Maybe, if we show how upset we are, she'll understand how angry and desperate she's made people. The thing is, that doesn't work because strangely, recipients of hate mail don't take that lesson away from it. When your defenses and alarm shoot way up because somebody is threatening you and sending hatred your way, your first response is not sympathy for the person who's threatening you.

For full show notes, transcripts, ways to contact the hosts or support the show, and more, visit hpafter2020.com.

He says to Harry, "I'll breathe freely again when this tournament's over, and that's not until June." To me, this is the proof. Yeah, Sirius is a parent, godfather. He and Molly Weasley have an argument in the next volume about whether he's really the same as a father. Yeah, this qualifies to me.

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She was the mother of a three-month-old, kicked out of the house with her baby still inside. That's something that happened to this author, and I can't help but remember that when I look at the passage of Fleur going crazy because she was physically unable to go rescue her sister. I'm not going to read literature separated from details of the biography of the author. I find it more rich, more human and rewarding to integrate what I know into my reading of it.

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Whether or not you change on the inside, there are choices you've made in your past that you cannot run away from, and there are people who remember that commitment you made and were in it, too. You can't disavow this. Snape seizes his left forearm as if "something on it had hurt him," and that's one of those rare moments when we get to see the real Snape. For full show notes, transcripts, ways to contact the hosts or support the show, and more, visit hpafter2020.com.

"Boys, keep back! They prefer the woman's touch... Girls to the front…" This is a de facto magical gender test, right? If you're a kid who might not fall neatly into the gender binary, then you have to wonder, “How is this magical creature going to respond to me?” You might be able to pass by human standards or wizard standards. What is a unicorn going to think? For full show notes, transcripts, ways to contact the hosts or support the show, and more, visit hpafter2020.com.

“I know people who've come out within the last few years as trans or non-binary because of the book series. It is the perfect metaphor for being gay, for being trans, and that's the community that makes up the heart of, at least, the Wizard Rock portion of the fandom. Regardless of what she says, her books make a difference to little queer kids every day.”

– Bess Carnan of WZRD Radio

For full show notes, transcripts, ways to contact the hosts or support the show, and more, visit hpafter2020.com.

"Hermione, for once, gets to be the main character." For full show notes, transcripts, ways to contact the hosts or support the show, and more, visit hpafter2020.com.

My friend Lokifan wrote a meta about how Rowling writes friendship as romance and romance as mystery, because we don't know at this point who Hermione is going with. When friends are separated, their misery is how we consider romance difficulties to feel, and when friends are happy together, that's the great fulfillment that you get in a romance from the couple getting together.

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Oh, Winky. She's nothing but pain, but I love her so much. She has, for me, some of the greatest pain of any character in this series, because she has all of the anxiety and burden of being a caretaker but none of the power. She can't stop caring; she's not even with the family anymore, but she genuinely cared and she can't stop. 

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Not all of your strengths have to be in being academic, right? And that's really true for Harry. He's got a lot of things that he's good at, but that idea of playing to your strengths and having someone remind you, "What are you good at? What are you bringing to this that no one else is?" That’s powerful, right? -JC For full show notes, transcripts, ways to contact the hosts or support the show, and more, visit hpafter2020.com.