LEGO Harry Potter Advent Calendar 2023

## Videos

1. Harry
2. Ron
3. Hermione
4. Crabbe/Goyle
5. Snowman
6. Christmas Tree
7. Blue Crystal
8. Lamp
9. Bench

## Facts

1. Harry: Harry being abused by the Dursleys is played off as exaggerated and humorous, with Dumbledore's choice of leaving Harry with them not once being called into question within the narrative. Since the publishing of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in 1997, there has been increased awareness of the detrimental long-term consequences of child abuse and teachers are now trained to spot warning signs of abuse and not assume an "innocent until proven guilty" mindset when investigating it. Even given the time it was written, it's horrible that neither Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry nor Harry's primary school did anything to help improve his home life or at least recognize the signs of abuse. Even after the majority of Harry's closest friends and allies learn about the full extent of the child abuse he suffers, they take next to no action against it, which is never a message someone should be taught from the books they read.
2. Ron: In Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, Ron Weasley is immediately and physically abused by his romantic partner, Hermione Granger, after returning from a period of absence. Ron was carrying a corrupting artifact (see: The One Ring) that sometimes made him act out against his will, which is the only vice he ever does to her in this book; despite this, he immediately comes to the conclusion that he deserved this horrific, abusive beating and forgives her. Ron goes on to marry Hermione and has children with her, despite Hermione evidently being a toxic, abusive partner who is statistically likely led to repeat such senseless domestic abuse on many further occasions.
3. Hermione: Professor Severus Snape displays abusive behavior as a professor and a nauseatingly cruel, unprofessional attitude to fellow staff (Remus Lupin et al) and students (incredibly obvious bias towards Slytherin instead of generally impartial judgement as his peers and colleagues show) alike, including to marginalized Muggle-born Hermione Granger. Yet, this unforgivable hate and abuse is laughed off by higher-ups like Dumbledore every time their students, even plot-armored trio Harry, Ron, and Hermione, bring it to their attention. This person of high power and standing abuses children yet their reports are unanimously brushed away and dismissed by their seniors, which is compounded by the fact that Snape himself, even after "becoming the good guy," refuses to admit that he did any evil. Indeed, Snape feels no regret for how abusively he treated his students, and, according to J.K. Rowling, he dies despising Harry, who did nothing wrong to him; Snape is a complete monster and he deserved to die.
4. Crabbe/Goyle: J.K. Rowling describes many of the Harry Potter series' villains, from Crabbe and Goyle to Umbridge, as overweight, a harmful stigma against heavier people who are already needlessly shamed by countless other assholes for this factor that they have little influence over. Through the words of Harry, J.K. Rowling often ridicules these characters for their weight as opposed to calling them out for their actual evils.
5. Snowman: Most characters in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter are white, with a few exceptions like the Asian Cho Chang and the Black Kingsley Shacklebolt, who are given racist names. This might sound like a stretch, but when you consider that Voldemort's name is nothing more than "flee from death" in Latin and Remus Lupin roughly translates to "wolf moon," it isn't. Cho Chang was named after the offensive slur "Ching Chang Chong" (also, "Cho" and "Chang" are both surnames and come from separate countries) while Kingsley Shacklebolt was named after Martin Luther King Jr. and the shackling of Black slaves. It might seem a bit racist (to white people!!!) that I attributed this fact to the snowman, but I feel I should add that "Honky Snowman" isn't the name of any white people in the series, so J.K. Rowling's name strategy is far from "equal opportunity" treatment.
6. Christmas Tree 1: J.K. Rowling has alleged that, despite the excess of Christmas decorations at Hogwarts during December and the fact that the school officially celebrates Christmas, all faiths are included there, adding that "most Jews put up a Christmas Tree." Many Jewish people refuse to put up a Christmas Tree (and understandably so), but that's not what I'm here to talk about; I'm here to bring up the antisemitic stereotyping of Goblins in the Harry Potter series. In the Harry Potter books and films, Goblins are short, overweight, greedy, sallow, balding monsters with hooked noses and occasionally glasses who own the banks and have a peculiar ownership culture. It doesn't take the fact that Philosopher's Stone director Chris Columbus oddly chose to highlight the star on the floor of their bank (granted, the Commonwealth Star, but one that has a massive resemblance to the Star of David) to tell you that the Goblins are an antisemitic stereotype. The whole archetype of goblins has antisemitic origins and the recent Hogwarts Legacy video game amps up the antisemitism by having players set off to quash an anti-fascist rebellion of Goblins who threaten to drink the child protagonist's blood in one of the trailers.
