Harry & Quidditch & More -Snape - Karkaroff - House Elves - Wizarding Religion - Dementors

[Catlady]

No: HPFGUIDX 17299

The Harry Character Sketch asked why is Harry a 'natural' at flying a
broomstick and catching a Snitch. The fact that there was already a
word, 'a natural', for  McGonagall to say to Wood indicates that this is
not a completely unheard of phenomenon in the wizarding world. However,
my reaction at first reading was: What a very convenient lucky
co-incidence it is that the "ugly duckling" has been endowed with this
great talent for doing something that not only does he love, but for
which he is respected by all and popular. Not much of a comfort, except
as a subject for daydreams, to other "ugly duckling" children who
haven't discovered any great talents yet, or maybe only a great talent
for schoolwork that leads people to call them nerd and geek and wonk and
bossy know-it-all and showing signs of OCD.

But when I read the question in the character sketch, it occurred to me
that if Harry had absorbed his Quidditch skill, along with his
Parselmouth ability, from Voldemort (who might have learned it as the
popular Tom Riddle), how absolutely miserable Harry would feel if he
ever found out.

***

Amy G asked:
> It seems like he would be more messed up mentally
> if the Dursleys treated him awful as a small child

I personally believe that whatever Lily did instead of trying to save
her own life not only made it impossible for V to touch H, but also put
a little Lily into Harry's subconscious mind, and that mental Lily
comforts him and makes him feel worthy of being loved despite those
Dursleys, which is why he is not even worse messed up mentally than he
is. Also, the description of H resisting the Imperius Charm said a voice
in H's head said No don't do it -- I am arguing that it was the voice of
the internal Lily. A strange further argument is that the reason H tries
so much more to find out about James than about Lily is because he
already has Lily.

***

hfakhro at n... asked:
> but in light of this behaviour why do they (and
> specifically Uncle Vernon) go to such lengths to keep
> Harry from going to Hogwarts. If they hate him so
> much then why go on this mad rush across half of
> England? You'd think they would be glad to get rid
> of him (and at some points it seems that they are - when
> they send him letters at Hogwarts asking if he can stay
> there for holidays).

I think (even tho' someone else already mentioned it) that the reason
that the Dursleys want to prevent Harry from going to Hogwarts rather
than simply welcoming the chance to be rid of him, is that they are
scared of what he will do to them (as just desserts) once he learns how
to do magic. Once he is at Hogwarts and learning magic, they would as
soon he stays there instead of coming home to them. They have to let
Harry live with them or otherwise Dumbledore will drop a word to
(Muggle) Child Protective Services, and the Dursleys would die of shame
at the scandal.

Wanda the Witch asked:
> Where are Harry's relations from his father's side? Why
> didn't Dumbledore send Harry to be with relations on that
> side? He must have had someone to go to on that side of
> the family. Another point they also mentioned was why just
> the Dursleys, his mom must have had other relations to
> besides her sister. If he had a Godfather, where is his
> Godmother?

Once again I say things that other people already said. Dumbledore told
McGonagall "I've come to bring Harry to his aunt and uncle. They're the
only family
he has left now." That means that all his other relatives are either
dead or in Azkaban or the mental wards of St. Mungo's (unless they are
Death Eaters who walked free and having become a Death Eater counts as
leaving the family). If James was an only child and both his parents
were only children, it isn't hard to imagine that every relative on
James's side has died heroically fighting Dark Wizards. It seems like
wizarding folk tend to have small families; maybe only children are not
rate.

It is not implausible that Mr and Mrs Evans had the usual 2 children,
Petunia and Lily and no others. The question would be, what happened to
Mr and Mrs Evans (Harry and Dudley's Muggle grandparents) and any
siblings they might have had (great-aunts and great-uncles) and children
and grandchilden of those siblings?

