Suspension of disbelief -Idiots of War

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 182452

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "sistermagpie" 
> Though of course, I think what Betsy is questioning is why this is 
> all anybody thought they could manage. It's not unbelievable, for 
> instance, that Harry and his friends slip out of the DE's grasp for 
> months.

Pippin:
It was what they thought they could manage without provoking massive
retaliation against innocent people, IMO. Umbridge was at least
concerned to find the guilty parties. But Voldemort wouldn't have
cared -- he'd happily execute innocent people as a warning to the
others. History shows this method of deterrence is quite effective if
you have the stomach for it. 

Besides that, if you get 90% of your work done in a bombed-out office,
you're a hero. But nobody's going to want to tell his superiors that
wand confiscations are down 10% because of some stupid practical joke.
You'd keep your head down, bury the bad news in bureaucratic
obfuscation, and hope that the pranksters pick on somebody else next
week. So now not only is work not getting done, the bosses don't know
about it. Downside, neither does anyone else. But the idea is to
hinder the enemy, not to do stuff just to make it look like your doing
something, right?

> 
> Magpie:
 Harry had very  smooth sailing around all those kinds of potentially
more humiliating and humbling conflicts and challenges. The book
wasn't ever going  there, it turned out.

Pippin:
Harry did have to humble himself to someone who hated him. He had to
surrender to Voldemort, who abused his body and displayed it to
Harry's grieving friends. 

It's true we don't see Harry ever choosing to humble himself to
someone *he* hated. But why should he? Why shouldn't canon say that
you don't have to choose to humble yourself to someone you hate,
because if you have the choice not to humble yourself, you have the
choice not to hate also?

Betsy Hp:
This is part of the reason I don't see
this series as a coming of age tale. Harry remains Dumbledore's good
little baby boy: obedient even unto death. And that's how he wins.

(Huh... A sign of Tom's evilness was his independence... I think
there's something there, actually. Perhaps JKR is saying we
*shouldn't* grow up?) 

Pippin:
Put down your coffee, I sort of agree with you. JKR doesn't see coming
of age as achieving independence, IMO. You come of age in canon when
you cease to focus on independence and start to see that we are all,
like it or not, deeply dependent on one another. Harry was not
Dumbledore's man because he depended on Dumbledore. He was
Dumbledore's man (and I think after King's Cross he would continue to
say so)  because Dumbledore could depend on him.

Pippin