Adults "failing" Harry (was: Themes in OotP)

[cubfanbudwoman]

No: HPFGUIDX 119919


Dungrollin:
> But there was another reason for DD being so distant.  He thought 
> that if Voldy ever realised that DD and Harry were closer than a 
> headmaster and a student, Voldy would try to use Harry to attack 
> DD.  And even at the end of OotP, when DD is apologising for being 
> an old fool, he maintains, *specifically*, that he was right about 
> this, whatever else he was wrong about.  Presumably Voldy would 
> have been trying to get DD to hurt or kill Harry in self-defense.
> 
> It's surely significant that throughout OotP, the only two times DD 
> and Harry make eye-contact, Harry feels the Voldy urge to attack 
> him.  <snip>
> 
> Is there some Harry pre-programming going on?  Perhaps the 
> something of Voldy that resides in Harry's head is obeying other 
> instincts, now that Voldy's got his body back. <snip>
> 
> Anyhow, my point is that DD is the one who knows about the 
> connection through the scar (and more than he's told Harry and the 
> others), DD is the one whom everybody trusts, and DD is the one 
> giving orders *which get followed*.  I agree, to a certain extent, 
> SSSusan, the reasons for not telling Harry *anything at all* do 
> seem odd, and DD does admit that he was wrong, but I'm fairly 
> confident that he had better reasons for being wrong than we know 
> about.  I hope so, anyway, otherwise, like you, I'll be a bit 
> miffed.  All in all, I'm trying to say that I'm waiting for book 7 
> before I say that OotP was crap, though I am tempted to agree with 
> you now.


SSSusan:
Oh my goodness!  I hope I didn't give the impression that I think 
OotP was crap.  I enjoyed the book very much.  In fact I think I 
mentioned in one of my posts yesterday that I'm quite easily 
entertained, and I was *definitely* entertained by OotP and much less 
bothered by some of its flaws than other posters.

That being said, I was disappointed in the adults around Harry.  
Betsy, Imamommy and others have helped show me that some of their 
behaviors were actually fairly understandable [a point I realize now 
I made myself once yesterday, so I've been talking in circles a 
bit],and that JKR may have had them "fail" Harry so much precisely 
because he was learning that adults *are* fallible. 

So what I'm left with is an annoyance with DD that's greater than I 
realized it was before.  I do understand your point about DD knowing 
more than we do, esp. about the connection, and I hope you're right 
that we'll discover enough more about this in 6 or 7 that we'll say a 
big, "Ohhhh!"  

BUT.  I still think that, even if DD was convinced Voldy would try to 
use the connection to get Harry to turn on him [DD] if he suspected 
their relationship was close, and thus he felt the need to avoid 
being together much and looking into Harry's eyes, I still think he 
could have communicated via some other method.  You know, one of 
those Mission: Impossible self-destructing tapes <g> or a letter he 
instructs Harry to burn immediately.  

Harry has always pleased DD with his strength and courage and 
bravery, with his ability to handle things many adult wizards could 
not have handled.  I guess I think for all Harry was annoyed with DD 
in OotP, if DD had made that effort to really explain how vital it 
was that Harry trust him, that he work on Occlumency so Voldy 
couldn't feed him any lies, Harry would have worked to please DD 
again.  You know?  Just *enough* detail and personal touch that 
Harry'd say, "DD trusts me enough to tell me some stuff; he *hasn't* 
abandoned me; I'm going to work even though *Professor* Snape is a 
prick."  [Gotta get that line in somewhere.]

And if Harry *had* been so willing, he might have succeeded at 
Occlumency and therefore shut down Voldy's intrusions.

Now, did DD *not* do this with Harry for a good reason?  I'm sure he 
thought so at the time.  It was out of love, out of wanting to 
protect him, just like Molly's mollycoddling.  But DD always seems to 
*know* more than others, and I would've thought he could have seen 
how his tack could really backfire....

Siriusly Snapey Susan