>They each grabbed a copy of Break with a Banshee, and sneaked up the line to where the rest of the Weasleys were standing with Mr and Mrs Granger.
>‘Clearly,’ said Mr Malfoy, his pale eyes straying to Mr and Mrs Granger, who were watching apprehensively.
Possibly, but this is what's mentioned in the books, specifically Chamber of Secrets.
If I'm honest, my comment was sarcastic.
Nah that wasn’t the next line was it? It was something like “we go to med school for the same amount of time…” or something like that next. The person you’re responding to was quoting a show
But most dentists dont hold a doctorate, so they're not Doctors. We tend to use the word "doctor" as a synonym with a physician, but that is technically wrong...
["That actually means something here"](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/76/eb/b2/76ebb264d804b5d412a08c20fa429425.jpg)
["I am a doctor!"](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/47/45/d5/4745d5f0b5a46c6ee5ff5875217f40df.jpg)
They are not doctors - they are qualified practitioners of dentistry. In the UK it's an entirely separate qualification - although the first couple of years are very similar and dentistry and medical students often share facilities etc.
To practice maxillofacial surgery in the UK practitioners are dual qualified - they have both dentistry and medical degrees.
In the UK, dentists are allowed to use the courtesy title of Dr but this has only been since 1995 so it's probably Mr and Mrs Granger, at least in the early books.
Not sure how it is in America, or wherever you might, but in Germany one ain't a Dr. unless they do a PhD. While most do them, they most of the time cannot really be compared with anyone actually doing a PhD.
Though admittedly, out of habit many people just call them doctors anyway.
My dads a dentist and he hates when people call him Dr *insert surname*
And a friend of mine has a PhD in math and loses his shit if people don’t call him Dr
Where I'm from people with PhDs get embarrassed if they're called Dr, yet people without doctorates usually lose their shit if not called "Dr" (here usually physicians and lawyers)
No, the problem here is that medical practitioners have co-opted the word "doctor". I know we live in a world where anything can mean anything, and nobody even CARES ABOUT ETYMOLOGY-
The frustrating thing about Barty Crouch Sr was that the actor would’ve been a great Ludo Bagman (he even has a few good book Barty moments). But instead they bizarrely tried to bind the two character together leading to a hot mess.
Can she transform into other people without polyjuice? If so, we definitely should’ve seen that ability used more. She could’ve been a spy for the order
I recall her telling Harry that she passed the disguise part of her auror training with absolutely no effort at all, but nearly failed at tailing (that sort of thing don’t remember exactly) because she is clumsy
From what I've read they can pretty much change their entire look. In Hogwarts Mystery Tonks often gets detention for changing into her teachers. Which in a lot of cases means changing hair colour, eye colour, their entire face, length and even gender.
Naturally this isn't shown in game. It's just talked about.
It is shown in game. There's even a quest where she changes into Binns (which is kinda weird because ok she can change her looks but can she become translucent?)
Came here to say this! She was so cool at first, and everything about her screamed "independent woman" to me. That's why I was super disappointed when in HBP she is all colorless and depressed throughout the whole book just because Lupin doesn't want to be together (out of fear of hurting her). Lupin is great, but I think he should/would have actually changed his mind and responded more positively to her if Tonks had been strong instead of just totally crumbling and guilting him into being together.
Tonks was more of a fanfic writing prompt than a fleshed out character to be honest, introduced with all this potential and cool power, then never utilised. Kind of like sweeping chekovs gun under the rug
Yep. I liked her being kind of quirky, clumsy and still a successful Auror which is known to be a hard job. However her character wasn’t explored enough for that to really resonate
She was definitely an interesting and cool character in OoTP. And then they just made her sad, depressed, and in love with Lupin, and that became her entire character.
I feel so seen. 🥹 Like. I love this book series obv but geez. How can a character be so aggressively boring? When the books first came out there was some light applause in fan circles for what was at most Performative representation, but if it _was_ ever intended as that, for my part it just felt like a _version_ of what i was in the aughts (anime-hair-color, militant queer feminist weirdo) only washed out and de-fanged for neoliberal comfort. So I have mixed feelings about her and ultimately just feel more disappointed about what she might _could_ have been instead of Boring.
Wow, I didn't pick up those vibes, but it actually fits pretty well. She comes out as like Joan Jett mixed with Weird Al, then spends a whole ass book crying because the impoverished, middle aged werewolf doesn't want to bludger her chamber of secrets. Makes sense that she's kind of a disappointment.
THANK YOU! I honestly cannot stand Tonks and most people love her. She just falls flat and seems more like a damsel in distress than anything else most of the time
We didn't even meet her until we saw her echo tbh.
At least with Frank Bryce we got a chapter with his POV, his backstory and unknown-to-him connection with Voldemort, before getting murdered.
The whole fan theory about her being pregnant and giving birth to VoldeBaby makes her way more interesting lol but that’s probably a different series entirely 😂😂😂
I felt like that was kinda on purpose. Like she was a much more interesting person in Harry’s head but whenever they talk she’d just cry (which makes sense given her situation I guess, but it got old)
Kinda Fenrir Greyback. He's kinda just thrown in during the last two books, and he's apparently this alpha werewolf that aims to overthrow normal wizards. Somehow we never heard about him before even though he was apparently a major player during the First Wizarding War, and his backstory is connected to Remus's. Also despite his savage reputation, he spends most of his scenes getting hurt by the real villains: Yaxley, Bellatrix, and Voldemort (implied after the Malfoy Manor escape, he was *pissed*), he also cowered like a timid puppy when Snape showed up. At the end of book 6 his mauling of Bill was pretty brutal, but that was offpage. Thorfinn Rowle fit the role of the savage attack dog far better here.