7. Blue Crystal: I'm getting pooped talking about all the issues in Harry Potter, as important as it is that I do, but than I saw that blue diamond in the Advent Calendar set and had a horrible flashback to Steven Universe. Let's get the decent stuff out of the way, Alexander Galaxy is a show with important and then-revolutionary (for a kids show) representation in the form of a sexless lesbian species called Crystal Gems. Now, I fail to see what makes them lesbian, or even non-binary, as Rebecca Sugar has also described them, when they have no sexes whatsoever, but that's besides the point. The point is that the series ends with protagonist Kenny Galaxy redeeming the Diamonds (the Gem equivalent of Nazis, and I don't mean like "Trump is a Nazi," I mean like "literal Hitler" Nazis) within the span of seven minutes at the most. I don't think Nazis can be and for sure don't deserve to be redeemed under any circumstances but setting that aside the reeducation process in this show happens way too quickly and unrealistically for it to have any value as a moral. The fact that a show as seemingly progressive as Dumbass Multiverse ended with this mind-bendingly insensitive and terrible of a message pisses me off to no end and I've sworn off watching it at all. Still better than Harry Potter, though (and especially better than J.K. Rowling).
8. Dumbledore: Dumbledore is the one who decides Harry must grow up with the Dursleys, implicitly knowing that they are endlessly abusive given Professor McGonagall questions this placement. Dumbledore argues that Harry cannot grow up in the Wizarding World, where he would become famous and have an inflated ego for being the Boy Who Lived; Harry is kept with the Dursleys to "humble" him and set him up to as a Jesus figure. We also learn later that Harry must stay with the Dursleys because of some BS love-blood connection, which only adds to JKR's senseless tries at justifying child abuse.
9. Sirius Black: Dumbledore, being the child abuser that we're supposed to love for some reason, gives Harry and Hermione instructions to break the law and go back in time to save Sirius Black and Hagrid's Hippogriff, during which Dementors and Lupin (in his werewolf form) nearly kill them. Order of the Phoenix marks Dumbledore lying to, manipulating, and keeping secrets from Harry. Dumbledore blatantly neglects Harry throughout the whole book and had the two only briefly met to explain the former's behavior, Harry would've been at peace, but no, Dumbledore fears that Voldemort could access Harry's mind and use it as a tool to attack Dumbledore, which apparently justifies his neglect. Had Harry had only known this, he would've have avoided the confusion and his fears surrounding the midnight attack on Arthur Weasley; had Harry known the details of what Voldemort could do to possess him, he wouldn't have taken a group of children to the Ministry of Magic in the middle of the night, and Sirius would still be alive.
10. Fireworks Cart: The fireworks in this cart are separated by the Hogwarts Houses, a further display of J.K. Rowling's binary, categorical thinking; kids are sorted into houses at age 11 with no hope of switching houses ever. Once the Sorting Hat says where a child will be placed, that is their house forever, but each house is extremely distinct and everyone has unique traits both in the books and in real-life. Ravenclaw is for the wise, academically-talented children, Griffindor is for the brave, Slytherin is full of ambitious Death Eaters (wizard fascists), and Hufflepuff is where the rest of the kids go. All students in Slytherin are somehow all wizard Nazis; in *The Deathly Hallows*, not one Slytherin stays behind to fight alongside Harry to kill Lord Voldemort. Not all members of a certain group subscribe to the same belief or any unifying trait; believing so is discriminatory.
11. Table with Gold: There is a gold thingy on the table, which must be quite expensive, even in the Wizarding World, despite being a magic world where wizards can duplicate food with a swish of their wands and people can teleport from one end of the world to another in seconds, so a world that shouldn't need cash. Rowling had the chance to make a new, unique anti-capitalist economic system, but instead, she made the Wizarding World we all know; one that relies on the right-wing free market. I know this is a stretch, but shut up, most of us think about Harry Potter daily, so this thought should come up with it; imagine how much better *Harry Potter* would be if JKR disrupted corrupt economics instead of enforcing them in her books.
