Suspension of disbelief WAS: Why should we care if Harry's not really needed

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182387

Betsy Hp wrote:
<snip> 
> But yes, I do expect child adventure stories to have a reasonable
reason for the child being the one on the adventure.  It's not like
it's impossible or anything.  Other children's stories have come up
with reasons other than the adults being idiots for their child
protaganists to be front and center. (The adults are busy and/or
distracted.  The adults are too set in their ways and/or the task
needs a certain level of purity to achieve.)  Frankly, I think it's
the first thing an author should consider.

Carol responds:
Aside from Harry's unique qualifications (the scar link with Voldemort
and Parseltongue) and his motivation (Voldemort killed his parents and
is after him because he believes the Prophecy, so Harry will have to
confront him at some point in any case) and the soul bit in his scar,
which means that he *must* be "killed" by Voldemort, all of which
pretty much means that Harry is going to be involved in the Horcrux
quest at some point (and only Hsrry can destroy the diary Horcrux and
turn the Seord of Gryffindor into a Horcrux destroyer). That being the
case, the sooner he is trained, the better.

Dumbledore, though he makes mistakes, is not an idiot. He has created
the Order of the Phoenix (admittedly, not as effectual as we would
wish it to be). He has provided the blood protection for the Prophecy
Boy until he reaches Hogwarts age, at which point he can be subtly
trained and guided. He has a network of spies, including Aberforth at
the Hog's Head, who have been supplying him with information on Tom
Riddle and his whereabouts since before the DADA interview. (He knows,
for example, that Vapor!mort is hiding in Albania.) He has been
collecting memories related to Tom Riddle and his crimes since the
murder of the Riddles (not believing Morfin to be the killer despite
his confession; he knows tom riddle too well). He seems to have
suspected that Voldemort was making Horcruxes long before Godric's
Hollow; otherwise, he could not have known that Voldemort, whose body
seems to have been destroyed, would come back. He deduces from the
destruction of the diary Horcrux that his multiple Horcrux theory is
correct and begins searching for the Horcruxes that he knows about
from the memories (the ring, the locket, and the cup) and discovers
the locations of two of them. He destroys the ring Horcrux (yes,
putting on the ring was a stupid, stupid blunder--thank goodness for
Snape) and figures out how to get into the cave, a feat that requires
the ability to detect traces of magic that Harry (and, I think, most
Wizards) would have no idea how to find. Similarly, he discovers the
invisible chain that pulls up the boat. And Dumbledore trusted Snape,
without whom he would not have been able to spy on Voldemort and
without whose help he would have died from the ring curse, with no way
to deliver the Sword of Gryffindor to Harry or to inform him of the
need to sacrifice himself.

Nor would I consider Snape, who kept his cover at great cost to
himself, in the least incompetent. (You may consider his obeying
Dumbledore idiotic, but it's not as if he never questions or opposes
Dumbledore. He *chooses* to keep his own promise to do "anything" even
after DD fails to protect Lily (it is not, of course, DD's fault that
the Potters chose a different Secret Keeper and then changed without
telling him). I've already discussed the measures that Snape took or
may have taken to protect the students at Hogwarts during his year at
headmaster. It's true that he couldn't prevent some of the students
from being Crucio'd by the Carrows, but no student was killed (and I'm
pretty sure that his reposting Umbridge's ban on organizations was
intended to encourage the DA to reform in opposition to their supposed
DE headmaster). And, of course, the antagonism between Snape and
Harry, along with Snape's desire for his help and protection to remain
unknown, prevents him from helping Harry openly or Harry from
accepting his help (unless we count teaching him Expelliarmus and, via
the HBP, teaching him Muffliato and other spells, not to mention
reminding him of Snape's first lesson on Bezoars, which saves Ron's
life in HBP).

We do have a reason why Lupin doesn't help Harry in OoP or HBP; he's
spying on the werewolves. In DH, Harry declines his offer to help
them, believing (rightly, IMO) that Lupin's duty to his pregnant wife
and unborn child should come before anything else. McGonagall has her
duties as teacher, head of Gryffindor House, and deputy headmistress.
(Probably DD doesn't want her on the Horcrux hunt, however "sprightly"
she was until those four Stunning Spells forced her to use a walking
stick for awhile, because he needs her where she is. We see her once
dressed as a Muggle, which suggests that she acts as a spy in Muggle
London over the summer.)

Sirius Black has a very good reason for not helping Harry find the
Horcruxes; he's dead. So is the paranoid ex-Auror Mad-Eye Moody by the
time the Horcrux begins. And so, of course, is Dumbledore (who
nevertheless provides indirect aid via Snape and Snape's spy, portrait
Phineas). Tonks is newly pregnant with a half-werewolf child and in
danger himself from her wacko aunt. And Mrs. Figg is a Squib, for
crying out loud. Mr. Weasley quite reasonably helps Ron plan an alibi
for missing school, allowing him to go with Harry but not imposing his
own company on them. Mrs. Weasley tries, motherlike, to protect them
from danger. Everyone is accounted for in some way, and in no case is
idiocy the excuse.