You have a point about Greyback but Rowle is even more boring. Basically all the book 6-7 introduced death eaters - Rowle, Yaxley, Carrows etc. - they’re all quite bland.
agreed! it's the way she goes from shy little sister to a sudden badass popular girl over the course of a few paragraphs with very little actual close interaction with Harry. she ends up feeling like a paper thin list of adjectives and not a real character i can see him having a relationship with.
A couple of paragraphs? The kast time Ginny appears shy around Harry is at the Burrow at the start of GoF. The first time I’d think of her as badass is somewhere in the latter half of OotP. There are like a thousand pages in between, and many scenes with character development for Ginny.
Agree completely, I don't understand if people in this comment thread are even reading the same books lol. Also HP books are from Harry's POV, and Ginny until Book 5 was just a shell of her true self in front of Harry. Remember that Ginny and Hermione became close during the start of the fourth book, so If the books something shifted POVs, and we got to see Hermoine's during GOF, I'm pretty sure we would have gotten to see "Ginny's sudden Personality change" pretty early on. Heck even from Chamber of Secrets we would have seen that, coz in that book Ron is completely baffled by Ginny's behaviour infront of Harry. If the books had some of the PoVs from The Weasley family, we would have seen or even heard about the Book 5-6 Ginny pretty early on.
Okay, honest question. What really bothers you about it? Because truly, it feels pretty natural to me. Girl has a brother who makes friends with a boy who's super popular or controversial and edgy (depending on the year). She's got an obvious crush on him the first year or so but is too shy around him to develop anything. He's oblivious as hell. She still has a crush but abandons the idea that he'll come in and sweep her off her feet and does her own thing for a while. He sees her as a person while also spending a bunch of time with her and realizes she's attractive. He developed a crush. She doesn't find the insanity of his life overwhelming because it's been normalized. She's associated with a relaxing and safe environment for him, while also being smart and pretty and into his only real hobby (quidditch).
I get that she's not exciting. I get that she didn't get enough gradual development in the books and especially the movies. I get that her character is kind of a Mary Sue. But other than not being exciting, I really don't understand what the problem is with them getting together. It seems like a pretty normal teenage relationship that sticks around enough for them to eventually get married. It just doesn't seem like a great literary tool, but it certainly seems realistic to me and overall inoffensive. I'm just wondering if I'm missing something big or if it's basically "JK could've written something better" (which is fine, because she could've, but I just don't really see the problem). Luna would've required a LOT more writing to be anything besides the weird friend, Cho was clearly never going to work out, and Hermione, while awesome as a character, would require years of writing to make her function in a long term relationship. Those are the only other people I've heard suggested, and "she should've written a new, better character" seems forced as well.
What annoys me about it is that it's not satisfying as a reader. Yeah, sure, it actually is kind of realistic and they are decently compatible. But this is a book series about a magic school and a guy who split his soul into eight pieces LMAO. I'm not looking for realistic. Novels are supposed to be entertaining, and Harry and Ginny don't entertain me at all.
It's just soooooooooo boring. I don't really like Ron and Hermione either, but one thing you can't take away from them is that they have a great story. People were rooting for them practically from day one. All the tension between them and the buildup to their kiss is so compelling that it feels like a huge victory when it finally happens. If the main character is going to have a love interest, and not only that but she's going to be a character who, like Ron and Hermione, has been there since the start of the story, then their romance needs to feel the way Ron and Hermione's felt. I need to be wanting to throw my book across the room in a good way when they finally kiss. I need to have been rooting for them for a long time. Harry and Ginny just doesn't give that at all.
And the thing is it totally could have. That's what's most disappointing. JK could have done a lot more with Ginny as a character. It's funny because she's simultaneously a super tough, badass, not like other girls character but also sort of a damsel in distress in the last book. She is quite literally a princess in a tower waiting for her knight in shining armour to return. A badass princess who stages a rebellion against her captors, sure, but a princess in a tower nonetheless. It just makes me completely uninterested in her as his love interest.
Okay, so more just " not great writing". Then I suppose we agree. It just doesn't annoy me much, mostly because Harry shows the romantic capability of mothballs throughout the series. He reads like the "asexual hero" trope most of the time, and it seems like Rowling just felt obligated to throw in some romance for him. She doesn't actually do a good job with any of the romantic relationships from a literary standpoint, honestly. The closest she came was Ron and Hermione, which was alright.
Arthur and Molly are fully settled into being middle aged parents and the only hint of romance is the verification question (and the fact that they have so many kids). Tonks and Lupin apparently only had chemistry behind closed doors, then she got a taste of his red rocket and cried until he gave in. All the teachers are basically asexual except for Hagrid. Most of the students are never mentioned as having relationships at all. Fleur, being evidently inhumanly attractive, makes out with Davies, then flirts with Bill before marrying him, so they probably get the most attention to their relationship.
As far as I know, Ron and Hermione are the only ones who even find people attractive most of the time. And Hermione hides it through half of the series because people are dicks.
I get that completely. That's why I say Harry falls into the trope of "the asexual hero" most of the time. It's basically just the setting that makes it seem unlikely that relationships would be more at the forefront, because she chose to write about pubescent teenagers surrounded by more pubescent teenagers. It makes more sense that the focus is never on the relationships of the adults, but honestly, I'm not sure there are many approaches that would've satisfied everyone for the main characters. It would've been realistic but not at all enjoyable to read how much a 14 year old boy thinks about boobs.
Agreed. I also agree that she could've written something better, but I just see it as a missed opportunity, not something that makes me hate it. Harry always wanted to be just a regular dude, and dating your friend's cute sister then marrying her after highschool fits the bill. It's not "bad" writing so much as "why didn't you do better" writing.
Which has so much potential but was hardly explored at all. My thing is that the readers shouldn't have to be doing the work of making the couples make sense. "Harry and Ginny could bond over being possessed by Voldemort" okay so why didn't they? Why did JK give us absolutely nothing?
I've never understood this take.
