this is a fanblog for the time-travelling version of ship Harry Potter/Albus Dumbledore. this can take on several forms:
- Harry time-travelling back to earlier in Albus’ life (the 1890s, during the war with Grindelwald, during the war with Voldemort, and anywhere in between)
- a young!Albus time-travelling forward to a point in Harry’s life (attending Hogwarts with him, Deathly Hallows AUs, post-war, and even later)
- wacky time-travel shenanigans that throw the two glasses-wearing nerds together out of order, so that they only have a few moments together across time
future posts will be meta posts about their compatibility from me and reblogs from others to promote fellow shippers’ work, whether that’s art or fanfic... and hopefully a lot more.
I'm so interested in your thoughts about Kendra Dumbledore potentially being native! I read a fic once (I wish I could find it again) where she was First Nations Canadian, and it explored her move to the UK and the complexities of that. And I've never seen anyone else talk about that part of the book! It's such a weird way to describe someone if the author didn't intend for Dumbledore to be partially native, but if she did... Why was it never brought up before?? Anyways, this has been bugging me since I was 11 and read DH for the first time lol
so I sat on this one because it's kind of a deeply personal issue for me (obviously!) and I wanted to give my thoughts some time to develop. the biggest issue I have around the question of Kendra Dumbledore and Native identity is that this introduces a lot of necessary tragedy to her story, and her children's stories, and it's a tragedy that I would argue is closed in the same way a culture can be closed. I think if you're going to be interpreting a character as Native in a story set in our world where colonization demonstrably happened the same way that it did in real life, you have a responsibility to render that history well and accurately and respectfully, and this means Kendra's story is... complicated.
(I am of course only one Native person - others may glory in a world where Native wizards totally escaped colonization via segregation in spaces similar to Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade (though I have thoughts about that as well), and still others may headcanon that American history unfolded differently in a world where the Triple Alliance and the Six Nations and the tribes of the plains and southwest who more robustly fought against the US army also had real magic on their side that wouldn't necessarily be segregated out of the general population. so these are my thoughts, and mine alone, and other interpretations are going to exist and be equally valid.)
I don't think it's easy, or even really the right thing, to disentangle wizard culture and wizard history from IRL history. Basically any time a minority group that faces discrimination from the dominant culture also has wizards in it, we have to ask the question of which community those minority wizards would be more loyal to. Did Jewish wizards break the Statute of Secrecy to shelter members of their community in places where the Nazis took over? (And did the Nazi fascination with the occult and in particular with European occultism lead to Nazi wizards fighting for the Axis?) Did Black American wizards stage slave rebellions and resist segregation and take part in protests or in actions against hate groups? Did African wizards protect their people during the Scramble for Africa, and did European wizards assist in colonization? Did wizards belonging to any of the many ethnic groups in regions colonized by Russia try and fight back? Did LGBT wizards work to magically cure or treat HIV/AIDS? Did Native wizards fight back against colonization?
Joanne's ideas about a completely secret and segregated community do work, but they're extremely shortsighted because they assume that there's no situation where a member of an oppressed minority might bring that oppression with them into their new identity as "wizard". And that's relevant, if we're talking about Kendra Dumbledore, because the circumstances around her choices and her life (if she is intended to be Native, or First Nations) intersect with the question of loyalty basically immediately.
If Kendra is First Nations - that is, if she was born in what's now Canada - there is a very good chance that she lost "Indian status" when she married Percival Dumbledore. Canadian laws around Native identity are in many ways even more draconian and absurd than American ones; they were explicitly designed to force the indigenous people to choose between access to the full benefits of modern society and continuity of culture, and they often tied things like voting rights or the ability to own land to renouncing your tribal identity and your racial status as indigenous and becoming an assimilated Canadian, legally white (but not socially white). Indigenous women who married white men immediately lost their legal status as indigenous, and their children were not able to be legally/officially enrolled in their mother's tribe. Albus, Aberforth, and Ariana would be legally considered white no matter how they or their family felt about the matter, and this would lead to difficulty claiming or reconnecting with the maternal side of their lineage.
