I've been thinking about Harry Potter. Something's been bothering me for years about the current crop of young wizards and witches portrayed in the HP books and films. They all seem to suck at magic. By this I mean that they seem to be in no way the magicians their predecessors were. Maybe this is a commentary on the decline of education at Hogwarts and beyond...
Consider Harry's dad, James, and his Hogwarts pals, Sirius, Remus and Peter. By the time they were Harry's age, they had created the Marauder's Map (one of the most infallible and amazing pieces of wizardry in the series) while three of them (if memory serves) had become accomplished Animagi -- able to transform into animals at will (stag, dog and rat). All this before they were eighteen.
Reading (or watching) the Half-Blood Price shows us young Severus Snape, who was busy correcting his textbooks and inventing his own powerful spells. Let's not even talk about the things that young Tom Riddle was able to do whilst at Hogwarts.
While still a student (we hear in the Half-Blood Prince movie), Harry's mom-to-be, Lily, was able to conjure a wondrous magical fish that swam contentedly until the day she died.
In short, who among the current crop of Hogwarts students is doing anything like this? It seems like Harry, while plucky, only knows three of four spells. Even Hermione, the genius of them all, seems to be a master of Magical Trivia (knowing the answer to every magical question there is) without actually doing much momentous magic.
I'm sending my kids to private wizard school.
No comments:
Post a Comment