I decided to spend the weekend watching all the films - well between unpacking and sorting and all other move things i have to do.

Retrospectively speaking - and as somebody who thought the books were so badly written I barely finished them, let alone re-read them - the films are fascinating.

Yes, fascinating and surreal in the ways in which they both do and don't work and have and haven't held up over time.
Firstly - one of my positive impressions of #HarryPotter right from the beginning was that it was a lovely discussion of grief and loss and how to deal with it. I stand by this.

But with knowledge of J.K. and hindsight, what's really jarring (and must be to all the people who loved #HarryPotter for what they thought was its celebration of difference and non-conformity) is the whole of the Umbridge plotline in #OrderofthePhoenix

How can the same woman who wrote this be the woman she is now?

Umbridge is introduced as the quintessential lamb in sheep's clothing. As with a lot of modern re-analyses of HP as a series, there are many ways to see Umbridge. But on paper (and on screen) she's a classic stereotype of a vicious, violent woman who uses extreme coded femininity to disguise herself

Umbridge is all pink, tea parties, knitting, homespun matronly femininity; all of which she wields as a weapon to disguise her ill-intent and repressed violence. Umbridge would have been a Bellatrix but was told that violence isn't ladylike so pretends to be sugar and spice and all things nice.

Umbridge wafts through the school in an exemplar of perfect, middle-aged, middle-class femininity while trying to enforce a nonsense, sanitised curricula as well as old-school social norms around gender, class and race.
Umbridge is a fascist.
But here's what makes this whole thing so surreal.