This of course assumes that Canadian wizards operate similarly to European ones, but again, since as far as we can tell both the US and Canada exist as political entities and we don't have a landscape of nations and tribes claiming territory as smaller states, colonization kind of happened the same way it did IRL.
If Kendra is Native - that is, if she was born in what's now the US - the situation is slightly more complicated. Depending on what tribe she's from, she might still be considered An Indian, and possibly her children can be enrolled (or could prior to a certain age). before the 1920s not all Natives were US citizens (there was a federal law passed changing that) so her legal status might be complicated. based on my own experiences it's likely that her children, if they know about this aspect of her life, would consider themselves half-Indian or part-Indian. they also might not know, especially if Kendra herself has settler ancestry and is at least occasionally white-passing. no matter where she's from, her choice to leave her homeland is a significant one - I'd have a seriously hard time leaving the continent, because that's Where I'm From, even as I'd be okay moving to Canada or Mexico. What drove her to make that call? Solely her love for Percival? The desire to escape poverty? Better opportunities for herself and her children that could be reached via assimilation and passing for white? Something else entirely? We can't know, because the canonicity of this point is so damnably dubious.
and all of this is necessary to bring up because Joanne wrote a story in which this woman, who she described as looking Native, watches as her daughter is subject to violence (heavily implied to be sexual) and her husband is taken away by law enforcement for the crime of defending her against the people the law say matter more than she and her family do, and must continue to live as a pariah in that village in that house because there are no other places for her and her family to go, and watches as her sons fall into bitterness and dysfunction and cycles of trauma because of what happened to their sister. That's a deeply relatable story, one that echoes back onto my own life and my own family history.
It's even more relatable to me that Albus, quietly homosexual and more easily white-passing, is absolutely desperate to escape his dysfunctional home through his own intellect, and that he falls into fantasizing about taking over the world as a coping mechanism to deal with the ways the system failed him and his family. My own family and my nation adopted policies of assimilation very early, in the hopes that becoming like the more powerful settlers would prevent the worst excesses of colonial violence. My grandfather taught my father and aunt and uncles to strip the regional accent out of their voice and code switch to speak in ways that wouldn't get them judged by settlers, and growing up I was told to prioritize assimilation and practicality in dealing with my disabilities. They were trying to protect me in the best ways they knew how. I can take a lot of that and apply it to the Dumbledore family. (Albus's persistent attempts to quietly change the system from within to be more accepting and tolerant and open to diversity... augh.)
I've been reading all these fascinating analyses about Voldemort and gender that keep circulating, and some of them are genuinely compelling, I love the creativity. The interpretations of him as femme coded or exploring his relationship with traditional masculinity are interesting from a transformative fandom perspective, and some of the meta is genuinely brilliant.
That being said, I think a lot of people are operating under this incredibly reductive, contemporary American working-class definition of masculinity that equates "masculine" with loud, physically aggressive, overtly brutish behaviour, and that's not how aristocratic masculinity has ever functioned, which gets us into some fascinating territory about classism and how different socioeconomic strata perform gender entirely differently.
The Slytherins, and Voldemort by extension, are explicitly emulating upper-class, aristocratic sensibilities. In those circles, the jock-adjacent, chest-thumping, aggressively physical masculinity is actually coded as vulgar, uncivilised, and lower-class. That sort of overt physical aggression would be seen as gauche, even pathetic. There's this whole classist framework where "refined" masculinity is performatively restrained, intellectually sophisticated, and economically secure enough not to resort to physical displays.
What commands respect in those circles is restraint, composure, and the ability to dominate through poise and intellect, not brute strength. A gentleman doesn't roar or brawl or puff out his chest to prove his masculinity, that's considered beneath him, literally déclassé. Think Caesar, Augustus, medieval monarchs. The most formidable men in classical literature embody this controlled, calculated masculinity. They don't raise their voices because everyone already understands the consequences of defiance. Physical violence is something you had others do for you, which is its own form of power projection. It's insidious precisely because it appears "civilized" while being structurally far more violent than any street fight.
