Sympathy to the characters

[Renee]

No: HPFGUIDX 159642


> > > Alla:
> >> > > 
> > > Weren't we? I don't know, I know that I certainly did not have 
> time 
> > > in one book to care for [Quirrell and Tom Riddle] that much as to 
> > feel sorry for them. 
> > > Honestly, I did not dislike them, but I did not sympathise with 
> > them 
> > > either, I was indifferent and I think that was done on purpose 
> for 
> > > the reversal to not be as radical as to go from sympathy to 
> hatred, 
> > > but from indifference to hatred, in my case at least.
> > 
> > Hickengruendler:
> > 
> > I mostly agree with you. I think part of this is also because both 
> of 
> > them had very limited screentime. 
<snip>
> > 
> > However, what about the fake Moody? 
> 

Renee:
He had a lot of screentime, and Harry trusted him, but I began to feel
uneasy about him from the moment he used the Unforgivables on the
spiders, especialy Crucio. (Spiders don't have the best of
reputations, but they're useful animals, and in the HP series they're
the enemies of the IMO irreversably evil Basilisk.) The bouncing
ferret scene sealed it for me: this was not a character I was going to
root for. And by Book 4 I had learned not to trust too firmly in
Harry's judgement. So, even though I never suspected "Moody" was
really someone else, or that he had put Harry's name in the Goblet, I
wasn't too shocked to find he was no good.   

Back to Dudley: even though it was obvious he was an unlikeable
character, I always felt vaguely sorry for him, in a cartoonish sort
of way that had nothing to do with true compassion. Though he's the
least unpleasant of the Dursleys, he seems to be the scapegoat for the
entire family. Maybe he deserves to be punished for his nastier
actions, but he rarely deserves the "punishment" he actually gets. I
would have felt far less sorry for Vernon.   

If there is a reversal, I'm inclined to say it started at the
beginning of OotP: how many readers really wanted Dudley to be Kissed
by that Dementor? And Dumbledore's little speech about Dudley in HBP
is prefigured by his much longer speech at the end of OotP, when he
essentially says that, yes, Harry's treatment by the Dursleys was bad,
but it would have been worse if Harry had been "a pampered little
prince" - like Dudley Dursley, for instance. DD's words in HBP are
merely the logical consequence of this statement; he is absolutely
consistent here.

Renee
[who suddenly thought of Snape when typing "pampered little prince" -
he seems to have been anything but a pampered little half blood prince...]