Shit, Actually

by Lindy West

  Flash-forward eleven years: Harry is now a severely traumatized tween who is forced to live in an airless cupboard and do unpaid domestic labor for his abusive (and worse, FAT) family because Dumbledore, “the only wizard you-know-who was ever afraid of,” who lives in a castle, thought it was “safer” for Harry there, even though as far as everyone knew at the time Voldemort had exploded. And yeah, I’m aware of the freaking magic power of a mother’s love, but couldn’t Harry just put the Dursleys’ as his registered address and then go “on vacation” to Hogwarts all year? He lives there most of the year anyway! And as far as I can tell, magic is all semantics! It doesn’t seem to be a problem when he leaves Privet Drive early to go to the Burrow for the last month of summer holiday every year. And anyway, what about Harry’s emotional safety?

  AAAAAAAAALSOOOOOOOO WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO ALL FOUR OF HARRY’S GRANDPARENTS? DID YOU KNOW THAT IF YOU DO THE MATH, LILY AND JAMES POTTER WERE ONLY TWENTY-ONE WHEN THEY DIED???? ALL FOUR OF THEIR PARENTS WERE ALREADY DEAD!?!?!? DO YOU KNOW ANYONE LIKE THAT IN REAL LIFE WHO DIDN’T LIVE THROUGH A WAR OR PLAGUE?

  JUSTICE

  FOR

  NANA

  AND

  GRAMPO

  EVANS

  AND

  MUNGA

  AND

  POP

  POP

  POTTER2

  You know, it’s like actually insane to make Harry sleep in the cupboard under the stairs when you have an entire extra bedroom. And don’t you need the storage? I would NEVER give up my linen closet no matter how much I hated my shitty nephew! Take the master, Grayson! I expected better logic out of Aunt Petunia, being the only non-fat in the family.

  Harry’s cousin Dudley has his parents totally cucked. He screams at them that he didn’t get enough birthday presents, and instead of giving him the present of a ride to the orphanage, his dad starts crying and takes him to the zoo. They’re in the reptile house when Harry just starts talking to a snake, and his only vibe is like, “Huh, I’ve never talked to a snake before.” Dude, you’re essentially a Muggle right now! It’s not like you live in the wizarding world where a cat is a person and sometimes a book will slice your jugular. This chill is psychopathic.

  Harry and the snake bond over their shared traumas. The snake tells Harry he was bred in captivity, and Harry goes, “That’s me too. I never knew my parents either.” Which had to have bugged the shit out of the snake because that’s not what “bred in captivity” means at all. That’s like when you tell someone your dad died and they nod and say they understand how you feel because they really miss their cat when they’re at work. Like, sorry your parents got murdered by a magician, but “bred in captivity” involves the kidnapping, imprisonment, forced insemination, and slavery of your entire family, sweetie! Look it up!

  Harry uses his secret wizard emotions to make the glass disappear, so the snake is like, “Bye, I’m going to slither to Burma.” Okay, good luck with all of Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. I’m sure you’ll make it, though!

  Now it’s Harry’s birthday, and for the first time in his life, he gets a letter in the mail. Mesmerized, this dumbass brings the letter into the dining room like he’s never met his own family before. Uncle Vernon of course confiscates it, fatly, but the letters keep coming! Thousands and thousands of them! Uncle Vernon has no choice but to Airbnb a shack on a crag in the middle of the ocean and drag his weeping family there because no wizard could possibly check his browser history and figure out where they went. (Actually, that is true. Wizards are constantly roasting “Muggle technology,” meanwhile their best method of long-distance communication is sticking your face in a fire and hoping your friend happens to be in the kitchen at the time. But yeah, fellytones are stupid!)

  The Dursleys are all asleep. Harry’s making himself a birthday cake out of dirt, which is also his bed. Just then, a giant wild man rips the door off its hinges and barges into the crag shack, which we’re expected to think is very cool! (IDK, I kind of feel like Muggles should have some rights, even if they’re dicks?) It’s Hagrid, and he’s brought Harry a real cake and an invitation to Hogwarts.

  “Of course you know all about Hogwarts.”

  “I’m sorry, no.”

  If you thought Harry knew all about Hogwarts, then why did you hunt this family down and break into their house????