Voldemort is written as masculine in the way a dark emperor is masculine. Silent, calculating, absolutely assured of his superiority. He speaks softly and rooms fall silent. He gestures and death follows. He doesn't need theatrical displays of dominance because his mere presence bends others to his will. There's nothing more masculine-coded in the classes that have historically wielded power than that level of control.
The classism here is crucial because when we code aristocratic restraint as "effeminate," we're inadvertently reproducing this false binary where working-class masculinity gets positioned as more "authentically" masculine than upper-class masculinity, but both are expressions of patriarchal power, they just operate through different mechanisms based on available resources.
Also, power is expressed through magic in the Wizarding World. Nobody's throwing punches lol. In a society where you can kill with a word or gesture, measuring masculinity by physical aggression is completely nonsensical. Voldemort's magical prowess is infinitely more formidable than any amount of posturing. The man literally split his soul to achieve immortality, which is the the most aggressively masculine thing imaginable, just expressed through magical rather than physical dominance.
Speaking of soul splitting, a big part of his arc is rooted in toxic masculinity taken to its extreme. His relentless quest for power, his inability to process emotional vulnerability, his complete rejection of anything that might be perceived as weakness. These are textbook examples of how patriarchal conditioning destroys men. He literally fragments his soul rather than confront his own emotional reality. That's masculine socialization so severe it becomes pathological. The way he handles his abandonment issues, his shame about his Muggle heritage, his terror of mortality. He doesn't process these emotions but weaponizes them. Instead of grieving or seeking connection, he transforms pain into domination, vulnerability into violence.
His level of emotional avoidance and the compulsive need to convert every feeling into power and control is really peak toxic masculinity, as is his obsession with immortality, being the most powerful, his need to have others literally unable to speak his name. That's not someone rejecting masculine ideals but someone who's internalized them so completely he's willing to destroy his own humanity to achieve them. He's basically what happens when masculine conditioning around emotional suppression and power accumulation gets taken to its absolute breaking point.
There's also this persistent misreading of young Tom Riddle's charm and sophistication as somehow feminine-coded, which is absolutely baffling. The dude was performing gentlemanly masculinity to perfection. Cultivated, articulate, magnetically charismatic in that distinctly genteel way. That whole "suave, seductive, manipulative" persona isn't femme coded but literally the playbook of every male aristocrat, politician, and cult leader throughout history.
Plus, there's something deeply troubling about how "effeminate" gets deployed in these analyses. Are we saying that anything that isn't overtly aggressive and traditionally masculine must be feminine? That's its own form of gender essentialism. We'll see a character who speaks eloquently, dresses well, and doesn't resort to physical violence, and immediately code that as less masculine, when historically, that's been the masculinity of the ruling class. It's worth interrogating why we've internalized the idea that "real" masculinity has to be working-class masculinity, especially when that framework often erases how different communities and cultures construct gender entirely differently.
Given JKR’s views on gender and her rather conventional approach to gender roles throughout the series, she would never intentionally write her ultimate villain as anything other than unambiguously masculine. For someone with her investment in traditional gender binaries, coding the most terrifying figure in her universe as feminine would fundamentally undermine his menace bbecause in her worldview, feminine-coded traits simply don't carry the same weight of existential threat. Voldemort's horror stems partly from his embodiment of patriarchal power taken to its most monstrous extreme, and Rowling's own biases would prevent her from subverting that in ways that might complicate her readers' ability to recognize him as the ultimate threat. The terror he inspires is inextricably linked to his masculine-coded dominance, control, and violence. Remove that framework, and you lose much of what makes him frightening within the moral universe she's constructed.
Moreover, Rowling constructs Voldemort and Harry as representing two archetypal forms of masculinity: the noble knight versus the tyrannical god-king. Harry embodies the "good" masculine ideal of the protective, self-sacrificing, brave knight, while Voldemort represents masculinity's darkest potential when untethered from empathy or moral restraint. This isn't a subversion of masculine archetypes but a a reinforcement of them, positioning both hero and villain firmly within traditional masculine frameworks while simply coding one as virtuous and the other as monstrous. Rowling's moral universe depends on this binary remaining intact and legible to her audience.
