[HPforGrownups] Bathroom scene again WAS: Re:Weasley Family Dynamics/To t...

[Marion Ros]

No: HPFGUIDX 165048

Amiable Dorsai:
I must say that I'm truly impressed by the number of people on this
thread, who, when a split second decision has been thrust upon them,
have, apparently, never said the wrong thing, never zigged when they
should have zagged, never hit the brakes when they should have turned
the wheel and who have always, even when a choice needed to be made in
the time between "cru" and "io", weighed their options, consulted a
lawyer, prayed for guidance, and made a cost-benefit analysis before
acting.

Marion
Alas, I have done many a stupid thing in my life, even without the excuse of it being done whilst making a split second decision, but then, I never nearly killed another person.
Now, let's try to imagine this being so. I'm driving my car, and suddenly and unexpectedly, a kid jumps from behind some parked cars, right in front of my bumper. In the split second it takes to try to avoid the kid I hit the brakes instead of jerking my steering wheel and I ram straight into the kid. 
In this analogy, I'm not at fault. I don't hate the kid. I don't have a history of fighting this kid. I didn't follow this kid around, trying to proof he's doing evil deeds. I don't even know this kid.
I don't secretly try out new ways to use my car to scare, annoy or hurt people.
In this analogy, I'm a pure victim of circumstance. It's not my fault this kid ran in front of my wheels. 
Yet, the sound his body makes, bouncing off my windshield, will haunt me 'till my dying days.
I will go, "OhgodohgodohgodIkilledhim" for quite some time, and even after the ambulance has taken him to hospital and it's confirmed that he will live, I'll still wake up in the night hearing that sickening 'bump', I'll still feel guilty and responsible, if only because of the two of us, I got away unscratched. 
I will, for days if not for months or even years, berate myself for not jerking my wheel instead of slamming the brakes.

Harry used a spell on Draco which imitated being hacked a hundred times with a machete. Blood dripping from the bathroom mirrors, dripping off the ceiling, heck, dripping of Harry himself. Harry's initial reaction *is* one of shock, but within minutes he gets more afraid of losing his potions book than of the fact that he very nearly killed a fellow human being. No guilt. No "I should've used stupefy instead". No bad dreams, no nothing.

Harry is deep in denial.

Or he's just very good at dehumanizing Slytherins in general and Draco in particular.

(It's bad to kill people with a slicing curse, *unless* it's Draco. Just as it's bad to bully kids four to one, dangling them upside down and take their underwear off, *unless* it's Draco)

It's amazing, really, because we've been told that Draco was better at learning Occlumency because he was better at 'compartimentalising his mind'. I disagree. I think what one need to learn Occlumency is self discipline. 'Decompartimentalising' one's brain is something *Harry* is very good at. But I digress.

Being in denial after just very nearly (and very messily) killing a kid is not so much what I fault Harry for. As you said, we all do stupid things sometimes. We all make bad decisions, especially when we're young (just ask Snape, Lucius or Regulus) 
I don't fault Harry for being in denial, but I don't condone it either. Making a bad mistake is one thing. Trying to act as if nothing ever happened is, well, cowardly.

There are fans that claim that his being in denial 'makes him human'.

As if taking responsibility for one's own actions is somehow *not* 'human'. It is human. It's also called 'being an adult', and at sixteen years old, Harry is rather late learning some of life's lessons. Especially since he's supposed to be the Hero of this story, the one who has to battle the Big Evil One.

It's one thing to charge down a battlefield, wanting to fight the baddies. It's another kind of courage to look at yourself, aknowledge the fact that you do make mistakes.
Neville, for instance, *grows* during the books. He arrived at school being afraid of his magic. Being afraid of people expecting great things of him. Better to be a dunce than to have all that pressure on you. Better to be a squib.
Denial!
Luckily for Neville, he had teachers that didn't let him get away with it. Neville *is* magical, so he'd better learn to use it. And lo and behold, after a few years we see Neville accepting his magic, accepting that he might be called upon to do great things, even if he doesn't necessarily *wish* to, he still goes and fight the baddies with great aplomb.

As long as Harry refuses to take responsibility for his own mistakes and as long as he keeps blaming others for them ("it wasn't stupid and discrimitory of me to suspect Snape of wanting to steal the Philosopher's Stone just because I think he doesn't like me, Snape is still evil and I refuse to listen to him or learn from him because no matter what it takes, I'll proof that he's evil for not liking me", "it wasn't me stupidly rushing to the MoM that got Sirius killed, it wasn't Sirius' own rashness that got him killed, heck, it wasn't even Bellatrix curse that got Sirius killed - it was all SNAPE's fault!!", "it wasn't my decision to follow Draco around and spying on him that got us into a fight, it wasn't my throwing a slicing hex at him that got him into hospital, it was all Snape's fault for writing the hex in the first place!!"), in shorrt, as long as Harry refuses to aknowledge his mistakes, and - God forbid! - even *learn* from them, I can't see him as any kind of Hero at all.


 

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