Harry's weak spot (was:Re: Choices)

[kiricat2001]

No: HPFGUIDX 86592

> Laura:
> 
> Hi Sophierom-nice post!  You know, I think you may have something 
> really significant there.  Harry's Achilles heel has always been 
his 
> craving for family and love.  That's where the "saving-people-
thing" 
> comes from, imo.  The one time he was really tempted to blow off 
> Hogwarts was when he discovered the Mirror of Erised.  He could 
> easily have stayed sitting in front of it forever had DD not 
> intervened.  Harry is always willing to take chances to learn 
> something about his parents-even risking Snape's considerable 
> wrath.  

Now me, Marianne:
I have to disagree here.  Harry does crave a family, but IMO he's 
often unaccountably incurious about his parents. Of course, once he 
hears from people like Hagrid how wonderful his parents were, he 
accepts that at face value, which leads him to defend his parents' 
reputation vehemently when those reputations are attacked, (ie., 
blowing up Aunt Marge, telling Snape "My father didn't strut!" in 
PoA). 

He accepts others' positive impressions of his parents without 
question.  Maybe that's understandable in that it gives him a fantasy 
of what family should be like, as opposed to what he suffers with the 
Dursleys. The downside of this is that Harry *believes* that his 
parents were truly one-dimensionally wonderful, especially James.  It 
comes as a shock to him that his father was not so saintly.

And that leads me to one of my problems with OoP.  Harry spent a fair 
amount of time in the same location as Sirius.  Yet, there is no 
canon that they ever talked in depth about Lily and James, that Harry 
ever took the opportunity to even seek out some time with Sirius to 
discuss them or ask questions.  It strikes a dissonant note with me.  
It just doesn't seem logical that that would happen.  Except, of 
course, that JKR made Harry the poster boy for "Angry Teen" and 
Sirius an emotionally roller coaster...

Laura:
<small snip>
  Whereas I see Tom as an actor, I see 
> Harry as a reactor.  (I hope that makes sense.)  Tom, raised in an 
> orphanage until age 11, probably experienced more indifference in 
> his environment than outright hostility.  That indifference would 
> have allowed him freedom to think about how to escape his 
> situation.  It would have allowed him room to act.  But Harry was 
> always in a hostile situation from the time he arrived at the 
> Dursleys.  His focus was to stay in one piece and protect himself 
as 
> best he could.  Since he never knew when or how the next attack 
> might take place, he learned to react.  That would have taken all 
of 
> his emotional and intellectual energy.  

Marianne:
Actor/reactor makes perfect sense to me.  Tom has always struck me as 
a proactive person, someone who sought from a young age to figure out 
how to control as much as possible the situation in which he found 
himself.  Whereas Harry, as a child, had to figure out what tactics 
to take to survive as well as possible with the Dursleys.  And he 
brought that with him to Hogwarts. Harry has never sought to become a 
leader.  He is initially clearly uncomfortable with the idea that he 
should be the one to teach the students the "DA" in OoP.  Whether 
Harry will grow into more of a leader role, now that he knows the 
prophecy, or whether he'll seek to be a more active independent 
operator remains to be seen.  

Laura:
> Harry's time at Hogwarts hasn't freed him of the instincts he 
> learned living at Privet Drive.  He's still reacting rather than 
> acting.  But I can really see him getting into some dangerous 
> territory in an attempt to reconnect with his parents or bring 
> Sirius back.  I'm not sure he'd trust any DE who offered to help 
him 
> with this, but I can imagine him falling into a trap if it was laid 
> with enough subtlety.

Marianne:

Hmmmm.  It would have to be really subtle.  I think Harry is going to 
have to spend some quality insomnia time dealing with the part his 
own actions played in Sirius' death.  I wonder if Book 6 will show us 
a Harry who swings too far in the other direction.  Rather than 
rushing in, in his typical "saving people" persona, what if Harry 
chooses to hold himself back in an attempt to compensate for that 
tendency, and ends up not acting when he should?

Marianne