  Even in the moment when his whole family is being terrorized by a giant, fatboy Dudley can’t stop himself from plunging his face directly into the cake and omph momph gromph skromph. As a fat woman, this moment of cultural representation moved me deeply. My uncle got straight up killed by a dog at his own wedding and I was still like, “So, uh, when we gonna slice into this baby?? Don’t keep Mama waiting!!!!!!”

  Hagrid takes Harry back-to-school shopping in Diagon Alley, which is a top-secret wizards-only neighborhood in London. Here’s another thing I don’t get: If wizards live in London (and as we know, Hogsmeade is the only all-wizard village in England, so most wizards must live in Muggle settlements!), why don’t they understand anything about Muggle culture? They’re surrounded by millions of Muggles every day! You’re telling me they never need to use Muggle money to get a sandwich or take a bus? They can’t get a basic handle on Muggle clothes? Mr. Weasley walks through giant crowds of Muggles every day on his way to work and still thinks he needs to wear an umpire’s chest protector and teal yoga pants and a baby’s christening bonnet and a Hula-Hoop just to pick Harry up from the bus stop? What are all the kids wearing on the Hogwarts Express before they “change into their school robes”? I am going to die of this.

  Harry buys a magic wand from John Hurt, considered by many to be the greatest actor of his generation, who really takes his twelve seconds of screen time talking nonsense to a child TO THE LIMIT. Hagrid buys Harry an owl as a present. They visit the bank, which is run by hook-nosed goblins with rubber hands (YIKES), so Hagrid can do some secret Hogwarts business. Harry admires the Nimbus 2000 in a shop window even though four seconds ago he didn’t know that flying brooms existed. He is taking all of this in stride to a degree that, again, is disturbing.

  That trend continues when Hagrid casually tells Harry that his parents were murdered by an evil wizard named Voldemort, who also tried to murder Harry, and probably still wants to ASAP. Harry’s like, “Wow.” Then Hagrid takes him to the train station and dumps him there! Alone! With no information except for “platform 9 and ¾” and “the evilest wizard of all time wants you dead, bye.” Because he’s “gotta meet Dumbledore.” Oh, yeah, if only there was a train named after Dumbledore’s house that was going directly from where you’re standing to Dumbledore’s house!

  So, does the Hogwarts Express run year-round? Who operates it? Hogwarts? The Ministry of Magic? Do the residents of Hogsmeade get to use it? Or is it just an entire steam train (WHO MINES THE COAL?) dedicated solely to taking one hundred children to and from Hogwarts twice a year? And if that’s the case, how the fuck does the witch who runs the snack trolley pay her bills? Do wizards have bills? If they don’t, then WHAT DOES IT MEAN THAT THE WEASLEYS ARE POOR?

  Harry is wandering around looking for platform 9 and ¾, and if this were Lindy West and the Sorcerer’s Stone, I would have literally stood on that platform until the Hogwarts Express came back at the beginning of summer holiday because I hate asking people questions, especially train conductors. But Harry spies a weathered railwayman and marches right up to him carrying a live owl like, “Excuse me, guv’nah, where is platform 9 and ¾?” and I tell you I would DIE before doing that!!!!!!!! Luckily, just as this uniformed authority figure starts yelling at Harry for being a wise guy (CORPSIFY ME FIRST), the entire Weasley clan walks by talking about “Muggles” and “Hogwarts” and Harry runs off to bug them instead.

  Fred’s and George’s haircuts are literally disgusting.

  Mrs. Weasley teaches Harry how to get on the train, and then Ron teaches Harry about all the different kinds of wizard candy. I’m sorry f
or constantly digressing, but who invented chocolate? Wizards or Muggles? Are house elves down in Brazil harvesting, roasting, grinding, and exporting cacao beans? Or did Muggles figure all that out, and then wizards just buy Muggle chocolate from Muggle chocolate factories (with WHAT KIND OF MONEY?) and then bewitch it to jump around like a frog? Because wizards literally treat Muggles like dumb trash, but there’s no way they don’t benefit constantly from Muggle invention. Not to be a capitalist, but don’t tell me wizards had any incentive to invent trains when they can already teleport.

