One thing that's not talked about much, when discussing these things, is that people seem to forget that Harry actually goes to Hogwarts. He goes to class, he does his homework, and he gets good (though not excellent) grades.

All of which means that he more or less knows how magic works already. So many fics have Harry going back over his old books and learning new things, often "discovering" the most basic magical theory.

Which is completely nonsense. He already knows that stuff. Yes, he's not a prodigy, but he's a decent student. For example, by the time he's got an E in his transfiguration OWL, he should be able to turn more or less any inanimate object or living creature into any other inanimate object or living creature, and vanish things. The transformation will be imperfect, because he's an "E" student not an "O" student, but his work will likely be functional.

NEWT Transfiguration covers human transfiguration and conjuration, and presumably there are some topics not covered at Hogwarts, but I think we can assume that post-OotP Harry can handle the transfiguration they've covered in years 1-5.

 

One thing I don't understand is the emphasis put on homework and grades. I am a strong believer in the fact that grades have little to do with actual proficiency in any subject. Good grades mean you know how to pass an exam. That's it. Period. There are plenty of people with great exam results and next to no proficiency in their subjects, imho. Harry should not be judged by the number of OWLs he got, but more by the way he performed under pressure.

Quidditch - A seeker isn't supposed to really be about team play, from what I saw. A seeker is just supposed to be about ending the game. Harry's record speaks for itself, and the heaps of praise he gets for his skills are proof enough here.

Flying - He's good. Damn good. He outflies a dragon, which I suppose isn't all that common. A dragon has evolved through the ages to be a huge avian predator with both great strength and agility, after all. Outflying one seems to speak of prodigious natural talent. In addition, he rides Buckbeak while rescuing Sirius. That's worth a brownie point or two.

Transfiguration - It has been a while since I read OoTP, so I can't remember his practicals, but I'm certain it wasn't really bad. At any rate, while it's never been described as 'Neville in Herbology', it's also never been described as 'Longbottom in Potions' either. (Edit - McGonagall does say something about his theory being bad, with the practical being pretty okay, I seem to remember.)

Charms - He's consistently been good. I remember some dialogue of McGonagall's during his career counselling which seems to mention that Flitwick has always thought Harry to be quite good at Charms.

Potions - We simply have his grade to go by here. I get the feeling that not only did Snape hinder his learning, Harry didn't have a knack for the subject either. We see this when the HBP's book gives out on him. So yes, he's probably not great at potions, but he isn't pants at it either.

Defense - If you're just going by the number of curses he knows, I'm not sure where to put him. But defense is more practical than not, and Harry has managed to defend himself from foes considered superior in many ways. It's not about technique, or number of spells and what not. Defence is about emerging relatively unscathed from an offense. Harry has done that consistently. PS, CoS, PoA, GoF and OoTP all show Harry accomplishing a lot on his own. The last two books show that he does have quite a ways to go. Dumbledore saves him on the tower, and Hermione from Bagshot. The Voldemort defeating thing was the craziest Deus Ex Machina I have seen in a while, tbh, and I don't want to include it in my analysis.

Leadership - This is probably the most difficult point to quantify. Harry, more than anything else, was a symbol. He was a great, Mary Sue of a symbol. You couldn't get a better symbol than him. BWL and then the Chosen One. Selfless and pure to a fault. Hell, his polyjuice is golden in color. However, he has also been shown to inspire loyalty in others. The end of OoTP comes to mind. Very few sane people will follow you on an adventure the likes Harry took them on. Keep in mind that Neville and Luna had no idea about what was going on. They didn't even know about Sirius. The others knew, and yet risked their lives. They trusted him. I'd have included the DA here too, but that was Hermione using Harry as a symbol. She counted on his appeal to draw people in. She planned it and ran it with Harry being the teacher. It involved personal risk on Harry's part, no doubt, but taking that risk makes him principled, not a great leader. He was quidditch captain for a year, and they won the cup. However, he wasn't there for the final match himself. Can you draw any conclusions there? I don't know.

History - Harry clearly reads no more than required. Reading textbooks rarely teaches you much about history in the real world, I doubt it's different in the magical one.

