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

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182685

Potioncat wrote:
> The point I'm making, and I think Carol as well, is that no other 
student gets the opportunity to face a Boggart/Dementor to practice 
on. So while they learn the spell under good circumstances, they 
aren't strong enough to cast it under the real situation. We don't 
know how they might have done under that stressful, but safe  situation. 
> 
> Even with the special training, Harry also had the rare situation of
seeing himself cast it before he did it. Not taking anything away from
Harry, just saying the situation was quite unusual.

Carol responds:

Right. Of course, when Harry faces a hundred Dementors at once, not
even Lupin's lessons with a Boggart!Dementor are sufficient
preparation. But they do enable TT!Harry to cast a corporeal Patronus
from a distance and scatter those same Dementors. I don't think he
could have done that if he'd only practiced the incantation and
mastered the spell. The hard part is not casting the corporeal
Patronus, as we see in the RoR, lots of wizard kids can do it. The
hard part is using it against real Dementors. That's where practicing
against a realistic Dementor substitute helps Harry.

Could the kids he taught in the RoR have fought off two Dementors in
an alley? I don't think so, not because they're weaker or less gifted
than Harry (Hermione is a very gifted young witch) but because, unlike
him, they haven't had the opportunity to train with a realistic
Dementor substitute that sucks out the happiness needed to conjure the
Patronus.

I'm not disparaging Harry. I'm just saying that it's lucky for him he
had that Dementor!Boggart, or he would probably have had his soul
sucked in PoA. Unless, of course, the caster of the doe Patronus woke
up in time to save him. <wink>
>
> > Alla:
> > My objection is to denying what Harry achieved, when his Es
somehow  do not mean much, when his Patronus does not mean much, etc, etc.
> 
> Potioncat:
> But Harry achieved a lot! No one is arguing that.
>
Carol:

Exactly. No one, including me, is saying that Harry's Patronus
"doesn't mean much," only that his training with a Boggart Dementor
prepared him to face real Dementors more effectively than learning to
cast them in the RoR prepared his friends, as Harry says himself,
because he knows what it feels like to have his happiness sucked out
and knows that he can cast the spell in spite of that.

As for his E's not meaning much, that isn't what I said, or at least
isn't what I meant. My question is how either he or Ron could learn
anything other than spell-casting and practical potion-making with
Hermione doing their homework for them. Can a student really learn
from copying another student's essay? I don't think so, and if they'd
been caught doing that in a Muggle school, all three of them would
have suffered serious consequences.

I think that Harry has above-average intelligence and a reasonable
amount of magical talent, exceptional Quidditch skills, great courage,
the ability to think on his feet (in contrast to the panic-prone
Hermione), loyal friends, and a lot of luck. And, of course, he has
"the power that the Dark Lord knows not" (love, or rather, the ability
to love despite the hardships he's undergone, as DD says in HBP) and
the powers that Voldemort has inadvertently given him, Parseltongue
and the scar connection, which make him a formidable enemy to
Voldemort from an early age.

Harry tells Hermione in DH that it was his wand acting on its own, not
his own exceptional powers, that caused the wand to fire at Voldemort.
He tells Dumbledore that he doesn't have "uncommon skill and power,"
to which DD replies that he can love (509) and that LV doesn't
understand "the incomparable power of a soul that is untarnished and
pure" (511). He tells Ron and Hermione in OoP that all the things he's
done are the result of luck: "I didn't get through any of that because
I ws brilliant at Defense Against the Dark Arts. I got through it all
because--because help came at the right time, or because I guessed
right" (OoP am. ed. 527). And in DH, after Harry says that Ron saved
his life, retrieved the Sword of Gryffindor, and destroyed the
Horcrux, Ron says, "That makes me sound a lot cooler than I was," to
which Harry replies, "Stuff like that always sounds cooler than it
really was. "I've been trying to tell you that for years" (379). 

Harry's powers don't even register in the boat in the cave. He has
nowhere near Dumbledore's (or Voldemort's) knowledge and power. And
yet Voldemort can't possess him because the "power that Voldemort
knows not" is the strongest of all. And Harry defeats Voldemort, not
through power and skill, but through self-sacrifice.

I think we should listen to Harry, and to Dumbledore. Harry, despite
certain unusual gifts and powers, is the archetypal ordinary person
(by wizarding standards) who triumphs against great evil through
selflessness and courage and friends and luck. And that is an
admirable accomplishment.

Carol, who thinks that Harry's triumph is all the more remarkable
because it doesn't involve the flashy magic that his friends expected
him to learn in HBP