There is at least one Christian denomination that requires each child to
have two godparents of its sex and one of the opposite sex (as Catherine
said is her family custom) but I don't remember which denomination it
is. But 'godfather' does not necessarily mean Christian -- I know that
many Wiccans use the terms godfather and goddessmother for the people
who vow to the gods to be the child's spare parents. Oops, this is
connecting to my remarks, below, about Wizarding Religion. I don't think
it likely that there are (Wiccan) Witch witches in the HP universe, but
they could have some other religion, maybe even a uniquely wizarding
religion that I don't believe in, that has a baby naming or blessing
ceremony that involves having one godparent. Or, as someone said, Harry
had one godmother but she died. Along with Lily and James and all their
relatives except Petunia.

Jenny from Ravenclaw wrote:
> If Harry dies, what is the point of the noble crusade he has
> pursued or good and against evil Voldemort?

If Harry dies to defeat Voldemort, the saga has the same archetypal plot
as Christianity's central story, which has influenced enough literature
that even non-Christian writers are affected by it.

I like to cite BRIDGE OF BIRDS as a charming novel that has a very happy
ending: everyone dies. (I hope it isn't a spoiler if I explain that all
the miserable suffering people die, ending their misery, and their
ghosts are seen finally rejoining their dead True Loves.)

Jenny from Ravenclaw wrote:
> Cho is out of the question.  I've mentioned this before,
> but how can Harry possibly date the girl whose boyfriend
> was murdered at his side?

If Harry could ever open up enough to share his grief, they could share
their grief over Cedric, slowly and gradually leading to a friendship in
which they actually get to know each other's virtues and quirks (instead
of Harry knows only that Cho is pretty, popular, and a good Seeker, and
Cho knows only that Harry is The Boy Who Live, Triwizard Champion, a bad
dancer, and a good Seeker). And the friendship could slowly and
gradually evolve into love and marriage.

Amy Z wrote:
> JKR has spared us the details of his crush--I mean, he must
> do more than just imagine Cho gazing at him admiringly now
> and then, right?  Doesn't he ever fantasize about talking to her
> or making out with her?

Me, I believe that Harry doesn't even want to *fantasize* about making
out with Cho or even talking to her, much less do so in real life. I
believe that his crush conflicts only of he likes looking at her. To me,
that is an aesthetic feeling rather than a romantic or sexual feeling. I
believe that Harry is semi-consciously deliberating avoiding or
sublimating all romantic or sexual feelings, because those are desires
that can lead to intimate interactions with another person, and he is
still in the habit of avoiding intimacy, because of his unfortunate
Dursley background. Look, when he loved someone (his parents), they went
away from (were killed) when he was too young to even remember, and from
then until Hogwarts, everyone he has interacted with has kept him at a
cold distance. Intimacy is first scary because of being unfamiliar, and
more scary because the unconscious remembers that the one time he tried
it, it was followed by disaster.

***

Echo said:
> As Dumbledore is so fond of Harry, and seems to know
> everything that goes on in the school, including Snape's
> picking on Harry, why doesn't he do something about it?

As someone has mentioned, JKR said in a chat that Dumbledore believes
that children (presumably including Harry) will learn from adversities
such as having cruel Snape and fraudulent Trelawney as teachers. I
personally think that the bad teachers are in the story because they
seem so familiar to children and former children who think (whether
accurately or not) of some of their teachers as terrifyingly cruel and
unfair and others as woefully ignorant of their own subject. Another
reason is that the wizarding world is different from the Muggle world,
in ways that are sometimes delightful and sometimes terrifying but
usually not very reasonable (like the money system of 29 Knuts to 1
Sickle, 17 Sickles to 1 Galleon; it would make so much more sense if it
were THIRTEEN Sickles to the Galleon) and it is not at all impossible
that one of the bad and unreasonable unMuggle features of the wizarding
world is that they think unfair cruel teachers, even unfair cruel
teachers who poison one of the students to test their antidotes, are
perfectly acceptable. I wouldn't put it past Snape to poison one of the
students, altho' I *think* he would have a supply of antidote right
there in his hand when he did it.

***

Magda asked:
> why did Karkaroff face a British tribunal in GoF when he
> was bargaining for his release and why was he in a British prison?

