#hp analysis

Sometimes the need to make a spreadsheet overwhelms me and here we are: a data-informed examination of bowing in the wizarding world :)

Throughout the seven-book series, we see approximately 94* bows performed by about 35 characters. In analyzing which characters bow, to whom** and the purpose these bows serve, I was able to pull out some interesting observations I wanted to share with you all.

Who bows, and to whom?

Slightly greater than half of the bows in the series (52 of 94, or 55%) are performed by wizards, and most are made to another wizard or group of wizards. The only non-humans on the receiving end of bows from wizards are Karkus, leader of the giants, and Buckbeak. It's worth noting that both have massive (literally!) physical advantages on wizards, and that bowing seems to be a critical part in how wizards can attempt to interact with them safely.

Of the 94 bows performed in a series that focuses mainly on wizards, it's notable that almost half (45%) of bows described in the series are performed by non-wizards (magical beings/creatures/entities), and all of these bows are directed towards wizards. The relatively high number of bows performed by these magical entities are driven mainly by house-elf bowing. Kreacher is the character who bows the most in the series; he alone bows 18 times and accounts for almost 20% of all bows performed. Kreacher bows mainly to Harry (12), though he also bows to Sirius, Fred, George, Ron, and Hermione. When taken together with Dobby’s bows (4) and other Hogwarts House Elves’ bowing (7), the house-elves make up almost a third of all bows performed in the series, and never receive a bow in return. I was also struck by how often Goblins are described as bowing to wizards in the series (5 times, more than Dobby and as often as Buckbeak, who must bow if one wants to interact with him in a safe manner). Given the relatively little page time that goblins are given in the series and their explicit disdain for servility to wizards ("I recognize no Wizarding master," Griphook says), the amount of bowing is a bit of a contradiction and could be interesting to explore in any fan work that centers goblins.

After Kreacher and the Hogwarts house-elves as a collective group, the character who most often bows is Albus Dumbledore:

Dumbledore’s fondness for the social niceties is even noted by Voldemort:

“We bow to each other, Harry,” said Voldemort, bending a little, but keeping his snakelike face upturned to Harry. “Come, the niceties must be observed. ... Dumbledore would like you to show manners. ... Bow to death, Harry. ...”

Voldemort is taunting Harry here, not necessarily characterizing Dumbledore, so we can forgive him for overlooking an underappreciated aspect of Dumbledore’s adherence to manners—that Dumbledore often weaponizes politeness:

Harry looked around; all three of the Dursleys were cowering with their arms over their heads as their glasses bounced up and down on their skulls, their contents flying everywhere.“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Dumbledore politely, and he raised his wand again. All three glasses vanished. “But it would have been better manners to drink it, you know.”

And so while Dumbledore's bows are always framed as courteous (the narration does not editorialize as with Snape’s bow to Umbridge), it more often than not serves as a placating gesture while he’s exerting authority over people that he does not particularly like, such as Rita Skeeter, Cornelius Fudge, and Dolores Umbridge:

“I will be delighted to hear the reasoning behind the rudeness, Rita,” said Dumbledore, with a courteous bow and a smile, “but I’m afraid we will have to discuss the matter later. The Weighing of the Wands is about to start, and it cannot take place if one of our champions is hidden in a broom cupboard.”

Dumbledore inclined his head in a little bow. “Then undoubtedly the Ministry will be making a full inquiry into why two dementors were so very far from Azkaban and why they attacked without authorization.”

As High Inquisitor you have every right to dismiss my teachers. You do not, however, have the authority to send them away from the castle. I am afraid,” he went on, with a courteous little bow, “that the power to do that still resides with the headmaster, and it is my wish that Professor Trelawney continue to live at Hogwarts.”

It’s also notable that Dumbledore does not bow to any Death Eaters; Lucius Malfoy bows to Dumbledore twice in Chamber of Secrets, but the bow is never returned.

We've already mentioned Buckbeak and the unnamed Gringotts goblins, so let's take a second to look at the only other character who bows 5 times in the series: Harry. His bowing is driven by his bows to Buckbeak in Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet of Fire, and Half-Blood Prince (sorry, Witherwings):

The only other character to whom Harry ever bows is Voldemort. He is magically forced to do so before Voldemort initiates their duel in Goblet of Fire.

