The Sorting Hat told Harry he would do great in Slytherin. The Sorting Hat must have had something specific in mind it considered great for Harry. What do you think would have been great for Harry because while being an Auror does seems like an important job , it is not very high on Wizarding Hierarchy and Aurors are just sort of cops of Wizarding World , and we are talking about a guy who defeated Voldemort even mostly by stroke of luck but still we are talking about Saviour of Wizarding world.

Did Harry become an Auror because it was easiest thing to do and everyone expected him to become an Auror after defeating Voldemort so he could continue catching Dark Wizards and keep all of them safe?

Do you believe canon Harry really reached his potential or greatness in canon? Do you believe canon Harry under performed than his supposed greatness? Is being an Auror that Sorting Hat considered great for Harry?

 

I think the sorting hat picks up where Olivander left of, and that is that Harry has a duality in him.
Harry and Voldemort have remarkably similar upbringings but we are repeatedly told throughout the story that it's the choices we make that makes us who we are.

Harry choosing to to be sorted into Gryffindor should be seen in this light, he choose to be with friendly people rather then "achieve greatness" or whatever it was the hat said. Basically, if Harry chose Slytherin, he would have been a person very much like Tom Riddle 2.0.
The greatness the hat meant was, in my opinion, for Harry to become another dark lord.

 

Plot?

No, Harry didn't live up to any potential he may have had for several reasons, but the most important is that's not the moral of the story.

I think Harry should've been a professor, but I also think you're downplaying Aurors, their skills, and what type of career being a successful one can have.

 

At its core, this question is very silly. It's taking a one-off line that was (almost certainly intentionally) incredibly vague, and running to pretty specific conclusions just to start.

Because the answer really all comes down to how you define "greatness". If you mean it as "Uber kick-ass muscle wizard of badassery", then no, obviously not. But if you mean it as "a good man who inspires loyalty and respect", then he very much did.

And it gets even more silly when you stop to think about it, because at the end of the day, Harry Potter was one of, if not the, most impactful and influential single persons in the history of the British Wizarding World. His actions before he'd even graduated shaped everyday life for multiple generations, and he only had more to contribute afterwards.

Could Harry have been better with a wand? Absolutely. But that's like the least relevant aspect of his character, and the fixation on it is all kinds of silly.

Also, the Sorting Hat only said that shit about Slytherin to push Harry to make a choice, as ultimately, by its own admission, its whole job is to place kids where they want to go, even if they don't know it yet. That's not to say Slytherin would have necessarily been bad for Harry (though admittedly, the series' core themes would not survive it), as ambition and drive are necessary for one to achieve much of anything, but that whole rigmarole was all about getting Harry to make a choice, and reveal who he was in the process.

 

I believe canon Harry did fulfill his potential for greatness. He defeated the most terrible Dark Lord of modern era before even completing his education. He went on to be an Auror and a very successful one. He had a family. He became a good, respectable and admired member of the Wizarding community.

Dumbledore and Voldemort were prodigies. But what in canon leads readers to assume that a grown up Harry would be magically inferior to either. Harry consistently performed remarkable feats through out his school years. Between highest OWL and NEWT scores, and being at the right place at the right time and make right choices, the later is a better mark of greatness. If the measure of greatness was the number of Os then Hermione would have been the protagonist.

What is wrong in being an Auror? Dumbledore chose to be a school teacher and took positions of power that he didn't effectively wield. Harry chose to be an Auror. Unlike Dumbledore Harry does not show any inclination towards trying to be an ideological influencer. He has no desire to sit on wizengamot or become the Minister.

Voldemort was a powerful dark Lord who terrorised a country but was defeated by a teenager. All his magical skill failed in face of determination, love and luck.

Compared to the two great wizards who came before him, I say Harry gets a better deal. He has a loving family and good friends, admiration of his community and is good at what he does.

 

It’s obvious that his life after Hogwarts was underwhelming based on — if nothing else, the amount of Indy-Harry fics post-DH.

He underperformed.

Of course, he went on to have a family and hold a job, and be widely admired and respected but only one of those things serve as a hallmark for greatness, and it was mostly achieved by the machinations of people greater than he was.

At the end of DH, Harry had gained an understanding of conceptual magic that could be said to be the foundation for achieving greatness, but it evidently wasn’t explored as evidenced by, well, the lack of any evidence of greatness in the epilogue.

 

He definitely had the magical power. He drove off a hundred demetors with a single patronus. I think he had the potential to reach Voldemort and Dumbledore's level. Almost nobody apart from a select few powerful individuals can do that with a single patronus. Hermione at theend of PoA, who is the one who states that it would need to be a very powerful wizard to drive away so many Dementors.

 

That's hardly the point. And anyway, people always seem to forget that he beat them from across a lake when they bring up this incident. The Dementors' effect was lessened significantly by the distance, if I recall correctly.

 

Thank you for demonstrating exactly my point. People get so hung up on "magical power" and all that nonsense, and it's almost completely irrelevant to Harry Potter as a character. Your whole argument here boils down to the idea that the only value a person has is in their ability to punch someone else in the face (or cast Abbas Kedavra at them, same difference), and that by not religiously dedicating his every waking moment to learning how to better punch someone in the face, Harry has somehow failed in some nebulous fashion.

It's idiotic, stop that.

Could Harry have been better with a wand and focused his every thought on mastery of magic? Sure. But that's fundamentally not in his character, and the obsession with "strength" ignores both his actual strengths (such as strength of character, loyalty, and even an impressive level of kinesthetic learning ability), as well as the fundamental premise and theme underlying the entire narrative and setting in the first place.

There's a reason I said the OP's question was very silly, and it's because the answer is either blatantly obvious or the question reveals a fundamental inability to understand human beings. In neither case its it useful to ask.

 

Per JKR:

http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2007/1217-pottercast-anelli.html

 

Lol so he even his supposed you could achieve greatness in Slytherin and not all Slytherins are evil gets put in the dumpster and are just because Voldemort is in his head ...

To the question he objectively kind of achieved greatness defeating Voldemort but people are just severely dissapointed because it wasn't because he was intellegent, hard working or special in his abilitys which draws more guys in than bravery and a pure heart.

 

Supple thighs.

There's a reason they only expose children to the Sorting Hat once a year and limit direct contact to their actual sorting.

 

Well, he had three kids and Ginny was still married to him 19 years later, so I think he performed at least adequately.