That's also incorrect. I did miss that Harry "Mastered" the Impediment Curse and the Reductor Curse. He didn't, however, learn the shield charm. He attempted to, but wasn't successful as Hermione was still able to curse him right through the charm while they were practicing in the classroom. There is no other mention of it in the book thereafter (that I have found).

Also, learning those other spells is not a big deal for Harry's age. In the next book, Colin Creevey mastered the Impediment Jinx and Parvati developed a Reductor Curse that was as good if not better than Harry ("she had reduced the table carrying all the Sneakoscopes to dust.") Luna also learned the Reductor Curse, and could control it enough that she used it while in an anti-gravity room to blow up a floating replica of a planet in the face of a Death Eater (same age as Harry was when he learned it). Ginny could also cast the curse - same age that Harry was in the tournament. In the D.A., Harry did know the shield charm, but so did Neville - and Neville learned it faster than anyone else but Hermione.

So no, he wasn't years ahead of his classmates. He was on par (the age he learned them) with Ginny, Luna, Colin and about seven or nine months ahead of most of the D.A. It was no great feat at all for Harry to learn it in GoF. Now, I'll grant you that he was able to learn the two of them within a month or so, but that puts him a little above average, at most.

If average is scraping a pass in a couple OWLs and failing a couple, then Neville is extraordinary as he received 4 OWLs. If you mean that they get most, but barely scrape by in two and fail two more, then Harry is just barely above average as he failed two OWLs and scraped a pass in Astronomy.
He and Ron got the same amount of OWLs (and failed the exact same ones), so either Ron is way above average as well, or they are both just average.

No, it has to do with the fact that through the fourth book, there is nothing "magical" of note that is Harry's, which gets him through any ordeal. In the first book, it was his mother's protection, not him. In the second book while facing the basilisk, Harry didn't do any magic. It was his bravery that saved Ginny. Pulling the sword from the hat wasn't his magic, that was the hat's magic. It was Harry's character (being a true Gryffindor - brave and chivalrous) that was his part. In the third book, his Patronus was pretty cool, but I already allowed for that. He saved Sirius. In the fourth book, it wasn't his magic that enabled him to duel Voldemort to a standstill, it was wandlock. Harry's courage and stubborness to not break the connection won. In the fifth book, he's now showing some strength - but in my OP, I stated that it was only in the last part of his Fifth Year, that we really start to see a development. It has nothing to do with what he is or is not learning "off camera." It is the fact that he is always dependent on other magic, other help, other luck, or other characterics to get him through a problem, rather than his own magic. (Again, outside of the Patronus). In OotP, it was his ability to love, not magic, that saved him.

No, I don't understand why JKR would write him using the disarming charm. I get that she was trying to shove wandlore down our throats because she didn't want to make little innocent Harry use a grown up curse against Voldemort. I don't however, think it was valid, for a number of reasons.

The first, is basic psychology. Harry, as he steps up to Voldemort is a person who has the ability to use the Cruciatus Curse (really has to mean it that they want to hurt someone else) and who was angry enough to want to hurt Snape with a Dark cutting spell. Beyond that, we've been told that he has a temper - enough that his aunts words sets off his accidental magic, something that he should be able to control (which is why there's no warnings for accidental magic before he's at Hogwarts). That same temper drove him to destroy Dumbledore's office and tear into his best friends for simple things when he got older.

All of that is laid on top of a foundation of child abuse/neglect (canon, not fanon, the latter taking it way too far) and a all the accompanying emotion probelms - a few of which JKR hints out. Now, with all of that, he steps up to the person ultimately responsible for all of it in his life, and what does JKR have him do?

Dance around in a circle while getting a little cheeky, all to cast - a disarming spell. Nice, smooth, suave Harry Potter, right? Bull. Of any and every possibility, his background, emotional makeup, and history would all determine that is the very LAST thing he would do. Like you said, he isn't Dumbledore.

He is however, the polar opposite of Snape and his balance throughout the entire story - which is why ultimately, the story is about Harry/Snape, more than anything else. But that is a different subject for a different thread.

 

Scrubbs, you have typed a whole fuckin lot but said almost nothing. You mad? You upset that Harry didn't turn into Aragorn or Wolverine? You sad sad sad that Harry continued to be a person worthy of the love, loyalty, and support of all the people he cared about and fought for, instead of becoming The Punisher or the goddamn Batman?

