[HPforGrownups] OotP Harry not a prefect & his Inner Voice

[feklar]

No: HPFGUIDX 115034

From: <macfotuk at yahoo.com>
> In chapter 9, Woes of Mrs Weasley. Harry finds out he is not a
> prefect. In a book where Harry is feeling both angry and persecuted,
> this sems the final straw. DD 'explains' it later as being that he
> didn't want to load Harry with too much and since his father was not
> a prefect but WAS head boy it isn't the hurdle one might think, even
> though Mrs Weasley tells Ron 'you could end up head Boy just like
> Bill and Percy, it's the first step!' - which suggests to me that
> it's highly unusual NOt to be a prefect before being HB.

Personally, my first reaction was, "Why would Harry have expected be a
prefect?  And how the hell did Ron become one?!"  Harry and Ron might be
heroes, but they aren't exempliary students; you don't need heroes for
prefects, you need good, responsible students who can help others be good
students.  At the very least, "prefect" implies someone who is supposed to
keep order and remind (and exemplify to) others obeying the rules and
meeting (academic)obligations.  Harry seems to be indifferent about both
academics and rules, so why on earth was he even interested in being a
prefect, much less think he qualified?  By the same token, I have no clue
how Ron became prefect.  Part of me felt that the writer's hand was a bit
too evident there, a "Well, I have to do *something* with Ron..."  And Ron
was a bad prefect, he undercut the rules (even before they went insane), he
didn't protect the younger kids from his brothers, he wasn't a responsible
student.  In short, he set a bad example for other students, exactly the
opposite of what a prefect should be.

Feklar