His becoming an Auror made no sense. McGonagall pressured him to think about what he wanted to do in the future in his 4th year to plan out the rest of his education. Auror was his very first idea, and he wasnt really even super into the idea then. It seemed to be mostly out of a sense of admiration for Mad-Eye Moody specifically. And then, despite finding out that Moody was in fact a Death Eater trying to kill him the whole time, somehow that didn’t taint his opinion on the Auror thing at all.
Even though it was just the first thing to pop into his head, he never gives it any sort of critical thought or even comes up with any alternatives. He doesn’t even have an understanding of the greater wizarding world at that point to even know what kind of work exists outside of Hogwarts and Hogsmeade. He just shrugs and goes with his first idea anyway. But then he’s not even committed to that idea really. He is not even bummed when his grades would apparently prevent him from taking Advanced Potions, a required class to become an Auror. When he learns that Slugorn had less strict requirements and he can take the class after all, he’s just kind of like, oh okay… “guess I will keep following this path. I have no other ideas.”
I agree with the Carlin Brothers that his career after Hogwarts should have been at Hogwarts. Whatever admiration he had for the fake Moody, the real Moody, or both, his truest admiration was for Dumbledore. And Hogwarts was his first real home. He excelled at Defense Against the Dark Arts from the beginning, and by his 5th year was even already teaching his classmates (including older students) skills that he had. And he was an incredibly effective teacher too, with his students using the skills he taught in the fight at the department of mysteries and the battle of hogwarts. He had more experience by then end of the 7th book fighting Dark Wizards than most Aurors at the ministry would have. That job would have been boring as hell after Voldemort and the Death Eaters were defeated. But he could use his experiences to enrich the next generations of witches and wizards, teach them to protect themselves, and be there to make sure Hogwarts remained the haven that is had been for him. It makes WAY more sense for him to have become the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor (especially since he broke the curse on the job with Voldemort’s defeat). But then count on JK to do some stupid shit.
To be fair, I chose my career in a very similar way.
When I was a kid, people kept bugging me what I will choose as my future career. I didn’t want to keep having the same stupid conversation all the time, so I decided that since I liked playing computer games, might as well become a programmer.
So I did.
Probably not the best way to choose, but certainly a way that happens.
Remember, kids aren’t adults. They work differently. And once you are on a track, sunk cost fallacy and people around you can make it quite hard getting off said track.
Ha. I actually enrolled in the wrong major when I went to college. Meant to do computer graphics, ended up in computer science (don’t ask, I was just an idiot). My academic advisor told me that I would have to wait a semester to change majors, that it didnt really hurt much because most of the first semester classes were humanities that count for both anyway, but to go ahead and give my intro programming classes a try in the meantime, and see what I thought. And I fell in love with it and decided to keep the major. So yea… I guess that was even more dumb than Harry’s situation.
And then, despite finding out that Moody was in fact a Death Eater trying to kill him the whole time, somehow that didn’t taint his opinion on the Auror thing at all.
Moody wasn’t trying to kill him. He’d been kidnapped and replaced by a Death Eater in order to infiltrate the school. At the end of book 4, the deception is revealed and the death eater is arrested by the Aurors.
The real Moody returns in book 5 and serves as a loyal companion and mentor through the end of the series.
He had more experience by then end of the 7th book fighting Dark Wizards than most Aurors at the ministry would have. That job would have been boring as hell after Voldemort and the Death Eaters were defeated.
Voldemort is just the latest in a long line of evil wizards. They’re stubbornly common place.
I do think Harry’s career as an Auror can’t last. The best “old man Potter” story is going to read like a Harry Dresden novel - a washed up ex-cop turned private eye with as many enemies in the bureaucracy as the underworld.
But it’s reasonable for Harry to consider joining the Aurors after graduation, only to find out the hard way what being a Wizard Cop means in practice.
Moody wasn’t trying to kill him. He’d been kidnapped and replaced by a Death Eater in order to infiltrate the school. At the end of book 4, the deception is revealed and the death eater is arrested by the Aurors.
The real Moody returns in book 5 and serves as a loyal companion and mentor through the end of the series.
Yes, I know all that. The guy he knew as Moody originally, the only one he’d met at that point, the one he was admiring that inspired him to be an Auror, was the imposter. That’s what I was talking about.
Voldemort is just the latest in a long line of evil wizards. They’re stubbornly common place.
Not really. I mean there are evil people who are wizards, sure. But not to the level that had Dumbledore felt the need to be involved anyway.
