So I read this book in middle school, nearly 30 years ago and I read up til number four in the series. My reason for stopping was that, on average, the books took about three years to release. Calculating that I would be in my early 20s by the time the series ended, that didn’t sit well with me.

A couple years ago I bought the book in German to help foster my German language skills and it got me to think about the series from an adult point of view. Harry potter is far darker than people realize.

So the story goes that Harry’s parents were killed in a crash and only he survived. He goes to live with his aunt and uncle, both big ole assholes. His cousin is a dick as well and Harry is stuck under the stairs, an abuse victim, until a dude named Hargid informs him that he is a wizard and takes him off to Hogwarts.

Now, if you’re familiar with me and my writing, you know where this is going. If not, buckle up mutha fuckers, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

So being abused from the age of infant to eleven cannot be good for anyone, I’m sure. What makes this even worse, is it is family abusing him. Harry is depicted as petite, not a strapping young lad. He is borderline emaciated from the Dursleys. Factor in isolation, which for most people isn’t good and you got the making of a Netflix serial killer documentary. It would seem to me that hogwarts, which sounds a lot like hogwash, is a hallucination, to protect Harry from self destruction. At some point, Harry gets out from under the stairs and slaughters all three of his family members. Harry probably never remembers doing so. The REAL ending to the book, is Harry being led away in cuffs, surrounded by reporters and he is brought to the police station and questioned.

Think about this, Harry Potter’s world is devoid of any technology, not even a tv. You have no clue what year you’re in and you wouldn’t, if you were kept under the stairs since birth and knew nothing of the world or its technology. Not even a phone is mentioned in the original novel as I recall. How the fuck does this world communicate?

Hogwarts runs itself like it’s the 15th century, Not a single bit of technology in that school or in the muggle world. Again, that’s not normal.

So the next novel is called The Chamber of Secrets. This is clearly figurative for Harry having to look deeply inside himself to come to terms with his crimes.

At some point, Harry stands trial and the edvidence shows the Dursleys were at fault for criminal abuse. Harry gets sentenced to 25 years in a psychiatric ward, leading to The Prisoner of Azkaban.

The rest of the series is Harry still dealing with personal delusions in his life, up until book seven, in which Voldemort, a hallucination of his torment, is finally vanquished, leading to an epilogue that has Harry, now much older, outside platform 9 3/4 with Ginny and his children. Ron and Herrmonie are there too, but as figurative ghost of his past life, still mildly haunting him, but still not the worst that his mental state had ever been. He’s taken his meds and returned to society a far better man.

That’s a unique take on the series, I think and I only scratched the surface of edvidence to support this.