"Handsome" Harry? Re: Dark Book - Blood and Cruelty

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 177203

Betsy Hp:
<snip stuff I more or less agree with about Draco and Snape> 

> But for some reason, JKR is all about the winners.  Harry Potter
doesn't lose a game. 

Carol responds:
Unless, of course, he's injured, which happens a lot. I agree, though,
that JKR can't bring herself to allow Harry to lose a game through any
fault of his own. The closest is being hit by McLaggen's bat because
he's yelling at his Keeper instead of paying attention to the game
(HBP am. ed. 415). (Learning how to win is Ron's problem, not Harry's.
Learning how to lose gracefully doesn't seem to be a concern for JKR.)

Betsy:
He's handsome and rich and when there's a school event, he's having to
duck the girls. <snip>

Carol responds:
Can you please point out a single reference in canon to Harry (or
James, who looks just like him) as "handsome"? Harry is a pale, short,
skinny kid with glasses and, at least as a not-quite-eleven-year-old,
"knobbly knees." His hair sticks up in the back. He isn't ugly,
exactly, though Fleur thinks she looks "'ideous" polyjuiced as Harry,
and Fred jokes about himself and George being stuck for life as
"specky, scrawny gits." His popularity as a date for the Yule Ball and
Slughorn's Christmas party results not from good looks (or the wealth
that no one knows about) but from his fame as a TWT champion (GoF;
he's just won the First Task) or a Quidditch champion who has also
survived an encounter with Voldemort (the Prophet has finally gotten
around to publishing Harry's interview with Rita Skeeter). The fickle
girls who swoon over Harry are like the girls who followed Viktor Krum
around in GoF. Viktor isn't handsome; he's duckfooted and hook-nosed.
But he's also an international Quidditch star, and that's all the
girls care about.

Harry also suffers long periods of unpopularity, for example, when HRH
and Neville lose 200 points for Gryffindor in SS/PS or when Harry is
suspected of being the Heir of Slytherin or when the Prophet is
calling him "mad, bad, and dangerous to know" (oops, that's Byron, but
same principle).

Anyway, the only boys who are described as handsome are Sirius Black,
Tom Riddle, and Cedric Diggory--an arrogant bully, a murdering psycho,
and a nice boy killed simply for being in the way. (Gellert
Grindelwald may have been described as handsome, too, but he's not
much better than Tom.)

Harry is like his father in being a natural athlete and a rule-breaker
but unlike him in not being arrogant (except around Snape, who, it
must be admitted, brought part of that attitude on himself) and not
being a bully (despite an occasional instance of retaliating with
wands instead of words). He does win a little too often, but he also
makes really stupid mistakes (like saying "Voldemort" and attracting
Snatchers to the tent). And he misjudges Snape for most of seven
books--not exactly a fount of wisdom (though I admit you never said
that he was).

Betsy: 
> (Hermione is the same way, I think: smart, beautiful, admired and 
courted by all who see her. <snip comment on Ron as underdog>

Carol responds:
She seems to be regarded as pretty when she's dressed up for the Yule
Ball or Bill and Fleur's wedding, but otherwise she's just Harry's
bushy-haired friend, who, until Draco's Densuageo spell is deflected
onto her and she gets her teeth shrunk by Madam Pomfrey, also has
over-large, protruding teeth. "Beautiful" compared with "pug-faced"
Pansy Parkinson, maybe, but Parvati Patil's surprise that she looks
pretty at the Yule Ball suggests that she normally looks rather plain.
Smart, yes, but "courted by all"? Harry doesn't court her. He thinks
of her as a sister. Ron, yes. Viktor Krum, yes (because she's not a
giggly fan girl). And Neville asks her to the Yule Ball because she's
nice to him in Potions. But her only real friend besides Harry and Ron
appears to be Ginny, and there's no evidence that they're particularly
close. As for her brains, she really is "an insufferable know-it-all"
for most of the series (though she's a little too clever for
plausibility when it comes to protective spells in DH). And even
Hermione is wrong about Snape despite the glaring clue of the
detention with Hagrid. She's also wrong about the Hallows being real
objects--narrow and close-minded, as Xenophilius says.

Ron could, I suppose, qualify as an underdog, but mostly he's an
ordinary guy with a sense of humor and a lack of self-confidence not
surprising in a kid with six older brothers and a famous best friend.
He has his annoying moments, but usually he's my favorite of the
three. I loved his symbolic destruction of his self-doubt when he
stabbed the locket Horcrux.

Carol, who thinks that JKR gives each of her three protagonists a
strength (courage, intellect, loyalty) but otherwise strives to make
them ordinary kids with very human failings