Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Chapter Notes

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Chapter 10: Luna Lovegood

• “An old woman greeted them on the corner. She had tightly curled grey hair and wore a purple hat shaped like a pork pie. ‘Wotcher, Harry,’ she said, winking.” – Tonks ability to change her appearance even goes as far as to change her age, meaning that theoretically she could stay forever young. However I always wonder how much effort it takes for her to change. It described that her face has a pained expression every time she changes her appearance. It is possible that changing her hair is less exhausting than changing her entire appearance. I always had this headcanon that changing in a significant way (her face, her body etc) would drain a lot of energy, so we only see her change her hair mostly, as it is much more effortless. Or maybe Tonks just feels very comfortable in her body and doesn’t think there is any need to change it. (I wonder if her transformations could go as far as to change into another person or another gender.)

• Neville doesn’t want to share a compartment with Luna, implying that he had heard about her and her reputation, unlike Harry, who is the most oblivious character ever. I also love how Ginny simply doesn’t care about Luna’s reputation.

• “Harry knew at once why Neville had chosen to pass this compartment by. The girl gave off an aura of distinct dottiness.” – If I ever form a band I call it “distinct dottiness”. And a quick look at the chapter titles tell us that J.K. Rowling has a thing for alliterations (Dudley Demented, Detention with Dolores, Percy and Padfoot etc).

• “‘I’m nobody,’ said Neville hurriedly. ‘No you’re not,’ said Ginny sharply.” – I love that Ginny stands up for Neville. She also defended him last book when Ron and Harry made fun of him because he had asked Hermione to be his yule ball date. Ginny simply doesn’t care that both Luna and Neville aren’t considered to be cool or popular, unlike Harry (at least for now). And Ginny herself is popular, she has her own group of friends, but she treats everyone with the same respect and won’t stand any kind of bullying. Which makes her awesome and you know the morally better person than Harry, just saying.

• “Rather pink in the face, she closed the door and departed. Harry slumped back in his seat and groaned. He would have liked Cho to discover him sitting with a group of very cool people laughing their heads off at a joke he had just told; he would not have chosen to be sitting with Neville and Loony Lovegood, clutching a toad and dripping in Stinksap.” – I wrote a separate post about this, but this scene mirrors a scene in book 6, where Harry again sits with Luna and Neville, when Romilda Vane offers him to sit with her and her friends, with the difference that Harry then appreciates his company and rather sits with his friends Luna and Neville. Again, a lot of the unlikeable Harry we see in book 5 is to show us the progress he makes. People are sometimes dicks, but fortunately they don’t have to stay that way.

• It is never stated but I think there is chance that Luna is on the autism spectrum. Her inability to understand social cues, paired with her intelligence would speak for it.

• I love that every article in the Quibbler includes the line “BUT DOES HE?”. Obviously book 5 deals a lot with media and the power media has. This theme has already started in book 4, where Rita Skeeter’s articles had at times severe consequences for Harry and his friends (especially Hagrid and Hermione). Now we see gain how much influence media, especially the Daily Prophet, has on the public opinion. It shows how much we trust media, and how important it is for media to be independent. The two articles Harry reads in the Quibbler are based on rumours, on something someone said, without any kind of verification. They are true because someone believes them to be true, in the same way Luna believes in things nobody else does. Of course there is no absolute truth and that is what Harry has to learn the hard way. The stories in the Quibbler are as true as the ones the Daily Prophet writes about Harry and Dumbledore, with the only difference that the Prophet appears much more trustworthy than the Quibbler, so people are much more likely to believe the Prophet. Independent media is now more important than ever, and if anything the Potter books taught us to be critical of the media we consume.

• “‘Oh, yes,’ said Luna, ‘I’ve been able to see them ever since my first day here. They’ve always pulled the carriages. Don’t worry. You’re just as sane as I am.’” – As we later learn the carriages are carried by Thestrals, creatures that can only be seen by those who have witnessed someone dying. We also learn that Luna can see them because she lost her mother. Meaning that she lost her before the age of 11 and that she saw her dying. Which is a lot. And puts Harry’s way of thinking he is the only one who ever suffered in a new perspective. (This already happened after he had learned about Neville’s parents, to realize that he is not the only whose family got destroyed by Voldemort and his followers.)