The Harry Potter Series

[Malle Babbe]

Put me on the Harry/Luna train as well. I harbor no malice towards Ginny, but when I was reading Order of the Pheonix, where Harry spends more time than usual being blown off and misunderstood by damn near everyone in the Wizarding world, Luna's friendship and help to Harry got me thinking that they would be a great couple.

Harry had two big issues in trying to make his way in the wizarding world; having no exposure to it in his childhood and being left to his own devices to get his feet under him when he started Hogwart's; and the baggage that comes with being known as The Boy Who Lived, rather than Harry Potter, the kid from Little Whinging. That, and he got a lot of drama from adults in the wizarding world who didn't think much of Dumbledore, and used Harry as a safer target for their resentment.

Luna related to him as just a fellow student going through a very tough time; granted, she is a bit of a space cadet, but she also related to Harry as just Harry.

[dwanollah]

Luna related to him as just a fellow student going through a very tough time; granted, she is a bit of a space cadet, but she also related to Harry as just Harry.

That's it exactly for me. They seemed more like equals, too, whereas with Ginny, there was the whole "little girl with a crush" history, which made things seem a little unbalanced by comparison.

[incognito]

I've been rereading the series (not in one go), and I'm just popping in to say that I think that Quidditch is the dumbest 'sport' ever, and that Rowling must have been on something when she came up with the rules. Particular the one about the Snitch being worth 150 points. IMO, Quidditch was simply another way to make Harry the most important person in yet another facet of the wizarding world (since the Seeker is the most important position on the team, the game results frequently depend on the Seeker's shoulders, etc.). But why? I mean, he was already the Boy Who Lived, blah blah blah, which makes him plenty important enough... why did JK Rowling feel the need to come up with something as contrived as Quidditch?

Also, here's a completely random question. In the Deathly Hallows, Hermione comes up with that Undetectable Extension Charm. Which seems neat, but wouldn't all that stuff still weigh a lot? Harry notices that when Hermione shakes the bag, it sounds like a cargo hold, so it doesn't sound like the items are losing mass or volume... how can Hermione carry the bag around so easily?

[ikmccall]

Love, love, love the Harry Potter books ---- except for Quidditch. Doesn't interest me at all, bores me, in fact. How can Hermione carry the bag so easily? Magic, maybe? ; )

[MissPandora]

I love Quidditch! I hated that we didn't get to see the World Cup match in GoF.

[Auroranorth]

Aug 3, 2009 10:38:23 GMT -4 Mutagen said:

As far as Harry goes, I never strongly shipped him with anyone. I think, this might sound really weird, but my first pass through the books I felt really maternal towards him. The mirror of Erised and the ending of Goblet of Fire made me think stuff like, "I want to take care of this poor kid and feed him hot chocolate" more than anything girlfriend-related. So when he finally ended up with Ginny, I was like "Sure, OK, whatever."

I think Harry needed about 10 years of therapy, not a girlfriend.

Ginny's crush on Harry always seemed like a reason why he wouldn't be interested in her- he doesn't like his fame and I felt like she was into him for that, at least in the beginning.

[susyhomewrecker]

Maybe she was, but I actually had a different interpretation--I don't think it's unusual for younger children form crushes on their older siblings' friends. Ginny probably hadn't been around many boys who weren't her brothers until she met Harry. The fact that he was "famous" Harry Potter was probably something Ginny saw as an obstacle, because someone that important would never notice her. (Or something. It's been ages since I read the books.)

[Deleted]

Regarding quidditch, the British Schoolboy genre always has a storyline around sports. Rugby, cricket, soccer, or rowing wouldn't have made a lot of sense in the wizard world since wizards seem to be pretty clueless about anything Muggles do. Quidditch works in that way. Making Harry a great seeker was a way of making him feel part of the wizard world. He wanted to return to Hogwarts every year to play. Since he was written as a mediocre student, it makes sense to give him something magic that would excite him.

[incognito]

Oct 2, 2009 14:08:13 GMT -4 @dguzpy said:

Regarding quidditch, the British Schoolboy genre always has a storyline around sports. Rugby, cricket, soccer, or rowing wouldn't have made a lot of sense in the wizard world since wizards seem to be pretty clueless about anything Muggles do. Quidditch works in that way. Making Harry a great seeker was a way of making him feel part of the wizard world. He wanted to return to Hogwarts every year to play. Since he was written as a mediocre student, it makes sense to give him something magic that would excite him.

Rowling could have written Harry as a good Seeker without having that asinine (IMO) rule about catching the Snitch being worth 150 points. That makes most of the rest of the game useless, unless you have some sort of blowout like in the World Cup. I just didn't like how it seemed like a transparent ruse to make Harry the most important person in the game, because the 150 points pretty much guaranteed that everything rested on his shoulders.

Another minor quibble I had...the whole physics aspect of flying on broomsticks. Right now I'm rereading Prisoner of Azkaban, and I got to the point where Harry is oohing and aahing over the Firebolt. Apparently you can go up to 150 miles on that particular model (IIRC, the excerpt says accelerate from 0 - 150 in a matter of seconds). But who would actually go that fast? At that sort of speed, you would be blown clear off your broomstick. It doesn't even have to be that fast, either; at even half that speed, people should have trouble holding on. Especially when playing Quidditch, since a lot of the times the players are only holding on with one hand. Maybe there's some sort of enchantment or charm to keep you from flying off, but Rowling never addressed that. I remember that sort of thing stuck out to me when I was reading the books for the first time, i.e. how do wizard manage to keep from being blown off their broomsticks? I always got the feeling that Rowling was using these broomsticks as some sort of substitute for fast racing cars (like the stuff with the Firebolt acceleration), and conveniently forgot that, in a car at least, you're in a vacuum so you don't have to worry about being thrown against the wind.

If you've ridden in a roller coaster before, you know how the speed and acceleration basically slams you against the back of the car (at times I've almost blacked out). I imagine that you'd get that same sort of pressure riding on a fast broomstick.

I don't even know why that bothers me...physics was always my worst subject in high school, lol.

[Deleted]

Oh, I agree, quidditch scoring makes no sense. None at all.

Wizard physics is very strange. Apparently, wizards are very tough. They can fall from extreme heights and suffer nothing worse than a broken arm. They can fly extremely high at night and don't seem to get cold. The broomsticks in the movies have a footrest/stirrup thing that probably helps with steering and allows the rider to stay on better. The broom is more akin to riding a racing motorcycle than driving a car, but it seems likely that they're not as affected by physics as regular humans are.