One final quibble: we can’t measure the gender worth of characters merely how they stand in relation to Harry. He’s the central character, so pretty much every character in the book is is measured by how they stand in relation to him, no?

This is true enough for Hermione, but more broadly too, we have McGonagall as Dumbledore’s deputy, Umbridge as Fudge’s deputy, etc. While McGonagall and Umbridge are certainly characters in their own right, they always have 2IC status. Also, with Fleur, although we see her more than Bill, I’m not sure how well her talent comes through. She is the only female champion in Goblet of Fire, and she’s also the weakest (to be fair though, this could be British prejudice against the French as much as it might be sexism, however ). There are again, further points I could make, but they would contain DH spoilers.

Ultimatley, I think that Rowling does some things well in terms of gender, but she still plays on a lot of implicit patriarchal assumptions– so with just about every character we have a mixed bag. Rowling moves away from defining women through childbearing, but at the same time she only raises, rather than smashes the glass ceiling. She provides strong female characters, that any girl could be proud to aspire to, but they are often sidelined.

One area in which I think Rowling does well is in Order of the Phoenix, when Harry discovers, after idolising the man for 4.5 books, that James Potter was actually a complete jerk, and that it’s actually his mother who is more of a role model– Harry needs to let go of his patriarchal assumptions in this regard. (And yeah, this does kind of prove wrong what I said earlier about Lily being defined by motherhood– just attribute that comment to a brain fart, okay? )

under the conservative Christian view, rearing children is more about tearing down their will

And under the Roman Catholic view, rearing children is about … rearing children.

There are things mentioned about Lily Potter (i.e. she was a very talented witch, she was very good with Charms) other than her just being Harry’s mom. Slughorn spends most of HBP going on about how good Lily was in Potions and [SPOILER] like her because she was nice to him. Both of those are related to Harry in that Slughorn credits his being good at potions to him being Lily’s son, and [SPOILER] because Harry’s all that’s left of her.

But we primarily hear about her being Harry’s mom, because that’s the most important thing about her to Harry.

we get Narcissa being worried about Draco.

Well, that I think is for another purpose. I can’t go into detail without spoiling DH, but I think the scene in HBP is to set up the later, very very significant, scene in DH.

For instance, although Hermione does develop as a character, that process of development tends to happen “off screen”, while with Harry, Ron and Neville we get to see some powerful, transformative moments.

While I agree with most of your post, Beppie (feeling it more accurate than Darkrose’s), I disagree with this bit. The `forward leaps’ of Ron, Harry and Neville are more dramatic simply because they are more necessary (especially in Neville’s case). The first book begins with HG already in place as one of the most gifted wizards we will see in the series, and one possessed of a mental and emotional discipline and self-awareness remarkable for her age; she is already way ahead of her contemporaries and her improvement seems less dramatic by comparison. Put in an athletic metaphor, we can’t criticize Rowling for letting Harry, Neville and Ron make dramatic leaps forward in how fast they run the 100 (wow! 13.2 to 11.9!) when Hermoine is already down the track, starting at 10.2, then going steadily 10.1, 10.0, (etc.). There is little drama in the slow, steady improvement of people who are already pretty magnificent to begin with.

Neville is a good character;; but I wonder if you made him exactly the same but a girl some people would have been angry with the hapless, negative characterization of him (especially his gift for plants!).

One final quibble: we can’t measure the gender worth of characters merely how they stand in relation to Harry. He’s the central character, so pretty much every character in the book is is measured by how they stand in relation to him, no? The only way to solve that “revolving around a male” situation would be to have started with the Harriet Potter series and taken it from there.

As someone else said at a Harry Potter conference at UC Riverside a couple of years ago (hey! I’m a kid’s librarian,, I had a perfectly legitimate reason for going!), JK Rowling isn’t just a woman - she’s a single mom the horrors! Or, well, she was when she was first writing the series. And her pet charity is one she founded for single parents.

honestly, there’s an interesting dissection one could make there. If one starts with the premise “Magical Powers can only exist through diabolic contract,” it raises all kinds of questions. Can the ends actually justify the means, especially when the only downside to the means is personal sacrifice? What limitations are there to that calculus?

BIBLE SPOILERS FOLLOW:
Of course Jesus returned from the dead. All that time he was “working Miracles” was just stockpiling Horcruxes.