CHAPDISC: PS/SS 1, The Boy Who Lived and Avatar SPOILERS LONG

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 187732


> Alla:
> 
>  So the choice is either Dursleys or Kings Cross? I just do not think so. But I had been through choices in the past and really do not want to recite them again. 

Pippin:
That is the choice, yes. Harry alive and miserable, or happy and dead. We don't meet anyone in the books who believes they can stop Voldemort from killing Harry any other way. 

Dumbledore does say in OOP that it was the only way he could keep Harry alive. And why should he be sorry about that? He's not God -- it's not his fault that there aren't any better choices. He didn't make  Petunia so bitter or  Sirius Black so rash. Hagrid told Sirius where he taking Harry and there was nothing stopping Sirius from going along with them, except his own poor judgment.

The "pampered prince"  is just the one silver lining Dumbledore could find in a very dark cloud. Remember, Dumbledore himself was a pampered prince. Everyone deferred to his brilliance and his talent. As a child his only responsibility was to develop them. Lovely, except that when he found out that real responsibilities meant hardship and discipline and sacrifice, he wasn't fit for them. That was the tragedy of his life. Can you blame him for being relieved that Harry escaped it?

> Alla:
> 
> Yes I can if the guardrail causes the person who may or may not approach it pain and sufferings.
> 

Pippin:
Running into the guardrail is usually not painless. But it's better than falling over the cliff. 

Alla:
> Voldemort says that he and his DE cannot penetrate the protection? That's nice, really. However, I also see that a wizard approaches Harry quite freely when he is with Petunia of all people. She is the very person in whom Harry's mother blood dwells, isn't she?

> So, how the heck I am supposed to believe that DE cannot approach Harry if this guy can?

Pippin:
Wizards  approach Petunia. Wizards, owls and a house-elf enter Privet Drive, they destroy part of the house, they  place enchantments on  Dudley, and even on Harry himself.   But none of them meant any harm to Harry. 

So how am I supposed to believe that any DE could have managed it, when Voldemort says so clearly that he himself could not?
 
The DE's do know where Harry is -- that's clear in DH -- but they can't get close to the house as long as the enchantment lasts. If there was any chance of their getting in, wouldn't the Order have had someone posted there 24/7? They do have such a guard in OOP, but it's not Voldemort they worried about -- it's the Ministry.

The Order is perfectly sure that Harry is safe from the DE's until the enchantment expires. If Mad-eye can't find a weak spot, it's pretty obvious there isn't one. 
 

I have no comment on the Avatar series, except to say that it put me to sleep, but comparing what the readers know to what the characters know in a work of fiction is apples and oranges. 

Look at LOTR. Could the people of Middle Earth have united and driven Sauron out of Mordor without using the Ring? Possibly. They didn't try, so I can't know But it's clear to me why the characters wouldn't think it was  feasible. 

As in LOTR, the people of the wizarding world are too isolated and mistrustful of one another to unite effectively  unless something happens to drastically weaken their foe. 

I can say that Tolkien should have shown me someone who tried and failed, but that would be a different story. That would be a story where Frodo wondered whether destroying the Ring was really necessary to defeat Sauron, and Frodo is not ever in any doubt about that, only about whether he is the one to do it. 

Harry is never in any doubt that the protection at Privet Drive was necessary, so I don't see why we should be. Someone mentioned child soldiers -- but it isn't Dumbledore who makes war on children. It's Voldemort. Privet Drive is the one place where Harry doesn't have to be a child soldier, because it's the one place the DE's can't attack as long as the protection last.

Alla:
> I get what JKR was trying to do with blood protection, and really if either Dursleys were better people, OR if I thought that what Harry underwent through at Dursleys, thing  like prodding and pinching, Dursley' hunting, trying to duck from Vernon hands and Petunia's pan, starvation, which I consider pure physical abuse, if I thought that these things could be just brushed aside, forget about absence of love, then I would have went easy on JKR with how convincing I wanted blood protection to be.

Pippin:
But the whole point is that the Dursleys were not better people and they did harm Harry, just like the whole point of Gollum is that he's treacherous and he did harm Frodo. And yet, just as Frodo could not have survived without Gollum, Harry could not have survived without the Dursleys. 

Pippin