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“disconnect between what Joanne actually wrote and how the fandom thinks it should be interpreted” #6574: Hogwarts’s fandom characterization as a posh private school, wizarding education generally

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hjp propaganda i’m not falling for—

he’s a playboy

he’s brown-haired (that’s hermione)

he’s a certified loose cannon

he’s a whiny jellyfish

he tends to look scrappy and dishevelled (dud’s rags aside, he uses/appreciates nice stuff)

he’s a dynamic, hyper energetic golden retriever

he enjoys the spotlight

he usually brute-forces his plans (it’s also often instinctual or quick thinking)

he can’t cook a decent meal

he’s got chicken scratch handwriting

he’s got poor table manners and a habit of stuffing his face (sorry ron, that’s more you)

he’s vocal and demonstrative in his display of emotions (again, that’s ron)

he struggles badly in potions and only managed proper brews bc of snape’s book

his temper ignites at the slightest provocation and manifests overtly (mainly traumatised ootp harry)

he’s a delicate, dainty orchid (i mean, his personality traits are clearly traditionally masculine: he’s assertive, athletic, action-driven, competitive, and militant—he’d rather confront & get physical than retreat)

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Power to the people, freedom to the ankles

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adding “Joanne does not personally design and individually approve of every piece of HP merch” to my List Of Obvious Misinformation And Lies

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its crazy to me that Acromantula are considered 'untameable'...

Hagrid hasn't tamed Aragog, but he does get along with him and his children safely enough through the power of... having chats. Respecting his territory borders. Giving a shit about his well-being.

'Untameable' because that's a fucking person that spider is someone you can discuss philosophy with, no shit he can't 'tame'

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edits and graphics with Wolfstar fancasts who aren’t The Typical Ones, y/n

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REBLOG IF IT IS OKAY TO COME INTO YOUR INBOX AND SAY THE RANDOMEST SHIT I CAN THINK OF BECAUSE I REALLY WANT TO INTERACT WITH YOU.

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i love. wolfstar

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Remus "And I'd give up forever to touch you 'Cause I know that you feel me somehow" Lupin Sirius "You're the closest to Heaven that I'll ever be And I don't wanna go home right now" Black

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it’s my fic I can post pieces of it if I want to

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idk if it's because of marauders vs snape discourse that focuses on the first war to the exclusion of all else or evil dumbledore discourse that often frames snape as like, the good guy in dumbledore's camp and makes dumbledore the root of all evil or WHAT but this fandom is really sleeping on snape/dumbledore parallels. brilliant but lacking in high positions in society, seeming like outsiders, and possessing high ambitions, both had close intense friendships as kids/teens that shaped their lives, both explored dark magic, and both killed people they loved in the pursuit of ideals they later decided were evil, and then dedicated the rest of their lives to counteracting the harm they had caused at the expense of any kind of personal life--dumbledore's whole life is mostly wrapped up in hogwarts, he lives not far from his brother but barely talks to him, while snape still lives in the town he grew up in, hates it but cannot move on, they don't really have close friends who know anything about them. they also treat their redemptions as often very theoretical: they do harm in the course of trying to do good, and focus on the abstract greater good rather than the specificity of being kind to others. they both believe the end justifies the means. and are distant from their past while obsessed with it. and of course schoolteachers! though dumbledore is a better teacher--not as much though because he kinda treats tom riddle like a young grindelwald just as snape treats harry like young james. they treat other people like pawns and inconveniences, they devote themselves to spy games and manipulation, they both do agree to killing voldemort at the potential expense of harry's life (snape protests but doesn't actually stop it! he gives harry the memories that convince harry to sacrifice himself, acting out dumbledore's desgins even in death). they are experts at legilimency! they have arcane knowledge of magic. they are both important mentor-type figures for harry in their different ways. and of course snape essentially replaces dumbledore in DH, literally as headmaster but also as the instrument of dumbledore's last plans and as someone in possesion of extra information that the order fears--just as dumbledore held cards no one knew he had in every other book, snape is thought of by the order and the characters as someone with extra knowledge (like how they're afraid he'll show up at grimmauld) and then does play the same role as dumbledore at the end as the revealer of secret, plot-crucial knowledge. and of course they are the two most important mystery-box characters, where 'what is up with snape' and 'waht is up with dumbledore' are the two most crucial character questions of the series. the revelation of their secret pasts even happens in the same book! not very far away from each other! and they are two of the most controversial characters in the series in terms of fandom reception. i don't like the name albus severus, but it does make sense as drawing a parallel between two characters who harry previously saw as opposites but comes to see as quite similar...

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the snape dumbledore voldemort situationship triangle

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need inspiration to finish my wolfstar fic

there’s three chapters on AO3 and I’m looking at the fourth like “I’m so sorry baby I’m working on it”

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I feel like in the early books Ron was not dumb and then JR kind of made him dumb later like she got influenced by the movies.

