Sounds like a monologue straight out of every bad Indy!Harry fic since the dawn of time. I mean you literally just said Ron was distracting Harry with food...

You can't really expect preteens to look at a decision like "which would you rather have; friends and happiness or more time studying magic?" and expect them to be even more studious than Hermoine. I don't have a problem with Harry slacking a bit. My problem was that he never stopped ever after Voldemort was back. An 11 year old can go off and play chess and do whatever. He's 11. The 16 year old Harry doing the exact same bullcrap in the 5th/6th books is annoying. If evil dark wizard who murdered your parents, wants to kill you, and take over the world isn't motivation enough for you....well your pretty fucking screwed.


Magical numbers are always sketchy and DLP has debated this countless of times. I always like to imagine my wizarding world as much much much bigger than it actually is, even if it's not canon. A "universe" of 3k people is just depressing. I just auto-expand it in my head.

 

Except for, you know, that decade-plus of durance vile in Dursley land.

Exactly... Except for, you know, not letting him escape his abusive relatives.

Come to think of it, Dumbledore usually only showed up in Harry's presence when Harry was recovering from something... which was usually capped off with Dumbledore telling Harry he couldn't do what he wanted.

No, you can't know why Voldemort is after you. No, you can't live at the school instead of Privet Drive. No, you can't go to Diagon to shop like a normal kid. No, you can't go to Hogsmeade. No, you caArglebarglegargleaafsnfipogmg!

Oh, I also won't lift a finger to stop Snape from being a prick to you; or tell the school you didn't enter yourself into the tournament; or discipline the student body when they're wearing defamatory buttons, which would normally be in the purview of a school administrator...

By seemingly being too inept at keeping the castle a safe learning environment and allowing the extraordinary sets of circumstances come to pass that necessitated Harry and his friends stop being students and start being an amateur detective squad and emergency rescue/paramilitary team, thus proving to Harry, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that adults are worthless. Absolutely; I couldn't agree with you more.

Really, I couldn't.

Sure, if Harry had just played by the rules, Voldemort might have regained a body in first year... and Hermione probably would have died... and Ginny would have died, meaning there would be two Voldemorts on the loose... and-

Well, a few bad things might have happened, but at least Harry wouldn't have been an unrepentant rule-breaker. There are rules for a reason, after all; that no one else was playing by them was hardly an excuse.

Yeah, Harry really should have been punished more for protecting himself from an Unforgivable curse with a perfectly legal spell.

What was it that Draco got for that incident, by the way? I only ask because using an Unforgivable on another human being is punishable with life in Azkaban.

He did go to Azkaban for that, correct?

You're totally right, though: Harry was way out of line for freaking out and protecting himself with the first offensive spell that popped into his mind. It's not like he had a previous bad experience with the Cruciat- Oh, except for when Voldemort did it to him... after he was bled like a hog for slaughter... after he was tied to a headstone... after Cedric was murdered in front of him in an event that would give him nightmares well into the following summer, if Dudley's taunts were any clue to go by.

Pfft, what a wuss. Amirite?

Snape's constant scathing remarks, turning a blind eye to the Slytherins' sabotage of Harry's work, and Snape's own outright sabotage of Harry's work; Trelawney's consistently foretelling his death; McGonagall's strict neutrality; Flitwick's falling over when first introduced to him; and the majority of Defense professors attempting to murder him, all fall well within the category of ass-kissing.

If only, just once, they could have been mean to him, instead, or impressed upon him the fact that his piddling concerns with things like impending Philosopher's Stone theft or nightly physical torture in detention would fall upon deaf ears.

Then, he might have learned that life wasn't going to be the sedan chair ride down easy street that he had, thus far, enjoyed.

That cunning bastard!

It was probably really hard to do, too, since Harry totally wouldn't have been interested in food, fun, and games, after being deprived of them for the first decade of his life at the Dursleys'. Normally tweens and teens never go in for any of that 'fun' malarkey.

 

In answer to the OP: Not just no, hell no.

Give him fifty years and maybe it's a conversation but at the time they last fought Harry was barely out of school while Voldemort had half a century of experience. And Voldemort was uniquely driven to be the best ever.

 

So Dumbledose knew Harry was being abused and let him be abused?