My favorite Scene: Harry and Dumbledore's portrait
Not 'King's Cross', not 'The Lost Prophecy', both of which are massive and include tons of exposition, but it's that short scene at the tail end of the last chapter before the epilogue that captured my heart.
I'll quote it bit by bit:
They clambered over him and onto the spiral stone staircase
that moved slowly upward like an escalator. Harry pushed open
the door at the top.
He had one, brief glimpse of the stone Pensieve on the desk
where he had left it, and then an earsplitting noise made him cry
out, thinking of curses and returning Death Eaters and the rebirth of Voldemort—
Poor guy, he just got done fighting a war and clambers up to his dead headmaster's office only to get assaulted by so much clapping that it sounds "ear splitting", there are only a dozen portraits here, how hard did they clap??
But it was applause. All around the walls, the headmasters and
head mistresses of Hogwarts were giving him a standing ovation;
they waved their hats and in some cases their wigs, they reached
through their frames to grip each other’s hands; they danced up
and down on the chairs in which they had been painted; Dilys
Derwent sobbed unashamedly; Dexter Fortescue was waving his
ear-trumpet; and Phineas Nigellus called, in his high, reedy voice,
“And let it be noted that Slytherin House played its part! Let our contribution not be forgotten!”
Harry getting some respect, take note though on how Harry's feelings on this aren't stated, all except for....
But Harry had eyes only for the man who stood in the largest
portrait directly behind the headmaster’s chair. Tears were sliding
down from behind the half-moon spectacles into the long silver
beard, and the pride and the gratitude emanating from him filled
Harry with the same balm as phoenix song
Harry doesn't care much about all that hollering and screaming and sobbing, he quite literally only had eyes for that one, silent, crying old man, and yeah, Dumbledore is crying out of happiness and pride for Harry, that old lovable crybaby.
I want to focus on this quote though:
and the pride and the gratitude emanating from him filled
Harry with the same balm as phoenix song
A Phoenix Song, Dumbledore showing pride and gratitude towards Harry affects just like the magical song of an immortal phoenix that fills the pure of heart with strength and courage(*).
Of course, Harry had already been associating that song with Dumbledore, going by his quote in GOF in 'Priori Incantatem'
We have 3 (Technically 2) instances of Harry being affected by that song, starting with COS:
Music was coming from somewhere. Riddle whirled around to
stare down the empty chamber. The music was growing louder. It
was eerie, spine-tingling, unearthly; it lifted the hair on Harry’s
scalp and made his heart feel as though it was swelling to twice its
normal size. Then, as the music reached such a pitch that Harry
felt it vibrating inside his own ribs, flames erupted at the top of the nearest pillar
Riddle froze slightly upon hearing it before whirling around, though that could be attributed to surprise rather than the fear that the song strikes in the impure of heart.
Looking at what Harry felt though.... Not a very nice description, it's 'eerie', 'unearthly', 'spine-tingling', those words, while not directly negative, do usually carry a negative connotation.
All except for the last one which recontextualizes them all, making him feel as if his heart was swelling.
As for the next one in GOF, it's not *technically *a Phoenix Song, it didn't come from any phoenix, but from the two wands with twin phoenix feather cores clashing, but it is directly compared to the phoenix song by Harry, and again, the Phoenix feather cores.
And then an unearthly and beautiful sound filled the air. . . . It
was coming from every thread of the light-spun web vibrating
around Harry and Voldemort. It was a sound Harry recognized,
though he had heard it only once before in his life: phoenix song.
It was the sound of hope to Harry . . . the most beautiful and
welcome thing he had ever heard in his life. . . . He felt as though
the song were inside him instead of just around him. . . . It was the
sound he connected with Dumbledore, and it was almost as
though a friend were speaking in his ear. . . .
Now that's the good stuff! Harry just waxes poetics on this song here, calling it as the most beautiful and welcome he ever heard in his life! (Though to be fair, I don't thing Harry has heard much music...)
