Neville is the one sticking my mind right now. He’s everything a hero needs to be. He easily could have been the chosen one and from some points of view, he almost was.
Let’s list his facts:
Parents tortured into insanity
Raised by an awesome Gran who taught him to take no crap.
Stood up for what was right multiple times
Brave. Maybe the bravest in the book along with Harry Potter. He held up Hogwarts during the 7th year, dealing with torture and making sure the D.A. kept going. The sword of Gryffindor even appeared to him. Pretty tough tough.
He stood up to Voldemort when things were very bleak and scary.
Killed a Horcrux, maybe one of the riskiest to kill.
In a way, I think he would have fought of Voldemort had Harry permadied instead of coming back.
My favorite is Snape - he’s the most complex character in the entire series.
I liked Sirius in the books, but I had a hard time getting past Gary Oldman’s ‘creepy uncle’ portrayal (complete with righteous porn-stache) in the movies.
I normally like villains, but I didn’t like Voldemort. He was too one-dimensional EEVIL. Lucius Malfoy was a much better villain (and I liked how he finally realized in the end that he valued his family more than he did supporting Voldy).
It’s very hard for me to pick. While I enjoyed the Harry Potter series and thought most of the characters were reasonably complete and well-written, there’s simply no one in the series that particularly resonates with me.
Probably my favorite is Prof McGonagall. She’s far enough removed from the Dumbledore/Snape conspiracy that she’s not tainted by it, and she seems like the most reasonable and competent adult in the entire series. It certainly doesn’t hurt that I like Maggie Smith as an actress, so the character in the book was made even better by the performance in the movies.
I would very much like to like Dumbledore, but I just don’t approve of how he handles things. The book does not provide enough evidence to convince me he is anything other than dishonest, manipulative and reckless. The movies make me think he’s senile on top of it.
I adore Neville. In addition to his big, showy bravery towards the end, he was always quietly brave from the beginning. Standing up to his friends at the end of the first book, yes, but also just the way he did his own thing every day. The Gryffindor boy’s dorm was split…Harry and Ron best friends on one side, Sean and Dean besties on the other, and poor Neville in the middle without anyone to hang out with. He could have become like Peter Pettigrew, forcing himself on to one of the other groups, a pathetic hanger-on, just in desperation not to be left out. But he didn’t…he just went about his business of getting through life as best he could, not feeling sorry for himself or being bitter. I think that takes an enormous amount of courage.
Not to mention having to go to Snape’s class every day. Talk about terrifying!
I agree with you about [strike]Volde[/strike] He Who Must Not Be Named but Lucious was a terrible villian IMO, a small, cowardly bully. His heart wasn’t even in it. A punch-clock villain, basically Peter Pettigrew with a silver spoon
Hermione. I just can’t put the reasons why any better than Aquadementia already did upthread
Snape is a tremendous character as a work of art. He is a complete asshole in petty ways but a selfless hero in important ways. JKR toys with her readership’s views on him with a deftness of touch that is just masterful. But like him? Nope. Can’t. JKR just does too good of a job of making him unlikable for me to be able to get over it.
In some ways I think Neville’s path was as hard as Harry’s - he didn’t have to deal with the weight of the “Boy Who Lived” reputation or the expectations of everyone that he’d save the day, but neither did he have as much support and guidance as Harry did. Harry was virtually trapped in his role as the saviour of wizardkind; Neville had no pressure whatsoever to be a hero but he did it anyway, without complaint or self-aggrandizement, and did it awesomely.
And I’m with Princhester on Snape - he’s a complete tragic figure and one can admire his courage and fortitude, but he’s still an asshole.
I’m a sucker for cryptozoological stuff, so was much taken from the first with the Lovegoods, père et fille. Luna is, overall, my favourite character in the books, and I could wish that she had come on the scene earlier. She’s gentle and thoroughly benign, but, as PPs have described it, with steel in her – a staunch ally when circumstances require. At the same time, she’s wondrously and entertainingly eccentric and “off up her own tree” over sundry issues.
I love Luna’s beautifully wacky and missing-the-point commentary on the Quidditch match. I have a theory that Rowling dislikes sport and the extremes of obsessive partisanship which people go to over same; and that she conceived Quidditch (a wildly impractical sport which in the view of many readers, simply does not work – even given people’s ability to fly on broomsticks) and all its attendant flapdoodle, in mockery of that whole scene.
Filmwise, I enjoyed all of the main characters, and the actors did a great job of making them sympathetic. I haven’t read the books in about 10 years, but just recently re-watched all of the films, with my wife and 12 year old son.
Hermione for me, hands down - plucky, smart, capable, and both driven and adorable. A runner-up: Gilderoy Lockhart was so shamelessly self-promoting and funny, I always liked him.
Gotta give it to Neville. He’s basically Harry without the magic, charisma, accolades, or money. The story was determined to marginalize and make a squib of him and he was having none of it.
Snape was basically a Darth Vader character. We were set up to judge him, and then given a backstory to essentially recast everything he did and said so in the end he was just a chronically broken guy with a bigtime crush that Dumbledore used to leverage him into protecting Harry and betraying Voldemort. The guy is just drowning tragic irony. I can’t say whether I think he was particularly redeeming and heroic, or if he just endured his shitty life.
Dumbledore was a selfish ass who had no problem using children as live bait. I sometimes wonder how many students he wound up getting killed before he got to Harry.
