Danger in designating an "Other" / Bad magic

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 174221

Beatrice wrote:  
> I'm being wrongly accused of constructing "A READING" of the text
here or perhaps more accurately "a re-reading" or re-working.  I'm not
trying to do either.  All I have tried to do <snip> is suggest that
the novel has a limited narration and that it is wrong to assume that
Harry's perspective and JKR's perspective are exactly alike.  While
they certainly may be linked together only JKR can tell us where one
begins and one ends.  <snip>

Carol responds:
Put another way, the third-person-limited narrator is not the voice of
the author, who knows how the story will work out, but a creation of
the author who describes the sensations, thoughts, perceptions, and
interpretations of the pov-character, in this case, Harry. (Fans have
called this device "the Harry filter.") Like human beings in RL, a
character is limited by his surroundings. Harry and his companions are
isolated in the middle of the book as they have never been before.
Almost their only contact with events outside their microcosm is
Harry's scar.

But the problem is not only isolation, it's misperception, complicated
by the few outside contacts whose information is as limited as their
own. Take Snape, for example. Only one living person, Snape, knows
what really happened on the tower or where Snape's loyalties lie, and
he's under cover as a DE. Both the DEs, who have been given the story
that it was done on Voldy's orders, and the Order members and their
friends, who have been given Harry's version. Elsewhere in the WW, the
Daily Prophet and Rita Skeeter are suggesting other versions of the
story. Harry is suddenly Undesirable Number One (a plot development I
certainly didn't foresee!) and the truth is up for grabs. Until Harry
receives Snape's memories, he is trapped by a false perception that
seems to be absolute and irrefutable, so much so that he (and his
friends both in the tent and at school) are oblivious to clues that
they see with their eyes or hear with their ears but don't process
with their minds.

A parallel process is occurring with Dumbledore. Harry has the wise
and benevolent Dumbledore he thought he knew; the seemingly capricious
Dumbledore who willed him and his friends a Snitch, a deluminator; the
saintly Dumbledore of Elphias Doge's epitaph; and the dark, mysterious
Dumbledore of Rita Skeeter's biography, seemingly confirmed by the
youthful letter to Grindelwald.

For all these reasons and others (such as wearing a Horcrux around
your neck--what were they thinking?), Harry's perception, and
therefore the narrator's, is more than usually clouded in this book.
He has to work his way through the clues, choose between Hallows and
Horcruxes, and arrive on his own at an assessment of Dumbledore that
the reader might agree with. With Snape, in contrast, he has an
epiphany, presented in nearly objective terms as a Pensieve memory.
His changed perception of Snape is announced to Voldemort and many
other listeners and is confirmed by the epilogue. His encounter with
Dead!Dumbledore isn't really an epiphany so much as the usual
Dumbledorean exposition, but the return to a benevolent Dumbledore in
DD's final scene suggests that Harry and the reader are seeing the
"real" Dumbdledore at last. The name Albus Severus sums up Harry's
final judgment on both characters, and even if it weren't for the
chats and interviews, we could be sure that it's the author's final
judgment as well. Finally, both Harry and the narrator can see
clearly, sharing the author's view. (Which is not to say that
authorial intention is the basis by which we should judge a work, only
that the author's intentions are clearly reflected in this small but
significant incident in the epilogue.)

With regard to Slytherin, Harry's perception is equally unclear for
most of the seven-book series. From the first book, it has been
depicted as Voldemort's House, the House from which nearly all the DEs
came. But there are hints that this statement isn't true. Not all
Slytherins are Death Eaters. Andromeda Tonks married a Muggleborn;
Snape and Regulus are heroes; Slughorn shows his spine in the final
battle; Narcissa lies to the Dark Lord for love of her son; the
Slytherin kids may sit out the battle but they don't join the DEs.
These events, and particularly Snape's contribution, change Harry's
perception of Slytherin House. There's all the difference in the world
between sitting under the Sorting Hat thinking "Not Slytherin! Not
Slytherin!" and telling your son that it's okay to be sorted into that
House and the bravest man you ever knew was a Slytherin.

The epilogue, IOW, reflects, at last, the author's view of her
characters and their fictional world, which evidently coincides with
that of her protagonist and the no-longer unreliable (but still
limited) third-person narrator. Harry's myopia is now only literal,
not figurative.

Carol, agreeing that JKR's perspective and Harry's perspective are not
the same, at least not until he achieves (JKR's version of) wisdom or
maturity at the end of the book