I'm going with a combination of being fast, as well as lucky. Plus, the spell he used was one he's been using since first/second year and knows like the back of his hand, so spell familiarity factors in there as well.

Still, in my book Voldemort trumps all but Dumbledore, so there's no way Harry is in actuallity as quick as Voldemort.

 

Harry is a pretty good dueller.

 

You mean like how he transfigured Dumbledore's fire whip into a snake?

 

I feel like that's something Harry could pull off, being above average and therefore at least decent with Transfiguration. Conjuring the silver shield was a more impressive move, probably something beyond Harry's skills, like Dumbledore's water globe or the golden statues.

 

I doubt fully that Harry could ever use something more complex than a point and cast spell in combat. He's not a thinker. He's not calm when he fights. He uses luck and reflexes while flinging spells whenever he can.

I'm sure that if someone conjured a fire whip, he'd attempt to dodge it. He isn't the type to trust his magical prowess with complex casting compared to another wizard.

 

Complex casting? He turned a fire-whip into a snake because they're both long and thin. It's like the needle all over again, and Harry got an E in Transfiguration.

He's also got pretty spot-on deductive reasoning, while being at least above-average in the core subjects. How is he not a thinker? It seems like you're just shitting on him for its own sake, now.

 

Provide a canon situation where Harry did just that. I can't think of one, though I could be wrong. Most of Harry's more complex spells were reasoned out prior to an event, such as the summoning spell in Goblet of Fire. Otherwise, Harry tends to throw point and cast hexes, jinxes or curses at a target.

 

I needed facts, so I searched the books. I'm always suspicious with the "he got lucky" concept when we talk about Harry's fights.

Through the books he used his wand against another witch or wizard 17 times. Most notably against Draco (5) and Lord Voldemort (3). In descending order:

He lost only 3 from those 17 times. Once he learned to apparate, he fought 9 times (5 being fought inside Hogwarts where you can’t apparate). And from the descriptions listed above, Snape was the only one who trounced him; he pwned Draco, Dolohov and Rowle more than one time. And showed a lot of skill because he didn't fired spells like he was some Rambo. From an above average kid, that's saying something.

 

I'm not saying that Harry couldn't do magic well enough to get an E on his OWL's, but he didn't think like a wizard at any point in the books, and he used his wand like a gun while Dumbledore used it like a paint brush.

Harry would never consider that you even could transfigure fire. That's simply who he is. When Harry sees fire, he does what a muggle would do. He attempts to not touch it.

When Dumbledore sees fire, he can make it so fire doesn't harm him, he can freeze the fire, or he can just transfigure it into a chair that he can then sit on for a nice cup of tea.

It's not at all 'the needle all over again', at least to canon!Harry. He makes leaps of intuitive deductions based off of knowledge and his gut. He does not create symmetry in his mind in which he understands that through the use of magic a fire-whip and a snake are simply a flick of the wand away.

Also, we saw Harry take his OWL's, and he did okay in those. We never saw him take his NEWT's (nastily exhausting, compared to ordinary). I'm not sure what he would have received on those, but I'd bet that they would be worse grades than his OWL marks unless something changed mentally for Harry.

And I am perfectly confused at how anyone COULD consider Harry a thinker. He doesn't wait to act, he doesn't get lost in theory, he doesn't read or ponder or practice philosophy. He would never take a fire-whip and relate it to an animal, because he isn't a wizard in that mystical sense. He's a very mundane magic user. He's a jock with a wand, more courage in his pinky than most have in their whole body, and decent grades.

@Henry Persico: You just proved that Harry has never used a complex spell in all of his fights throughout the books. Yes, he's a great, natural fighter, and he can move quickly and react...

But that doesn't make him a thinker, and he doesn't fight with thought as his weapon.

Also, none of this is to say that Harry can't be bad ass. But it's not his magic that makes him bad ass, and he's no epic hero that could take any death eater to town. He's good at aiming and dodging, and that's great, but he's not especially gifted with wizardry.

 

Lol! Man, if you believe that makes you a thinker, you need to hit the streets a lot.

 

Just because he didn't do something doesn't mean he wouldn't be able to. I said he probably could, not that he would.

 

I was the first one to use the term 'thinker'. I was using it with the definition I just gave in mind. Now, if you think that Harry is any of the things I described, then give me some examples. If you think that the way I use thinker is wrong, then it's simply semantics, and there's no reason to argue that point when we can both agree that I could have used the wrong word. I'm not sure I did use the wrong word, but meh.

@Cheddar: That's exactly what I'm saying. Harry attempts to go through problems using simple solutions that often involve a couple words, a jet of lights, and a relatively simple effect acting directly on an object. Someone is stunned, disarmed, slowed, or even sometimes cut (Malfoy).

It reminds me of something I was telling my girlfriend earlier in steam chat. I said "you like to use actions to solve problems. I like to think that problems don't exist if you just logic your way to making reality favorable." I'm a thinker. It's how I interact with the world. It takes me a relatively long time to make actions, and those actions are far enough distanced from the stimuli that caused them to not be called reactions. The same can't be said for her. She reacts.

Harry is like my girlfriend. They don't like to spend time theorizing, and they won't if they can help it. That isn't a bad thing at all (I dearly love my girlfriend). I just wouldn't call either of them thinkers.