I kinda feel like this, too. Again, I'm not a mind reader, and I don’t know what JKR was thinking or what her writing process was, but that is the vibe I got too. I mean, even in boom 5, Ron is smarter and more capable than he is portrayed in books 6 and 7. But this feeds in to a lot of other problems I have with the final two books.

Something I noted recently when reading through book 5 again is that Ron was already the Keeper of Gryffindor's Quidditch team in year 5. Throughout year 5, Ron has an arc of getting more confident as a Quidditch player, and he gets a win at the end of the book. At the end of the book, he also sorta accepts that it: "can't get any worse". So, apparently, JKR trudged the same arc with Ron twice, once in OotP and once (but worse) in HBP.

And Ron isn't the only one who is dumbed down in the final books. The romances in HBP make all of them look dumber (Hermiobe included). It's like all of Romione's emotional intelligence (a staple of both characters in earlier books. Ron was always good at understanding how to talk to people and balancing Harry and Hermione’s moods while Hermione used to be great at analyzing other people's emotions) was thrown out the window in HBP for the sake of teen romance drama. (I know the emotional range if a teaspoon line is in OotP, but Hermione is wrong and frustrated that Ron doesn't seem to realize she has a crush on him. Again, retrudging arcs)

But Ron in DH is at his worst. Now, I can find watsonian explanations for that (the war, worry for his family, etc.). But doylisticly, it seems JKR was influenced by the movie portrayal the most when writing the final book. Hermione is toned down compared to her past, Ron is stupider, Harry is more book Harry than movie Harry, but he still feels off. The entire Golden Trio dynamic feels off for sections of DH (and parts of HBP to a lesser extent). All their plans are also kinda shit in a way they don't need to be considering they had time to plan for a change.

And we know the movies influenced her writing. Hell, even the twins height was influenced by the movies. In PS, Ron at 11 is said to be "almost as tall as the twins". They are repeatedly described as built like Molly and Charlie - "short and stocky" and yet, they are described as taller than Harry in DH, even though, Harry is the same height as James who is described as "tall". So I think the movies were definitely a contributing factor.

DH is the only book in the series Ron feels useless while Hermione is portrayed as amazing (even if she's not as perfect as her movie counterpart). It's so much closer to their movie dynamic than the books. But its not consistent. Some scenes are more similar to their book characters, while others feel oddly detached and like these aren't the same people. (I think JKR edited in some scenes later that were more influenced by the movies, including the battle of the seven Potters and a good chunk of the camping trip, if i had to guess).

It's all part of why I'm not a fan of Romione in HBP and DH. Ron feels dumber than he had up to this point. In the earlier books, his and Hermione’s banter was so good because they were both incredibly intelligent and respected each other so much. In the last two books, their dynamic just doesn't feel the same to me in a bad way.

So, I definitely feel like Ron was dumbed down in the final 2 books and had his arcs from books 4 and 5 get retrudged in 7 and 6, respectively. Which adds to him feeling dumber, I think. The fact we see things we already saw from him adds to him feeling stupider since he didn't really learn from his arcs. I feel JKR wasn't sure what to do with his character by the end. I feel she had the same problem with Hermione, as she doesn't really get an arc at all in DH. (Which is a shame, since I think she could've had an interesting arc in realising what she was willing to do in war, rather than give Harry that arc that wasn't there beyond one line from Lupin, since she was kind of primed for it. And I wish Ron didn’t get arcs he already had. I think Romione getting together in year 5 would've helped both their arcs).

Again, I can find watsonian explanations for all of this, and I do like the final two books. But I'm more critical of them since I feel there is more to criticise there from a writing standpoint, a plot and worldbuilding standpoint, and a characterization standpoint. (Especially as they come after my favorite books in the series: GoF and OotP)

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I think part of the problem at the root of the “straight vs gay” reads of various HP characters (particularly Lupin, though certainly also true for someone like Bill Weasley who was a very popular slashfic staple post-OotP and pre-HBP) is that Joanne is just… utterly terrified to write her male characters expressing any kind of desire for women beyond chaste courtly love hero-worship or the absolute vaguest allusions to sexual arousal

the first is seen especially in Snape’s love for Lily, which Joanne definitely sees as a central brilliant redeeming factor of his personality that changes everything and makes him noble. He is, in many senses, the ultimate Safe Man - below the woman socially, physically less attractive and charismatic than she is, bad at traditional masculine signifiers of gender like sports, ostracized from manhood and picked on/dismissed by other men, totally devoted to the object of his affection, and totally incapable of ever materially impacting her life or touching her or changing her.

