Quote from Shell Cottage on September 27, 2026, 2:08 pm

Quote from IFFIN on September 26, 2026, 11:39 am

Part I

I have been answering this offline and I was trying to edit it to be shorter, but it just got longer. I tried posting it in one go. That wasn't happening. So I am doing it in parts and I want to do it today, because I start a paint class this afternoon and don't want this on my mind.

 Interesting stuff so far. But I don’t think we know if  JKR was obsessed with  John Nettleship or just a child observing her mother’s boss. About the coup de theatre  I remember when trying to look for clues on what was going to happen next. One book that JKR loved was I Captured the Castle, because of the surprise. I’ve read the book and watched the movie and yes there is a big surprise. So I kept that in mind when looking for clues. Since I liked Snape, I always believed the big surprise had to do with him. 

When Rowling suddenly sprung it on us that James really was a bully, and later that Snape was a (slightly tattered) hero, many people were reluctant to give up their deeply-held fanons which had shaped their understanding of the books, and tried to force the text to fit the fanon - so we get people who still refuse to accept that James bullied Snape, regardless of what Rowling may say both in the books and on Pottermore.

This I believe. And personally I don’t think there is anything wrong in believing that fictional reality as long as you know that it isn’t book canon and you respect that others have their own ships. And if you have a different point of view, share it. Maybe there is something in canon that makes you think differently because we are all unique and no one is ever going to see 100%. The stories will in the end and they are always changing. Someone saw the Scarecrow fall in love with The Wicked Witch of the West and we got Wicked the musical.

Something similar happened with Dumbledore. Some people still clung to their idea of him as a saintly, kindly old grandfather figure against all the evidence, while others were so shocked by the revelations in DH that they decided he was a complete villain with no redeeming features.

Nah. I was more upset about how he ran Hogwarts. I never thought he was saintly in the first book when he gave all those points to Gryffindor. And my first read of DH wasn’t a thorough read. I had to see about Snape. So I caught the Dumbledore part, but I didn’t really think about it. Needed to get to Snape's part. Camping. Hermione and Ron arguing. NO Snape. More camping. And where in the f**k did the deathly hallows come from? Was there any clues in the previous books? More camping. Oh hell. Let me just go to the prince's tale. Then I got depressed. 

I hadn't heard of I Capture the Castle.  Interesting to know.