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Harry Potter and the Cursed Child script review
There are plenty of spoilers below the cut, so proceed at your own risk!
After listening to Mugglecast's spoilery review episode about the play preview performance, my own reaction was WTF?! Which was pretty much the same reaction as the podcasters who had seen it, namely a story reveal that reads like bad fanfic. However, they also said that there were great elements as well (especially the friendship between Albus and Scorpius), and that the stage performance was amazing and mitigated some of the bad plot elements.
Which made me really curious as to how it would read as a script, without being able to see the actors bring it to life. I was hesitant about spending $30 for the book, so I reserved it at the library, and had to wait a couple of weeks to get hold of it since there were a few people ahead of me on the list. However, one of my coworkers read it before I did and said that she enjoyed it, assuring me that it wasn't as bad as the spoilers made it sound.
So I finally got my copy of the book and read it, and she's kind of right: I did enjoy it, and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, although I still think the fanficcy elements are pretty WTF. (Will get to that a little later.) Sorry this is long and kind of rambling, but there was a lot to talk about! Here are my overall impressions of the script:
Mostly I agree with the Mugglecast and Hypable reviews of the Cursed Child script book. (See also the Hypable review of the live play, and more Hypable Cursed Child coverage here.) I'll be making a lot of the same points, so listen to those episodes for a more detailed review and discussion by people who have both read the script and seen the play.
First off, the positive points: The Albus/Scorpius friendship is awesome and almost makes up for all the stuff I didn't like about the story. There's a scene where they meet on their first train ride to Hogwarts and take an instant liking to each other. Rose (Ron and Hermione's daughter) tells Albus that he shouldn't befriend Scorpius because he's a Malfoy, but Albus says (essentially) that he can pick his own friends, thank you very much. The price of the book is almost worth it for that scene alone, and their friendship only grows closer and more awesome from there.
Scorpius and Draco's relationship is also great and very moving. Draco has matured a lot, being sadder and wiser, and while he's not perfect, he's a loving father who cares enough about his son that he not only tolerates Scorpius's friendship with a Potter, he fights to try and keep them together when Harry wants to separate them (more on that later). Draco's maturity is due in large part to his wife Astoria--we are told that Lucius objected to their marriage because he thought her views of Muggles and Muggle-borns were too tolerant. We also learn that she suffered from a terminal illness and was always destined to die young, but chose to have a child even though it would shorten her life even further. It wasn't to carry on the Malfoy name, we are told--it was so that Draco wouldn't be alone after she died.
All of this was very touching, and Astoria sounds like a wonderful person and interesting character, but she appears only briefly early in the play in a scene taken from the DH epilogue, where the parents are sending their kids off to Hogwarts at the station. Rather than actually seeing what kind of person she is, we're told about it by Draco, and I feel sort of cheated that we didn't really get to see her, and that she was killed off to give Draco and Scorpius manpain.
And now, moving on to the negative and the downright weird: The plot of the play revolves around a time-turner that the Ministry has recently confiscated. Previously, all the time-turners were destroyed in OOTP, after JKR belatedly realized that they were too big a deus ex machina--after all, what's to stop people from going back in time to stop Voldemort, or to stop Voldemort from going back to kill Harry without giving Lily the chance to sacrifice herself, or even to kill James and Lily before they have a chance to conceive Harry?
But suddenly we have time-turners again, with the play getting around the OOTP plotline by having Theodore Nott invent a new, improved model. (Actually two--we later find out that the Malfoy family has another one, because Nott had been working for Lucius.) Which (perhaps irrationally) really bugs me because Theodore is one of my favorite minor canon characters, and my fanon Theodore is a good guy, not a bad guy! He's mentioned only in passing after the first time-turner has been confiscated and he never actually appears in the play, but it still irks me that he's been arrested and will presumably go to prison for creating Dark Magic items. My Theo wouldn't do that! And if he did, he'd be too smart to get caught, damn it!
But at the same time, I kind of like the idea that Theodore is smart enough to create such a powerful and complex item as a time-turner. Though someone that smart should be able to realize how dangerous it is, but maybe he loves the challenge of creating magical items and that overrides common sense. Or maybe as the son of a Death Eater, he couldn't find other work and needed the money. It doesn't seem like either he or Lucius tried to use their time-turners to go back and change history; I think Draco says something about his father enjoyed collecting magic items that were better than anything anyone else had, so it seems like it was more of status thing, at least for Lucius.