(Additionally, I think a significant factor in Snape’s continued complexity is that these character traits - particularly the obsession with one specific Nerd Girl Who Likes Nerd Things - have a remarkably different context in 2025 than they did in 2007. We’ve had over a decade of incel movements and fashy alt-right introverted nerds who were radicalized into violence and disgusting misogyny and racism as a direct result of being unlucky in love in exactly the ways Snape is unlucky in love, and it’s hard for me to blame readers who come away upset with him because real life has shown us way more about how these kinds of men tend to think and act and what they’re motivated by than we had when DH was published. I’m also sympathetic to Snape fans whose interpretations of the character are purposefully separate from IRL context, people who’ve felt consistently the same way about him since publication - it’s really hard when massive cultural shifts forever change the way a character is going to be read, especially because you can’t un-ring that particular bell. But since you can’t un-ring it, I think any sympathetic analysis of Snape has to begin from the starting point that his critics are often speaking from places of personal experience with kinds of stochastic right-wing extremism that parallel what he was actually exposed to in canon. But that’s sort of its own post.)

The second is seen mostly in Harry and Ron and to a lesser extent in James - point of view or central supporting characters who express interest in girls Because That’s What Boys Do, or whose personalities include some element of desiring a girl for reasons that aren’t really explored or explained at all. Harry thinks Cho is pretty, and they kiss, but Harry at no point feels anything for Cho that could be described as sexual desire (though, as @wisteria-lodge points out in a recent post, Harry is probably intended to be read as having physical attraction toward Cho that motivates most of his desire to date her). Ron obviously lusts over Lavender, and to a lesser extent Fleur, when you read GoF and HBP through adult eyes, but we never see him talking about how he feels or what he sees, only that he looks and gapes like a Tex Avery cartoon character. Joanne positions this behavior from both Harry and Ron as immature, not only in terms of them having to earn access to Hermione and Ginny but also in GoF when Arthur teases the boys at the World Cup about being bewitched by the Veela. Worth pointing out that Arthur is in the happiest and most stable relationship we see in the entire series (excluding Bill/Fleur and Andromeda/Ted because we barely see them) and he’s married to a woman who’s described as not particularly attractive - the ideal man, then, can be read as someone who looks for an equal partner who isn’t a beauty queen. Beyond that, Molly is a force to be reckoned with, running her house and her family - Arthur often embodies the henpecked husband stereotypes. A good man is a safe man, and a safe man is one who is to some extent automatically submissive to his wife.

James is in an interesting place here, because his interest in girls and showing off for girls goes hand in hand with the Worst Memory, and therefore he becomes a worse person by becoming someone who’s obviously sexually interested and romantically interested in Lily. His flirting and bragging and brash pursuit of his romantic desires is contrasted with Snape’s quietly heroic love and adoration, and the latter is what Joanne ultimately uplifts as brave and noble and worth pedestalizing.

Remus and Tonks are in the same position - he actively avoids her, she must pursue him, and they only get together because she essentially begs him for it and argues him down. Vernon and Petunia appear to be relative equals, but Petunia still makes a number of decisions that dominate affairs on Privet Drive and Vernon lets her do what she likes and never expresses any desire for her in ways that Harry registers. We know nothing about Alice and Frank, or Lucius and Narcissa, or the Lestranges. And even as Merope is badly badly badly treated by the narrative, her power over Tom Sr. is the most important aspect of their relationship.

This shows a remarkable nervousness around male attention period, even in the abstract, even from “good” characters. She can’t write a man who’s good and heroic and also openly and frequently desires women. She seems kind of incapable of it. Harry’s infamous Chest Monster is an outgrowth of this - she writes his lust for Ginny and his interest in her like something he doesn’t understand, can’t understand, because she doesn’t understand it and (possibly) because her trauma from her domestic abuse prevents her from examining how she feels.

So we get people like Harry (nominally interested in women, is frequently documented staring at Draco or Sirius or Bill) or Lupin (interest in women only confirmed in an interview but never in the text, closest relationship is to a man, marries a queercoded shapeshifter who is a blood relative of that man after his traumatic death) or Bill (canonically GNC by Wizard standards to a degree that makes Molly uncomfortable, romances Fleur entirely off the page until they’re very seriously involved). We get Dumbledore’s queercoding (canon, per author) and Sirius’s queercoding (ambiguous). We get men who are deeply psychosexually fixated on another man to a point of utter devotion (Quirrell and BCJR on Voldemort) while their female counterpart (Bellatrix) is a canon sexual partner of the guy they’re all obsessed with who talks and behaves the same way.

And this really only becomes remarkable when you notice how it compares to other middle-grade and YA fiction.