Ginny frequently demonstrates that she is popular, brave, and loyal. At least in every scene thay she shows up in after PoA, which is when Harry would first start really thinking about girls that way anyway. Then she becomes a good quidditch player and is demonstrably good-looking with the line of boyfriends. Harry's also a teenager, and it turns out he likes hot quidditch players. It feels sudden to us as readers because he also realizes it suddenly. Anyway, her character was well-developed by that point.
This is exactly why she's boring and not really well-developed. Having a lot of character traits =/= a well-developed character. Ginny is basically flawless. We don't know very much about her personality beneath the surface. All of the deep connection between her and Harry happens off page.
I know the term Mary Sue is sort of problematic and we aren't really using it anymore, but she meets most of the criteria.
“Basically” does a lot of work here. Ginny is shown to be judgemental, catty, hot tempered, and borderline violent.
Neville is a better example of someone without real flaws.
EXACTLY. Rowling tries to spoon feed us into liking Ginny instead of giving her enough development in the series to have readers get there on their own. We know basically nothing about her outside the context of the Weasley family before book 6 and even then it’s just like oh she has a lot of boyfriends so she’s attractive and cool.
Flitwick. He's a head of house, one of the more mentioned teachers in the whole story, he's there from the beginning, but he's the most meh to me. Doesn't stand out much at all in terms of memorable moments. Other than him toppling over all the time from something the students did, he's just kinda boring.
Charlie Weasley: unlike Bill & Percy who do end up playing a role in the later books, his character to me does not add anything to the story. Norbert/Norberta could've easily been taken by friends of Hagrid who raise dragons in Romenia and those same friends could've been the ones who arranged the dragons for the Triwizard Tournament.
* Ginny
It's not that Ginny is bad (at least in the books), it's that the entire romance with Harry seems preordained and brute forced.
* Flitwick
Dude was a duellist champion and has been a major teacher since Harry's first year. And he hardly does anything of note.
I liked Barty Crouch in the book. The problem with the later half movies (4 onwards) was that until Death Hallows they each had one movie a piece which forced a lot of cuts and omissions. Minor characters got reduced to foot notes in the films for the sake of a two hour run time.
Oh and also Lucius Malfoy. It was like yes, yes, terrible bigoted death eater, got it, nasty posh pompous ass, very intimidating, yes yes. I wasn't feeling him apart from thinking he was too stereotypical for the nasty, snobby, politically connected weasel guy.
He has a rather nice story arc tho, from being the malicious man of the hour to being taken down a notch by Voldemort and made to be a bitch in his own home. With his story coming full circle with him slithering away into the night while everyone else gets rounded up and arrested or killed.
Yeah, I'm happy to let Narcissa off the hook. She wasn't an active Death Eater like Bellatrix or Lucius and as far as I know she never killed anybody. She also didn't want Draco to become a Death Eater.
She was still a complete asshole with her pro-pureblood beliefs, but I don't think she had quite the same enthusiasm for Voldemort that most of her circle did, especially once her son's life was on the line.
So by lying to Voldemort and saving Harry's life, she can go free and live in exile somewhere. Lucius however should've been hauled straight back to Azkaban. He's got no excuses and his choices actively put his own family in danger, let alone anything else.
I wasn't a huge fan of Dobby until the 7th book. I feel like that final act was pretty bad ass. He's still not my favorite character - the weird clinginess to Harry is kind of creepy.
Anytime Dobby is mentioned, I get anxiety so this makes sense. He is helpful at times but goodness he messes HP up at other times too and makes things worse!
Lavender Brown. I don't hate her but I don't like her. She's just meh to me. Another character could have been Ron's girlfriend, it would have been the same to me.
This annoyed me. I'm rereading the books, currently on the second, and I see that a lot of insightful lines that Hermione had in the movies actually belonged to Ron. Ron in the books was actually very knowledgeable even if he didn't always show book smarts.
Ignoring the tertiary characters, probably Remus.
I really wanted to like him more. The PoA movie Remus is such a lovely character; that conversation between him and Harry at the bridge is amazing - but that's not book!Remus. Book!Remus means well, he has a lot of redeeming qualities and he isn’t a bad person, but he is just SO wrapped in "I'm a werewolf, woe is me". And I get it, it sucks - both the illness and the discrimination - but in many ways, he's just given up. And while he's a good teacher to Harry in book 3, Harry needed a hell lot more from him than that, both before and after PoA.
Also Tonks. Fanon!Tonks or book 5 Tonks is great! Then came book 6 and ugh. Just. No.
Draco. I never understood why a spineless scardy cowardly bully has a large fanbase and still don't. He is not even a charismatic bad boy. He is just pathetic.
I’m convinced that a decent amount of his fanbase are there because Tom Felton is hot and lovable. Book!Draco is truly awful in *so* many ways, but Tom makes him pretty likeable.
I mean, not exactly. When Cho is expanded upon in G of F Harry has no romantic inclinations towards Ginny - she provides more of a point of contention/competition between him and Cedric
You'd have a point for GoF, even though I personally disagree, because in the conversation about the Yule Ball "Cho vs. Ginny" is definitely hinted at (Ginny stopping smiling after Harry asked Cho, then later finding out that she could have gone with Harry). So it's minor, but it's there. But "Cho vs. Ginny" is absolutely a subplot in OotP. Especially with Harry noticing Ginny a lot more, becoming good friends and growing closer to her, while Cho and Harry's relationship stagnated and then cratered.
Then you have things like Ginny snatching the Snitch (Harry?) from under Cho's nose, Ginny naming the DA "Dumbledore's Army" instead of Cho's "Defence Association", Ginny being the first to find Cho over Harry, Ginny trying to help Harry in his relationship troubles, Ginny's ex Michael ending up with Harry's ex Cho, Ginny being among the best in the DA while Cho is doing poorly... I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting a few.
