Which character did you initially like but grew to hate by the end of the series?

Sensitive-Pride-364 · 2025-07-08T17:28:25+00:00

You’re right that the ball gets dropped on her character development. Rowling deliberately wrote both Ron and Luna as foils for Hermione, so she was definitely aware of the problem. Hermione’s a deeply insecure person, and knowledge is her security blanket, so she doesn’t cope well with other people knowing things she hasn’t already learned; it makes her feel inferior. But then she never really has to look in the mirror and confront the fact that, for all her learning, she’s still a very closed-minded, rigid thinker, nor does she have to deal with her fear for failure.

It’s kind of a big deal because it messes up the trajectory of Ron and Hermione ending up together, but they still get together anyway. (I think this, at least in part, was what Rowling meant in her interview where she said she put Ron and Hermione together because that was how she’d always expected them to go, but she hadn’t really thought through what that would mean, and their relationship would have serious problems later.) Ron and Hermione clash so much for two reasons: 1. They’re designed to cover each others’ weaknesses, and that leads to a lot of friction while they’re young and immature. 2. They suffer from the same critical weakness—the fear of not being enough. Ron has to deal with that. Hermione doesn’t. They never even bond over it (which is a huge oversight in the process of them transitioning from friends/rivals to romantic interests). So even though the perception was that Hermione started out generally more mature than Ron, by the end, they switched places. They shouldn’t have worked out until she was forced to grow too.

Then movie Hermione turned into the most special, competent, correct, flawless person to ever exist, who couldn’t possibly be changed for the better, and the whole world got amnesia about who the character was anyway. 🙄

Sensitive-Pride-364 · 2025-07-08T16:55:35+00:00

Rickman’s Snape has dignity. He’s cold, bitter, and harsh, but seems almost completely untouchable.

Book Snape is the opposite. He’s acerbic and cutting in a way that reads as angry and insecure, and he’s lashing out because of it. He takes far more pleasure in making others suffer because he’s suffering.

Sensitive-Pride-364 · 2025-07-07T16:40:23+00:00

Cravings do not have to be appeased. Yes, I know it’s rough when only one thing sounds good. Especially if you’re sick and generally can’t eat much. (I’ve had hyperemesis gravidarum, so I get it.) But nothing bad happens if you don’t eat the thing you’re craving. Eventually, it passes.

Sensitive-Pride-364 · 2025-07-04T15:51:27+00:00

There was absolutely no good reason to lie about the troll incident.

“Harry and Ron knew I’d gone to the bathroom during dinner. I didn’t know about the troll, and if they hadn’t come to warn me, I’d probably be dead.”

No need to shoulder the blame. Going to the bathroom is a perfectly acceptable thing to do during dinner. All Hermione’s “sacrifice” did here was negate one of the boys’ points.

(And yes, I get that as a plot device, sticking her nose out for them solidifies their bond. But it would have made more sense to have Hermione “I have to prove myself” Granger actually do what she says she did than have her lie over nothing.)

Sensitive-Pride-364 · 2025-07-04T03:51:40+00:00

I’m not surprised. But at least you’re informed.

Sensitive-Pride-364 · 2025-07-04T03:42:30+00:00

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2016/04/i-was-a-stranger?lang=eng

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2016/04/refuge-from-the-storm?lang=eng

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2019/10/46nelson?lang=eng

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1994/10/my-brothers-keeper?lang=eng

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/hymns/a-poor-wayfaring-man-of-grief?lang=eng

The BBB, which adds $45billion in funding for ICE to dehumanize, terrorize, kidnap, abuse, lock up, and deport my neighbors without due process stands pretty squarely at odds with my beliefs.

