Can someone please explain the end of Harry Potter to me?

[Tonight37]

Please explain it to me as though I’m 5.

Is Albus Dumbledore good or bad?

What about Snape?

Thanks

But the HP books aren't a first person narrative so Harry isn't an unreliable narrator.

Also, the prophesy could have referred to Harry or Neville. Voldemort 'chose' Harry but it was actually Neville who killed the last Horcrux and then Voldemort killed himself during his duel with Harry.

Harry definitely is an unreliable narrator - completely blind to Ron and Hermione having feelings for each other, for example! And agree re his feelings about Snape too.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/andyneuenschwander/these-hilarious-harry-potter-comics-show-how-irresponsible-d

Love this collection about Dumbledore.

Having recently listened to the series again I am now leaning towards thinking that Dumbledore was a paternalistic arsehole and Snape was a self absorbed, malevolent shithead.

As a kid I definitely came away thinking dumbledore was good. On an adult re-read, I'm not so sure. Certainly a gray character, that does some pretty awful things, possibly believing it to be for the greater good, though I believe he does cross lines and makes self-serving choices aswell.

Chapter 1, first book, he leaves an infant on a doorstop overnight in winter and engine's for a child to be raised in an abusive situation. He is not a nice man.

Interesting thread. It sort of makes me wonder if AD really abandoned the idea of the ‘greater good’ after falling out with Grindlewald - after all, the only way he could justify the abuse of Harry with the Dursleys was by that same maxim.

X post!

Snape was bullied when he was young, and he passed that bullying on to the kids he taught, and he held a grudge against the children of the ones who bullied him.

the films truly aren’t as clear as the books -

Harry might not literally narrate the books but they are told from his viewpoint. We see only what he sees and the only character whose thoughts we get access to are his. That colours the lens through which we see everything else.

When Umbridge gives her speech we only hear as much of it as Harry’s attention span gives us and then we get the edited highlights from Hermione who was paying attention. That sort of thing happens quite a bit in the books where we get limited information because Harry was there but not paying attention and then someone else (usually Hermione) has to fill Harry and the reader in afterwards.

Snape considers himself to be a cut above the other Death Eaters. He has no hesitation in reminding Bellatrix that he has the Dark Lords trust. She was in prison, Snape undercover. At the performing of the Unbreakable vow he steps up to the challenge from Bellatrix and tells her that Voldemort is the greatest Legilimans and she should have no doubt the Dark Lords trusts him. He uses that against her a few times. But then he is a clear thinker whereas she is devoted to Voldemort and is hell bent on killing. Of course love for Lily made him this way. But he had been a follower of Voldemort beforehand l.

Agree both are good and bad. But why are people saying that Dumble engineered Harry to be raised in an abusive home ? I thought he had to stay with relatives to keep the protective curse on him and Petunia was the only living relative so essentially was the least bad option, in terms of keeping Harry alive ? Dumbledoor didn't WANT him to be raised in an abusive home did he?

I agree with Harry being an u reliable narrator. Whilst the books are not written in first person, a lot of the 'bad' shape does is written from Harry's point of view. We often know Snape is behaving badly because of how Harry feels about it.

That lends an air of unreliability. Not least because it is never countered by Snape's point of view - to keep Snape's secrets from the reader, he has to be somewhat of an enigma and we never find out how he is feeling.

But neither he nor AD are all good or all bad. Both bear a lot of responsibility for the misery of Harry's early childhood and for the placing of the burden on his shoulders.

I agree that Harry is meant to be a slightly unreliable narrator. He has a burning hatred for Snape and only sees the bad in him.

I see Snape as quite a sad figure. He lives a miserable fake life and doesn’t live to see Voldemort defeated. Who knows what sort of person he might really have been were he just free to be himself?

He was free to be himself before Voldemort targeted Lily and he started spying for Dumbledore. And he was a Death Eater.

I thought the Cursed Child was mostly awful, but the one thing it got right IMO is that Harry's nightmares are about the Dursleys as much as they are about Voldemort.

Agree with a lot of the PPs.

Dumbledore was a ‘for the greater good’ type of character which meant some questionable decisions and allowing Harry to grow up miserable and destined to die at the right time.