Harry is, unsurprisingly, much more often on the receiving ends of bows.** As our main character, a renowned name in the wizarding world, and generally adored by house-elves (one of whom he… owns), Harry is on the receiving end of a bow about 40 times:

Almost three-quarters of the bows Harry receives come from Kreacher, the Hogwarts house elves, Buckbeak, Dobby, or Gringotts goblins. Wizards who bow to him include shop owners in Diagon Alley (Madam Malkin, Ollivander, and Tom the Barman), and Order members such as Dedalus Diggle (whose eager and excited bow to Harry in book 1 is intentionally mirrored in book 7) and the charismatic and well-mannered Kingsley.

Hermione and Ron are often bowed to as well, but many of these instances reflect bows made to them while they are in Harry's company. Independently of Harry, Hermione is bowed to by Slughorn and an unnamed Hogwarts house-elf. (Tom the Barman and a Gringotts goblin also bow to her, though they believe they are bowing to Bellatrix Lestrange.) Ron is bowed to by Dobby and Kreacher.

Besides Harry and those receiving bows in his company (e.g. Ron, Hermione, & Hagrid), the wizards who receive the most bows tend to have power, status, and/or lineage: Voldemort (6), Umbridge (4), Fudge (3), Sirius (3), Dumbledore (3), and Draco (3):

What purpose do bows serve?

In marking each bow made in the series, I attempted to draw some conclusions about the types of bows typically made in the wizarding world and came up with the following five categories. I've attempted to define and characterize the main features of each grouping below, but as this process of classification was subjective I'd love to hear anyone else's take!

Service bows: service bows are made by shopkeepers to their patrons, deferential employees to their superiors, Death Eaters to Voldemort, and subservient magical creatures/beings/manifestations to wizards. These bows are made by the subordinate (willingly or unwillingly) to demonstrate respect for their superior’s status and a willingness to serve, due to the power dynamic that exists between them. Service bows make up the majority of bows made in the series (54%), and the high rate of bowing is driven by house-elves.

Courtesy bows: courtesy bows are made by formal, upper-class wizards to one another as a sign of politeness. Most courtesy bows are made between relative equals and thus the receiver of the bow may even bow in return. A little less than a fifth of the bows made in the series fall into this category, and our main man of the courtesy bow is none other than Albus Dumbledore (see above). One thing that stood out to me was that about half of courtesy bows were made to female characters, a notably high ratio. Five of Dumbledore’s courtesy bows are to female characters, and other wizards who bow at least once to a female character upon addressing them or taking their leave include Slughorn, Ollivander, Fudge, and Karkaroff. This group of wizards, who are most of them from an older generation, status-conscious, and/or highly formal, suggests that making courtesy bows to witches may be a somewhat old-fashioned habit among higher-class circles. However, while it is much more common for female characters to be bowed to than it is for them to bow to other characters, Madame Maxime and Umbridge both make courtesy bows to other professors.

Scripted bows: scripted bows are made as part of formal or otherwise rigidly-adhered-to codes of interaction (i.e. between wizards and hippogriffs or giants, or between wizards in formal dueling scenarios—willing or unwilling). These bows are highly symbolic, conveying less real information about power hierarchies or politeness. About another fifth of bows made in the series fall into this category, with the greatest number being made by Harry, Ron, or Hermione to Buckbeak in order to approach him, who often bows in response. It's interesting to me how few of these bows are between wizards in dueling scenarios. In fact, I only counted three: Lockhart bowing to Snape in COS (which Snape does not return), Voldemort "bending a little" towards Harry, and Harry bowing (forced) to Voldemort in GOF. In Harry and Draco's formal duel in COS, they "barely inclined their heads," which I did not count as a bow.

Performative bows: performative bows are taken in recognition of a feat respected by an assembled crowd. In the HP series, these celebratory gestures are not made not proactively out of a sense of self-importance, but in response to a crowd’s already expressed approval. Performative bows are relatively rare (we only see 3 in the series). Characters taking a bow in front of a group of people in recognition of a job well done are Ron, Ludo Bagman, and the Sorting Hat—relatively jovial, upbeat, charismatic characters who enjoy being the center of attention.

Mocking bows: Mocking bows are made rarely in the series (again, we only see 3), but I wanted to carve them out because although they do convey information about how bows are used in the wizarding world, it's often in the negative. Mocking bows are made by sarcastic characters to ridicule the pompousness of a courtesy bow (Fred to Harry) or the deference of a service bow, conveying contempt for the idea that the person on the receiving end would be their superior (Fred to Ron, Snape to Umbridge).

