McG / DD / Re: Why should Harry be expected to listen to anyone at H...

[dungrollin]

No: HPFGUIDX 123003


Gerry wrote:
> > I think his detention was actually a good thing. He learned the 
hard way how far people are willing to go, and with what they can 
get away if they have the authority. So for his next actions, he 
knew the risk.
Too bad he did not manage to control his temper. 

> > Yes, I know he is fifteen years old. But getting all adolescent 
is a really stupid thing to do if somebody has it in for you. 
Especially if that somebody makes the rules.  


Lupinlore replied:
> This comment is so flabbergastingly out of line and downright 
immoral that I choose to believe you did not intend to make it.  
Kindly review what you have said and be more careful.


Dungrollin interjects:

Stick to your guns, Gerry!
I am of exactly the same opinion - and I agree with McGonagall, too. 
If someone is in a position of power and authority and is bent on 
making your life hell, giving them extra incentive to do it is 
foolhardy. Nobody is defending Umbridge's actions in those 
detentions, nor anywhere else. But Harry clearly wasn't listening to 
McGonagall because he went and did the same thing again almost 
immediately afterwards. 

Using his brain, listening to Hermione and McGonagall, and resisting 
Umbridge's reign *in secret* was the sensible thing to do, and was 
what he ended up doing anyway. But it appears that he wouldn't 
consider that anybody else has a better understanding of the 
situation than he, and has to go through the whole horrible week's-
worth of detentions again, before finally he learns to keep his head 
down. Evidently he needed two weeks of hellish detentions to make 
him take Umbridge seriously, because explaining it to him didn't 
work. What's immoral about that?

And, out of interest, if Gerry's suggestion that a fictional 
detention may have been a good thing is immoral, is JKR not more 
immoral for having written that fictional detention in the first 
place?