Too bad. Go and read something else if you don't understand, after all the posts in this, the latest in a parade of similar posts, that Rowling did not - NOT - set out to write a high fantasy action adventure. She set out to write a compelling underdog story, where that underdog is NOT a lone hero, who goes it alone and hands out righteous justice or settles his debts in blood.


Harry Potter is the underdog, but he never goes it alone because (1) he knows he can't and (2) his friends and supporters are PART of the story that Rowling wanted to tell. Harry Potter is only one part of the story, and without every connection he makes through the books, he would have failed miserably.


Think about it. The only Horcrux Harry actually destroyed was way back in book two. Every other one was destroyed by another member of this essential cast of helpers, which is the best example I can give you that this story is the story about the power of many dedicated and committed and loyal people defeating the immense and ruthless power of a group of hateful, spiteful, cruel people.


TL;DR - If you don't like it or don't understand the context, write a better one or STFU.

 

I think DD planned to die without being defeated so wand's power would be broke with his death. Malfoy disarming and taking wand's ownership from him cames from left field and blindsides DD. He never planned to give wand to Snape or Malfoy.

On to my question. Would Harry's death destroy the wand's power? He died without being defeated afterall.

 

Yeah - I looked back on it and was surprised at how much I actually typed.

Mad? Not at all. Actually, I quite like underdog stories. My original point was a response to someone's thoughts on GoF. I believe that Harry really didn't gain that much power during that year - and that magically, he was portrayed as being average at best throughout the books, though experience wise, he was ahead of his classmates (something I should have included earlier).

Isn't your post pretty much a similar argument? Harry is weak (enough) that he needs other's help, instead of going it alone?

Except for the final battle and the epilogue, I actually enjoyed the story quite a bit. I just found Harry's response in the final battle to be out of character for the Harry Potter she built - and a letdown. Agree or disagree, doesn't really matter. That was my reaction.

BTW, I smiled when I got to "TL;DR" after "you have typed a whole fuckin lot but said almost nothing."

 

Er, no.

1. He was successful at casting the shield charm. It was a weak shield, but still a shield.

2. He far from mastered the impediment and reductor curses.

3. Regardless of level of mastery, it was still at this point that he discovered and started practising these spells, specifically for the third task.

They only learnt those spells because Harry taught them. Under normal circumstances they wouldn't. Again, I remind you: average Ministry worker can't cast a shield charm.

Yes, Ron is also significantly above average. OWLs are modelled on GCSEs, just as NEWTs are modelled on A-Levels. The national average for GCSEs is to take 8-10, and to pass 5 of them with the lowest passing grade (C) and fail the others. Never underestimate how stupid people are. I'm always shocked to hear that statistic, as I've always been surrounded by intelligent people and my instinct is to extrapolate from that.

Yes, it was luck and bravery and the machinations of others that led to Harry's victories. So what? This says almost nothing about his skill as a wizard. Even if Harry was as skilled as Snape, he still would have had to win by luck and so on. Why? Because he's fighting Voldemort. Hell, even if Harry was as skilled as Voldemort had been when he was in school, he still would have needed luck to win, because Voldemort had 60 years on him.

Because if he had used almost any other spell, he probably would have lost the battle, and he knew it. Had he cast any other spell, Voldemort would still have had the Elder Wand in his hand. Which would mean that - assuming his Killing Curse didn't kill Harry when it hit him, in the absence of being turned around by the disarming charm - he would have the opportunity to acquire another wand (presumably he still has his Yew wand, but it wouldn't be too hard to summon another from the battle) and duel Harry on skill,

 

It's too late to respond to every point - but thanks for the laugh:

On the rest, I see where you're going and you have valid points. I don't read it that way, but that is the nice thing about fiction, it can be personalized so that the same story is a little different for every person that reads it, making it their own journey.

Either that. . . or screw you, I'm right.

 

I always thought that when Harry's magic and Voldemort's magic met and started the beam duel or whatever it's called, that both spells hit the loser. I think that this wasn't the case in the GoF in the graveyard because the wands shared cores. In the final duel however, Harry is using Draco's wand (I think? Not his own anyhow) so the cores are not shared. I always thought the link still existed through Voldemort's connection to Harry (revealed to be the horcrux) and that was why the beam duel happened. BUT Harry is no longer a horcrux at this point, so that doesn't add up anymore. The killing curse is unblockable, so how does Harry even start that beam duel? But yeah however it happened, I think both spells hit the loser, meaning Voldemort gets both disarmed and killed.