 

*In answer to the OP:

No, Harry would likely never be able of the kind of magic we see in the Dumbledore vs Voldemort battle at the end of OotP. He likely woudn't be able to create any of the cool stuff we see in the Department of Mysteries either.

Then again, just about every Duel aside from that consist of pointing your wand and saying "Stupefy!" before the other guy can say "Protego". Or casting that silently. Or letting your wand describe an exact figure while not messing up pronounciation.
You don't need to know how a gun works to pull the trigger.

Harry could do the standard spells just fine, and apparently, that made him a prodigy at DaDA. All the big magic, like the taboo or the wards, enchanting a car or a motorcycle to defy the laws of physics is never described at all.

Maybe it's really hard, maybe you just need to have the resources. Like the charms on the car take 24 hours to cast and have to be updated daily for the next two years.
And the taboo needed resources from the ministry, so maybe 100 wizards and witches in their twenties, positioned on important magical points on a full moon?
There's not skill there, just a demanding recipe. Either you have the ingredients, or you don't.

I do not believe, Harry would have achieved the insight Dumbledore or Voldemort had.

Dumbledore was wise (portrayed as, please note wise does not equal clever or common sense), an academic in his youth and corresponded with many experts, including Flamel. It would be safe to say, he knew quite a bit about how magic works.
Like when he "felt" the entrance and conditions of the cave in book six.

Voldemort searched for immortality, something really really against all rules. To break the rules, you have to know them first. He delved deep into the dark arts, and if the name is any indication, learned something of the forbidden, secrets that are not meant to be known to men.
He also boasted an understanding of magic, but failed to notice Lilys sacrifice. And "she sacriced herself for him, so he is protected" isnt exactly complicated. For Voldemort not to notice ...

Harry doesn't have the drive to learn what borders on philosophy, he doesn't have the innate understanding either.
He would depend on Expeliarmus! and whatever Auror tricks he learned.
But does he need more? Knowledge is not always Power.
Voldemort never used one of his fancy unknown dark spells, because Avada Kedavra was plain better. Kill/destroy whatever is in the way, no questions asked.
Harry has proven in book seven, that he is capable of using the unforgivable curses.

More to the point, magic combat aside from that one duel between Dumbledore and Voldemort always boiled down to the same thing: "Get hit and your out of the equation".
And if your enemy doesn't want his bodybind finite incantetemd he can send a reductor curse after you. Harry won his fights because he dodged and shot faster then his opponents, and there's no sign (in cannon) of magic combat getting more comlicated.

 

He admits in the books that he didn't just know it was happening: He knew it would happen, even before he put Harry on the Dursleys' doorstep (in the cold November rain *snicker*).

However, he figured most of the 'alternatives' would end with Harry joining his parents in worm town, so the Dursley solution was the 'least shitty' option.

Opinions on Dumbledore's evaluation of the situation vary, but since Harry was still drawing breath when it came time to get on the Hogwarts Express, the headmaster was able to justify the galleons he spent on that 'Mission Accomplished' banner.

 

Sorry, but this is a piss analogy. The two are exclusive neither in the Harry Potter world nor in real life.

And yet Harry out-dueled (or at least fought to a draw) Voldemort several times--in the graveyard, in the flight from Privet Drive, and at the end of Deathly Hallows, to name a few. In the last, he even did so using a deeper knowledge of esoteric magic, both wand lore and the same "old magic" (to use Voldemort's words) of love and self-sacrifice that his mother had used to defeat Voldemort the first time.

On a related note, regarding the topic of the thread:

Harry's greatest magical accomplishments in the series are autodidactic. Taure touched on his mastery of mental arts as one example, but I don't think anyone has brought up perhaps the most profound evidence of accomplishment. If you look back on the series (and ditch the pedestrian sexual innuendo), you'll find that Harry was a wand prodigy, having a connection with his wand that nobody could match with theirs, even Dumbledore.

