Harry's DADA skill was Re: Albus and Gellert/Voldemort's Power

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182656

-Carol earlier:
> > > > Well, there's that Patronus, the one spell he's better at than
Hermione, but he had lots of help and the advantage of training on a
Boggart!Dementor. whatever Harry's natural gift for casting this
spell, no one else has the advantage of special training at age
thirteen from a competent DADA teacher <snip> and no one else has the
advantage of a Dementor Boggart to practice on. It's one thing to cast
the spell in the DA headquarters, where it's just fun; it's another to
be able to cast it against a real Dementor. Harry had the opportunity
to overcome his fear of a fake Dementor before facing a real one. 
> 
Beatrice responded: 
1st: Fear of a fake Dementor?  It seemed to me that even the boggart
was able to produce the same effect as a real dementor as evidenced by
Harry's experience in Lupin's office - he hears his mother's death,
passes out and has to be revived with chocolate. <snip>

Carol responds:
Which is exactly my point. Harry's Boggart, shared by no other person
we know of, allows him to practice (safely) on a highly effective
substitute Dementor. No one else has that advantage. All they can do
is cast learn to cast a Patronus in the RoR, where it's easy to find
and concentrate on a happy memory. It's another matter altogether when
a Dementor (whether real or a highly realistic Boggart substitute) is
sucking out the very happiness that's required to conjure the
Patronus. The Boggart, scary as it is, can't *really* suck out his
happiness, much less his soul, any more than Boggart!Snape can really
take points from Neville or a Boggart mummy can really do whatever
mummies do. So Harry, under the supervision of Lupin (who, as you say,
is armed with chocolate and who can send the Boggart back to its case
with a flick of his wand) can practice dealing with what seems to be a
real Dementor and overcoming that fear. And even he, of course, has
trouble when he's faced for the first time with a real Dementor. Lucky
that he sees his future self casting a corporeal Patronus, lucky that
the future self is far away from the Dementors and not in danger, and
lucky that he's had that Boggart!Dementor to practice on, an advantage
that none of the other students have. (Hermione might well have been
able to cast a corporeal Patronus at thirteen or fourteen had she
practiced, but I don't think she could have used it against a Dementor
because her Boggart does not provide a workable substitute. (Harrry
says as much in OoP, wishing that they had a Boggart to practice
on--as if the Boggart would stay in Dementor form and not try to shift
as it does in PoA. And Parvati, IIRC, says something like, "Oh, no!
That would be scary!" Of course it would, Parvati. That's the point.)

Beatrice:
> Lots of help?  Well, sure what student doesn't have lots of help?  

Carol responds:
Does any student other than Harry actually receive private lessons? (I
suppose we could count Snape's putting Crabbe and Goyle in detention,
ostensibly to help them pass their DADA OWLs this time around, but I
can't recall any other examples.) And sure, Karkaroff and Madame
Maxime did a fair bit of cheating (erm, pardon the word "fair"!) to
help their students in the TWT, but no other Hogwarts student receives
help resembling what Harry receives from Lupin. Harry could not have
won the TWT without help from Fake!Moody, Death Eater or no. But maybe
that's not what you're talking about here. I can't tell.

> Beatrice:  You are right he wasn't facing even one Dementor.  He was 
> facing a hundred Dementors and his life, the life of his best
friends and the life of the only "family" member he had ever known and
just met was in terrible danger and yet he was able to find a "happy" 
> moment even in his life filled with unhappiness.  And here is ONE of 
> the things that makes Harry extraordinary: despite the tragic loss of 
> his parents; his miserable, abusive childhood; the horrors he has 
> witnessed in the WWW; and  the way he is objectified by the majority 
> of the WWW he is still able to find happiness and to hold on to it in 
> moments of utter despair.  

Carol responds:
That's true, but I don't see how it relates to my point, which is that
Time-Turned!Harry could not have cast the Patronus that saved Harry,
Sirius, and Hermione if he hadn't had those lessons from Lupin using a
Boggart!Dementor. I'm not in any way disparaging Harry's courage nor
am I saying anything at all about his abusive childhood. However, as
Lupin explains, the whole reason that Dementors affect Harry more than
anyone else is that he has "horrors" in his past that they don't
share. Those horrors (and his fear of fear, if Lupin is right) also
give him the Dementor!Boggart. That Boggart gives him an advantage
over those who fear more mundane things (spiders, for example) when it
comes to learning to cast a Patronus against a Dementor, which is very
different from making a pretty silver animal come out of your wand in
the RoR. 

Beatrice:
> Okay - but they master it under Harry's instruction, with NO
dementor or even a fake Dementor present (which makes it much less
impressive) AND in DH they face the Dementors together - not own their
own.  And not with Harry's past which Lupin tells us in PoA is why he
reacts so strongly to the dementors. <snip>

Carol responds:
They learn how to cast a corporeal Patronus, but they don't experience
the fear that Harry feels when he's learning to cast one. *They* don't
relive their worst experiences (or require chocolate :-) ); they're
just learning a cool new spell. Seamus, Neville, and Luna don't face
real Dementors until DH, when most of them are in seventh year (Luna
is in sixth), and even Hermione, now eighteen years old and a highly
gifted witch, can't sustain her Patronus. Harry, with the advantage of
special training involving a Boggart Dementor, and the dubious
advantage of having faced a hundred Dementors and then saved himself
by casting one from a distance, and the dubious advantage of having
faced two more Dementors in OoP, can (usually) sustain a Patronus. But
put any of those other DA members, say Cho or Seamus or Ron or
Hermione, in an alley facing two Dementors with no help and I don't
think that they would come away with their sould intact. (Luna might;
she has reserves of courage and optimism that make her different from
everyone; and Neville might, given his fierce courage and determination.) 

Carol, who is simply saying what Harry has said himself, both in
regard to Patronuses and to his own powers