OotP Harry not a prefect & his Inner Voice

[slgazit]

No: HPFGUIDX 115114


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "delwynmarch" <delwynmarch at y...>
wrote:

> Harry is not a bad student, he's got good leadership qualities, he can
> keep his head cool under stress, so he was a good candidate for the
> Prefect badge.
> 
> But I don't see that there's any way to jump from that conclusion to :
> 
> Harry was the best candidate for the Prefect badge.
> 
> Not without assuming a whole lot of things.

Actually there is enough evidence that he was considered to be the
best candidate:

1. Everyone is astonished that he was not chosen.

2. The four other Gryffindor boys (Dean, Seamus, Neville and Ron) show
clear lack of leadership skills and (with the possible exception of
Neville) are pretty immature.  We already know that Harry is a born
leader (plenty of evidence for that even if based only on the first
four books). The chosen prefect (Ron) did a pretty mediocre job during
his first year as a prefect. I don't see how being a good student or
not helps on this job, but there is no evidence here that Harry is a
worse student than anyone else.

3. At the end of OOP Dumbledore admits to Harry that the only reason
he did not make him prefect was that he felt he already was dealing
with enough burdens. This clearly upsets Dumbledore much as that was
the only point in the whole serie where Dumbledore shows strong
emotions (not anger).

Mind you, I think Dumbledore (and JKR) made the right choice in not
giving Harry the prefect job, though I personally think Neville would
have done a better job than Ron.

Salit