History Woobie / HarryPotter

* For a while in Books 4 and 5, Cho Chang. Poor girl; [[SacrificialLion her boyfriend]] died just because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her bouts of crying, especially when she began to realize she liked Harry and couldn't figure out if she was okay with that, could very easily have come off as pathetic; given the situation, I'm sure plenty of readers just wanted to hug her.

* Professor [=McGonagall=] is revealed to be this in [[AllThereInTheManual her Pottermore-provided backstory]]. [[spoiler:When she had just graduated from Hogwarts, she fell in love with a young Muggle farmer and cheerfully accepted his marriage proposal. However, a combination of knowing what happened when her own father unknowingly married a witch and a CareerVersusMan dilemma (for a job at the Ministry she later found out she didn't even enjoy) forced her to break off the engagement without being able to tell him why. After becoming a teacher at Hogwarts, she later found out he married another woman, driving her to tears. On top of that, when she had much later gotten over it, she got HappilyMarried with an older man, only for him to die only three years into the marriage.]] As Pottermore puts it, "few people - excepting perhaps Albus Dumbledore - ever realised how much she suffered."

* Pius Thicknesse. Under the Imperius Curse throughout [[spoiler: his term as Minister of Magic]]. Imagine achieving your lifelong dream only to be [[NotHimself Not Yourself]] and a [[MindRape Mind Raped]] slave.

* Ginny Weasley has a very, ''very'' [[MindRape bad]] [[MailerDaemon first]] [[DamselInDistress year.]]

* Tom Riddle Sr is definitely an example. He may not have been a particularly nice person, but he found himself first attacked by Morfin for being a Muggle, and then drugged and raped repeatedly by Merope. When she finally had the decency to release him from her control, Tom understandably fled, only for the child he conceived with Merope to [[MisBlamed blame him for his hellish childhood in the orphanage]] and murder Tom Sr and his family in an act of revenge.

-->Harry had no memory of ever being hugged like this, as though by a mother.

*** This is really driven home in the last book, when Harry arrives at Hogwarts and is searching for the last Horcrux in a frantic race against time to defeat the BigBad and prevent anyone else from being killed, but it's right then that everyone he loves shows up at the school and basically volunteers to throw themselves into a meat grinder just to buy him more time. He then has to watch his friends die left and right as they fight the Death Eaters, knowing that they're dying for him. [[spoiler: And then promptly has to sacrifice himself in order to render Voldemort killable. [[DisneyDeath He gets better from that at least.]]

* Harry himself. Remember Dumbledore in OOTP? "My only defense is this: I have watched you struggling under more burdens than any student who has ever passed through this school, and I could not bring myself to add another -- the greatest one of all."
** Or the end of [=GoF=], when Harry is ''already'' in a state of complete shell shock after being assaulted and nearly murdered, and witnessing the pointless murder of a friend, by Lord Voldemort... and then, while he's still reeling and vulnerable, ''another'' villain gets Harry alone under the guise of helping him, and promptly attacks him.
** Harry's early childhood was not nice. Having to live with an aunt and uncle who were abusive at worst and didn't give a damn about him at best, enduring constant bullying from his cousin, his cousin's friends and his uncle's jerkass sister, all because he has magical abilities. It doesn't help that his real parents were murdered when he was barely a year old. It got to the point that when he stayed at the Burrow, i.e. a wizard house filled with all manner of fascinating magical stuff for the first time, the thing that came as the biggest shock was the fact that everyone he lived with liked him.
** "Harry had no memory of ever being hugged like this, as though by a mother." That is all.
** Harry's an innocent teenager who carries the world on his shoulders. All the grief of losing every single person he loved. Of being fated and knowing you have to battle the greatest dark wizard of all time. Seeing your friends die around you. No one should have to go through those horrors, but he did, and he has a heck of a lot more coming.
*** This is really driven home in the last book, when Harry arrives at Hogwarts and is searching for the last Horcrux in a frantic race against time to defeat the BigBad and prevent anyone else from being killed, but it's right then that everyone he loves shows up at the school and basically volunteers to throw themselves into a meat grinder just to buy him more time. He then has to watch his friends die left and right as they fight the Death Eaters, knowing that they're dying for him. [[spoiler: And then promptly has to sacrifice himself in order to render Voldemort killable. [[DisneyDeath He gets better from that at least.]] ]]

%%Good Morning Editors, If you wish to add more woobies, please consult the cleanup thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=15391212720A38366900&page=1

* Neville Longbottom, who's spent most of the series [[ButtMonkey getting mocked, cursed, beaten, battered, and having his parents' misfortune thrown in his face.]] He has to visit his insane parents. And listen to his grandmother talk constantly about how brave they were, which reminds him how far they have fallen, and sets an almost impossible goal for himself to be at least as good as they were. Which, [[spoiler:by the way, he actually manages in the end! A CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming is when she says how proud of him she is]].

