What's annoying about Harry (WAS: Characters you hate)

[Tom Wall <thomasmwall@yahoo.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 51378


Grey Wolf, nice point on Quirrell, and although it's a conjectural 
one, I agree that Hagrid probably would have had the same answers. 
That doesn't exonerate Harry for falsely accused Snape of some fairly 
nasty stuff on nothing but coincidence, IMHO.


I WROTE: 
First off, if Harry would just *tell* Dumbledore 
that he hears a strange voice, then we'd have gotten 
through the whole thing a lot quicker, IMHO. It's
largely due to Harry's stubbornness that the attacks
continue

GREY WOLF REPLIED:
(Pale) yellow flag. Point of canon: the attacks don't continue fter 
his talk with Dumbledore: almost all have happened by then, the only 
two that are left are Hermione/Penelope. And of course, the first 
thing that comes to Harry's mind when Dumbledore asks that question 
is the fact that he, with Hermione and Ron, have broken "about 50 
school rules" to prepare the multijuice potion. And since Harry is 
under the threat (made by Dumbledore himself) that another rule 
violation and he would be expelled, it's not the sort that would 
encourage Harry to reveal what's going on in his life.

I REPLY:
In other words, Harry's selfish consideration of his place at the 
school as more important than honesty and the confession that he 
hears the attacker is justified? No, I disagree with that entirely. 
It was a selfish, self-centered 12 year old boy thing to do.

Of course, we all know that Harry didn't tell Dumbledore the truth at 
any point because of his rule breaking, and also because Ron 
suggested that [paraphrased] "even in the wizarding world, hearing 
voices that no one else can hear is a bad thing." Those are merely 
explanations, not justifications for his behavior.

Also, I don't see where the yellow flag comes from. I wrote "If Harry 
WOULD just *tell* Dumbledore."  When had nothing to do with it. IF 
Harry had been sensible and told Dumbledore right away, much might 
have been avoided. But luckily for us, Harry is not too sensible 
(logical, but not sensible) - otherwise we wouldn't have had much of 
a story. ;-)


GREY WOLF WROTE:
I'm pretty sure that all the teachers had realised that 
the monster was a basilisk by now (OK, all except Lockhart). 

I REPLY:
There's no canon to support that. Is that just a MD thing?


AND GREY WOLF WROTE:
they didn't attack Snape because he wouldn't listen, but because he 
goaded them into it, but purposedly insulting Harry's dead parents 
(with a good reason, too, if you ask me - but then, I'm an MDDT. 
Check Pip's post 39662 for the full details).

I REPLY:
Yeah, Magic Dishwasher is very interesting, although I'm not sure 
it's entirely thorough in its reading of the text, and it does assume 
a lot out of canon, which is fine, given its nature. At my present 
point in reading through the posts subsequent to Pip's, I'd say that 
roughly 1/3 of it seems (to me) like it is very much the case.

I have plenty of questions about it, but haven't read through all of 
the posts yet, and don't want to reiterate previously brough up stuff.

-Tom