James, the arrogant little berk (was: Sirius revisited--emotional maturity)

[sbursztynski]

No: HPFGUIDX 105429

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "anthyroserain" 
<anthyroserain at y...> wrote:
> > Carol:
> > Just out of curiosity, are there any James fans on the list? If 
so,
> > please step forward and defend your favorite character. I'd like 
to
> > hear how I've got poor James all wrong.
> 
> For that matter, I'd looove to hear someone explain how the Malfoys 
> are misunderstood. They seem so purely dreadful. Any takers?
> 
> -Katie
>  who doesn't hate any non-eeevil characters but thinks OOTP Percy 
> deserves a swift kick in the behind

Sue:

I'm not a James fan, but in all fairness, he did improve. It was he, 
not Sirius, who ended up stopping the Prank before it got out of 
hand, and may very well have been ashamed of himself and what he had 
done by then. Maybe this is why he eventually appealed to Lily. If he 
wasn't basically decent underneath, she wouldn't have wanted him, 
would she? Of course, from what was implied in OOTP, he didn't stop 
picking on Snape, even when he was going out with Lily, but he may 
have kept it down to a manageable level. He was just immature, as a 
lot of otherwise nice boys can be at that age. I know - I work with 
teenagers and there are two boys I have privately labelled "James and 
Sirius" - they make me laugh, too, and are bright lads, but some 
parents don't like them visiting! Whether they'd pick on others, I 
don't know - but then, not even Professor McGonagall said anything 
during that pub conversation about, "They were a bit like the 
Weasleys, but they were bullies..." and I suspect she would have 
noticed if anyteacher would. :-)

As for the Malfoys ... Lucius is a villain, no doubt about it. But 
Draco may just be the product of his upbringing. From what we saw in 
CoS, he was brought up to think Dark Magic was fine. Yes, I know that 
Sirius rebelled against a similar upbringing, but not everyone can or 
would. I will be interested to see what happens in the next two 
books. Will he work at getting revenge on Harry for what happened to 
his father? Or will his father eventually betray him and maybe he 
will suddenly realise he's been had and change?