangerous than he does Blast-Ended Skrewts.
Now, in CoS, when Ron is confronted with the exact same scenario - going into the Forbidden Forest at night - his reaction is identical to Malfoy's: "Er - aren't there - aren't there supposed to be werewolves in the forest?" This surfaces in his mind above even the fact that they are going into the forest to track spiders, of which he is mortally afraid (though he doesn't know about the acromantulas yet, or I'm sure they would take fear precedence). Again the grounds are only described as moonlit, which could mean any reasonably bright phase of the moon. Ron is also pretty unobservant, but at this point werewolves have been brought up three times in relation to the dangers of the Forest, each time with no regard to easily observable facts. To me this implies (in only three sentences! JK is gooood) that Draco and Ron, both purebloods, were both raised with a lot of exposure to stories, threats or general misinformation about werewolves that painted them as pure bogeymen, completely unrelated to the real political and social situation of human beings who happened to have lycanthropy. And of course this is exactly what JKR brings up in PoA and onward in a much more straightforward way (e.g. Ron's reaction to the reveal that Remus is a werewolf is instant, intense revulsion). It's just that this is my first time to really notice how this prejudice was seeded (by intent? IDK) through the first two books, which at first blush seem too childish to have much to do with the later "magic is might" pureblood Nazis plot.
The last offhand statement about werewolves in CoS comes from Tom Riddle: "On the one hand, [me]... on the other hand, big, blundering Hagrid, in trouble every other week, trying to raise werewolf cubs under his bed..." Now, Riddle/Voldemort would absolutely throw out blatant lies about both Hagrid, for whom he has utter contempt, and about werewolves, which offend his ideal of pureblood supremacy. It is of course telling about how badly werewolves are oppressed and marginalized by mainstream wizarding society that a lot of them would rather side with the man who will at least provide for them as long as there's a fight to be fought, even though the same man believes that they are scum with no place in his ultimate pureblood order. The casual way that Riddle tosses out "werewolf cubs" implies a creature that is pure animal as well as pure monster, a creature that breeds to create more of itself (rather than being primarily forced on unwilling victims via violent physical contact). Malfoy and Ron may not know any better, but they should; Riddle knows better and doesn't care, because he actively wants to denigrate this group in preparation for eventually wiping them out. It makes me think of the ridiculously unbelievable Nazi lies spread about Jews, that they drank blood and ate babies, etc etc. Which it's supposed to, of course.
Things that aren't shown in the books, but that I would absolutely love to be a fly on the wall for: Molly and Arthur's initial reactions to Remus and Sirius. First, to the news, probably received by owl, that one of their children's teachers is a werewolf. The question is, if they and Remus were in the Order at the same time during the first war, were they aware that Remus was a werewolf back then? If not, how would they react to such a reveal about someone they've known for a long time? If they did know at the time, how would they react to his being outed publicly? Also, reforming the Order: are members learning about Remus for the first time? Who knew already? How much prejudice has been internalized even by Order members who fight for the "right" side, the side of equality and tolerance? Clearly even Molly and Arthur either caused or didn't prevent their children from internalizing the common wizarding perception of werewolves as dangerous, untrustworthy bogeymen. In some ways Molly has displayed more of a lingering resistance to assimilating with "acceptable target" groups than Arthur has, but Arthur's fascination with Muggles can get pretty over the top, to the point of alienating the Muggles he's trying to prevent other wizards from harming. And then of course I would just love to see the stretch of time between the end of GoF (when Sirius turns back into a man in the hospital wing, and Molly points and shrieks "Sirius Black!" and everyone else is like, LOL Molly, calm down, it's fine) and the beginning of OotP, when Arthur is already completely blase about Sirius being there and Molly and Sirius have a really fascinating tension between them that has clearly developed from a much more complex place than just "he used to be in prison, I don't like him" on Molly's part.
So... there isn't really a point to all of this besides observation and appreciation. I just love it when these things pop out at me and I like to share it when they do. It could just be that JKR was using the first name of a mythical creature to pop into her head when writing the dialogue for Malfoy, Ron, Hagrid and Riddle, or it could be that she knew she was going to use werewolves as a complex example of an abstract concept later on and she wanted to seed a little bit of casual prejudice against them very early. Either way, it worked out brilliantly: only kids from pureblood families (who have pureblood privilege whether they know it and act on it - Malfoy - or not - Ron) react in a casually ignorant, totally uninformed way to a commonly demonized minority, while ostracized but humble Hagrid has probably internalized many of the oppressive things privileged wizards believe about "half-breeds," and ostracized but spiteful Riddle has recognized the oppressive language about half-breeds and embraced it because it comes attached to privilege, which he equates to power, which he values above all else because he never had any to begin with.