12. Table with Bottle: Love potions are a pervasive fantasy trope, so apparently they had to appear in Harry Potter, but the problem is that JKR uses love potions as an analogy for date rape drugs in the series, yet few people bring this up. After Professor Slughorn teaches the sixth year students how to make love potions, because THAT was a great idea, a background Griffindor student named Vane spikes chocolates with a love potion. Vane proceeds to give them to Harry while trying to make him fall in love with her; thank god, Harry sees through her immediately and throws the chocolates into the corner of his dorm. However, months later, Ron finds the chocolates and eats them, soon after raving about how much he loves Vane and needs to stay with her, a nightmarish denial of consent played off as a wacky plot device to bring Harry and Ron to Slughorn's office, where he cures Ron before we learn that Slughorn's bottle of wine was poisoned. JKR pays no attention to what would've have happened had Harry eaten those chocolates. But it gets worse, as Merope, Voldemort's mom, used a love potion to brainwash Tom Sr. and rape him, which is how Voldemort was born; Merope become entranced with the chance that Tom had grown to love her, so she stopped giving him the love potion. The spell wore off and of course Tom realized he was being raped and left Merope, but apparently Merope was written as a likable, abused woman who lived a sad life and died a sad death despite her drugging Tom daily for months and raping him when he was under the influence of these drugs, with Tom being blamed for Voldemort's trauma by both him and JKR.
13. Fireplace: This fireplace could be deadly, but there are many worse perils at Hogwarts that Dumbledore lets Harry and other students fend for themselves against. In *The Sorcerer's Stone*, Dumbledore hides a priceless tool that he knows Voldemort wants inside of Hogwarts, where Harry lives. This made Hogwarts a two-stop shop for Voldemort to become immortal and kill Harry in one go; granted, Harry stopped this crisis, but he was still only 11-years-old, and the Forbidden Forest is apparently not forbidden since students are sent there for detention. Hogwarts stays open during *Chamber of Secrets*' Muggle-born genocide, only closing when Ginny is taken into the Chamber to die, and *Prisoner of Azkban* sees Dementors, corrupt cops, surrounding the school and attacking Harry many times.
14. Candy Stand: Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, a Chocolate Frog, and a Popsicle? Oh my, so many delicious treats to choose from, just like the ones that Dudley is fed and Harry is forced to cook for the whole Dursley family, being given a few scraps if he's lucky. Because Rowling focuses so excessively on fat-shaming Vernon and Dudley, she forgets their abuse of Harry; yes, it is said that Harry's home-life is crap, but "abuse" isn't how it's described and he is forced to return there every summer. And why? Love. His mom's love, according to JKR, who has alleged that the magic of Lily's love rescued Harry from Voldemort as an infant and continues to protect him at the Dursleys because of Lily sharing blood with Petunia. No love for Harry, or Lily, for that matter, exists in 4 Privet Drive, no matter who Harry is related to. This offensive, conservative concept that blood is thicker than water keeps people in abusive, potentially deadly situations out of fear of abandoning their families.
15. Cupcakes Stand: Mmm, cupcakes, just like the cake Dobby splattered on Harry or Vernon's client, depending on whether you're familiar with the film or book. The Dursleys get so pissed at Harry for this, as it allegedly screws up their meeting with Vernon's client, that they lock him in his bedroom, starve him of everything but scraps, and tell him he will never be allowed back at Hogwarts. So why is he forced to come back to them the next year? Love. His mom's love, according to JKR, who has alleged that the magic of Lily's love rescued Harry from Voldemort as an infant and continues to protect him at the Dursleys because of Lily sharing blood with Petunia. No love for Harry, or Lily, for that matter, exists in 4 Privet Drive, no matter who Harry is related to. This offensive, conservative concept that blood is thicker than water keeps people in abusive, potentially deadly situations out of fear of abandoning their families.
