Greetings Earthlings! 🙂
After recently seeing the new Fantastic Beasts film in the cinema, it’s got me thinking about whether or not some of my favourite characters in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter are on the autistic spectrum.
As I stared up at the big screen at Eddie Redmayne’s Newt Scamander, I was really struck by how many autistic traits that his character possessed. Newt is quirky and socially awkward, he rarely makes eye contact, he has an unusual gait and is obsessed to distraction with magical creatures, often mimicking their behaviours to communicate with them. Perhaps most telling of all in the latest film, Dumbledore tells him that his honesty is one of his greatest attributes. Eddie Redmayne himself has said in interviews that he feels that Newt probably has Asperger’s syndrome based on how JK Rowling described Newt’s mannerisms to him, but would have unlikely been diagnosed as the films take place in the 1920’s long before Kanner and Asperger first published their work on autism.
Here’s a video that someone spliced together showing Newt and some of his autistic moments in the films:
Driving home after the film, I started thinking back over the books and wondering how I had never wondered if some of the characters were autistic.
Perhaps the most obvious potential autist would be Luna “Looney” Lovegood- a quirky and eccentric girl who is often shunned by her peers for being different (famed in particular for her radish earrings). She floats around the castle a social outcast, her mind often miles away in a dreamland. Highly intelligent, fiercely loyal and brutally honest, Luna is quite gullible and often the victim of bullying, as many of us on the spectrum often are. Irish actress Evanna Lynch who played Luna in the films has said in interviews that she regularly receives letters from autistic fans about Luna and how they connect with her. I didn’t quite connect with Luna in the same way that I identified with Hermione Granger (as I’ve mentioned previously), but she was the one character I would have loved to have played in the films.
Many have also questioned whether Hermione Granger is on the spectrum due to her obsession with good grades and initial struggles to make friends after arriving at Hogwarts. While I certainly connected very strongly with Hermione, I doubt that she is on the spectrum- her emotional intelligence and understanding of people wouldn’t generally be expected of an aspie. She spent many nights by the common room fire schooling Harry and Ron on how to understand women and their emotions, something that very few on the spectrum would feel knowledgeable enough to comment on.
In addition, there are those who also feel that Snape and Voldemort could have been on the spectrum. I can see how Snape, like Hermione, could in passing seem autistic as he has displays some traits through his anti-social behaviours, obsession with potions and tendency towards eloquent language use, but again feel that this is unlikely. Let’s face it- most of us have no filter, we’d have never successfully hidden that we were working as a double agent from Voldemort!
As for Voldemort himself being an autist…I think that’s really reaching. Most people possess some level of autistic traits, and I think it’s a little insulting to liken one of the most evil literary villains of modern times to autists, and in fact quite damaging to compare his sociopathic lack of empathy to our struggles with this emotion. To attempt to humanize him by linking autism to his origin story really doesn’t do the autistic community a service.
While none of these character’s were ever explicitly written with autism in mind, it’s wonderful to hear that many autists feel they can connect with these character’s and feel seen 🙂
Hope you enjoyed this post dear Earthlings!
Happy Easter! 🙂
Aoife
A Is For Aoife Not Autism 
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