Enviable and pitiable characters

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 35691

Playing a bit of catch-up here...

Cindy asked:

> This is the opposite of Devin's question about which characters we 
> pity.  In other words, which character seems to have a very good 
> lot in life?  Careful now, because your answer may reveal something 
> about what you value.

I will consider myself warned.  ;-)

Bearing in mind, of course, that the less we know about people
the easier it becomes to envy their lot in life, I would still 
like to cast my vote for Most Enviable Character for little
Professor Flitwick.

He has a comfortable job, and he is good at it.  He is confident
enough in his role as an instructor to allow the students to slack 
off and have a bit of fun at Christmas time, but he is no push-over 
either: in GoF, he gives Harry and Neville extra assignments when 
they both seem to be faltering in his Charms class.  He is friendly 
and accessible and gives no impression of House bias in his dealings
with the students.  If he were one of my teachers and I were having
difficulty with his subject, I would feel perfectly comfortable 
going to him out of class for extra help; I suspect that most of
Hogwarts' students feel the same way.  Flitwick's teaching style
may not be as flashily challenging as Snape's, nor as blatantly 
"tough but fair" as McGonagall's, but it is rock-solid.  His
students learn their stuff, and they seem to learn it well.  He's 
a very good teacher.

Flitwick is also well-respected among his peers.  We know that he 
has talent in his field: in his youth he was a duelling champion;
McGonagall enlists his aid in checking Harry's Firebolt for signs
of tampering; and when discussing the Fidelius Charm in Hogsmeade,
the other adults instantly defer to him to give the explanation
of precisely what the Charm is and how it works.  

He would also seem to be quite well-liked and to have the ability
to get along well with a wide variety of types of people.  He 
goes out for drinks with McGonagall, Hagrid and the Minister of 
Magic himself in PoA, and there is no indication that he is not
perfectly comfortable with all three of them.  Everybody seems to
like him.  Even Snape never has a single snipe for Flitwick.  

And he seems very content.  If he cares at all that House 
Ravenclaw never nabs the Quiddich or House Cup, then he does
an excellent job of hiding his resentment.  He would seem not
to be particularly competitive at all, really -- although given
that he was once a duelling champion, we can assume that this
isn't because he's at all *incapable* of showing a good fighting
spirit when he feels like it.  He's just plain too *well-adjusted* 
to give way to envy or resentment or jealousy over such trivial
matters.  And good for him!  He's sane.  Sane, cheerful, kind...
the guy has simply got it together.

Of course, there may well be some dreadful tragedy in the poor
guy's past.  But if there is, then he would seem to be handling 
it remarkably well.  And that's an enviable quality too, come to 
think of it.

So Flitwick gets my vote for the character I envy the most.  After
all, who wouldn't want to be well-liked, well-respected, eminently 
well-adjusted, and comfortably ensconced in a secure job at
which you excel?


As for pity, my vote goes to Diggory.

No, no.  Not Cedric.  *Amos.*

Like Judy, I don't pity the dead.  Cedric died cleanly and 
quickly, and while it's certainly very sad that he died so
young, I tend to think of the dead (with the exception of
ghosts) as being well beyond the need for pity.

No, I pity Amos Diggory.  The poor man.  Cedric would seem 
to have been an only child, and it's just painfully obvious 
that the kid meant all the world to him.  He was if anything 
over-involved in his son's life, over-identified.  And when 
we see him at the end of GoF, he is grieved beyond the capacity 
for speech.  He doesn't even seem capable of providing any 
support at all to his wife.  The man's just a mess.  

I think that losing a child to murder must be one of the most
horrible things that anyone could ever undergo, and when you're
an overidentified parent like Amos Diggory, it's got to be just
that much worse.  So Amos gets my pity vote.

And as for that suggestion that someone (I can't remember who,
sorry) made a while back that poor Amos Diggory might be high 
on the list of Characters Now Vulnerable To Seduction By the 
Dark Side, all I can say is: my God, have you no *heart?*
I mean, the very thought!  It just makes me want to drop my
head down on the keyboard and *weep,* that does.


-- Elkins, fearing that she may well losing her Edge