Peter Pettigrew lived with the Weasleys as a rat for around twelve years. That means a fully grown man spent years sleeping in Percy’s bedroom and then Ron’s bedroom, travelling with the family and listening to their private conversations while pretending to be a pet. And nobody ever really discusses how profoundly disturbing that is. Sirius and Lupin understandably focus on the fact that Pettigrew betrayed James and Lily. But from Ron’s perspective? Imagine discovering your childhood pet was actually a middle-aged murderer who had been watching your family for most of your life.

I think people take Snape’s “pig for slaughter” line far too literally. Dumbledore knew Harry would eventually have to face Voldemort, but by the time Harry walks into the Forest, Dumbledore has also given him the Resurrection Stone and arranged things so there’s a very real chance he survives. Snape sees a man who raised a child to die. Harry eventually understands something Snape never did. Was Dumbledore actually raising Harry for slaughter, or is that simply what it looked like from Snape’s side of the story?

One of the things I find most interesting about Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is how Harry and Sirius are basically trapped in parallel. Harry is stuck at Hogwarts while the Ministry calls him a liar, Dumbledore avoids him and the adults around him keep information from him “for his own protection.” Sirius is stuck inside Grimmauld Place for exactly the same reason. He’s finally escaped Azkaban, but instead of getting his life back, he’s confined to the childhood home he hated while everyone else goes out and fights. And I think that’s why Sirius understands Harry’s frustration better than almost anyone else does that year. The problem is that Sirius handles confinement just as badly as Harry. He becomes restless. Reckless. Desperate to be useful. He starts encouraging Harry to take risks that the other adults wouldn’t. Sirius is supposed to be Harry’s godfather, but Order of the Phoenix sometimes makes them feel more like two people trapped in the same emotional situation at different ages. And that makes what happens at the Department of Mysteries even sadder. Sirius finally gets the chance to leave that house and help Harry. It’s also the last thing he ever does.

The multiplying part is a fair question. Hermione actually says you can increase the quantity of food if you already have some. Gamp’s Law stops them creating a meal from nothing. It doesn’t explain why they couldn’t keep a supply going once they’d found bread, eggs or something else edible. Being on the run explains why shopping is difficult. Their cooking explains why dinner is miserable. But neither fully answers that bit. You sometimes see people say duplicated food loses its nutrients, but the book never establishes that. I wouldn’t invent an extra rule just to get them out of this one.

And this explains that tiny moment in Goblet of Fire when Dumbledore looks almost triumphant after Harry tells him Voldemort took his blood. It’s such an odd reaction when you first read it. Harry’s describing how Voldemort came back, and Dumbledore briefly looks pleased. Then you get to Deathly Hallows and understand what he’d spotted. Voldemort could touch Harry now, but he’d also taken Lily’s protection into his own body and given Harry a way back from the forest. I love that the clue is sitting there three books before we get the explanation.

We actually never find out who Voldemort thought the source was. Dumbledore’s portrait tells Snape to give him the real departure date. It also tells Snape to plant the Seven Potters idea with Mundungus, which we later see him do. But that explains what Snape was doing behind the scenes. It doesn’t tell us what story he gave Voldemort. Mundungus would be my guess, since Snape already had access to him and could interfere with his memory. That’s a guess though. The book never names the “source we discussed”. I wouldn’t take that line as Voldemort knowingly accepting tips from Dumbledore’s portrait.

The pipe wasn’t sitting open for fifty years. The entrance was concealed beneath a sink and had to be opened with Parseltongue. Knowing Myrtle died in that bathroom wouldn’t automatically tell Dumbledore where it was. There’s also a detail in Rowling’s extra writing: Corvinus Gaunt protected the entrance when Hogwarts installed plumbing, so it stayed hidden. But I do think “how thoroughly did anyone investigate Myrtle’s death?” is a fair question. Harry and Ron eventually get a useful description from the victim herself. I can buy a magically hidden entrance. I still want to know what questions the adults asked the ghost.

I love this fight, but the book has a moment I really wish had made it into the film. Voldemort attacks Dumbledore with a Killing Curse while a conjured snake is about to strike him. Fawkes flies in and swallows the curse, bursts into flames and falls to the floor as a baby phoenix. At the same time, Dumbledore gets rid of the snake and traps Voldemort in water. It’s such a good sequence because Dumbledore looks incredibly capable, but there’s still a horrible amount happening at once. He has help. There’s danger. Whenever this gets discussed as Dumbledore casually beating Voldemort, I think poor Fawkes deserves a mention.

