(no subject)
+ Big D! ♥
+ Myrtle!
+ Ginny being Nice!
+ Harry administering a double burn to Dumbledore, then himself.
Then receiving further insults from Bane.
+ Harry's dickishness being acknowledged, if only momentarily before Ginny embarks on Verse 999375930 of 'Your pure heart!' (I especially enjoy that he's become the kind of parent who precedes everything with 'As a parent, you can in no way understand love/child development/calculus until you've had a child.' He would.)
+ McGonagall telling off everyone:
+ Shipping: Draco/Hermione
(or him being rude to her, if that's your anti-ship
); Draco/Ron
, some alt-universe Snape/Hermione and Snape!Hermione
, some Hermione/banging her secretary
, and most importantly, your Draco/Harry, including a fight composed primarily of binding each other and using blindfolds
, Draco confiding about his fridged wife from a nineteenth century novel, who conveniently had a baby and died, like 90% of the mums in the Potterverse:
(apparently Lucius disapproved of her because of contrivances in the plot,
Character development, of Draco (gasp!) and even Ginny (DOUBLE GASP!)
Bad
Good to know Ginny can't make an appearance in any media once she's rebooted as ideal with referencing her appearance
.
YMMV whether this scene with Harry is finally developing their relationship, or retroactive pasted in canon
. Likewise this:
There's also this weird thread of Ludo Bagman trying to incite the French to root for Fleur, when everyone knows that as a girl, she should be in the most minimal role:
.
Ron continues to suck
.
There's this odd alt future of Ron marrying Padma because he liked her better (NO!), without jealousy and bitterness even being a factor (STOP!), and how she emasculates him by having pretty much the same life as he has with Hermione (they have a kid, although it's clear she got to name him - HAS FEMINISM GONE TOO FAR?!).
Like, he's described as looking after the kids, but obviously we all know that only a beta male like Ron would tolerate that.
.
He has the son he wanted, but hates him, which is definitely a reflection on Hermione and Padma and their relative suitability for him, and not at all on Ron as a character.
In this horrifying alt-reality Hermione never married (TERRORS!), instantly transforming her into Snape (which would seem to be an almost sympathetic reading of how loneliness can warp a character, like it did Tom Riddle, but obviously again, has no reflection on Hermione's inner character - probably her womb got all blocked up with shards of glass and broken dreams and caused all the rage!)
Padma is awful because she smells of mint (?), thinks of things more deeply than Ron (hard not to, tbh), insists he parent his child and somehow caused him not to run a jokeshop, even though that's like, the only thing that would presumably stay the same, unless in this reality, Fred's still around (the lack of the twins forced me to give the Cursed Child an automatic rise in grade from every HP book, tbh.)
I like that he describes himself as the least intense (and that to Hermione, the idea of transfiguring herself into Voldemort is a 'right'. I would feel absolutely comfortable with my civil liberties being under the charge of a prime minister who's idea of justice is kidnapping and scarring, just saying.)
The world building is about as believable as ever - Harry's head of the cops, Hermione's Prime Minister, Ginny runs the paper.
Also, while JKR has spent a bunch of time since the book's release offering us tidbits of equality (Dumbledore was gay! Hermione could be black! There are Jewish students at Hogwarts!), obviously she's completely powerless to include this in the text. Undoubtedly in three years, there'll be a tweet in which she reveals either Albus Severus and/or Scorpius (obviously not both, god forbid a gay person have sex!) were in her view, gay, and YOU'RE the homophobe for wanting it to be in one of her zillion dollar spin-offs rather than revealed in the bravest way possible - online to people who can then ignore it.
But for now, there's lot of guys being guys (the Bechdel test passes, barely, as ever) with the obligatory 'No homo! Now how about that hottie with the vagina, huh?' (Rose seems to be getting the same 'Being a jerk is cute, if you're really pretty. Ugly girls need not apply.' treatment as Lily and Ginny before her.)
.
Dumbledore also reveals that his love caused nothing but harm.
I'm so glad he can be the sole bearer of the LBTQ torch in the Potter series!
The less said about the plot (let's retroactively change the rules of timetravelling, have alternate universes in which character is so neglible and morality so black-and-white that anyone not a Gryffindor is apparently one shitty day away from being a Death-Eater, introduce an OC with a backstory so cliched it was a fanfic trope 15 years ago...) but it's pretty bleak to A) return to the Voldemort well at all - there's no other imaginable threat in a world where everyone is pretty much reset to a divisive system that sets them against each other? B) reenact his story (all the baddies are awful for thinking blood tells, but Tom Riddle, despite the sympathetic mentions of lonely childhood is irredeemable from day one.
Likewise, there's nothing anyone can do for Delphi, who with layers, also gets to be the evil feminazi killing only men and gloating over how pliant they are.
.
It's also significant how the male characters like Dumbledore and Snape are described as greater for their flaws, unlike the female characters - there's no woman in the Potterverse who's nasty but decent - you can be bitchy in petty ways that JKR winks at (I'm a woman, I know what we're like, blah blah) or you're an outright monster, and normally ugly to boot.