I hope any of that made sense and/or was vaguely interesting. And now it's time to get some sleep.... *zzzzz*
JK is an undisputed master of the long con. I re-read American Gods recently with Mark Reads and it was ridiculous fun to watch Mark completely miss every single clue to the novel's endgame dropped along the way by Neil Gaiman (and there is one about every other paragraph) until the very last chapter, when it all comes together. JKR is the same, but the sheer scale of the misdirection, clue-dropping and blink-and-you-miss-it world-building in HP absolutely boggles the mind. In each re-read, depending on where my own mind and life are at any given moment, different events, characters and threads of foreshadowing catch my attention, and by allowing my mind to sidle towards those thoughts in a slightly sideways and unfocused way, new ideas pop out at me like the hidden images in those white noise optical illusions. I don't think I could ever get tired of re-reading HP.
So, a few chapters into PoA again for the nth time, two things have leapt out suddenly:
First, a thing that always bothered me a little bit but not enough to think intently about it: that Harry seems to remember exactly what happened the night his parents died, despite being only one year old at the time, whenever the "worst experience of his life" is dredged up by a dementor. In The Wind in the Door by Madeline L'Engle she has a character posit that everything witnessed by a human being is stored in photographic detail in the mind, but that a human's ability to access that storage is limited and dodgy. That was fine and worked really well in the context of the L'Engle book, but even then the main character was only trying to remember something she'd overheard when she was five or six, I think, which is old enough to be forming long-term memories anyway. I never quite bought that Harry could be forced to "remember" the night of Oct. 31, 1981, in complete, accurate detail, including what James said, even though James was downstairs from Harry's nursery.
Suddenly, on this reading of Harry's first encounter with a dementor, the whole thing just inversed in my head, an optical illusion that I found the right angle to focus on which abruptly popped inside out. And it makes perfect sense and is about a million times creepier and oh god why. If a dementor makes Harry relive the worst experience of his life, then even though watching his parents die is plenty bad enough, wouldn't the experience of a bit of Voldemort's soul attaching itself to his own while Voldemort simultaneously experiences being hit by a rebounding Killing Curse be a thousand times worse? In DH, at Bathilda's, Harry finally experiences the complete "vision" of Voldemort's memory of that night, from Voldemort's point of view. What if this is the only way he's EVER been experiencing a "memory" of that night? What if it's never really been his own memory? What if when a dementor gets too close to him, it causes him to relive, not the simple experience of watching his parents die, but the experience of becoming a Horcrux and being imbued at one year old with the adult memory of killing his parents contained within Voldemort's soul? That is some Frank Herbert pre-born Abomination shit right there, and not only do I find it more likely than a one-year-old retaining a photographic memory of anything, I also find it more Fridge Horrifying and more likely to cause Harry to basically have seizures and pass out, which is what he frequently does. D:
Like, I'm sure other people have come to this conclusion long ago, but this is the first time it's clicked for me and aaaarrrrrgggghhhhhhh.
Now, second: werewolves. I don't know when JK decided that she was going to write werewolves as a metaphor for the marginalized minority of your choice (in her mind, she's said, the disabled or chronically infirm; in lots of fans' minds, GLBTQI). Maybe she knew from the start, or maybe she didn't decide that she was going to write them like that until she started on book 3 and developing the character of Remus Lupin. The fact that Remus is my favorite always makes me pay a good deal of attention to his arc and any discussion of werewolves, but this time I went into a re-read with a lot of new awareness of the role of privilege in the oppression of marginalized groups, courtesy of the extraordinarily patient, tolerant and articulate conversations that go on over at the Mark Does Stuff blogs. This time I wanted to pay more attention to the subtle detail that JKR built into her world regarding Fantastic Racism, pureblood privilege and those oppressed by it.
The reason I wonder about when she decided to write werewolves the way she does later is because of several offhand comments in books 1 & 2. First, when Malfoy realizes in PS/SS that they are going into the Forbidden Forest for their detention, he seems legitimately frightened at the idea, and the first thing he says is "We can't go in there at night - there's all sorts of things in there - werewolves, I heard." The moon is described as "bright" but whether it's full or not isn't specified; no one who brings up the possibility of werewolf attack in books 1 & 2 ever questions the phase of the moon at the time, which always bothered me, because Rowling's werewolves are consistently full-moon-only werewolves, one night a month. I could disregard this as Malfoy being unobservant. However, on the next page Harry asks Hagrid if a werewolf could be killing unicorns, and Hagrid replies only that "[they're] not fast enough," which does not address the factual (im)possibility of a transformed werewolf being present in the forest. Then he says he found another unicorn dead the previous week, which should utterly exclude the possibility of werewolf attack. I can't attribute this to Hagrid being unobservant, because he's the groundskeeper and you would think that he notices the sky, being under it nearly all the time. Also, being the expert on monstrous magical creatures that he is, you'd think he would be well aware of when werewolves might be around and wouldn't be any more bothered by them or consider them any more dangerous than he does Blast-Ended Skrewts.