 

Uber Necro is uber.

 

Well, yeah. That's why the Elder Wand flies into Harry's hand, and Voldemort dies. He wasn't disarmed by the Killing Curse, he was disarmed by Harry.

 

But Harry always wins because of that. I'm not sure why that would suddenly become a problem in Deathly Hallows.

First year, he didn't kick Quirrel's ass. His mother's love for him did. Also, the security measures on the stone were exactly the sort of thing that Harry (plus help from his friends) could just barely overcome using what little they knew about magic and the magical world, which was a pretty blatant plot device for the sake of an exciting climax to the story but still spawned a billion stupid manipulative!Dumbledore plotlines that need to go die in a hole.

Second year, Harry fought a giant weapon of mass destruction and the equivalent of a higher year student that is a genius, prodigy of the Dark Arts, and quite willing to commit murder to get what he wants. Furthermore, he was operating under a time limit, because Ginny was dying and Riddle was getting stronger (in direct proportion to each other). He won because Fawkes and the Sorting Hat saved him. Twice over, actually, once by showing up, blinding the snake, and giving Harry the Hat so he wouldn't die while the snake was being blinded, and again when Fawkes healed him. Freaking Neville could have done what Harry did, had he been thrown into the same situation.

Third year, Harry wins by using magic that he learned, so that one I'll give you. Even then, though, I'll mention that the Patronus that drove away all those Dementors was not only cast far enough away that Harry wasn't feeling any of their effects at the time, but he was also in a unique position to cast an exceptionally perfect Patronus, because he was given the sort of insight that can only come from meddling with time, which is that "I have already stood here once before, cast this spell, and it worked perfectly and saved everyone, so of course I can do it," and that thought of complete and utter confidence and surety was apparently even more powerful than the happiest thought Harry could muster.

Fourth year is like an ironic deconstruction of every indy!Harry story ever written, in that while Harry does learn some new spells, both of them are householdy in nature and don't make him the slightest bit more badass, he beat a dragon that was chained to the ground in a flying match (which he was already good at, and it's not that hard to beat something in a flying competition that cannot fly), he flat-out couldn't solve the second task at all without having the solution literally handed to him (twice, both the clue solution and the solution to the task itself), and he only got to the cup in time in the third task because a powerful Dark wizard was fucking all of the other contestants up behind the scenes.

I could go on, but I think I've made my point. Harry never wins because he was a badass. He wins because he was at the right place at the right time, and all of his own victories are nonmaterial ones that he gains because of cleverness, bravery, and a willingness to put himself on the line to do what is right.

And that's what I like about him. Harry Potter doesn't run around Forzareing things in the face. Every one of his major victories happens because he is a good person, because he loves his friends, because he is brave and self-sacrificing.

Dumbledore places a great deal of import on the fact that not only is Harry a good person, but he is in fact a wonderful person. He is brave and honest, intelligent and loyal, hardworking and clever. He has a good heart, in spite of the fact that he was raised by the Dursleys, in spite of the fact that he and Riddle had extremely similar childhoods. That's the important part about Harry. Harry is proof that what matters is not what you are born as, but what you grow up to be.

Harry is not some ridiculous magical badass that busts out Shaolin Kung-Fu and juggles fireballs and knifefights vampires in a phone-booth. Other people do that. He doesn't. Harry didn't kill the Basilisk in a ridiculous bossfight involving twelve health bars and an action sequence out of Beowulf. He beat the Basilisk because he wasn't willing to let Riddle's words crush his hope or shake his conviction in what was right and what was wrong. The real victory in the second book is that Harry went to save Ginny at all, when everyone else would have just told a professor. The real fight was fought when a thirteen year old boy decided to slide down a dark hole and walk through a boneyard of dead creatures and giant snake skins to save his best friend's sister, because that was the right thing to do. The real final blow was Harry telling Riddle that even if he was alone in the Chamber of Secrets and about to die alongside his best friend's sister, and even if "the mere memory" of Riddle had succeeded in driving Dumbledore away, that Dumbledore was still worth more gone than Riddle would ever be, and that, though he did not use the words I am about to, Harry said, his own clumsy and childish way, that Dumbledore represented something greater than the man himself, that he was an idea, and that Voldemort could not kill that Idea, that Hogwarts, that Dumbledore.

