Harry Potter Is A Bloody Idiot

You probably think, since this is the second post I’ve written that criticises Harry Potter, that I don’t like it.  And to you, I say: "Put a mandrake (or mantagora) root in it! Of course I like Harry Potter!"

I was raised on this series. The first book I ever read by myself was Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone. For me: the fifth book in the series felt like a rite of passage as a child. My classmates were all forced to read for twenty minutes every day, and that’s probably the last time the majority of them have ever read a book since. They would all have slim volumes of forgotten children’s books (or “kid-crap” as I like to call it) and I would be sat there with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix looking like a young Plato as I poured through this phonebook that broke my back as I carried it to and from school. Order of the Phoenix separated the men from the boys and the women from the girls. You got through Order of the Phoenix – you’re a bookworm. Already people were throwing me copies of Ulysses…

So I feel perfectly qualified to say that Harry is a bloody idiot.

Imagine a giant bursts into your house on your 11^th birthday claiming that you’re the most famous wizard who ever lived, and in seven years’ time you will save the world. What do you do?

A) Absorb everything this wonderful world of magic has to offer, exploring this incredible society beyond the normal world. 

B) Work and study hard to match your reputation. Learn from the greats to become greater. 
  
C) Idly drift through your school-life, doing the minimum that’s required – only being truly invested when there’s an adventure to be had: like a really dumb Sherlock Holmes.

In case you couldn’t tell, Harry chose ‘C.’ He bucks up a bit when he’s kicked out of Hogwarts and has to fend for himself, but even then he spends the summer prior doing bugger all. He has a wealth of textbooks available and he doesn’t even glance at them before embarking on a mission to save humanity…which he’s hopelessly under-equipped for.

"It's not like he's The Chosen One...."

OK, so Dumbledore was ridiculously stupid for letting Harry compete in the Triwizard Tournament instead of pulling him out of the contest and opening an investigation because it was so painfully obvious that someone had sabotaged the goblet. This is like if a child was accidentally signed up for the army, and the army found this out but decided: “what the hell! Let the kid go to war!”

But Harry didn’t exactly make things easier for himself. He barely prepares for the first task. He’s straight-up told what the task is, yet has to rely on the help of someone else. In the second task he’s given a clue, but he has to be told how to use it and he waits right until the task before attempting to solve it. Once again, he has to be straight-up told how to complete the task. He only excels at the final task because he’s told a good month beforehand precisely what the tasks going to be and his friends almost fail their exams helping him. And, of course, it turns out Harry only got so far in the tournament because the antagonist wanted him to win – so imagine what would’ve happened if Harry becoming an entrant was just an accident rather than part of a greater plan. My guess is that The Goblet of Fire would’ve been a very short book.

Maybe Harry is such an annoying protagonist because he constantly hangs around with a person who’d make a much, much better protagonist: Hermione.

Good god, Hermione is awesome. She finds out that she’s part of a world where you can levitate stuff, and naturally immediately seeks to master it. And who wouldn’t? She’s the only person in her class to summon birds on her first try, and she learnt how to summon birds because she’s the only person who actually thought: “that’s completely awesome.”

She’s born to a muggle family, and upon finding out magic exists she immediately wants to know everything about it. Harry is curious, but just kind of shrugs his shoulders by the end of book one. Hermione embraces magic as a glorious gift, making it even more heart-breaking that she has to suffer prejudice coming from a muggle family.

Behold: Harry's biggest achievement...

Let’s not forget how many times Hermione has saved the day. She’s the one who knows about the Philosphers Stone because she’s the one whose picked up a book and learnt about all these works of genius invented by great magicians. She immediately solves a riddle to help Harry get to his grand climax; a scene that wasn’t included in the movie because watching Hermione go all Sherlock would’ve been too awesome for audiences. She not only knows the existence of polyjuice potion, but she’s able to brew a ridiculously complex recipe despite being twelve years old. And once again she successfully gets Harry to the climax despite being in an unconscious state for the last tenth of the book. It’s her who sets up Dumbledore’s Army, not Harry – and she saves the day over four times throughout the course of The Deathly Hallows. Harry saves them twice: once by simply unleashing a giant dragon and the other by simply being wizard-Jesus.

I don’t get why Dumbledore chose to train up Harry as humanities last great hope when all this time he completely ignored Hermione. Yes, Harry is wizard-Jesus, but he’s never earned his role and he’s never attempted to fill this role. Dumbledore forces him to become humanities saviour, and Harry just follows his instinct – which always by luck produces success. Katniss from The Hunger Games gets a lot of criticism, as she too is unwillingly forced into the role of humanities saviour – but in the end she doesn’t save humanity because she’s only seventeen. She’s way in over her head, and her every decision reflects this. I was actually really annoyed when Harry came back from the dead because it meant he was wizard-Jesus all along. The twist towards the end of the final book implies that all along he was merely a puppet…which is what he is, but the double-twist comes along to prove otherwise, much to my annoyance.

As a footnote to Hermione’s greatness: according to J.K Rowling she’s the only person who went back to Hogwarts after the seventh book to finish her studies. Harry and Ron save the world after a series of lucky breaks and are like: “yeah, I think we’re qualified to go into full-time employment now.” Hermione, on the other hand, is like: “good luck trying to get jobs with only OWLs: I’m off back to school.”

I think that says it all, really.