It affects him so much that he feels it inside of him, as if it is a part of him, and as I said, he directly connects that sound with Dumbledore, with a friend.
Then, the last one in HBP, and the one that makes that comparison in DH the most powerful one in my opinion:
Gulping, Madam Pomfrey pressed her fingers to her mouth, her eyes
wide. Somewhere out in the darkness, a phoenix was singing in a way Harry had never heard before: a stricken lament of terrible beauty. And Harry felt, as he had felt about phoenix song before, that the music was inside him, not without: It was his own grief turned magically to song that echoed across the grounds and through the castle windows.
How long they all stood there, listening, he did not know, nor why it
seemed to ease their pain a little to listen to the sound of their mourning,
This time, it is after Dumbledore's death, the Phoenix song now just doesn't exude power and comfort, but grief too! Fawkes's grief, and everyone else's grief turned into song. It's decidedly different than how it was in GOF and COS, Harry remarks even remarks on it.
Also take note on how the song seemed to ease their pain, comforted them.
But talking about 'Grief' more, grief isn't just an emotion that appears on it's own, in many cases, grief stems from Love, the thing Dumbledore's always touted as the strongest power.
And in DH, a connection is made between grief and love,
His scar burned, but he was master of the pain, he felt it, yet
was apart from it. He had learned control at last, learned to shut
his mind to Voldemort, the very thing Dumbledore had wanted
him to learn from Snape. Just as Voldemort had not been able to
possess Harry while Harry was consumed with grief for Sirius, so his
thoughts could not penetrate Harry now while he mourned Dobby.
Grief, it seemed, drove Voldemort out . . . though Dumbledore, of
course, would have said that it was love.
So then, you could also say that The Phoenix Song in HBP was not only conveying grief, but love too.
.... And that's what makes Harry comparing Dumbledore's pride and gratitude to the Phoenix song so powerful!
Harry saw his dead beloved mentor, someone whom he thinks of as a kind of parent, showing so much pride and happiness for him, and that filled Harry with.... An Eerie spine tingling unearthly --
(Okay maybe not those lmao), It filled him with courage, with grief, with love, and with comfort all at once. Excuse my French, but I fucking love this!
..... Oh right, and the rest of the scene in DH:
At last, Harry held up his hands, and the portraits fell respectfully silent, beaming and mopping their eyes and waiting eagerly
for him to speak. He directed his words at Dumbledore, however,
and chose them with enormous care. Exhausted and bleary-eyed
though he was, he must make one last effort, seeking one last piece of advice.
Look at this! He cares so much about Dumbledore, He still seeks out his advice and guidance, and he does so with 'enormous care'!
“The thing that was hidden in the Snitch,” he began, “I dropped
it in the forest. I don’t know exactly where, but I’m not going to
go looking for it again. Do you agree?”
“My dear boy, I do,” said Dumbledore, while his fellow pictures
looked confused and curious. “A wise and courageous decision, but
no less than I would have expected of you. Does anyone else know where it fell?”
“No one,” said Harry, and Dumbledore nodded his satisfaction.
“I’m going to keep Ignotus’s present, though,” said Harry, and
Dumbledore beamed.
“But of course, Harry, it is yours forever, until you pass it on!”
Harry is the Master of Death, as dubbed by Dumbledore in King's Cross, I do believe that it is just a metaphor for someone who accepts death in all it's forms, but still, he is the Elder Wand's master, he is the Cloak's rightful owner, and he already used the stone in the correct way and disposed of it.
Yet he still seeks approval from Dumbledore.
And Dumbledore sees Harry being the better man than him, sees him not try to use the stone to drag back the dead like Dumbledore had tried to do, and Dumbledore beams at Harry.
And then... There's the elder wand, truthfully, I don't like how it's handled, but I'll speak on what I like about it first:
“And then there’s this.”
Harry held up the Elder Wand, and Ron and Hermione looked
at it with a reverence that, even in his befuddled and sleep-deprived
state, Harry did not like to see.
“I don’t want it.” said Harry.
