Seeing is Believing

The inspiration for this podcast comes from several places.

A recent Alohomora episode was all about Percy Weasley. In the comment section for that podcast I read a comment made by username BloodCharm. BloodCharm was talking about Percy’s falling out with his family, stating that Percy was actually justified for sticking with the Ministry. BloodCharm’s reasoning for that is because there was very little evidence for Voldemort’s return, the main one being Harry’s word of what he witnessed in the graveyard. Can you really blame paranoid and cowardly Fudge for not wanting to believe the Dark Lord was back just because Harry said he was? And because Fudge didn’t believe, the Ministry’s stance was that Voldemort was not back, and that led to Percy falling out with his family.

After I read that it made me think of something my friend said a little while ago. My friend Angela made a comment once that Ron and Hermione stuck by Harry in this fight against Voldemort when they really had never seen or come face to face with Voldemort at all, not until the Battle of Hogwarts (well, Hermione had a near run in with him in Godric’s Hollow, but yea). Harry told them he was back and they never questioned him.

I just thought it was really cool, this realization I stumbled upon, thanks to BloodCharm and Angela, of the drastically different reactions and consequences of Harry being the only witness to Voldemort’s return.

I started to think about this more and I realized that there are very few people alive who have actually seen Voldemort and lived to tell the tale (aside from the Death Eater’s of course); actually it’s probably only Harry who can claim that achievement. After his return at the end of book 4, Voldemort purposely stays in the shadows to create that doubt that Fudge, and others like Seamus and his mom, felt. I found it amazing that so many people joined in the fight against Voldemort, even though the tyrant was never seen by their own eyes. But, I realized, just because they hadn’t seen Voldemort didn’t mean that they weren’t seeing the effects that his evil agenda had on wizarding society. All of those brave people did not need to see Voldemort to know that they opposed what he stood for.

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