And Harry was right. He couldn't. Because Harry was there, to hold the sword that killed the Basilisk. Because the Sorting Hat of Hogwarts was there, to stop the Gaze of the beast and give Harry the tool he needed to get the job done. Because Dumbledore's pet phoenix Fawkes was there, to blind the monster and restore Harry to life, and avert a most unhappy ending. It was not within Riddle's power, be he shade or ghost, memory or Dark Lord, to destroy either the literal or metaphorical ideal that Dumbledore and Harry and Hogwarts stood for. That is, in fact, a recurring truth throughout the entire series as a whole. The players on the field represent more than just what they literally are. Harry Potter is not 'just' some scrawny kid with above-average grades and a plucky attitude. He's the Boy-Who-Lived. Albus Dumbledore is not just an exceedingly powerful and learned wizard, and the headmaster of a school. He is "the only one he ever feared." And Hogwarts is not 'just' a magical school. It is the bastion, the heart, hearth, and home of all who have passed between it's walls, a symbol of unity, strength, cooperation, and brotherhood that stands in contrast against every Darkness Voldemort would inflict upon the world.

Dumbledore places a great deal of import on the fact that not only is Harry a good person, but he is in fact a wonderful person. He is brave and honest, intelligent and loyal, hardworking and clever. He has a good heart, in spite of the fact that he was raised by the Dursleys, in spite of the fact that he and Riddle had extremely similar childhoods. That's the important part about Harry. Dumbledore and Riddle both see that Harry is a great deal like Riddle, but while Riddle sees a threat and a nuisance, Dumbledore sees something else. Harry is an affirmation that it is the choices we make that define who we are. Harry can't beat Voldemort up with magic, but then, beating up Voldemort was never the point of the story. That's kind of why there's this whole giant cluster of recurring subplots about blood purity, which is itself just a metaphor for the rather old and suitably Greek question of "what makes the man; what he is born as, or what he grows up to be." The story was never about "who is stronger." It was about "who is in the right." Voldemort stood for the concept that the strong rule and the weak get ruled. He was the metaphor of the idea that people are born strong and born destined for greatness. Harry, on the other hand, stood for the concept that one can be great without strength or power, and was the metaphor for the idea that while the circumstances of ones birth can have an influence on what they do, it is not what defines what they ultimately become.

We see this metaphor repeated again and again, if we bother to pay attention. Hagrid, half man and half giant, should, by nature, be a callous and vicious monster. This is what society expects of him, and yet that is not what he becomes. Rather, he is the gentle giant, a kind soul, a source of honesty and simple wisdom of the earth. Remus Lupin, though not a werewolf by birth, was bitten at a very young age, and the event was outside of his control, and unable to hold a job in the mundane world due to his condition, a constant danger to himself and everyone around him, he should by all rights have become an embittered and angry monster, lashing out at those around him. And yet he was kind, soft-spoken, and learned, and objectively the best Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher Hogwarts ever saw during the course of Harry's tenure there. Sirius Black, scion of the House of Black, should have been a cruel and racist Dark Wizard, a blood supremacist of the oldest and foulest sort. And yet Sirius rebelled, and chose to walk a different path. Even Draco Malfoy proves this rule; born to an old and pure line of wealth, prestige, and power, he was average-to-subpar at everything, was of no notable talent, possessed nothing of what the Pureblooded beliefs said he should have, and did not in any way distinguish himself, either athletically or academically. Even his Prefectship was implied by Dumbledore to be, not rightfully earned, but an attempt to try and give him a chance at redemption, which he, of course, squandered. In the end he failed even to be a particularly vexing foe to Harry. Draco Malfoy was mediocre even as a nemesis. He failed even to kill Dumbledore, who was severely weakened, possibly dying, and standing unarmed and defenseless in front of him at the time. And of course there is Harry Potter, the boy who should, by all rights, have grown up to become very much like Tom Riddle, and yet became his ideological antithesis instead.

We can argue about the failings of the final book all we like (and they are many and varied), and we can even argue about the specific events of the ending, but it does not change the fact that Harry Potter ended on the noted that it needed to. Harry, who was weak, defeated Voldemort, who was strong, because he was brave and trusted his friends and never gave up, which, I would argue, allowed him to make his own luck, where he had rather thoroughly run out quite some time prior.

