1. The books are better than the movies. 

Many of the Harry Potter movies gloss over the important details the books supply, even going as far as to cut out entire characters and events that happen in the books. Many elements that are frequently mentioned in the books are forgotten until they can be convenient in the movies. For example, Peeves who is an important character who offers comedic relief in the books is completely cut from the entire cinematic series. Also Hagrid’s half-brother Grawp is seen exactly twice throughout the entirety of The Order of the Phoenix movie but is an important element in adding stress to Harry’s life throughout the book making him overwhelmed and stressed, which leads to a series of events that leads to the death of his Godfather.  

2. Severus Snape may be a glorified bully, but he is the lesser evil. 

Severus Snape was a bully from the very beginning, picking on a schoolboy because of his parentage, because this boy’s father was his own bully in school. This is a despicable act of authority, being petty to a literal child and taking out the vengeance he never released in his school years. Yet, through all this bad, he protected Harry through the very end, saving him from the greater evil in almost every book. It is important to mention that Severus Snape was young when he joined Voldemort, most likely fresh out of Hogwarts, anywhere from seventeen to twenty-two. He had his whole life in front of him and threw it away because he was young and stupid. This does nothing to justify his actions in the future, yet, perhaps with the correct guidance everything would have turned out differently. 

3. Dolores Umbridge is worse than Voldemort. I don’t care what you say she is a despicable woman. 

Dolores is an outlet for many fan’s hate, including my own. She is a prejudiced and racist woman who openly insults people based on their heritage and blatantly praises those with her own beliefs and is seen in society as a “correct” pureblood. She discriminates against magical creatures in the magical world, and it was even said she tried to implement laws that make it harder for magical creatures, werewolves in particular, to survive in the magical world, making it illegal for someone affected by afflictions such as lycanthropy to even exist.  

4. The Slytherins were raised in a world where they were constantly looked down upon for being categorized by their ambition and a few bad members of their Hogwarts house. 

The Slytherin house was looked down upon by the world ever since the rise of Voldemort. As a Slytherin alumnus and a descendent from the man himself, Voldemort made it harder for Slytherins to exist in the world without seeming evil. Many families who followed Voldemort in the first war in the 1970’s were looking for a way to been seen by something other than the name of their Hogwarts house. While several people joined Voldemort just to cause pain, many were looking for a life that didn’t involve being berated and degraded by society. Slytherins were attributed by their cunningness and their willingness to do anything to achieve their goals. They are determined and are looked down upon for it. All Slytherins do what they must in order to survive, and in a world that judges based on a few bad apples, it’s hard to do when you grew up in the dungeons of Hogwarts.  

5. Sirius Black, although one of my favorites, is a man-child because he was never allowed to grow up in a safe environment, and this was the ultimate cause of his death. 

Sirius Black was a wrongly convicted murderer who spent the majority of his twenties and half of his thirties in the worst prison known to the magical world. Before that he was the oldest child in the most noble and most ancient house of Black and was looked down upon by his family for his unprejudiced views and his house sorting into Gryffindor. His house sorting was an outrage amongst his family as he was raised in a notoriously Slytherin household. Being raised in a toxic home where he was never truly allowed to be himself made him grow up faster, abandoning the childhood years he was guaranteed but never had. Hogwarts was an outlet for that inner child, and being best friends with a childish person such as James Potter allowed him to indulge in what he missed out on during his childhood. Graduating during the midst of a war did nothing to help him as he was thrust into the clutches of death and devastation as a fresh graduate. No trial was held when he was found at the scene of the crime as Sirius was assumed guilty, and, because of this, he wasted away in prison for a decade. Sirius was subjected to the power of the dementors, a magical creature that sucks all the happiness from your body and suffered alone for thirteen years. After his escape during Harry’s third year at Hogwarts, he was set to avenge his friend’s death and failed leaving him on the run until his ultimate demise just two years later. He was in the midst of battle and was trying to impress his godson when he was struck with the killing curse finally leaving Harry alone in the world.  