Anyway, getting on with the story: Harry gets along well with his children Lily and James, but has a troubled relationship with Albus, who feels oppressed by the burden of being the famous Harry Potter's son. Harry tries to connect with Albus but fails miserably, complaining to Ginny at one point that he doesn't understand him, but I find this hard to believe. After all, as a student, he was weighed down with the burden of his fame and the expectation that he would be the one to defeat Voldemort, so I can't understand why he doesn't see that Albus is going through much the same thing he did.
More troubling is that during an argument with Albus, Harry says, "Sometimes I wish you weren't my son." To be fair, Albus has just said, "Sometimes I wish you weren't my father," which of course is hurtful, but Albus is just a kid, and what kid hasn't told his or her parents at some point, "I hate you!" On one hand, as Andrew from Mugglecast points out, parents are human too, and can say things they don't mean in the heat of the moment. But OTOH, Harry is someone who grew up without a family and craved one all his life. I find it hard to believe that he would ever, even in a fit of temper, say to one of his kids "I wish you weren't my son."
Later in the play, Harry tries to separate Albus and Scorpius when he believes that Scorpius has put his son's life in danger--though actually it was Albus who got them into trouble, but Harry won't listen to Albus at all, which seems out of character to me. Well, maybe I can see Harry's past history with the Malfoys coloring his view of Scorpius, but that goes against his changed views of Slytherin in the epilogue, and he doesn't seem to believe that Draco is reverting to his Death Eater ways. Even more OOC is when he orders McGonagall to keep them apart at school, threatening to bring the full weight of the Ministry down on her if she won't comply. Harry Potter threatening people with his position? And Ginny and McGonagall are taken aback, but tamely go along with this? I can't see McGonagall taking kindly to threats, and it's hard to believe Ginny wouldn't say, "Wait a minute, I have some say in this, too!" (Unlike Harry, she does seem to understand how important the boys' friendship is to them.) Much, much later they finally do stand up to him, just around the time that he starts to come to his senses--but by then the damage has already been done and the boys have run off traveling through time (see below) before Harry has a chance to set things right.
And then there's all the time travel stuff. There's a bizarre rumor about Scorpius being the child of Voldemort--supposedly Draco couldn't have kids, so Astoria used a time-turner to go back in time and bang Voldemort to get pregnant. It's untrue, but WTF?! How does a rumor like that even get started? I mean, I could understand rumors that Astoria slept with someone other than Draco to get pregnant, but traveling through time?
And the main plot is about Albus (and a reluctant Scorpius, whom he ropes along into his adventure) stealing Theodore's time-turner from the Ministry so he can go back in time to save Cedric Diggory. (After overhearing an argument in which an embittered elderly Amos Diggory begs Harry to do the same, and Harry turns him down because it's too dangerous to mess with the past.) Time travel aside, it seems weird that the writers would pick Cedric as the one to save--someone Albus has never met, and has no deep personal connection to. Like the podcasters said, it would have made a lot more sense if they went back to try to save Sirius for Harry's sake, or if Teddy were in the play and Albus wanted to save Remus and Tonks so that he wouldn't have to grow up an orphan. I mean, I like Cedric, but it seems so weird and random that he's the one Albus decides to risk messing up the timeline for.
More strangeness: in one alternate timeline, Cedric is humiliated when Albus and Scorpius prevent him from winning the Triwizard Tournament along with Harry, which somehow causes him to eventually become a Death Eater. What? Cedric was such a kind and decent person, but being embarrassed and losing a contest somehow turns him evil? Which in turn creates a world in which Harry was killed and Voldemort won the war, and Umbridge is the Headmistress of Hogwarts. They celebrate Voldemort Day which is kinda (unintentionally) hilarious. Although it was sort of cool that in this timeline, Snape and Ron and Hermione were running a secret rebellion together--there was respect, even a degree of friendship between Snape and his former students. And it was moving when Snape said that since he failed to protect Harry for Lily's sake, he decided to fight for the cause that she believed in, and eventually came to believe in it himself.
But the weirdest of all: Albus and Scorpius enlist the help of Delphi, supposedly Amos Diggory's niece and caretaker, in their plan to save Cedric. But...wait for it...Delphi is actually Voldemort and Bellatrix's secret daughter, and she wants the time-turner so that she can go back in time to save her father! I could not believe it--it was like something out of a bad fanfic. And Delphi is totally a Mary Sue: she has blue-and-silver hair, and can fly without a broomstick! It was just so weird!
