Powerful Harry

[nicholas at adelanta.co.uk]

I had meant to respond to this last week, but Life intervened, and now I
have lost the original post.

I think it was Valerie who said that Harry surely wasn't powerful enough to
conjure his own Patronus, and that James must have been there too on the
night that Harry saved himself and Sirius from the Dementors.

I don't think this is so. Harry *is* an extremely powerful wizard; by the
age of fifteen, he has seen off Voldemort on several occasions and is
teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts to his fellow-students. That's not
normal for a wizard-in-training..

Harry is unusual, because his most effective magic is instinctive. In
lessons at Hogwarts, he does okay, but not spectacularly; but when he needs
to do a certain thing and is able to draw upon his own emotional strengths
to perform the required magic, he is very powerful indeed.

This is being set up throughout the storyline, in the books and the movies.
Before Harry knows that he is a wizard, he does instinctive magic; fear
at being chased by Dudley and his bullying friends makes him leap on to the
roof; shame at his appearance when Uncle Vernon shaves off his untidy hair
makes him grow it back again overnight. It's the same instinctive magic
when Aunt Marge gets blown up after insulting James and Lily; it's a
projection of Harry's emotions.

This is a far more powerful type of magic than the tame stuff that they
learn in their lessons at Hogwarts. Hermione knows the difference between
the way that she works; via books and memorising, and the way that Harry
works; by gut feeling...and she knows that Harry's way is stronger.
Remember the scene after the chess game in PS/SS, when she tells Harry that
he is a really great wizard, and she dismisses 'books and cleverness' as
something inferior. At the end of PoA, we are told again by Hermione; only
a really powerful wizard could conjure such a successful Patronus. Harry
did it, Harry alone, fortified by desperation to save Sirius and himself,
and knowing that he did have the ability to do it.

The challenge for Harry is not so much to learn how to do magic, but how to
control the potential for magic that he has within him, and to channel his
emotions to make the magic more effective. Magic takes effort; you have to
have the desire to achieve what you are setting out to do.

So Harry's Patronus is all his own, springing from his own strength and his
own emotions. James was only there in a genetic sense.

Cheers,
Nicholas