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Sure, Hermione is not such a girboss in books - although that is arguably a little bit more grating to be honest at least in the beginning. However she shows quite a lot of growth, by the end of the series she is a monster who can cast every spell silently, she can best deatheaters in duels under high-pressure situation, she is genius in potions and transfigurations that she uses constantly to great effect etc. Harry on the other hand remains stagnant, from spellcraft he is one-trick pony using expeliarmus and patronus. Other than that he just utilizes pure gimmicks such as hic connection to Voldemort and psychic visions or pulling Gryffindor sword literally out of the hat just because. He is the series version of McGuffin, he is imbued asset managed and operated by Hermione according to Dumbledore's strategy. It is Hermione who does the heavy lifting such as actually researching on how to destroy horcruxes or painstaking training in spellcasting.
She's Basil Exposition, there to conduct the background research and dripfeed the reader useful information that's too tedious for the protagonist to bother with. She provides Harry with some of his cool gadgets. Harry is the one putting his body on the line. Harry is the one who has to systematically lose his parent figures in the process of growing into the leader his people need him to be. Harry is the one who figures out the last pieces of puzzles at the last second when it really counts, and then actually defeats the bad guy.
Yes, Hermione is a valuable asset and a character who grows throughout the course of the story. She is a technically more proficient magic practitioner than Harry is, and uses this to save him on numerous occasions. She is more organized and more responsible, as girls tend to be at that age.
But Harry isn't just some buffoon protected by main character energy. Set his special chosen one status aside for a second. He may not be a star student, but the books are pretty explicit that this is because he prioritizes the battle against Voldemort over academics. Yes, sometimes he's just slacking off with Ron instead of studying, but more often than not, he struggles because he spends his nights snooping around the castle and is constantly battling extra work and detention as a result of this (and vindictive teachers actively out to harass him). In the areas he is able/willing to apply himself, he consistently outshines Hermione. Harry is also much more well-rounded than Hermione (in the model of the classic English gentleman. Being a broadly successful dilletant is good; being a single-minded striver is gauche). He's exceptionally brave, loyal, and strong-willed in the face of institutional opposition. What he lacks in technical acumen, he more than makes up for in grit, determination, and leadership.
Hermione is a very capable (though flawed) character, but she's not heroic in the same way Harry is.
This is just matter of perspective. In practice, it is Harry who is Basil Exposition for Hermione, especially given the gimmicky nature of how he receives his knowledge. If the story was written from Hermione's perspective, it would be much more interesting. She is out there in the library researching Nicolas Flamel, creating plans and plots only for Harry to casually drop stuff like randomly waking up screaming, speaking to snakes, and seeing visions of Voldemort torturing people - only to obsess about quidditch the next day as if nothing happens, leaving all the work to main protagonist Hermione.
The story would shift toward Hermione managing this Harry moron, who refuses to communicate (e.g. when he refused to talk to Hermione about seeing Grim in Prisoner of Azkaban), who endlessly whines about how bad he has it and, who has some inferiority complex trying to hard to be a hero only to be rescued like damsel in distress by Hermione. You would get your standard YA story where the main protagonist manages his team of moronic sidekicks who more than villains are there to foil his plans. Just think about all the time when Harry talking to Hermione would solve the plot in couple of days instead of whole year.
No, he does not prioritize that. Like I said before, he wallows in his trauma and refuses to communicate. He constantly switches priorities to stupid stuff like quidditch instead of the issue at hand or even communicating with the group. Other than Hermione, it is his chosen plot armor is his main quality.
He never is more well rounded. He is myopic, lack any planning or true talent except of dumb luck. And it even gets worse as Hermione shores up her academic/theoretic leanings by raw experience. If anything, managing Harry in earlier yeas is her training wheels - much as in some story the main hero takes care of his younger sibling or ailing mother.
Also Hermione is much better leader and even possesses better character. Just compare these two scenes: Harry is tortured in Goblet of Fire and he decides to stand and face Voldemort by pure grit and defiance. He casts his stupid expeliarmus - there is nothing else in his bag of tricks - and the nature of predcicament makes it so that he resists Voldemorts curse by pure cosmic coincidence. Second scene: Harry is threatened by crucio torture in Umbridge office. Harrys instinct is stubborn denial. However Hermione keeps her cool, pretends to fold, invents complex story about Dumbledore's secret weapon in the forest thus leading Umbridge into a trap. This was the umpteenth time where Hermione bailed out that moron from deadly situation so that the Voldemort could actually be defeated.