  Harry gets a Dumbledore trading card with his chocolate frog and is confused when Dumbledore just walks out of the frame. Ron is like, “Well, you can’t expect him to hang around all day,” and I’m sure you know what I’m going to ask. Is there just ONE SIMULACRUM DUMBLEDORE FOR ALL PAINTINGS AND CARDS? The odds of ever catching him on your chocolate frog card would be basically zero, but this is the least fucked-up thing about the internal logic of the sentient portraits in Harry Potter, so I will back down.

  Ron introduces Harry to his hand-me-down rat, Scabbers, who blows (and is secretly a man, and has definitely seen multiple Weasley brothers masturbate????), and then Ron announces he’s going to try out a new spell that Fred and George taught him. It goes like this:

  “Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow, turn this stupid fat rat yellow.”

  Setting aside why anyone would possess the drive to turn a rat yellow, this is clearly not a real spell. We know this because a) the rat does not turn yellow, b) Hermione shows up and is like, “That’s not a real spell,” and c) Ron, your parents are wizards! You’re eleven years old! Haven’t you ever heard a real spell before? The spell for turning a rat yellow would be, like, “Rattonius yellowus” because let’s be honest, sometimes the writing in these books is bad.

  BTW, Hermione should 100 percent be the protagonist of this whole shit and I cannot wait for this series to root deep enough into the public memory to produce a bona fide literary fiction retelling from Hermione’s POV and I’d like to put pre-dibs on the TV adaptation option for that property, please! Thx! I’m avail!

  Thoughts on sorting:

  First of all, reminder that Harry Potter presupposes that every witch and wizard in England went to the same high school except for a handful of full-KKK wizards who shipped their kids to Durmstrang. And there are only like fifty children in Harry’s year! Everyone in the country would know each other! There’s this part in book six where Harry holds Quidditch tryouts for Gryffindors only and is like, “Yeah, I don’t know any of these people.” HOW? There are 150 of you tops and you all live in a tower together and eat treacle tart family style every day! You’ve never met Cormac McLaggen before?

  Second of all, the Sorting Hat. So it’s a sentient hat, and they stick the kids’ heads up its asshole so it can tell them whether they’re brave, smart, evil, or other (the four genders). What does the Sorting Hat do the rest of the year? Does it have to sit in a cupboard in the dark? That seems cruel and unusual for a living hat. Does it ever get to fuck a woman hat? Freedom for Sorting Hat.

  Third of all, I’m sure this is a hacky thing to say in Harry Potter fandom and many of you are sharpening your quills to send me letters about what “cunning” means, but disband Slytherin! Why keep it? Do we need it? Why have one house that’s evil? Especially when your whole society is so scared of evil wizards they can’t even say one guy’s name out loud? Wizard hack: don’t send fully one-quarter of your children to Evil School, and maybe end up with 100 percent fewer evil wizards.

  Harry gets sorted into Gryffindor and goes up to his dorm room where he sits in his window seat petting his owl. Does anyone else find it weird how no parents ever come visit Hogwarts? It’s weird, right? These kids don’t even have phones! It is weird to be ten and only talk to your parents once a year, sorry.

  Now is the time for wizard school to start!

  I know that “Dumbledore trusts him,” and I get the whole Harry’s parents’ backstory, but the way that Snape treats Harry throughout this series is absolutely off the rails and would be illegal in Muggle society (but yeah, wizards are “better”!). You’re telling me the students have absolutely no recourse if they’re being abused by staff? You’re telling me there aren’t any wizard helicopter parents (or as Mr. Weasley calls them, “smellyhopper” parents) who would complain? Harry is verbally and emotionally abused, not to mention held back academically, for six years, because Snape, an adult male authority figure, has such poor coping skills he can’t stop himself from vindictively projecting his resentments onto an innocent child! It’s truly a dystopian vision of an education system with no community oversight!

  That said, Alan Rickman!!!!!!! The acting in this movie so vastly outstrips the script and direction it is frankly problematic and I’m telling cancel culture.

  I hate how they sometimes crimp sections of Hermione’s hair like that’s part of her natural hair texture like we’ve never seen hair before.

  The kids go outside for their first flying lesson. Neville immediately loses control of his broom and crunches to the ground, and Madam Hooch is like, “Oh, weird,” as though that’s a completely unexpected outcome when you give a child a flying machine and no instruction. “Oh dear, it’s a broken wrist.” Yeah, because you did a really bad job supervising them!