Consider:

• Despite having been disarmed multiple times in the series, Harry never lost his wand's allegiance.
• He managed to cast spells with his wand when not even holding it in OoTP, something we never hear of anyone else doing. If it were commonplace, surely it'd be a standard response to do so, casting a spell at one's opponent when one has been disarmed.
• His wand invoked (and triumphed in) the Priori Incantatem event in GoF.
• His wand was able to act on its own volition in the firefight in Deathly Hallows, firing a spell that Harry did not even know at Voldemort. Basically, he turned his wand into an ego weapon.
• Through an indirect, convoluted means of disarming a third party's wand, he was able to secure the allegiance of the greatest of wands, the Elder Wand, and was sufficiently confident in his knowledge of how wand allegiance worked that he was able to defeat Voldemort with it.
• He even managed to Reparo his own broken wand, something that nobody, not even Hermione, believed could be done, again pushing the envelope in wandlore.

I don't know what more evidence one needs that canon Harry was a prodigy in this facet of magic. He was utterly without peer and, to quote a phrase applied to another prodigy, "Did things with a wand I've never seen before."

 

Why didn't Dumbledore just Confund the Dursleys or put them under the Imperius? If he couldn't cast them himself he could have had his Death Eater pet Snape do it.

 

I concur with your analysis. Simpy based on the student throughput at Hogwarts these are the minimum numbers. You cannot reasonably argue for something much larger. Therefore I would think that the number of Aurors was a few dozen, perhaps more when there is a need to have more.

His reflexes don't have to be superhuman though to take on a large number of wizards - a few good spells can take on large numbers of people. Even so, I don't think he could take on more than half a dozen to a dozen skilled Aurors.

He wanted to kill Harry personally.

 

Pers. Mind. Blown.
When you put it like that he does sound way more awesome.

As far as magical duels go; yeah, we are shown its mostly this kinda lame shield counter repeat sequence. But there are hints of it being more than that like when we see Dumbledore vs Voldemort in book 5. There are also other things like when Dumbledore took out those 5 aurors and Fudge all at once. Also presumably Dumbledore (and more than likely Voldemort) could break out of Azkaban without a wand like it ain't no thing. (We also know that apart from the animagus hole, people just aren't able to break out of that place). So I think it's only the weaker wizards that half that lame dueling.


and on a side note on the topic of dueling. Whenever I picture Flitwick in his "dueling champion mode" I always picture him just like Yoda when he fights the Sith in ep 2/3. I would of fucking loved to see him vs Voldemort in a fight similar to that.

Does anyone else picture him jumping around like that when they picture him dueling?

 

Many of those accomplishments are just coincidental. The first is a good point. The second I don't recall so I can't comment on. The Priori Incantatem was merely as a result of their wands sharing the same core. His wand acting of its own violation has nothing to do with Harry's skill again. The penultimate point is valid and demonstrates some intelligence on his part. The final point can hardly be considered any skill on his part. He merely tried to fix his wand using the elder wand. Anyone who had possession of that wand could have done so. There is no evidence to suggest he knew it would work other than "it's the elder wand!" On the whole I put most of these points down to coincidence rather than Harry's skill. It is important to note that many of these aren't repeatable.

-

As as been said by others, Harry's skill doesn't lie in manipulating magic as much as other practical, useful skills which were the real reasons he managed to overcome so many obstacles. What he says about himself in OOTP in Hogshead meeting DA meeting is quite true.

Both Dumbledore and Voldemort were said to be prodigal as students. Something which Harry isn't, on the whole - but he is good, easily above average. That doesn't mean he won't learn a lot as he ages.

Perhaps we should think about why people are different levels? What does it take to get to the level of Dumbledore and Voldemort?

Considering the magical aspect you need:

• Straight-up a large amount of knowledge. This can be obtained by reading a lot of books as Dumbledore did. It is likely that finding advanced information is actually quite hard and dependent on books or teachers. For this reason Voldemort travelled the world in pursuit of knowledge.
• The ability to apply the knowledge. This is closely linked with the above point. Perhaps there are parts of magic like the patronus charm and occlumency that some people truly will struggle with for their entire lives.
• The ability to understand the knowledge. Magic is tricky. Not even Dumbledore understands it fully. But I think that this is an issue of hard work more than anything else for the most part. Some people will be able to put in the hard work and others won't - like real life.
• The ability to create new magic. Snape demonstrated this while he was still a student. I can't really comment here since I don't know what this would involve. Voldemort demonstrated this (at least in terms of understanding and knowledge) by creating more than one Horcrux.

