Subject: Re: Harry, Hermione, Sirius, and the Dream (was : What should Harry REALLY feel)

[Eileen Forster Keck]

No: HPFGUIDX 116877


Del replies :
> I admire Harry for always rushing to people's help.... My problem is that he *believed* the dream was truewhen to me it was so obviously a fake.

> I'm not saying he shouldn't have done anything while knowing Sirius was in danger. I'm just saying that if Harry had forced himself to think straight almost impossible, I know...

Eileen:
Harry was working on past (recent) experience, and an overload of adolescent hormones. Had he ignored the "dream" of Mr. Weasley and the snake, his best friend's father would now be dead.

He is quite attached to Mr. Weasley (and not only as Ron's father), but he loves Sirius, the first adult to openly love him and one who even offered him a home away from the despised Dursleys.

Even an adult might have tremendous difficulties sorting these things out in time.

Harry is flawed, as we all are, and has many additional handicaps, not the least of which is the (still recent) transition from boy-in-the-cupboard to Savior of the WW. Coping with that sort of a mind-boggling transition leaves one with a LOT of side effects, more bad that good, at least during a high-stress period.


Hannah said:

> It seems to be accepted that teenagers, while more able to make decisions about morality and their own behaviour than younger children, are still going to make mistakes and shouldn't necessarily be damned for them.

And...even though they have more information, teenagers sometimes have more difficult applying it. :-) After all, along with that "information" they have also acquired, almost suddenly, the ability to see more that one side of an arguement, and that is a disturbing ability! Small children see ONE possibility: the one that affects them most directly (this is true as a rule, though there are of course exceptions).

  Eileen