Are there better ways it could have been done? Yes, I personally believe there are. I've suggested before that the ending would have probably been better if the final confrontation had taken place, not in the flesh, but in a mental or spiritual plane, possibly within the link between their minds, where the full brunt of not just their magical skill, but also who and what each of them are could have come into play. And that's just one example of many that have been put forward for improving that final series of scenes.

But the notion of the ending, the attitudes that were in play at the time, need no alteration or change in my mind. Harry the normal person who loved with his whole heart, defeated Voldemort the unstoppable monster who never believed that love held any power at all, because he never stopped doing the right thing, and never gave up even when there was no hope left. That was precisely the nature that the ending needed to have, is entirely within the pattern of Harry's victories and virtues throughout the series, and I would have it no other way, rules-lawyering with eleventh hour artifacts of doom nonwithstanding.

 

Lord Raine, I kneel before you.

 

When your nemesis is irredeemably evil at the ripe old age of 11, when other combatants on your side are inexplicably silent about your usage of Unforgivables like candies, when you wanted to see Pettigrew tortured for life by abominations rather than grant him mercy of quick death and nobody cared, when you just simply did not care about summary execution of Barty Crouch Jr., when you were born from woman whose simple existence and briliance and purity and divinity redeemed even such a piece of filth like Snape and made even Voldemort acknowledge her, then it is easy to be a paragon of goodness like Harry Potter is.

To raise above your abusive upbringing and not to seek any justice is, without doubt, right and not merely easy.

To forgive almost murderer and terrorist and bully Draco Malfoy (plus rest of his terrorist and murderous family) who almost cast Unforgivable on you, but teachers cared more about your self-defense is not simply human, but rather divine.

To cast aside any doubts about your mentor that forced you to watch his choreographed death before your eyes, continuously failed to protect you in previous six years, was buddy with prominent Dark wizard, possibly murdered his own sister, did not care to prevent incarceration or summary executions of innocents and assets but is still worshipped as demigod after one short conversation with fragment of your imagination is a glorious example of POWER OF LOVE, FAITH and GOODNESS that together with Chestburster dwells inside chest of exalted Harry Potter.

Hmm, it seems like the true masterpiece of Rowling was her ability to make me care and deeply dislike her paragons and demigods of goodness and people who could be some sort of moral compass for youth or children. I wanted to give every Death Eater a small, barely lethal dose of death to eat. I wanted to see Order and co. go down from their comfy heavenly moral high ground and start acting like fighters of civil war. I wanted to see that there is possible future outside of what omniscient and omnipotent manipulator Dumbledore planned.

All I got was POWER OF LOVE and SACRIFICE COMPELS YOU ! and hordes of Dumbledore apologists...

More power to you Lord Raine, if you truly enjoy character of Harry Potter. I found I cannot.

 

Dumbledore, Harry Potter, and Word of God say you're wrong.

Just a heads up. I mean, there's stuff to argue, sure. But there's a whole hell of a lot more if you're just going to start throwing canon out the window whenever it gets in the way of your indy!Harry ideal.

 

Well, he wasn't irredeemable in an absolute sense, but word of god is that he was born evil, because he was conceived under a love potion.

 

I thought Word of God was that he was born unable to love, rather than evil?

 

Rowling said neither. The love potion thing is out-of-universe symbolism, not in-universe metaphysics. This is the relevant quote.

 

You're confusing canon with fanon, Taure. Canonically, Voldemort not only chose his own path, but he actually chose it twice over. Once in his 'first' life, when he could have chosen to follow a different path, but chose to became Lord Voldemort, and again when he decided to murder Harry in the forest.

Voldemort imbibed Harry's blood believing it would make him stronger, but in truth, it did two things, neither of which Voldemort expected.

The first is that it bound Harry's life to Voldemort's using Lily's sacrifice as a medium, the same way Voldemort's life was bound to Harry's via the Horcrux scar. Dumbledore explained this when he and Harry talked at King's Cross. So long as the body Voldemort created using Harry's blood survives, so too will Harry, because Voldemort became a living vessel for the enchantment of Lily's sacrifice. Voldemort did not know it would do this. In fact, he did not even suspect it was possible. Dumbledore did, however, which is where the "brief flash of triumph" came from when Harry told Dumbledore what happened at the end of Goblet of Fire. By using Harry's blood to try and make himself stronger, all he actually did was turn his body into a kind of Horcrux for Harry himself.