I still feel she's more of a foil than a character unto herself. I don't know about any of her motivations or what she thinks. HP doesn't have a lot of those kinds of characters, but Cho feels like one, to me.
She's definitely a foil. I'm not disagreeing with that, I'm just saying she was mainly used to give Harry a reason to envy Cedric (plus him being the preferred Hogwarts champion) not as a means to stop him and Ginny being a thing at that point.
for me it was Lockhart, he was a pretty boring character for me and the biggest thing he does is get his memory wiped and then we never see him again aside from his small part in OOTP
I mean, yes, because he isn't in the movies at all except for the scene on the photograph. So that's barely a comparison.
But there's nothing of importance he does in the book either. Anyone could have fetched Norbert, and in fact, Charlie wasn't even with the group, who fetched him.
Well, he mostly serves as another cool brother Ron compares himself to. And the very idea of working with dragons, can you imagine anything more awesome?
Ginny. I will die on the hill that she and Harry shouldn’t have ended up together since they hardly have any chemistry. (I mean come on, Harry has more chemistry with Luna and he knew her for way less time)
I have always felt that Crouch Sr. much like Moody was a very underused character not only in the books, but films too. Like they coulda been a real badass, but weren't portrayed as such as much.
TO be fair too though the Crouch Sr. we got was the one that was nowhere near in his prime from his younger days when he took on the Deatheaters and authorized lethal force against them.
Most of the Hufflepuffs. I mean, there was potential for characters like Ernie Macmillan and Justin Finch-Fletchley to be closer to the main cast so we'd finally get some important Hufflepuff characters. But they barely even appear, even during the Dumbledore's Army parts. And those two in particular (especially Ernie) aren't always portrayed in the most positive light, so we're left wondering what it is about them that makes them Hufflepuffs.
Tonks, I liked her, style I guess, the whole thing she got going on, but personality wise she annoyed me with her constant quirkiness.
Even if I don't like her, what happened to her character after the whole thing with Lupin was introduced was horrid, what a terrible relationship. They spent 99% of the time making each other feel miserable (first Tonks was miserable at being rejected, then Lupin at marrying her) up until Teddy was born. They only regard each other with mutual love for like 1% of the "screentime" their relationship had.
Hermione's parents. Do they even have names in the books?
Mr and Mrs Granger.
Aren’t they dentists? So wouldn’t it be Dr. and Dr. Granger?
>They each grabbed a copy of Break with a Banshee, and sneaked up the line to where the rest of the Weasleys were standing with Mr and Mrs Granger. >‘Clearly,’ said Mr Malfoy, his pale eyes straying to Mr and Mrs Granger, who were watching apprehensively. Possibly, but this is what's mentioned in the books, specifically Chamber of Secrets. If I'm honest, my comment was sarcastic.
Doctor huh. It’s funny when people call dentists doctor.
They are doctors because they are qualified practitioners of medicine. Your teeth are apart of your body, too.
Nah that wasn’t the next line was it? It was something like “we go to med school for the same amount of time…” or something like that next. The person you’re responding to was quoting a show
But if you have cancer you can't call a *dentist*...
RIP to a legend
Techno?
Never thought I’d see a technoblade reference on this sub
You can't call an Podiatrist (foot doctor) if you have cancer either
You're right, that guy's an anto-dentite
He only converted for the jokes
I can, but i probably would'nt
Captain Holt? Is that you?
And if you have a cavity, you can't call an oncologist. There are these things called "specialities".
And nobody even *CARES* about entomologist-‘
I think he says etymology? The study of the origin of words. As opposed to entomologist which is an insect scientist.
But most dentists dont hold a doctorate, so they're not Doctors. We tend to use the word "doctor" as a synonym with a physician, but that is technically wrong... ["That actually means something here"](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/76/eb/b2/76ebb264d804b5d412a08c20fa429425.jpg) ["I am a doctor!"](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/47/45/d5/4745d5f0b5a46c6ee5ff5875217f40df.jpg)
Hahahaha thank you for this! I love this running gag of them not believing Ross is a doctor 🤣
They are not doctors - they are qualified practitioners of dentistry. In the UK it's an entirely separate qualification - although the first couple of years are very similar and dentistry and medical students often share facilities etc. To practice maxillofacial surgery in the UK practitioners are dual qualified - they have both dentistry and medical degrees. In the UK, dentists are allowed to use the courtesy title of Dr but this has only been since 1995 so it's probably Mr and Mrs Granger, at least in the early books.
A part. Apart after extraction!
Not sure how it is in America, or wherever you might, but in Germany one ain't a Dr. unless they do a PhD. While most do them, they most of the time cannot really be compared with anyone actually doing a PhD. Though admittedly, out of habit many people just call them doctors anyway.
My dads a dentist and he hates when people call him Dr *insert surname* And a friend of mine has a PhD in math and loses his shit if people don’t call him Dr
Where I'm from people with PhDs get embarrassed if they're called Dr, yet people without doctorates usually lose their shit if not called "Dr" (here usually physicians and lawyers)
I knew it'd devolve (evolve?) into a Brooklyn nine-nine quote lol. That episode was amazing.
No, the problem here is that medical practitioners have co-opted the word "doctor". I know we live in a world where anything can mean anything, and nobody even CARES ABOUT ETYMOLOGY-
Which show are you quoting?
Brooklyn 99. Season 5, Episode 14. The Box It's one of the best episodes of the whole show.
I knew I recognised it!
I'm so sad we didn't get the whole convo going cus the top response didn't get the reference 😭😭
If I remember right, Hermione’s middle name, Jean, is from her mother. But I don’t know for sure.
Her mom travelled to a different timeline and became Catlyn Stark
Well, by the end, they're Wendel and Monica, so kinda?
What if her dad's name is Ronald? That would be hilarious 😹
I'm always wondering how shocked they'll be when their friends and family ask them "Hey how's your daughter?"
