To my niece Sarah:
Apparently it may not make for polite conversation on Christmas morning, but it’s important nonetheless that you understand, Harry Potter is a degenerate psychopath. And many of your other opinions about the books are poorly reasoned.
You’ve been told by the Lo Mein Stream Media that Harry Potter is the perfect image of love and bravery and goodness. That argument is as solid as my stool after Chinese take-out. It’s not bravery, or any other kind of virtue, that allows Harry to beat Voldemort, it’s Harry’s pharmaceutical grade insanity. What kind of 11-year-old finds out the world’s most dangerous serial killer is in his basement, and decides that it would be a reasonable idea to go and try to catch the motherfucker? Most kids have an old house on their block that they’re too scared to go near. Not Harry Potter. Harry Potter would drive drunk in a Hummer through a mine field if he thought Voldemort was on the other side.
Ask yourself Sarah, when your Daddy wanted to try and learn how to do oil changes himself, did you let him practice on the family car? Or did you tell the nearest authority figure, your Mommy? When Harry goes Voldemort hunting, he’s acting like your luddite father. But unlike your father, things always seem to work out for Harry. No one ever screams at Harry or makes him go to couple’s therapy. In fact, rather than acting responsibly, the authority figures in his life are textbook enablers. Which probably explains why Harry would sooner ask Fluffy the three-story pit bull for a dick suck, than ask an adult for help.
And Sarah, remember on Christmas Eve you came running down the stairs because you thought you heard Santa, but it was just me in a Voldemort mask? You were so scared, Sarah. With lungs like that, your Mommy and Daddy are wasting their time teaching you about 911. But Sarah, who could be scared of the most disappointing villain of all time? Not Harry Potter. That little shit might be crazy, but he’s not stupid. He knows that, like your father’s drunken claims about the size of his “wand,” the hype doesn’t match the reality.
The hype is that Voldemort is the craziest, most violent, baddest motherfucker of all time. That he makes the lifers in the supermax-island-fortress-wizard-prison look like half way crooks. That he split his soul into seven pieces just so he could go around murdering for longer.
The reality is that he got punked not once, not twice, not three times, but seven straight times by this little dipshit kid. The last of which got him killed. This guy, somehow, always fucks it up. He is the Chicago Cubs Cleveland Indians of villains. Just when you think that there is no possible way that he could lose to Harry Potter again, he finds a way.
And contrary to your claim that Voldemort’s greatest weakness is the lack of love in his life, Voldemort’s real problem is that he never learned how to surround himself with better people. The human capital value of his organization is shockingly low. Death Eaters? Apparently not, because their one and only target is still alive and has body bagged dozens of their friends. They eat death the way Wilford Brimley eats sugar: begrudgingly and with no control.
It’s impressive how Voldemort, devastatingly incompetent himself, was able to find a gang’s worth of people dumber than he is. And man do they love telling him how great they think he is. “Oh Voldemort you’re so evil. You’re the best of all time!” But Voldemort is just smart enough to know better, and that’s why he’s pissed all the time. No one in his organization gets it. They don’t understand how truly and undeniably fucked they are. Voldemort needs to say “No you pricks, Harry Potter is the most evil wizard of all time. And in case you hadn’t been counting, I’ve never beaten him. Fuck! I had him. I had a loaded machine gun pointed at an infant, and I some how ended up shooting myself in the head. And guess what? Now that little psychopath is coming after me. And he isn’t just trying to kill me, he is on an Arnold Schwarzenegger search and destroy mission for my soul.”
And Sarah, if you want to pity Voldemort, pity him for having to be aware that his failure is inevitable, despite how grossly things are stacked in his favor. Unlike your father, Voldemort doesn’t have the luxury of being totally oblivious to his shortcomings. Voldemort knows that all he has to do is string one victory together. But he can’t do it because he sucks at his job and he also knows that. And like clockwork, every June he gets killed by Harry. And every July he re-spawns back at his lair, where he’s once again inundated with compliments about how great he is by his band of morons, like some cruel joke.
And then after seven rounds of this bullshit, of Harry fucking with him, Harry decides that it’s time to kill Voldemort. And when he does it, he doesn’t just kill him. He publically executes him in front of the entire wizarding community. And afterwards, like always, everyone congratulates Harry. No one is even a little freaked out, even though at one point Hermione and Ron have to physically restrain Harry from cutting Voldemort’s dick off and putting it in his mouth.
And that’s how your great story really ends, Sarah. Harry finally gets his man. And the “greatest villain of all time” is felled by a kid who can’t even stomach beer unless there’s butter in it.
I await your reply,
D. Diaz