6. Luna Lovegood is a traumatized child of war and deserves more respect than she gets. 

Luna Lovegood’s past is never truly touched within the books or the movies, but it is known by few that Luna watched her mother’s own spell backfire upon herself, killing her instantly. The Lovegood family was already eccentric, well known by the British magical community as “odd” and “strange” but watching her own mother die before her eyes must have left her scared beyond comprehension. Her father taught her to be who she is no matter the consequence and this gets her bullied horrendously in school, yet no one could understand, except maybe a small few, the horrors Luna had seen.  

7. Peter Pettigrew is a vile, loathsome man and Harry should have let Sirius end him. 

Peter Pettigrew was part of the marauders, a friend group consisting of James Potter, (Harry Potter’s father,) Remus Lupin, Sirius Black, and Peter. They stayed together throughout their school career, pulling pranks and making a name for themselves around the school. Throughout school, Peter, James, and Sirius all became animagi, which are wizards or witches who could transform themselves to and from animals at will. They did this in order to keep Remus company during his transformation on full moon nights. Peter had been a rat, James a stag, and Sirius a dog. This helped their bond grow and they all stuck together throughout school and beyond, yet Peter grew distant from his friends. Unbeknownst to them, he had taken the dark mark and pledged his allegiance to Voldemort. Peter plotted against his friends, became James Potter and Lily Evans’s secret keeper and ratted, pun intended, them out to Voldemort. betraying his friends and not only contributing to the imprisonment of Sirius Black but the abuse Harry had to endure all throughout his childhood.  

8. Remus Lupin, yet another child of war, deserved to be represented by something other than his lycanthropy.  

Throughout the entirety of the British magical community, werewolves were looked upon as scum of the earth. No one could see beyond the ailment all werewolves suffered through. Forced to transition every full moon, their bodies changed into creatures of the night, and they went on rampages looking to turn, or kill, anyone in their path. Yet, all of this can be solved by the administration of the wolfsbane potion which allows any werewolf who takes it to remain in control of their mind and be harmless throughout their transition. Yet, despite this, the wizarding community still looks upon them as vile because, during the war, a rogue pack of werewolves supported Voldemort for the chance for equal rights in magical society. 

9. Dumbledore allowed Harry Potter to be a victim of child abuse even after being told multiple times that Harry was not welcomed in the Dursley’s household.  

On the night of October 31st, 1981, Harry Potter was orphaned and declared the boy who lived for his “defeat” over the dark lord Voldemort. While he was being picked up from the rubble of his childhood home in Godric’s Hollow, Minerva McGonagall, later Harry’s transfiguration teacher, watched over the home Harry was set to live in until the year he reached his magical maturity at age seventeen. Over the time McGonagall had watched the Dursleys, Harry’s ‘only’ living relatives, related through his mother’s side with her sister being Petunia Dursley, McGonagall expressed her distain of the family going as far as to say that the Dursleys were “the worst sort of Muggles imaginable,” and yet Dumbledore still placed Harry in a home where he was forced to sleep in a cupboard under the stairs, wear clothes too big for him, and slave away for his aunt and uncle, and even get physically abused by his cousin Dudley who received no backlash for his mistreatment towards his cousin. Even later on when Harry was finishing up his second year of Hogwarts and asked Dumbledore to stay at the school over the summer as his “family” truly didn’t like him, he was pushed aside and sent back to an abusive home where, the summer before his second-year, bars were placed on his windows, and he was fed through a metal slot at the base of his door. Dumbledore even after being told time and time again that Harry was not welcomed in his “home” sent him back summer after summer, second-handedly contributing to the abuse Harry received. 

10. J.K. Rowling does a bad job of expanding on magic as a whole in the Harry Potter universe. 

Magic as a whole has been expanded time and time again throughout the ages of history, and in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series she captivates audiences with her whimsical writing and fantasy-filled adventures. In spite of this, Rowling never expands further into the universe she created, and while this does give fans the ability to add onto her universe themselves, it leaves the universe unfinished. While she does expand into the universe with the addition of The Cursed Child, many things are still left untouched. Spells, potions, and creatures are still left unwritten by the author. Questions left unanswered as Rowling never expands beyond what she publishes. Considering that Harry Potter is a billion-dollar franchise it seems unprofessional to leave a universe uncompleted when there is so much more to add to and contribute to the making of what is considered by many a literary masterpiece.