Finishing Voldemort

[blpurdom]

No: HPFGUIDX 38093

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> wrote:
> I wrote:
> >>>If that sword doesn't prove to be Voldemort's bane, I'll eat my 
> laptop.<<<
> 
> And Barb suggested
> > I would suspect that salsa would help microchips' flavor 
> somewhat.  <g>  In this case, we know about the sword and why 
> it is there, so  this can't be foreshadowing.  Harry already used 
> this to kill the  basilisk in CoS.  JKR doesn't tend to repeat 
> herself. [snip]
> 
> Thanks for the serving suggestion. There is a shop around here 
> that says they can make *anything* out of chocolate (they got in 
> trouble once for doing chocolate Oscars without a license). I am 
> sure they can do a G4 <g> 

Any time. ;)

> But really >>JKR doesn't tend to repeat herself.<<< are you 
> kidding? Unregistered animagi, polyjuice, DADA teachers with a 
> secret, things getting smashed by the Whomping Willow, Hagrid  
> and his absurdly dangerous pets, Neville blowing up cauldrons, 
> etc, etc, and so forth. JKR is very fond of  variations on a 
> theme. 

I should have been clearer about that.  I should have said that she 
doesn't repeat the climaxes of her books.  All four so far have been 
very different.  And there's a difference between running themes, 
foreshadowing and repetition.  You mention unregistered Animagi.  We 
had two of them in PoA at the climax, but this served to foreshadow 
the one in GoF, who was hardly at the center of the story (and the 
clues were there).  Hagrid and his pets and Neville blowing up 
cauldrons is character-definition (although I wonder whether 
Hagrid's pet foibles are foreshadowing for his eventual fate).  
Things getting smashed by the Whomping Willow is consistency; the 
only things that got smashed badly are the Ford Anglia and Ron's 
wand (both necessary for later developments).  The CoS episode 
served as foreshadowing for the PoA explanation of the Willow's 
origins, and if it didn't beat people about the head in PoA, that 
would have been wildly inconsistent.

The Mirror already appeared in the climax of book one, so it's 
doubtful it will reappear to hide a magical object at the center of 
the story in any other book climax.  The sword was already used to 
vanquish a foe at the end of book two, so it is unlikely to be used 
for that purpose again.  Ron's wand spent the entire CoS 
malfunctioning as foreshadowing for what would happen when Lockhart 
used it on Ron and Harry.  This is unlikely to be repeated.  In the 
climax of PoA we had the unregistered Animagi, disarming Snape 
(foreshadowed by him disarming Lockhart in CoS), a hippogrif, a Time 
Turner and rescuing someone from injustice (this comes closest to a 
repeat, in that Harry freed Dobby at the end of CoS, but that wasn't 
really the climax and it was probably really foreshadowing the whole 
Winky thing and SPEW).  In GoF we had a Portkey we didn't know was a 
Portkey (we had the Portkey in the QWC bit so we'd know exactly what 
was happening to Harry when it occurred later) a dark ritual/potion 
and a duel.  The only one of these likely to be repeated in a 
seventh-book showdown between Harry and Voldemort is a duel, and I 
doubt it will be a Muggle-style duel with swords.

> In contrast to the Stone,  that sword has been carefully 
> preserved. Unlike the Mirror of Erised, we have been allowed to 
> know where it is. I think it is going to be used again, else it 
> would have fallen into a convenient abyss, like Luke's first light-
> sabre. 
  
> As to how the sword might be used, rereading FBAWTF, I noticed 
> this description under Ukrainian Ironbelly (p 14): " ...extremely 
> dangerous, capable of crushing dwellings on which it lands.The 
> scales are metallic grey, the eyes deep red, and the talons 
> particularly long and vicious." 
> Now I ask you, does that sound like anyone we know? 
> 
> We know that Voldemort can do  extremely dangerous magical 
> transformations. Suppose he turns himself into such a creature, 
> the better to destroy Hogwarts? Then Harry could kill him with the 
> sword, without raising all those messy human rights/capital 
> punishment issues.

It would, but for that exact reason it seems very un-JKR.  I didn't 
say the sword wouldn't appear again, just that it would be unlikely 
to be the instrument of Voldemort's downfall.  For one thing, she's 
been there and done that with the basilisk.  For another, unless he 
DOES turn into a dragon or other beast (which is a bit too much like 
the Buffy graduation--wrong fandom!--and not very JKR) I can't see 
Harry killing anyone who's nominally human in such a grisly manner.  

In the end, I think Harry and Voldemort will meet each other on 
their own terms, man to man, and Harry may make him even more human 
than before, which could be his final undoing.

--Barb

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HP_Psych
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