The Crouch family could honestly carry a horror film of their own. His dying mother takes his place in Azkaban. His father brings him home, then keeps him hidden under the Imperius Curse for years. Winky has to look after him and keep the secret. And when Bertha Jorkins discovers he’s there, Crouch damages her memory trying to cover it up. That’s the detail I find most disturbing. Bertha hasn’t done anything wrong. She’s walked into a family secret and ends up paying for it. Voldemort later gets that information out of her and discovers he has a loyal servant available. By then, Crouch’s attempt to keep everything buried has become part of the explanation for how Voldemort gets someone inside Hogwarts. There’s so much more going on here than “Barty escaped prison”.

The bit about Harry and the Dementors that hits me is that part of him wants to keep hearing them. They force him to relive his parents’ deaths. That’s why they affect him so badly. But during Lupin’s lessons, those memories also let him hear his mum and dad. He barely has anything of them. Imagine finally hearing their voices and this being the only way. So he’s trying to learn the Patronus while also struggling to give up those few seconds with them. He knows it won’t bring them back. He still wants to hear them. I wish the film had spent a little more time on that. It makes those lessons so much sadder than Harry having trouble with a difficult spell.

I want game shops to be worth going into again. Let me try something, browse a decent used games section and find a game I hadn’t already been advertised six times that morning. Give me a reason to spend half an hour in there. I can look at a preorder page at home.

There’s a point where “I can’t wait for the next season” becomes “hang on, what happened in the last one?” Then the recap throws twelve names at you and expects you to remember why someone’s brother was in prison. I don’t need every show rushed out yearly, but getting back into one shouldn’t feel like revision.

This little smile. Alongside all the danger and mystery, I really want the series to give Harry room to enjoy being a kid.

Poor Ginny’s first year is genuinely horrible when you stop and think about it. She’s eleven, away from home for the first time, and telling this diary things she’s too embarrassed to tell anyone else. Meanwhile it’s using everything she shares to get more control over her. I’d love the series to spend more time with her during Chamber of Secrets. There’s so much happening to her while Harry and Ron are trying to work out who’s behind it.

A disappointing ending doesn’t erase great television, but it can change what rewatching it feels like. With GOT, so much of the pleasure was wondering where a conversation, a promise or a character’s decision would eventually lead. When the payoff disappoints you, some of that anticipation goes with it. I can still think a scene is extraordinary and feel less excited about starting the whole series again. Those feelings can exist together.

I think Snape protecting Harry while also disliking him is what makes him interesting. The protection is real. So is the resentment. One doesn’t cancel out the other. And his treatment of Neville and Hermione is much harder to explain as secret kindness. Threatening Neville’s toad or mocking Hermione’s teeth doesn’t help keep Harry alive. I find him more compelling when we let those contradictions exist. He can do something extraordinarily brave and still be someone you’d hate to have teaching your child.

Harry Potter and Game of Thrones satisfy completely different things for me. Hogwarts is somewhere I want to spend time, even when the story gets dark. Westeros is somewhere I’m fascinated to watch people try to survive. One makes the return to a familiar place part of the pleasure. The other makes me nervous whenever anyone starts to feel secure. I can love both without needing one to defeat the other. What interests me is how they create those feelings.

I’d struggle to pick Tywin for “stable”. He’s brilliant at making people obey him, but look at the family he expects to carry his legacy. His relationship with Tyrion alone should make us question how sustainable his methods are. There’s something fascinating about a man so obsessed with his family’s future being killed by his own son. Charles Dance makes him so convincing that I think it’s easy to accept Tywin’s assessment of himself. I’m much less convinced he builds anything that can function without him.

This is why I find Dumbledore more interesting in Order of the Phoenix than when he has every answer. He has reasons for keeping his distance, including his fear of Voldemort exploiting the connection with Harry. But Harry experiences that distance as rejection. The person trying to protect him ends up making him feel more alone. I think that’s a much stronger reading than “Dumbledore forgot to explain the plot”. He makes a serious mistake in how he cares for someone, and being the cleverest person in the room doesn’t save him from it.

I think Hermione can be right about the injustice and still have things to learn about helping the people affected. Dobby wants freedom and paid work. Winky is devastated when she’s dismissed. Those different reactions don’t make owning house-elves acceptable. To me, they show why changing someone’s circumstances and helping them build a life afterwards are different challenges. That’s why I’d want the series to take this storyline seriously. There’s much more to discuss here than whether Hermione’s campaign has a funny name.