Arianhrod, you certainly have a firm grasp on the subject matter. I do question, however, the differentiation between "love" and "basic necessities". Love is understood in a multitude of ways, often with discrepancies across cultures. Absolute, unquestioned/unchallenged love requires no obligations. Such love might exist, I believe, perhaps temporarily between a young child and a parent.

I believe such love is uncommon among small children. Children can be very demanding (or so I've heard). They need to eat. They are cranky/tired. They want attention. And if the "good", doting parent fulfills the child's needs, does the child truly love the parent?

Psychodynamic theory aside, is 15 months of dotage enough for Harry to have the fortitude to develop a much higher, lasting, meaningful experience of love? If so, for whom? His parents? Sirius? Prof. DD? Friends?

Just one other thought. Is pity similar to love? Does Harry "pity" Tom Riddle at the end of all things?

Ex Libro Cogito posted:

Thanks for the compliment!

Yes, 15 months is enough time. Of course, the bond grows stronger over time, but if a child has learned to bond by then, chances are he'll be fine. That attachment to Lily as a baby laid the foundation for all relationships that would come after. It's also how he survived the Dursleys relatively intact.

I think you are confusing needs with wants. A small child doesn't just want to be cuddled--they need to be cuddled. (Just as an example.) They need that security and to feel safe. That is how they feel loved. (And truth be told, most adults feel the same way, don't we?) But they do not know the difference between needs and wants--something most adults don't know, either.

Do children know how to love? Absolutely. As adults, we say that love requires no obligations. Well, when we have children, we are obligated to provide them love, shelter, food, and medicine. That's what being a parent entails. But it is still unconditional. It's your child; you love them no matter what. No matter what it costs you personally, you will do it for your child, no strings attached. Why? Because the child doesn't know any better. Another part of being a parent is teaching them the difference.

And children love unconditionally as well. Many children, no matter how they are treated, still love their parents unconditionally simply because they are their parents. It's only when they are older (usually) that problems develop.

Young children are very demanding. That's the nature of the beast and goes with the territory. They may have the vocabulary, but they do not have the emotional development to control it. Also, they do not know the difference between needs and wants. In their minds, "want" and "need" are exactly the same thing. Children are by nature very self-centered because their cognitive skills haven't developed to the point where they can step outside themselves and put themselves in another's place. That takes many, many years, and some people never do get it.

Yes, 15 months is enough time. Of course, the bond grows stronger over time, but if a child has learned to bond by then, chances are he'll be fine. That attachment to Lily as a baby laid the foundation for all relationships that would come after. It's also how he survived the Dursleys relatively intact.

Harry had dreamed and dreamed of some unknown relation coming to take him away, but it had never happened: the Dursley were his only family.

Both Harry and Tom Riddle NEEDED love, in order to grow up normally, in order to develop a healthy personality and character, in order to move on.. But they both were deprived of it when they were young ; (I should give an advantage to Tom in this, because Tom could have found love in the orphanage if he had wanted to, but he didn't, whereas Harry wasn't given love no matter how hard he tried in the Dursleys)..

The green light flashed around the room and she dropped like her husband. The child had not cried all this time: he could stand, clutching the bars of his cot, and he looked up into the intruder's face with a kind of bright interest, perhaps thinking that it was his father who hid beneath the cloak, making more pretty lights, and his mother would pop up any moment, laughing--
He pointed the wand very carefully into the boy's face: he wanted to see it happen, the destruction of this one, inexplicable danger. The child began to cry: it had seen that he was not James. He did not like it crying, he had never been able to stomach the small ones' whining in the orphanage--
'Avada Kedavra!'
And then he broke: he was nothing, nothing but pain and terror, and he must hide himself, not here in the rubble of the ruined house, where the child was trapped and screaming, but far away... far away...
[...] and he had killed the boy, and yet he was the boy....

The trauma Harry feels with the approach of the Dementors is actually Voldemort.

What was he doing? Why was he flying? He needed to help her...she was going to die...She was going to be murdered...