Now, in CoS, when Ron is confronted with the exact same scenario - going into the Forbidden Forest at night - his reaction is identical to Malfoy's: "Er - aren't there - aren't there supposed to be werewolves in the forest?" This surfaces in his mind above even the fact that they are going into the forest to track spiders, of which he is mortally afraid (though he doesn't know about the acromantulas yet, or I'm sure they would take fear precedence). Again the grounds are only described as moonlit, which could mean any reasonably bright phase of the moon. Ron is also pretty unobservant, but at this point werewolves have been brought up three times in relation to the dangers of the Forest, each time with no regard to easily observable facts. To me this implies (in only three sentences! JK is gooood) that Draco and Ron, both purebloods, were both raised with a lot of exposure to stories, threats or general misinformation about werewolves that painted them as pure bogeymen, completely unrelated to the real political and social situation of human beings who happened to have lycanthropy. And of course this is exactly what JKR brings up in PoA and onward in a much more straightforward way (e.g. Ron's reaction to the reveal that Remus is a werewolf is instant, intense revulsion). It's just that this is my first time to really notice how this prejudice was seeded (by intent? IDK) through the first two books, which at first blush seem too childish to have much to do with the later "magic is might" pureblood Nazis plot.
The last offhand statement about werewolves in CoS comes from Tom Riddle: "On the one hand, [me]... on the other hand, big, blundering Hagrid, in trouble every other week, trying to raise werewolf cubs under his bed..." Now, Riddle/Voldemort would absolutely throw out blatant lies about both Hagrid, for whom he has utter contempt, and about werewolves, which offend his ideal of pureblood supremacy. It is of course telling about how badly werewolves are oppressed and marginalized by mainstream wizarding society that a lot of them would rather side with the man who will at least provide for them as long as there's a fight to be fought, even though the same man believes that they are scum with no place in his ultimate pureblood order. The casual way that Riddle tosses out "werewolf cubs" implies a creature that is pure animal as well as pure monster, a creature that breeds to create more of itself (rather than being primarily forced on unwilling victims via violent physical contact). Malfoy and Ron may not know any better, but they should; Riddle knows better and doesn't care, because he actively wants to denigrate this group in preparation for eventually wiping them out. It makes me think of the ridiculously unbelievable Nazi lies spread about Jews, that they drank blood and ate babies, etc etc. Which it's supposed to, of course.
Things that aren't shown in the books, but that I would absolutely love to be a fly on the wall for: Molly and Arthur's initial reactions to Remus and Sirius. First, to the news, probably received by owl, that one of their children's teachers is a werewolf. The question is, if they and Remus were in the Order at the same time during the first war, were they aware that Remus was a werewolf back then? If not, how would they react to such a reveal about someone they've known for a long time? If they did know at the time, how would they react to his being outed publicly? Also, reforming the Order: are members learning about Remus for the first time? Who knew already? How much prejudice has been internalized even by Order members who fight for the "right" side, the side of equality and tolerance? Clearly even Molly and Arthur either caused or didn't prevent their children from internalizing the common wizarding perception of werewolves as dangerous, untrustworthy bogeymen. In some ways Molly has displayed more of a lingering resistance to assimilating with "acceptable target" groups than Arthur has, but Arthur's fascination with Muggles can get pretty over the top, to the point of alienating the Muggles he's trying to prevent other wizards from harming. And then of course I would just love to see the stretch of time between the end of GoF (when Sirius turns back into a man in the hospital wing, and Molly points and shrieks "Sirius Black!" and everyone else is like, LOL Molly, calm down, it's fine) and the beginning of OotP, when Arthur is already completely blase about Sirius being there and Molly and Sirius have a really fascinating tension between them that has clearly developed from a much more complex place than just "he used to be in prison, I don't like him" on Molly's part.
So... there isn't really a point to all of this besides observation and appreciation. I just love it when these things pop out at me and I like to share it when they do. It could just be that JKR was using the first name of a mythical creature to pop into her head when writing the dialogue for Malfoy, Ron, Hagrid and Riddle, or it could be that she knew she was going to use werewolves as a complex example of an abstract concept later on and she wanted to seed a little bit of casual prejudice against them very early. Either way, it worked out brilliantly: only kids from pureblood families (who have pureblood privilege whether they know it and act on it - Malfoy - or not - Ron) react in a casually ignorant, totally uninformed way to a commonly demonized minority, while ostracized but humble Hagrid has probably internalized many of the oppressive things privileged wizards believe about "half-breeds," and ostracized but spiteful Riddle has recognized the oppressive language about half-breeds and embraced it because it comes attached to privilege, which he equates to power, which he values above all else because he never had any to begin with.
I hope any of that made sense and/or was vaguely interesting. And now it's time to get some sleep.... *zzzzz*