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crosspost: on Harry's gifts [Oct 2014]
An anon on Tumblr asked, in response to this post:
But was Harry gifted because he was gifted or did it seem he was gifted because he had a part of Voldemorts soul in him, transferring many of Voldys powers to him, which could include excelling at the Dark Arts
1) Does it matter? If Harry has a flair for Dark Arts because of Voldemort’s soul piece in him, he still has a flair for Dark Arts. Honestly, it sounds a lot like “but if you’re only good at reading because you and your parents worked hard at it, are you really good at reading or are you faking it?”
Which, again, is the sort of idea that HP actively opposes.
2) On the meta level, though, I would find it profoundly annoying if that glimmer of ambiguity was just the soul fragment, a sort of magical “the devil made me do it”.
Thankfully, the soul fragment doesn’t seem to work that way. Compare Harry’s use of Dark Arts to the skill we knowhe acquired from Voldemort: Parseltongue. Harry does not feel some compulsion to seek out snakes and start talking to them. He doesn’t even consider getting a pet snake so he can have a pet he can talk to (I would! and I’m afraid of them). But Harry starts throwing around curses and Unforgivables of his own volition. The moral ambiguity is his own.
3) JKR said that in OOTP (the book in which Harry resisted the Imperius and quasi-successfully cast the Cruciatus) we begin to see Harry’s gift for Defence Against the Dark Arts emerging. (It’s also the book where we see Harry not just casting what could be considered ‘battle magic,’ but effectively teaching it.) While I don’t feel that I or others are necessarily bound by the author’s intentions, it does tell us that she did not mean his flair for curses, jinxes, etc to come from the soul fragment.
(I suppose it’s theoretically possible that the tamer curses and resistance to things like the Imperius are his natural talent and the Dark ones are the soul fragment, but tbh that seems silly and unnecessarily complicated to me.)
4) Harry is good at other subjects, too, especially Charms. After the aggressive magic of DADA (or just Dark Arts), his most spectacular magic tends to be Charms—the Accio that impressed Flitwick, the Patronus at 13. If I’m remembering correctly, McGonagall thought his baseline at Charms was pretty much Exceeds Expectations already, while his Transfiguration work wasn’t quite there. Given that Harry habitually puts very little work into anything that doesn’t actively interest him, it gives us a good idea of where his talents lie. And with some effort he was able to pull Transfiguration and Potions up to the Charms level. (He found Potions fairly easy without Snape around, and easier still with superior instructions.)
So unless you’re suggesting that the entirety of Harry’s magical performance is down to the soul fragment, even things that don’t seem typical of Voldemort at all, it just doesn’t seem likely.
But was Harry gifted because he was gifted or did it seem he was gifted because he had a part of Voldemorts soul in him, transferring many of Voldys powers to him, which could include excelling at the Dark Arts
1) Does it matter? If Harry has a flair for Dark Arts because of Voldemort’s soul piece in him, he still has a flair for Dark Arts. Honestly, it sounds a lot like “but if you’re only good at reading because you and your parents worked hard at it, are you really good at reading or are you faking it?”
Which, again, is the sort of idea that HP actively opposes.
2) On the meta level, though, I would find it profoundly annoying if that glimmer of ambiguity was just the soul fragment, a sort of magical “the devil made me do it”.
Thankfully, the soul fragment doesn’t seem to work that way. Compare Harry’s use of Dark Arts to the skill we knowhe acquired from Voldemort: Parseltongue. Harry does not feel some compulsion to seek out snakes and start talking to them. He doesn’t even consider getting a pet snake so he can have a pet he can talk to (I would! and I’m afraid of them). But Harry starts throwing around curses and Unforgivables of his own volition. The moral ambiguity is his own.
3) JKR said that in OOTP (the book in which Harry resisted the Imperius and quasi-successfully cast the Cruciatus) we begin to see Harry’s gift for Defence Against the Dark Arts emerging. (It’s also the book where we see Harry not just casting what could be considered ‘battle magic,’ but effectively teaching it.) While I don’t feel that I or others are necessarily bound by the author’s intentions, it does tell us that she did not mean his flair for curses, jinxes, etc to come from the soul fragment.
(I suppose it’s theoretically possible that the tamer curses and resistance to things like the Imperius are his natural talent and the Dark ones are the soul fragment, but tbh that seems silly and unnecessarily complicated to me.)
4) Harry is good at other subjects, too, especially Charms. After the aggressive magic of DADA (or just Dark Arts), his most spectacular magic tends to be Charms—the Accio that impressed Flitwick, the Patronus at 13. If I’m remembering correctly, McGonagall thought his baseline at Charms was pretty much Exceeds Expectations already, while his Transfiguration work wasn’t quite there. Given that Harry habitually puts very little work into anything that doesn’t actively interest him, it gives us a good idea of where his talents lie. And with some effort he was able to pull Transfiguration and Potions up to the Charms level. (He found Potions fairly easy without Snape around, and easier still with superior instructions.)
So unless you’re suggesting that the entirety of Harry’s magical performance is down to the soul fragment, even things that don’t seem typical of Voldemort at all, it just doesn’t seem likely.