Daine and Numair (Tamora Pierce’s The Immortals) are the central romantic couple in a series of books with HP’s target audience, and both of them are problematically horny for one another. Rachel Berenson and Tobias (K.A. Applegate’s Animorphs) have long passages of age-appropriate text describing their attraction and desire across multiple books, even though their romance is less important to the plot than the romances in HP. Talia and Dirk (Mercedes Lackey’s Queen’s Own) date and have sex with other people before getting together while both desiring each other, and their appearances as older adults in later books show they’re comfortable with physical intimacy and flirting. There’s more examples that I can think of, but the point stands - Rowling’s male characters are unusually terrified of being horny for members of the opposite sex, and so it’s not surprising that many fans look at that and go “oh so you’re queer and closeted”.

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From a Watsonian standpoint, who do you think fell in love first between Grindelwald and Dumbledore? What about each other do you believe made them gravitate towards one another?

I think Dumbledore fell first, and Grindelwald fell harder.

Eighteen year old Albus is… lonely. It’s a loneliness coming from a few places. One is his own brilliance: Nicolas Flamel is maybe at his level, he’s a mentor slowly becoming a professional peer... but he’s all the way over in France. Elphias Doge? Half in love with Albus, half in hero-worship. That’s a problem Albus will have his entire life. He’s got people who worship him, and people work for him. But very few people who actually consider themselves to be his equal. 

Albus’ other problem is the way he’s hiding a pretty brutal home life. Ariana is dangerous and unstable (the rumors are that his sister's a squib, but he can’t confirm or deny that.) The only reason people don’t think of Albus as the son of Percival Dumbledore the Muggle killer is because Albus’ own accomplishments really are that extreme. He is the shining golden child so people don’t look too closely at what's going on within his family. No part of Albus wants to be at home with them - he wants to be away at school, he wants to be on a European tour with Elphias Dosge (and don’t tell me Elphias wasn’t low-key footing most of the bill for that trip…) 

But then his mother dies/is killed by Ariana, Albus becomes responsible for his brother and sister. Because Ariana can’t be moved, that means he’s also effectively tied to Godric’s Hollow. It’s stressful. It’s boring. Albus has no one to talk to.

And then Gellert moves in. It must’ve felt like the sun breaking through clouds. He’s beautiful. He’s fascinating. He’s on Albus’ intellectual level. And he’s not suck like Abus is. No, he’s driven, he has plans, he has incredibly grand hopes for the future. Albus would take one look at him and be - this is it. You are the answer. We are going to discover the secrets of the universe together.

Now Gellert has recently been kicked out of school for dark magic related activities, and is effectively lying low in Godric’s Hollow. But honestly, he kind of wiggled out of any serious consequences. If anything, his mindset is probably more “I’ve already learned everything Drumstrang had to teach me. Good riddance. Now I just have to wait, and think about my next move.” 

Seeing Albus for the first time probably wouldn’t have blown his socks off. Gellert (as Harry tells us, multiple times) is very handsome, while Albus is probably more… interesting looking. Good looking in an unconventional way. But Albus is clever, and would have found out who exactly his new neighbor was very quickly. He’d hear about the dark magic and… not care. Probably just be more intrigued. Albus is desperate for someone to talk to, and whatever dark magic Gellert was up to, I’m sure it had to at least be interesting. 

So Albus tracks down Gellert, and he’s asking all of these questions. All these really good questions. At first Gellert is flattered (also, he can tell that Albus has a crush on him. That’s not especially unusual, if you’re Gellert Grindlewald.)  

But once he spends a little more time with him, I think he starts getting a little awed by Albus. This isn’t like Elphias Dodges’ hero worship, this is 'I want to put Albus Dumbledore in a jar and study him.' How can he be this good? How can his well of knowledge be so deep? How does he pick up everything I show him so fast…and immediately start adding improvements. How is he able to solve these magical problems and conundrums that I’ve been struggling with so easily?

Albus starts trusting him a little bit more. He doesn’t tell anyone about the details surrounding his father attacking the muggles, or about what’s going on with Ariana. But he tells Gellert. He tells him about the pressure he feels being responsible for them. How he can’t help resenting the way his family ties him down. He wants things to be different so badly, but doesn’t know what he's supposed to do.

I think that getting to see Albus’ vulnerability this way, his darkness, his cracks - things which he doesn’t show anyone - is what gets Gellert properly falling in love with him. Albus saw his darkness and didn’t back off, and now Gellert gets to return the favor. He probably starts getting a little romantic about all this, starts attributing the fact that they met to fate, thinks of Albus as this wonderful gift the universe is giving to him… but then Gellert’s perspective kind of shifts, and he starts believing that really he’s Albus‘ gift. He’s meant to save Albus, because it’s a crime that anyone this extraordinary should truly think that they’re trapped, and that their life needs to stay so small. 

