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

[a_svirn]

No: HPFGUIDX 179609

> Carol:
> 
> As I said before, being famous is not the same as being important. 

a_svirn:
Have you never noticed, though, how often the latter comes with the 
former?

> Carol:
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. 

a_svirn:
Well, up until OotP the issue of saving world from Voldemot had not 
arisen. However, as soon as it did Harry became the most important 
teenager of the WW. 

> Carol:
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. 

a_svirn:
Which is roughly about a hundred of people of no little importance. 
All of whom find Harry very important person indeed. So important in 
fact, that Lucius Malfoy reminded his son in CoS that  "it is not - 
prudent - to appear less than fond of Harry Potter, not when most of 
our kind regard him as the hero who made the Dark Lord disappear".

> Carol:
(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.

a_svirn:
OK for popularity. But importance has everything to do with it. 
Zacharias Smith would not have come to the less than respectable 
Hog's Head to listen to Hermione. But he did come to listen to the 
notorious Harry Potter. 

> Carol:
 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. 

a_svirn:
Really? So why didn't they organize an inter-house study group for a 
history of magic? And called it an "army" and elected a leader? 

> Carol:
> 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. 

a_svirn:
That's because he does not make *use* of it. Which is one his more 
likable qualities. Had he wanted to whip up some following for 
himself, he would have found it an easy task. As it indeed proved in 
OotP. One meeting in a pub et voilas he is a leader of an army. 

> Carol:
And if Hermione offered to teach DADA, it's posssible that
> a few students would at least want to have study sessions with her.

a_svirn:
Highly improbable. Certainly not the students from other houses. 

> Carol:
> The difference is that no one would be curious to hear her story and
> no one has seen her battle a dragon. 

a_svirn:
Indeed. The difference, in short, that disqualifies her from being 
regarded as a leader.  


> Carol responds:
> When and how does Hermione's social standing improve? 

a_svirn:
Well, let's see. From a nerd with no friends at all she became a 
Friend of Harry Potter Himself, and gained an entrée to the wizarding 
world outside school through the Weasleys. She would never have had 
enough authority to make a successful prefect on her own, even though 
her grades would have entitled her to that position. And of course 
Ron's appointment is nothing if not blatant favoritism – he would 
have never been made a prefect if he hadn't been Harry's friend. 
How's that for "social clout"? Two key position of power in 
Gryffindor to his two friends? 

> Carol:
> 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. 

a_svirn:
"Convenient, eh?" Couldn't find a place in any other compartments, 
but the one the famous Harry Potter occupied. And once settled he 
proceeded to pump Harry for information asking question his mother 
had explicitly forbidden him to ask. (Harry showed more tact with 
Neville, though admittedly he was older at the time.) And three years 
later he repeated the performance though less successfully with Krum:

"Over here! Come and sit over here!"  Ron hissed.  "Over here! 
Hermione, budge up, make a space -" 
"What?" 
"Too late," said Ron bitterly. 
Viktor Krum and his fellow Durmstrang students had settled themselves 
at the Slytherin table.  

> Carol:
Harry is as curious about Ron, a boy who
> grew up in a whole family of wizards, as Ron is about him. 

a_svirn:
That's certainly true. The fact remains, however, that it was Ron who 
made the fist move. 

> 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. 

a_svirn:
We were discussing the series as a whole I believe. And in any case 
you forget Hagrid, the elder Weasleys, Sirius since PoA. Not too bad 
really. Most people have much less friends whose first loyalty is 
always for them. 

> 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. 

a_svirn:
Certainly. But I don't altogether understand the point you are 
making. I said that far from being of little importance to Ron, 
Harry's fame was a source of constant jealousy and torture for him. 
You are saying now that but for a few lapses he has managed to 
suppress it successfully. Does it prove that Harry's fame mattered 
little for Ron? Hardly. It mattered enough to have become his 
personal demon, as you say.