Yes, Dumbledore might ultimately stage-manage everything, but Minerva's the first to explicitly reward rather than punish him for breaking the rules. Before she ever attempts to punish him for anything, she's ALREADY shown herself to be biased in his favor. And even that first punishment was...er, quite appealing to a Gryff, yes? So of course she's "strict but fair" rather than a Harry-hater.
Good catch on that end-of-year talk - I missed that! Making it very explicit, and building on the pattern...
Getting Hermione to be the instigator was an inspired touch on Dumbledore's part, since the boys regard her as the rule-enforcer....
Oh, yes. Because it's not just Harry in question here, but his cohorts as well, yes. Lock them all into a pattern where they can reinforce to each other the overall direction for Harry... And then, yes, Ron in GOF, pushing Harry away, and coming back to apologize and admit his wrong. Echoed later in his return in DH, though at that point he really was right about everything.
Definitely by HBP Harry had completely internalized the idea that even when he'd done something he himself thought was wrong, it was ENTIRELY unjustified for someone to actually punish him for it. ... it reinforced for him that negative consequences were independent of his actual actions.
PRECISELY. Word. And how is Harry supposed to build any coherent moral framework for himself internally if his actions and external consequences fundamentally have nothing to do with one another? Poor Sev at least attempted to be consistent with him, but all he ended up doing under the circumstances was confirm Harry's distorted view of things. Sev could only wield influence in his little corner of Harry's universe, while everyone else undermined that.
And then the Ministry and Umbridge, punishing him for telling the truth and then making up rules aimed specifically at Harry and his cohort....
Oh yes. And at the end of that year we get the fiasco at the DOM and Sirius' death, and then Harry has MASSIVE internal emotional pressure to deal with that gives him plenty of motivation to 1) avoid any honest self-reflection whatsoever, and 2) shrug as much of the blame off on someone else - someone emotionally safe to blame - as he possibly can. And that lovely little speech of Dumbles' gives him all the implicit license he needs to go full-throttle in the direction he's already tending, and offload everything onto Severus.
The man he already hates and resists, who he's already wronged but would like to avoid having to acknowledge that fact about, and the man who subconsciously presents the greatest threat to his internal model here - because Severus of course had been the one pointing out the danger Harry fell into and the likely result and had demanded he work to avoid it. Severus is here most clearly the figure of rightful authority, the one with the greatest standing to criticize Harry, the one whose rules he failed to obey and thereby lost Sirius. Severus is going to be the figure Harry most strongly and instinctively resists, and Dumbledore says 'go for it! That's my boy!'
And after THAT Harry starts openly doubting and critiquing Severus in relation to anything and anyone, not just himself - until HBP we've never seen him, for example, argue with the choice of Severus vs. Poppy when Hermione or someone was hurt.
And then, of course, at the end of HBP we have Severus apparently revealed as the true source of all misery in Harry's life, from his parents' deaths to Dumbledore's to (via the book) his own attack on Draco...
This is I think why so many of us felt let down by the Prince's Tale. Instead of the honest, face-to-face conversation and onscreen resolution of the tension between Harry and Severus that had been building for seven books - which we NEEDED to deal with all that emotional charge - we got palmed off with a handful of memories and an emotionally-dead Harry who just marches off to suicide on Albus' say-so.
But then, the Harry of DH had never learned any of the moral lessons he would have needed to be able to have that conversation like an adult. JKR had to avoid that confrontation because she'd utterly failed to properly prepare her hero for it.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: This is great! Harry's education that he was above the rules...
Date: 2015-08-16 05:08 pm (UTC)Yes, Dumbledore might ultimately stage-manage everything, but Minerva's the first to explicitly reward rather than punish him for breaking the rules. Before she ever attempts to punish him for anything, she's ALREADY shown herself to be biased in his favor. And even that first punishment was...er, quite appealing to a Gryff, yes? So of course she's "strict but fair" rather than a Harry-hater.
Good catch on that end-of-year talk - I missed that! Making it very explicit, and building on the pattern...
Getting Hermione to be the instigator was an inspired touch on Dumbledore's part, since the boys regard her as the rule-enforcer....
Oh, yes. Because it's not just Harry in question here, but his cohorts as well, yes. Lock them all into a pattern where they can reinforce to each other the overall direction for Harry... And then, yes, Ron in GOF, pushing Harry away, and coming back to apologize and admit his wrong. Echoed later in his return in DH, though at that point he really was right about everything.
Definitely by HBP Harry had completely internalized the idea that even when he'd done something he himself thought was wrong, it was ENTIRELY unjustified for someone to actually punish him for it. ... it reinforced for him that negative consequences were independent of his actual actions.
PRECISELY. Word. And how is Harry supposed to build any coherent moral framework for himself internally if his actions and external consequences fundamentally have nothing to do with one another? Poor Sev at least attempted to be consistent with him, but all he ended up doing under the circumstances was confirm Harry's distorted view of things. Sev could only wield influence in his little corner of Harry's universe, while everyone else undermined that.
And then the Ministry and Umbridge, punishing him for telling the truth and then making up rules aimed specifically at Harry and his cohort....
Oh yes. And at the end of that year we get the fiasco at the DOM and Sirius' death, and then Harry has MASSIVE internal emotional pressure to deal with that gives him plenty of motivation to 1) avoid any honest self-reflection whatsoever, and 2) shrug as much of the blame off on someone else - someone emotionally safe to blame - as he possibly can. And that lovely little speech of Dumbles' gives him all the implicit license he needs to go full-throttle in the direction he's already tending, and offload everything onto Severus.
The man he already hates and resists, who he's already wronged but would like to avoid having to acknowledge that fact about, and the man who subconsciously presents the greatest threat to his internal model here - because Severus of course had been the one pointing out the danger Harry fell into and the likely result and had demanded he work to avoid it. Severus is here most clearly the figure of rightful authority, the one with the greatest standing to criticize Harry, the one whose rules he failed to obey and thereby lost Sirius. Severus is going to be the figure Harry most strongly and instinctively resists, and Dumbledore says 'go for it! That's my boy!'
And after THAT Harry starts openly doubting and critiquing Severus in relation to anything and anyone, not just himself - until HBP we've never seen him, for example, argue with the choice of Severus vs. Poppy when Hermione or someone was hurt.
And then, of course, at the end of HBP we have Severus apparently revealed as the true source of all misery in Harry's life, from his parents' deaths to Dumbledore's to (via the book) his own attack on Draco...
This is I think why so many of us felt let down by the Prince's Tale. Instead of the honest, face-to-face conversation and onscreen resolution of the tension between Harry and Severus that had been building for seven books - which we NEEDED to deal with all that emotional charge - we got palmed off with a handful of memories and an emotionally-dead Harry who just marches off to suicide on Albus' say-so.
But then, the Harry of DH had never learned any of the moral lessons he would have needed to be able to have that conversation like an adult. JKR had to avoid that confrontation because she'd utterly failed to properly prepare her hero for it.