Comparison with others - He can't compare to Hermione. He's clearly better than Ron, however (he doesn't splinch himself while side-along apparating, while Ron does it normally). Is he better than Malfoy? We don't know, really. The duel in second year showed them evenly matched, more or less. The Malfoy of 6th year was... difficult to quantify. He won once by catching Harry off guard, and lost to Sectumsempra. Harry did defeat Malfoy in DH, but I don't remember the circumstances. It probably helps that he was fighting for his life and Draco wasn't. How does he compare to the marauders? Unfavorably to Snape, of course. I am inclined to believe that the marauders, as a group, were far better than the golden trio. They were able to create the map, become animagi and be renowned for their pranks. Lily was great at Charms and potions. James and Lily were head boy and girl respectively. Looking at Tom Riddle, Bill and Percy, it might be reasonable to believe that the head boy (and by extension girl) aren't completely useless. Also, we see James Potter and Sirius Black humiliating Snape. This means little as a one off incident, but the fact that James and Sirius were cavalier about bullying Snape does give credence to the fact that they were each at least as good as he was. 15-year-old Snape being superior to 15-year-old Harry, can we say that 15-year-old James and Sirius were also better? Maybe, but it does seem more likely than the converse.

In addition, Harry was of quite strong a character, IMHO. OoTP is an entire book based on his strength of character.

 

Well, as it so happens, I do know someone who fits the physics description exactly. I also know many CS majors who know nothing more than Java and get stymized trying to install Arch Linux. I know someone who graduated with a Mechanical Engineering major who doesn't know jack about MechE, but is probably on the fast track to becoming one of the maintainers of GNU wget. He also did some cutting-edge research on real time systems. All this without any formal training in CS.

Getting more personal, the profs in my department consider me a total failure, as would be evidenced by my grades. But as it happens, I was the only one in my batch with a Chemical Engineering major who got a full scholarship + stipend for an MS abroad.

In India, you choose your major before you enter university, not during its course. A lot of people end up doing engineering not out of choice, but out of social pressure. They usually end up in IT jobs or if they're lucky, they stumble upon something they like doing and do it well. Sometimes, what they end up being good at and their major aren't even remotely correlated.

In another case, if you look at the way history is taught in high school, you'll never understand the underlying patterns that weave through world history. It's all too simplified in these textbooks. So you might know as much history as a 15 year old is officially supposed to know, but you might not have inferred anything from it. You'll never understand what Metternich's role was in holding together the Austro-Hungarian Empire unless you learned history from an angle which showed how he did it. And even if you did, you might never understand how that's relevant to today's Middle East. 'Cause making those connections is something you do yourself, and no book can teach you how to do that. No book can teach you how to think and apply your mind in a subject unless you manage to steer it properly in said direction yourself. And for that, you need more than grades. You need dedication. You need interest. You need, translating directly from Hindi, your arse lit up on fire. If you don't have any of that, you'll never be good at something, no matter how great your grades are.

 

Of course. I have nothing against practical exams. In my original argument, I have referred to some things McGonagall mentioned during Harry's counseling. She does mention his practical grades being good (E in practical charms and transfiguration, if I remember properly?) among them, I think...

 

Yes and no.

The way some fics do it, as if Harry never learned a thing, I agree with you, complete nonsense. That doesn't mean, however, that he can't pick stuff up from going back over his books. Unless Harry has a photographic memory, or he has another way to gain 100 percent retention, it's almost guaranteed that he'll pick up a number of things, some of which may even be elements of the most basic magical theory.

That is especially true of someone like Harry who, brand new to the world of magic, would probably be much more interested in the how rather than the why. In truth, I could see him revising over his 1-4 year book repeatedly his fifth year when he would have to go back and fill in the holes in his knowledge.

God knows, I still have to pick the equivalent to a first year book when I'm revising for some stuff because I don't even come close to having total recall.

 

Hey, to be fair, I got a 4 on my AP Bio test back in the day and I literally knew nothing about biology, I was barely passing the class and only took the test for the fuck of it.


But on the whole, I agree with you that, in the world of magic, especially with practical exams, grades are likely to mean a whole lot more.