Anyway, thank you for indulging me and my spreadsheets and sticking with me through this post that no one asked for. Hope this has been in any way thought-provoking for anyone else re: wizarding world/HP world-building!

*This analysis was conducted by searching for “bow,” “bowed,” and “bowing” in the text via Pottersearch (my beloved). I excluded “bowed heads” or instances used to describe a posture as opposed to a gesture (e.g. "heads bowed against the wind" or when Ron pulls at the front of Harry’s robes in OOTP). An additional instance of a bow was identified by @kuningannasansa in the notes—many thanks! This is not intended to be the singular, definitive analysis and I welcome anyone else to replicate this analysis and/or provide your own commentary, corrections, or suggestions! :)

Order of the Phoenix

My boy threw all caution to the winds and was willing to bodyslam the attacker because "we can go down together but you are NOT harming her"

it's also interesting how his muggle upbringing is very much reflected here but we will talk about that later

Deathly Hallows

I think it’s realistic, so I’m neither a fan or hater if I’m being honest.

I grew up in a family of six (ten to eleven if you include grandparents and uncles that I lived with) and while not the biggest family to exist I would say it gives me a pretty good idea on how big families work.

The hardest part about a big family—especially ones that are slightly dysfunctional—is that there’s so many people and they’re not always going to get along. People will get in fights, some will be forgotten or pushed to the side, others will be coddled and others will be in the middle. Also, with so many people (especially children) it’s hard to ensure everyone gets the attention and things they need.

I would say this is true for the Weasleys, a family of nine who is poorer (I promise the poor part comes into relevance). The children of the Weasleys are pretty close in age overall, this means that as toddlers they likely each had a baby also being cared for at the same time. Molly & Arthur are definitely swamped at this time during their children’s development, exhausted, burnt out and overall done.

This creates an environment for competition and tension, there’s also no adult (who’s not tired) to correct behavior and teach the kids good coping mechanisms. The Weasley’s are seen the books as always competing, Ron wanting to stand out a good example, but also they dog on each other (in a sibling way but there’s a line that is crossed occasionally). There’s also a lot of Jealousy to go around, Ron jealous of Percy for getting an owl, Ginny, George and Fred jealous of Ron’s new broom, the twins jealous of the support their parents show to their other siblings careers.

The twins are seen pulling a lot of pranks, many of which aren’t harmless and even put their siblings at risk. You can see them dogging on Percy’s success constantly and trying to lower the value of it. Ron does the same though, he is seen often degrading Percy and Ginny (he looks up to the others). Ginny though not as often seen attacking her siblings verbally the way she interacts with other students shows she can’t control her emotions (OOTP with the vex, actually, she seems to vex people a lot).

What makes this competition worse is the fact the Weasleys are poor and can’t afford to fully meet their children’s expectations. They pick and choose which kid they want to “spoil” depending on their success, not by fairness, success. This fact is probably the driving factor for Ron’s ambition, Percy’s drive and the twins resentment.

Fred and George are a good example of the kids that get attention through being trouble makers. By the time they came around Charlie and Bill were likely already helping care for their siblings which means Molly and Arthur were even less involved. This means that they’ll have to try harder for their parents attention and by the time Charlie and Bill are at Hogwarts Ginny and Ron are babies/toddlers and Percy is getting set up to go to Hogwarts. So, the best way to get that attention is by causing problems (later I think they did it out of pent up resentment though).

Percy is the “perfect” child. He works to excel and cause as little problems as possible, he aims to get his parents attention through his studies and success and also be the favorite in a way. Bill and Charlie were in Hogwarts by the time he was a bit older so he probably saw how their success made their parents proud. The twins are also around and likely causing trouble at this point which taught him that trouble stressed their parents. Thus, he took this route instead.

Ron is what I’d call the follower, the child that seeks his parent’s attention but also the approval of his siblings. He looks up to the twins specifically, he gets into trouble to impress them, doesn’t try as hard to not be mocked. However, he’s not as outgoing as them, preferring to keep a bit more to himself and not pulling pranks. This was likely to please their parents because while he is a bit of a troublemaker he could be worse, especially with his brothers to contrast him. He’s more the one that blends in to an extent but tries to stand out ever so slightly, but more to his own brothers instead of parents.

