New series alert!🎉
It’s hard to write. No one is discounting that. Editing an existing work, however, is a much less daunting task. It’s so easy, in fact, that I do it all the time without thinking about it, so I decided to start a series where I actually put some effort into it. If I could rewrite Harry Potter, this is what I would do.
To start off, my actual plan for this was to do a deep dive into each arc of the series, but with 7 books to the series, ain’t nobody got time for that. Soooo, instead, I’m just going to change my main grievance with the Harry Potter series.
(Yes, the whole concept of this series kind of goes against the nostalgia break I suggested, but I feel like it changes the viewing experience just enough that I don’t feel too guilty.)
So, what bothers me so much about Harry Potter? Well, it’s two-fold, but it can fall under the umbrella of a lack of diversity. And I’m not talking about race. Well, not yet.
Muggles and Muggle-born
For a series about fighting preconceived notions of blood purity, there isn’t a lot of representation for the oppressed groups. here is only one set of regularly appearing Muggles is Harry’s abusive family. (Not the best argument for protecting Muggle life.) One of the main characters is a Muggle-born, but most of the time ,she is written in a way that undermines why that would matter (more on that later). Besides her, most other Muggle-born are background characters.
Imagine how weird that would be in any other context. Like a book about women’s suffrage with only a black widow archetype as the singular woman in the story. (Actually, I’ve seen a couple of bad shows like that.) Not only does it fail to properly immerse you in the issues the characters face, but that one character also becomes the example of their minority.
This lack of representation also adds a level of hypocrisy to the heroes of the story. These people are willing to fight for Muggles and Muggle-born lives, but they never go out of their way to engage with them socially. Sounds a bit like performative activism if you ask me. Well, this is J.K. Rowling’s work we’re talking about.
To fix this problem, let’s throw in some Muggles. It’s as easy as giving the Muggle-obsessed Arthur Weasley a Muggle pastime where he can meet people. Like bowling!…do British Dads do that? Sure, Harry (and the reader by extension) wouldn’t be able to follow the plot very well, but it could be a running theme where Arthur asks Harry and Hermione about things his Muggle friends brought up.
Its storyline could even develop into an indicator of how the wizarding world’s unrest is affecting the Muggle world. As things got more tumultuous, Arthur’s bowling buddies would start to take notice. After all, the Death Eaters were also tormenting muggles for fun, so maybe Arthur’s friends could give faces to the victims of the war.
Another way I would change it would be to put some focus on the parents of muggle-born children. Currently, there is no real indication of how the parents reacted to all the terrible things happening in the wizarding world while their children were in school. It sounds kind of like the children were allowed to have control over what their parents could know (Makes sense in a world structured around magical supremacy.), but you would think the parents would be uncomfortable with their 11-year-old’s new freedoms. My solution for this fits with my fix for the lack of Muggle-born characters.
There are only a handful of Muggle-born characters, most of which are only relevant in the second book. The two who are relevant through the books (Hermione and Lily) have the same personality (incredibly intelligent and top of her class despite being new to magic). Some diversity is clearly needed in this department.
My fix is to give Harry a muggle-born neighbor. Say a new kid moves into the neighborhood, so they don’t have any preconceived notions about Harry. He wouldn’t be the Boy Who Lived or Dudley’s weird cousin. He would just Harry. So I think it would be cool if he got to connect with someone solely on the merit of his character. Maybe Harry could start out as their babysitter to get away from his family, and then in a later book, the kid gets a letter to Hogwarts. Harry being a mentor to the young Muggle-born going to Hogwarts for the first time. Bonus points if the Muggle-born is in a different house than Harry.
Since we’re talking about giving Harry more friends, let’s give Hermione some too. Something I didn’t like about Harry Potter is how Muggle-raised people just seem to abandon that side of their life after going to Hogwarts, and Hermione’s no exception. So what I’m about to suggest is make that decision a little more challenging. If Hermione had muggle friends, then there might be a narrative about how hard it is for Hermione to choose which world she will live in after graduation.
Sirius Black Should Have Been Black
Jk. But, seriously. Pure-bloods shouldn’t just be white. Rowling states that Pure-blood families are inbred to maintain blood purity, but why marry your cousin-uncle when you could marry a foreigner who fulfills the same purpose. That way, Pure-bloods could keep the magic-blood strong while keeping the genetic abnormalities at bay.
I get this is supposed to be an allegory for eugenics and white supremacy movements, but the rules of Rowling’s world don’t work that way. It doesn’t matter where you are from: magic is magic. So, it would make a whole lot of sense for Pure-blood wizards to travel overseas to find a proper match. (Especially since such trips would be made astronomically easier with magic.) Also, Pure-blood families should have more children to ensure there are enough of them to stick around.
When They Did It Right
Interestingly enough, the Fantastic Beasts movies do fix the lack of Muggles by including the character Jacob Kowalski. Jacob had to deal with suddenly being thrust into a magical world where he falls in love with a witch and helps to save the day. That man was my favorite part of the movie and my favorite character in the whole franchise. If only the series could have more characters like Jacob Kowalski, then the series would go from good to great in my book.
That’s all I have for now. Honestly, this turned out to longer than I expected. Future parts of this series will probably be don’t arc-by-arc to keep it manageable. But anyway, that’s how I would rewrite Harry Potter.
I Think Thinks 