I have always assumed that Karkaroff was living (and presumably either
working or studying) in Britain at the time that Voldemort came into
power, that Karkaroff joined the DEs in Britain, that Karkaroff was
caught in the act and arrested in Britain. Certainly there are plenty of
Muggles living in countries other than that of their birth -- or he
could even have been born of immigrant parents in Britain and taking the
job at Durmstrang is a 'roots' thing.

Incidentally, one thing I have been wondering lately is whether
Karkaroff will try to come back to Hogwarts seeking protection from
Voldemort trying to kill him.

***

Ebony wrote:
> There is nothing symbiotic about the relationship between
> wizards and house-elves.  I agree with Amy Z.  From what
> we've seen in canon, the elves get the short end of the stick.

But we haven't seen everything. Perhaps someday we will learn that House
Elves have to breathe the effluvia of magic that radiates from wizards
and witches as they do spells. that the HEs need it as a source of
something like a vitamin or essential amino acid. That would still be
the short end of the stick (it would be more fair for them to live where
they chose and HIRE a wizard to come do spells around them) but perhaps
we will learn that HEs get something bigger and much more equal from
their wizarding families.

***

Seattle de Taelore wrote:
> I know this has been brought up before in a way, but I
> was wondering about Wizard religion. (snip)
> Then I got to thinking, what if the wizarding world
> has religions, similar to those of the muggles, and
> yet without all that "witches are evil" stuff.  For
> example, are there Catholic and Muslim and Jewish
>  witches?  Mayhaps they have their own kinds of
>  religions?

One of my favorite things to try to figure out.

I feel CERTAIN that there are Catholic and Muslim and Jewish witches --
in every generation there are a number of Muggle-born witches and
wizards, some of whom would have been raised in religious families of
all the common religions, and I can't imagine that they would give up a
religion they believed in just because of going to school at Hogwarts.
The Patil twins, Parvati and Padma, were almost certainly raised in a
Hindu family (of which there are many in Britain) because they are named
after Hindu goddesses with a South Asian family name. I wish we saw
something about Parvati celebrating some Hindu holy day. I wish JKR had
mentioned some student with a Muslim name.

I fantasize that rather  than the main religion of old pureblood
wizarding families being a distinct wizarding religion, perhaps
descended from Druidism or NeoPlatonism, that in Britain it is the
Anglican religion. In my fic, I have some wizarding folk going to
regular Muggle church with Muggles. I further fantasize that Hogwarts
until recent years had an Anglican chapel and compulsory Sunday worship
services. That just seem so old-time English. Don't bug me about
Hogwarts actually being in Scotland.

***

Andrea ra said:
> Lupin explains that only Harry has true horrors in his
> past, namely facing Voldemort and having his parents
> murdered.  "The horrors in your past are enough to
>  make anyone pass out" (paraphrased from Lupin)

People have already pointed out that Ginny and Neville also react
strongly to the Dementors and also have horrors in their pasts. Amy Z
already quoted that Draco reacted strongly to the Dementors:
"That little git," [George] said calmly.  "He wasn't so cocky last night
when the Dementors were down our end of the train.  Came running into
our compartment, didn't he, Fred?"
"Nearly wet himself," said Fred, with a contemptuous glance at Malfoy."
But has anyone yet suggested that Draco reacted strongly not because of
being a coward but because of having horrors in HIS past? He certainly
has a father capable of providing them, either as abused child or simply
as witness.

Altho' the Dementors waking the repressed memories of horrors in their
victim's minds doesn't sound like major depression to me. That they suck
out all happiness and all hope and their victims feel unhappy and
worthless and helpless and futile sounds like major depression, but
remembering the horrors sounds more like PTSD.

Magda wrote:
> Interesting, isn't it, that Snape takes off when Lupin and class
> show > up in the teachers' lounge to battle the Boggart?  Would
> he see a Dementor? Or Lord V, like Harry is afraid he will?

Or himself? ... Magda, what a thought-provoking question.
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