Hermione is as brave as Harry, but she goes about it more intelligently. She is proactive, strategic, she can rely on backup plans. In terms of leadership she is communicative, competent, mature, she has high moral integrity and by the end of the book she is very versatile monster of a witch, true enlightened gentlewoman. Harry is isolated self pitying whiner, inept, prone to distractions like quidditch. His redeeming qualities are his stubbornness - the other side of the coin of introversion and refusal to communicate. He is for sure brave, even stupidly so and his main redeeming qualities are plot armor in form of being the chosen one.
If I wanted to select who would be my colleague or coworker or even friend or role model after the whole ordeal, I would take Hermione over Harry every time.
Have you read Leaders of Men? I think it gestures at some of what you're eliding as "gimmicks".
I did right now, and as far as I understand this is what counts?
So leadership is some je ne sais quoi, ability to get results via mysterious means? I think it can work from the outside, but it does not work in literature where you have access to internal monologue of main leader and his underlings. I actually think that people really underestimate how moronic Harry Potter was and how he was managed by everybody else. Here is one passage of angry Potter being called to professor McGonagall office after he had altercation with Umbridge:
Calm down, have a biscuit and let me tell you what to do right now before I lose my patience with you. A classical treatment of ancient hero in sagas of old, right? Achilles was known for his ability to take shit from bureaucrats like that, sit down and sip his tea waiting to be berated about how awful he is.
At best, Harry was treated as a loose cannonball, a moron to be managed by everybody: Dumbledore, McGonagall, Hermione and the whole Order of Phoenix. Even Draco Malfoy. Otherwise he would fall flat on his head and die instantly. Potter is no backroom manager moving chess pieces or anything like that. At best, he is a brute field player who has to be managed by the likes of Granger or McGonagall, who are Willie Randolphs of the story.
Moreover Potter does not even work as a traditional reckless hero like Beowulf or Achilles. He is literal subversion. He lacks any agency in achieving Kleos/Glory, all his victories are result of pure luck, his blood chemistry through his mother or through administrative support of whole organization with private armies. He is not an individual hero like Beowulf who gets angry, sails across a sea to tear arms of Grendel by his bare hands. He is no Conan the Barbarian who stands proud in defiance of gods, wizards and the world with his honor, strength and good steel in his hand. Neither is he Odysseus using his guile and cunning, or Batman devising strategies, plans and gadgets to put him on even playing field with monstrous villains of his world - if there is any such hero in that story it is Hermione. Potter is damsel in distress, a MacGuffin to be protected by multi-billion operation, the best wizard who ever lived and literal Order.
He is not a leader. If that was the case, any moronic lottery winner who is managed by his mom would be voted as a president of the country. That is why Potter is no hero for boys and men. He is subversion of heroic archetype and no sophism and mythical leadership je ne sais quoi will save that fact.
Okay, so what I was pointing at is that character matters, IRL, and most of the magical feats you call "gimmicks" are a case of character mattering in HP magic as well.
He wins in Chamber of Secrets because of his faith in Dumbledore (summoning Fawkes) and his bravery (allowing him to pull the sword out of the hat) - and while you claim that Hermione's just as brave as he is, the very fact that you also lament his foolhardiness puts the lie to that, because foolhardiness literally is just excessive bravery. He escapes in Goblet of Fire because of his strong will (Priori Incantatem wouldn't have saved him if Voldemort had managed to make Harry's wand reverse itself instead), and to some extent his ability to be a fair winner with Cedric. He's able to kill the Horcrux and come back for much the same reasons as in CoS.
And aside from magic being character-based, his character is also more mundanely what let him run the DA in Order of the Phoenix; Hermione couldn't have done that, because the sort of person who trusts no-one and springs surprise Dark Arts on allies is not the sort of person people follow. As noted in Leaders of Men, you want someone who makes Hermione's decisions and has Harry's character, but someone with Harry's character doesn't make Hermione's decisions.