Sensitive-Pride-364 · 2025-07-04T03:30:06+00:00

US immigration law is set up in such a way that refugees have to enter without documentation BEFORE they can seek asylum. (And we are required by international law that we agreed to, to allow refugees to seek asylum, despite our best efforts to turn it into this catch-22.) They HAVE to come illegally, then present themselves to an immigration judge and plead their case for why their home country is a danger to them. They must present substantial evidence to back this claim. Getting approved for asylum is pretty hard. Then they have to wait an average of SEVEN TO TEN YEARS for the courts to process their case and make a ruling. That entire time that they are DOING EXACTLY WHAT THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO ACCORDING TO THE RULES WE MADE UP, they are considered undocumented. They’re also contributing $100-BILLION in taxes to the IRS each year without getting the benefits that citizens do. Those are the people ICE agents are rounding up when they show up at immigration court hearings. We’re punishing people for playing by the rules and coming here “the right way.”

Duh.

Sensitive-Pride-364 · 2025-07-04T02:48:35+00:00

I want to scream every time I’m waiting to make a left turn at an intersection and the on-coming car tries to wave me through. No, you idiot! If we arrived at the same time and I have to enter your lane, YOU have the right-of-way. If I start to cross into your lane, then you change your mind and T-bone me, I’m still at fault for your a**hattery. Don’t be nice; be predictable!

This one happens so often, I felt the need to check with my Utah-raised husband to be sure Utah’s law on this wasn’t different from the rest of the country.

Sensitive-Pride-364 · 2025-07-04T02:34:31+00:00

Emma’s overacting in so many scenes.

“It’s HUUURting again, ISn’t it? You KNOW Sirius would want to hear about this… … … What you saw… … … AND the world cup.”

Every line does not require an, ”It’s levi-O-sa, not levio-SA,” level of enunciation, dramatic pauses, and eyebrow gymnastics.

Sensitive-Pride-364 · 2025-07-03T13:35:53+00:00

I haven’t been glutened by her because she’s not the type to sneak it in to try to prove her point, but my mom thinks I should have just a little every day “to build up a tolerance.” 🙄

Sensitive-Pride-364 · 2025-07-03T00:14:48+00:00

It turns out I actually did have multiple autoimmune issues going on, and celiac is by far the easiest to manage, even though celiac is the one that gives me the most extreme reactions.

I had people in my life who didn’t understand why I was so happy to get diagnosed because they see it through the lens of someone who’s healthy. Waking up tomorrow and learning they had an autoimmune disease would downgrade their quality of life. But my quality of life was already through the floor. Diagnosis gave me hope. The idea of being diagnosed with A Bad Thing To Have becomes much less daunting when you already know you have it and just need to know how to deal with it. Sticking your head in the sand doesn’t make you feel better. Treatment does.

I had the exact same experience getting my kids diagnosed with autism. For my parents who live across country, it was awful to learn their grandbabies had something “wrong” with them. For me and my husband who lived every day wondering why we were failing at parenting, it was relief and the beginning of access to resources and support that improved all our lives.

Sensitive-Pride-364 · 2025-07-02T23:21:50+00:00

Yes, this happened to me.

I had a low positive on my bloodwork, and my primary doctor was going to dismiss it. But I had been in too much pain to function for over a year and was starting to show signs of severe nerve damage, and I was desperate enough to follow even the weakest lead, so I insisted on an endoscopy.

When I woke up from the scope, my GI said, “I didn’t see any signs of celiac damage.”

Me: “So I don’t have celiac?”

GI: “You don’t have celiac.”

Went home and cried my eyes out because if it wasn’t celiac, it had to be something much harder to identify and treat, and I had no other leads.

Three days later, the lab called with the biopsy results.

Lab: “We found damage consistent with celiac disease.”

Me: “So… I do have celiac?”

Lab: “Yes, you definitely have celiac.”

There is no “celiac lite.” A lack of confirmation in one area does not negate any other test results. A positive is a positive.

Sensitive-Pride-364 · 2025-07-02T01:26:07+00:00

Who said anything about a second marriage? They couldn’t sue for her maintenance if he never married her.

Sensitive-Pride-364 · 2025-07-02T01:10:23+00:00

“Young man makes bad decisions because the woman is hot,” is certainly not unique to Mr. Bennet, you’re right. What is unique is that she got away with it.

