The problem is that was an utter failure, so Harry was left unprepared for no real gain.

I am frequently amazed by how gung-ho a lot of fanfiction authors are about the idea of child soldiers, though.

 

Most fanfic authors are teenagers, and teenagers don't consider themselves children, which is why they're completely okay with children fighting wars.

 

I should really dredge up a few thousand words of plot bunny I have lying around about a truly manipulative bastard of a Dumbledore.

I was planning to draw from all the things that those idiotic authors "want" Dumbledore to do, and show just how cruel and inhuman it all is.

Rather than taking Harry to the Dursleys, Dumbledore would raise Harry to be absolutely devoted to him, blah blah blah. Trained to fight, raised with that single purpose etcetera. You know, delve into just how broken and unrelatable a child brought up like that would be. How utterly wrong such a thing is, just to throw all the "Harry should have been trained" shit on its head.

Then I realized that I'm not really a skilled enough author to pull off the whole concept in the way I would want to read such a concept and dropped it. But I'd still really like to read it or something like it one day.

 

I can certainly understand the teenage indy!Harry that expects to be treated as an adult, but that still doesn't really explain the people who think Harry should be a killing machine by the time he starts at Hogwarts. As a teenager I'm pretty sure I thought there was a much bigger difference between an eleven-year-old and a fifteen-year-old than I do now.

 

fifteen year olds regularly fought in wars throughout history.

 

OnoM's Learning To Breathe features a Harry brought up as a soldier, in peak performance.

Been a while since I read it, but it wasn't bad.

It is, however, unfinished. And likely to stay that way.

 

You know, there is a gray area between locking Harry outside the society he's supposed to save to give him "a normal childhood" and raising him as a SPARTAN!!! Like teaching him the basic stuff like theory and history at nine, letting him play with magical toys to give him a more intuitive touch with magic, teaching transfiguration during summers so that when it became obvious that he needs a combat solution he wouldn't need to start from scratch. Even learning the very minimal of the theory behind potions would have saved Harry a lot of time for other subjects when he came to Hogwarts.

There is a lot you can teach a child that will be useful in battle without making him into a soldier. Harry could have been an absolute prodigy in magic while still having loads of fun and friends had Dumbledore just wanted so.

That said, it's surprising how utterly pathetic the pureblood kids are in magic when they come to Hogwarts. Like Draco having "a wrong grip" on his broomstick.

 

If it were so easy to manufacture prodigy, everyone would be doing it.

 

It is easy, all you need is hard work.

 

Clearly you haven't interacted with many young kids recently if you think it's easy to motivate young kids to work hard in a sustained, focused way, on a broad range of subjects, including those that they don't particularly like. And for that hard work to be effective in the kid actually mastering the concepts rather than just regurgitating information. And for the kid to not burn out early, and remain well adjusted and socially capable.

And on top of that, it's not really all hard work. It's also about genetic factors (why is it that some kids start speaking so much earlier than others, for example? And then some start reading years before their peers). And on top of that you have environmental, emotional, and developmental factors. Developmental is particularly important, there. A child's brain has not finished developing. There will be some things they just can't grasp until they're older. And on top of that you need quality instruction (what subjects a kid likes is often related to that).

 

Yes, but that's without magic. I wouldn't be surprised if there were potions and charms that could be used to motivate a child in such a situation. Even, as much as I hate to bring it up, Legilimency.
Besides I don't think it would be hard to motivate anyone to learn how to levitate toys.

 

Most of the motivation comes just from imitation. If parents are working hard, the kids will too; that's the most important "genetic" factor. You can't really force kids to work hard, but example goes a long way. And Dumbledore probably has the best contacts in the world for quality instructors, not to mention the "Boy-Who-Lived" factor that would draw in masters of every field. Definitely Slughorn.

Also what Panther said: it shouldn't be too hard to motivate kids to play with magic. Hell, it's hard to keep kids from doing things. The "focused on a broad range of subjects, including those that they don't particularly like" is not what I'm saying Dumbledore should have done, simple living in a magical household with encouragement (and a waiver for the underage restrictions) to do magic when Harry seems interested would have taken him way above his peers in Hogwarts, at least on some areas.

 

Why? That's exactly the same upbringing as many of those peers have received. If it really turned people into geniuses, then Draco Malfoy would be a magic genius.

 

Wasn't that done already - at least partially, and done well?

I know it wasn't actually Pers. focus in the story, but it comes across pretty well, imo.

 

I have no idea what kind of upbringing Malfoy had, but Tom Riddle became a magical genius by learning himself. If you consider what kind of accidental magic Harry is doing as a kid, there's no reason why he couldn't have done at least most of the same with some instruction and encouragement (which makes one wonder if Harry would have found his powers by himself if the Dursleys hadn't been aware of magic. A kid who finds himself on a rooftop as if by magic would probably be very interested about what happened, if it didn't result in immediate punishment for "freakishness").

And as I said before, it's surprising how bad Malfoy and his peers are at magic when they come to Hogwarts. I'd say it's an oversight by Rowling so that Harry wouldn't be in a massive disadvantage that he really should be. Maybe magical kids are just spoiled rotten and kept in cotton as they are seen so precious by the purebloods, and as such don't learn to work hard (or at all) as kids.

 

Riddle was smart naturally though. Harry on the other hand, isn't. It's stupid to use Riddle as a measuring stick for Harry because Riddle, by virtue of the fact that the kid had more than his fair share of smarts and a big enough chip on his shoulder, combined with sociopathic tendencies that he was prepared to and did go much further than a more adjusted person, (read Harry), would.

tl;dr Riddle, like Dumbledore ect were born smart and no amount of conditioning or whatever you want to call it would make Harry comparable to them because the playing field was never even in the first place.

Really what you want IMO, is a Harry with a work ethic, and is as interested in magic as you would think someone with his upbringing would be. That solves most of the more common issues that DLP has with the books.

 

Actually, Tom Riddle becoming a magical prodigy on his own was a very special case. I mean he, just like Harry, was shunned for being different and creepy, but instead of trying to prevent his accidental magic from acting up, he learned to control it. He controlled accidental magic. I'm pretty sure that was unheard of, seeing as its, you know, accidental.

So no, I don't really think you can compare Harry to Riddle in that regard, even though I still think that Dumbledore could have seen to it that Harry was prepared better, motivating him to learn and keeping him from lazing about, while still letting Harry have a good childhood.

 

Also, I'm not sure how much connection there is between Riddle's grasp of his accidental magic and his later success. I mean, him displaying that level of control is, I suppose, indicative of general intelligence, curiosity, and experimental spirit (for noticing his own accidental magic and learning to control it), but mastering academic material involves a somewhat different skill set.

Lily had control of her accidental magic too, and though she was a very talented witch she was no Dumbledore/Voldemort.

 

Well yes, but Lily had the bonus of knowing about magic because of Snape if I remember correctly.

 

Sure Riddle might have been naturally smart (although I think the teenage Riddle was too perfect in canon; he's as bad as the worst indy!Harry clichés), but to get into the "one in a thousand" or "one in ten thousand" level you don't need to be any kind of freak of nature. Right upbringing is more than enough.

And that's what I'm arguing about: Dumbledore should have ensured that Harry gets the right upbringing, and that doesn't mean raising Harry as a soldier and having him run laps and doing push-ups at nine...