The friendship between him and the Golden Trio isn’t even particularly close, yet Neville cherishes it. Neville has a hard time making friends, with the exception of his loyal toad Trevor. People act surprised when Neville glows up at the end of the series, but we’d argue it was never a glow up, so much as a steady brightening. Not least this: that Neville, in standing up to Harry, Ron and Hermione, was incredibly brave. We take issue with Albus Dumbledore’s decision to wait three days to award Gryffindor all the house points at the Hogwarts Leaving Feast, thus humiliating the Slytherins who had worked hard to earn their win, but in doing so, the man raised some excellent points. “It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.” – Albus Dumbledore, The Sorcerer’s Stone If you want to get the measure of a person, look at how they treat others, not just how they treat you.Ģ. Of course, this is something Sirius Black could learn himself, but just because he’s terrible at taking his own advice doesn’t mean we are. If you witness someone treating another person badly, especially when that person is just doing their job, then there’s the shorthand to tell you they are, simply put, the worst.
It’s about taking notice of how we treat each other as humans. If someone’s job is to provide people with a service, that does not mean they are a receptacle for rudeness. It’s not about inferiority/superiority it’s more about privilege and lack of empathy. And what he is trying to get at is the same thing most of us think when we see people being horrible to waiters or retail employees. He has a lot of pureblood nonsense to unlearn. However, as we’ve established, Sirius means well. On one hand, Sirius means well, but ignores his own advice by treating Kreacher terribly, which then leads to his death when the house-elf betrays him.Īlso, though we know this is not what Sirius is intending, the idea that anyone is inferior to anyone else is not okay, and certainly not what Harry Potter stands for. “If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.” – Sirius Black, Order of the Phoenix Here are 20 of the best Harry Potter quotes to live by.ġ. We have taken many of its lessons to heart - “Never tickle a sleeping dragon” is incredibly good advice, for instance - and there’s now a generation of people who live by the words and guidance J.K. There’s no denying that the books have fundamentally changed us. So Harry Potter, like most good fiction, is as much of an inspiration as it is an escape.
The groups who read the Malfoy-being-awful sections were more accepting when asked about their attitudes towards selected minority groups later in the week. A 2014 study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology revealed that people who are emotionally attached to Harry Potter tended to be less prejudiced towards people who are marginalized.Īs pointed to by The Independent, the study tested three sets of readers who were divided into two groups, one focusing on passages from the books where “mudblood” prejudice is tackled, and the other reading scenes about butterbeer and Quidditch.
The series has been a formative influence on many of us, not least in determining the way we behave. We’ve spent years devouring oodles of Harry Potter content, whether it’s the books, the films, the play or the mobile video game. (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images) Needless to say, if you’re reading this, you’ll probably agree that the Harry Potter series has had a huge impact on all our lives. By Laura Stanley 3 years ago Follow Tweet