for whom are the books named?

[Sherry Gomes]

No: HPFGUIDX 134195

i've been thinking a lot about this over the last couple days, and the
deluge of posts has flooded my HP folder in Outlook.  Time after time, there
is something I want to answer, that gets lost along the way.  But my
thoughts have been coming together, and I thought I'd share some of what
I've been thinking.

this series is about Harry Potter.  oh sure, it's also about Dumbledore,
Ron, Hermione, the Weasleys, Lupin, Sirius, Draco, Snape and Voldemort.
Among many others.  but in the end, it is Harry's story.

Since the release of HBP, we have all been discussing Snape.  Snape evil, or
Snape good.  Snape's motives.  most people seem to doubt that wise and
intelligent Dumbledore could have been wrong all this time, that brainy
Hermione could have been wrong either.  The Snape debate often comes down to
this:  who do we believe?  Dumbledore and Hermione, the voices of reason?
Or Harry--and also Ron to a lesser extent--the voices of emotion and doubt?
But this is Harry's story.  It isn't Albus Dumbledore and the Half blood
Prince.  It isn't Hermione Granger and the Order of the Phoenix.  It isn't
Severus Snape and the whatever.  it is Harry Potter and the ... 

Harry is the hero.  Snape isn't the hero.  Hermione isn't the hero.  Sure,
in a side kick sort of way she is, just as much as Ron or any of Harry's
other friends.  just as the Fellowship is in LOTR.  

So, this brings me back to the point.  Whose story is this?  It is Harry's
story.  If we are going to believe that Dumbledore was absolutely right to
trust Snape, then that seems to take some of the hero mantle away from
Harry.  i think it will be a far better twist, to have Harry proved right in
the end.  Sure, we are all, even those of us who weren't Snape apologists
before, concerned about the ideas of choices and redemption.  if Snape is
indeed evil, then what about choosing right over easy.  what about
redemption?  Doesn't some bad guy have to turn away to give the themes of
the story any validity?  Yes, I believe that someone has to turn away from
evil.  and didn't we see that beginning to happen on the tower with Draco?
The controversy aroused by the end of HBP has almost seemed to turn the book
into the story of Severus Snape.  no, no!  it is Harry's story.  In the next
book, we are likely to see him away from school, on a typical quest,
searching for the horcruxes.  I think Harry--and we--must begin to doubt
people like Dumbledore now, so that Harry can find his own way to triumph.
Maybe not totally doubt him, but as any child begins to do, Harry must
search for his own answers, find his own way.  sometimes, his gut instincts
have to be right.  He can't completely depend on everything Dumbledore said
or did.  He has to learn to pick and choose and find the right way in
himself, combining things he has learned from everyone else and what he
understands to be right in his heart.  It isn't enough anymore to say,
Dumbledore said it, or Dumbledore believes it, so therefore it is right.
Didn't we learn in OOTP, that Dumbledore wasn't always right?

The more I think about it all, the more and more deeply I am convinced that
Harry will turn out to be right about Snape in the end, and Dumbledore sadly
wrong.  Harry is the hero; it is his story.  It has to be that way, I think.


Sherry