Voldemort and his death eaters were after Harry, not the school.
It was the school going to war for him, not the other way around.
ish… Harry was prophecied to defeat Voldemort so he was the immediate target but Voldemort and the death eaters had nearly conquered the wizarding world before Voldemort attacked Harry the first time and their ultimate goal was to take over so it was fight the death eaters with the guy who was destined to stop them now or fight the death eaters without him later.
Another take on that is that he wasn’t going to war for his school at all. That’s ignoring the previous comments about it not being about the school at all (which is partly true), but recognizing the validity of that perspective.
My point is that even if the war had been about the school itself, that wasn’t what Harry was fighting for. He was fighting for his home…
Books or movies, Hogwarts was the one place that Harry felt was home. Not the Durselys’, not even the Weasleys’. Hogwarts was Harry’s first real home. So, even if he hadn’t been the “chosen one”, even if voldemort was attacking the school directly as a goal without any of the rest of the part about him and Harry, I think he still would have fought as hard as he could to defend it.
You could make Harry a supporting character with his parents just having died of natural causes, and him being taken in by the Dursleys to eventually go to school at Hogwarts with nothing else involved, and that kid would still have fought for the one place he felt at home. Hogwarts was like that for other students, but Harry had that abusive household and extremely limited freedom to make other social connections. That’s an ideal setup for someone to attach to something as wonderful as Hogwarts was in comparison.
I really think that Harry would have fought just as hard or harder for no other reason than that.
Nor would have I, but I like to think I would have for my friends.
Harry Potter is also crazy because the “hero” spends the last two books in possession of a slave.
While this is is technically true, he did so reluctantly, and only to help the Order prevent Kreacher from falling into the hands of Bellatrix:
‘I don’t care,’ said Harry again, looking with disgust at the writhing, stamping house-elf. ‘I don’t want him.’
‘You would prefer him to pass into the ownership of Bellatrix Lestrange? Bearing in mind that he has lived at the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix for the past year?’
Harry stared at Dumbledore. He knew that Kreacher could not be permitted to go and live with Bellatrix Lestrange, but the idea of owning him, of having responsibility for the creature that had betrayed Sirius, was repugnant.‘Do I – do I have to keep him with me?’ Harry asked, aghast, as Kreacher thrashed around at his feet.
‘Not if you don’t want to,’ said Dumbledore. ‘If I might make a suggestion, you could send him to Hogwarts to work in the kitchen there. In that way, the other house-elves could keep an eye on him.’
‘Yeah,’ said Harry in relief, ‘yeah, I’ll do that. Er – Kreacher – I want you to go to Hogwarts and work in the kitchens there with the other house-elves.’HBP3
Yeah, but later on Harry’s like “I need someone to spy on Malfoy, but I’m too busy. Oh, if only I had a servant to order around. Oh wait a second, I do, I’m a slaveowner! Kreacher, come here!”
Harry also literally watched the government be taken over by fascists and the law turned into an instrument of oppression (as if it wasn’t already), and decided to become a cop.
That boy is just totally incapable of thinking his way through any problem with a moral depth greater than a thimble. Probably because the author is the same way and doesn’t have the capacity to describe a morally intelligent character.
You notice how the books are constantly describing different ways in which wizard society is fucked up, but none of the root causes ever get fixed? Voldemort was born because of love potion rape, but love potions are still legal at the end. He got wizard followers because wizards are eugenicists, but the same people are still racist at the end of the book and have the same power they did at the start. Magical creatures joined Voldemort because they had unequal rights, but they still have unequal rights after he’s defeated. The book ends with the line “all was well”, but it wasn’t. All of the structural problems still existed. The only social change is that the Weasleys aren’t poor anymore, but that’s only because Fred and George did a capitalism. Other people are still poor.
Harry never sought any structural solutions to the world’s problems, because Rowling is incapable of imagining structural solutions. The best she can come up with is writing Hermione’s civil rights movement as a joke. She’s not capable of anything deeper than inappropriate parody.
