Alright the most common comments are “but not McGonagall and Hagrid!!” and “Molly and Arthur have never let anyone down ever!!” and “Remus Lupin is perfect fight me!!1!” but let me remind you that what I said was “every adult let us down” NOT “every adult fucked up in an earth shattering way”
That being said, McGonagall and Hagrid and Molly and Arthur /did/ let Harry and others (and by extension, us as readers) down
Let’s start with McGonagall and Hagrid
Both of their disappointing actions happened in HP1
McGonagall didn’t believe Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s claims that someone was trying to steal the Stone and dismissed them. If she had just listened and perhaps written to Dumbledore explaining their concerns then the trio would’ve never felt the need to go down the trapdoor
Hagrid unwittingly gave up the secret of how to get passed Fluffy because he wanted an illegal dragon egg
Which eventually hatched and he refused to deal with it until it was left to Harry and Hermione to bring it to Charlie’s friends, costing Gryffindor 150 points and a detention that put Harry in front of Voldemort
Also despite knowing just how awful the Dursleys were, neither of them really argued with Dumbledore about placing Harry with them and then just not checking on him for the next 10 years
Harry’s letters were addressed to “the cupboard under the stairs” ffs
Although neither of them could’ve known that their actions would end so terribly, they still did and that’s rather disappointing coming from adults that Harry (and us as readers) trusted more than most other adults in the series
Moving on to Molly and Arthur Weasley
Arthur, like every other adult Harry trusted with his suspicions that Malfoy was a Death Eater and was trying to kill someone, dismissed his claims as a “school rivalry” and didn’t take him seriously
Molly, despite having good intentions, would minimize the Twins’ accomplishments and would chastise her children (Charlie for working with dragons and not marrying; Bill for dressing differently and marrying Fleur) because they weren’t doing what she considered to be “acceptable”
She also was rather rude to Fleur who was a guest and her son’s fiance, although, Fleur was pretty awful to the Weasleys in return (especially to Ginny who she babied and criticized) even though she was an uninvited guest in their house but back to Molly and Arthur
Molly had a tendency to overstep boundaries especially when it came to Harry, invalidating Sirius’ role as Harry’s legal guardian
Also after finding out that Ginny had been possessed by Lord Fucking Voldemort for /a year/ they first yelled at her for being stupid and “trusting something when you couldn’t see where it kept its brain” instead of insisting that she be given medical attention and yelling at Dumbledore for not seeing that one of his students was being possessed by a Dark Lord sooner
They’re rather small things but they’re still disappointments
In the case of Remus Lupin there are a few disappointing moments
The first being the most obvious one: He tried to leave Tonks and Teddy the minute he found out she was pregnant
Now I really don’t care what you think about Remadora and how Wolfstar is your life because Remus tried to leave his pregnant wife because he didn’t want to face the potential consequences of his actions
Not only that but he tried to guilt Harry into letting him come along hunting Horcruxes by using Harry’s dead father against him (”James would’ve let me come”)
Also, and I know it wasn’t entirely his fault, He never tried to contact Harry
And I’m not just talking about before Harry came to Hogwarts (although that must have been a slap in the face to Harry to learn that there was someone out there who was best friends with his parents and yet never tried to look for him) I’m more referring to after Harry’s third year.
Harry finally has 2 direct links to his parents and only one of them will talk to him and even that is vague and sporadic at best.
Imagine how much that must’ve hurt Harry to think that maybe Lupin didn’t actually like him and maybe he was just being a bother wondering about his parents
Imagine how differently the aftermath of Snape’s Worst Memory would’ve gone if Remus had been the adult here and reached out to Harry to tell him more about Lily and James
Anyway my point behind this post is that the vast majority of the adult’s in the Harry Potter Series didn’t fuck up horribly and they weren’t manipulative assholes but they, like every other adult in the series, still did let Harry and others down, which is so important because it showed that adults are capable of making mistakes and messing up and being an adult doesn’t automatically make you better and wiser