HP: Prisoner of Azkaban, HP: Order of the Phoenix, HP: Half-Blood Prince
Burn Donate to a used book store: Half-Blood Prince, I suppose. If I have to give up something in this series that was my childhood, it’s Dumbledore putting on his Wise-Old-Wizard’s-Cap and setting up Harry for death, and the adolescent high-spirited fumblings of kids in spiteful teenage love.
Read: Prisoner of Azkaban.
Rewrite: Order of the Phoenix is my unabashed favorite of the Potter books. I can’t stand Harry and his ALL CAPS ANGST for most of it, but Dumbledore’s Army is my patronus, what can I say. They are my happy thought.
So, if I was to rewrite it, I’d want more.
More Fred and George being mentors in mischief, in creativity, and in kindness.
More of Ginny and Luna’s blooming friendship. More of Ginny as a steady, smirking shock to Harry, to the reader, and to everyone inbetween— the last time we saw much of her, Ginny was a pale and weeping wreck on the Chamber floor. Now she’s flinging Bat Bogey Hexes and laughing at boys over Butterbeer.
Ginny names Dumbledore’s Army for the Ministry’s greatest fear, because she knows about fear, this girl with her fire hair and iron bones. I don’t want Harry gaping at her beauty. I want him gaping at her strength.
More Hermione befriending Ginny, these two tough and underestimated young women, their violence and their warmth, their jealousies and their anxieties and their generosities. More Hermione learning to see that Luna’s intelligence, just because it doesn’t run in straight lines or careful notes, is just as bright and glorious as her own.
(I love the Golden Trio, I do, but I want this one, too: these three girls and their varied strengths, the way they spend so much time underestimating each other and themselves, and then learn better. It makes them better, all of them, to build this respect and camaraderie between them).
More of Neville refusing to back down. More of this gawky boy with his learning disabilities and clumsy fingers, the way he pulls himself, handhold by shaky handhold, into a place where he can stand his own against Death Eaters by the end of the book.
More of Marietta Edgecombe, Cho Chang’s (eventually traitorous) friend. More of her uncertainty, her letters from home about how the Ministry is getting worse and worse. More of how Marietta was living in this new age of fear, not just in these school hallways, but in her sisters’ letters about Mom crying, her mother’s tense, tightly-cheerful Floo messages. When Umbrage called Marietta into her office that last time, the toad used her mother’s name and giggled. More of the way Marietta wasn’t sleeping through the nights, the way she was torn between loyalty to her schoolfriends and loyalty to her family. More of how her choice was not petty—it was not brave, but it was not petty. It was a sixteen year old girl put up against selfish people with power.
Less of Harry angsting, and more of Harry mentoring: telling people off for teasing Luna, and feeling an odd, bursting pride weeks later when Harry sees those old bullies jumping furiously to her defense when some civilian in the Hogwarts hallways makes fun of Luna’s latest ornament.
More of Harry mentoring: having to learn how to deal with other people’s egos, with having to trust people, having to learn about strengths other than his own.
More of Harry teaching the Creevy brothers about battle magic, but somehow learning photography tricks from them, and slowly slowly falling into a deep respect for these two boys who are always on the wrong side of the bullies, who manage to stay bright, stay awed, stay loyal to each other in a world that sometimes hates them for who they are; more of the Creevy brothers’ hero-worship of the Boy Who Lived fading into something quieter and more real as they get to know this stubborn, rash fool who chooses again and again to save lives at the expense of his.
More of Ginny taking Harry aside and saying you have to trust somebody, you stupid boy. You have to talk to somebody. You’re going to explode, all that stuff inside you, if you don’t. And don’t you even try to tell me I can’t understand what you’re going through.
Ginny scoffs. Luna, of course.
More Ron the chessmaster. More focus on the reasons this redhead boy deserves (and he does deserve) to be the final lynchpin in our Golden Trio. The boy’s a master strategist, and we’re building an army, after all.
More Slytherins in the DA: Muggleborns whose drive, ambition, and loyalty gave them the option of Slytherin, and whose stubborn refusal to let this bigoted world deny any part of themselves actually put them in the House. Non-Muggleborns, too, snakes who shed skin and shed skin but always stay the same at their core, who love their friends and hate their enemies, who just want to open bakeries and become Aurors and fall in love. These are the ones who set up complex hexes in the Slytherin common room to make it so that every time someone says a slur, the word explodes in their mouth.
More Ravenclaws in the DA (smarts and focus, and smarts and distractability; thoughtfulness and enthusiasm), more Hufflepuffs (hard work and loyal hearts, stubborn, stubborn souls, as steady and as surprising as the castle itself), yes, but give me some Slytherins dear wizard god.
(ask box (x), if anyone else wants to play)