He convinces Albus to leave, says they'll be able to take Ariana with them. I bet Gellert believes it too. He and Albus are so powerful, so talented, so knowledgeable, so off the charts in every way - what could Ariana possibly do that the two of them wouldn't be able to handle? 

But then, of course, the duel happens. Ariana dies (and I do think it was probably Albus who accidentally killed her.) We know that Gellert ran right after this. But I think  this is a situation where Albus is in shock, Gellert is grabbing his arm, dragging him towards the door, saying - we’ve got to get out of here. Don’t worry, it’ll be fine, I can fix this.

Albus can’t do it. He did wrong, and he has to face his punishment (a punishment I don’t think he ever feels he actually received. The closest he gets is Aberforth breaking his nose at the funeral, which is why he lets it stay broken.) There’s a lot of dark, sticky stuff in Albus Dumbledore's psyche. Stuff I don’t think he’ll ever let anyone see - both because he’s so hyper-competent he can mask it, and because it is his job to protect people (that’s the only thing he thinks he’s good for…)  Showing people his darkness and weakness, the way he showed it to Gellert - that is the opposite of protecting them.

If he’s honest with himself, I do think there’s a part of Albus that wishes he had been weaker, that he had run with Grindelwald that day. Best case scenario - maybe he could’ve influenced him, steered him down a better path (does that mean the blood of Grindelwald‘s victims is on his hands?) Or maybe it would have gone the other way, and without Ariana's death he would have ended up a worse Dark Lord than Grindelwald ever was. But more realistically… I think Albus knows that he and Grindelwald would have eventually had a falling out. But maybe not for a couple of years. Maybe Albus could’ve ignored the red flags that long. Maybe he could have had a few years - running around Europe, being young, powerful, and in love. 

Instead, Albus goes back to Hogwarts to hide. Because he can’t trust himself anymore. He can’t trust his judgment, he can’t trust himself with any kind of power. News of Grindelwald comes every day. He’s becoming more powerful. Dumbledore could stop him - but doesn’t. I think he’s worried that he saw Grindelwald again… (if Grindelwald is still in love with him…) (of course Grindelwald is still in love with him...) If Gellert asked him to leave Hogwarts and come with him, Albus is worried that he might say yes.

But in the end, Dumbledore does face him. Grindelwald fights him with the Elder Wand, but Dumbledore still wins. I like to think it’s because Gellert just cannot bring himself to kill him. Cannot bring himself to imprison him. He loves Albus too much. Albus is a work of art he cannot bring himself to destroy or lock away.

But Albus is prepared to lock Grindelwald up. So the Elder Wand - who always knows who has the power in a dynamic - becomes Albus.’ He defeats Grindelwald, and then uses Grindelwald’s wand the rest of his life. He’s buried with it.  I do think that Albus' intention was to die the wand’s last true master, both as a favor to the world, but also as a kind of romantic gesture. Because what is Voldemort compared to Grindelwald? Voldemort doesn’t deserve that wand. Gellert dies, tortured and killed by Voldemort, refusing to give up Albus, laughing. Because he knows how good Albus is. He knows how brilliant he is. He knows how ice cold he is. And (if Gellert is honest with himself) that only makes him love Albus more. After all, he was right. Albus really was a force of nature who took over the world without anyone realizing. Voldemort doesn’t stand a chance.

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Hi! question: Harry was high-key horrible towards Cho, and no one ever called him out on that. Which is sort of weird, because a) he is surrounded by people who would, b) he never ever has thoughts "women are stupid cows" etc. Hermione sort of does (because jkr does), but like. It's not the premise of the books that women are stupid cows. I would even argue that its canon that Harry acts like a total twat when he's with Cho (meaning that jkr thinks so also), but you see, because Cho can't withstand Harry's friendship with Hermione and her importance in Harry's life, therefore Cho, s=according to canon, is a stupid cow who is friends with traitors.

ok so with Cho it's probably a matter of jkr not knowing how to write communities as tight as the wizarding ones (because somebody would have said something to him. a) it's juicy, b) they are both quidditch players so have lots of mutual friends between them, like why wouldn't Fred and George play ball with Cho occasionally for example), but still this has always been such a strange plot point to me, because Harry actually occasionally acts like a massive piece of shit to Hermione and Ron never said a thing. no one did. which is yeah jkr is a misogynist, old news, but strange. like what, Ron is a kind of person who won't say hey Harry stop being a twat?

eh... i don't think this is a fair reading of what happens.

while you're right that cho gets whacked with two of the doylist text's big issues - protagonist-centred morality [aka behaviour which wouldn't be tolerated from anyone else is fine when harry does it] and jkr's detestation of anything she views as disloyalty [hence her glee at the idea that marietta was permanently disfigured by hermione because "i loathe a traitor"], which means that cho ends up being positioned as much more in the wrong about the end of their relationship than harry ever does specifically because of her defence of marietta - i don't think harry is horrible to her, nor that the text intends you to think that he is, nor that the text intends you think that cho would deserve it if he was.

instead, harry behaves stupidly and dismissively towards cho - largely unintentionally - for a combination of reasons. some of these are literary - he's the protagonist and the only narrative perspective we receive - but most of them are human. harry is fifteen, dense about other people's inner lives at the best of times, and denser than usual because he's going through a lot.

and this last point is important. harry's relationship with cho is something i always really like reading because it's a really, really good insight into the fact that experiencing something traumatic can make people incredibly self-centred.