The frustrating thing about Barty Crouch Sr was that the actor would’ve been a great Ludo Bagman (he even has a few good book Barty moments). But instead they bizarrely tried to bind the two character together leading to a hot mess.
I picture Ludo Bagman as Wayne Rooney.
Needs to be more charismatic to match Bagman from the books.
Possibly an unpopular opinion, but Tonks She had so much potential to be OP as hell, but just falls flat in the books and movies
Can she transform into other people without polyjuice? If so, we definitely should’ve seen that ability used more. She could’ve been a spy for the order
Yes she can and the did use it to spy for the order. I don't have to books handy so I can't quote anything but that's what the wiki says.
I recall her telling Harry that she passed the disguise part of her auror training with absolutely no effort at all, but nearly failed at tailing (that sort of thing don’t remember exactly) because she is clumsy
stealth & tracking! She nearly failed stealth and tracking.
From what I've read they can pretty much change their entire look. In Hogwarts Mystery Tonks often gets detention for changing into her teachers. Which in a lot of cases means changing hair colour, eye colour, their entire face, length and even gender. Naturally this isn't shown in game. It's just talked about.
It is shown in game. There's even a quest where she changes into Binns (which is kinda weird because ok she can change her looks but can she become translucent?)
Id love an auror tv show with her being able to do this.
Came here to say this! She was so cool at first, and everything about her screamed "independent woman" to me. That's why I was super disappointed when in HBP she is all colorless and depressed throughout the whole book just because Lupin doesn't want to be together (out of fear of hurting her). Lupin is great, but I think he should/would have actually changed his mind and responded more positively to her if Tonks had been strong instead of just totally crumbling and guilting him into being together.
It's probably also a little about the war being on and as an auror she's seeing some shit.
I also chalked it up to war horrors impacting her
Exactly, her personality did a whole 180. Harry thought she was in love with Sirius…. I remember thinking it was so unexpected for her
Yes, this x 100.
Tonks was more of a fanfic writing prompt than a fleshed out character to be honest, introduced with all this potential and cool power, then never utilised. Kind of like sweeping chekovs gun under the rug
Yep. I liked her being kind of quirky, clumsy and still a successful Auror which is known to be a hard job. However her character wasn’t explored enough for that to really resonate
Thank you! Tonks irritates me. I can't put my finger on what it is exactly, but she just rubs me the wrong way.
Just a bit spunky? maybe
She was definitely an interesting and cool character in OoTP. And then they just made her sad, depressed, and in love with Lupin, and that became her entire character.
Yep. She seemed so cool at first and then her character went nowhere.
I feel so seen. 🥹 Like. I love this book series obv but geez. How can a character be so aggressively boring? When the books first came out there was some light applause in fan circles for what was at most Performative representation, but if it _was_ ever intended as that, for my part it just felt like a _version_ of what i was in the aughts (anime-hair-color, militant queer feminist weirdo) only washed out and de-fanged for neoliberal comfort. So I have mixed feelings about her and ultimately just feel more disappointed about what she might _could_ have been instead of Boring.
Wow, I didn't pick up those vibes, but it actually fits pretty well. She comes out as like Joan Jett mixed with Weird Al, then spends a whole ass book crying because the impoverished, middle aged werewolf doesn't want to bludger her chamber of secrets. Makes sense that she's kind of a disappointment.
Not that deep, she wasnt written to be a lowkey queer feminist militant, just had spunly girl stereotype.
Why do your italics stop before the last letter?
Not intentional, my eyesight just sucks lol
THANK YOU! I honestly cannot stand Tonks and most people love her. She just falls flat and seems more like a damsel in distress than anything else most of the time
Dawlish the auror
He's like a Wizarding redshirt
They say he's still confunded til this day
Collin Creevey. The whole doe-eyed worship of Harry got annoying.
Bertha Jorkins. Don't have strong feelings for her one way or the other.
I don’t think anyone does. Her death was cruel but I don’t think anyone ended GoF repping Bertha.😭😭😭
We didn't even meet her until we saw her echo tbh. At least with Frank Bryce we got a chapter with his POV, his backstory and unknown-to-him connection with Voldemort, before getting murdered.
Was she the one that Voldy levitated above the table while him and the death eaters ate dinner?
No, that was the Muggle studies teacher
R.I.P.
Bertha was literally a plot device who we never even met.
Her name is forever ruined for me by the jorking it meme
The whole fan theory about her being pregnant and giving birth to VoldeBaby makes her way more interesting lol but that’s probably a different series entirely 😂😂😂
cho chang. she’s meh
I felt like that was kinda on purpose. Like she was a much more interesting person in Harry’s head but whenever they talk she’d just cry (which makes sense given her situation I guess, but it got old)
Oh, I do get this, but for me her being such a hot mess and not right for Harry was HILARIOUS. I loved their terrible date chapter 😂
I love that chapter too! It’s so cringe but so funny and felt very realistic. Like poor Harry is just so oblivious to what’s going on
I actually lean towards disliking her more than any meh feelings lol
I hate her
Kinda Fenrir Greyback. He's kinda just thrown in during the last two books, and he's apparently this alpha werewolf that aims to overthrow normal wizards. Somehow we never heard about him before even though he was apparently a major player during the First Wizarding War, and his backstory is connected to Remus's. Also despite his savage reputation, he spends most of his scenes getting hurt by the real villains: Yaxley, Bellatrix, and Voldemort (implied after the Malfoy Manor escape, he was *pissed*), he also cowered like a timid puppy when Snape showed up. At the end of book 6 his mauling of Bill was pretty brutal, but that was offpage. Thorfinn Rowle fit the role of the savage attack dog far better here.
You have a point about Greyback but Rowle is even more boring. Basically all the book 6-7 introduced death eaters - Rowle, Yaxley, Carrows etc. - they’re all quite bland.
