They only survived because of Harry´s sacrife was protecting them, but props to them for not getting totally wrecked

 

Harry is a slightly above average wizard.

I mean, the guy isn't Dumbledore or Voldemort or Grindelwald: he doesn't have that ability or power. But based on his grades ( a lot of EEs and one or two Os ) I'm pretty sure he's a good wizard. He'd probably be considered above average and a fine student. It's only because he's the BWL that he's important.

'The power he knows not' turned out to be love, not Harry's actual ability. He's special because of Voldemort, I think. If the prophecy didn't exist you'd be looking at the slightly above average dude with a slightly above average life with slightly above average friends (he probably wouldn't have met Ron and Hermione or become friends with them unless he still saved her from the troll).

Overall, according to his OWLs he 'exceeds expectations': which, without a dark lord trying to kill him, is probably what his life would've been like.

 

I really want to read Harry Potter, The Slightly Above Average Bloke

 

Harry Potter was, for the most part, not the best student that Hogwarts had ever seen. He didn't really like to study, unless it was necessary to protect his life (e.g. Patronus, studying up during the Triwizard Tournament, learning about Riddle's past). But that does not mean he was an average wizard.

He learned the Patronus Charm at age thirteen and managed to fight off at least one hundred Dementors at the same age. That is, as far as my knowledge of Harry Potter lore goes, something that has never been done by a wizard Harry's age before.

He actually managed to hold his own against Voldemort one on one for a short time, something not many adult wizards have managed to do (even if Riddle was toying with him at the time, he seems like the type to do that to humiliate his victims so it still counts). Hell, he managed to actually kill Riddle! Wands can only do so much (so Harry being the true wielder of the Elder Wand, while a useful factor in his favor, likely wasn't the game breaking factor involved), so that accomplishment of his definitely keeps him from being an average wizard.

At least that's my opinion.

 

Frankly the patronus is not soo awesome after the whole DA was able to learn it only 2 years after Harry and they (contrary to Harry) didn't have Remus Lupin like their personel tutor.
Maybe the would still able to learn it 2 years earlier.

The summoning is ridiculious easy after the 4 book for everyone.

And yes he's good at DADA, betther than anyone else his age but....if I compare him to his parents, the marauder or Snape at his age....I see him behind them.

The marauder become animagus and create the Mmaps whille being in school.....Snape create his own spell and potion.....that is way above that being able to cast the patronus at 13 years, speacialy the whole DA was able to do it 2 years latter with a less skilled teacher than Remus.


Maybe he a little bit above average....but some are better than him....and he certainly not equal to Voldemort or Dumbledore.

 

We really don't know how "magical power" and "strength" is explain in canon. Some authors like to say that wizards have cores, or pools of magic, and the more magic you have, the more powerful you are. How did Dumbledore and Voldemort get so strong? We know Voldemort did "dark rituals", and that Dumbledore was extremely intellectual. So is it knowledge, skill, or how much magic they have? Based on canon, I would say that Harry is definitely skillfull in Defensive magic, a bit more than the average wizard. Would he ever be able to reach Dumbledore and Voldemort? I'm not sure.

 

I've never quite understood how anyone could think that maybe Harry was as powerful, or had the potential to be as powerful, as Dumbledore or Voldemort, because he never really showed signs of it past Goblet of Fire, at least in my humble opinion, which maybe isn't all that humble, because really, HP was about a regular kid getting involved in a war because a powerful madman believed a prophecy and ended up targeting him and then wouldn't leave well enough alone.

So speaking of Goblet of Fire... up until that point I felt like we were well on way to having a powerful Harry, who would come into his own as a force to be reckoned with! The Patronus he cast in Prisoner of Azkaban, that was not only a powerful example of a spell but a powerful example of a spell that children were rarely able to master at all! He showed potential at the end of Goblet of Fire, truly reacting under pressure, managing to fling his will against that of Voldemort in priori incantatem! All the things! And at the end of Goblet of Fire, I was super crazy excited that when book 5 hit, and Voldemort was back, that Harry was going to really come into his own and start taking steps to go from reasonably clever and talented student to a powerful contender. After all, it's not that uncommon in MG or YA books for the kid character to go toe-to-toe with adults at some point!

Except he didn't. Book5 was full of teenage angst and Dumbledore avoiding Harry instead of training him to be the badass I'd been expecting for the last three years. Harry's potential, in my mind, peaked at the end of Goblet of Fire, and he never realized it. Honestly I think JKR might have mislead us a bit there, but that's fine, whether it was intentional or not, because I think she probably stuck true to her original intent for the story, which was to have a regular kid with a good heart, a few solid skills, and great instincts manage to survive and turn the tides of the war... mostly because he got caught up in events that were way over his head through no fault of his own.