[which isn't a sin. but nor is it a virtue, either.]

the basic issue in harry and cho's relationship is how they each process grief. harry - entirely understandably - doesn't want to talk about cedric's death. cho - entirely understandably - does. harry interprets cho's desire to share her grief as insulting - he sees it as an attempt to keep pouring salt into his trauma-induced wound. cho interprets his refusal to share her grief as similarly insulting - she sees it as an attempt to dismiss and belittle her colossal trauma.

it's worth pointing out that their kiss follows the only moment in canon where each of them actually makes an effort to understand the other's process - harry by engaging [however begrudgingly] with cho's desire for reassurance that cedric didn't die because of a lack of talent [that is, that there wasn't anything obvious which she could have done to save him], and cho by recognising that he finds talking about cedric difficult:

She shook her head and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. "I'm - sorry," she said thickly. "I suppose... it's just... learning all this stuff... It just makes me... wonder whether ... if he'd known it all... he'd still be alive..." Harry's heart sank right back past its usual spot and settled somewhere around his navel. He ought to have known. She wanted to talk about Cedric. "He did know this stuff," Harry said heavily. "He was really good at it, or he could never have got to the middle of that maze. But if Voldemort really wants to kill you, you don't stand a chance." She hiccuped at the sound of Voldemort's name, but stared at Harry without flinching. "You survived when you were just a baby," she said quietly. "Yeah, well," said Harry wearily, moving toward the door, "I dunno why, nor does anyone else, so it's nothing to be proud of."   "Oh don't go!" said Cho, sounding tearful again. "I'm really sorry to get all upset like this... I didn't mean to..." She hiccuped again. She was very pretty even when her eyes were red and puffy. Harry felt thoroughly miserable. He'd have been so pleased just with a Merry Christmas... "I know it must be horrible for you," she said, mopping her eyes on her sleeve again. "Me mentioning Cedric, when you saw him die... I suppose you just want to forget about it..." Harry did not say anything to this; it was quite true, but he felt heartless saying it. "You're a r-really good teacher, you know," said Cho, with a watery smile. "I've never been able to Stun anything before."   "Thanks," said Harry awkwardly. They looked at each other for a long moment. Harry felt a burning desire to run from the room and, at the same time, a complete inability to move his feet. "Mistletoe," said Cho quietly, pointing at the ceiling over his head. [OotP 21]

sadly, neither of them ever repeat this feat again...

but there's a second layer to harry and cho's divergent approaches to grief, which is that harry isn't great at recognising that other people's traumatic experiences affect them as - or even more - profoundly as his own affect him.

harry's view in order of the phoenix is that because he's the only person who had to experience the specific trauma of watching wormtail murder cedric and then seeing voldemort return from the dead, his trauma is worse/more impactful/more important - whatever term you want to use - than that of anyone who hasn't had this specific experience.

this is where his dislike of cho crying comes from. while i know this is how a lot of people take it [and jkr certainly doesn't help herself when it comes to this interpretation], harry doesn't object to her emotions because she's a woman, so much as because he thinks that her emotional reaction is disproportionate in comparison to his own. he - the person who saw cedric die - isn't constantly crying about him. so why is cho, when her experience of cedric's death is a rung below his on the trauma ladder?

he does something similar in half-blood prince, when he's under the impression that tonk's misery is caused by grief for sirius. when he realises that it's actually about lupin, he actually kind of gets it...

and also in half-blood prince, harry views both hermione and ginny's tears at dumbledore's funeral as entirely sensible because they're proportionate to his understanding of the occasion.

now, this is certainly somewhere where the doylist text's views on gender - especially its belief that women are inherently "sensible" and women who have emotional responses which jkr deems irrational are letting the side down - creeps in.

and there's also a bit of narrative context which needs to be borne in mind, which is that order of the phoenix is a coming-of-age story.

harry spends the book learning to be the chosen one, completing an arc which begins at the end of prisoner of azkaban. and part of how he does this is by coming to appreciate that the death eaters impacted society more broadly than just him and his parents. in the first three books of the series - and in deathly hallows - the first war [and, in deathly hallows, much of the second] is framed in such a way that the reader would be forgiven for thinking that james, lily, and harry were the only people ever targeted by the dark lord.

