I notice you are confused. I think you’ve made two questionable assumptions;
Assumption 1. Wizard Children are not generally treated as competent at age 11.
Assumption 2. The children making the announcement at Hogwarts are responsible for brokering the deal.
I.e. they aren’t just mouthpieces for their respective families.
Assumption 2b. The Hogwarts staff is aware of 2.
Assumption 1 might be true—but I note that the age of majority has been increasing over time, and wizarding society is in many ways old timey.
It seems reasonable to me that allowing a child of 12 to command a wizarding army is no stranger in wizard society than allowing David Farragut to command a ship at age 12 was during the war of 1812.
Also, we haven’t seen the reactions of the wizarding world in general—maybe everyone who isn’t on the Hogwarts staff is scandalized. For that matter, maybe the staff is too, they’re just not openly scandalized.
But assumption 2 seems completely wrong to me, and likely the main source of the confusion.
No, I’m not assuming that children brokered the deal, but I can see that it may have looked that way, especially if you miss the context (that I was responding to the specific things EternalStargazer said).
To some extent, yeah, wizard children are, and are treated as being, more competent than muggle children. But there’s still a very real difference between an adult and a child. For example, Harry Potter still needs a legal guardian. And I assume that McGonaggal’s “She is a twelve-year-old girl, Albus!” isn’t strongly atypical.
Anyway, no matter how mature they are (read the various dorm and SPHEW scenes for some sanity checks on that idea), they still don’t have any authority; there are people whose responsibility is to make announcements such as these, and to have the kids do all this posing instead makes it a bit farcical to me.
I think if they really wanted to, the parties involved could make this happen, but why would they want to? I don’t expect the world to be scandalized, I just expect some eye-rolling and mild incredulity. Not something you want if you’re making a political move and want to be taken seriously.
But hey, I’m one of the probably small minority of readers who’ve never quite accepted things like, say, how easily Harry Potter gets away with being rude to Dumbledore.
I notice you are confused. I think you’ve made two questionable assumptions;
Assumption 1. Wizard Children are not generally treated as competent at age 11.
Assumption 2. The children making the announcement at Hogwarts are responsible for brokering the deal. I.e. they aren’t just mouthpieces for their respective families.
Assumption 2b. The Hogwarts staff is aware of 2.
Assumption 1 might be true—but I note that the age of majority has been increasing over time, and wizarding society is in many ways old timey. It seems reasonable to me that allowing a child of 12 to command a wizarding army is no stranger in wizard society than allowing David Farragut to command a ship at age 12 was during the war of 1812. Also, we haven’t seen the reactions of the wizarding world in general—maybe everyone who isn’t on the Hogwarts staff is scandalized. For that matter, maybe the staff is too, they’re just not openly scandalized.
But assumption 2 seems completely wrong to me, and likely the main source of the confusion.
^ Don’t do that.
No, I’m not assuming that children brokered the deal, but I can see that it may have looked that way, especially if you miss the context (that I was responding to the specific things EternalStargazer said).
To some extent, yeah, wizard children are, and are treated as being, more competent than muggle children. But there’s still a very real difference between an adult and a child. For example, Harry Potter still needs a legal guardian. And I assume that McGonaggal’s “She is a twelve-year-old girl, Albus!” isn’t strongly atypical.
Anyway, no matter how mature they are (read the various dorm and SPHEW scenes for some sanity checks on that idea), they still don’t have any authority; there are people whose responsibility is to make announcements such as these, and to have the kids do all this posing instead makes it a bit farcical to me.
I think if they really wanted to, the parties involved could make this happen, but why would they want to? I don’t expect the world to be scandalized, I just expect some eye-rolling and mild incredulity. Not something you want if you’re making a political move and want to be taken seriously.
But hey, I’m one of the probably small minority of readers who’ve never quite accepted things like, say, how easily Harry Potter gets away with being rude to Dumbledore.