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Um, yes, there is a contest of wills.
Like, seriously, go reread the scene. They cast, the effect goes off, and they're stuck in a contest of wills with beads of light moving between them. Harry forces the beads into Voldemort's wand, and it makes ghosts of the most recent people Voldemort killed, who then harass Voldemort long enough for Harry to get away (the Death Eaters are also IIRC thrown off-balance by seeing Voldemort lose at anything). If Harry hadn't won the contest of wills, he would not have been able to get away and Voldemort or a Death Eater would have killed him. If Harry hadn't befriended Cedric, Cedric's ghost would have been less willing to go along with it.
No, it wasn't. The DA turned out to be critical. There are pitched battles at the end of HBP and DH in which the Hogwarts students are the main fighting force. The DA built camaraderie and at least a decent chain of command; you need that for effective cohesion under fire and without that experience they'd likely have broken and been slaughtered.
You keep noting that Harry is lousy at planning. Sure, he's lousy at it. So is the coach Leaders of Men is about. Harry's strength is not his brains; it's his character. Yes, Harry without Hermione fails. But Hermione without Harry also fails. Character matters, both mundanely and, in HP, magically. This is the whole point of Leaders of Men, which you seem to have missed. Planning helps. It is not the only thing that helps. Unity and morale help. Emotional resonance helps. Harry's open defiance of Umbridge, the very thing you lambast him for, is key to the DA working; he is visibly and expensively committed to the cause, and people want to live up to that.
It is not true contest of wills in terms of planning, execution etc. The whole thing is manufactured by cosmic accident with some sparks flying around, some ghosts chiming in and so forth. By the same account Potter possesses "strong will" when he braves through quidditch injury etc. And I am not saying that he is not brave and stubborn, but at best he is weak version Dr. Watson from Sherlock Holmes - a brave veteran, fine gentlemen and in some ways more suited for tasks than Holmes. But he is not the hero.
Potter lacks even the basic motivation and prerequisite of being a leader. He literally had to be tricked to "lead" DA that was organized, equipped and constructed by Hermione. It goes beyond just planning. You are constantly eluding to Leaders of Men. I have to use the same argument - we are not talking about Putin or Trump where we can speculate about invisible variables and mystical juice of leadership. We literally have access to internal monologue and all circumstances of the characters in the books. And we see that Potter is a moron.
Uhhhh... what? Outplanning each other is a contest of wits, not wills. Yes, absolutely, will is determination.
This... seems like a non sequitur? Running logistics is the quartermaster's job, not the leader's. The leader's job is to get everyone pointed in the same direction and giving 110%. Harry is hilariously better at that than Hermione.
I specifically used contest of heroes like Achilles and Hector. Their will is not about some specific scene where Achilles and Hector bash their shields in contest of who pushes harder - until Hector gets distracted and slips on a banana peel proving his inferior will. It is everything that surrounds it, how their motivations and actions brought them in front of the walls of Troy, how their preparations pan out and what impact it will have on the war.
Harry Potter is nowhere near that, he was dragged there literally against his agency, with no preparation and no plan - in fact he was the one manipulated throughout everything like a puppet by shadowy play of Voldermort's spies against Dumbledore and his allies from behind. From Voldemort gathering intelligence from ministry employee, through mysterious evasion of age restriction to activation of portkey; it was all orchestrated play. Potter could have been a wooden puppet that exploded in Voldemort face when he used a flawed wand. I am not sure if you get what I want to say.
It was not just logistics. Hermione identified the threat. She strategized and came up with a plan of DA. She selected and vetted its members. On top of that she handled logistics, OpSec and everything. She even hired local celebrity as Brand ambassador and mascot in form of Potter. When there is any decision to be made about what to do next, Potter immediately defers to Hermione ranging from where to meet, what are supposed to be terms in contract - he literally just signs on the dotted line without even knowing that it is hexed. He lacks any knowledge about anything, because he ultimately does not matter as he is not the one making decisions - Hermione is.
This lack of decision making goes even beyond that. As an example, when Ministry Falls, Potter does not strategize, select best course of action or anything like that. Hermione just grabs him and Ron without asking, and teleports them into pre-prepared backup base she arranged and of which Potter did not even have a clue about. What a masterful Leader of Men. And by the way, Hermione could do that, because of course she is apparition genius and knows the spell to such a level that she is certified teleporter.
Moreover Potter himself agrees with me here, he explicitly says that he is just an instructor and even gets aggressive if praised, admitting that he only lives thanks to dumb luck and immense help. Of course his bursts of rage, self-pitying etc. have to be managed by Hermione before impacting morale. Hermione shows excellent interpersonal and conflict resolution skills of true leader, managing such an unstable asset in her team by reframing his behavior as modesty. We have access to his internal monologue and we know exactly what happened, why it happened, who made decision and everything. There is no leadership mystery to uncover here.
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The top level is already AAQC, but the two of you and @georgioz deserve a nomination of your own. I don't have a dog in this fight (never even read HP), but I'm really enjoying the conversation.
Carry on, chaps.
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