in order of the phoenix, however, harry is forced to recognise that plenty of people he knows are also grieving losses caused by voldemort and his minions - above all, neville.

but the lesson harry has to take from this - since, of course, he's the series' singular hero - is that his job is to avenge all of these losses because he's more important than everyone else.

cho becomes a victim of this learning curve. the harry of half-blood prince would behave completely differently towards her, because he'd view her as one of voldemort's victims who was going to be comforted by his destruction of the dark lord.

but even without these twin narrative lenses, harry's behaviour in order of the phoenix is - while certainly not sympathetic - completely understandable. he's not in a place where he has the emotional bandwidth to truly appreciate that cho is just trying to survive the process of grieving her dead boyfriend, because he's not in a place where he's able to put aside the idea that his experience is "worse".

but there's also a non-trauma-related issue in harry and cho's relationship - or, a non-trauma-related issue from harry's perspective, i should say - which, while it's harry being dense rather than cruel, also contributes to cho feeling dismissed.

and that's how the two of them understand their relationship's place within the passage of time.

from harry's perspective, the two of them getting together is the natural conclusion of the crush he developed on cho in prisoner of azkaban. as we see throughout goblet of fire, his view isn't that cho preferred cedric, it's that cedric got there first - he sees it as completely without question that, if he'd asked her to the ball more promptly, she would have been with him.

in harry's mind, then, cedric was a minor blip in the linear progression of his relationship with cho - a simple obstacle to something inevitable, now removed.

from cho's perspective - however - there's nothing inevitable about it.

from where she's standing, her relationship with cedric was something separate - in which harry did not feature - which she's forced to leave in another life, on the other side of a fucking enormous rift, when cedric dies. her relationship with harry is - as she understands it - an attempt to reach back across this rift, and to connect the strange new world she finds herself in [and the strange new version of herself she finds herself being] to the one she's had to leave behind.

this is why harry interprets cho bringing up cedric as her bringing up his love-rival in an attempt to make him jealous. but that's not what she's doing. he just won't see it that way.

cho is trying to make him jealous when it comes to roger davies. but - i think it's worth being really clear about this - jkr thinks that she's the person in the right here.

[and this is something which connects to the point about hermione - which i haven't got the space to go into more detail about here. harry is indeed frequently really quite cruel to hermione - far crueler, in fact, than he ever is to cho - but hermione is almost exclusively absolutely correct in whatever she's said to trigger his response. she's right about sirius sending the firebolt, she's right about sirius' treatment of kreacher, she's right that harry's vision of sirius being tortured is false, she's right about the prince's book being dodgy, she's right that they shouldn't follow "bathilda bagshot", and so on. the doylist text doesn't see this as a boy kicking off at a girl. it sees this as harry learning the lesson that hermione - like all admirable women - is much more sensible than he is and he should listen to her...]

cho brings up roger as a roundabout way of telling harry that she's chosen him - what she means by it is "i'm not just here because i don't have any other option. i want to be here with you."

she's doing the same thing when she brings up hermione. what she's trying to check is whether harry wants to be with her regardless of his other options, or if he's only with her until something better comes along.

which is what hermione tells him:

"... so then [...] she jumps up, right, and says 'I'll see you around, Harry,' and runs out of the place!" He put down his spoon and looked at Hermione. "I mean, what was all that about? What was going on?"   Hermione glanced over at the back of Cho’s head and sighed. "Oh, Harry," she said sadly. "Well, I'm sorry, but you were a bit tactless."   "Me, tactless?" said Harry, outraged. "One minute we were getting on fine, next minute she was telling me that Roger Davies asked her out, and how she used to go and snog Cedric in that stupid tea shop - how was I supposed to feel about that?" "Well, you see," said Hermione, with the patient air of one explaining that one plus one equals two to an overemotional toddler, "you shouldn't have told her that you wanted to meet me halfway through your date." "But, but," spluttered Harry, "but - you told me to meet you at twelve and to bring her along, how was I supposed to do that without telling her - ?" "You should have told her differently" said Hermione, still with that maddeningly patient air. "You should have said it was really annoying, but I'd made you promise to come along to the Three Broomsticks, and you really didn't want to go, you'd much rather spend the whole day with her, but unfortunately you thought you really ought to meet me and would she please, please come along with you, and hopefully you'd be able to get away more quickly? And it might have been a good idea to mention how ugly you think I am too," Hermione added as an afterthought. "But I don't think you're ugly," said Harry, bemused. Hermione laughed. "Harry, you're worse than Ron [...] Look — you upset Cho when you said you were going to meet me, so she tried to make you jealous. It was her way of trying to find out how much you liked her." "Is that what she was doing? [...] Well, wouldn't it have been easier if she'd just asked me whether I liked her better than you?" "Girls don't often ask questions like that," said Hermione. [OotP 26]

