So, I've been rereading Harry Potter, and I'm on Prisoner of Azkaban and while, yes, obviously it's occurred to me how negligent the adults in Harry's life have always been in each individual circumstance, it really just occurred to me how ridiculous it is that he continued going to school from POA and on.
In POA he supposedly has a murderer after him, and what do they do? Put him in an inn for 3 weeks, essentially unsupervised, and then send him to school with dementors around the perimeter. Sure he still had the Trace on him and presumably some steps were taken to ensure his safety without him knowing, but he was able to keep his invisibility cloak which allowed him to sneak into Hogsmeade as well as go on other Potterly adventures, he was able to continue playing quidditch, he was given no extra skills to protect himself (other than being taught the Patronus by Lupin, which is only helpful against Dementors). After seeing what he got into as an 11 and 12 year old when there was no "official" threat to him, there were practically no steps taken to protect and understandably control/confine him from his own hero complex.
Then you go onto GoF, which everyone acknowledges is ridiculous that they "had to" let him compete.
Then OotP, Voldemort's back, but still no real extra efforts taken to protect him besides the clusterfuck that was Occlumency. He was able to start his own fucking secret Defense Tactics club while still being given no extra help by adults in his life because politics.
Then HBP when its fully accepted by the Wizarding World that Voldemort's back; still going to school, everything's cool, everything's normal. Just a little extra tension, ya know? And now is when Dumbledore starts a slow and controlled information flow to him.
Then in DH he goes out on his own with his two other 17 year old buddies because by this point, he "can't be protected" anymore.
Not an original thought at all, but the overarching theme and understanding is basically that Dumbledore knew everything going on in Hogwarts but let it all happen just to see how it would go...?
There's the other idea that Dumbledore is the great protector, but this kid should've been in Wizard witness protection since PoA. Real talk. Sure, for the story to continue the villains would've gotten around it and Harry probs would've run away from it too, but the efforts taken to protect this child are shameful.
Details aside, this is the situation PoA and onward: the evilest people in the world are after this child, how can we protect him?
Answer: well, this school that he's almost died at 5 times already (conservative count here) should be fine cause Dumbledore's there. 🤷
You can't tell me that noone in the Wizarding World has ever been homeschooled. And yeah, hindsight is 20/20 but Dumbledore didn't exactly have Harry's best interests at heart once he realized he was a Horcrux. Not gonna get into the morality of Dumbledores action here, but as far as protecting the child goes, everyone with any power to do so did a piss-poor job of it.
Where's internal affairs when you need them.
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