Also...I believe that Bellatrix would bang Voldemort, but I didn't think that Voldemort cared about that kind of intimacy, even if it's purely physical lust and not love. I mean, I'm not even sure if his conjured-up body is even capable of having sex! Besides, I always figured that his true desire was for power and immortality, not sex. The only reason I could see him deliberately having a child (it's not clear if Delphi was intended or an accident) is if he needed it for some magical spell--such as to make a horcrux, I think one of the podcasters suggested.
Oh, and apparently Rodolphus was okay with his wife sleeping with the Dark Lord, because he paid a Death Eater related family (the Rowles) to raise Delphi while he was in prison, though he didn't tell them that she was Voldemort's daughter. You'd think that he might be a little angry about his wife and his master betraying him, but OTOH, maybe he was devoted enough that he thought it was a privilege to give his wife to the Dark Lord.
Small irritations: in the "real" timeline, Hermione is the Minister of Magic, which is awesome. But she makes some dumb moves for such a smart woman: hiding the time-turner in a not secure enough location (it is hidden, but not well enough since Albus and Scorpius get hold of it), and not being concerned when key ingredients used in the Polyjuice Potion go missing at Hogwarts even though she's brewed it herself in the past and should've suspected that someone (in this case, Delphi) might be up to no good.
Worse, in one of the alternate timelines that Albus and Scorpius inadvertently create, Hermione is a bitter, Snape-like DADA teacher at Hogwarts. Apparently this is because she and Ron never got married (he married Padma instead), and it irks the hell out of me that a strong female character is turned into a bitter, unhappy woman because she didn't end up with the right guy. It angered me just as much as when Tonks turned all mopey and lost her magic when Remus rejected her in HBP.
I was also a little irked that the script killed off so many parents (offscreen): there was Astoria mentioned above, and we learn early in the play that Petunia has passed away. Dudley discovers that she had kept the blanket baby Harry was wrapped in when he was left on the Dursleys' doorstep, and gives the blanket to Harry after her death. (It's kind of complicated and I've already rambled on too long, so I'll just say the blanket plays a crucial role in the story.)
Lucius and Narcissa have also apparently passed away, though there doesn't seem to be any good reason for this other than to have Draco be alone with Scorpius, and possibly to be able to get his hands on the Malfoy time-turner without having to persuade Lucius to give it to him? But it seems odd for his parents to have died relatively young when we know that wizards are able to live much longer than Muggles, at least judging by Dumbledore. It would have been just as easy to get them out of the story by having them move to Europe or something, to get away from the stigma of their Death Eater past in Britain, and Lucius could have left the time-turner behind at the Malfoy estate.
And finally, as Hypable points out (as does Andrew in the Mugglecast podcast) the play misses out on an opportunity to finally represent LGBT characters with Albus and Scorpius. They are shippy like whoa even in the script version, and apparently they are even more slashy in the stage performance. JKR isn't obligated to make them a couple, of course, but she's said that the Wizarding World isn't prejudiced against gay wizards, and we haven't seen any LGBT canon characters in the books or movies. (Saying Dumbledore was gay in an interview doesn't count for me.) It would have been nice to see Albus and Scorpius become a couple, especially when they are so devoted to each other, and are devastated when Harry breaks them up, and Scorpius even gets jealous when Albus develops a crush on Delphi. There are some humorous references to Scorpius crushing on Rose (even though she's mean to him at worst, and tolerant at best), and him talking about asking Rose out at the end of the play feels like a "no homo!" moment. It might feel less forced if the two of them had more contact in the play, but Rose appears only in a few scenes and comes across as the obligatory female love interest.
Overall, I think there were too many things that didn't make sense or characters acting OOC purely to further the plotline, so the story felt forced rather than flowing naturally. There were some good things about it, especially Albus and Scorpius and Draco, as I mentioned above. Which makes the story even more of a disappointment to me, because it was just okay when it could have been amazing. I do think HP fans should read it if they can borrow it from a library or friend, but I can't recommend buying it.
And dammit, now I want more fic about Theodore Nott!
After listening to Mugglecast's spoilery review episode about the play preview performance, my own reaction was WTF?! Which was pretty much the same reaction as the podcasters who had seen it, namely a story reveal that reads like bad fanfic. However, they also said that there were great elements as well (especially the friendship between Albus and Scorpius), and that the stage performance was amazing and mitigated some of the bad plot elements.
