Coolness // Portraits

[montavilla47]

No: HPFGUIDX 182818

> > Montavilla47:
> > 
> > I agree with you, Catlady, but I must say that I felt the sermonette got
> > watered down because it was Romilda judging Luna and Neville as 
> > uncool, and Romilda seemed to have absolutely no "cool" cred.
> > 
> > As I recall, she was in second or third year, unattractive, and annoying.
> > Unless we were supposed to see Luna and Neville as such hopeless
> > losers* that kids three or fourth years younger could look
> > down on them, I don't see that there was any reason for Harry to 
> > ditch them, even if they hadn't fought in the MoM.
> 
> Pippin:
> The point is not that Harry is so noble that he won't ditch his uncool friends in order to 
> hang with cooler strangers. The point is that Harry has changed his idea of what's cool 
> *and* no longer cares whether Neville and Luna are supposed to be cool, although he 
> thinks they are.
> 
> Romilda, a fourth year, points up the immaturity of Harry's previous behavior -- it was, 
of 
> course, vain.
> 
> Pippin
> thinking that vanity is a major theme of HBP, and that Romilda was indeed vain and silly 
> not to recognize that Neville and Luna were cool even by her unenlightened standards.
>

Montavilla47 (again):
Yes, I get that, but I think the message would have been stronger had
the person urging Harry to ditch his "uncool" friends had actually
been someone Harry would have thought in a million years *was*
cool, rather than someone in his house that Harry had never noticed
before.

I don't know who that "cool" person might have been, since there's 
nobody left in the upper years that Harry admires after the twins 
have left and he's broken up with Cho.  That moment in OotP, when 
Harry is embarrassed to be with Neville and Luna seemed based on 
Harry's specific crush on Cho rather than a general discomfort at 
being with either Neville or Luna.

Harry always seemed suspicious of people who were attracted to
popular people--and there's no student he really looks up to in
the whole series.  So, the whole concept of "cool" was something
he seemed to dismiss and distrust.

It's a little like that moment when Ron has supposedly changed 
his views on elf-slavery and yet he's essentially taking the 
same attitude he's had all along:  that elves should be respected
and allowed to make their own decisions, even if that decision
is to clean up after humans.

Likewise, Harry sits with the same people he sat with a year 
earlier.  Had Romilda Vane come up to him that year earlier
and offered to have him sit with her friends, he probably would
have still dismissed her, just as he did with Colin Creevey in
CoS.

In other words, it doesn't seem to me that Harry's views of
"coolness" have changed.  He would *never* have found
Romilda's obvious interest in him to be cool.  

Montavilla47