I'm sorry so many were disappointed in Snape's final encounter, but Snape's entire charisma was due to the enigma of his narrative. He himself has relished the idea that he was the bad boy gone good, or was he. He enjoyed the role of double-agent. It suited him in that it played to his character's strengths, a love of the dark arts and an insatiable curiosity, and his weaknesses, social awkwardness and acute insecurity. However, once exposed as the double-agent who truly lived in a No Man's Land, Snape loses his charisma and becomes a sad minor figure who played his part and no more.

The bond was broken Arianrod. If you're at a hospital with an eighteen month old child who has been kidnapped and abused by strangers you wouldn't reprimand the child: Your mum loved you for a year and a half--what are you crying about?

Edited:Although the perception as to whether Harry was affected by the manner his parents died or not is completely up to reader's individual judgement, the matter of the effect that any trauma, disease, violence, and seperation has on the developement of a child is more in the realms of study.

He senses his father's fear, his mother's terror, he feels anxiety, confusion, hopelessness, he passes out. That's a significant reaction to the trauma.

However, the perception that Snape because his parents argued suffered more than Harry belongs to fans. What Jo created was two boys: A boy neglected by his parents, who nonetheless has knowledge at nine or ten of himself, whom he is, what he can do. He's capable of kindness to another child that he finds "worthy" because of her gifts--in fact in the young Snape, you see the patience and kindness we expect from a teacher--he had the gift. Where did young Snape learn this--possibly from his mother. And we have factor into the equation, the possibility that Eileen didn't inform Tobias that she was a witch--Seamus says his mother didn't tell his father and it was a "nasty shock" for his father--until Tobias saw evidence of the gift in his son.

Well--I've worked in institutions, and although Tom might have found an attendant who cared, the turnover in these places is very high. Children are adopted--so they're coming and going, and there is always some sort of competition. Harry had the advantage because he was with family, but the advantage also contributed towards his confusion and later rebellion (running away ranks pretty high when people are examining behavior disorders, or abuse in children...)--because Petunia and Vernon were family, as Harry grew older he knew they should treat him better than they did.

The thing is Jo sometimes hammers in her point --Lily breaking off her friendship with Snape. Jo seems to try to hard to make her audience understand that the minute Snape says "Mudblood" he makes a lie of his statement that Lily's being Muggle-born makes no difference to him. He does think of her as a Mudblood, or he would have called her something different. The break off could have been a simple:"You said it didn't matter; you lied..."

But she has Lily preach--The good girl becomes the shrew...

But would such an edit merely change our perceptions of the characters or would it strenghten the the story?

And you can't exactly dismiss what fans say --you yourself are a fan.

Well, this is what he does at thirteen years, not at fifteen months.

Ah, so does Harry suffer from this "behaviour disorder" or is it the Dursleys who do?

I'm sorry, but the edit proposed would be absurd. Snape is not lying. And he calls Lily "mudblood" to cover up his shame and humiliation.

The bond was broken Arianrod. If you're at a hospital with an eighteen month old child who has been kidnapped and abused by strangers you wouldn't reprimand the child: Your mum loved you for a year and a half--what are you crying about?

Edited:Although the perception as to whether Harry was affected by the manner his parents died or not is completely up to reader's individual judgement, the matter of the effect that any trauma, disease, violence, and seperation has on the developement of a child is more in the realms of study.

In a study, the bonding period may be fifteen months, but the emotional developement does not stop at that age unless there is a disability or some kind, or illness--or extreme change.
And I believe by putting Harry on the Dursley's doorstep, Jo does present a disruption to Harry's developement.

The trauma of separation is a factor in Harry's development from the point that he goes to live with his aunt and Uncle, as it would be in any child's development. He cries for mummy--whom does he get: Aunt Petunia or Dudley pummleting with his bottle...
Harry states quite clearly that he doesn't recall being held as by a mother, so whatever his experience with Lily, his life with Petunia shut that out. At ten " Harry was a toddler at fifteen months--and his options at this time would not be--oh my parents are dead =I must die myself. His options are his needs, food, warmth, reassurance, shelter..