Grindelwald fell in 1945, and it wasn’t until 1970 that Voldemort debuted himself to the world as the Dark Lord. He attempted to kill Harry 11 years later and lost his body in the process, comes fully back 13 years after that, and then is killed 3 years after coming back. We hear about no other person even attempting to rival the role that Grindelwald and Voldemort filled in that time. So from 1945 to 1997, 52 years, the only evil wizard that required a coordinated effort beyond the typical efforts of the Ministry that we ever hear of is Voldemort.
Not to nitpick, but Auror was Rowling’s first idea, as you suggest in your last sentence there. Rowling’s narrow-minded world view wouldn’t let the hero become a teacher, or a politician, or an activist, or anything else. Her view of the world says cops are the real heroes, so the hero of her story must become a cop.
That’s cause Rowling was a status quo loving Tony Blair labourite. As per a 4chan post:
“It very neatly describes the way liberals see the world and political struggle.
Lots of people complain about the anticlimactic ending, but really I don’t think it could be any other way. I’d like to imagine that there’s some alternate universe where Rowling actually believed in something and Harry was actually built up as the anti-Voldemort he was only hinted as being in the beginning of the books. Where he’s opposed to all the many injustices of the Wizarding World and determines to change their frequently backwards, insular, contradictory society for the better, and forms his own faction antithetical to the Death Eaters and when he finally has his showdown with Voldy, Harry surpasses by adopting new methods, breaking the rules and embracing change and the progression of history. While Voldemort clings to an idyllic imaging of the past and the greatest extent of his dreams is to become the self-appointed god of an eternally stagnant Neverland, Harry has embraced the possibility of a shining future and so can overcome the self-imposed limits Voldemort could never cross, and Voldemort is ultimately defeated by this.
But that would require a Harry that believed in something, and since Rowling is a liberal centrist Blairite that doesn’t really believe in anything, Harry can’t believe in anything. Harry lives in a world drought with conflict and injustice, a stratified class society, slavery of sentient magical creatures, the absurd charade the Wizarding World puts up to enforce their own self-segregation, a corrupt and bureaucracy-choked government, rampant racism, so on and so forth. But Harry is little more than a passive observer for most of it, only the racism really bothers him (and then, really only racism against half-bloods). In fact, when Hermione stands up against the slavery of elves, she’s treated as some kind of ridiculous Soapbox Sadie. For opposing chattel slavery. In the end, the biggest force for change is Voldemort while Harry and friends only ever fight for the preservation and reproduction of the status quo. The very height of Harry’s dreams is to join the Aurors, a sort of wizard FBI and the ultimate defenders of the wizarding status quo. Voldemort and the Death Eaters are the big instigators of change and Harry never quite gets to Voldy’s level. Harry doesn’t even beat Voldemort, Voldemort accidentally kills himself because he violated some obscure technicality that causes one of his spells to bounce back at him.
And this is really the struggle of liberals, they live in a world fraught with conflict, but aren’t particularly bothered by any of it except those that threaten multicultural pluralism. They see change, and the force behind that change, as a wholly negative phenomenon. Even then, they can only act within the legal and ideological framework of their society. So, for instance, instead of organizing insurrectionary and disruptive activity against Trump and the far-right, all they can do is bang their drum about what a racist bigot he is and hope they can catch him violating some technicality that will allow them to have him impeached or at least destroy his political clout. It won’t work, it will never work, but that’s the limit of liberalism just as it was the limit of Harry Potter.”
I think we’re putting the cart before the horse here.
Assuming Harry is virtuous and good and brave and excellent at fighting dark wizards and helping people, wouldn’t that be the perfect person to become a cop?
Those things qualify you for a whole slew of jobs, and Harry has plenty of other interests besides fighting evil wizards. It seems like very shallow, hackneyed writing to have a 14-year-old latch on to becoming a cop in a community that he didn’t even know existed until he was 11*, one which he literally isn’t permitted to participate in until he finishes boarding school.
Fair enough, but that argument also works against you:
Why become a cop? He has other interests than being a cop.
is equal to
Why not become a cop? He’s interested in being a cop.
Surely you know cops don’t eat sleep and breathe law enforcement too, right? As in they have other hobbies and interests? That goes for every job; a tailor has hobbies other than tailoring, and a taxi driver has other interests than driving.
What? Those aren’t equivalent at all. My whole point is that it’s bad writing and out of character for Harry to be interested in becoming a cop. Him becoming a cop is in no way equivalent to him pursuing literally anything else that would be more in-character.
