Chapter 34 Summary

[Rita Winston]

No: HPFGUIDX 14117

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., voicelady at m... wrote:
> 
> 1.	Harry has beaten Voldemort on several occasions by now.  Why
> then did Voldemort untie him and give him back his wand?  Is he on
> drugs or just stupid?

Answers which were recently suggested in the group include: the spell 
for getting his body back requires that the first thing he do with his 
new body is to engage in a fair combat; he needs to impress his Death 
Eaters because they doubt his power now that he was defeated once by a 
baby and again by a first-year student; he is insanely in love with 
theatricality.

> 2.	Were the apparitions emerging from Voldie's wand ghosts?
> If not, what were they and why were they able to speak to Harry?

They were the images of the spells that had been cast. God (JKR) only 
knows why they, mere images, were able to speak and act. Maybe Harry 
hallucinated it. JKR has said that James and Lily are not ghosts.

> 3.	We know that the Avada Kedavra curse is associated with green
> light.  But what was the symbolism, if any, of the red light
> streaming from Harry's wand?

The way that Harry's true wand announced itself in Ollivander's shop 
was by shooting out red stars. I gather that the color red is 
associated with Harry's magic, which might be related to red being 
the Gryffindor color, which JKR probably did not intend as Communist 
propaganda. 

> 4.	Do you wish that, even though the original wand order was a
> mistake, Jo had worked with it and come up with a reason for James
> emerging first?

Oh, god, yes. Should I repeat my previous list of some of the 
reasons that have been suggested on this egroup: 1) Harry's own 
magic and his emotions at that moment were so strong that his magic 
overrode the normal PI effect and brought Jamse out first because 
James were the one he was thinking of. 2) The person identified as 
James was really Harry and represented the unsuccessful Death Curse 
that Voldemort cast on baby Harry (the real James would have come out 
after Lily) -- Harry had already been mistaken for James in the stag 
Patronus scene in PoA. 3) Voldemort lied or was in error about having 
killed James first -- the man whose voice Harry heard telling Lily to 
take Harry and run was really one of his grandfathers (probably 
the Potter grandfather, with that strong family resemblance that 
lets Harry be mistaken for James, and with magic). Grandpa was killed 
(and would have appeared after Lily) while Lily fled. Voldemort 
caught up with Lily and had that conversation remembered by Harry. 
Lily, instead of trying to save her own life, used her last moments 
to send Harry to (hoped) safety with James (and, says I, to leave an 
image of herself in Harry's mind, to guard and guide and comfort 
him). Voldemort caught up with James and threw one Death Curse at 
both of them and it both killed James, spared Harry, and rebounded on 
Voldemort. That would explain not only why James appeared before 
Lily, but why no spell echo appeared for a Death Curse on Harry -- it 
was one echo for both.
 
> 5.	Do you think we'll see Cedric's ghost at Hogwart's now?

No. JKR said that happy people don't become ghosts. Apparently 
using an Aristotlean definition of happiness, which does not mean 
swimming in pleasure and the absence of pain, but rather the 
satisfaction of knowing that one has done one's duty, been good 
rather than evil, done one's best, etc.  Besides, she said she must 
teach her child readers the lessons that death is permanent and evil 
is seriously real, and bringing Cedric back as a ghost would lessen 
the feeling of permanence of his death.