Ginny is the “coddled” one and I don’t say this to be mean. She is the only daughter meaning Molly likely adored her a bit, she’s also the youngest meaning there’s no younger siblings they have to care for. Molly and Arthur are also burnt out by this point and aren’t as likely to put in as much effort making her more likely to have less control over her emotions. She probably resorted to taking it out on her siblings and since they’re older it was allowed or seen as cute. She doesn’t particularly need to do anything to stand out, so I’d say she’s more likely to try and seem cool to her older brothers while acting independent.

Bill is the classic oldest sibling in my opinion, he reminds me a lot of my sister. He probably got out early but still comes home often to visit his family. I would say since he’s the eldest his parents put the most effort into him meaning they had higher expectations. He didn’t quite meet them and his mother is often trying to control him but he still comes around. He likely has some resentment due to having to help raise his siblings but overall he’s more laid back and tries to help where he can.

We don’t know much about Charlie but I’m going to make a wild guess based solely on the fact he almost never comes around and also how my other sister is. I think he’s more resentful overall, the child who had a lot of people watching because Bill came before and they were comparing them. He was probably the mediator as a child turned the one with the most fire after being quiet so long. We know he was a good Quidditch player but went into dragon taming instead, something I don’t think the Weasleys would see as respectable. He was probably at odds with his mother and doesn’t come around because he’s tired of the competition, tired of having to please despite all he’s done.

However, despite the dysfunction of the family that mainly stems out of expectation, money and attention I do think the Weasleys are a loving family. They care deeply for each other, would fight a war together and wish to take the others place whether they get killed or injured. Even after Percy had his little moment he returned, stood by his family at the Battle of Hogwarts. Molly and Arthur did love their kids despite their selfishness (Arthur refusing to work for a better job and both of them for having more children than reasonable) causing problems. They did their best to provide, tried to reward their kids for their work.

The Weasleys dynamic is neither bad or good, it’s real. It’s the type of dynamic found in large families, the one I observed within my own family. I would say their family is closer to good though because at least there’s no addiction, no huge arguments, no mental health issues, no physical or verbal abuse and so on (things I’ve seen in a lot of bigger families). It’s not perfect, it never will be, but it’s a good reflection of the real world.

A lot of the fun of writing a book-accurate fix-it fic comes from taking the events of the book, and removing JKRs (simplistic, misleading, sometimes just weird) narrative framing. Slytherins = baddies, Gryffindors = goodies, you know. 

This is especially fun with Lucius Malfoy, who just like… isn’t very evil? Chamber of Secrets is his most villainous book, and I’ll get to that, but otherwise? He tries (unsuccessfully) to get the animal that attacked his kid killed. He donates to hospitals (but in like, an evil way.) He is a hilariously incompetent Death Eater, and then he's Voldemort’s punching bag. 

That’s kind of the point of Lucius. He looks the part. He commits to the aesthetics of the thing, with the hair and the peacocks and the snake-wand-cane. He likes the mystique of walking into a room and knowing that you know (but can’t prove) he’s a dark wizard. It allows him to be… kinda lazy. He can coast on his family name, money, reputation, privilege. I really think that if you sat Lucius Malfoy down and asked him to walk you through all the wizard-supremacy talking points he wouldn’t be able to do it. He’ll toss around words like “mudblood” and “mudblood-lover” no problem, but in the end he doesn’t really care. Lucius is not a true believer. The way the world is set up benefits him tremendously and he doesn’t want Voldemort back. That’s just text:

“Use your brains, Ron,” said Bill. “If they really were Death Eaters… I bet they’d be even more frightened than the rest of us to see him come back. They denied they’d ever been involved with him when he lost his powers, and went back to their daily lives… I don’t reckon he’d be over-pleased with them, do you?”

Lucius and friends had too much to drink at a sporting event, put on the old outfits (again with the aesthetics) and started levitating muggles. Which obviously isn’t GOOD, but they’re not killing or torturing, or furthering any kind of agenda. It’s important that Barty is so insulted and pissed off by the way they’re basically playing Dark Wizard that he casts the Dark Mark to “show [them] what loyalty to the Dark Lord meant, and to punish them for their lack of it.” Which kicks off most of the events of the book. 

Prison of the Phoenix is going to have a companion, parallel fic told from Harry’s POV (tentatively titled Harry Potter and Malfoy’s Suspicious Interest in Werewolves.) Lucius does show up in that one, and I was honestly surprised by how much more frightening and intimidating he is when filtered through Harry’s perspective. Because with a Severus POV… when Severus is used to spending time around Voldemort, Greyback, Bellatrix, honestly Dumbledore and Sirius Black…. Lucius is not scary. Lucius wants to buy presents for his son, go to high-profile events with his beautiful wife, and wear a variety of snake-themed accessories and extravagant hats. 

