Harry's Characterization

[quick_silver71]

No: HPFGUIDX 163439

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Steve" <bboyminn at ...> wrote:
<snip>
> bboyminn:
<snip>
> Now in the latest book (HBP) I can excuse Harry lack of
> enthusiasm for learning the specific things he will
> certainly, from his perspective, need to know. First,
> he has Dumbledore; as has been oft repeated, as long as
> we have Dumbledore, everything is under control. Second,
> Dumbledore has promised to teach Harry what he needs to
> know to defeat Voldemort. Harry, Ron, and Hermione 
> speculate that it will be spectacular spells and curses.
> 
> But it turns out to be a history lesson in Voldemort/Tom
> Riddle. Well, certainly, Harry must trust that this 
> information will be important, but I suspect Harry is
> continually expecting the /next/ phase of his training
> to start. From an internal perspective, I assume that
> at some point Dumbledore did intent to start arming 
> Harry with certain necessary skills like curse breaking,
> identifying magic, and combat dueling. He has given him
> a working sample of all those skill. But that chance 
> never came.

Quick_Silver:
Ok I'm in general agreement with what both you and Ken are saying but 
at the same time I think that's it's risky to say that Dumbledore 
ever intended to teach Harry magic unless Harry specifically asked 
him to. One of the things that I get from the books is that the very 
best wizards (in terms of their magical abilities) are primarily self-
driven. Snape and the Marauders, aside from excelling at school, 
mastered an impressive amount of magic on their own initiative. JKR 
described Dumbledore as being mainly self taught and Voldemort was 
well on the way to becoming a wizard whether he was accepted to 
Hogwarts or not. 

And I think that for Harry to be truly great he needs to find the 
motivation that makes him want to do magic. Considering that Snape, 
the Marauders, Dumbledore, and Voldemort were probably motivated for 
totally different reasons and appear to have markedly different views 
on the use of magic I just don't think that this is something that 
can be taught (it can be encouraged however). If Dumbledore had 
started teaching Harry what he knew about magic there's the very real 
possibility that Harry could come to rely on Dumbledore as a crutch 
(like the rest of wizarding world seems to). Or to use the example 
form OotP Snape suggestion of "not wearing your heart on your sleeve" 
and then Harry escaping Voldemort using his heart (I'm at little hazy 
on those scene
my books are packed away) which shows what is good for 
one wizard might not be good for another. 
  
<snip>
> bboyminn:
> But he is also obssessed with Draco and rightly so. I
> think Dumbledore just wanted Harry to leave the situation
> alone, but instead of talking to him, he just told him
> 'not to worry his pretty little head about it'. No kid,
> especially Harry, is going to stand for being condescended
> to in such a way. If Dumbledore had said, 'thank for the 
> info, but I'm aware of what Draco is doing and I'm on top
> of it'. That would have gone farther toward comforting 
> Harry, then being told to forget about it.

Quick_Silver:
See I view the Draco fiasco as being a huge event in 
Harry's "training" if you will. He shows dedication, is forced to 
evaluate Draco motivations and mental state, has to re-form several 
of his arguments to take into account evidence, uses the resources 
that he has available (the invisibility clock, the Marauder's map, 
Dobby, Kreature), and heck he even get to test out some powerful 
magic on Draco (Sectumsempra). And all of that takes place without 
Dumbledore really planning on it to happen
although I think it 
reinforces the lessons that Dumbledore was trying to teach Harry with 
the memories of Tom Riddle and fetching Slughorn's memory. 

Quick_Silver