Harry Potter (novel)/Radar

• Now that you're not 12, give this passage from Chamber of Secrets a close read. Alas, in the final chapter it's revealed that Ginny walked in on Percy kissing his girlfriend.
• The final book constantly refers back to Harry & Ginny's "final snatched moments in darkened corners of the castle" before he breaks up with her before going on his final quest. The same kind of quote gets used anytime there's a party or ball occurring in Hogwarts.
  • Don't forget the couples out in the bushes during the Yule Ball.
    • There's a fairly hilarious moment when Snape is a bit confused to see Harry and Ron there - although they'd actually been eavesdropping on his conversation with Karkaroff.
• In HBP, the narration mentions that Harry was having dreams about Ginny that "made him devoutly thankful that Ron could not perform Legilimency". Wonder what kind of dreams he was having?
• Let's face it, Fenrir Greyback was a pedophile.
  • Especially considering that JKR used lycanthropy as a metaphor for AIDS. A man with a (metaphorically sexually transmitted) disease that primarily attacks children and spreads the disease to them?
  • Not to mention Lupin's worry that he could pass his lycanthropy (as one passes HIV and other STDs) on to his son...and him, having been infected nearly his whole life, he probably did a fair bit of research on his condition that gave him good reason to fear this happening (i.e. he knows of a case where it's actually happened.)
• Immediately before Cho and Harry's first kiss, Harry is said to feel "a peculiar sensation around his midriff". Yeah.
  • "Is there a wand in your pocket or are you happy to see me?"
• This snippet from the first book. This being the first book, it probably wasn't meant like this at all, but it sure as hell reads differently when you're in your teens or 20s as opposed to when you're eleven or twelve:

He pushed the door ajar and peered inside – and a horrible scene met his eyes. Snape and Filch were inside, alone. Snape was holding his robes above his knees.

• Aberforth's illicit charms on goats could imply some sort of sexual activity.
  • JKR was asked exactly what Aberforth had done with said goats at a Q&A session:

Fan: In the Goblet of Fire, Dumbledore said his brother was prosecuted for practicing inappropriate charms [JKR buries her head, to laughter] on a goat; what were the inappropriate charms he was practicing on that goat?
JKR: How old are you?
Fan: Eight.
JKR: I think that he was trying to make a goat that was easy to keep clean [laughter], curly horns. That's a joke that works on a couple of levels. I really like Aberforth and his goats. But you know, Aberforth having this strange fondness for goats, if you've read book seven, came in really useful to Harry, later on, because a goat, a stag, you know. If you're a stupid Death Eater, what's the difference. So, that is my answer to YOU.

• "Can I have a look at Uranus too, Lavender?" J.K. Rowling was surprised when her editor didn't object to that joke.
  • It was also wonderfully translated to Polish. Since there's not as much fun with the word "Uranus" in Poland, Mr. Polkowski had had to be quite inventive here. It went something like this (translated back to English from his translation to Polish):

Lavender: Oh Professor, look! I think I've got an unaspected planet! Oooh, which one's that, Professor?
Prof. Trelawney: It is Uranus, my dear. A very important celestial body.
Ron: Can I too have a look at Lavender's body?

• • Which would make it a Brick Joke, as in Half Blood Prince, he totally does.
    • And the French translation changes it to the Moon. "Can I see your moon too, Lavender?" This does have the same connotations as the term "mooning" in English.
    • The Danish translation goes somewhat like this, with Ron's comment laden with Innuendo, since 'end' can be understood as ass as well.

Lavender: Oh professor, I think my ending number got an unknown aspect, what can it be Professor?
Prof Trevawnley: That's Uranus dear.
Ron: Can I see an aspect of your end as well Lavender?

• • And in OOTP, Ron uses basically the same joke again (though he isn't really in his right mind at the time):

"Harry, we saw Uranus up close!" said Ron, still giggling feebly. "Get it, Harry? We saw Uranus." Ha ha ha."