** Then, in a mix of TearJerker and CrowningMomentOfAwesome, Molly ''[[MamaBear completely snaps]]'' at [[spoiler: Bellatrix Lestrange and kills her for mockingly threatening to kill Ginny ''right after'' Fred dies]]. Awesome, yes, but still extra woobie points right there.

* Subverted with Quirrell. The guy spends most of the book as prime woobie material - A smart but naive young professor who went off to experience the world... and was so traumatized by his experiences that he is constantly trembling and stuttering. Even worse, because of this he is mocked by his students, despite having a "brilliant mind". He also appears to be one of the kinder professors - at one point he 'rescues' Harry and his friends from Filch. The poor guy is even bullied later on by Snape. Of course, then we find out that [[spoiler: it was an act and he was the villain all along. Wasted sympathy.]]
** Another good subversion comes with Peter Pettigrew: In ''[[Literature/HarryPotterAndThePrisonerOfAzkaban Prisoner of Azkaban]]'', he was revealed to have been the least of the Marauders, physically and intellectually; even the teachers were harsh with him, something [=McGonagall=] admits regretting after he confronted Sirius Black and was killed by him. Subverted by the teensy little fact that [[spoiler: ''he'' betrayed the Potters to Lord Voldemort, blasted apart a street filled with Muggles, and framed Sirius for both crimes. Oh, and uh, [[HesJustHiding he wasn't dead]]. Also, he's a DirtyCoward and TheMole, especially in ''[[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows Deathly Hallows]]''.]]

* While Tom Riddle is not a remotely sympathetic charecter, his identity as [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds Lord Voldemort is created by a series of tragedies]]. His Mother, who was mistreated all her life, became pregnant out of a desperate bid to be loved, and then died just after giving birth, then Tom was raised with no one to teach him about his powers, and he therefore felt detatched from his fellow orphans. When he went to Hogwarts his feelings of superiority caused him to abuse his incredible intellect, he also found out more about his father abandoning him and his mother, and was angry. This spirled into a hatred for muggles, and muggle-borns. While any sympathy one could feel for him stops at Tom's terrorizing his peers at the orphanage, one could feel sorry for him in the way Dumbledore feels sorry for Dudley.

** Let's be honest, the whole lycanthropy thing; he was horrifically maimed at the age of four and then forced to turn into a murderous creature every month for the rest of his life. To make it worse, the transformations were so painful that the place he transformed in came to be known as the most haunted house of the country due to the amount of screams that came from it.And then there's the whole FantasticRacism thing, too.

* Many {{fangirl}}s are under the [[MisaimedFandom misguided notion]] that Severus Snape from the ''Literature/HarryPotter'' series is a delightful, cuddly chap. His actual backstory doesn't help, since he alternates between Woobie and {{Jerkass}} with surprising ease. He was bullied constantly by Harry's dad and his friendship with Lily was permanently ruined when he called her a Mudblood. [[spoiler: He also unintentionally sold Lily to her death by telling Voldemort the prophecy.]]

** Let's be honest, the whole lycanthropy thing; he was horrifically maimed at the age of four and then forced to turn into a murderous creature every month for the rest of his life. To make it worse, the transformations were so painful that the place he transformed in came to be known as the most haunted house of the country due to the amount of screams that came from it..
*** And then there's the whole FantasticRacism thing, too.

* Many {{fangirl}}s are under the [[MisaimedFandom misguided notion]] that Severus Snape from the ''Literature/HarryPotter'' series is a delightful, cuddly chap. His actual backstory doesn't help, since he alternates between Woobie and {{Jerkass}} with surprising ease.
** He is without a doubt a JerkassWoobie, an integral and popular member of the Woobie family