On lying and cheating

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 165434

Geoff wrote:
> Mike touched on this in a way when he quoted from HBP:
> "He felt just one tiny twinge of regret.... This was the end of his
> ambition to become an Auror."
> (HBP "An Excess of Phlegm" p.102 UK edition)
>
> ...and then posed the question "How important is becoming an
> Auror to Harry? "
>
> I believe that this twinge merely underlined and confirmed
> something which had become evident to him previously:
>
> "Perhaps the reason he wanted to be alone was because he had felt
> isolated from everybody since his talk with Dumbledore. An invisible
> barrier separated him from the rest of the world. He was - he had
> always been - a marked man. It was just that he had never really
> understood what that meant ...
>
> ...It was sunny and the grounds around him were full of laughing
> people and even though he felt as distant from them as though he
> belonged to a different race, it was still very hard to believe as
he sat here that his life must include, or end in, murder..."
> (OOTP "The Second War Begins" p.754 UK edition)
>
> My feeling is that Harry's attitude towards school and work is
> completely - and possibly subconsciously - coloured by this and
> by his feelings about Sirius. Other events - his concerns about
Draco and his peregrinations with Dumbledore - are making demands on
> his time and I join with others who sense that his heart is not
fully in his classes although he may still be seeking a little one
upmanship over Hermione and also enjoying the lack of confrontation in
Potions.
> But seeking academic credit to be an Auror?
>
> I have my doubts. I think the episode by the lake marked the
beginning of a sea-change in his view of his life.
>
Carol responds:

First, the Auror quote is the good old unreliable narrator again.
Getting an E in Potions doesn't end Harry's chances of being an Auror;
it just sets up the subplot with the HBP's textbook (a new Potions
teacher who lets in E students and just happens to have two old
textbooks lying around). And Harry wouldn't take advantage of the
chance to take Potions with Slughorn if he and Ron didn't still want
to be Aurors. He could just turn down the opportunity because he
doesn't have the book and doesn't like (or need) the class. But, as
Snape points out at the Christmas party, the classes Harry is taking
just happen to be those required to be an Auror. Hmmm.

As for the episode by the lake, Harry rather quickly puts it out of
his mind. He no longer feels alone at the end of OoP. In fact, having
half the Order turn out to escort him on Platform 9 3/4 *tells* him
that he's not alone. By the time we see him again at the beginning of
HBP, except for some residual and unresolved grief, guilt, and anger
relating to Sirius Black's death that he deflects onto Snape, he's
pretty much himself again.

When has Harry ever really cared about his courses? He's always copied
from Hermione when he had a chance, and he and Ron cheated blatantly
on their Divination homework without a qualm of conscience. Now he's
taking credit for work that someone else has done in Potions (only
Hermione doesn't approve because this time she's not the one "helping"
him by providing the improved instructions, the result of the *HBP's*
creativity and research). Even when his life was in danger from the
TWT, he put off practicing the necessary spells or trying to figure
out the egg clue. He's always regarded Quidditch as more important
than classes, and he spends a whole lot more time in HBP thinking
about Quidditch (and Ginny) than about Voldemort. He even puts off
getting Slughorn's memory of Tom Riddle for Dumbledore because he has
non-Voldemort-related concerns.

As for Harry's obsession with Draco, we're back to CoS when HRH
thought that Draco was the Heir of Slytherin, only this time he's
alone in suspecting that Draco is a DE. (Harry isn't worried about
Voldemort himself or about his own safety. Draco isn't out to kill
*him* or he'd have done more than stomp on his face in the Hogwarts
Express. He's worried about what Draco and his supposed accomplice
Snaoe are up to.) The only thing different about Harry in HBP from
Harry in previous books is that he's acting more like James dearest by
hexing people in the hallways, including the helpless Squib, Filch,
whom he hits twice with Langlock, the tongue-tying hex. He also hits
Crabbe with the toenail hex when, IIRC, Crabbe hasn't done anything
other than exist. Like Sherry, I find Harry's behavior in HBP
disturbing, but unlike her, I don't blame the book itself or its
author. Harry himself is responsible for his behavior, or should I
say, his choices, in HBP and always, and his choices are not very
admirable in this book whether they're deliberate choices like hexing
people or sins of omission like taking credit he doesn't deserve or
foolish and potentially disastrous errors in judgment like using an
unknown curse labeled "for enemies" on a fellow student. (I'm not
saying that everything he does is wrong; it's certainly a good thing
he knew what a Bezoar was when Ron was poisoned, but the credit for
teaching him about Bezoars goes to  HBP!Snape and Potions Master
Snape. BTW, there was a Bezoar lesson in GoF as well. Snape wants
those kids to learn their antidotes. Slughorn, in contrast, is a total
loss when Ron is poisoned.)

I'm trying to think of a single time in HBP when Harry is not with
Dumbledore (before the tower) when Harry is thinking about Voldemort
and the danger that he'll be facing. I can't think of a single example
(though I'm sure I'll be corrected if there is one). His mind is
always on something else: trying to prove that Snape and Draco
are up to no good, testing out those spells, thinking about hexing
McLaggen, trying to decide between Ginny and Ron (as if he actually
had to make that choice), worrying about the Quidditch Cup. Situation
normal for Harry Potter, who only thinks about the scar and the
Prophecy and Voldemort when he has no choice and about classes when
he's facing an exam or writing an essay--or faced with Golpalott's Law
and no help from the HBP except a snarky joke about Bezoars. And I
forgot. Harry also has to contend with girls who are trying to give
him a love potion to get him to take them to Slughorn's party. Harry
is a Quidditch star, after all, just like his father. And just like
his father, he's obsessed with a cheeky red-haired girl, thinking
about her when he's not thinking about Quidditch or hating Snape.

Carol, seeing James reincarnated in HBP!Harry and not liking the
picture at all