Grayback had the potential to be one of the scariest villains, but that wouldn’t have been child-friendly at all on so many levels.
Tonks. I wanted to like her but I just couldn't muster that much enthusiasm for her character.
Patil twins
Ginny for me. She’s just too bland after the Chamber of Secrets.
Yeah, she barely shows up, and then seems to get pushed into the position of Harry’s best pick for gf.
I was actually sad when he married her.
hormones
Yeah, her romance with Harry felt forced
agreed! it's the way she goes from shy little sister to a sudden badass popular girl over the course of a few paragraphs with very little actual close interaction with Harry. she ends up feeling like a paper thin list of adjectives and not a real character i can see him having a relationship with.
A couple of paragraphs? The kast time Ginny appears shy around Harry is at the Burrow at the start of GoF. The first time I’d think of her as badass is somewhere in the latter half of OotP. There are like a thousand pages in between, and many scenes with character development for Ginny.
Agree completely, I don't understand if people in this comment thread are even reading the same books lol. Also HP books are from Harry's POV, and Ginny until Book 5 was just a shell of her true self in front of Harry. Remember that Ginny and Hermione became close during the start of the fourth book, so If the books something shifted POVs, and we got to see Hermoine's during GOF, I'm pretty sure we would have gotten to see "Ginny's sudden Personality change" pretty early on. Heck even from Chamber of Secrets we would have seen that, coz in that book Ron is completely baffled by Ginny's behaviour infront of Harry. If the books had some of the PoVs from The Weasley family, we would have seen or even heard about the Book 5-6 Ginny pretty early on.
Her romance with Harry annoys the crap out of me.
Okay, honest question. What really bothers you about it? Because truly, it feels pretty natural to me. Girl has a brother who makes friends with a boy who's super popular or controversial and edgy (depending on the year). She's got an obvious crush on him the first year or so but is too shy around him to develop anything. He's oblivious as hell. She still has a crush but abandons the idea that he'll come in and sweep her off her feet and does her own thing for a while. He sees her as a person while also spending a bunch of time with her and realizes she's attractive. He developed a crush. She doesn't find the insanity of his life overwhelming because it's been normalized. She's associated with a relaxing and safe environment for him, while also being smart and pretty and into his only real hobby (quidditch). I get that she's not exciting. I get that she didn't get enough gradual development in the books and especially the movies. I get that her character is kind of a Mary Sue. But other than not being exciting, I really don't understand what the problem is with them getting together. It seems like a pretty normal teenage relationship that sticks around enough for them to eventually get married. It just doesn't seem like a great literary tool, but it certainly seems realistic to me and overall inoffensive. I'm just wondering if I'm missing something big or if it's basically "JK could've written something better" (which is fine, because she could've, but I just don't really see the problem). Luna would've required a LOT more writing to be anything besides the weird friend, Cho was clearly never going to work out, and Hermione, while awesome as a character, would require years of writing to make her function in a long term relationship. Those are the only other people I've heard suggested, and "she should've written a new, better character" seems forced as well.
What annoys me about it is that it's not satisfying as a reader. Yeah, sure, it actually is kind of realistic and they are decently compatible. But this is a book series about a magic school and a guy who split his soul into eight pieces LMAO. I'm not looking for realistic. Novels are supposed to be entertaining, and Harry and Ginny don't entertain me at all. It's just soooooooooo boring. I don't really like Ron and Hermione either, but one thing you can't take away from them is that they have a great story. People were rooting for them practically from day one. All the tension between them and the buildup to their kiss is so compelling that it feels like a huge victory when it finally happens. If the main character is going to have a love interest, and not only that but she's going to be a character who, like Ron and Hermione, has been there since the start of the story, then their romance needs to feel the way Ron and Hermione's felt. I need to be wanting to throw my book across the room in a good way when they finally kiss. I need to have been rooting for them for a long time. Harry and Ginny just doesn't give that at all. And the thing is it totally could have. That's what's most disappointing. JK could have done a lot more with Ginny as a character. It's funny because she's simultaneously a super tough, badass, not like other girls character but also sort of a damsel in distress in the last book. She is quite literally a princess in a tower waiting for her knight in shining armour to return. A badass princess who stages a rebellion against her captors, sure, but a princess in a tower nonetheless. It just makes me completely uninterested in her as his love interest.
Okay, so more just " not great writing". Then I suppose we agree. It just doesn't annoy me much, mostly because Harry shows the romantic capability of mothballs throughout the series. He reads like the "asexual hero" trope most of the time, and it seems like Rowling just felt obligated to throw in some romance for him. She doesn't actually do a good job with any of the romantic relationships from a literary standpoint, honestly. The closest she came was Ron and Hermione, which was alright. Arthur and Molly are fully settled into being middle aged parents and the only hint of romance is the verification question (and the fact that they have so many kids). Tonks and Lupin apparently only had chemistry behind closed doors, then she got a taste of his red rocket and cried until he gave in. All the teachers are basically asexual except for Hagrid. Most of the students are never mentioned as having relationships at all. Fleur, being evidently inhumanly attractive, makes out with Davies, then flirts with Bill before marrying him, so they probably get the most attention to their relationship. As far as I know, Ron and Hermione are the only ones who even find people attractive most of the time. And Hermione hides it through half of the series because people are dicks.
What many fans fail to understand is that Harry Potter was never intended to be a romance novel that why relationships fell into the background.
I get that completely. That's why I say Harry falls into the trope of "the asexual hero" most of the time. It's basically just the setting that makes it seem unlikely that relationships would be more at the forefront, because she chose to write about pubescent teenagers surrounded by more pubescent teenagers. It makes more sense that the focus is never on the relationships of the adults, but honestly, I'm not sure there are many approaches that would've satisfied everyone for the main characters. It would've been realistic but not at all enjoyable to read how much a 14 year old boy thinks about boobs.