• • • Unfortunately, several other translations have completely missed these jokes, such as the Hungarian, Brazilian and Russian translations.
• In Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets, when Vernon Dursley complains that Dobby's antics upstairs "interrupted my Japanese Golfer joke". There's more than one famous Japanese golfer joke, but the punchline to one of these jokes is, "What you mean.... 'wrong hole'?"
• The Tales of Beedle the Bard is filled with cuddly Radio 4 innuendo in the sections where Dumbledore discusses the content of the fairy tales -- particularly when he mentions a female relative refusing to marry a man after seeing him "fondle a Horklump" (a pink mushroom-like creature covered in bristles).
  • On the topic of Beedle the Bard, according to Word of God, no woman has ever laid claim to the most powerful wand in the Potter Verse. As the book says, "make of that what you will".
    • It could mean that women were smarter than to go around trying to get a more powerful wand that gets you killed, but what Dumbledore was probably trying to say is that it figures that only men would view a long, thin object (much like a certain part of their anatomy) as a symbol of how big and tough they are.
    • And Ron did say "I've got an unbeatable wand, come and try it if you think you're hard enough" or something like that.
• In the seventh book, Ron gets Harry a book whose title was something like Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches. Apparently, it's not all about "wand-work".
• The lyrics to "A Cauldron Full of Hot, Strong Love":

Oh, come and stir my cauldron
And if you do it right,
I'll boil you up some hot, strong love
To keep you warm tonight.

• • Made even better by the fact that it's ... jazzy.
• Deathly Hallows: Ginny was going to give Harry a birthday / farewell present to remember her by. It was in her bedroom, no gift boxes were evident, and it started with a deep kiss. Do the math on that one.
• Ron's swear, "Merlin's saggy left--"
• Another Curse Cut Short: Ron's uncle who, at parties, would pull up his robes and pull bunches of flowers out of his-
  • I hope Ron means his ass . . .
    • How else would... never mind. Although that would (at least partially) explain Bilius' lack of luck with women.
• In Half-Blood Prince, Ron and Lavender stumble into a classroom where Harry is trying to comfort a distressed Hermione. Seeing as Ron and Lavender were perfectly comfortable making out rather passionately in a crowded common room, one has to wonder (or not) exactly why they suddenly felt the need to seek out an empty room.
  • To clarify, the reason why Ron and Lavender didn't just use the mostly-empty room they found is obvious; Ron didn't want to see a distressed Hermione. Why they left the common room in the first place, however, is a mystery...
• How about the spell-checking quill Ron uses to write his essay? "Augury" really doesn't start with O-R-G....
  • Worse in the Dutch translation; it actually fully spells out O-R-G-I-E (Dutch for orgy). How the translator ever got away with that, we'll never know.
  • The Danish translation makes him spell "røvsur" which is a slightly vulgar Danish expression for being very grumpy ("røv" means "ass").
• While most cases of profanity before Deathly Hallows were carefully written around, Prisoner of Azkaban makes use of an extended metaphor involving dogs and Harry's nature to have Aunt Marge call Harry's mother a bitch.

If there's something rotten on the inside, there's nothing anyone can do about it. ...It's one of the basinc rules of breeding. You see it all the time with dogs. If there's something wrong with the bitch, there'll be something wrong with the pup... (insert Harry's accidental anger magic here).
(later)Now, I'm saying nothing against your family, Petunia, but your sister was a bad egg. They turn up in the best families. Then she ran off with a wastrel and here's the result right in front of us.

• • And between the two is an explicit statement about killing weak dogs, like Harry.
    • Don't forget in "The Deathly Hallows", where Mrs. Weasley says "Not my daughter, you bitch!"
• How about Voldemort taking Lucius's wand in Deathly Hallows and comparing its length to his own wand's?
  • And in the movie, rather than doing that, he strokes the damn thing, and while doing so, his eyelids flutter shut!!
  • Also, the way Lucius winces when he snaps the handle off...
  • It's worth noting that Lucius' wand, according to source materials, is eighteen inches long, making it by a wide margin one of the longest wands in the Potterverse. Cue the jokes about Compensating for Something...
• Bill in book six tells of a man in Gringotts named Arkie Philpott who "had a Probity Probe stuck up his..."
• From the fifth book :

"Well?" Ron said finally, looking up at Harry. "How was it?" Harry considered for a moment. "Wet," he said truthfully.
Ron made a noise that might have indicated jubilation or disgust, it was hard to tell.

