Redeeming Hagrid was Rewriting OotP

[psychic_serpent]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> 
wrote:
> When Harry demands an accounting for Snape's memory, it's 
> *James's* motives and history he's concerned with, even though 
> Sirius was there too. At the very end, Harry sorrows for the 
> question about *James* he never got to ask, even though 
> Sirius's past is just as much a mystery.
> 
>  This, IMO is why when Harry and Sirius are together for any 
> length of time their connection fades instead of deepening. It's 
> why Harry not only doesn't use the Mirror, but isn't even tempted 
> by it. The real Sirius isn't as satisfying as the imagined one 
> because the real Sirius isn't, and never could be, James. If 
> Sirius had lived I don't know if either  of them could have  
> escaped the shadow of James and forged a relationship in which 
> they were valued for themselves alone.

Yes!  Neither one was seeing the other person for who he really 
was.  And neither was satisfied with the other person--Sirius 
thought that Harry wasn't enough like James, and Harry wasn't 
satisfied with Sirius, either, although I think it was because he 
wasn't literally his father, not because he necessarily wanted him 
to be like the prat he saw in the Pensieve.  The fact that he 
wondered why his mother ever married his father was a clear 
indication that he was getting 'over' James, and perhaps the idea of 
finding a substitute father in general.  

As you say below, the solution is for him to become his own father, 
which is reminiscent of that line in Wordsworth's "My heart leaps 
up"--The child is father of the man.  So perhaps PoA was strangely 
prophetic during the episode when Harry mistook himself for James.  
After reading OotP, I'm finding many things in the earlier books 
(especially the first one) to be possible indications of 
foreshadowing, even though certain episodes previously did not come 
across that way at all.

> IMHO, in the end Harry will realize he can replace his father only 
> as he did in PoA; by taking his father's place.  Harry must do the 
> things his father failed to do:  accord with Snape,  expose the 
> secret traitor and finally save his beloved from 
> Voldemort.(SHIPping Note: this is why I don't see H/H as a long 
> term possibility. It would be a waste of Hermione's heroic 
> potential for her to need Harry to rescue her from Lord V.)
 
Well, I'm not sure he needs to find accord with Snape as much as 
Snape needs to stop visiting the sins of the father on the son.  If 
he hadn't done that to begin with, they probably wouldn't have the 
adversarial relationship that they do.  Harry has been responding to 
Snape's patent unfairness all along.  He's lived with that all of 
his live, at the Dursleys, and perhaps he thought he could escape it 
at Hogwarts.  Just as Sirius needed to see that Harry wasn't James, 
Snape needs to see that as well.  I don't really see that as Harry's 
problem but Snape's.  

Now, I would have thought exposing the secret traitor would have 
been a priority before OotP, but that's when the purpose of that 
would seem to have been to clear Sirius.  As that is no longer a 
concern (although he could be cleared posthumously, I suppose), 
Peter must serve some other purpose.  (I thought it was weird that 
he was nowhere to be seen in OotP.)  It seemed that Dumbledore 
telling Harry that Peter is indebted to him was a clear 
foreshadowing of Peter turning on Voldemort and doing something to 
benefit the good guys.  Does NO ONE else see Peter redeeming 
himself?  Probably only just before buying the farm, yeah, but 
still. ;)

I also don't see Harry rescuing a damsel-in-distress from Voldemort 
as part of the climactic conclusion (pun intended <eg>) to the 
series.  I sort of think he's already been there and done that in 
CoS.  At that stage, Ginny was young enough to be truly helpless.  
At this point in the series, none of the possible female candidates 
for Harry-counterparts are really frail and helpless enough for this 
to ring true.  The damsels have all grown up and are forces to be 
reckoned with in their own right.

--Barb