What alignment are these Harry Potter characters? (Spoilers abound.)

billd91

Not your screen monkey (he/him)
For pretty most of the Order of the Phoenix, Weasleys, non-Slytherin students we actually know anything about, I don't see much call for calling any of them anything but good. You can still be a bit rough and tumble as Sirius and James were as youths and as Fred and George are. Playing jokes, even the occasional cruel one, isn't a mark of evil or serious deviation from the general course of goodness. It's a function of maturity. It may, however, be a mark of philosophy.

So, I'd be putting James Potter, Sirius Black, Fred Weasley, and George Weasley down as CG. None of them set much store by rules, but none of them, in the main, are bad people.

Percy Weasley and Severus Snape both come closest, of the main "good" characters, to not actually being good. Percy has a lot of LN tendencies, but I still think he's more good than not. He just took a while to remember it.
Snape has, I think, too much baggage to really be good. He's on the side of good overall, but he's not a good person. LN sounds fine enough for him.

Hagrid is someone I would definitely put down as CG. He cares little for rules over all and his devotion is to individuals (like Dumbledore) rather than to institutions and structures.

Hermione, despite being a rule breaker, is LG. Her rule-breaking is typically because the rule is clearly bad or the circumstances particularly serious. Her natural inclination is, and always has been, to follow the rules, to work within the system until the system becomes so broken it must be reformed from without.

Ron does not seem to have a particular devotion to either rules and structure nor personal freedom and choice. And in the absence of much information on Ginny, Bill, and Charlie and their personal philosophies, it's easy enough to see them as NG. I'd say the same for Arthur, who has some rebelliousness to him and his dubious hobbies.

Harry could fit in as CG quite well. He has little devotion to rules compared to his own personal convictions. He could, arguably, fit in as NG either depending on the strength of his commitment to freedom and personal choices compared to desire to chart a more middle course. While either would work OK, I'm more inclined to put him in the CG pigeon-hole simply because he's following his own moral compass so often rather than relying on rules or institutional ethics.

Fudge, I'd put in the LN category. More devoted to office than doing the right thing.
Umbridge, LE. A very model of structured, organized evil.
Voldemort, CE. It's personal strength and power that matters to him. He rules by personal strength and terror. The organization has no live or ethic of its own, it's all about him.

Rita Skeeter. She's got a selfish streak, cruel and mean spirited. She'll take anyone down, slander anyone to get ahead. She's just not brutal and violent. NE.
 

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prosfilaes

Adventurer
billd91 said:
For pretty most of the Order of the Phoenix, Weasleys, non-Slytherin students we actually know anything about, I don't see much call for calling any of them anything but good.

The average human is TN, so I hesitate to lump everyone as good. Even those who were part of Dumbledore's Army may well be TN (or especially CN--cool stuff and a chance to stick it in the man's eye.)

http://www.theennead.com/elkins/hp/archives/000155.html and http://www.theennead.com/elkins/hp/archives/000156.html provide a good argument that the Weasley twins are bullies; after reading those articles, I have a very hard time placing them as better than neutral. Yeah, they're brave Griffindors who do the heroic things their family and friends expect, but they behave in sadistic and cruel behavior to those weaker than them.
 

Pbartender

First Post
prosfilaes said:
The average human is TN, so I hesitate to lump everyone as good.

But this is a heroic series of novels about a boy wizard fighting against an utterly evil "Dark Lord". In such stories, amongst primary characters -- even minor character cameo appearances -- truly neutral people are generally the exception.

Ollivander, in all honesty, is one of the very, very few wizards who I could see as True Neutral.
 

billd91

Not your screen monkey (he/him)
prosfilaes said:
The average human is TN, so I hesitate to lump everyone as good. Even those who were part of Dumbledore's Army may well be TN (or especially CN--cool stuff and a chance to stick it in the man's eye.)

http://www.theennead.com/elkins/hp/archives/000155.html and http://www.theennead.com/elkins/hp/archives/000156.html provide a good argument that the Weasley twins are bullies; after reading those articles, I have a very hard time placing them as better than neutral. Yeah, they're brave Griffindors who do the heroic things their family and friends expect, but they behave in sadistic and cruel behavior to those weaker than them.

The average human is true neutral? According to whom? The debate over the nature of man is a long drawn out philosophical topic. The willingness of most of the non-Slytherin students allowed to stay and defend Hogwarts and enable Harry's great confrontation with Voldemort, all at great personal risk, rather puts the assertion they are simply neutral to the lie.
 

Pbartender

First Post
billd91 said:
The willingness of most of the non-Slytherin students allowed to stay and defend Hogwarts and enable Harry's great confrontation with Voldemort, all at great personal risk, rather puts the assertion they are simply neutral to the lie.

Biased Sample.

No, it only means that your typical non-Slytherin students educated at Hogwarts lean toward protecting the school with their lives.

That example says nothing about the general populace.
 

billd91

Not your screen monkey (he/him)
Pbartender said:
Biased Sample.

No, it only means that your typical non-Slytherin students educated at Hogwarts lean toward protecting the school with their lives.

That example says nothing about the general populace.

Nor does prosfilaes's assertion. But we're talking about the characters in Harry Potter and not the general populace anyway.
 

prosfilaes

Adventurer
billd91 said:
The average human is true neutral? According to whom?

It's not as clear as earlier editions, but page 13 of the PHB says "Humans tend towards no particular alignment, not even neutrality." That implies there should be a good number of neutral characters at Hogwarts.

The willingness of most of the non-Slytherin students allowed to stay and defend Hogwarts and enable Harry's great confrontation with Voldemort, all at great personal risk, rather puts the assertion they are simply neutral to the lie.

IIRC, quite a few of them left. For the ones that stayed, peer pressure is always a possibility. Also, Voldemort was making life terrifying for everyone in England and had put the Carrows in charge of Hogwarts. Just because you're neutral, or even evil, doesn't mean that you enjoyed life under his reign or wouldn't support the person, the Chosen One, the prophesied one, who could stop him. When the chance to help Harry kill him came right to their doorstep, they helped. That doesn't mean they're not fundamentally neutral.

Pbartender said:
But this is a heroic series of novels about a boy wizard fighting against an utterly evil "Dark Lord".

I would say that the very nature of utterly evil tends to hide the difference between good, neutral, and sometimes even evil. When demons erupt from the earth, most wife-beating drug-dealers are going to be fighting them just like everyone else.
 

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