On being Lucky (was On lying and cheating)

[lupinlore]

No: HPFGUIDX 165892

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "horridporrid03" 
<horridporrid03 at ...> wrote:
>
> Betsy Hp:
> But it's another unintended consequence.  So again, Harry does 
> something stupid (lies) but luckily it turns out to give him a brain 
> storm on how to get in good with Slughorn? Is that supposed to 
> reflect well on him?
> 

Yes, I suppose it is. You talk about being Lucky as if it was a minor 
or unimportant or unpraisworthy thing.  Many times it's not.  Indeed, 
there are plenty of human cultures who have, over time, held that being 
lucky is a personal attribute every bit as important as being 
intelligent or brave or anything else.  It is, after all, a sign of 
Divine Favor.  And although many (but not all) modern religions don't 
specifically equate being Lucky with being Favored of God, that is 
still the gut reaction of most people.

On a less philosophical level, Harry quite simply IS the favored of 
God -- or of JKR, who amounts to the same thing in the context of the 
Potterverse.  OF COURSE he's going to have incredible runs of good 
fortune, timely interventions of fate, and plentiful unintended 
consequences from which he is going to reap the rewards.  That is what 
being the Favored of God gets for you.  It's a fact of life in 
literature -- and beyond literature, for that matter.

This even speaks to the conflict between Harry and Snape.  Snapey-poo, 
bless his abusive little heart, is UNlucky, and that isn't a good 
thing.  The Unlucky are the invisible lepers of the world, for deep in 
their guts most people regard them as being Despised of God as much as 
the lucky are favored.  Why are people so uncomfortable in the face of 
misfortune?  Well, there are many reasons, some laudable and some not.  
One of the most powerful, and least admirable, is that faced with an 
unlucky person people have a deep superstitious dread that the disfavor 
of God will rub off.  Faced with someone like the teenage Snapey-poo 
who is, let's admit it, quite a loser, the automatic reaction is to 
keep your distance lest the plague of unluck infect you.  So Snape 
hates Harry because Harry has that powerful and triumphant thing that 
Snapey-poo doesn't have -- luck.  And he hates Neville because Neville 
is a mirror of himself in the luck arena -- except that Neville rubs 
salt in the wounds by actually experiencing a change in his luck over 
time, largely by garnering the good favor of people more lucky than 
himself -- or more accurately and more viscerally, he sticks close 
enough to God's Favored that some of the luck rubs off.

It even speaks to the position of Hermione in the saga.  Hermione is, 
after all, smarter than Harry, brave (albeit in a different way), and 
as a muggleborn faced with a much higher set of social barriers.  So 
why is Harry the Hero and Hermione the Sidekick?  And I know at least 
one feminist literature professor who constantly fumes because for all 
Hermione's sterling qualities, it has been made extremely clear that 
she isn't the hero and never will be.  The answer is that Harry is the 
favored of fortune, as the Romans might say, or the favorite of JKR, as 
we would say, and Hermione, for all her estimable qualities, isn't.

So, it all comes down to this -- Harry is JKR's favorite character.  He 
gets the luck, Snapey-poo doesn't.  He gets to be the hero, Hermione 
doesn't.  He gets the girl, Neville doesn't.  He most likely gets to 
live, Dumbly-dore doesn't.  He makes mistakes and garners rewards from 
it.  He is facing a wizard who, under any rules of logic you can 
imagine, ought to have easily killed him a dozen times by now -- and in 
the end he will beat said wizard and said wizard's henchman who 
are "nearly as terrible as he."  How does he accomplish all this?  He 
is the Favored of the God of the Potterverse.

So yeah, it's wise to praise and value Harry's luck.  After all, if you 
were a Potterverse character, a little bit of it might just rub off on 
you.


Lupinlore