Mudsnake (Harry Potter Muggleborn!Slytherin!SI)

[Fulcon]

And Merlin is wrong about courage.

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Have a cookie.

Now, I'm going to use your post as an excuse to talk about my perspective on courage, fear, respect, whatever. Because Merlin's perspective is my perspective.

When someone is afraid of death, what do we characterize that as? Running, hiding, fighting tooth and nail to avoid death. Obviously, this is a perfectly healthy drive, I'm not arguing that.

One definition of Courage, as you have said, is the ability to proceed in spite of your fight, flight, freeze and fawn response. That, however, is not the definition Merlin or I am using.

Consider an alligator tamer. Is he afraid of alligators? No. Is he aware that they could bite and snap his arm off in the literal blink of an eye? Yes. Does that stop him from being an alligator tamer? No. Does he completely ignore all best practice to avoid getting his arm snapped off in the blink of an eye just because he's not afraid? No.

Because he respects the alligator.

Now replace the alligator with death. Are most people afraid of death? Yes. Are they aware it could happen at any moment? Yes. Does that stop them from going into the world and doing what needs to be done? No. But, if they were not afraid, would they abandon all best practice to avoid death? No.

Because someone who stopped being afraid of death still respects it.

Now, realistically, very few people get to this point. This is my opinion on where the classical view of courage comes from.

In my opinion, Harry got to this point. In my opinion, it is part of how he defeated Voldemort at the Battle of Hogwarts. A huge part. He accepted death, and as a result was able to master the Elder Wand.

And, in my opinion, this is what separates heroes from normal people like you and I.