The Harry Potter series has recently dived into the past with Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, which has brought focus to characters like Newt Scamander and Albus Dumbledore. However, the original protagonist remains widely popular and fans love to understand his thoughts and concerns.
Although love is Harry’s primary power, he also has a number of great fears. These range from Harry’s anxiety over losing loved ones like Sirius and Ginny to more rational fears like Dementors. All in all, it’s interesting to stack up all of the things that worried Harry since it provides additional context to consider him.
To Be Rejected By Someone He Fancies
Harry doesn’t usually go about trying to impress someone, which makes the times that he does very significant to him. He’s scared of rejection because that’s how he was treated back as a kid during the period Dudley’s gang bullied him. When he was in the friendlier setting of Hogwarts, Harry harbored similar fears that he didn’t like to confront.
His fear of rejection was best shown when he was too scared to approach Cho Chang, with Harry spending weeks worrying about Cho turning his offer as his Yule Ball date down. He portrayed this attitude again when he fell for Cho, as Harry worried if she felt the same way.
To Feel Unwelcome And As A Burden
There were very few times that Harry Potter ever acted like a jerk as he was a good kid for the most part. The moments where he did become touchy and defensive were when he thought he wasn’t welcome, such as when he isolated himself from everyone at 12 Grimmauld Place.
It stemmed from Harry’s fears of being a waste of space, a result of the cruel treatment the Dursleys had subjected him to. Harry developed anxiety over this mindset and it came into play a lot because of Voldemort’s attempts at his life which meant Harry had to be protected at places like The Burrow. Here, Harry would take to apologizing for his presence, feeling he was burdening everyone.
To Be Unfairly Judged
The times when the protagonist’s name came up in the possibly most powerful Harry Potter wizards’ list was when people considered him to be an evil descendent of Salazar Slytherin’s. Harry was scared of the impact of the unfair judgments of his character and would look to keep a distance but couldn’t control himself from listening to what others were saying about him.
Harry’s fears were realized to a greater extent during the Ministry’s smear campaign against him, where he was constantly worried about how the Wizarding World perceived him as a liar. This worrying brought out an angrier side of Harry, as he didn’t know how to cope with the stress.
To Lose The Happiness He Has
Harry rarely had times where he could consider himself to be truly happy. He took to worrying his newfound happiness would be over soon, as seen when he was constantly on edge about Sirius’ possible capture. Harry became pessimistic about the possibility of having a family and he felt he was bound to lose Sirius.
During Harry’s relationship with Ginny, he again wondered if he was living someone else’s life because the happiness he felt being with her was something he didn’t think fit in with his usual struggles.
To Be Confronted By A Dementor
The confrontation with a Dementor on the Hogwarts Express made Harry realize that this creature was his deepest fear in a corporeal form. The Dementors made his inner feelings of hurt and abandonment come to life, along with bringing back his worst memories.
As mentioned by Remus Lupin, Harry’s true fear was fear itself, which the Dementors projected. The creatures forced him to feel the defeated mentality inside of him that he generally pushed down. During the Battle of Hogwarts, the Dementors nearly eliminated Harry for good because he was tortured by the deaths of the ones who had recently perished.
To Disappoint People He Looks Up To
Harry desperately craved a father figure and took to looking for such a person in the likes of Albus Dumbledore, Sirius, Hagrid, and Arthur Weasley. He was shown to feel relieved when they were proud of him but would be troubled when he did something they didn’t approve of.
Harry was deeply hurt when he realized that Albus hadn’t chosen him to become a prefect, mainly because he thought he’d let Albus down somehow. The few times Harry argued with Sirius were when he would constantly deliberate over what he could do to make things right and was scared of their relationship fracturing. With Hagrid and Arthur, Harry would worry about betraying their trust when he decided to break the rules in his various battles against the dark arts.
To Be Reminded Of The People He Saw Die
Some fans consider Harry Potter to be a low-key villain during the time he was constantly on edge during the Ministry’s smear campaign since he treated his friends in a harsh manner. However, that was due to Harry channeling his fear of thinking about Cedric’s death in a different form.
Harry was scared of remembering the people he’d lost, even including Sirius and his parents. He took to avoid talking about it and isolated himself if it meant the topic wouldn’t be broached. Harry didn’t want to remember the good memories he had of these people either because it meant he’d have to face the fact that it was all he had of them now.
To Be Responsible For The Death Of Others
The death of his parents took a toll on Harry for the rest of his life and he blamed himself for it. This began a general fear of subjecting other people to similar fates. Harry was frequently seen asking his friends not to fight for him and even leave him to his own devices because he didn’t want the possibility of their deaths on his conscience.
This fear was seen in the most striking way when Harry broke up with Ginny. Harry confessed he couldn’t live scared of the prospect of his enemies coming after her due to him. When he met the resurrected souls of his loved ones in the Forbidden Forest, Harry profusely apologized out of the belief that he was the reason they had passed away.
To Experience A Betrayal By A Friend
This is a fear all Gryffindors have in Harry Potter because people of the house consider friends as close as family. Harry was terrified at the very idea of a friend betraying him, as seen when he leaped to Hagrid’s defense when the latter was suspected of letting slip the plan of the Seven Potters.
Harry was tortured with the memory of Ron’s abandonment, as he considered it a betrayal of their trust. Harry never wanted to consider the possibility of his friends turning on him because they were the ones that made him feel accepted, something he never had living with the Dursleys.
To Be All Alone
There’s little doubt that this is Harry’s primary concern in the series. Having been branded as an outsider and a freak by the Dursleys, Harry was scared of the idea of returning to such a life once he’d joined the Wizarding World. To him, a life without love was as bad as things could get.
The presence of Dementors made Harry feel powerless and alone, which is the opposite of what he saw in the Mirror of Erised. During the Horcrux hunt, the main cause of Harry’s sadness was loneliness, which had brought his worst fears to life, as he lost the company of people he’d grown to love.
