Harry's Tears (WAS: Lily's Role in Voldemort's Final Defeat)

[erisedstraeh2002]

No: HPFGUIDX 46558

Iris wrote:

> Like Harry shedding tears? Tears of compassion, of sorrow? I always
> wondered why, after all that he suffered, we never saw him crying 
> yet. Sometimes he had tears in the eyes because of the pain his 
> scar was giving him, but, except at the end of PS/SS, this young 
> man never cries. It looks as if he didn't dare, as if he denied his 
> own sorrow. Okay,"boys don't cry". However, Harry should learn to 
> cry. The baroque age thought that tears were a gift. A magical gift?

Now me:

I wasn't really thinking about it as tear-shedding, although that 
would be a nice parallel to the healing tears of the phoenix.  I was 
thinking of it as more of the eyes harnessing and directing Harry's 
powerful inner magic, and (somehow) defeating Voldemort in the 
process (without killing him, of course).

As to Harry's not crying - he was about to cry at the end of GoF in 
the hospital wing when Molly Weasley was hugging him, but the loud 
bang Hermione made when she captured Rita the Beetle made him stop 
(this incident has always annoyed me - oh, how I wish Harry could 
have let it all out then!  It would have made him feel *so* much 
better).  And he wiped his tears on his bedsheet after Dumbledore 
told him about his mother's sacrifice at the end of PS/SS (these 
crying scenes always seem to take place in the hospital wing, don't 
they?).  So Harry is definitely capable of crying, but he does seem 
to have a bit of that "boys don't cry" belief in that he always seems 
to try to hide his tears.

~Phyllis