Hmmm. What's your favorite *now*?

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 183081

Magpie wrote:
> <snip>
> Within this universe Harry is one of these most special people ever,
hands down. He's never just been ordinary. He doesn't relate to that
particular perspective of Ron's. He is defininitely not ordinary from
 a Muggle or a Wizard perspective. (And the book opens with Wizards 
discussing just that.) That these things sometimes lead to bad things
for Harry is not the same as them making Harry ordinary. He still 
retains aspects of his personality that are like any other boy/man, 
of course. There's plenty of ways where he is unexceptional and 
mediocre. It depends on what you're talking about. But in the 
beginning of PS we're told he's somehow special, then wait while he
finds it out. <snip>

> As an adult he seems pretty uninteresting (though if you listen to 
interviews his career is extraordinary). He's certainly ordinary 
enough that we can empathize with him, but in the context of the 
opening chapters, I stand by him not being ordinary and the extended
run from the letters being too long.

Carol responds:
Harry's *fate* and *destiny* are not ordinary, nor are the unique
events that led to his becoming the Chosen One. But none of that has
to do with Harry himself; it's more what happened to him. Thanks to a
series of events--Snape's eavesdropping, his revelation of the partial
Prophecy, Voldemort's decision to go after Harry, Snape's request to
save Lily, Wormtail's breach of the Fidelius charm, Voldemort's offer
to let Lily live, Lily's sacrifice, Voldemort's attempt to kill Harry
after the love magic activated--Harry is suddenly famous, having done
nothing except survive through no effort of his own. He's "famous
before he can walk and talk" for something he didn't even do. To
himself, however, he's just a skinny orphan with a scar on his
forehead who sleeps in a cupboard under the stairs. Once he gets to
the WW, he's a celebrity, not because *he* is extraordinary but
because something extraordinary happened to him--and to Voldemort
(though Harry did not defeat LV; he defeated himself by attempting to
kill the magically protected Harry).

Sure, Harry has a soul bit in his forehead, but all it does is enable
him to speak to snakes, feel pain when Voldemort is near or feeling
strong emotions, and, later, see into Voldemort's mind. Handy powers
if you're going to fight Voldemort, and highly unusual, but that's as
far as "extraordinary" goes. I'm by no means undervaluing his willing
self-sacrifice in DH, which is by far my favorite Harry moment, but
you don't have to be magical or have a soul bit in your head to
sacrifice yourself.

At any rate, the WW's view of him as "special" is a bit exaggerated
(on *their* part, I mean). No one knows that Harry is the Chosen One;
they only know that he survived an AK that backfired. DEs wonder
whether it's because Harry himself if a powerful Dark Wizard, but,
nope. It's his *mother's* self-sacrifice made under highly unusual
circumstances (a chance to  live, a choice to die) that saved him.
Harry himself was an ordinary Wizard baby of fifteen months and, had
it not been for Voldemort's promise to Snape and Lily refusal of LV's
offer to let her live if she'd only step aside and let him kill Harry,
Harry would be dead.

Fame for something you didn't even do, something that *happened* to
you, is not the same thing as being extraordinary.

Carol, who was a great deal more disturbed by the celebrations after
the Potters' deaths than by the letters that Harry couldn't catch