  She takes Neville to the hospital wing, so Malfoy seizes the opportunity to be a dick. He steals Neville’s Remembrall (a ball filled with smoke that turns red when you’ve forgotten something, more a torture device than a convenience, really, worse than not having one, IMO!) and flies high up into the air with it, taunting Harry.

  Harry takes the bait: “Give it here, Malfoy, or I’ll knock you off your broom!” Wow, you’ll KILL HIM???? For Neville’s Remembrall? What a psycho! #Maybe! #Snape! #Was! #Right!

  Malfoy throws the Remembrall into the sky and Harry executes a flawless catch to save it and Professor McGonagall spies him out the window. You think he’s going to get in trouble for breaking the rules, but fortunately, the only thing McGonagall cares about more than rules is balls of yarn, and the only thing she cares about more than balls of yarn is laser pointers and the only thing she cares about more than laser pointers is tuna water and the only thing she cares about more than tuna water is SPORTS. She makes Harry the seeker on the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Hermione informs Harry that his dad was the Gryffindor seeker in 1972 because this freak has already memorized every trophy in the castle.

  Harry, Ron, and Hermione inadvertently wander into the forbidden corridor on the third floor, and when they’re nearly caught by Mrs. Norris (…a cat), they run deeper and deeper into the forbidden corridor where they’re nearly mangled and mutilated by Fluffy, a three-headed giant dog. See, this is what happens when children are given no foundation of safety and consistency—when they’re just as likely to be publicly humiliated by an adult goth as they are to be heard and believed if they’re caught in apparent misbehavior and tell the truth. Kids should be able to say, “The staircase moved so we accidentally went down the wrong hallway, sorry,” without Filch beating them with a chain!

  Anyway, Ron is like, “What do they think they’re doing, keeping a thing like that locked up in a school?” and it does seem like a significant liability just to protect a rock that Dumbledore could easily keep in his underpants.

  Oliver Wood teaches Harry the rules of Quidditch in his turtleneck. Is that what cool clothes and hair were like in 2001? Can I have all my crushes back?

  They go to Charms class and we meet Professor Flitwick, the only professor who matters, who should be making a billion galleons a year but instead is only ever referred to as “tiny Professor Flitwick.” Charms is basically ALL SPELLS. Name one useful thing they learn in Transfiguration! Oh, finally, a solution to my teacup surplus / mouse shortage!

  Hermione is (rightfully) condescending about “wingardium leviosa,” so Harry and Ron hurt her feelings and she goes to cry in the bathroom. Professor Quirrell comes running into the lun
chroom screaming that there’s a troll in the dungeon, so Dumbledore sends all the kids to their dormitories to hide. Harry and Ron remember that Hermione doesn’t know about the troll because she’s boo-hooing in the shitter! They race to get her and discover that somehow in the maddening, thousand-room maze that is Hogwarts Castle, the troll has wandered into the random girls’ bathroom where Hermione is crying. Sure, okay!

  Why does a troll wear a loincloth? It can’t talk, but it feels shame about its genitals?

  Harry and Ron defeat the troll by sticking Harry’s wand up its nose and into its brain, and then Ron wingardium leviosas the troll’s club so it knocks him out—yet another instance of Hermione saving everyone’s ass by being the only competent person in the building. Not only that, then she does them a huge solid. In the toilet!!!!!!! Just kidding, she does them a huge solid by taking the blame for hunting down the troll while being children. And McGonagall awards them points for it, yet another example of the completely destabilizing systemic inconsistency allowed to flourish at Hogwarts! (This is why Harry never goes to an authority figure about any of his many outrageous and deadly problems. What does authority even mean in such a context?)

  It’s time for Harry’s first Quidditch match of the season. Snape approaches him. “Good luck today, Potter. Then again, now that you’ve proven yourself against a troll, a little Quidditch match should be no problem, even if it is against Slytherin.” Dude, you’re an ADULT. GO TO THERAPY.

  Harry and the Gryffindors square off against Marcus Flint and his magnum dentures. If Quidditch were real, every single one of these Quidditch players would be dead. In the middle of the match, Harry’s broom—a.k.a. a stick that a child is riding in the sky—goes rogue and tries to throw him off. Hermione spies Snape (seemingly) muttering a curse in the stands, so she sets him on fire, the only recourse available to a student at a school where chaos is king! Then Harry catches the golden snitch in his mouth and wins.