'Clue to his vulnerability' (Coming to a conclusion )

[pippin_999]

> Carolyn:
> Well I don't. In fact, codswallop [I took your advice and opened a 
> bottle..Miss H on the rampage, you have been warned <g>].
> 
> There's nothing remarkable about Harry. Quite a lot of people/and
non 
> humans in the WW have been in touch with what laughably passes 
> for 'pure evil' (mostly incompetence, actually) and seem to emerge 
> relatively unscathed. Take Ginny, Dobby, Slughorn, Dumbledore, 
> Dudders, Mad-eye Moody, even Draco to some extent. 
> 
> And you've conveniently side-stepped my point. Harry doesn't always 
> do the right thing, and to a certain extent he does submit to 
> temptation on numerous occasions. As do numerous of the other 
> supposedly good characters in the story. And every adult reader is 
> fascinated by this, because that's what really happens. Things get 
> mucky, despite best intentions.
> 

Pippin:


Harry often errs, especially when he doesn't consider the consequences
of what he's doing. But he has never considered a moral consequence
and thought, "I don't care, I'm going to do it anyway" or  "Serve them
right" or "It  doesn't matter as long as it's not (fill in the blank) 
who gets hurt."

We *have* seen this behavior from other 'good guys', from Sirius and
Lupin especially, as well as from the twins and of course it's the
hallmark of the bad guys,  regardless of the reward they expect to
get from their  evil-doing. We certainly see it from Snape in his
treatment of Harry .

I think that's what Jo and Dumbledore are talking about--that despite 
being exposed to a great many models of this behavior, even in people 
he admires, Harry has never been tempted to imitate it.

 Harry's untarnished soul does not mean he  doesn't have the same
base instincts as the other characters. What it seems to mean is that 
he knows they are base when he bothers to think about it and then he 
has no difficulty rejecting them.

He's lashed out reflexively attempting to use the cruciatus curse,
but if I understand what Bella was saying, cruciatus can't be used
that way. You have to think about what you're doing to make it work, 
unlike sectum sempra.

Along with the fear expressed by some that Jo is going to
turn all insipid, sacharine and preachy is there a fear that 
she might  have something to say, in a non-preachy
unsacharine fashion, that will compel the invested reader to take
it seriously?

I wonder about that --I don't think her ideas coincide about the
soul or religion are going to coincide with mine at all, at all, and
I thoroughly expect to encounter some cognitive dissonance when 
Everything Is Explained.

Pippin