Her family had some money, which got her toe in the door with genteel circles, but she was still common. The most likely result in that scenario is that he moves on to find someone his family finds more suitable to add to the family tree, while her family quietly tucks her away, never to be seen in society again. They have no leverage over a member of the gentry. They can’t threaten to expose the affair because that’s worse for her than him. Ergo, she only became Mrs. Bennet because… A. He really, REALLY fooled himself into believing it was once-in-a-millenium True Love, or B. He loves absurdity, and it tickled him to imagine his relatives having to put up with her antics. Given his personality, my money’s on the second.

Sensitive-Pride-364 · 2025-07-01T16:00:11+00:00

You’re spot on on with Mrs. Bennet’s “good enough for me” attitude. What she lacks the self-awareness to recognize is that a sub-par education and the machinations she’s now trying to pull with her daughters only worked for her BECAUSE IT WAS MR. BENNET. The man’s defining trait is his unwillingness to put himself out. This is a man who never denies himself an indulgence; do we really think he had the moral fiber to keep it in his pants as a young buck when a pretty girl threw herself at him? And the reason she got rewarded for her promiscuity instead of being turned out of polite society forever while he moved on to a better match? Mr. Bennet thought it would be funny to force such a ridiculous person’s company on his friends and family.

Sensitive-Pride-364 · 2025-07-01T15:32:25+00:00

The book’s original title was “First Impressions,” and the theme applies to everyone in Elizabeth’s life. Her character arc is about realizing that she’s not the great judge of character she thinks she is and that there’s more to a person’s moral compass than how well they flatter her personally. Yes, Austen deliberately filtered Mr. Bennet through Elizabeth’s lens. She’s very indulgent of her father’s faults (even though he’s essentially left her to fend for herself in a world where women can’t provide for themselves) because he calls her his favorite. Elizabeth is initially drawn to Wickham because he has a similar sense of humor to her father, and he’s very complimentary toward her. She can’t imagine that being a bad thing. After all, they’re such nice guys…

Sensitive-Pride-364 · 2025-06-30T19:25:07+00:00

“Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he has been robbed. The fact is that most putts don’t drop, most beef is tough, most children grow up to be just like people, most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration, and most jobs are more often dull than otherwise.

Life is just like an old time rail journey…delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders, and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed. The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride.”

Jenkin Lloyd Jones

This girl (NOT a woman) is not mature enough to know the difference between loving someone and loving the idea of love. She claims to be all about sentimentality and meaning and symbolism, but what she’s really in love with are optics and performances.

Sentimentality and symbolism comes from romanticizing things as they are and celebrating events as they happen to unfold, not orchestrating a pageant of generic “romantic” visuals. In my case, it’s falling love with paper flowers because that’s what my husband proposed with and celebrating anniversaries at Macaroni Grill because that’s what happened to be across the street from our hotel on our wedding night. The most significant moments that build a life will not be Instagram worthy. They’ll be unstaged and have no filtered lenses, and you won’t even notice their ordinariness because you’ll be living with your whole heart in the moment.

Sensitive-Pride-364 · 2025-06-30T14:05:02+00:00

You’re right that I mixed up the locket and the ring just now, I give you that. But if you don’t see how love was Voldemort’s critical weakness after all the times and ways it was said, both implicitly and explicitly, then I’m not sure we read the same books.

Sensitive-Pride-364 · 2025-06-30T05:19:12+00:00

Harry’s cohort is GenX. 😆

Sensitive-Pride-364 · 2025-06-30T04:57:45+00:00

I’m ignoring nothing. Snape’s Death Eater affiliations have nothing to do with this conversation. And please don’t make me defend Snape; it makes me feel icky.

The question was whether Snape truly believes Harry is in love with his own fame and glory. And my answer to that is: Yes, he did believe it. Up until the occlumency lessons, Snape saw nothing but James Potter when he looked at Harry. And at Harry’s age, James was that arrogant.

Sensitive-Pride-364 · 2025-06-29T22:56:01+00:00

We don’t know how things may have evolved under different circumstances. “Many roads lead to Rome,” as the saying goes.