Your second point has nothing to do with anything, and I don’t know why you included it.
If cops could be helpful to Harry, then why wouldn’t he ride a time horse back in time to meet his grandaddy’s prize-winning steed, a racehorse name you’ve likely not heard of. I hope you’re happy with your assertions
Fair enough, it was an implication that you might not have intended. Add to it that 99% of Lemmites believe “ACAB,” and you can imagine why I made that conclusion.
Secondly, in a lot of stories Batman defeats city-wide or even nation- or global-wide threats. Kinda like Harry. And whatever Batman happens to do, because it’s somehow justified, it ends up being good. Because he’s the hero. Like Harry.
But like the earlier dude said Harry hasn’t even got an understanding of the wider world. He would be much better at being a professor, because it also includes studying instead of just enforcing the rules.
Even if you imagine a perfect cop, he wouldn’t be acting like Harry. Harry constantly breaks some rules or laws. Not what cops should be doing. Yeah you need some of the virtues Harry has but Harry is also inpatient and a large risk-taker. Neither of which are particularly good characteristics in cops except in media. A perfect cop would be someone slightly autistic about the rules and literally doesn’t do whatever they feel like, but defers to the rules.
Which Harry most certainly doesn’t.
Imagine if the magical world was (for this analogy) the US. Some who grew up in another country and hasn’t even lived in the US, just went to a mostly American school, wants to be an American cop? Even when they go through a necessary training (and we know the wizarding world isn’t big on credentials or experience) to become a cop, he’d still have very little understanding of the actual law with just some weeks of training, and wouldn’t have grown up hearing about the constitution of the US let alone all the amendments to it.
But like the earlier dude said Harry hasn’t even got an understanding of the wider world. He would be much better at being a professor, because it also includes studying instead of just enforcing the rules.
This section is refuted by: He’s 18, so “Duh” and “Nah,” respectively.
Even if you imagine a perfect cop, he wouldn’t be acting like Harry. Harry constantly breaks some rules or laws. Not what cops should be doing.
A fair point, but essentially the opposite of what looks like most people’s assertion about Harry becoming a cop, i.e. “He’s good so he should not be a cop,” and/or, “If some/most/all cops are bad, no one should become a cop.” I find both of those asinine takes, hence my refuting them above.
TL;DR: Harry would be morally upstanding and a loose cannon (assuming he doesn’t mature past 18), therefore a “good” cop, but not a “great” cop, and assuming his world is anything like ours, should absolutely be a cop to offset the bad.
Imagine if the magical world was (for this analogy) the US. Some who grew up in another country and hasn’t even lived in the US, just went to a mostly American school, wants to be an American cop? Even when they go through a necessary training (and we know the wizarding world isn’t big on credentials or experience) to become a cop, he’d still have very little understanding of the actual law with just some weeks of training, and wouldn’t have grown up hearing about the constitution of the US let alone all the amendments to it.
Yes, immigrant cops have a disadvantage to face, but I disagree in your analogy and its application to Harry that it means they’re disqualified from the position; that’s a training issue that is far from impossible.
TL;DR: Harry would be morally upstanding and a loose cannon (assuming he doesn’t mature past 18), therefore a “good” cop
“Loose cannons” are never good as cops. No matter how much you delude yourself they’re completely moral and even if that were 100% true they wouldn’t be good cops. Cops aren’t justice. They’re law enforcement.
Someone applying their own morality all the time instead of laws should never ever be a cop. That’s why ACAB.
“Loose cannons” are never good as cops. No matter how much you delude yourself they’re completely moral and even if that were 100% true they wouldn’t be good cops. Cops aren’t justice. They’re law enforcement.
A reminder that we’re talking about choosing between lesser evils here. Would you rather an immoral by-the-book Auror/cop in league with Voldemort/Hitler or a moral loose cannon like Harry?
Someone applying their own morality all the time instead of laws should never ever be a cop. That’s why ACAB.
How do you feel about ICE arresting people for immigration offenses?
How do you feel about the DEA prosecuting people for cannabis?
There’s nuance here, and you’re pretending there isn’t.
His becoming an Auror made no sense. McGonagall pressured him to think about what he wanted to do in the future in his 4th year to plan out the rest of his education. Auror was his very first idea, and he wasnt really even super into the idea then. It seemed to be mostly out of a sense of admiration for Mad-Eye Moody specifically. And then, despite finding out that Moody was in fact a Death Eater trying to kill him the whole time, somehow that didn’t taint his opinion on the Auror thing at all.