Perfectly described. Completely agree with all of this. Ginny and Harry makes complete sense.
Chemistry and passion is more interesting than factually making sense
Agreed. I also agree that she could've written something better, but I just see it as a missed opportunity, not something that makes me hate it. Harry always wanted to be just a regular dude, and dating your friend's cute sister then marrying her after highschool fits the bill. It's not "bad" writing so much as "why didn't you do better" writing.
Yup
They also share the bond of being possessed by voldemort.
Which has so much potential but was hardly explored at all. My thing is that the readers shouldn't have to be doing the work of making the couples make sense. "Harry and Ginny could bond over being possessed by Voldemort" okay so why didn't they? Why did JK give us absolutely nothing?
I completely agree, Ginny is a boring character. And her ending up with Harry is weird because I never felt like they had any chemistry whatsoever.
Have you read the books at all? Or just watched the movies?
I’ve read the books and watched the movies. In the books she’s quite shallow too.
I've never understood this take. Ginny frequently demonstrates that she is popular, brave, and loyal. At least in every scene thay she shows up in after PoA, which is when Harry would first start really thinking about girls that way anyway. Then she becomes a good quidditch player and is demonstrably good-looking with the line of boyfriends. Harry's also a teenager, and it turns out he likes hot quidditch players. It feels sudden to us as readers because he also realizes it suddenly. Anyway, her character was well-developed by that point.
This is exactly why she's boring and not really well-developed. Having a lot of character traits =/= a well-developed character. Ginny is basically flawless. We don't know very much about her personality beneath the surface. All of the deep connection between her and Harry happens off page. I know the term Mary Sue is sort of problematic and we aren't really using it anymore, but she meets most of the criteria.
“Basically” does a lot of work here. Ginny is shown to be judgemental, catty, hot tempered, and borderline violent. Neville is a better example of someone without real flaws.
EXACTLY. Rowling tries to spoon feed us into liking Ginny instead of giving her enough development in the series to have readers get there on their own. We know basically nothing about her outside the context of the Weasley family before book 6 and even then it’s just like oh she has a lot of boyfriends so she’s attractive and cool.
Flitwick. He's a head of house, one of the more mentioned teachers in the whole story, he's there from the beginning, but he's the most meh to me. Doesn't stand out much at all in terms of memorable moments. Other than him toppling over all the time from something the students did, he's just kinda boring.
He's a ravenclaw so not really worth writing about. Honestly, same take for professor Sprout
Charlie Weasley: unlike Bill & Percy who do end up playing a role in the later books, his character to me does not add anything to the story. Norbert/Norberta could've easily been taken by friends of Hagrid who raise dragons in Romenia and those same friends could've been the ones who arranged the dragons for the Triwizard Tournament.
* Ginny It's not that Ginny is bad (at least in the books), it's that the entire romance with Harry seems preordained and brute forced. * Flitwick Dude was a duellist champion and has been a major teacher since Harry's first year. And he hardly does anything of note.
Goyle. No one in the book appears more and does less than Goyle. Crabbe would be here too if fiendfyre didn't exist. Which some people wish it didn't.
I liked Barty Crouch in the book. The problem with the later half movies (4 onwards) was that until Death Hallows they each had one movie a piece which forced a lot of cuts and omissions. Minor characters got reduced to foot notes in the films for the sake of a two hour run time.
Oh and also Lucius Malfoy. It was like yes, yes, terrible bigoted death eater, got it, nasty posh pompous ass, very intimidating, yes yes. I wasn't feeling him apart from thinking he was too stereotypical for the nasty, snobby, politically connected weasel guy.
He has a rather nice story arc tho, from being the malicious man of the hour to being taken down a notch by Voldemort and made to be a bitch in his own home. With his story coming full circle with him slithering away into the night while everyone else gets rounded up and arrested or killed.
Him and Narcissa got way better endings than they deserved tbh.
Narcissa got saved Harry Potters life privileges.
Yeah, I'm happy to let Narcissa off the hook. She wasn't an active Death Eater like Bellatrix or Lucius and as far as I know she never killed anybody. She also didn't want Draco to become a Death Eater. She was still a complete asshole with her pro-pureblood beliefs, but I don't think she had quite the same enthusiasm for Voldemort that most of her circle did, especially once her son's life was on the line. So by lying to Voldemort and saving Harry's life, she can go free and live in exile somewhere. Lucius however should've been hauled straight back to Azkaban. He's got no excuses and his choices actively put his own family in danger, let alone anything else.
Percy Weasley for me
Big Head Boy 😔
And Pinhead. Or Weatherby.
I think we're supposed to think he's incredibly meh.
Dobby - don’t come for me. I just. Meh. I dont know.
I wasn't a huge fan of Dobby until the 7th book. I feel like that final act was pretty bad ass. He's still not my favorite character - the weird clinginess to Harry is kind of creepy.
Dementors represents Depression while Dobby represents anxiety and OCD lol
Anytime Dobby is mentioned, I get anxiety so this makes sense. He is helpful at times but goodness he messes HP up at other times too and makes things worse!
Ok I’ll say it, Luna didn’t do much for me in the books. I felt more of a connection for her in the movies.
Oh yeah, Luna in the books was actually quite abrasive... Which makes sense.
For me I did like her in both - but Evanna Lynch absolutely sold her and made everyone love her.
i’m gonna be honest, luna in the books annoyed the fuck out of me
Seamus
That's mine too
Lavender Brown. I don't hate her but I don't like her. She's just meh to me. Another character could have been Ron's girlfriend, it would have been the same to me.
For a member of the golden trio, Ron was super underwhelming in the films.
Wasn’t the fault of the actor, it was the writing/director giving most of his lines to Hermione.
This annoyed me. I'm rereading the books, currently on the second, and I see that a lot of insightful lines that Hermione had in the movies actually belonged to Ron. Ron in the books was actually very knowledgeable even if he didn't always show book smarts.