I wanted a kind of college-roommates-who-stayed-friends feel for the Severus + Lucius relationship, because they are friends. Sirius calls Severus Lucius’ “lapdog,” and Narcissa calls him Lucius’ “oldest friend.” Lucius is also part of the welcoming committee when Severus is first sorted into Slytherin. He’s five years older (I think Jason Isaacs is the only Harry Potter adult the same age as the character he plays), which would have affected the dynamic between him and Severus a lot in school. Personally, I think it makes sense for Lucius to be a little protective of this brilliant half-blood kid with no money. And as an adult, there’s some guilt mixed in there as well. Severus probably would not have been sucked into the Voldemort thing nearly as deep or nearly as fast if it hadn’t been for Lucius, and the war kind of destroyed him. Lucius remembers a younger Severus who was modding potions, inventing spells, coming up with cheeky nicknames for himself, and that person is gone. That’s a big part of the reason he’s so invested in the Severus/Remus relationship in Prison of the Phoenix. Something about Remus has managed to wake up parts of that younger Severus, and Lucius thinks that’s fantastic.

I also think Lucius might be the character who knows Voldemort the best. He’s one of the only Death Eaters who Voldemort calls by their first name (Bellatrix, Severus, and Draco are the others) and he’s weirdly familiar with his “slippery friend” Lucius, addressing the whole speech about how/why he returned to him, for some reason? Anything that helps Voldemort make sense as a person I’ll take, and to me it makes sense that young Tom Riddle charmed Abraxas Malfoy, Lucius’ father, first. The dates are right, and he’s exactly Tom’s type - rich, pureblood, probably easily flattered (let’s be honest) and sitting on a pile of magical artifacts. It’s very Hepzibah Smith vibes, is what I’m saying. And rich, posh, popular seventeen year olds don’t join cults. But if Lucius’ father was already in a cult… 

It also makes sense to me that Tom Riddle got sort of stuck when he killed Marvolo Gaunt, and made his first horcrux at sixteen. He has this fascination with sixteen year old pureblood wizards (so Barty, Draco, and Lucius would have fit this profile.) He sort of wants to be them, but also sort of wants to break them? It’s messy, and complicated. It’s creepy and compelling, that Lucius is aging but this spectre that’s dominated his life isn’t. 

And so when Lucius gives Ginny the diary in Book 2… it makes sense that he’s just trying to get rid of it. He was just at Borgin and Burkes selling dark artifacts, but knows that the diary is worse. He needs to make sure it can’t possibly be traced back to him. So he gives it to the daughter of the head of the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office. (It is an enchanted muggle artifact, after all.) If Arthur Weasley finds it and deals with it, fine. If Ginny is discovered with it in a way that blows up in Arthur’s face, also fine. If it does get to Hogwarts and does open the Chamber of Secrets - well Draco is going to be fine, and it might undermine Dumbledore. If it was really important to Lucius that the diary rid the school of muggleborns… he would have given it to Draco and had him use it. Or given it to Draco, and told him to leave it somewhere for an enemy to find. But Lucius doesn’t do that, because he doesn’t want Voldemort back and his politics just aren’t that important to him. 

but for snape? his worst crimes happen after he leaves hogwarts; 17+, legally an adult in his world. he joins voldemort - possibly going on muggle/muggleborn raids, killing innocent people. eventually when he realizes that voldemort has lily in his sights at 20 (three whole years after joining), then he switches sides and starts to spy.

fast forward a bit to his teaching years (so he's 30+) - he never calls any muggleborn student a mudblood but he denies hermione medical care when she needs it, he becomes neville's worst fear/boggart, he insults/treats harry terribly and takes out his trauma from james on the orphan who has never known his father, he has students chop up their pets' species for potion parts (ron- rat tails bc of scabbers, etc.). all of that is not just as an adult, but as an adult in charge of the wellbeing of those children. all this happens before voldemort got his body back and snape went back to spying.

meanwhile what did sirius do in his 30s? expose the real traitor that got harry's parents killed, attempt (and fail) to get harry out of an abusive situation, provide emotional support while harry was facing what felt like a death sentence with the gof, sacrifice his wellbeing to live on rats and scraps to support harry, offer dumbledore and the order all his wealth in the second war against voldemort, and eventually die in a duel to save harry and neville's lives. i think he also called snape snivillus a couple times.

