How do the books affect children? (was: Why down on all the characters?)

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 179596

a_svirn wrote:
> I think you sort of confuse being unpopular with being notorious.
Harry's fame and importance is a fact of canon, <snip> In GoF he's a
school champion, and as such has more social clout than any
fourth-year could dream of. In OotP for all his alleged unpopularity a
few dozens of people turn up in a seedy pub to listen what he has to
say. And they recognize him a leader from the get-go. Just imagine how
many people would turn up if Hermione invited them to listen to *her*
rather than to Harry. This is not what being unpopular means.

Carol responds:

As I said before, being famous is not the same as being important. No
one in Books 1 through 6 (with the exception of Dumbledore) treats
Harry as someone with the potential to save the WW from Voldemort. In
fact, not until Book 6 does anyone believe besides DD, Snape, the
Order, the DEs and a few of Harry's friends believe that Voldemort is
back. (Many of the DA members are more concerned with Umbridge's
failure to teach them than with Voldemort. Others, primarily Zacharias
Smith, want to know what happened to Cedric.) Neither popularity nor
importance has anything to do with it. And they stay on because they
believe that he knows spells that they don't know (which is more a
reflection on bad DADA teaching than on Harry as someone with power or
influence, which is what "important" suggests to me. (Dumbledore is
*important.* Harry is famous. (Of course, when Sirius Black is
believed to be after him, the MoM goes out of its way to protect him,
but that's because they would look very bad if anything happened to
the Boy Who Lived.)

Harry has no "social clout" that I can see. It's only when something
like the Yule Ball or Slughorn's Christmas party is in the offing that
girls clamor to go out with him--so *they* can have a treat and bask
in the reflected glory of a TWT champion or Quidditch champion. I
suppose he's a kind of James in these situations, without the
arrogance. And if Hermione offered to teach DADA, it's posssible that
a few students would at least want to have study sessions with her.
The difference is that no one would be curious to hear her story and
no one has seen her battle a dragon. 

a-svirn 
> It was Hermione who was unpopular for the part of PS. And it was 
because her friendship with famous and popular Harry her standing in
Gryffindor improved. (Though unlike Ron she did not set out to 
> befriend the famous Harry Potter.) <snip>

Carol responds:
When and how does Hermione's social standing improve? Except for
Viktor Krum, who probably likes her precisely because she doesn't
chase after him, and Ginny, who is the younger sisters of one of her
best friends, and Hagrid, who becomes closer to all of the Trio than
is usually the case with a teacher or staff member, Hermione remains
virtually friendless throughout the books. On the few occasions when
she's estranged from both Harry and Ron, she sits alone at the
Gryffindor talbe (unlike Ron, who has the Twins, Dean and Seamus, and
sometimes (IIRC) Lee Jordan to sit with when he's fighting with Harry
in GoF.

As or Ron "setting out" to befriend the famous Harry Potter, that's
not at all what happened. Ron slides open the compartment door and
asks if he can sit down because "everywhere else is full." Then he
asks if Harry is really Harry Potter because he thinks it might be one
of Fred and George's jokes. Harry is as curious about Ron, a boy who
grew up in a whole family of wizards, as Ron is about him. Also, Ron
can tell him about things like Chocolate Frog Cards and Bertie Botts
Beans and Quidditch. Each fills a need for the other. But, IMO, it's
Draco's insulting the Weasley family, marking himself as "the wrong
sort," that seals Harry's friendship with Ron, just as it seals his
enmity with Draco. (Hermione, OTOH, is just a bossy, busybody girl to
both of them. "No wonder she hasn't got any friends," as Ron says
later. And that statement would, IMO, have remained true had it not
been for the incident with the Troll.)
> 
Steph:
><snip>
Overall, Harry doesn't appear to have many friends beyond Ron,
Hermione, the other Weasleys, Seamus, Neville, and Dean.  
> 
> a_svirn:
> Huh. That's what, about a dozen people who would die for you without 
> even asking a single question? Poor Harry, that must be tough being 
> so unpopular. 