But Harry never showed any true badassery skills beyond what I'd call a 'better than average for his age' skill in Defense Against the Dark Arts. He scored a crazy high score on that OWL, but what people are always seeming to forget is that just because you're the best kid in your school, or even the best kid ever at something, that you are capable of competing with someone who is decades older than you and also relatively skilled in that subject. By his age a lot of other canon wizards seemed more skilled than Harry in pretty much everything except Defense (inventing spells, becoming animagi, etc.) which enforces my notion that Harry might have been skilled in DADA but probably in the same sense that his dad was skilled in Transfiguration. Even Harry's earlier accomplishments like the Patronus are nullified by the fact that he manages to teach it to a bunch of other kids later, making his seem less impressive.

Harry managed to do things IN SPITE OF his lack of significant talent.

There's a cool story in that too, it's just a different story from the cool story we usually get where the kid ends up being a badass chosen one who does have all the power to stand toe to toe with giants.

 

Dumbledore and Voldemort are not above average wizards. They are statistical outliers. Comparing anyone to them to check for talent is meaningless.

You have compared Harry to his father and Harry holds up in that measure. Recall how James and Lily defied Voldemort thrice. He had his talents, just like his parents had their own.

 

Well, sure, but I think this is pretty much exactly what I said?

I compared Harry to Dumbledore and Voldemort because the first post, the OP in this thread, mentioned it. And Harry is nowhere near them. They are statistical outliers, like you said, and I don't think I implied they were anything but.

I also said that Harry held up to his father, or could be said to, with his talents just lying in different areas (I mentioned that for James it might have been Transfiguration that he had above average still in, while Harry excelled specifically in DADA).

The tone of your post makes it seem like you're disagreeing with me but then it seems you said pretty much the same thing that I did.

Harry didn't have significant talent, like Dumbledore or Voldemort, and he did alright anyway.

He was closer to being average than he was to being at their level, however, if that's what you're disputing. Granted as he grew up and got older and got more experience and had to deal with all sorts of shit in DH and whatnot he might have risen above that to be above average in other areas, like trusting his instincts or something that would allow him to excel at being an Auror... but regardless, Harry wasn't crazy talented at wizardry in general.

 

I'm not disagreeing with your arguments, but your conclusion. Specifically:

You have a very skewed perception of talent. Harry did have a significant talent, just like James, Lily, Hermione and several other wizards and witches. They were all far above average. Just because they don't measure up to a couple of statistical outliers doesn't make them average. The average witch or wizard didn't or wouldn't be able to do half the things they did.

 

I guess we just see it differently, given that we never really saw Harry do anything as an adult. We know he got an Auror job, but it was half implied he got it because of popularity, given how young he was at the time.

Harry essentially made an "A+" in DADA in High School, with maybe a few other As mixed in with his Bs and Cs. That's not enough for me to label him "above average" in the overall picture - because we don't know what he did with it. Most of his accomplishments in the series weren't related to 'above average' magical skill, with perhaps 1-2 DADA exceptions like the Patronus... they were related to him having excellent instincts, good reaction times, and a willingness to ACT in situations where most people would freeze or wait for someone else to handle it.

Harry wasn't average at the specific things he did, and the only two things I'd say he excelled at were DADA and Flying. But he was average in other areas. To a point that applies to people everywhere - almost everyone excels at something, so I expect that most wizards excel at some particular area of magic.

I guess I'm saying that being 'above average' at one thing, while being about average at everything else, is in itself... fairly average.

 

I guess we do see it differently. I would not equate Hogwarts to high school. Sure, it does seem so given their ages, but you don't expect to come out of high school with a career in the muggle world.

Also, Hogwarts is also considered one of the best Magical schools in Europe and likely the entire world.

Before we go into speculation of possible higher education in the wizarding world, I'd point out that Tom Riddle expected a professorship at Hogwarts after a few years of experience post-NEWTs. If anything, that makes Hogwarts the equivalent of Grad school with OWLs possibly the equivalent of undergrad.

EDIT: To be very clear, I would not equate Hogwarts with anything muggle, but that's the closest I would get to comparing Harry's grades to the muggle equivalents.

 

I think he's pretty powerful, he might not do as good as others in school but he is still a good wizard and it was him who killed Voldemort. He could conjure a corporeal Patronus in his 3rd year and he could resist the Imperius Curse. I think being able to do those alone make him a pretty great wizard.

 

Maybe Harry's achievements don't seem as impressive because we see exactly how they take place and they occur in gradual increments in real time. We see it take him a whole year to learn the Patronus, but I doubt anybody thinks of that when they consider how prodigious a feat of magic it was to have expelled so many Dementors at the end of the year.


