Give Credit Where Credit is due

[mrs_weasley2004]

No: HPFGUIDX 150244

I have been tempted to submit this as an editorial to MuggleNet but 
want some feedback first.  My actual books are in storage except for 
OotP and HBP. I have all the books on tape at my house so it's hard 
to look up page numbers for the quotes so it makes it hard to follow 
their rules for submission. 

I keep finding a theme in reading editorials lately so I have felt 
compelled to write this.  I read time and time again where Draco 
couldn't have done this or Regulus couldn't have done that or known 
what they did because they were too young.  Or that Voldemort 
wouldn't trust someone that young with something like that.

Stop and think about what we are doing.  It's the same kind of thing 
Hermione campaigns against for House Elves.  Adults tend to think 
kids aren't as smart as they are. Let's look at Harry and crew. They 
know a lot of stuff about Hogwarts and the magical community in 
general that the grownups around them don't know they know. 

1.	Fred and George: Knew enough to invent enough stuff in one or 
two summers to start a joke shop and the shield charm stuff they 
invented was good enough that the Ministry of Magic ordered some for 
use in combat. They were smart enough at age 7 or 8 to almost get Ron 
to enter into an unbreakable vow. Remember why Ron says he is afraid 
of spiders?  One of the twins turned his teddy bear into a spider 
when he was a little kid.  

2.	James, Sirius, and Peter Pettigrew were smart enough to learn 
how to become animagi while still in school and managed to keep it 
from Dumbledore.  He seemed quite impressed by that in POA.  They 
also made the maurader's map.  Pettigrew even managed to keep his 
spying a secret from James and Sirius.

3.	Snape: Is given credit as the Half-Blood prince so he either 
authored the changes in the potions book that Harry used or at least 
was smart enough not to let on what he was doing with his mother's 
old potions book.  Being a double agent or not he was also at least 
competent to be given the job as potions master at the school just a 
short time after getting out of school himself.  He would have had to 
have been at least good enough at it to look like he deserved the 
job. 

4.	Barty Crouch  Jr. was sent to Azkaban fresh out of Hogwarts 
it looks like for helping torture the Longbottoms into insanity.  
He also knew a lot of magic in Goblet of Fire, I'm sure he didn't 
learn all that while in Azkaban or at his family home under the 
imperius curse.  I still want to know what his motivation was in 
teaching Harry and company about unforgivable curses you would think 
he would want to send Harry to Voldemort as unprepaired as he could 
so why teach them anything about them in the first place? 

5.	Malfoy: May be a jerk but he manages to fix the broken 
vanishing cabinet, right under Dumbledore's nose, without Snape's 
help (granted he may have had help from Voldemort since the other 
half was in Knockturn Alley at the old shop where Voldemort used to 
work
hmmm I wonder if there is any other significance to that?) and 
steals enough Polyjuice potion to keep his lookouts hidden for most 
of the year.  I wonder what else could be hiding in that room where 
the cabinet was and Harry's stolen potions book is.  Wonder if any of 
Tom Riddle's old school things could be there too? 

I think Voldemort would have a good reason to want to influence 
students at Hogwarts what a great time to get kids young and 
impressionable and away from their parents who may be able to teach 
them something different, remember Hitler's youth?  What about the 
gangs we see news stories about and the stuff they do, stealing 
property or worse, just to feel included. That would seem out of the 
realm of normal, but they still happen so obviously the young people 
are capable of doing them.  Even Dudley and his gang run around 
beating up kids in the neighborhood and his parents are too blind to 
see what is going on. 

In conclusion I think that we as adults need to stop thinking that 
these kids are not able to perform on the level as adults.  They seem 
to prove time and time again that isn't the case.

mrs_weasley2004