Which made me really curious as to how it would read as a script, without being able to see the actors bring it to life. I was hesitant about spending $30 for the book, so I reserved it at the library, and had to wait a couple of weeks to get hold of it since there were a few people ahead of me on the list. However, one of my coworkers read it before I did and said that she enjoyed it, assuring me that it wasn't as bad as the spoilers made it sound.
So I finally got my copy of the book and read it, and she's kind of right: I did enjoy it, and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, although I still think the fanficcy elements are pretty WTF. (Will get to that a little later.) Sorry this is long and kind of rambling, but there was a lot to talk about! Here are my overall impressions of the script:
Mostly I agree with the Mugglecast and Hypable reviews of the Cursed Child script book. (See also the Hypable review of the live play, and more Hypable Cursed Child coverage here.) I'll be making a lot of the same points, so listen to those episodes for a more detailed review and discussion by people who have both read the script and seen the play.
First off, the positive points: The Albus/Scorpius friendship is awesome and almost makes up for all the stuff I didn't like about the story. There's a scene where they meet on their first train ride to Hogwarts and take an instant liking to each other. Rose (Ron and Hermione's daughter) tells Albus that he shouldn't befriend Scorpius because he's a Malfoy, but Albus says (essentially) that he can pick his own friends, thank you very much. The price of the book is almost worth it for that scene alone, and their friendship only grows closer and more awesome from there.
Scorpius and Draco's relationship is also great and very moving. Draco has matured a lot, being sadder and wiser, and while he's not perfect, he's a loving father who cares enough about his son that he not only tolerates Scorpius's friendship with a Potter, he fights to try and keep them together when Harry wants to separate them (more on that later). Draco's maturity is due in large part to his wife Astoria--we are told that Lucius objected to their marriage because he thought her views of Muggles and Muggle-borns were too tolerant. We also learn that she suffered from a terminal illness and was always destined to die young, but chose to have a child even though it would shorten her life even further. It wasn't to carry on the Malfoy name, we are told--it was so that Draco wouldn't be alone after she died.
All of this was very touching, and Astoria sounds like a wonderful person and interesting character, but she appears only briefly early in the play in a scene taken from the DH epilogue, where the parents are sending their kids off to Hogwarts at the station. Rather than actually seeing what kind of person she is, we're told about it by Draco, and I feel sort of cheated that we didn't really get to see her, and that she was killed off to give Draco and Scorpius manpain.
And now, moving on to the negative and the downright weird: The plot of the play revolves around a time-turner that the Ministry has recently confiscated. Previously, all the time-turners were destroyed in OOTP, after JKR belatedly realized that they were too big a deus ex machina--after all, what's to stop people from going back in time to stop Voldemort, or to stop Voldemort from going back to kill Harry without giving Lily the chance to sacrifice herself, or even to kill James and Lily before they have a chance to conceive Harry?
But suddenly we have time-turners again, with the play getting around the OOTP plotline by having Theodore Nott invent a new, improved model. (Actually two--we later find out that the Malfoy family has another one, because Nott had been working for Lucius.) Which (perhaps irrationally) really bugs me because Theodore is one of my favorite minor canon characters, and my fanon Theodore is a good guy, not a bad guy! He's mentioned only in passing after the first time-turner has been confiscated and he never actually appears in the play, but it still irks me that he's been arrested and will presumably go to prison for creating Dark Magic items. My Theo wouldn't do that! And if he did, he'd be too smart to get caught, damn it!
But at the same time, I kind of like the idea that Theodore is smart enough to create such a powerful and complex item as a time-turner. Though someone that smart should be able to realize how dangerous it is, but maybe he loves the challenge of creating magical items and that overrides common sense. Or maybe as the son of a Death Eater, he couldn't find other work and needed the money. It doesn't seem like either he or Lucius tried to use their time-turners to go back and change history; I think Draco says something about his father enjoyed collecting magic items that were better than anything anyone else had, so it seems like it was more of status thing, at least for Lucius.
Anyway, getting on with the story: Harry gets along well with his children Lily and James, but has a troubled relationship with Albus, who feels oppressed by the burden of being the famous Harry Potter's son. Harry tries to connect with Albus but fails miserably, complaining to Ginny at one point that he doesn't understand him, but I find this hard to believe. After all, as a student, he was weighed down with the burden of his fame and the expectation that he would be the one to defeat Voldemort, so I can't understand why he doesn't see that Albus is going through much the same thing he did.
