My Little Harry: Friendship is Magic (and a Scorpius/Albus tangent)
My favourite line of the entire play was Harry’s: “I’ve never fought alone and I never will.” ♥ HARRY. After all of that horrible angst and guilt over “how many have died for the Boy Who Lived?”, it was the last beautiful statement on friendship. Jamie Parker delivered it as a hero line. Harry said it proudly, no hesitation, when people had tried to make him ashamed that others had helped him, and then they all fought her off together. To find the right allies and bring them in with you, to be with your friends rather than alone, just like with Scorpius finding them in the Voldemort-won!AU - in this universe that’s a form of heroism in itself. <333
I really can’t say how much I love that. It’s beautiful, of course, to see friends standing together. And - this is seriously bringing in my own stuff, speaking as a lefty who has a bunch of opinions about the impossibility of socialism in a Chosen One world, and that stories about individual heroes and a bunch of chumps in the aggregate do damage, who believes in “only connect” and that at the end of the day it’s people together who change the world - it’s just like. The exact message to make me cry.
And I really love stories that emphasise adult friendships as key relationships, sustaining and vital, not stand-ins or secondary to romantic & familial relationships. TRIO ♥ ♥ ♥
AND oh I just realised. When he rolls under the pew to escape her, that’s a callback to Harry hiding from Voldemort behind the gravestone! A lightning-quick reflex to escape, and then Delphi like her father is all “face me like a man, the way your father died”. And that scene is so harrowing because he’s so very alone, but then his family and the other ghosts are there with him and get him out. And here it’s Albus forcing his way through a trapdoor and bringing the others crashing through.
FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC <333 This is why even though I truly sympathise with frustrated Scorpius/Albus shippers having the “close but no cigar” annoyance, I think it’s misguided to think it should have been canon, and wasn’t because of establishment fear. Because this is about Epic Friendship. Hermione/Ron and Harry/Ginny are significant elements, but it’s the Trio that gets the little scene about it being amazing and something others are jealous of; Harry and Hermione get a lot of scenes together. Draco’s “a grieving mess” because he lost his wife but he’s getting better by the end of the play and that’s not because of a flirtation, as it might be in another story - it’s because he and Scorpius understand each other better and because he’s stood alongside the Trio and Ginny.
Scorpius thinking of Albus to fight Dementors isn’t only a Snape/Lily reference: he’s by the lake threatened by a Dementor’s Kiss, just as Harry was in PoA. And Harry wasn’t thinking of romantic love but of friends and family. “You need a parent or a friend.” Stories about being best friends and that being vital - you don’t know what they need, you just know they need it - are so important. So often not told. And I really don’t think this is a “gal pals” situation - i.e. a story where it basically makes more sense if you assume queer romantic feelings, where it’s a romance in everything but name. The whole play is structured around friendship: it’s MORE cohesive (and unusual and cool) as that story.
Which is not to say you shouldn’t ship them or that I find post-CC shipping implausible. I just think assuming it’s not a canon romance because of money worry or homophobia or erasure is unfair.
And I have, as ever, a lot of feelings about Harry Potter.
This was originally posted at http://lokifan.dreamwidth.org/345472.html. Comment wherever you like :)
I really can’t say how much I love that. It’s beautiful, of course, to see friends standing together. And - this is seriously bringing in my own stuff, speaking as a lefty who has a bunch of opinions about the impossibility of socialism in a Chosen One world, and that stories about individual heroes and a bunch of chumps in the aggregate do damage, who believes in “only connect” and that at the end of the day it’s people together who change the world - it’s just like. The exact message to make me cry.
And I really love stories that emphasise adult friendships as key relationships, sustaining and vital, not stand-ins or secondary to romantic & familial relationships. TRIO ♥ ♥ ♥
AND oh I just realised. When he rolls under the pew to escape her, that’s a callback to Harry hiding from Voldemort behind the gravestone! A lightning-quick reflex to escape, and then Delphi like her father is all “face me like a man, the way your father died”. And that scene is so harrowing because he’s so very alone, but then his family and the other ghosts are there with him and get him out. And here it’s Albus forcing his way through a trapdoor and bringing the others crashing through.
FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC <333 This is why even though I truly sympathise with frustrated Scorpius/Albus shippers having the “close but no cigar” annoyance, I think it’s misguided to think it should have been canon, and wasn’t because of establishment fear. Because this is about Epic Friendship. Hermione/Ron and Harry/Ginny are significant elements, but it’s the Trio that gets the little scene about it being amazing and something others are jealous of; Harry and Hermione get a lot of scenes together. Draco’s “a grieving mess” because he lost his wife but he’s getting better by the end of the play and that’s not because of a flirtation, as it might be in another story - it’s because he and Scorpius understand each other better and because he’s stood alongside the Trio and Ginny.
Scorpius thinking of Albus to fight Dementors isn’t only a Snape/Lily reference: he’s by the lake threatened by a Dementor’s Kiss, just as Harry was in PoA. And Harry wasn’t thinking of romantic love but of friends and family. “You need a parent or a friend.” Stories about being best friends and that being vital - you don’t know what they need, you just know they need it - are so important. So often not told. And I really don’t think this is a “gal pals” situation - i.e. a story where it basically makes more sense if you assume queer romantic feelings, where it’s a romance in everything but name. The whole play is structured around friendship: it’s MORE cohesive (and unusual and cool) as that story.
Which is not to say you shouldn’t ship them or that I find post-CC shipping implausible. I just think assuming it’s not a canon romance because of money worry or homophobia or erasure is unfair.
And I have, as ever, a lot of feelings about Harry Potter.
This was originally posted at http://lokifan.dreamwidth.org/345472.html. Comment wherever you like :)