Snape was a tortured child who made the wrong choices growing up. Very much groomed by the Death Eaters in an extremists/terrorists sort of way. He wasn’t a pleasant person but a lot of his actions were to ensure his role as a true Death Eater wouldn’t be questioned. He wasn’t completely altruistic though.

charity burbage was the muggle studies teacher.
I also think that it depends on whose POV you're looking at it from, including in terms of 'greater good.' Harry clearly ended up forgiving both of them (I always wondered if Ginny didn't want any say in naming any of her kids?) but would Charity Burbage think her death was for the greater good? How about her kids (if she had them), would she think Snape's good points outweighed him murdering her to keep his cover going? How about the 12 year olds who got tortured under the Carrows when he was headteacher?

Apparently his bullying of Harry was justified or at least understandable because of him being bullied by James, but then what excuse did he have to, as a grown adult, bully Neville, another boy who'd already essentially lost both his parents and was bullied by his classmates? Neville finally found his own self-confidence but it could very well have gone the other way.

As you might tell, I don't get the Snape love!

Same with Dumbledore, really. Even his own brother didn't really forgive or like him. I can't remember if Dumbledore's house was ever mentioned...I think it would have been a good twist if for the first 6 years everyone spoke about how brave and clever and heroic he was but it was revealed that he was actually in Slytherin, which really matches his essential character much more...

But there were other options. They could have done the fidious (spl?) Charm on the house of an order member, but with dumbledore actually being the secret keeper. Or they could have taken baby Harry to hogwarts, or had the aurors guard him and his guardian, or send him to a powerful wizard family in Australia.

Leaving the child in an abusive home was not the only way to keep him safe. It was however a good way to keep him isolated, so much easier for dumbledore to control when he re-entered the wizarding world. Imagine if he'd grown up with magic and had an involved adaptive family looking out for him.

But there were other options. They could have done the fidious (spl?) Charm on the house of an order member, but with dumbledore actually being the secret keeper.

I do think you have to not look too closely at other options in HP.

The secret keeper charm (fidelius??) was used by Bill Weasley to secret keep his own home that he then just stayed in - no worry about being betrayed, and presumably impossible to torture out of him because you'd have to find him first and you couldn't do that. Why did James or Lily not just do that in the first place!!

I'm not sure an entirely isolated childhood would be good for anyone growing up. Harry had it very tough, but he did at least go to school with other kids in the Muggle world.

Another important question about the film- why did they all look like middle aged cliches in the future scene at the train station when they were only 36/37?

Why are his parents clearly in at least their late 30s in the flashbacks when they died aged 21?

All of the adults got aged up in the films compared to the books.

The overarching point was that people are people. Very very few are truly evil - Voldemort and possibly Bellatrix.

Most are somewhere in between - good people can do “bad” things - and “bad” people can do good things for very complicated reasons. And sometimes people make mistakes.

Harry used unforgivable curses for what he believed were justified reasons.

Dumbledore wanted to do the right things but this ended up with Harry being caught in the middle and being made to suffer his abusive family and being lied to by Dumbledore for “the greater good”.

Snape did good things - helped the light side but for entirely selfish reasons - for his love of Lily. He betrayed Voldemort because he murdered the love of his life.

He was still absolutely awful to Harry and possibly not a nice person - but he still helped the order and Dumbledore at great personal risk to himself.

Umbridge was always deeply unpleasant but technically on the “light” side to start with but with an authoritarian streak that was fed when the death eater took control - she then went further and further until she was committing some really heinous acts.

Draco did some awful things as he was brought up in that vein but a lot of it was because he was coerced and from the tone of the books they hinted at redemption.

A lot of the numbers in the books make zero sense, I think they tried to right that a bit in the films. There's a bit in the first one about Gryffindor not winning the Quidditch since the great Charlie (?) Weasley was on the team - which was six weeks earlier.

Yeo. Rowling is famously crap at numbers. She talks about there being 1000 students at Hogwarts but when you look at the fact that there’s clearly no more than 60 kids in each year and more likely about 40, that clearly doesn’t add up.