crosspost: my most popular meta! [Sep 2014]

[anghraine]

...somehow. I wrote it as a grumpy middle of the night rant, a bnf friend reblogged it, even more bnf-ish bnfs reblogged it from her, and by the point MuggleNet reblogged it I was just o_O.

Still stand by it, though.

friendly reminder that Harry Potter

1. at eleven, was described by his teachers as bright
2. at the same age, according to the Sorting Hat: “Not a bad mind, either. There’s talent, oh my goodness, yes” and “You could be great, you know, it’s all here in your head”
3. mastered the challenging Patronus Charm at thirteen and proceeded to teach it at fifteen
4. resisted the Imperius Curse at fourteen and soon learned to throw it off completely, even when cast by the incredibly powerful Voldemort
5. also at fourteen, learned to cast a powerful Accio Charm
6. at fifteen, was training other students
7. at the same age, under extreme stress, tested as 'exceeds expectations’ or 'outstanding’ in every subject that required actual magic (including the dreaded Potions)
8. same age, cast a briefly effective Cruciatus Curse
9. at sixteen, became a star Potions student simply by following superior instructions
10. at seventeen, successfully cast the Imperius Curse on his first try, and used it repeatedly
11. at the same age, cast a successful Cruciatus Curse

This is important??

It’s not that Harry learns some useful spells. He is naturally good at Dark Arts. (And he’s pretty good at everything else, esp Charms.) Not just defending from them. Flat out Dark Arts. Like Voldemort, like Snape. Harry is perfectly capable of becoming a terrifying Dark Wizard. There are times that he seems alarmingly near that point. But he chooses not to.

And I think a lot of the “the special thing about Harry is that he’s not really gifted at anything! he just has LOVE!” overlooks that? Harry’s ability to love, to accept love, to understand others’ love for the people in their own lives, is incredibly important, yes. But it’s not because he’s an incorruptibly pure hero with an unprecedented fountain of love in his heart. It’s because, in the end, he chooses friendship and family, and not just his own. He understands it. He deliberately exchanges his life for the people of Hogwarts. He recognizes what’s going on in Narcissa Malfoy’s head when she asks about Draco and seizes his opportunity. He leaves friends willing to fight with him and for him, as he would for them.

But this is not an inevitability. Little eleven-year-old Harry who pored over his new books and wanted to learn curses for Dudley and longed to prove himself could have turned out very differently. He could have gone after greatness and power; he has that potential in him, as the Hat saw. There are certainly times he’s tempted. The point is that he chose another way: unlike Voldemort, who only valued power, and unlike Snape, who only managed to honour Lily’s friendship after she was already dead. Harry acted selflessly for the people he loved, even in the abstract (“Hogwarts”), here and now–not merely as an outgrowth of a better nature but as a terrible moment of choice.

tl;dr - Harry is a talented wizard by any metric and could have gone after ULTIMATE POWER MUAHAHAHA had he chosen it. Characterizing him as 'mediocre magically but innately pure and loving’ in opposition to Voldemort and Snape is weirdly essentialist–especially considering that the series explicitly parallels the three of them and active choices overriding inherent ability/nature is pretty much the central theme of the books.