Explaining the danger to Harry (was: Changing the title because I'm tired of it)

[cubfanbudwoman]

No: HPFGUIDX 130073

Amanda:
> Awww. Poor baby. Here he is, the center of the universe, and 
> nobody's telling him anything. After all he's suffered and gone 
> through and done. Poor woobie. Hey, sometimes the answer is "you 
> can't know that yet" and sometimes the situation is an emergency. 
> If I tell my kid to stop balancing on the balcony, I want her 
> *down* and RIGHT NOW and I am not about to get into a debate about 
> the dangers until the immediate danger is past. I will go and get 
> her, and if I make her mad because I didn't explain or didn't
> listen, too bad--she's alive to be mad. She'll get over it.


SSSusan:
I don't think the two situations are quite analogous.  Like you, I'd 
darn well get my daughter or son DOWN and *then* worry about the 
explanation, but that's because the child is in a situation fraught 
with immediate danger.  The child has no role to play *except* 
getting down.  

Harry, OTOH, has a potentially much bigger role to play in the 
crisis situation, should it come.  We don't know the specifics of 
the danger he is in -- nor even when he will be at the point of peak 
danger.  The training is to be ongoing, not a one-time "This is an 
emergency! DO this and LEARN this NOW!" kind of thing.  What DD (and 
likely Snape, if DD told him much) suspect is that Harry will need 
to be prepared and that it will take a fair bit of work on his part 
to get himself adequately prepared.  

Your daughter or my son need ONLY to GET DOWN and it's over.  Harry 
needs to learn a skill so that he'll be able to take action in the 
future, possibly several times in the future, and potentially 
without the guidance or assistance of any adult when it matters 
most.  Our children can be taught *simply* once they're in safety 
why what they were doing was dangerous and why they should avoid it 
in future.  Harry, however, I would argue, needs a much more 
complete explanation for a situation he doesn't know the specifics 
of, can't fully anticipate, and doesn't really even understand.  

He believes, for instance, that his connection to Voldy is USEFUL 
and doesn't quite know why he needs to do what Snape's telling him 
he needs to do.  Yes, Snape did the best job Snape's ever done in 
explaining something to Harry, but it didn't get fully to the heart 
of it, really... and their 5-year relationship got in the way of 
Harry's hearing enough and Snape's answering all the key questions.  
Harry really did need to understand more fully, I think, why the 
DANGER of the connection outweighed the clear (to him) USEFULNESS of 
the connection.  So much more needed to be understood in the 
situation, and so much more of the danger is of a murky nature, that 
I would argue much greater care needed to have been taken to ensure 
that Harry really heard, understood and accepted the need to master 
Occlumency.


Amanda:
> I don't think Snape likes Harry, but I don't believe Snape ever 
> set himself up as Harry's enemy. For God's sake, Snape is a grown 
> man with better things to do with his time. When Harry
> crosses his path, Snape feels no obligation to be pleasant, but I 
> doubt Harry is in Snape's mind with anything like the frequency or 
> venom that Snape is in Harry's.

SSSusan:
If Snape has better things to do with his time (and I fully agree 
that he does), then why DOESN'T he do better things with his time?  
Why DOES he persist in going out of his way to be so nasty to 
Harry?  Harry deserves some of the remarks Snape sends his way, but 
it sure does seem to me that Snape spends an inordinate amount of 
time focusing precisely upon this child and the ways in which he can 
humiliate him and cut him down.
 
Siriusly Snapey Susan