Before getting into Voldemort as a figure, I always feel it helps to look at Rowling herself, because her biography threads through her work in ways that are honestly impossible to ignore. Her relationship with her mother was loving and formative. Her relationship with her father was the opposite. It was strained, then distant, then functionally nonexistent. This pattern runs so consistently through her fiction that it feels like an authorial fingerprint.

The Harry Potter series is saturated with good mothers and failed fathers. Lily Potter is sanctified, sacrificial, the source of the most powerful protective magic in the series. James Potter is brave but arrogant, a bully in his youth, dead before he could fully mature. Even Petunia Dursley, awful as she is, gets psychological depth and a redemption gesture. Vernon is just cartoonishly cruel, no interiority, nothing to work with. Fathers in this universe fail, abandon, die, or disappoint. Mothers sacrifice, protect, love, and save. Over and over again.

Harry himself is explicitly positioned as his mother's son. He has James's appearance but Lily's essence and his heroism is maternal in structure, which I find genuinely moving. His final sacrifice, walking willingly to his death so that others might live, directly echoes Lily's sacrifice for him. He defeats Voldemort by doing what his mother did. He lets himself be killed for love. The hero's journey here isn't the masculine bildungsroman of achieving power but the feminine narrative of achieving sacrifice. Harry wins by becoming Lily.

Against this maternal heroism stands Voldemort as the dark father. His relationship to the Death Eaters is explicitly patriarchal. He is the Lord, the master, the father-figure whose approval they crave and whose wrath they fear. The Death Eaters don't love him. They serve him, worship him, abase themselves before him. There's no connection here, only dominion.

There's something almost theological in how Voldemort presents himself, isn’t it? Did anyone else notice that? It's honestly it's one of my favorite things about him. His speech patterns have hints of the stern Old Testament God. The lord who demands absolute obedience, punishes disloyalty with death, positions himself as the source of all power and the arbiter of all worth. The grandiosity, the first-person absolutism, the way he places himself beyond mortal categories. This is the rhetoric of the patriarchal godhead, the Father who creates and destroys at will. The Death Eaters call him "the Dark Lord." Lord. One of the primary names for the Christian God. They gather at his summons, bear his mark on their bodies, speak his name with reverence or terror. It's a dark church organized around a father-god who offers power instead of grace and demands submission instead of love. The religious imagery here is doing so much work and I really believe it's intentional.

Rowling built a moral universe where maternal love saves and paternal authority corrupts. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. The central conflict itself is a gendered confrontation between two fundamentally different orientations toward power, vulnerability, and human connection. Voldemort is what happens when the patriarchal imperative to suppress emotion, reject vulnerability, and pursue dominance at all costs consumes a person so completely that it fragments their very soul. Literally in this case.

The textual evidence for this reading is overwhelming once you start looking for it. Dumbledore's assessment in Deathly Hallows is perhaps the most explicit articulation of Voldemort's fundamental failure:

"That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and children's tales, of love, loyalty and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing. Nothing. That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped."

The specific constellation of things Voldemort dismisses: house-elves (servants, the domestically-coded), children's tales (the naive, the soft), love, loyalty, innocence. These are all culturally coded as feminine, as weak, as beneath serious consideration by serious men pursuing serious power. Voldemort's worldview is basically a hypermasculine epistemology. He literally cannot perceive or comprehend anything that falls outside the narrow bandwidth of domination, control, and raw magical force. He's not subtle about it either. The contempt for "feminine frivolity" is right there in the text. He calls Lily a "silly girl." He dismisses Ginny entirely and mocks her. His mother, Merope, would be the ultimate example of that in his mind. She fell in love with a Muggle and gave him her name.

It's not that he scorns love so much as fail to register it as a variable worth calculating. In his framework, power is zero-sum, strength is dominance, and protection comes from being too dangerous to challenge, never from being too loved to harm. The idea that a mother's sacrifice could generate magic more powerful than his own is categorically unthinkable to. It exists outside his ontology entirely. And that's what kills him.

One of the most psychologically revealing details in Voldemort's backstory is his assumption that his father must have been the magical parent, not his mother. On a surface level, this seems straightforwardly explained, that his mother died (weakness), his father survived and abandoned him (strength), but the implications run deeper.

Tom Riddle grew up believing that his magic, his power, his specialness, everything that elevated him above the mundane cruelty of the orphanage, came from his father. When he discovered that his mother was the witch and his father just some Muggle, what he learned was that magical inheritance came from the parent who died, who failed to survive. His mother wasn't strong enough to keep herself alive, not even with magic. In Riddle's calculus, this is damning, actively fatal.

