Broken potionvial and Harry expectations WAS: Re: Bad Writing?

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 163355


> Jen:  There are two levels at work here, one is the level of Harry's 
> life as the Chosen One and one is the level that Dumbledore 
> desperately wanted for him to the point of carrying Harry's burdens 
> for him for a number of years:  A Harry who could have some semblance 
> of a normal life with friends and studies and Quidditch and all the 
> things that another kid could have.  Not everything Harry learns has 
> to do with the quest to oppose the genocidal murderer.  Some things 
> are more mundane and ordinary and are the struggle of all kids to 
> become independent adults.  
> 
> That's the level Harry is operating on when it comes to his teachers, 
> and that's what Dumbledore thinks too, or he would bring these 
> problems to light in terms of how Harry's views are interfering with 
> his ability to defeat Voldemort.

Pippin:
But he *does.* Or at least that's what I see him doing with the lecture
about the golden fountain.  When he says we wizards have abused our 
fellow creatures for too long, he's not just  talking about Voldemort. 
After all, the biggest slaveholder in  Wizarding Britain is *not* 
Voldemort. It's *Hogwarts*. 

Wizarding society is built and Hogwarts was founded on exclusionist 
and elitist principles: how can it possibly be fair? Harry isn't wrong to 
seek fairness, but  the reader, IMO, is  allowed to see  that the source
of all the  petty  unfairness in Harry's life is not Severus Snape. 

Snape *was* unfair, but Snape was just echoing the fountain. He 
expected his students to receive his bounty with absolute attention and 
worshipful silence, and he was !@#$ irritated when he didn't get it. 

Of course he had no right, but the point is, he didn't get that 
expectation from Voldemort. One might even  say he got it from 
James. 

Dumbledore doesn't state this in so many words, because he
knows Harry will have to see it for himself. He just says that
Snape can't get over his feelings about James because his wounds
are too deep for the healing. 

Dumbledore has no power to make anyone, even Harry, see the 
truth. He can't, no matter how many teachers he sacks, make 
anyone see that the fountain is not only a lie in the sense that it 
doesn't reflect reality, but a lie in the sense that the ideal it 
represents is a false one.

That will take change on the cultural level and it will never happen
until people realize that the current system is broken. Dumbledore
is not going to take a sledgehammer to it (though the destruction
of the fountain suggests that he would like to) but he's not going to
pretend that it's working. That's why, IMO, even if Dumbledore didn't 
need Snape's skills to fight Voldemort, he would still want Snape as 
a teacher. Because his students *do* need to learn, as part of
their growing up, just how unfair the society they're joining
allows them to be. If he insulates them from it as children, 
they'll go on expecting to be insulated as adults. 


Pippin