“What?” said Ron Loudly. “Are you mental?”
“I know it’s powerful,” said Ron wearily. “But I was happier with mine. So . . . ”
He rummaged in the pouch hung around his neck, and pulled out the two halves of holly still just connected by the finest thread of phoenix feather. Hermione had said that they could not be repaired, that the damage was too severe. All he knew was that if this did not work, nothing would.
He laid the broken wand upon the headmaster’s desk, touch it with the very tip of the Elder Wand, and said “Reparo.”
As his wand resealed, red sparks flew out of its end. Harry knew that he had succeeded. He picked up the holly and phoenix wand and felt a sudden warmth in his fingers, as though wand and hand were rejoicing at their reunion.
Harry had already rejected the wand once, way back when he decided to go speak with Griphook rather than Olivander, and here he does it again, despite the wand being right Infront of him, despite knowing with certainty that he is the master of it, Harry chooses to *reject *the wand and instead reunite with his old one, the one that contains the phoenix feather from Fawkes, Dumbledore's Phoenix.
“I’m putting the Elder Wand,” he told Dumbledore, who was watching him with enormous affection and admiration, “back where it came from. It can stay there. If I die a natural death like Ignotus, its power will be broken, won’t it? The previous master will never have been defeated. That’ll be the end of it.”
Dumbledore nodded. They smiled at each other.
“Are you sure?” said Ron. There was the faintest trace of longing in his voice as he looked at the Elder Wand.
“I think Harry’s right,” said Hermione quietly.
“That wand’s more trouble than it’s worth,” said Harry. “And quite honestly,” he turned away from the painted portraits, thinking now only of the four-poster bead lying waiting for him in
Gryffindor Tower and wondering whether Kreacher might bring him a sandwich there, “I’ve had enough trouble for a lifetime.”
Okay, 4 last points before I get to talking about why I don't like how the wand is handled:
1: I assume that the intended message here is that Harry is still honoring Dumbledore, he is putting the wand back inside Dumbledore's grave, leaving Dumbledore's body with a wand and reversing what Voldemort had done, and returning Dumbledore's grave to it's original form.
2: Harry is following Dumbledore's plan for the wand (Assuming that this was the plan and not Snape ending up with the wand), Harry is going to let the wand die with himself naturally, dying undefeated as the wand's true master.
3: he told Dumbledore, who was watching him with enormous affection and admiration
....Excuse me as I go cry from the sheer emotion of this, 'Enormous care and affection?!'
4: The previous master will never have been defeated. That’ll be the end of it.”
Dumbledore nodded. They smiled at each other.
.... Okay lemme just go cry again--
But really, this is probably referencing how Dumbledore's original plan, the shared smile here implies that to me.
Anyways, as for why I don't like how the wand is handled much:
The first thing is that, the wand could be found again, Harry and Voldemort were yelling at each other about that blasted thing in the middle of the great hall, everyone was silent and focusing on that confrontation, someone could feasibly put two and two together and just deface Dumbledore's grave to grab the wand.
Secondly.... I don't think Dumbledore likes the Elder Wand very much. Sure, it was the one hallow that he mastered, it worked for him since he didn't boast of it, because he didn't take it for it's power, but to protect others from it.... But it's still a Deathly Hallow the group of objects that is a part of his obsession, the thing that was a part of why Ariana died, a part of why (Whether or not it's true, Dumbledore blames himself for it at least) the Potters died, and it's why *he *died.
Not only that, look at how he describes the wand:
Maybe a man in a million could unite the Hallows, Harry. I was
fit only to possess the meanest one of them, the least extraordinary.
I was fit to own the Elder Wand, and not to boast of it, and not to
kill with it. I was permitted to tame and to use it, because I took
it, not for gain, but to save others from it.
"The Meanest", "The Least Extraordinary", doesn't really sound like something he likes much, in the end, he was buried with what was his obsession, something that he considers 'Mean', the thing that he won from the duel against Grindelwald, his past lover.
Perhaps it would have been better to search for his original wand, or just bury him with no wand at all.