More troubling is that during an argument with Albus, Harry says, "Sometimes I wish you weren't my son." To be fair, Albus has just said, "Sometimes I wish you weren't my father," which of course is hurtful, but Albus is just a kid, and what kid hasn't told his or her parents at some point, "I hate you!" On one hand, as Andrew from Mugglecast points out, parents are human too, and can say things they don't mean in the heat of the moment. But OTOH, Harry is someone who grew up without a family and craved one all his life. I find it hard to believe that he would ever, even in a fit of temper, say to one of his kids "I wish you weren't my son."
Later in the play, Harry tries to separate Albus and Scorpius when he believes that Scorpius has put his son's life in danger--though actually it was Albus who got them into trouble, but Harry won't listen to Albus at all, which seems out of character to me. Well, maybe I can see Harry's past history with the Malfoys coloring his view of Scorpius, but that goes against his changed views of Slytherin in the epilogue, and he doesn't seem to believe that Draco is reverting to his Death Eater ways. Even more OOC is when he orders McGonagall to keep them apart at school, threatening to bring the full weight of the Ministry down on her if she won't comply. Harry Potter threatening people with his position? And Ginny and McGonagall are taken aback, but tamely go along with this? I can't see McGonagall taking kindly to threats, and it's hard to believe Ginny wouldn't say, "Wait a minute, I have some say in this, too!" (Unlike Harry, she does seem to understand how important the boys' friendship is to them.) Much, much later they finally do stand up to him, just around the time that he starts to come to his senses--but by then the damage has already been done and the boys have run off traveling through time (see below) before Harry has a chance to set things right.
And then there's all the time travel stuff. There's a bizarre rumor about Scorpius being the child of Voldemort--supposedly Draco couldn't have kids, so Astoria used a time-turner to go back in time and bang Voldemort to get pregnant. It's untrue, but WTF?! How does a rumor like that even get started? I mean, I could understand rumors that Astoria slept with someone other than Draco to get pregnant, but traveling through time?
And the main plot is about Albus (and a reluctant Scorpius, whom he ropes along into his adventure) stealing Theodore's time-turner from the Ministry so he can go back in time to save Cedric Diggory. (After overhearing an argument in which an embittered elderly Amos Diggory begs Harry to do the same, and Harry turns him down because it's too dangerous to mess with the past.) Time travel aside, it seems weird that the writers would pick Cedric as the one to save--someone Albus has never met, and has no deep personal connection to. Like the podcasters said, it would have made a lot more sense if they went back to try to save Sirius for Harry's sake, or if Teddy were in the play and Albus wanted to save Remus and Tonks so that he wouldn't have to grow up an orphan. I mean, I like Cedric, but it seems so weird and random that he's the one Albus decides to risk messing up the timeline for.
More strangeness: in one alternate timeline, Cedric is humiliated when Albus and Scorpius prevent him from winning the Triwizard Tournament along with Harry, which somehow causes him to eventually become a Death Eater. What? Cedric was such a kind and decent person, but being embarrassed and losing a contest somehow turns him evil? Which in turn creates a world in which Harry was killed and Voldemort won the war, and Umbridge is the Headmistress of Hogwarts. They celebrate Voldemort Day which is kinda (unintentionally) hilarious. Although it was sort of cool that in this timeline, Snape and Ron and Hermione were running a secret rebellion together--there was respect, even a degree of friendship between Snape and his former students. And it was moving when Snape said that since he failed to protect Harry for Lily's sake, he decided to fight for the cause that she believed in, and eventually came to believe in it himself.
But the weirdest of all: Albus and Scorpius enlist the help of Delphi, supposedly Amos Diggory's niece and caretaker, in their plan to save Cedric. But...wait for it...Delphi is actually Voldemort and Bellatrix's secret daughter, and she wants the time-turner so that she can go back in time to save her father! I could not believe it--it was like something out of a bad fanfic. And Delphi is totally a Mary Sue: she has blue-and-silver hair, and can fly without a broomstick! It was just so weird!
Also...I believe that Bellatrix would bang Voldemort, but I didn't think that Voldemort cared about that kind of intimacy, even if it's purely physical lust and not love. I mean, I'm not even sure if his conjured-up body is even capable of having sex! Besides, I always figured that his true desire was for power and immortality, not sex. The only reason I could see him deliberately having a child (it's not clear if Delphi was intended or an accident) is if he needed it for some magical spell--such as to make a horcrux, I think one of the podcasters suggested.