Carol:
Who besides Ron and Hermione would die for Harry without asking a
single question before OoP? And even then, it's only Ginny, who has
always had a crush on the Boy Who Lived (I forgot to include her in
his fanclub earlier), Luna, who is more than a bit eccentric, and
Neville, whose parents were Crucio'd into insanity by Death Eaters,
who are willing to face DEs with Harry. I'm not sure that Luna knows
what she's getting into nor that Neville is doing it for Harry. And
even after the Battle at the DoM, which teaches Harry to appreciate of
three people he had previously underestimated, none of them becomes
his close friend. BTW, being popular (or famous) and having people
willing to die for you are two completely different things. Are the
girls who follow Viktor Krum because he's a famous Quidditch star and
a TWT champion willing to die for him? I doubt it. Is Romilda Vane,
who tried to trap Harry into asking her to Slughorn's party by giving
him chocolates laced with love potion willing to die for Harry? Funny;
I don't recall her name being mentioned as one of the participants in
the Battle of Hogwarts. (Also, I'm not sure that everyone who fought
in that battle on the good side was fighting "for Harry." Kreacher was
fighting in the name of Regulus Black; Molly Weasley was fighting for
her family; Lupin dies trying to make the world a better place for his
baby son. Harry may be the Chosen One, but he's not the be all and end
all of the WW. Ron fights as much for Hermione as for Harry. Hermione
fights at least in part as a champion of the oppressed, primarily
Muggle-borns like herself.

Unlike Cho, who is genuinely popular (perhaps because she's pretty),
Harry never has crowds of other students following him around. His
circle of friends is restricted to two, with others such as his
roommates and the Weasley Twins as acquaintances with whom he's on
good terms most of the time. What does he know about any of them? It's
the middle of GoF before he even finds out that Neville is
(indirectly) as much a victim of Voldemort as he is. And when does he
worry about their problems rather than his own? Granted, he has a lot
on his plate, but he almost never sees beyond himself and his own
small circle unless it's too worry about Hagrid. He snubs anyone,
whether it's Draco or Colin Creevey, who tries to get too close. And
after awhile, people stop trying. (The Weasleys are close by default,
because he spends so much time with their family, not because of any
effort on their part to befriend him. They just act like themselves
around him, Ginny excepted for the first three and a half books. And,
of course, it doesn't hurt that the Twins themselves are excellent
Quidditch players on the same team as Harry. We don't however, see the
Twins joining him in the DoM or offering to die for him. Admittedly,
George loses an ear "for Harry" and Fred eventually dies, more or less
accidentally, fighting on Harry's side, but matters have changed in DH.)

Steph:
> Ron certainly thought it was cool that Harry was who he was, but
after that it didn't really seem to matter to Ron that Harry was famous.  
> 
> a_svirn:
> Didn't matter? When he was obviously consumed with jealousy all the
 time? To the point of succumbing to the Horcrux's influence?
>
Carol:
That was Ron's personal demon, as it's probably the personal demon of
the obscure best friends of many famous people. But, except for a
brief time in GoF, when he thinks Harry is lying to him and Harry
omits the important information that "Moody" thinks someone is out to
kill Harry, and the fight in DH, which he immediately regrets, Ron
does a very good job of suppressing his jealousy or envy of Harry. He
risks his life for Harry or with Harry in SS/PS, CoS, OoP, HBP, and
DH. In PoA, he tells Sirius Black that he'll have to kill him and
Hermione before he kills Harry. 

Most of the time, Ron is Harry's loyal friend and companion who not
only would but does place his life on the line for Harry. In DH, he
risks his own life to save Harry, and, in doing so, makes himself
worthy not only of wielding the Sword of Gryffindor, but of destroying
the locket Horcrux which has tormented him by bringing out all his own
insecurities. (It's not just Harry; the locket taunts him that his
mother wanted a girl.) Look at all the times in which Ron adds humor
or his own brand of courage to the situation. He is by no means
"consumed with jealousy *all* the time, any more than Harry is
consumed by a desire for vengeance against Snape/Draco/Sirius
Black/Umbridge/Voldemort or whoever the target of his rage and desire
for revenge happens to be *all* the time. Both of them have plenty of
time to be just kids and just friends until DH brings matters to a
head. And even in that action-filled book, there are moments of
normalcy. There are moments, too, when Harry envies Ron, who has a
loving family and is clearly on the verge of a relationship with
Hermione that Harry fears will exclude him (HBP, Herbology class; I
forget the name of the chapter, but it's before Slughorn's Christmas
party).

Unless some particular event or Prophet article calls attention to
Harry, most of the students are so used to him that he's just another
student or, at most, an excellent Quidditch player whose popularity or
unpopularity depends on whether the other student is a Gryffindor or a
member of a rival House.

Carol, noting that surviving an AK when you're a baby makes you a
phenomenon but it doesn't necessarily equate to being the future
savior of the WW, which, for the first five books at least, doesn't
even know that it's in jeopardy