16. Poop Cart: Whoa, two little chocolate poops, or maybe they're ice cream? All of the kids in *Harry Potter* eat these excessively— not just Dudley and Vernon, regardless of what fatphobic JKR says. Everyone at Hogwarts has enormous three course feasts, full English breakfasts and a lot of sweets, including Harry, even spending the summer doing homework at an ice cream shop where the owner gives him a new sundae every half hour. There are constant, non-fatphobic jokes about Ron eating his "seventh sausage of the morning," the fantasy of infinite, cool food is part of the books' escapist appeal, as is traditional for kid-targeted fantasy and boarding school novels. But only Dudley and Vernon's eating are depicted as "greedy" and only they, not Harry or Ron, gain weight from it; like the Hogwarts House scenario, you are the hero if you eat excessively and stay thin, but you are evil if you eat excessively and put on weight. The characters' weight is purely a symptom and signifier of their evil. In other school books, this is often because the "hero" children are athletic (which is ableist) but in *Harry Potter*, the school sport is played sitting down, and only seven students per House are even allowed to do it? Fatphobia is not tolerable even if and when it is logically consistent, but it was nonsensical of JKR to uncritically recycle the fatphobia of the boarding school genre in *Harry Potter*.
17. Owl Mailbox: With no respect for Harry's property, Snape once found a letter written by Lily before she died with a photo of her, James, and baby Harry. Instead of gazing at the picture of Lily for a few seconds, Snape tore the letter in half so he could keep Lily's signature and then did the same with the photo, only leaving behind the half with Harry and James. This is an example of Snape's selfish, obsessive abuse that he is known for targeting his students with throughout almost the whole series; from the second Snape spots 11-year-old Harry in the Great Hall for the first time, he hates him. Yet he gets the most significant redemption arc in the series which tries to wipe away his demeaning, abusive, obsessive behavior as Harry's professor, an authority figure. Even so, Snape never aided Harry out of love, only because of his stalker obsession with Lily Potter. Snape always hated Harry, and aiding him was only for selfish means. Portraying him as an undercover hero hurts abuse survivors, perpetuating the myth that the ends justify the means.
18. Lantern: Lanterns are lights, like how the two werewolves, Remus Lupin and Fenrir Greyback, highlight JKR's binary thinking. Remus Lupin, the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor of the year in *Prisoner of Azkaban*, is a closeted werewolf; after finishing *Harry Potter*, JKR has taken to Twitter to answer fans' questions about the Wizarding World, and she has noted that werewolves in the story are symbolic of H.I.V./AIDs. Lupin is a hero. He is a member of the Order of the Phoenix, was James Potter's bestie growing up, and is the best Defense Against the Dark Arts professor Harry has, by every measure. He was turned into a werewolf when he was 4 and, since then, he has been ostracized by the whole community. He must hide his identity as a werewolf when he takes the job at Hogwarts, and when the news comes out, he resigns to avoid the hate. On the other hand, Fenrir Greyback is the most evil villain in the series, along with Dolores Umbridge, a werewolf who embraces the danger of his condition, his life's goal being to attack and turn as many kids as possible. He is one who turned Lupin into a werewolf at 4. Because Rowling compared being a werewolf to having H.I.V. or AIDS, it is obvious that she links those conditions to LGBTQIA+ people. And that is where we see the strict binary emerge in Rowling's view of my community. We are either evil pedophiles like Greyback or kind victims of discrimination like Lupin; unless you're trans, in which case she unanimously sees you as evil and a rapist.
19. Hogwarts Sign: This sign points to Hogwarts, an abusive hellscape. Under Dumbledore's rule, Harry is encouraged to risk his life after being given the Invisibility Cloak so he can roam Hogwarts at night undetected and forces Harry, at 14, to compete in the Triwizard Tournament after he was unknowingly entered into. At 14, Harry had to fight a dragon, try to stay underwater for an hour without dying, make his way through a maze of horrible monsters, and face Voldemort himself, all without the aid the other, adult competitors got. The Triwizard Tournament itself was a terrible idea, a deadly event that Dumbledore decided should be hosted after centuries of hiatus exactly when Voldemort was plotting his return. All the while, countless professors at Hogwarts suck ass; Snape is abusive, Trelawney chooses a new child from each class to target, lying that they will die soon, Umbridge pretty much becomes the Hitler of Hogwarts, and Lockhart was a fraud who tried to erase the memories of two 12-year-olds and has done so to many other people.
