Gingy Ginny

Full discolsure:  I love all the Weasleys.  Looove.  I love that they’re ginger.  I love that they’re a huge family and they’re all always fighting for attention.  I love how they adopt Harry – and even Hermione – to make sure they have a safe place in the wizarding world and someone looking out for them.  So, yeah.  I freaking love Ginny.  I realize that in the movies she’s kind of boring and whatever.  I don’t care.  I’m talking about book Ginny.  Let’s break it down, shall we?

1) Bitch is funny.  Seriously.  Like, way funnier than Harry (sorry bout it).  Fred and George clearly had the right kind of influence on that girl

2) I love love love her character arc.  From the annoying little sister to the fangirl who can’t talk in front of her crush to this badass bitch.  It’s a very realistic arc for a girl who is being raised right, I feel.

3) Oh, right, she’s a BAD ASS BITCH.  She doesn’t just go hide in a corner when the war starts, she pushes her way to the front lines to protect her world and her ideals.  She is a damsel, she’s in distress, she can handle it (hayy Meg from Hercules)

4) Uh, Ginny’s a pimp.  Like, seriously.  She was in love with Harry, but he didn’t think of her that way.  So she GOT THE FUCK OVER IT and dated a bunch of other boys who DID think of her that way.

I could go on for HOURS about my love for Ginny Weasley, but everything I list would be a variation on those 4 things..  Funny, dynamic, badass pimp.  That’s how you spell Ginny Weasley.  I want to be her when I grow up.

Tom Riddle

Voldemort.  Tom Marvolo Riddle.  Voldy.  Oh, I find you so fascinating.  From a distance.  The way I find, say, Hitler fascinating.  Because you are quite like Hitler, aren’t you?  With your torture and murder and insistence on a master race?  I always think of you and your Death Eaters as 50s-era KKK, but the Hitler / Nazi connection works as well.

I guess what I find most fascinating about you, sir, is that Rowling made you…pitiable?  In the first four or five books, you were simply an evil, unkillable monster, hell-bent on purifying the wizarding race through mass murder and probably eugenics.  And you could have stayed that way.  Rowing could have left you as a perfect villain to her perfect (if rather dense) hero and been done with it.

But instead, we got glimpses into your early life.  And the life of your mother before you came along.  And in some ways, it because impossible not to pity you.  You, child conceived under the effects of a love potion, doomed to a life without love because of your mother’s (selfish?) actions.  Doomed to grow up alone when your father left your mother and she died of a broken heart.  Doomed to pin all the blame for those events on your absent father, the Muggle, never knowing or understanding the actions of your mother that set things in motion.  It’s no wonder you grew up hating Muggles, being raised as you were in a Dickensonian orphanage, knowing all the while you were better than them and then having it proved to you in the most spectacular way possible; not only were you a wizard, born into powers far beyond what those silly Muggles could understand, but you were practically ROYALTY in the wizarding world, the last descendant of one of the founders of the great Hogwarts.

None of that is to mitigate what you did, or suggest that your death was anything other than justified – it was far less than justice, in fact, when you consider how much pain and suffering you caused to those around you.  But thinking of the little boy you were makes me sad.  Because I don’t think you were forced into the path you took or that your hand was ever moved by anything other than your own envy and anger – but because the little boy you were deserved more than to grow up to be a monster.

Snape Snape Severus Snape

Oh my.  This character. This MAN.  He’s emerged as the breakout star of the Harry Potter series, so to speak – as a romantic hero, doomed by his unrequited love but ever vigilant in his care for her son.  Uh, guys.

His reaction to being friendzoned and bullied in high school was to join a genocidal hate group.

That’s…unhealthy.  And to those who wish to point out that he did eventually choose the right side and offer himself up to Dumbledore as a spy – yes, that’s true and I do think that many of his later actions SOMEWHAT redeem him.  But let’s not forget that he only joined the Order of the Phoenix after Voldemort killed Muggleborn Lily.  Why Snape thought that his boss – whose stated purpose was to kill all Muggles and Muggleborns and damn the genetic consequences – would let her live because of Snape’s crush is beyond me.  And YES I’m aware that technically speaking Lily was killed because of the prophecy related to Harry and not because of her blood status, but let’s be real – if Voldemort had won control of the wizarding world she would have been killed anyway.

THAT BEING SAID.  I don’t hate Snape as a character.  I think that he’s a very well-drawn, complex character that highlights the idea that the world isn’t black and white or good and bad – there are shades of gray, and some of those shades of gray are people who did bad things and want to leave them behind to be good again.  He brings much needed depth to the story and I truly enjoy seeing the main trio’s perception of him shift through the series as they learn more about him.  Even his relationship with Harry has glimpses of his inner complexity – Harry looking so much like his father, Snape’s high school bully, clearly gives Snape problems, but he’s determined to protect Lily’s son regardless.  And the “Always” scene gets me every time, because it’s just another glimpse of how nobody is truly evil to their core, there are always explanations and backstory that give them life and motivation.  The story would ABSOLUTELY lose a lot without Snape to liven up the joint.

I just wish people would stop romanticizing him.  It’s nearly as bad as Edward Cullen.

Ronald

Oh, Ronald.  You are…just my favorite (I say that about every single character, don’t I?  Don’t tell them I’m cheating!)  You are just the most real, refreshingly normal teenage boy I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting in a book.  Ugh.  Where to begin with the reasons I love you?

1) You have a complicated, REAL reaction to your best friend being super famous and needing to deal with all the shenanigans that comes along with that.  Rowling created a character who doesn’t incessantly talk about his feelings – because, after all, he’s a teenage boy – but is clearly struggling with being jealous of the attention Harry gets, while also wanting to be supportive of what he’s going through.

2) Ron is one of the perfect examples of how the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.  It would have been really easy and expected for Rowling to make the Weasleys a really perfect famly to contrast with Harry’s home life with the Dursleys.  And in some ways, it is – they’re all full of love and acceptance and really adopt Harry and become his magical family (and later in-laws, yay!).  But they struggle financially in a way that Harry never has to, and Ron struggles to stand out – in the first book, what he sees in the Mirror of Erised is him outshining all of his brothers.  That’s not the mark of an idyllic family – it’s reality.

3) I freaking adore the way he becomes a magical guide to Harry – and Hermione.  I think it was a really smart way for Rowling to deal with both Harry & the reader entering this brand new world – instead of some sort of boring exposition disguised as a book or a sermon from some older wiser character, she shows the real-life friction that comes from not knowing things that someone close to you takes for granted, and how weird and awkward it is to have to have your best friend explain things to you.

4) All of the Weasleys are ginger!  Yay ginger pride!

Seriously, I could go on for days about how much I love Ron but it would really just be repetition – I love how realistic he is as a teenage boy, I love his language and his mood swings, I just love him.  I want to cuddle him and be his platonic wife.  Is that weird?  Don’t answer that – I don’t care.