Maddening

(This post does NOT contain spoilers for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows except for a tiny one that has to be highlighted to be read.)

I have given up trying to reconcile J. K. Rowling's inconsistencies in plot and detail. There are just too many and too infuriating, and at some point, you've just got to throw up your hands and admit that even though you're in love with the world she has created, all you feel for the author herself is the deep loathing reserved for people who should know better, dammit.

But then she comes along and says something so colossally stupid that you just have to go at her again, because justice demands it.

1. Forgetting her own words in an interview of just a week ago (SPOILERS if you click) where she told us that Ron revolutionised the Auror department along with Harry, she now says Ron went into business with George (as a handy replacement for Fred, what else?) while Harry finished school and went on to become an Auror. This is beyond aggravating. I know you all think this is also easily retconnable, but I am not so sanguine, because this is Jo Rowling we're talking about, a woman whose track record speaks of carnage during attempts at retconning. Example:

J. K. Rowling: I know some have asked about Quirrell with regard to [the curse on the DADA teacher post]. He was teaching at Hogwarts for more than a year, but NOT in the post of D.A.D.A. teacher. He was previously Muggle Studies professor.

Uh, why would Voldemort want to limit his time at Hogwarts by choosing to possess a guy who Voldemort himself has made sure will only last there for one year?

2. In the Bloomsbury chat transcript, you will see this:

J.K. Rowling (in answer to a question about where Muggle-Borns get their magic): Muggle-borns will have a witch or wizard somewhere on their family tree, in some cases many, many generations back. The gene re-surfaces in some unexpected places.

Hmm. Let's see.

It can't be a dominant gene, because then it couldn't lie dormant for generations; it would be forced to express itself if it had been passed down at all.

It can't be a recessive gene because then it would be rare for a witch/wizard who marries a muggle to produce a magical kid, which goes against copious evidence in the books.

It can't be incomplete dominance (tall pea plants crossed with short pea plants give medium height pea plants), where the child of a muggle and a magical person produces a child of dilute magic because then pure-blood maniacs would be right, and Harry, Snape, Voldemort, Seamus Finnegan etc would be vanish in puffs of logic.

It can't be co-dominance because that just doesn't make sense: you can't be magical and non magical at the same time.

You can't claim that this is a product of multiple genes working in combination because that would make this purely on/off action even more improbable.

(People who know more genetics than I do: did I get anything wrong? Do you know a way this can work with single gene control?)

The only way for this to work is if the gene randomly mutates far more frequently than is common for any other gene, producing squibs in the magical community who go on to live muggle lives, passing on their mutated gene for generations which randomly turns on again somewhere down the line. But this is nothing like anything seen in nature, mutations are random to the degree that even the TYPE of mutation is random - and for this gene to mutate in exactly the same way millions of times is bizarre.

It seems to me this is just another example where J. K. Rowling's woeful ignorance of a subject doesn't stop her from using it to give us nonsensical explanations anyway. Let's call this Her Sloppy Attitude, and move on to the following final astute observation:

Woman, when you have "spent the last seventeen years" plotting out a series whose central theme hinges on magical talent NOT being dependent on genetics, why would you go and blow it in a single throwaway line in some shitty interview? That's the Harry Potter Series she just mangled and handed to you in a plate, ladies and gentlemen. That's all for today, goodbye.