OOP: Really for Children?!

[Dicentra spectabilis]

No: HPFGUIDX 64458

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Tim Regan" <timregan at m...> wrote:

> I think the final action scenes make this a children's book. They 
> were very exciting, but they involved a group of kids outwitting a 
> team of trained and battle-hardened adults. 

Battle-hardened adults who had spent 14 years in Azkaban having their
powers drained by Dementors, and who certainly didn't expect children
to have the training they did.  Harry beat Voldemort with a mere
Expelliarmus in GoF because Voldemort didn't expect Harry's wand to be
his wand's brother.  The DEs didn't expect that the kids had been
getting any training.  They were supposedly reading DADA theory all
year, right?

> That only happens in 
> kids' books, and the only way I could suspend disbelief there was to 
> remember that this is a kids' book, and so it has to be through the 
> actions of children that good prevails.

The kids are the ones who got themselves into that mess in the first
place.  Their youth and inexperience is why Voldemort could lure them
into a trap.  They thought they could handle it, but if the Order
hadn't arrived, the DEs would have won.  

Unlike in many children's stories -- wherein the children take care of
business while the adults remain clueless -- Harry doesn't take action
until after he has first attempted to clue in the adults (when
possible): He told McGonagall that someone was trying to steal the
Stone, but she didn't take him seriously.  Harry believed that
Lockhart really was going to rescue Ginny, so he meant only to give
him information.  In PoA, there wasn't time to run for help after
Padfoot dragged Ron into the tunnel, and as for GoF -- well, Harry
didn't know he was in trouble until Cedric dropped to the ground.  In
OoP, he tried to tell the Order what was going on, but as far as he
knew, he was the only one who knew Sirius was in trouble.

Furthermore, adults come to the aid of the children near the end, so
the children haven't exactly saved the day.  Dumbledore saved Harry at
the end of PS/SS, Fawkes (Dumbledore's proxy) saved him in CoS, Snape
and Prongs came to the rescue in PoA, and in GoF, Harry's parents and
the other shades helped him get away from Voldemort, and later he was
rescued by Dumbledore, McGonagall, and Snape from the clutches of
Crouch Jr.

We don't have an assumption that kids are smart, adults are stupid in
this series.  Adults are flawed, inaccessible, or evil, but they're
not stupider than the kids.  Harry's powers don't exceed those of an
adult, and his insights into the world certainly don't, either.

--Dicentra, whose disbelief is easily suspended