The kind of bond you are speaking of has to be reinforced. What saves Harry is his intelligence and the fact that there is, though negative, interaction and positive lessons within that interaction. Harry speaks well, he has manners, he has household skills, he recalls getting a small allowance and toys. So there was, no matter how grudging and shabby, interaction with Petunia and Vernon. Petunia had to teach Harry, these things. Harry had the intelligence to adapt. Just because a person adapts, adjust, survives, can we dismiss the fact that was trauma in his life?

Harry reaction to the trauma--that is, when he is forced to remember his parents distress at an age where he can understand what happened was to pass out. We see Ron and Hermione are affected by the dementors but they do not pass out--this is a gage of how traumatic the memory is to Harry. Not of his parent's death, after they died there was silence--but of the terror they experienced before they died.

As Lupin says Harry reacts this way because the horror in his life is real. Harry experiences acute distress when he cannot help the screaming woman, fear that that she is being murdered, his tears--that's his reaction to trauma. The threstals are NOT a gage for trauma--only that a person has seen death--and understood it. Of course seeing and understanding that someone has died is traumatic for a child, Luna can attest to that. But the ability to see Threstals is not described as a traumatic experience, in spite of Deloris Umbridge's attempts to make it so. Hagrid did not pull the Threstals out to scare the young people.

A child of fifteen months would not know that his parents are dead, even if Hagrid found Harry right next to Lily trying to wake her up. What the toddler would recognize and what would cause his distress is the same thing that causes Harry's distress when he is attacked by the dementors: He senses his father's fear, his mother's terror, he feels anxiety, confusion, hopelessness, he passes out. That's a significant reaction to the trauma.

Well--I've worked in institutions, and although Tom might have found an attendant who cared, the turnover in these places is very high. Children are adopted--so they're coming and going, and there is always some sort of competition. Harry had the advantage because he was with family, but the advantage also contributed towards his confusion and later rebellion (running away ranks pretty high when people are examining behavior disorders, or abuse in children...)--because Petunia and Vernon were family, as Harry grew older he knew they should treat him better than they did.

The great danger is in positing an ideal for childhood. There is no such thing. What we have is a world of individuals, each one living a story. And these various narratives interact. And cruelty and indifference to a child will harm them, but how much they will be harmed is unknown, because each person is unique, each narrative is different.

Physical harm is fairly easy to define. (Although spanking is still a subject for debate in North America.) But mental cruelty and indifference are subjective by nature and as difficult to define as obscenity. Is Neville's gran cruel? Has Neville been abused? How do the two narratives of Neville and his gran intersect?

Voldemort, the great villain, who is close to being the absurd super-villain of so many James Bond-like stories, was humanized in HBP and literally made mortal by Harry in DH. Voldemort's character never really develops beyond the isolated and resentful child Dumbledore met at the orphanage. Indeed, it is Voldemort who tries to become an ideal wizard and seeks to become a perfect abstraction by creating his Horcruxes. For Tom Riddle, only he exists, and everyone else is merely a shadow cast on the wall of his Platonic cave.

I'm confused. Was Ari reprimanding someone? And Harry was not kidnapped and abused by strangers; he was taken in by his aunt and cared for, even if only in a minimal fashion.

I don't think he passed out when he was fifteen months, we don't know really. However, the Dementor attack is not like the Pensieve memory where Harry inserts his feelings on what he witnesses. The only emotions and memories the Dementors can pull out of thirteen year old Harry are those which were stored and repressed in his mind at fifteen months old. At fifteen months old, it is doubtful Harry had the language to express the feelings, but that doesn't mean he didn't feel then exactly what he felt when he "remembered" what happened. And the trauma, is the seperation. Harry is taken from one enviornment, one set of care-givers and given to another. Ever see a fifteen month old go to the baby-sitters for the first time?
Even if it is Grandma, after a couple of hours there is anxiety.