I think, on the whole, it isn't about innate skill except, perhaps, for some specific parts of magic. It is more about Hard Work. I am positive that anyone can go from a 10 to at least a 2 if they put in the work (barring people that are mentally deficient).

So the question becomes a matter of who is going to be willing to put in that work? I don't think Harry will. He has no real reason to. He has never been after magical power or knowledge. He has never shown any tendencies to learn for the sake of learning. Perhaps he will have a reason as part of his duty as Head Auror. He knows that he will have to fight against people that may be of Voldemort's level and so he should train himself appropriately.

Now this is very different from the following skills which aren't related to magic:

• The ability to duel and fight. Harry has demonstrated he is very good at this.
• The ability to think strategically. At the very least Harry managed to blunder his way to victory against Voldemort and became Head Auror.

I never did picture that, it wasn't consistent with how everyone moves in Harry Potter (they're human in that regard after all). It's funny imagining it though!

Perhaps Flitwick's duelling days are behind him. We never really did see him do any kind of fighting. He didn't even seem to be part of the Order and took up to teaching Charms rather than DADA, so he probably didn't want to do those kinds of things any more.

 

In OOTP, he cast a Lumos to locate his wand in the dark after Dudley had knocked it from his hand.

Wands are subtle, complex, at least partially sentient entities. Wands are incredibly important in the Harry Potter world. That Harry could forge such a profound, deep connection with his, managing multiple feats that could well be unique to him, and that he could instinctively suss out some of the deepest secrets of wandlore are not matters that should be summarily dismissed as mere coincidence. The entire series was framed by Harry's connection with his wand. Like Harry himself, his wand perished and was returned to life through the intricacies of Harry's Mastery of Death. Upon repair, his wand projected feelings of warmth, loyalty, and, dare I say it, love. This was not accidental on JKR's part.

You don't think that Harry, with a wand like that in his hands over a lifetime, could go on to accomplish Dumbledorean feats? I do.

 

Okay, I only managed to utterly dismiss 2 of the 6 points you made.

The quote that you gave signifying his connection with his wand could very well be common. We only ever see from Harry's point of view. However, some of your other points are evidence that he has done things as a result of that connection that no one else has.

• Despite having been disarmed multiple times in the series. Harry never lost his wand's allegiance, whereas others have easily.
• He managed to cast spells with his wand when not even holding it in OoTP, something we never hear of anyone else doing. (Could even be some indication of wandless magic at a stretch.)
• His wand was able to act on its own volition in the firefight in Deathly Hallows, firing a spell that Harry did not even know at Voldemort.
• Gained incredibly specialist knowledge of wandlore [Note: I think he is lacking an enormous amount still - he can't make a wand for instance]

These all suggest skills, some of which are unique, to Harry. These are all very significant and show a large amount of skill on Harry's part. These could be expanded by him in his future life.

On reflection, I think his wand is a tool which he has the ability to use in ways that no one else does. So this would count towards his 'skill' quite significantly in fact.

 

Am I the only one who thinks that the entire concept of "wand allegiance" was a ridiculous hack job that makes no sense at all?

 

Much to learn, you still have, Padawan.

 

Emphasis mine.

ROFL! :awesome

Finally, a statement I can get behind! Dumbledore's primary goal in the series was to make sure he was the one who directed when, how, and why Harry died.

That it worked out better (for Harry) than he could have ever dreamed, was purely serendipitous.

 

Makes sense. He wanted to recreate Lily's love shield. Sometimes I wonder if he is really like the Dumbledore in Potter Resistance. And Snape failed epicly in protecting Lily's son.

 

You can't see me, but I'm face-palming so hard right now, that I've got arm hair tickling my amygdalae. :facepalm

No. Albus just wanted Voldemort to die. Destroying the horcrux in Harry's skull was part of that process.

 

I don't get why he sent the trio on the horcrux hunt. He could have had Lupin, Kingsley and Moody fully trained and trustworthy wizards after it.

 

It's worth mentioning that a wand maintaining allegiance to its owner after disarming is not so unusual: it's only the Elder Wand that is completely disloyal, following strength and completely disregarding its previous owner.

It's true that Harry seems to have good instincts when it comes to how wands will behave (though one wonders how much that is just the fact that he's had a lot of experience with wands behaving weirdly). His connection to his Holly Wand does seem to be very strong - though we should not forget that most wizards have strong bonds with their wands. Consider the reaction of the Death Eaters when Voldemort asked for a wand.