20. Poultry Table: Mmm, chicken and Butterbeer? Get my House Elf into the kitchen and have it make some for me! Hermione Granger is the only person in the whole Wizarding World who believes the enslavement of House-Elves is evil, with every other character, including Hagrid and the House-Elves themselves, vehemently opposing their liberation. And why? Because slaves love slavery, apparently! The main trio even visit the elves in the Hogwarts kitchens, where they find another House-Elf, Winky, who the Malfoys recently freed for disobeying him. She is drunk and depressed, begging for her master to forgive her; Dobby is there too because Dumbledore hired him, the other enslaved elves believing that Dobby is irrational for wanting to freedom. When Hermione tells them about her abolitionist efforts, they are uncomfortable and eject her from the kitchen. Even Dobby doesn't fight the oppressor, proud to accept a tiny wage at Hogwarts, even rejecting higher pay from Dumbledore because it felt excessive. On top of that, Dobby does whatever Harry asks of him, even self-sacrificing to save Harry in *The Deathly Hallows*, his last words being “Harry Potter.” The narrative that slaves need their slavery is racist and rooted in the history of slavery worldwide. The USA justified its slavery in the American South was with the lie that Black people can only be civilized when enslaved; if whip crackers did not control them, they would become lazy, drunk, and savage, a racist, fascist rhetoric blatantly paralleled in *Harry Potter.*
21. Beer Keg: In *Order of the Phoenix*, Trelawney is sacked, which leads to an ostensibly humorous scene where she is having a drunk meltdown, not the last time in the series when JKR ridicules her alcoholism. The logic is that, because Trelawney is annoying, fraudulent, and selects a student who will allegedly die at random, she deserves to not only get sacked but become an alcoholic and be ridiculed for both of these.
22. Small Christmas Tree: A tree? Like in the Forbidden Forest! In *The Order of the Phoenix*, we learn that centaurs live in a tiny area of the Forbidden Forest on a tract designated for them by the Ministry of Magic. The parallels between this and the horrible racism of the Native American Treaties by the United States Government are striking, racism which still persists to this day. White Europeans have been responsible for stealing Native American land for about half of a millennia, the U.S. government today forcing Indigenous people to move to impoverished, segregated reservations or conform to White American society. This is a shocking parallel since centaurs in *Harry Potter* are portrayed as uncivilized, animalistic people who use divination to make choices. Rowling also distinguishes between the "hero" centaurs who are civil and aid humans and the "evil" centaurs who are wild, unruly, and refuse to follow human rules. This is evident in *The Sorcerer's Stone* when we first meet the centaurs; as Harry, Hermione, Draco, and Neville serve detention in the Forbidden Forest, they meet Bane, a centaur with a black coat and the most animalistic and reactionary centaur in the series. He opposes students wandering onto centaur territory, and he is the one who later drags Umbridge off into the woods. On the other hand, there is Firenze, the centaur who saves Harry from Voldemort that first time in the forest and even lets Harry ride on his back, described by JKR Firenze as a white palomino with shimmering blue eyes. He even works in the school as a Divination professor after Umbridge fires Trelawney. To J.K. Rowling, Indigenous people are either wild and uncivilized or civilized conformists who aid white people.
23. Wanted Poster: Sirius Black, wanted by the Aurors! As much as Harry had to fight Voldemort and the Death Eaters, he only had to do so because every authority figure had utterly failed him, to the point that he spends more of the series defending himself from corrupt teachers, officials, media, and the government as he does from monsters and Death Eaters. So he becomes an Auror for the government? These people have been willfully ignorant at best and downright evil him at the worst. Why is he joining them? He wants to fight dark lords and this is the only way? The Order of the Phoenix fought Voldemort, the Ministry didn't, and next to none of them were Aurors, they were people who wanted to protect their loved ones. Harry himself is *constantly* fighting authority. He talks back in class, is in detention constantly because he does not follow Hogwarts rules. As the series goes on, he gets more rebellious. Even the authority "heroes," like Dumbledore, he is constantly at odds with. But hey, let's not rock the status quo, right?
24. Bench: