CHAPDISC: 34, The Forest Again.

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 185046

Kamion: 
> My model with 
> quote JKR: Harry really was war veterans, who have seen horrors and 
> are asked to  go home and rebuild, and go back to ordinary life and 
> care for a family, be a father - particularly be a father - [it is] a 
> difficult.
> 
> Nice Jo, when are you going to write THAT book? It could be very 
> interesting to read your version of that process, that hunderds of 
> fanwriters of variated plumage have touched in also so many 
> variations.

Pippin:
She *did* write that book. That's what the Marauder generation is all
about. It's part of the reason they had to die, IMO -- to show that
they had to live with the scars of war to the  end.

What JKR is talking about, IMO, is the decision Harry made  at King's
Cross, to live on knowing that by the time he defeated Voldemort (and
he couldn't know then how long that would take) he might be as damaged
as Sirius, Lupin or Snape. Of the three, only Lupin recovered
something like his former happiness -- and he didn't get to enjoy it
for long. 

Nineteen years later, JKR shows us a Harry who is reasonably happy
with his life, but if we want to know how he got there, we have to
look at Pettigrew, Snape and Sirius, each of whom remained frozen  in
a different stage of recovery: denial, bargaining or anger. Only Lupin
got to move on to acceptance from despair. 

One of the things JKR does with her world is remind us that we'd be
leaving more than decent dental care behind if we had to live in the
pseudo-medieval society so beloved of  heroic fantasy sagas. There
simply is no mental health counseling as we know it in the WW.

They don't even know that they need it. 

 In saying that Merope lacked courage, Dumbledore echoed the
common thinking of a century ago, when people who broke down after
traumatic events were accused of cowardice or bad faith. Sirius and
Snape make just those accusations to each other.

Pippin