• • OK, Cho was crying because she remembered Cedric. The point was Ron's reaction.
• We all know what Lavender thought Ron and Hermione had been doing when she caught them coming out of the boys' dormitory together. Of course, they weren't doing that, but the book still discreetly avoids mentioning exactly what Lavender must have been thinking upon seeing her boyfriend exit a bedroom with a girl he has an obvious crush on.
• For adult readers (of which JKR must have realised she had plenty by the last books,) she seems to imply that the wizarding world is pretty cool about sex, straight or gay (perhaps because, with magical medicine, they've never had to worry about unwanted pregnancy or other consequences.) Even when Rita Skeeter is doing her hatchet job on Dumbledore, she only mentions his crush on another wizard so she can make dark suggestions about its political implications; that he was gay apparently is not an issue to anyone.
  • She also implies that he's a pedophile, saying his relationship with Harry has "been called unhealthy, even sinister".
• In Book 5, during the DA members-to-be meeting inside Hog's Head, Zacharias Smith, who Ron and Hermione both agree to dislike, keeps hounding Harry annoyingly, to the point the Weasley twins intercept with this:

"Would you like us to clean out your ears for you?" inquired George, pulling a long and lethal-looking metal instrument from inside one of the Zonko's bags.
"Or any part of your body, really, we're not fussy where we stick this," said Fred.

• In Prisoner of Azkaban, the security trolls assigned to guard Gryffindor Tower are described as "comparing the size of their clubs".
• On at least one occasion, the slang term "berk" is used, the shortened Cockney Rhyming Slang for "Berkley Hunt". Guess what it rhymes with.
• In Half Blood Prince, after Christmas, the password to Gryffindor Tower is changed to 'Abstinence'. The chapter before had Ron admitting that he and Lavender "don't talk much. It's mainly..." "Snogging." Though, 'abstinence' doesn't simply refer to not having sex. It can also mean refraining from drinking liquor, which is ironic, given that half the time she has page-time, the Fat Lady is drunk, and in that scene, the Fat Lady is massively hungover.
  • It could also mean that the Fat Lady herself did something that she regretted, and decided to use that password as a reminder to lay off the booze.
• Cracked.com did an article about the most depraved sex scenes implied in the series.
• In Book 6, Harry and his friends visit Fred and Georges' new shop. One of the products on sale is a magical daydream-creator, guaranteed to put the user into a hallucination to pass the time during class. There's a label stating that these are not for sale to anybody below sixteen. Wow, Mrs. Rowling. Everybody knows what 16-year olds will be daydreaming about...If You Know What I Mean. Real subtle.
  • What's more, the picture on the cover of the daydream creator box was of a handsome man and a swooning beautiful woman on a sailing ship.
  • Keep in mind that this is basically a drug with a more family friendly name. Also, as the Cracked article above points out, Amortentia, Love Potion, is, essentially, a magical date-rape drug. They distribute this openly.
  • There's also another article entitled Top 6 Reasons Harry Potter Isn't For Kids.
  • 6 Horrifying Implications of the Harry Potter Universe, again from Cracked. Relatively tame deconstruction of the Rowling world-building foibles, right up until we get to #2: the Marauder's Map and it's total disregard for privacy: two issues are discussed are how it's entirely likely Fred and George knew the map identified Scabbers as Peter, and that in the credits of the third movie, there's an easter egg where two students are shagging in the corner. Also, #1, which uses the lack of privacy as a point of departure to springboard into the darker elements of magic. To give an example, Cracked draws a solid connection between Love Potions and Date Rape drugs.
• Umbridge is seriously implied to get gang-raped by the centaurs in book five.
  • Quite hilariously parodied in A Very Potter Musical. Still disturbing, but hilarious.
• There was also Ron's line about "not wanting people saying his sister's a-" regarding her many boyfriends.
  • And in book four, with him worrying about Hermione being known as a "scarlet woman". Which was arguably pretty funny.
• Mandrakes "grow up" similarly to humans, going through puberty, etc. Then this happens: "The moment they start trying to move into each other's pots, we'll know they're fully mature."