What if Merope had lived? What if she'd been powerful, commanding, present? We'll never know, but Voldemort's formative understanding of femininity was shaped entirely by absence, death, and perceived weakness. From this wound, a worldview crystallizes. Power is survival, emotion is liability, and the feminine is fundamentally inadequate to protect you. The only safety lies in becoming so powerful you need no one. Not mother, not father, not connection of any kind. The Horcruxes are the ultimate rejection of human interdependence, the final severance from anything that could make him vulnerable.

Speaking of Horcruxes: there is perhaps no better metaphor for the psychological cost of toxic masculinity than Voldemort's literal soul fragmentation. He destroys parts of himself to achieve invulnerability. He murders the capacity for wholeness in pursuit of the inability to be killed. It's grotesque and it's perfect. This is masculine emotional suppression taken to its ontological extreme. The cultural imperative that tells men to cut off parts of themselves, the soft parts, the vulnerable parts, the parts that feel and grieve and need, is horrifyingly literalized here. Voldemort doesn't just repress his emotions. He excises the very substance of his humanity and hides it in objects, dispersing himself so thoroughly that there's barely a self left to destroy. A man so defended against vulnerability that he's hollowed himself out entirely.

No one forces Tom Riddle to make Horcruxes. He chooses, repeatedly, to prioritize invulnerability over integrity. Each murder, each soul-split, is a decision to trade humanity for power. The wounds are self-inflicted, the prison is self-constructed, the isolation is chosen over and over because the alternative, being vulnerable, being whole, being capable of being hurt, feels worse than being fragmented. That's the tragedy of toxic masculinity rendered literal, and Rowling never flinches from it.

The gendered composition of Voldemort's inner circle matters too. The Death Eaters function as a masculine space, a boys' club of dark magic where women are peripheral. Young Tom Riddle's Hogwarts circle, the proto-Death Eaters, appears to have been exclusively male. He collected boys, groomed them for violence, built an organization structured around dominance hierarchies and absolute fealty to a male authority figure. It's a dark parody of a masculine fraternity.

We only ever meet two female Death Eaters. Bellatrix Lestrange and Alecto Carrow. Bellatrix is introduced as part of "the Lestranges." Sirius describes them as a unit, a married couple who were in Azkaban. In battle, she and Rodolphus fight as a pair, just as Alecto and Amycus Carrow operate together. The only women in the Death Eaters are tethered to men, functioning as part of male-associated teams.

Did Bellatrix need Rodolphus to enter this masculine space? Was marriage to a Death Eater the price of admission, the male sponsorship required to access Voldemort's inner circle? If it was, we know she transcended this. Within the organization she's clearly the more prominent, more devoted, more favored of the pair. Rodolphus is barely a character. Bellatrix is iconic. Her relationship with Voldemort eclipses her marriage entirely. Yet outsiders like Sirius still describe her through the marital unit. In battle she's still paired with her husband. It's a pattern familiar from real-world patriarchal structures where exceptional women can rise within male-dominated spaces, but they often need a male connection to get through the door in the first place, and outsiders continue to read them through that connection long after they've surpassed it.

Returning to Voldemort himself, there's something so tragic in how his story illustrates the self-perpetuating nature of masculine emotional suppression. He was an unloved child who concluded that love was unnecessary. He was abandoned and decided that attachment was weakness. He was vulnerable and chose to annihilate his own capacity for vulnerability rather than risk that pain again.

Every choice he makes is a defense mechanism calcified into ideology. This is how toxic masculinity functions in the real world. Men who cannot allow themselves to grieve instead rage. Men who cannot admit need instead dominate. Men who were not held become men who cannot be touched. The wound becomes the weapon becomes the identity, until there's nothing left but the defense mechanism, endlessly protecting a self that no longer exists.

Voldemort's failure is epistemological. He built his entire existence around a framework that dismissed feminine-coded virtues as irrelevant, and that dismissal destroyed him. He couldn't see Lily's protection because mother-love wasn't a variable in his calculations. He couldn't anticipate Harry's willingness to die because self-sacrifice was unintelligible to him. He couldn't understand why his Death Eaters' fear-based loyalty was weaker than the Order's love-based loyalty because he'd never experienced love as anything but weakness.

