Fanon VS Canon
Most witches and wizards are pagans.
There is a widespread assumption in fandom that the Potterverse witches and wizards must be Wiccans or some other type of pagan. As a pagan myself I might find this idea attractive, but we see Hogwarts observe Christmas and Easter holidays, as well as Hallowe'en, and Rowling has stated that all Muggle religions are also found in the wizarding world, except Wicca.
That sounds like a touch of spiteful sour grapes, especially coming from somebody who used to be an amateur astrologer (an illustrated birth-chart which Rowling drew up for a neighbour turned up on the Antiques Road Show), but it does make a certain sense. Wiccans have fixed ideas about how magic works which aren't compatible with what wizards do in the Potterverse, so it wouldn't really be possible for a Potterverse witch/wizard to be a Wiccan unless they altered the religion so much that it wasn't really Wicca any more anyway.
Only good people have Patronuses
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This one probably came about because Rowling said that Snape was the only Death Eater to have a Patronus, because the Death Eaters associate with things like Dementors which are the antithesis of a Patronus, and he had to hide the fact that he had a Patronus from the others in case it gave away his true loyalties. But interviews, Pottermore etc. are only canon if they don't clash with the books, and in the books Umbridge both associates with Dementors and has an especially strong, bright Persian cat Patronus.
I suggest, therefore, that if Death Eaters really don't have Patronuses it's because the Dark Mark somehow interferes with Patronus-casting, and Snape has to hide the fact that he has a Patronus because the fact that he can cast one is a sign that he is using Occlumency to shut Voldemort out of his mind. As well as, of course, the fact that if anybody on the Death Eater side recognised that his Patronus matched Lily's it would raise questions about where his loyalties lay, and whether it was possible that he could serve Lily's killer sincerely.
Add-on: canon has now imitated fanon, and Pottermore has come up with a brief essay claiming that indeed only good people have Patronuses, and that Umbridge was only a bit morally dubious and that was why she had one. I regard this as a case where Pottermore cannot be regarded as canon because it contradicts the books. Umbridge in the books appears to be seriously evil, and yet she doesn't just have any old Patronus - she has an unusually bright and strong one. What's more the description of casting a Patronus in the books makes it clear that what you need to cast one isn't virtue but a strong happy memory - and there's no law which says evil people can't be happy.
Yeah I definitely think JKR messed up when it came to giving Umbridge a patronus, because it implies that twisted people can utilise horrific things that they can use as a 'happy' memory.
And snaters use that as fuel to accuse Severus of finding 'joy' in torturing students, among other things 😒
True, Snaters often use Umbridge's example to bash Snape for having a patronus.
The centaurs raped Umbridge
This idea is often stated as definite fact - generally by people who wish to exaggerate Hermione's already rather callous behaviour - because the centaurs of Ancient Greek myth were rowdy drunks who were reported to often carry away and rape human women. But within the fictional world defined by the Harry Potter books, the centaurs of Hogwarts are fully sentient flesh-and-blood beings, not animated Greek myths or beasts primarily ruled by instinct, so to assume that they must be rapists because their ancestors 2,500 years and 1,500 miles away were reputed to be rapists is like assuming that modern humans neccessarily carry out human sacrifice because the Ancient Greeks did. In fact, it's worse than that, because being part equine the centaurs may well have a much shorter generation time than humans, making Ancient Greece almost as far away, for them, as the Ice Age is for us.
Plus, we are actually told that post-centaur Umbridge had mussed-up hair with twigs and leaves in it, but "otherwise she seemed to be quite unscathed". It sounds as though she might have been literally "dragged through a hedge backwards", or thrown down on the forest floor, but not otherwise physically injured. Even allowing for the fact that if their human parts are human-sized and their equine bodies are gracefully in proportion, centaurs must be more pony than horse, and also that when equines mate they insert only the first few inches of the penis, the rest being just a kind of gantry to bridge the considerable gap between the stallion's hind quarters and the mare's, rape by something with equine genitalia would surely cause bruising and bleeding, which we see no sign of.
Umbridge is certainly psychologically damaged - but then she's been held prisoner by a mob of creatures about whom she has a phobia, like Ron with the Acromantulas, and she obviously has serious issues about control. If you take authorial intent into account, Rowling's bothering to state that Umbridge was physically unscathed apart from having messy hair seems to be there to make it clear Umbridge had not been seriously molested, despite the centaurs' historical reputation.
However, it may well be the case that Umbridge was enough of a bigot to assume that the centaurs were mere beasts ruled by instincts, and must therefore be rapists because their ancestors 2,500 years ago had been, and this may have been at the root of her phobia about them. Especially since, if they are very horse-like in their physiology, some of them may well have been wandering around with spontaneous erections.
Quote from Naaga on May 22, 2023, 2:03 pmHouse-elves are child-like.
House-elves are often portrayed as simple-minded, and this goes with the idea that Winky must be a pathetic victim rather than an adult woman who insisted on responsibilities which she then welched on. This is based in part on the fact that the first elf we meet, Dobby, is a bit of a twit who tends to overthink the problem, and on their disjointed way of speaking. Yet the traditional folkloric creature they are based on, the hob, house-brownie or gruagach, is a kind of semi-domesticated ogre, quite strong and fierce, very proud and not at all child-like. Even the elves' habit of punishing themselves if they feel they've done wrong is not actually any madder or more childish than Catholic monks scourging themselves in penance for unclean thoughts.
Nightfall Rising has pointed out that the house-elves' dialogue ceases to sound at all child-like if you imagine it in a Jamaican accent. This suggests that their odd way of speaking isn't a sign of childishness or stupidity but is an adult patois or pidgen, a localised dialect of English spoken by a group who were trying to be bilingual, but whose own original language is so structurally different from English that their version of English comes out a bit grammatically peculiar.
It's an interesting fact that despite widespread and rather patronizing sympathy for the elves, I have never seen any fanfic which was written before DH, and which portrayed Kreacher in a sympathic light. In pre-DH fanfics he is always either played as a villain, or killed off to get rid of him. The morality of the Potter books is often rather dubious - sneering at people who are overweight, playing Hagrid's bigotry against Muggles for laughs, giving the Trio and the Twins a free pardon for what is often quite appalling behaviour including kidnap and deliberately scarring somebody's face - but as far as Kreacher goes, JKR undoubtedly has the moral high ground and has dealt with him with more kindness and generosity than any of her fen.
This makes me head spin. It’s now my headcanon.
