Hagrid

The people who knew Harry was alive because they were present there: Sirius black, Severus Snape, and Hagrid.

Dumbledore knew ig because of the prophecy. But like. It was an assumption he made.

Snape wouldn’t have talked, Sirius was you know Sirius. But Hagrid went and retrieved Harry and is a notorious chatty fucker. Weak link.

You know the entire Harry is the Savior of the Wizarding World thing that had gotten around by morning?

Hagrid.

That entire story exists because Hagrid is a prison snitch.

The entire series up until Voldemort returns plays out the way it does because Hagrid can’t keep his goddamn yap shut.

Someone needs to tell Hagrid “nobody talks, everyone walks”

(And JK Rowling needs to stay in her lane and let us have our childhoods back. Trans women are women.)

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I like this take. I also present to you: Dumbledore was a jerk. c:

I’d also blame him for strategic rumors.

(But no. You’ve absolutely got a point with Hagrid. Bless his heart?)

(Also I want to reclaim HP from that women because :c it was so formative for so many of us if so very flawed and I wish the world building was so much better)

(I think there's a distinction between three broad categories of "this is super gross and why do you even like it", "I guess you can like whatever but let's agree this is really problematic", and "this is fine but the author is scum so let's deliberately demonetize the IP while enjoying the content" and HP mostly seems to fall in the last one)

ladysarai: Exacerangutan: you are both right, Harry Potter as its own category, with the thousands of people who worked on it and made their names on it was a salvation for a lot of people, many of them trans / queer / POC

and JK Rowling is basically pissing on art that just. it's bigger than she is

Neil Gaiman said once that anything created ceases to be the work of the writer or something along those lines. In this case, HP is definitely no longer hers.

And also.

Dumbledore was a jerk.

More thoughts on HP is it's kind of like a kid being blamed for the shitty parent. Dan Rad is such a good goddamn person, same with Grint and Watson and Rickman was also just. :[ Everyone who worked on those movies. All of them were stand up people.

...sidebar but isn't it weird Tim Roth and Robert Carlyle weren't in them?

Oh yessss, I ABSOLUTELY believe in Death of the Author. Once you put it out in the world it no longer belongs to you. That’s how art works.

^^^^

I MEAN... my thoughts on canonicity and authorial intent are a little more convoluted and ambivalent... but loosely speaking I agree there. Authorial intent is worlds less important than manifest content, and it's pretty common for people to accidentally write good stories/characters they don't understand, themselves.