(*) The thing about the Phoenix Song giving courage to the pure of heart isn't from the main books, but from the fantastic beasts book:
The phoenix is a magnificent, swan-sized, scarlet bird with a long
golden tail, beak, and talons. It nests on mountain peaks and is
found in Egypt, India, and China. The phoenix lives to an
immense age as it can regenerate, bursting into flames when its
body begins to fail and rising again from the ashes as a chick. The
phoenix is a gentle creature that has never been known to kill and
eats only herbs. Like the Diricawl (see page 9), it can disappear
and reappear at will. Phoenix song is magical; it is reputed to
increase the courage of the pure of heart and to strike fear into
the hearts of the impure. Phoenix tears have powerful healing properties.
I’M SICK OF DUMBLEDORE BASHING. I’M SICK OF ITTTTT. ENOUGH ENOUGH ENOUGH!!! MY FAV WHIMSICAL GUY!! WHY CANT PEOPLE UNDERSTAND HIM??! SO MANY FICS THAT HAVE GREAT PREMISES TURN AROUND AND HAVE DUMBLEDORE BASHING AND I’M DONE WITH IT!!! EASILY ONE OF THE MOST INTERESTING CHARACTERS IN THE WHOLE SERIES!!
"Your Precious Little Death Eater Friends:" Student Violence at Hogwarts in the First War
An essay on student violence at Hogwarts during the first war with Voldemort. Written for a charity fundraiser.
A great deal of fanfiction, fanon and fan arguments center around the generation who went to Hogwarts in the seventies, despite the minimal information in the Harry Potter series. My aim here is to examine student violence at Hogwarts during the 1970s. The first war against Voldemort took place from roughly 1971 to late 1981-early 1982, depending on which events are taken to indicate the end of the war. This means that the war spanned the entire time characters like Lily Evans, James Potter and Severus Snape were in school. My argument is that the episodes of violence among the student body over these years were not unrelated or routine school problems, but consisted of an additional front of the war, with violence occurring for political reasons between students affiliated with different political factions of outside society. While there isn't space to get into the details here, in this way the seventies resembled both Tom Riddle's earlier gang and the "nasty incidents" they caused, and Umbridge's Inquisitorial Squad's pursuit of preexisting grudges through politics.
wait, Draco crying pre-sectum sempra WASN'T supposed to make him sympathetic?
This is the perfect opportunity for me to link you to @wisteria-lodge 's excellent post about male crying in the hp books. Basically jkr has a weird attitude towards crying and very rarely are characters allowed to cry (like when they're in great pain or are witnessing a death), especially if they're men. The characters that do cry outside of these select circumstances (and even some that cry when allowed) are portrayed mockingly, at least partly because of jkr's internalised misogyny (which can be seen from space).
Draco's case is not as clear cut as, say, Hagrid's (who only cries for comedic relief) but it's still apparent that jkr did not intend for the bathroom scene to read in a humanising way. I'd say we are supposed to feel like Draco is scared and a little weak and we ought to think of him like a boy and not like the man he boasted of being at the beginning of the book.
jkr has always been very firm in stating that we aren't supposed to feel sorry for Draco so I think she kinda shot herself in the foot there because the scene ended up portraying him in a very sympathetic light to a lot of people.
‘Hagrid,’ said Dumbledore, sounding relieved. 'At last. And where did you get that motorbike?’
'Borrowed it, Professor Dumbledore, sir,’ said the giant, climbing carefully off the motorbike as he spoke. 'Young Sirius Black lent it to me. I’ve got him, sir.’
'No problems, were there?’
'No, sir - house was almost destroyed but I got him out all right before the Muggles started swarming around. He fell asleep as we was flyin’ over Bristol.’
Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall bent forward over the bundle of blankets. Inside, just visible, was a baby boy, fast asleep. Under a tuft of jet-black hair over his forehead they could see a curiously shaped cut, like a bolt of lightning.
'Is that where-?’ whispered Professor McGonagall.
'Yes,’ said Dumbledore. 'He’ll have that scar for ever.’