While Dumbledore didn't actually clarify some of his motivations at the King's Cross sitdown, he did obliquely imply that this was why he was willing to create a plan that involved Harry dying as part of the plan. He knew that as long as Voldemort's new body was intact and alive, Harry couldn't die, because he had a kind of Horcurx of his own. That's why all Voldemort actually accomplished when he killed Harry in the forest is destroying the fragment of his own soul that made Harry a Horcrux. So the "Harry dies against Voldemort" part of the plan that everyone alway jumps on Dumbledore about is actually the "get Voldemort or someone playing on his side to blast his Horcrux out of Harry" part of the plan. Harry actually-for-real dying was never in the cards. Anybody who gets all pissed about it just wasn't paying attention during the Kings Cross bit, when Dumbledore explained this. And if any of you don't believe me, feel free to go read the Kings Cross bit again. It's all there. Harry was effectively demi-immortal from the epilogue of Goblet of Fire until he went into the forest to face Voldemort in Deathly Hallows.

The second thing it did, though, and the thing that's actually germane to the discussion at hand, is that it gave Voldemort another chance to choose. Tom Riddle already made the choice to be Lord Voldemort once; that's how Voldemort came to be, obviously. But Dumbledore said at the end that, in taking Harry's blood into himself, he gave himself, in Dumbledore's words, "one last, small hope." Lily's sacrifice didn't just help out Harry. It helped out Voldemort. Just not in any way that Voldemort would consider helpful. Dumbledore implied, and Rowling later explained clearly when questioned about it, that by inadvertently becoming a living vessel of Lily's sacrifice for Harry, Riddle gave himself another chance to choose to be something other than Lord Voldemort. However, Riddle squandered this second chance as well by re-starting his war, and sealed his fate when he tried to kill an unresisting Harry who didn't try to fight back and willingly came to die, having accepted that he was going to die, to save everyone in Hogwarts.

Voldemort wasn't "born evil." The very idea is absurd, and undermines the entire overarching theme of the series. He and Harry grew up under extremely similar circumstances. It was their choices that made them different, just like how it was Hagrid's choices that made him different from what everyone expected him to be, and how it was their respective choices on how to live their lives that made Remus Lupin and Fernir Greyback so different, or what made Lucius Malfoy so different from Arthur Weasley.

If Voldemort and Greyback and Lucius Malfoy and all the rest had been 'born evil,' whereas everyone who opposed them would then presumably have been 'born good,' then the entire message is completely lost. It was not the birth of a baby boy that created the Dark Lord Voldemort. It was the choices made by Tom Riddle about the kind of man he wanted to become. That's the single strongest recurring theme in the entire series.

Harry Potter chose to fight the troll to save Hermione and Ron. The three of them together chose to go after the Stone to try and stop the person who was trying to steal it. The three of them chose to try and do something about the Heir of Slytherin, and Harry chose to go in after Ginny, even after Lockheart had blasted his mind to goo and Ron was unable to go after and help him.

They chose to try and help Sirius and Buckbeack escape. Sirius chose to tell Snape where to find Lupin, and Snape chose to go after Lupin in turn. The lot of them chose to perpetuate their dislike for each other until it nearly got one of them killed. Snape chose to fall in with the crowd that he did (who themselves chose to be that crowd), and he chose to call Lily a Mudblood, which destroyed their childhood friendship. Snape chose to give the prophecy to Voldemort. Dumbledore chose to believe Snape's sincerity in his regret of that decision, and give him a second chance to redeem himself by working as a spy for the other side. Snape chose to accept that offer, at considerable personal risk to himself, and chose to continue to play that role up until the end of his life as penance for Lily's death.

Dumbledore and Grindelwald chose to try and change the entire world, and subjugate the entire nonmagical world beneath their heels with the power of the Hallows. Dumbledore eventually realized he could no longer make excuses or justify his rationalizations, and chose to stand against his former friend. Grindelwald, in turn, chose to go forward with his plans, which may or may not have directly caused the second World War. Harry Potter chose to not allow the Dursleys, Draco, or the abuse he suffered at the hands of some fellow students and the wizarding public to shape who he became. Tom Riddle chose twice to become Lord Voldemort, and twice he was ruined because of those choices, the second time for good.

I could go on, but a complete list of it all, from Umbrige and Fudge down to Dumbledore and Harry, would be quite exhaustive, and I believe I've made my point.