Even though it was just the first thing to pop into his head, he never gives it any sort of critical thought or even comes up with any alternatives. He doesn’t even have an understanding of the greater wizarding world at that point to even know what kind of work exists outside of Hogwarts and Hogsmeade. He just shrugs and goes with his first idea anyway. But then he’s not even committed to that idea really. He is not even bummed when his grades would apparently prevent him from taking Advanced Potions, a required class to become an Auror. When he learns that Slugorn had less strict requirements and he can take the class after all, he’s just kind of like, oh okay… “guess I will keep following this path. I have no other ideas.”
I agree with the Carlin Brothers that his career after Hogwarts should have been at Hogwarts. Whatever admiration he had for the fake Moody, the real Moody, or both, his truest admiration was for Dumbledore. And Hogwarts was his first real home. He excelled at Defense Against the Dark Arts from the beginning, and by his 5th year was even already teaching his classmates (including older students) skills that he had. And he was an incredibly effective teacher too, with his students using the skills he taught in the fight at the department of mysteries and the battle of hogwarts. He had more experience by then end of the 7th book fighting Dark Wizards than most Aurors at the ministry would have. That job would have been boring as hell after Voldemort and the Death Eaters were defeated. But he could use his experiences to enrich the next generations of witches and wizards, teach them to protect themselves, and be there to make sure Hogwarts remained the haven that is had been for him. It makes WAY more sense for him to have become the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor (especially since he broke the curse on the job with Voldemort’s defeat). But then count on JK to do some stupid shit.
To be fair, I chose my career in a very similar way.
When I was a kid, people kept bugging me what I will choose as my future career. I didn’t want to keep having the same stupid conversation all the time, so I decided that since I liked playing computer games, might as well become a programmer.
So I did.
Probably not the best way to choose, but certainly a way that happens.
Remember, kids aren’t adults. They work differently. And once you are on a track, sunk cost fallacy and people around you can make it quite hard getting off said track.
Ha. I actually enrolled in the wrong major when I went to college. Meant to do computer graphics, ended up in computer science (don’t ask, I was just an idiot). My academic advisor told me that I would have to wait a semester to change majors, that it didnt really hurt much because most of the first semester classes were humanities that count for both anyway, but to go ahead and give my intro programming classes a try in the meantime, and see what I thought. And I fell in love with it and decided to keep the major. So yea… I guess that was even more dumb than Harry’s situation.
Moody wasn’t trying to kill him. He’d been kidnapped and replaced by a Death Eater in order to infiltrate the school. At the end of book 4, the deception is revealed and the death eater is arrested by the Aurors.
The real Moody returns in book 5 and serves as a loyal companion and mentor through the end of the series.
Voldemort is just the latest in a long line of evil wizards. They’re stubbornly common place.
I do think Harry’s career as an Auror can’t last. The best “old man Potter” story is going to read like a Harry Dresden novel - a washed up ex-cop turned private eye with as many enemies in the bureaucracy as the underworld.
But it’s reasonable for Harry to consider joining the Aurors after graduation, only to find out the hard way what being a Wizard Cop means in practice.
Yes, I know all that. The guy he knew as Moody originally, the only one he’d met at that point, the one he was admiring that inspired him to be an Auror, was the imposter. That’s what I was talking about.
Not really. I mean there are evil people who are wizards, sure. But not to the level that had Dumbledore felt the need to be involved anyway.
Grindelwald fell in 1945, and it wasn’t until 1970 that Voldemort debuted himself to the world as the Dark Lord. He attempted to kill Harry 11 years later and lost his body in the process, comes fully back 13 years after that, and then is killed 3 years after coming back. We hear about no other person even attempting to rival the role that Grindelwald and Voldemort filled in that time. So from 1945 to 1997, 52 years, the only evil wizard that required a coordinated effort beyond the typical efforts of the Ministry that we ever hear of is Voldemort.
Not to nitpick, but Auror was Rowling’s first idea, as you suggest in your last sentence there. Rowling’s narrow-minded world view wouldn’t let the hero become a teacher, or a politician, or an activist, or anything else. Her view of the world says cops are the real heroes, so the hero of her story must become a cop.
That’s cause Rowling was a status quo loving Tony Blair labourite. As per a 4chan post:
Source: https://www.tumblr.com/ryttu3k/672686578850840576/description-a-text-post-originating-from-4chan
I think we’re putting the cart before the horse here.
Assuming Harry is virtuous and good and brave and excellent at fighting dark wizards and helping people, wouldn’t that be the perfect person to become a cop?
