I can conclude from this statement that you have little experience with the highly gifted. If you look at this population (one that I have more than a bit of experience with), it's clear that their success is a combination of innate ability and environment. Occasionally, someone will rise to prodigy despite deficiencies in the latter, but it essentially never happens without the former.

I don't care what the environment--and I'm raising a kid in a town where every other adult has a STEM Ph.D. and where nearly half the kids in the local schools qualify for gifted programming--it takes more than upbringing to produce a prodigy. It's the preschool child born to physicists who adores numbers, who demonstrates abstract mathematical reasoning before he could talk, who asks to have his face painted with prime numbers instead of dinosaurs, who will be taking uni maths in middle school and start Math Olympiad competitions as a nine year old. It won't be his neighbor, also born to physicists, with essentially the same environment yet without that innate drive, who does, no matter how hard his parents push him.

Even then, as Taure notes, the prodigy won't be ready for certain concepts until he matures. Puberty is a strange thing--it affects not only hormones, but also the brain, particularly the ability to understand certain sophisticated and often subtle concepts fully. I'm convinced that there are just certain abstractions that no prepubescent kid, no matter how gifted, is ready for.

What we know of Harry Potter magic in canon is that seems to require many of the same kinds of abstractions. It's not "point and shoot;" the requirements of many spells (the Cruciatus, the Killing Curse, the Patronus, Apparition, Transfiguration, wordless magic) demonstrate a need to be in the right state of mind in addition to the precise wand movements and pronunciations. There's more to it than the mechanical--there is a subtle mental component that, it would seem (since Draco is not a prodigy), younger children are simply not prepared for prior to Hogwarts.

There may be prodigy in the Harry Potter world (Tom Riddle, Albus Dumbledore), but my sense based on what we see in canon is that it's bound to be at least as rare as mathematical prodigy among Muggles. Given the rather small population of wizards, such prodigy is probably a once-in-a-generation occurrence at best.

 

Great post, Pers.

I have a new story I'm working on that deals with the very subject of prodigies coming along every 70-80 years or so in Wizarding Britain (amongst other things).

Some of Taure's posts on magic "ratings" seem to be similar. And of course there's the Lords of Magic, who in a sense are "prodigies" of a different sort.

Canonically, I would agree that Riddle and Dumbledore - possibly Grindelwald as well - were prodigies in their understanding of magic. As Pers said, they were born with the innate potential - in youth, probably shown as unnatural and creative control of their magic along with - and then once they got to Hogwarts this adapted to, within a few years, devouring the curriculum and showing an understanding of advanced concepts that would be absurd to expect from most students.

Remember Madam Marchbanks declaring that at O.W.L. level, Dumbledore had "done things with a wand" that she'd never seen. I imagine Riddle would have at least kept up with him, academically, from everything we've ever heard of him. Albeit quite possibly unique and excitingly hard to counter curses, and things of that nature. Along with the transfiguration that Riddle and Dumbledore were both canonically amazing at.

 

Who knows how good Lily 'could' have become had she lived. She is portrayed as a very bright and talented witch and could have held her own against Riddle or Albus had she had the 'time'. She was what, 20-21 when she died....

 

But doesn't the prophecy imply that Harry has at least the potential to be just as great a wizard as Voldemort? Unless you feel the "the dark lords equal" is more symbolic in nature, Harry would be one of those prodigies, but one - to use your metaphor - that was rebuked each time it had shown interest in mathematics.

 

Prophecies are fickle things and, since Harry won in Deathly Hallows according to JKR he had something Voldemort didn't have - guess it balances out for her.

But in my (considerably AU) story, yeah, the three British prodigies in the past 150 years are Dumbledore, Riddle, and Harry.

 

That doesn't mean a 17 year old Harry Potter is going to duel Voldemort to death. Riddle has got decades of knowledge and power over Harry. But yea, I get your idea. The idea of 'prodigy' Harry always appeals to me.

I am sure you can pull this one off Frank.

 

Harry is well out of Hogwarts in my story

To do otherwise would essentially be to write Santi's story, which I have no interest in. I can just read it.

 

Both Dumbledore and Riddle were said to be a level above normal wizards while they were still in school. At the age of 17, both of them had already surpassed everyone else in wizarding Britain (with the exception of Dumbledore, in Riddle's case).

Lily, while said to be talented, just wasn't on that level, and never would have been.

 

The price she paid, perhaps, for being born an attractive, compassionate, woman, rather than an inbred psychopath or an obsessive, torn between idealism and cold pragmatism, with a predilection for his own gender?

TANSTAAFL... :|

 

Damn that ceiling-enchanted-to-look-like-outside that's keeping witches down.

 

Wizarding Britain is rather due a Dumbledore-level witch.

 

Two words: Alexandra. Potter.

 

Now that you have brought Alexandra up Frank. @Taure, what happened to her at her trial? I especially liked the 'ideal' world of ice-queen Daphne Greengrass.

EDIT: It's trial and not 'trail'.

 

I don't think she's hairy enough yet to have a 'trail', nor old enough to have anything of note happening near it. :awesome

Hehe.

Seriously, though, Lily seems to have traded power for being 'normal', karma-wise.
Harry, on the other hand, is one of the most noteworthy figures of his age in the magical world (whether he's a decent wizard or not), and his life has been anything but normal... and certainly neither peaceful nor pleasant.

 

It is funny that we discussed all this and never got into the point that was Dumbledore not attempting to do any of those not him failing to achieve the goal of having Harry as a prodigy.

 

Haha. My bad @Warlocke. It's a trial and not 'trail'. Spell check.

 

Can a muggle be side-along apparated or portkeyed?

 

I believe this has been asked before and I believe that the conclusion was: yes, they can.

 

How do pregnant witches get anywhere? Portkeys, Floo, Apparition, and the Knight Bus all seem a bit dangerous with the spinning and jumping around.

 

I think Harry is just awful at each of these. Normal people use them just fine.