Duane: Harry was Right?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 189733

Alla wrote:
> 
> Maybe you are talking about the assumptions Harry makes when he does not have all the information Pippin, but that's surely not what I was responding to. I was responding to what I felt was very generalized argument about Harry being basically almost always wrong. Wrong about people, things, their behavior, etc. <snip>

Carol responds:

I snipped the part about being right or wrong about clues because we need red herrings and wrong interpretations for the mystery elements of the story to work. Also, Harry's being wrong about someone's guilt or innocence is paralleled by instances where most of Hogwarts is wrong about him (CoS, OoP) and the entire WW is wrong about Sirius Black (who is himself wrong about his own brother). Wrong interpretations and wrong judgments are a major motif in these books, and saying that Harry, too, can be wrong (and often is) is not a criticism. It merely indicates that despite being the Chosen One, he's as human as everyone else.

Harry's judgments of his teachers and other adults don't tell us much. (I'll leave his view of Dumbledore to you. <smile>)  He is wrong throughout the entire series about Snape--not Snape's intense dislike of him but Snape's loyalties and motivations--but that's necessary to the plot (as are most of his misjudgments of adults). He is wrong in SS/PS about Quirrell (whom he thinks is being bullied by Snape); he is rght to some extent about Lockhart (but doesn't realize that he's actually dangerous); he is wrong (along with the whole WW) about Sirius Black); he is wrong--very wrong--about "Professor Moody" (but, again, so is everyone else). He is right about Umbridge--but he saw her vote to expel him from Hogwarts and she's telling the school that Voldemort hasn't returned, so it isn't hard to see that she's a bad apple even before she gives him his cruel detentions. (In HBP and DH there's only Snape to misjudge. Harry's errors are of a different sort that isn't relevant here.) What we see with regard to his teachers is that Harry for the most part judges them by their treatment of him and by appearances. If they're nice to him, they're good guys even if they're incompetent egomaniacs (Lockhart) or cheaters and bullies ("Moody"); if they're mean to him, they're bad guys (Snape, Umbridge). Harry should have seen through Crouch-Moody (a good person does not turn students, even those they dislike, into ferrets and bounce them on the pavement and only a person with an ulterior motive would help a student cheat in a tournament), but the other judgments, right or wrong, are understandable and merely show that he's human. What teenager doesn't judge his teachers in more or less the same way?

I think it's Harry's judgments of his contemporaries (and the childlike Hagrid) that are important because they show his growth as a character. True, he starts off with pretty accurate judgments of Draco, Ron, Hermione, Hagrid, etc. (Even when he thinks that Hagrid let the monster loose in CoS, he doesn't think that Hagrid did it on purpose.) But he's wrong about Neville and Luna, judging them by appearances. Neville is just a weak little fat boy; Luna is just odd. Only after they fight with him in the Department of Mysteries can he see their worth. (Ginny, too, is just Ron's little sister until that point.)

The ultimate example of judging by appearances is Grawp, who must be brutal and unteachable because he's a giant. (Oddly, Hagrid is right in this instance, but he's dead wrong about the Acromantulas!) Kreacher, too, is not what Harry thinks he is. Nor is Sirius's brother, Regulus, the first example of a reformed Death Eater/good Slytherin.

Although all these instances, especially his reevaluation of Luna and Neville, are necessary to Harry's growth and development, teaching him that people (and other beings) are not always what they seem, it's not until he sees Snape's memories in the Pensieve that he permanently learns this lesson, IMO. It's too late for Snape, of course, but it's not too late for Harry, who shows that he has learned to value Snape's courage (and love for Harry's mother) by naming his second son Albus Severus. (Of course, the name also shows that he values and forgives the flawed Dumbledore, but I don't want to discuss DD here.)

Carol, who thinks that the best indicator of Harry's maturity at the end of the books is his attitude toward Snape and his willingness to give Slytherin House a chance to show its good side