Those things qualify you for a whole slew of jobs, and Harry has plenty of other interests besides fighting evil wizards. It seems like very shallow, hackneyed writing to have a 14-year-old latch on to becoming a cop in a community that he didn’t even know existed until he was 11*, one which he literally isn’t permitted to participate in until he finishes boarding school.
Fair enough, but that argument also works against you:
Why become a cop? He has other interests than being a cop.
is equal to
Why not become a cop? He’s interested in being a cop.
Surely you know cops don’t eat sleep and breathe law enforcement too, right? As in they have other hobbies and interests? That goes for every job; a tailor has hobbies other than tailoring, and a taxi driver has other interests than driving.
What? Those aren’t equivalent at all. My whole point is that it’s bad writing and out of character for Harry to be interested in becoming a cop. Him becoming a cop is in no way equivalent to him pursuing literally anything else that would be more in-character.
Your second point has nothing to do with anything, and I don’t know why you included it.
Only if you assume cops are there to help people. He’d do more good as a Batman/Dexter type.
You’re putting the cart before the horse there.
If cops could be helpful to Harry, then why wouldn’t he ride a time horse back in time to meet his grandaddy’s prize-winning steed, a racehorse name you’ve likely not heard of. I hope you’re happy with your assertions
Again, cart before horse.
You’re asserting that there are no helpful cops, therefore Harry being helpful means he should not be a cop.
In reality, Harry being helpful should be a cop, because he could be in a position to help people.
Dexter/Batman don’t do a lot of helping, they just crack skulls of people they perceive as bad. Ironically for your point, much like most IRL cops.
I asserted that?
Fair enough, it was an implication that you might not have intended. Add to it that 99% of Lemmites believe “ACAB,” and you can imagine why I made that conclusion.
First off, ACAB.
Secondly, in a lot of stories Batman defeats city-wide or even nation- or global-wide threats. Kinda like Harry. And whatever Batman happens to do, because it’s somehow justified, it ends up being good. Because he’s the hero. Like Harry.
But like the earlier dude said Harry hasn’t even got an understanding of the wider world. He would be much better at being a professor, because it also includes studying instead of just enforcing the rules.
Even if you imagine a perfect cop, he wouldn’t be acting like Harry. Harry constantly breaks some rules or laws. Not what cops should be doing. Yeah you need some of the virtues Harry has but Harry is also inpatient and a large risk-taker. Neither of which are particularly good characteristics in cops except in media. A perfect cop would be someone slightly autistic about the rules and literally doesn’t do whatever they feel like, but defers to the rules.
Which Harry most certainly doesn’t.
Imagine if the magical world was (for this analogy) the US. Some who grew up in another country and hasn’t even lived in the US, just went to a mostly American school, wants to be an American cop? Even when they go through a necessary training (and we know the wizarding world isn’t big on credentials or experience) to become a cop, he’d still have very little understanding of the actual law with just some weeks of training, and wouldn’t have grown up hearing about the constitution of the US let alone all the amendments to it.
This section is refuted by: He’s 18, so “Duh” and “Nah,” respectively.
A fair point, but essentially the opposite of what looks like most people’s assertion about Harry becoming a cop, i.e. “He’s good so he should not be a cop,” and/or, “If some/most/all cops are bad, no one should become a cop.” I find both of those asinine takes, hence my refuting them above.
TL;DR: Harry would be morally upstanding and a loose cannon (assuming he doesn’t mature past 18), therefore a “good” cop, but not a “great” cop, and assuming his world is anything like ours, should absolutely be a cop to offset the bad.
Yes, immigrant cops have a disadvantage to face, but I disagree in your analogy and its application to Harry that it means they’re disqualified from the position; that’s a training issue that is far from impossible.
“Loose cannons” are never good as cops. No matter how much you delude yourself they’re completely moral and even if that were 100% true they wouldn’t be good cops. Cops aren’t justice. They’re law enforcement.
Someone applying their own morality all the time instead of laws should never ever be a cop. That’s why ACAB.
A reminder that we’re talking about choosing between lesser evils here. Would you rather an immoral by-the-book Auror/cop in league with Voldemort/Hitler or a moral loose cannon like Harry?
How do you feel about ICE arresting people for immigration offenses?
How do you feel about the DEA prosecuting people for cannabis?
There’s nuance here, and you’re pretending there isn’t.
This is not at all what I remember happening
Edit: you mean when Crouch is impersonating him?
Edit 2: oh yeah, he did meet Crouch as Moody first