 

All of that depends on how important you think magical theory is, as opposed to simply learning the wand movements and incantations by rote (or is there any unifying theory behind swishes and flicks at all?). We all know that Taure thinks theory is basically everything and you can't do shit without knowing it intimately, but I don't think it's unreasonable to assume you could transfigure your matchstick perfectly without knowing anything about the underlying theory.

The typical fanon (and arguably also canon) Harry has some level of instinctual understanding on how magic works and manages to do spells that should be beyond his level. For someone who "just knows" how the basic stuff works it might be very useful to later actually study the theory behind it to be able to step to the next level.

Think of it as a guy who has learned the basics of piano and some common pieces simply by fooling around: going back to learn to do the same by the book (learning the "right" techniques and to read notes) will open a huge new world of music that would otherwise be beyond their grasp.

 

Quidditch - professional level Seeker, no doubt. We have enough evidence in the books.
Intellect - while above average, he is no Hermione, and often jumps into conclusions when his emotions get better of him.
Raw magical ability - impressive (proven by the strength of his Patronus) but not refined.
Charms - above average but could do better if he bothered to learn more about theory.
Leadership - Harry is a reluctant leader, who is practically forced in this position, partially thanks to his BWL status. Makes you wonder how successful DA could be if Harry was just another Gryffindor, or even Gryffindor Triwizard Champion.
Dark Arts/Defense Against - again, could be better if he had better teachers. Well, that's what fanfiction is for.
Emotion - the fact that Malfoy, Snape and Umbridge can easily get under his skin proves how bad he is in controlling his emotions. Of course, it can be the side effect of the Horcrux.
Potions - we'll never know how good he can be at Potions thanks to Snape.
History - with Binns as the teacher, it's no wonder he isn't interested in the subject.
Flying (as opposed to actual Quidditch) - natural at flying. Proven by outflying the Hungarian Horntail with just a scratch.
Apparition - better than Ron at least.
Strength of personality - selfless to the point of suicide, not doubt that's exactly what Dumbledore wanted.

 

The way I se it, trying to make Harry better at magic by him rereading year 1 books and such is bullshit. Like in Law school you're studying about 1000plus civil laws and how make a good petition about inquinile laws and such, and then they ask you about the definition of a law in such and such time and place.

Was that important when you studied it? Yeah, but now you already have a formed opinion about what is a law (in the norm and such, not written law per se) and you will have forgotten the other definitions, because you saw and discarded what you didn't like/agree or fully understood. And unless you're an idiot or did a really poor job at studying, you won't add anything new by revising it.

You will have have to lose you time by going back to a lot of concepts and ideas you don't need anymore, about something you already learned and thought it wasn't worth remembering and will hardly add anything new on how define a law.

 

You're assuming total recall of all necessary facts. Maybe it's just me, but I always get something from revising books from two or three years previous in my education. No, it's not "Oh! Damn! I'm now the Einstein of such-and-such subject," but rather, "Ah, I forget that part of it," or, "Huh, how did I miss that, no wonder I'm getting a point marked off for it," type of things.

 

Quidditch- Great
Intellect- Average
Raw magical ability- Barely above average
Charms- Above Average
Leadership- Great
Dark Arts/Defense Against- Very good
Emotion- Bad
Potions- Above average
History- Below average
Flying (as opposed to actual Quidditch)- Terrible
Apparition- Above average
Strength of personality- Average

 

Flying - terrible D: wut?

 

Never mind flying, but an average strength of personality? Which Harry Potter series have you been reading?

Harry's actually quite talented with magic, at least, with magic that interests him. It's so blown out of scale because JKR made a big hoo-haa about how powerful the prior generation and Voldemort at his peak were, before she probably realized that she couldn't write a coherent story on that scale. I'm just really stuck on the personality bit.

The guy who dealt with a decade of crap at the Dursleys and still came out of it witty and with a mind of his own, who cast a Patronus when the best magician of their age couldn't, who threw off Barty Crouch Jr's Imperius, not to mention Voldemort's own? And who says emotion is a bad thing, exactly?

For all of Snape's admitted useful insight in closing his mind, it was emotion that helped Harry block of Voldemort in the seventh book.

PS - Tread carefully. Read the forum rules. This was a terrible necro.