One does also wonder how applicable Harry's wandlore instincts would be to everyday situations rather than unique events involving powerful Dark wizards when the planets align and Harry just so happens to be in just the right situation to take advantage of an obscure part of wand ownership rights.

If he could replicate his feat from OotP when he cast a spell without holding his wand, that might be useful (though in most situations where you've lost your wand it's because the other person beat you, so being able to continue casting might be of limited use - if you can't beat them with a wand, being able to cast spells without holding the wand seems to be of limited use). However, he's unfortunately shown no sign of doing the same thing again.

On top of that, we don't really know how unusual it is: there's some implication you need a wand on your person to apparate (in DH, according to Ron they couldn't apparate out of Malfoy Manor because they didn't have their wands), but you certainly don't need to be holding the wand. This may be an example of magic with a wand while not holding it. And if apparition, why not other things - Quirrel's ropes in PS, for example.

Harry's wand does do some interesting things. Word of God via Pottermore is that phoenix feather cores often have unique powers or mysterious aspects: Harry's wand's ability to shoot some of Voldemort's magic back at him in DH is an example of this. It's debatable how much Harry had to do with that, if anything. He certainly had no idea what was happening at the time. And again, we didn't see him able to repeat it. But it does show promise: Harry's wand, we know, absorbed (part of) Voldemort's knowledge and skill via the Priori Incantatum in GoF. It might be able to teach Harry some of that magic, or impart upon him over time some of that skill.

Harry's victory in that Priori Incantatum battle seems to be related more with his willpower than any idea that his wand is more powerful or that he understands wandlore better. As brothers, Harry and Voldemort's wands seem to be evenly matched, after all. And Harry was able to throw off Voldemort's Imperius, so we know he has the ability to overcome Voldemort's will (Harry's struggle with non-verbal magic seems like a rather poor attempt to make Harry more of an "everyman" in HBP, given this. We're told it has to do with focus and willpower, which Harry has in spades. Yet he struggles. It's something of a contradiction).

In short, I'm not sure how much Harry's affinity with wandlore is a) attributable to Harry b) useful c) repeatable. That said, it is undeniably something he understands better than most wizards, and it would not be unbelievable for Harry to become more powerful in general as a result of this skill.

________________________________________________________________________________

@Warlocke: I think you're being rather inconsistent with your treatment of Dumbledore. You're cherry picking which parts of the books to take at face value and which parts to subject to logical analysis.

The fact is that the Dursleys are cartoonish in their treatment of Harry. They're like a Disney evil step-mother. It's not meant to be taken entirely seriously: the Dursleys are presented in a comic, buffoonish light, and Harry, while he doesn't like them that much, never shows any sign of abuse or even really significant neglect. If a real life family did what the Dursleys did to Harry it would be terrible abuse, with real psychological consequences. But instead we're presented with mild resentment. There is a disconnect between their treatment of Harry and the way they're presented.

In a similar way, Dumbledore is cartoonish. He's absurdly omniscient: he basically predicted with 100% accuracy how events would come to pass a year after his death, and masterminded everyone's actions for that entire time with complete success. Needless to say, that's absurd. But it's canon: Dumbledore planned for Snape to tell Harry he had to die, he planned for Harry to come back to life, he planned for basically everything.

What you're doing is taking the Dursleys at face value - cartoonish evil - but interpreting Dumbledore as if it were real life. You conclude that because Dumbledore can't have been that omniscient, he must have been caviler with Harry's life and sought Voldemort's death at its expense. But if you're reinterpreting Dumbledore in a more realistic fashion, you also have to reinterpret the Durselys. And the reinterpretation there, of a more realistic Dursley family, would be one of mild neglect, as that's what we're shown in terms of its results on Harry's character. It's also the only way the Dursleys wouldn't have been investigated for child abuse in the real world. And with a reinterpreted Dursley family as less cartoonishly evil and more mildly neglectful, Harry's placement with them becomes something of a non-issue.

You can't have it both ways. Either you accept Harry Potter as something of a cartoon in terms of realism, and also accept that Dumbledore is cartoonishly good, or reinterpret the whole thing in a more realistic fashion.