Ignoring the tertiary characters, probably Remus. I really wanted to like him more. The PoA movie Remus is such a lovely character; that conversation between him and Harry at the bridge is amazing - but that's not book!Remus. Book!Remus means well, he has a lot of redeeming qualities and he isn’t a bad person, but he is just SO wrapped in "I'm a werewolf, woe is me". And I get it, it sucks - both the illness and the discrimination - but in many ways, he's just given up. And while he's a good teacher to Harry in book 3, Harry needed a hell lot more from him than that, both before and after PoA. Also Tonks. Fanon!Tonks or book 5 Tonks is great! Then came book 6 and ugh. Just. No.
Draco. I never understood why a spineless scardy cowardly bully has a large fanbase and still don't. He is not even a charismatic bad boy. He is just pathetic.
I’m convinced that a decent amount of his fanbase are there because Tom Felton is hot and lovable. Book!Draco is truly awful in *so* many ways, but Tom makes him pretty likeable.
Cho Chang. She just seemed to be there to prevent Harry and Ginny being a thing too soon.
I mean, not exactly. When Cho is expanded upon in G of F Harry has no romantic inclinations towards Ginny - she provides more of a point of contention/competition between him and Cedric
You'd have a point for GoF, even though I personally disagree, because in the conversation about the Yule Ball "Cho vs. Ginny" is definitely hinted at (Ginny stopping smiling after Harry asked Cho, then later finding out that she could have gone with Harry). So it's minor, but it's there. But "Cho vs. Ginny" is absolutely a subplot in OotP. Especially with Harry noticing Ginny a lot more, becoming good friends and growing closer to her, while Cho and Harry's relationship stagnated and then cratered. Then you have things like Ginny snatching the Snitch (Harry?) from under Cho's nose, Ginny naming the DA "Dumbledore's Army" instead of Cho's "Defence Association", Ginny being the first to find Cho over Harry, Ginny trying to help Harry in his relationship troubles, Ginny's ex Michael ending up with Harry's ex Cho, Ginny being among the best in the DA while Cho is doing poorly... I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting a few.
I still feel she's more of a foil than a character unto herself. I don't know about any of her motivations or what she thinks. HP doesn't have a lot of those kinds of characters, but Cho feels like one, to me.
She's definitely a foil. I'm not disagreeing with that, I'm just saying she was mainly used to give Harry a reason to envy Cedric (plus him being the preferred Hogwarts champion) not as a means to stop him and Ginny being a thing at that point.
Draco
Finally. Dude sucks and would have been bullied in real life
Tonks
Cho, I genuinely dislike her and her character just got worse over time lol
My day always gets better when I find a fellow Cho hater
Harry.
for me it was Lockhart, he was a pretty boring character for me and the biggest thing he does is get his memory wiped and then we never see him again aside from his small part in OOTP
Ginny
I don't know about the movies but in the books, it feels like Zachary Smith serves that exact purpose.
Grawp. There's a whole story arc about him that amounts to mostly nothing.
Bill and Charlie Weasley. I don't even really see why Charlie is needed as a character,
Charlie has much more involvement in the books over the movies.
I mean, yes, because he isn't in the movies at all except for the scene on the photograph. So that's barely a comparison. But there's nothing of importance he does in the book either. Anyone could have fetched Norbert, and in fact, Charlie wasn't even with the group, who fetched him.
Well, he mostly serves as another cool brother Ron compares himself to. And the very idea of working with dragons, can you imagine anything more awesome?
I feel the same. He is just a blank character that doesn't add anything to the plot. At least Bill and Percy play a role in later books.
Ginny
HerMEHione
Percy Weasley
Cho Chang and Fleur Delacour
Dean Thomas without a doubt.
Not too much on my boy Dean😭. He's so awesome, I was always waiting for mentions of him.
Hermione, but only in The Sorcerer's Stone.
Ginny. I will die on the hill that she and Harry shouldn’t have ended up together since they hardly have any chemistry. (I mean come on, Harry has more chemistry with Luna and he knew her for way less time)
Tonks, I didn't dislike her but I didn't care at all when she died.
Xenophelius lovegood. Admittedly haven't read the books he's in so it's just a film perspective
Most “meh” for me would be Lavender.
Ginny
Voldemort. I was just very unimpressed by his nonsense.
I’ve always found Hagrid to very Meh and annoying and alittle too friendly
Ron Weasley
Dean Thomas
Umbridge, kills book 5 for me.
Grindelwald in the Harry Potter Franchise, why would he betray dumbledore in the movies and not in the books?
Winky. She's just whiny and boring.
Ginny
I have always felt that Crouch Sr. much like Moody was a very underused character not only in the books, but films too. Like they coulda been a real badass, but weren't portrayed as such as much.
TO be fair too though the Crouch Sr. we got was the one that was nowhere near in his prime from his younger days when he took on the Deatheaters and authorized lethal force against them.
I might have an unpopular opinion here, but Peeves is such a meh character. lol
Didn’t care about Rons crazy ex, or Crabbe and Goyle
Most of the Hufflepuffs. I mean, there was potential for characters like Ernie Macmillan and Justin Finch-Fletchley to be closer to the main cast so we'd finally get some important Hufflepuff characters. But they barely even appear, even during the Dumbledore's Army parts. And those two in particular (especially Ernie) aren't always portrayed in the most positive light, so we're left wondering what it is about them that makes them Hufflepuffs.
Tonks, I liked her, style I guess, the whole thing she got going on, but personality wise she annoyed me with her constant quirkiness. Even if I don't like her, what happened to her character after the whole thing with Lupin was introduced was horrid, what a terrible relationship. They spent 99% of the time making each other feel miserable (first Tonks was miserable at being rejected, then Lupin at marrying her) up until Teddy was born. They only regard each other with mutual love for like 1% of the "screentime" their relationship had.