Maybe if we'd seen more of Snape trying out spells that didn't work, or had a chance to see the Marauders fucking the map up once or twice, like we got to see Fred and George experimenting, those achievements wouldn't seem so much loftier than those of the more recent generation.

 

No, it didn't. Remus started to teach him the Patronus after the Christmas holidays, and Harry was able to cast it perfectly (without Dementors, granted) by the time of his second Quidditch match (around February or March IIRC). He already had enough results with the Boggart that his Patronus was protecting him, but not push the creature back.

In comparison, we know that the DA started it after Christmas too and that by the time the DA is disbanded (the Lexicon says "a Monday in April"), "a few" of them were able to cast it in a room without Dementors.

I really don't understand by what logic it shows that Harry's mastery and subsequent teaching of the spell is "average".

 

Why everyone here say harry patronus is not awesome compared to DA member is in my opinion and backed by canon info too are the weird one here. DA member got it easy when they learn it you know. Even then when it come to facing dementor for real no one could cast it properly. Read book seven again you would realised that harry have to cast it first(and aberforth too) to decreased dementor effect before the other can cast it.

 

I always got the impression that he had a lot of potential. But only applied himself when faced with major challenges.

 

Harry gave the impression (to me) that when his life wasn't actively in danger he just wanted to have fun. This seems reasonable to me. He very early on was noted to have great talent with dulling and generally surviving, but he did not seem to have the same level of prodigious skill as Dumbledore or Voldemort. But he was able to battle wizards several times his age and come out still alive and, occasionally, better than them. So I would say he is rather above average.

 

I feel the fandom at large may also severely underestimate the role of age in this equation as well. I mentioned before that a even a young genius wouldn't have much on a bunch of old geniuses, but it also applies to pretty much everyone else, at least in a subjective sense.

However smart you were at 15, I feel like most people look back at that from 25 and facepalm. Even when you stop actively being in school, you still continue to develop your understanding of the world, still continue to learn hard truths, understand difficult concepts, and in many ways, you do things you never did in school, apply theory in practical situations and gain knowledge that way.

If you were a wizard, and how powerful you were was dependent upon on how well you understood things, imagine how hard a 25-year-old version of yourself would stomp a 15-year-old-version. So as long as a wizard just continues to live, it's not like they're capping out in ability at the end of their Hogwarts education, especially if they're good. Occlumency, for instance, seems like something much more suited to the understanding of an adult mind.

I'm not saying Tom and Albus weren't on another level, because they were, and to some extent, Snape as well. But were they slapping aside dozens of wizards at a time the way they do at 70 and 150? Really doubt that. So while they were geniuses, I think there may be a tendency to see them as they are during Harry's time and think, "that's how they always were," but I think there would have been some progression from "prodigious young wizard" to what Dumbledore was doing in the Atrium.

I think Harry's talents and feats in his own favorite subjects are probably the resemblance, in terms of ability, that so many people think he lacks to people like Snape, James, or Lily, however much it may not have seemed that way watching a 40-year-old Snape slap a devastated teenager down, but combined with his knowledge of the more esoteric branches of magic and some time to himself, it seems possible that he might have grown to be a truly fearsome wizard.

Had Harry been around Snape's age, or even 5-10 years older, I very much doubt that Snape would have made it out of Hogwarts that night. However strong he was compared to Harry then, remember that Snape got his ass beat (on the regular at that) as a teenager too, by James, but people consider him, as an adult, to have been probably the third most powerful wizard we see in action.

 

Every bit of what afrojack (am I doing that right?) said is absolutely true and important to remember. I'd also buttress this by reminding people to re-read the Battle of the Astronomy Tower. Once Harry gets into the fray, he devastates everyone in his way but Snape. He plows through Death Eaters against whom Ginny or Hermione (I forget which) later say that they would have died but for Felix Felicis. Even Bill falls, and while Harry too 'falls', he gets right back up, even after the Death Eaters realize who he is.

Similarly, look at the Battle of the Seven Potters. What does Kingsley says he and Hermione (both) did? "Injured two, might've kiled one." Now look back at what Harry and Hagrid managed to do: injure two or three and kill at least three. Harry himself killed two before he tried disarming Stan and Voldemort arrived. He and Hagrid (who spent half the battle being awesome and half the battle making it more difficult for the two of them) performed twice as well as Kingsley Shacklebolt and Hermione Granger who by every standard that the nay-sayers in this thread like to bring up should have been the most impressive group.

And, for those of you who (quite rightly) point out that battles are always a bit of a crap-shoot, let me give you one unassailable arbiter: the Sorting Hat. What does the Sorting Hat say to Harry?

Does an average wizard have "talent, oh my goodness, yes"? I don't think so.