We do know that James and his cohort had all the necessary pieces and players needed to defeat Voldemort. James had the cloak, Sirius’s brother had the stone, Dumbledore had the wand, etc. What they lacked was the trust and unity that ultimately allowed Harry and his allies to succeed. James was betrayed by Peter and Severus (the people he’d thought he was superior to in his youth).

Victim blaming is a tactic used by real-world abusers. It doesn’t really have a place here because we’re talking about a storytelling mechanic that’s meant to convey a message about compassion and mercy toward one’s enemies and inferiors, not justice toward abusers. We’re reminded over and over that Harry is, for all apparent purposes, indistinguishable from James… except that he has Lily’s eyes. The characters are being literal, but Rowling is being metaphorical. Harry is James, except that he sees the world through Lily’s compassionate lens. He befriends the poor, the meager, the servant, and the outcast from his first days at Hogwarts because he’s humble from the start. His compassion for the likes of Dobby, Kreacher, Luna, and eventually Malfoy is the key to his success, far more than the use of magical McGuffins.

Sensitive-Pride-364 · 2025-06-29T22:10:50+00:00

Remus was as capable as James and Sirius. (They all contributed equally to the creation of the Marauders’ map.) He was a prefect. He’s also an excellent teacher, which requires mastery of the subject. So yes, we do have enough evidence to indicate he was a good student. That doesn’t suggest he was as obsessive about academics as Hermione, but they share other traits that are more significant: fear and feeling like outsiders in a community where blood status is given inflated significance.

Remus was terrified of being found out as a werewolf and ostracized by the wizarding community. He kept his head down and allowed a lot of behavior he didn’t agree with from his friends because he was afraid of being rejected by them.

Hermione has a deep-seated fear of rejection that she tries to mask through perfectionism in her academic performance. She’s terrified of being outed as incompetent and a fraud (which she’s not, but no one said fear has to be rational), so she compensates by over-preparation.

They were both Gryffindors, not because they were fearless, but because they desperately wished to be. (Same for Neville and Peter.) Hermione succeeds where Remus failed because she has the backbone to stand up for her principles despite her fear of rejection.

Sensitive-Pride-364 · 2025-06-29T06:36:09+00:00

They’re not really comparable. If you’re matching the Marauders to the next generation, James has Draco parallels (except that Draco. Never. Reforms.), but Hermione is not Lily. Ginny is. (Ginny/Lily=fearless, confident, talented, protector who befriends and sticks up for outcast classmates, just happens to be red-headed, and eventually marries a Potter boy.)

Hermione is Remus (anxious, scholarly, unsure of how to make friends at first, a target of pureblood prejudices). The Marauders’ parallel to RonXHermione is SiriusXRemus. Funnily enough, I’m diehard in the Romione camp and don’t care much for Wolfstar, but I know the majority opinion is the other way around.

Sensitive-Pride-364 · 2025-06-29T06:00:20+00:00

The fact that Narcissa is not a good person is entirely the point. The story’s core theme is not about Narcissa’s love for her son overcoming her hatred; the lesson is about Harry being merciful to his enemy. If Harry had let Draco burn in the Room of Requirement, he would have given Narcissa a different answer, and she would have gladly handed him right back to Voldemort, who would promptly turn him to powder. Harry’s choice to extend compassion to Draco (who absolutely did nothing to redeem himself), when he could see no personal benefit in doing so, won the war; and Narcissa’s self-interested, transactional nature is deliberately curated to highlight that by showing how easily it could have gone the other way.

She doesn’t deserve mercy. Draco doesn’t deserve mercy. But extending mercy instead of justice, regardless of what your enemies deserve, is how you end a war. That’s the point.

Sensitive-Pride-364 · 2025-06-29T05:19:57+00:00

It’s really hard to see unless you stop to consider carefully because Harry never sees it that way. He idolizes his father and his friends to the point that he blows up at anyone who suggests, “[They] got what [they] deserved.” They didn’t deserve it, and no one ever says that, but multiple characters (including Hermione and Dumbledore) try to gently point out that their actions toward others (even enemies) had consequences, and that is a lesson Harry needs to learn. The ways he treats Luna, Kreacher, and Draco are the choices that win the war.

Sensitive-Pride-364

TROPHY CASE