The choices that everyone made shaped what they became. It was those choices that ruled the events of the series, and ultimately decided the fate of not only Magical Britain and the United Kingdom, but quite possibly the world. It was Riddle's choices that plunged the Magical World into war, and it was Harry's choices and attitudes, the selfsame ones that near-all indy and darkfics mock and degrade, that saved it.

To say that Tom Riddle was born evil, to say that it was inevitable that he would become Lord Voldemort or some effective equivalent, is to say that Tom Riddle and Lord Voldemort were never evil at all.

How could he be, if he had no choice in the matter?

Harry survives little better under such a litmus test. If he was born bright and kind, if he was always going to be an upstanding and noble person, then what value do any of those traits hold? How does going on alone into the terrible darkness to face unknown horrors and a monster that even Dumbledore could not uncover, much less stop, to save someone who needed his help matter, if there was never any choice or ability to turn back? To run away? To go hide in his dorm with the rest of the students, and tell himself that the professors would sort it out, and everything would be okay? If Harry would have 'never' been able to do those things because of 'who he was,' then what value do those actions even have? It would be like throwing a ticker-tape parade every time someone dropped a pencil because gravity worked.

The dichotomy between so may characters, to me, exists for a very important reason. Dumbledore is what Grindelwald could have been, had he chosen to see his ambitions for what they were, and abandon them for a better path. Lord Voldemort is what Harry Potter could have been, had Harry given into the Dark, and likewise, Tom Riddle could have been like Harry Potter, had his choices been different. A great many characters, from Dumbledore and Grindelwald to Harry and Riddle, to Ron and Draco, to Lucius and Arthur, to Lupin and Greyback, are deliberate echos of each other, opposing sides of the same coin, separated only by the choices that they made.

Harry chose to walk alone into the Darkness to save what he loved again and again. Voldemort chose to embrace the Darkness at the cost of his humanity for the sake of power and supremacy again and again. It was those choices that defined what they became, not what they were born as. That was, I think, rather the whole point.

 

Canon is contradictory on the matter: we're told that Voldemort is the way he is because of his choices, we're shown that he was always that way. We're told he had a choice, but see that he was behaving sociopathically from a very young age - well before age 11. We're told that by taking Harry's blood into himself he "allowed himself a second choice", but we see that the choice is a token one - it would involve a complete reversal of character without cause. At that point in his life he can as much choose to be good as I can choose to murder all my friends.

The whole philosophy of choice we're presented with is nonsense: as if there was any one point where he chose to become Voldemort in the first place, as opposed to it being the result of his entire life; the culmination of all of his experiences from a young age.

In a similar way we're told he's the most brilliant wizard ever, but shown him acting stupidly over and over.

Yes. That is indeed a serious problem for the series. Probably the biggest one: it makes niggling problems like the Fidelius mechanics seem rather small.

 

Wasn't the key point behind Harry's survival in the forest that he chose not to defend himself and allowed himself to be killed? If he'd been killed under different circumstances, that would have been the end iirc.

 

Canon is only contradictory on the matter if you assume that Riddle did not continuously choose to behave the way he does. As though one only ever has one or two choices to make in how they live their lives, and if you miss that intersection, it's gone. That's not how choice works at all. He could have chosen at any point to turn aside from his path. Every time, at every opportunity, he chose to stay the course. That he was shown to be consistently bad is meant to be an indicator of how many times he chose to be that way.

You can decide to interpret this to mean that there was never a single choice involved if you want, but that's boiling down the entire concept of being evil to Anakin Skywalker tiers of shallow. Riddle could have been a total cunt of a kid that abused his magical powers, but still grown up decent. I distinctly remember being occasionally cruel myself when I was young, and I was not the worst example of it I can think of. And yet nobody I know has grown up to become a serial killer. Hell, Dumbledore was actively plotting and working towards taking over the entire motherfucking world and enslaving most of humanity when he was a young man, and yet he turned out okay as an adult.

Dumbledore pulled his head out of his ass. Grindelwald didn't. Neither did Riddle. There were numerous points where Riddle could have chosen to turn back, or step onto a different path. So what if he's a little cruel? There's a difference between being a cruel person and being Lord Voldemort. So what if he has a clique of close friends? That's not a crime either.

He chose to make his Horcrux. He made an active decision to. We even saw it happen.

It's only a contradiction if you assume choice is a superhighway with only a few turn offs, instead of a wide open parking lot that you're free to chart your own course and direction across.