You might disagree with the character traits Harry is rewarded for actually being good. You might not like, on a stylistic level, character mattering like this. (I'm a Hermione fan too!) But they're not "pure gimmicks"; there is a theme going on here, much the same theme that's hammered in time and again that it's choices, not abilities, that make Voldemort a bad guy.
EDIT: Another Zvi post; will quote the relevant parts this time.
As for your examples, Harry pulled the sword not based on his grit, his will or anything like that. He matched the criteria of "Gryffindor in need" and it was pulled. It could have been Ron or Hermione or even Neville if he was there, the result is the same. In fact Neville put that sword later in the books. As for Priori Incantatem it also not works. It is established in the book lore that Harry didn't know what Priori Incantatem was, he didn't plan for it, and he didn't trigger it intentionally. He cast a his expiliarmus gimmick out of desperation, and the universe stepped in with a technical glitch of shared cores that saved his life. Harry was not a leader contesting enemy general, he was a drowning person randomly getting ahold of floating beam that fate put there. Relying on your opponent's gun jamming is not a display of heroic military leadership. There was not contest of will like Achilles vs Hector.
The whole DA is laughable. People followed him because he was a celebrity and Harry was very self aware of how unprepared he was for the role. Heck, they had to persuade him to do it. At the beginning of the book Harry as usual was his whiney self, lacking any internal agency, motivation, need for glory or revenge. He was as usual reluctant moron manipulated into a situation well above his head by Hermione who strategized about threat Ministry of Magic posed, who ultimately came up with the idea of DA as a valid strategy, called the first meeting, lied to people and used that lie and emotional manipulation to make Harry take the role as a figurehead. And Harry was right, he was just a brand ambassador and way of his league, Hermione was CEO and leader. She ran the operation smoothly from communications through magic artifacts she created, OpSec including Sneak Jinx that caught defectors, member vetting, base establishment etc. She did it all. Furthermore, Harry's lack of strategic caution is exactly what doomed the DA—he failed to master Occlumency, fell for Voldemort’s blatant psychic trap, and led his friends into a catastrophic ambush at the Ministry of Magic.
I already said that these Zvi posts do not work here. We have access to Harry's internal monologue, we have perfect information of lore, actions of villains and allies. There are no unknown unknowns, no leadership mystery. We can evaluate everything coldly based on basic criteria. Be it hero journey, leadership and managerial skills as with Kotler Management Matrix or whatever.
It is not what I like or dislike, I actually liked the books but I do consider Harry Potter as a subversion of hero. He is dumb, moronic Chosen one, who has to rely on systems, his professors, more capable people and dumb luck to navigate situation that is well over his head from start to finish - even his win against Voldemort is quirk of the Elder wand, a convoluted license agreements/EULA failure, that was tracked internally by the wand, and who nobody was really aware of including Voldemort and Potter. It is one of the most anticlimactic defeats out there, a repeat of wand glitch from cemetery scene and perfect encapsulation of Potter's status as "the hero who lucked out" and lived. He is less of a protagonist and more of a vessel through which we can watch prearranged events unfold - events orchestrated by real heroes. I used this comparison elsewhere - at best he is Dr. Watson to Sherlock Holmes of Hermione, Dumbledore, Snape and rest of the cast. An admirable, brave and likeable character, but no hero of the story.
I specifically consider Potter as subversion of hero, because he is antithesis of what boys and men usually wanted to see for millennia. They want to see Achilles and Beowulf. They want to be Wyatt Erp or Conan The Barbarian - not a moron like Potter, who is constantly talked down, whines and more importantly lacks almost any agency over his actions. Actually correction, there is one area where he really deserves his accolades - his quidditch success. There was no Dumbledore manipulating the snitch, no mommy blood navigating him toward a goal or defensive play. It was all result of his talent, training and dedication. Moreover Potter actually has internal motivation to become a good player and be famous not for his scar but for something that he has control over. If this was a story of how Potter became the best Quidditch player of his generation, it would be a fine boy story along the lines of Karate Kid or Inazuma Eleven. But it was not meant to be, Potter will be remembered as the boy who lived.
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.
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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