[harry and cho's relationship is also - it's worth noting - a nail in harmony's coffin, which is the doylist reason hermione is the object of cho's jealousy.]

while - yes - this is bound up in jkr's weird essentialist ideas about innate "male" and "female" ways of communicating, hermione is correct in her interpretation of cho's behaviour in this specific context. in the text's eyes, harry is at fault for not knowing how to read cho's subtext.

and harry does actually learn a lesson from this. ginny is massively jealous of several other women - including cho - but harry doesn't rise to her attempts to bait him over this jealousy.

harry also learns a second lesson about relationships from his time with cho - that you can't hope to sustain a relationship on physical attraction alone. harry and cho don't speak in prisoner of azkaban and barely speak in goblet of fire, and the moment they begin interacting with slightly more regularity in order of the phoenix, it's clear that they have absolutely nothing in common except quidditch and cedric.

their relationship - then - is the forerunner of ron and lavender's in half-blood prince. both harry and ron have a humiliating experience [although harry's is less humiliating, because he's the hero], which leads to them learning that going out with a girl when your personalities don't click is a dumb move. this allows them to - in the eyes of the doylist text - become mature enough to "deserve" their endgame couples.

[michael corner, who ends up with cho, is her male equivalent. he doesn't deserve ginny because he's immature. harry does.]

and something which i think it's worth noting is that harry is called out on this, when ron clocks - while, interestingly, hermione doesn't - that harry's attraction to cho is purely physical, and that he doesn't actually want to pursue a relationship with her:

Hermione looked as though she was restraining herself from rolling her eyes with extreme difficulty. "Well, I suppose it could have been worse," she said. "Are you going to see her again?" "I'll have to, won't I?" said Harry. "We've got D.A. meetings, haven't we?" "You know what I mean," said Hermione impatiently. Harry said nothing. Hermione's words opened up a whole new vista of frightening possibilities. He tried to imagine going somewhere with Cho - Hogsmeade, perhaps - and being alone with her for hours at a time. Of course, she would have been expecting him to ask her out after what had just happened... The thought made his stomach clench painfully. "Oh well," said Hermione distantly, buried in her letter once more, "you'll have plenty of opportunities to ask her..." "What if he doesn't want to ask her?" said Ron, who had been watching Harry with an unusually shrewd expression on his face. [OotP 21]

and this - especially when combined with hermione's reaction to harry's treatment of cho on their date and hermione's response to harry telling her that he kissed cho ["you just had to be nice to her... you were, weren't you?"] - is why i don't think that it's correct to say that harry isn't criticised for his behaviour.

but i also don't think it's fair to say that harry should have had the law laid down with any more force than this. i don't get the impression in canon that anyone other than ron and hermione realises that harry's interested in cho - certainly, the only person other than ron and hermione who notices that they're together and feels the need to pass comment on it is pansy. and - yes - this is partially due to the weirdness of the house system meaning that cho and harry don't end up having any mutual friends, but it's also because the sum total of cho and harry's relationship is about half-a-dozen stilted conversations, one kiss, one terrible date, and one session of mutual stropping about hermione versus marietta.

[in which cho gives as good as she gets - and, tbh, bodies harry with that iconic "go and cope with it, then" line. i think it would be reductive to describe this as a one-sided instance of harry being cruel to cho - it's mutual conflict.]

nobody's looking at their few interactions and going "wow, harry's a real fucking dick to his devoted girlfriend, i should take him aside and tell him to tighten up..." ron and hermione's reactions - "mate, i don't think you actually want to ask her out, so maybe don't?" and "maybe reflect a little on how you conducted yourself there?" are proportionate in context.

i get why people really feel for cho - watching her grief go unacknowledged is legitimately sad. but i think this is one of those times when remembering that books contain literary conventions - that is, remembering that cho's grief goes unacknowledged because the series is from harry's limited perspective - is important and one of those times where it's necessary to recognise that conflict can exist without either party being a villain.

cho is hurt by harry - and harry, to be fair to him, is confused and upset by cho - but neither of them do anything which makes them the bad guy, nor which mandates that they should face some sort of significant comeuppance for their behaviour. it's good to want to defend cho from the idea - which originates far more from the fandom than the text, tbh - that she's an irredeemable bitch, but simply reversing the charges so harry becomes the bitch is no more accurate or compelling.

their relationship can be bad for both of them and still be nothing more evil than two teenagers [a category of people who already lack a certain degree of emotional maturity by default] doing their best under trying circumstances, receiving no support except each other, and not acquitting themselves admirably.