MAGICkal elITE

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 186379

 
> Sartoris22:
 
> I think I catch the irony. Geoff, and I understand your point. But does anyone ever call Harry on what he does? Does anyone ever change his or her opinion about Harry because of what he does?

Pippin: 

Hermione calls Harry on his cheating, McGonagall calls him on the crucio, Snape calls Harry on his arrogance, Dumbledore calls him on his anger when it is unjust.

True,  Harry doesn't offend anyone he likes so badly that they never forgive him or refuse to trust him again.

 But a good person, in Rowling's universe, is supposed to trust and forgive. Lily, the good person who doesn't forgive, pays a terrible price for it.  So it's not Harry who's annoyingly perfect in that sense. It's everyone who likes Harry. :) Though Dumbledore, come to think of it, never trusted Harry in life as much as Harry thought.

Harry's values are good, like Superman's, but unlike Superman, Harry can't always be faithful to them. That's what Dumbledore was trying to say in his "right vs easy" speech, IMO. Voldemort doesn't have to corrupt people's values in order to spread enmity and discord. He just has to make it too hard for people to do what they know is right. 

The only answer to that, says Dumbledore, is for people to put their faith in friendship and trust. But Rowling does more than ask her characters to trust Harry again. She asks her readers to trust him as well.

There's never a time when Harry's got his mind right, as Ron would put it, when Harry thinks torturing people is okay. But there are times when rage and humiliation run away with Harry.  Ever since Voldemort tortured him in the graveyard, Harry has been capable of sadistic anger, of taking pleasure in having a target for those feelings. 

It wasn't that way before -- in the first four books, Harry never really wanted to hurt anyone, he just wanted to make them stop hurting him. But in OOP, Harry imagines how good it would feel to turn Dudley into something with feelers, he's not sorry for Ron and Hermione when he sees how Hedwig has hurt them, and so on.

Harry can't get over that, any more than Snape could. But Harry wasn't even aware that he'd changed. He didn't know what Bella was talking about when she said righteous anger wouldn't hurt her for long. It's only when he finally succeeds at the cruciatus curse that Harry understands the difference between righteous anger and sadism.

We are asked to trust that now that Harry knows the difference, he will try not to act sadistically, just as he wouldn't let himself fall apart with grief  once he knew he had a choice. We see that even though he was furious at Crabbe, Harry didn't want him to die like that. 

But who knows, he might get an uncontrollable urge to use crucio again, and, IMO, that's why he doesn't want to carry a wand that already knows how to do it. There is one person who changes his opinion about Harry because of what Harry does. Harry Potter.


Pippin