@Afrojack: But that's kind of the point of magic. Many things are possible; almost anything in fact. So while you can accurately say that Harry could transfigure a fire-whip into a snake (in class), he wouldn't in combat because that's not the way he performs magic, thinks about magic, etc. That's what makes Harry not the wizard that DLP wants, and that's the whole point of what I've been trying to say.

EDIT: I did say that he couldn't, but that wasn't accurate. I believe he wouldn't in battle. This isn't necessarily to say that he couldn't in a classroom setting if told it's possible, but, as I've said, Harry isn't the type to consider magic being used for that sort of purpose. Canon! Harry, that is.

 

Yeah, I wasn't trying to say he'd whip it out against Voldemort, I was trying to say if he wanted to, he could. He's not good enough with magic for that to occur to him as an easy solution in the midst of battle, so he wouldn't use it.

But it's not like Dumbledore or Voldemort really had to consider it for that long either. If you're looking for someone who likes point and shoot, look no further than Dumbledore. He does most everything with a flick of his wand. He didn't cast the whip to be fancy, and Voldemort probably transfigured it because it was the quickest and easiest way to evade such a powerful spell, they're just better with magic. It isn't complex for them, and when or if Harry ever had a good enough grasp of such magicks, he might think to use them in battle. He does what he can when he can, the most efficient way he can, but for those two "what you can when you can" is a great deal more. They've been dueling for much longer. It's not really fair to compare Harry to two prodigious, elderly wizards and say he isn't a thinker. He's thinking, but of course it's not going to be on the same level.

I could be a thinker, but if you compared me to Einstein in a life or death situation I wouldn't look like one. In the situations you're talking about, not even Hermione would be able to think in the way you describe. She'd freeze up, but Harry wouldn't, and neither would Dumbledore and Voldemort. The latter two would even be able to plan and cast complex magic on their feet. But no one is going to say Hermione's not a thinker. She just can't think with the seasoned skill and experience of Dumbledore or Voldemort.

From how you described things, in a life-or-death situation, your girlfriend would live, and you'd probably die. You're still thinking as you react, just differently


EDIT: When you say Harry isn't a thinker, comparing him to those two, you're basically just saying he's dumb. But "thinking" is something Harry does in every fight, and comparing his thought processes to those of a century-old wizard is apples and oranges.

 

Transfiguration isn't really Harry's strong suit. While I do think that he can transfigure most things, I think it takes him time. When we see him in class, and when he hear about how he performed in tests, his transfigurations aren't completed in one action. Rather, he prods and pokes at the thing changing it slowly, by degrees, each change getting it to closer approximate his desired end result.

And even then, his transfigurations aren't clean: they still tend to possess some traits of the object it used to be.

On top of that, all of Harry's transfigurations have been classical physical objects, sitting still. Fire is not an object in the traditional sense - under modern understanding it's a reaction, under classical understanding an element - nor is it nice and static.

Voldemort transfiguring the fire into a snake perfectly, with a single wave of his wand, is a perfect example of how wizards like Voldemort aren't just better because they can do things other wizards can't, but mainly because they do things that other wizards can do much better: faster, more powerfully, more completely, with greater scope.

 

I feel like that could be him practicing and mastering the spell in a classroom setting, yes, but theoretically once he'd learned it he'd be able to do it in a point and shoot cast. Most of the scenes of Transfiguration being performed properly involve a single, short cast, do they not? Once it's done properly, it's a short process, and to get an E at Ordinary Wizarding Levels, Harry would presumably have to be able to do most Transfigurations (object-object, organic-organic, object-organic, volume-mass differentiation between the above, etc.) properly, in one go.

EDIT: I see it as -

O: perfect Transfiguration (no qualities of the previous form remain)
E: near-perfect (minor aesthetic or visual qualities/patterns/markings are left-over, identifiable to the trained eye but making no difference as to the use/functionality of the new form)
A: functional, visibly incomplete (the new form can be used or perceived as intended, but with noteable, visible imperfections and remaining qualities)
P: not fully-functional (bears a strong resemblance to the previous form, functionality hindered by incompletion)
T: little to no visible change

 

Maybe that's the difference between getting an EE and an O on the transfiguration exam. EE students get the object to change into what they want, O students get it there with alacrity and style.

 

What Harry first needs then is to start thinking like a wizard. I blame the evil!Dumbledore for all of Harry's mugglelike actions.

 

Harry might be talented in Dark Arts. He casts them so easily. Evil!Dumbledore gives Harry a secondary antagonist beyond Voldemort and can make for a compelling story. I think it just aids the drama of a story to have such betrayals, though it can get hackneyed after a while. With a plausible reason for Harry no longer listening to Dumbledore in terms of the fight against Voldemort in particular, Harry becomes a truly independent protagonist and the powerful, self-reliant hero (or anti-hero) that we like to see.

 

I think it's also important to remember that Dumbledore was basically toying with Voldemort in their duel. He was trying to delay him, and Dumbledore knew (or thought) he couldn't kill Voldemort because of the prophecy. Voldemort was perfectly content to fight with AK until Dumbledore's stalling tactics forced him to try something more creative. And I really don't think Voldemort would start with something he didn't think was his most efficient weapon.

Which leads nicely back to Harry: he might not be too creative with his magic, but I could easily see him charging into a fight wand blazing, and being extremely efficient in it. Again: fighting isn't art, it's very utilitarian thing. It's when you are wondering how to resurrect yourself after 13 years of un-life that you really need to be creative, not in the heat of a battle.