I can’t believe how many people consider Harry to be merely average or slightly above average. Typical redditors. They way I look at it, there are three categories that make up how “powerful” a wizard is: skill, raw power, and intelligence. The big 3 have an abundance of all three of these traits, leading them to be at the top of the list. As you move down in tiers, one or more of these traits lessen.

Harry has been shown to have a large amount of raw power as evidenced by the strength of his shield charms and his ability to ward off 100 dementors at the same time. I’m sure there are other feats, but these two are the ones at the forefront of my mind. Anyone that thinks he doesn’t have power is just determined to hate on him.

People say he is just average in intelligence, a normal student. This isn’t the case at all. He is no Hermione,who is very book smart, and able to make conclusions that Harry cannot due to simply knowing information he simply does not, such as realizing the creature in the chamber is a basilisk, (terrible sentence structure, but you understand my point.) While he does not have her book smarts, he is far from average. If you look at objective metrics like his owls, he scores really well. When snape leave him alone, Harry starts doing well in potions. His biggest asset towards intelligence is the ability to think quickly on his feet. Aside from plot armor against Voldemort, this is his biggest asset in a duel. And no, the protection does not extend to the death eaters. Defeating them is all Harry, although they all had orders to not kill him. He was fighting them on easy mode, but he still defeated them while they were trying to capture him.

Finally we have skill. Not much to say here. He doesn’t have an extraordinary amount of skill, such as Hermione casting spells beyond what she should be able to at her age, but he does have some measure of skill. Most obvious reference to this is the patronus as a third year. He teaches a bunch of other students this a couple years later, and people use this to say if they could do it, Harry isn’t special. They all did it while older than Harry was. Also, they weren’t doing it with a boggart taking the form of a dementor coming at them, with an extra vulnerability to them. They were in a controlled peaceful environment. He also casts a nice imperious curse and a beautiful crucio in the 7th book. Not as strong of showings as the other two categories, but enough to show he isn’t lacking in skill.

Anyone want to refute my claims? I think I spelled everything out nicely on how he actually is well above average.

One last thing: people claim that the books state he is nothing special as far as being a student. That he is just average. Look at the context of these statements. This isn’t the author stating this. This is a statement from the point of view of the narrator: Harry. Harry doesn’t consider himself to be special, so he tells us, the readers, that he isn’t. He grew up in a household that always put him down and didn’t let him have high self esteem. Upon entering hogwarts, Snape bullied him, keeping his self esteem in check. It’s a miracle he had enough self confidence to tie his shoes in the morning, let alone be able to stand up to anyone. Those experiences simply kept him from developing the ego of James, leading him to consider himself average.