He's the patriarchy's final form. So committed to domination that he destroyed everything in himself capable of connection, and so certain of his framework that he never saw what was coming for him.

Harry, by contrast, is defined not by magical prowess but by his capacity for love, sacrifice, and connection. He survives not because he's the most powerful but because he carries his mother's sacrificial protection in his veins and upholds her legacy. He wins not through domination but through surrender, walking willingly to his death, choosing sacrifice over self-preservation. He defeats Voldemort with his superior understanding of love, loyalty, and the magic that flows from self-sacrifice. The feminine-coded virtues that Voldemort dismissed as weakness turn out to be the only power capable of destroying him.

The final confrontation makes it literal. Harry casts Expelliarmus. A disarming spell. The most defensive, nonlethal option possible. Voldemort casts Avada Kedavra and it rebounds and kills him. He dies by his own curse. His own aggression, his own killing intent, is what destroys him in the end. Harry doesn't murder him. Harry doesn't even try. Even the gendered coding of active versus passive is at play here. Voldemort attacks, Harry deflects.

Harry represents masculinity redeemed by feminine values. He's brave, but his bravery is relational. He fights for people, not for dominance. He's powerful, but his power is rooted in connection rather than isolation. Where Voldemort fragments himself to avoid vulnerability, Harry opens himself to it, and that openness is precisely what lets him survive death and transcend it.

The series arc, then, can be read as a confrontation between two models of masculine selfhood: one that defines strength as invulnerability and pursues it to the point of self-destruction, and one that defines strength as the capacity to love and be loved, even at the cost of pain.

You can't discuss these themes without acknowledging how heavily the series leans on maternal sacrifice as the ultimate counterforce to evil. Lily's love saves Harry. Narcissa's love for Draco leads her to lie to Voldemort's face, enabling Harry's final victory. Molly Weasley kills Bellatrix screaming "NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!" which, honestly, iconic. I have complicated feelings about that moment but I can't pretend it doesn't hit.

There's something both powerful and limiting in this framing. On one hand, it positions maternal love as genuinely world-altering in ways that Voldemort's masculine power-seeking cannot match. Mothers have access to magic deeper than anything dark wizards can conjure. On the other hand, this is gender essentialism of a fairly traditional variety. The series doesn't imagine feminine power outside the maternal. Women's greatest magic flows through their children. Lily is barely characterized except as Harry's mother. Her sacrifice, while significant, is also the most traditionally feminine act imaginable. The feminine gets valorized, but only in a very specific, limited form that reinforces traditional gender roles rather than challenging them. She could have done so much more with this.

I see Remus as a bit of a paradox, and here's why. So, as we know, he is deeply, deeply traumatised by his condition and his identity and self-worth is basically non-existent outside of being a werewolf. But then, I have always found it bizarre that, for someone so painfully aware of his lycanthropy, he forgot to take his Wolfsbane Potion in Prison of Azkaban, absolutely jeopardising the lives of three students, a teacher, and his best friend. Because he, for whom his identity as a werewolf is permanently at the forefront of his mind and affects every aspect of his life, just 'forgot'.

He knew it was the full moon. There was no way he didn't. He'd been preparing for it all week, taking his daily doses of Wolfsbane, and would be getting the physical and mental symptoms of an impending transformation. He even makes the effort to explain the entire process to Harry, Ron, and Hermione, about how his condition impacts him and how the very potion he takes to mitigate the effects works. He goes through the whole thing! I just can't understand why, given all of this, he would a) forget the dose in the first place, or at the very least, b) twig that he'd forgotten it and go 'oh fuck' and immediately rectify the problem.

The book and movie scenes are different mainly concerning Snape, but essentially, had Sirius not been able to draw him away from Harry, Ron, and Hermione, they'd all be grievously injured werewolves at best, and slaughtered at worst. Because in the movie, yes Snape protects them, but he has no wand! There is nothing he can do to actually stop Remus from attacking other than shield the kids with his body and wait to get mauled.

I also think it's worth mentioning that Snape went to find Remus to give him his Wolfsbane, but when he couldn't find him, he just... left the potion there and went to find him, Sirius, and the kids, aware of the fact that no potion = mindless werewolf, and mindless werewolf = certain death. Snape nearly got Wolf-Creeked by Remus as a teenager! Snape would be very, very conscious of the risks!

Aside from plot purposes that required Remus to be revealed as a werewolf at the end of the book to fulfill the theme of DADA teachers facing unfortunate circumstances, this makes zero fucking sense!