Oh, and apparently Rodolphus was okay with his wife sleeping with the Dark Lord, because he paid a Death Eater related family (the Rowles) to raise Delphi while he was in prison, though he didn't tell them that she was Voldemort's daughter. You'd think that he might be a little angry about his wife and his master betraying him, but OTOH, maybe he was devoted enough that he thought it was a privilege to give his wife to the Dark Lord.
Small irritations: in the "real" timeline, Hermione is the Minister of Magic, which is awesome. But she makes some dumb moves for such a smart woman: hiding the time-turner in a not secure enough location (it is hidden, but not well enough since Albus and Scorpius get hold of it), and not being concerned when key ingredients used in the Polyjuice Potion go missing at Hogwarts even though she's brewed it herself in the past and should've suspected that someone (in this case, Delphi) might be up to no good.
Worse, in one of the alternate timelines that Albus and Scorpius inadvertently create, Hermione is a bitter, Snape-like DADA teacher at Hogwarts. Apparently this is because she and Ron never got married (he married Padma instead), and it irks the hell out of me that a strong female character is turned into a bitter, unhappy woman because she didn't end up with the right guy. It angered me just as much as when Tonks turned all mopey and lost her magic when Remus rejected her in HBP.
I was also a little irked that the script killed off so many parents (offscreen): there was Astoria mentioned above, and we learn early in the play that Petunia has passed away. Dudley discovers that she had kept the blanket baby Harry was wrapped in when he was left on the Dursleys' doorstep, and gives the blanket to Harry after her death. (It's kind of complicated and I've already rambled on too long, so I'll just say the blanket plays a crucial role in the story.)
Lucius and Narcissa have also apparently passed away, though there doesn't seem to be any good reason for this other than to have Draco be alone with Scorpius, and possibly to be able to get his hands on the Malfoy time-turner without having to persuade Lucius to give it to him? But it seems odd for his parents to have died relatively young when we know that wizards are able to live much longer than Muggles, at least judging by Dumbledore. It would have been just as easy to get them out of the story by having them move to Europe or something, to get away from the stigma of their Death Eater past in Britain, and Lucius could have left the time-turner behind at the Malfoy estate.
And finally, as Hypable points out (as does Andrew in the Mugglecast podcast) the play misses out on an opportunity to finally represent LGBT characters with Albus and Scorpius. They are shippy like whoa even in the script version, and apparently they are even more slashy in the stage performance. JKR isn't obligated to make them a couple, of course, but she's said that the Wizarding World isn't prejudiced against gay wizards, and we haven't seen any LGBT canon characters in the books or movies. (Saying Dumbledore was gay in an interview doesn't count for me.) It would have been nice to see Albus and Scorpius become a couple, especially when they are so devoted to each other, and are devastated when Harry breaks them up, and Scorpius even gets jealous when Albus develops a crush on Delphi. There are some humorous references to Scorpius crushing on Rose (even though she's mean to him at worst, and tolerant at best), and him talking about asking Rose out at the end of the play feels like a "no homo!" moment. It might feel less forced if the two of them had more contact in the play, but Rose appears only in a few scenes and comes across as the obligatory female love interest.
Overall, I think there were too many things that didn't make sense or characters acting OOC purely to further the plotline, so the story felt forced rather than flowing naturally. There were some good things about it, especially Albus and Scorpius and Draco, as I mentioned above. Which makes the story even more of a disappointment to me, because it was just okay when it could have been amazing. I do think HP fans should read it if they can borrow it from a library or friend, but I can't recommend buying it.
And dammit, now I want more fic about Theodore Nott!
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love, lore
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JKR does seem like a nice person, and I appreciate all the charity work she does, and that she's pretty supportive of fandom unlike some other authors who consider fanfic to be sacrilege.
A friend gave me a complete 8-dvd movie set for Christmas a few years back, so I've been thinking of doing a rewatch sometime.
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I don't think she understands that when some people read a single book, the plot is everything, but when reading a series, the characters take on more importance. The first HP book had a great story and she built a strong world and characters. It's love of those characters that leads us to the next book. You never hear people say they can't wait to read the next Sunnydale comic book - they want to read the next Buffy story.
I think Rowling thought she was serving the characters by telling the stories that would lead them toward a final resolution. Unfortunately, to make her plot work, she had to shift characterizations in an illogical way. Or maybe she just saw the characters as fluid to her plot. Not sure. It's a writing fault in my eyes, but I think I'm finally ready to move past her faults (and mine!). ^_^
love, working it out in your journal lore