And the thing is, Harry has Hermione's book knowledge and Ron's
loyalty (once he defeats his inner demons by destroying that Horcrux)
and his own scar connection to help him, as well as the knowledge of
Riddle!Voldemort imparted to him by Dumbledore. It's a shame that he
made the side trip to Godric's Hollow, but otherwise, he and his
friends did at least as well as any full-fledged adult would have
done. (I know that seventeen is considered an adult in the WW, but I
would have liked it better if they had finished their Hogwarts
education and embarked on Horcrux-hunting in Year eight.)

So, I really don't see your objection. He and his friends are not
entirely without adult help, Harry has been trained for the job, and,
thanks to Godric's Hollow, he is uniquely qualified for the task. The
absence of adults on the quest is accounted for.

Harry wouldn't even be involved if it weren't for Godric's Hollow
(even supposing that he survived an uninterrupted Voldie regime in
which Snape is a loyal DE and Lucius Malfoy has not disgraced himself
 and Bellatrix and the Lestrange brothers and Barty Jr. and Dolohov
and all the rest have never been arrested or restrained).

But imagine the series without Godric's Hollow. Voldemort wouldn't be
Vapor!mort, which means that he wouldn't be possessing Quirrell trying
to get at the Philosopher's Stone. There goes SS/PS. He would have
created the diary, but Lucius wouldn't have put it in Ginny's cauldron
against orders thinking that his master was dead, and even if LV
ordered him to do so, a scarless Harry without a soul-bit infested
scar would have been unable to open it and destroy the diary (not to
mention kill the Basilisk and make the Sword of Gryffindor into an
anti-Horcrux weapon). There goes CoS (and possibly Hogwarts, if the
Basilisk is at large and DD can't destroy him). Sirius Black wouldn't
have been arrested for supposedly killing those Muggles and Peter
wouldn't have been hiding as Scabbers and run off to rejoin Voldemort.
There goes PoA. Wormtail wouldn't have made Voldemort a fetal form and
Voldie wouldn't have plotted to kidnap Harry to use his blood in a
resurrection potion. There goes GoF. Voldie wouldn't have spent almost
a year trying to implant visions in scarless Harry's head to retrieve
the Prophecy orb because there would be no Prophecy Boy. There goes
OoP. Dumbledore would not be giving scarless Harry, who has no more
connection to Voldie than anyone else (and doesn't have an accidental
Horcrux in his head) special lessons on Voldemort, nor would DD have
been saved by Snape from the ring Horcrux, and even if he had survived
by not putting on the ring, he wouldn't have had Snape to kill him in
Draco's stead. There goes HBP. And, of course, DD wouldn't have willed
HRH three key objects and sent them on a Horcrux hunt and Hrry
wouldn't have had to sacrifice himself and save the survivors of the
battle from Voldie's magic as his mother did (no shared drop of blood,
etc.). There goes DH.

So, fine. Let's have a book of school adventures about a boy wizard
named Harry Potter who plays Quidditch and dislikes a teacher named
Snape and deals with a snob named Draco with bully henchmen who go by
their last names. We can even have Harry orphaned and raised by Muggle
relatives. Make it a Bildungsroman in which he learns not to judge
people (Luna, Neville, Snape, even Draco) based on appearances. Bring
in motifs like love, loyalty, courage, friendship, and prejudice. But,
without Godric's Hollow, the story as written--the specific adventures
that Harry embarks on and the central conflict with Voldemort--cease
to exist.

Or let's have a story of adults faced with the problem of a Dark
Wizard calling himself Voldemort, taking away the Prophecy and the
vaporization and the fourteen-year respite and the accidental survival
of the boy with the scar, who is now just an ordinary wizard kid who
may or may not be an orphan and is of no interest to this story about
adults. One of them will have to be a Parselmouth if the diary is to
be destroyed and the locket to be opened, and forget about the Sword
of Gryffindor as a Horcrux destroyer unless one of them does what
Harry does in CoS. Let them find a deadly poison whose only use
appears to be to destroy Horcruxes (surely it can't be a potion
ingredient available on the black market because it would destroy any
cauldron or container it was put in) or risk using uncontrollable
Fiend-Fyre (any idiot can cast the spell, as Crabbe proves, but any
idiot can also push a button that causes a nuclear holocaust). Might
make a great adventure/detective story if you take away the necessity
for Harry's presence and give the job of Chosen One to an adult.

Either way, the story that JKR might have written would be very
different from the series that we have, which requires Baby!Harry to
survive Godric's Hollow thanks to the Snape/Lily connection and his
mother's sacrifice; the particular powers, the unwitting gift of
Voldemort, that reside in Harry's scar; and the vaporization of Voldemort.

Carol, who thinks that JKR has quite successfully written a series
that requires Harry's involvement in the destruction of the Horcruxes
(especially the diary and the locket, which only he can open) and
Harry alone to face Voldemort in the end