Harry's magical powers/Ron/Ron's wand

[Katze]

No: HPFGUIDX 33808

Barb wrote:
> 
> Hello Kristin and thank you for clearing up my understanding (or lack of...)
> regarding heir, descendent and ancestor.  Your examples made it very clear to
> me.

Glad I could help!
 
> If I might add one more "suppose"... lets suppose that since time travel is
> possible in the wizarding world, that Harry is actually re-visiting the past
> during the entire series of books, using a time-turner for some yet undisclosed
> purpose.

This might be interesting. Perhaps in one of the books we find out that
Harry could have gotten rid of V at a certain point, but failed to do
so, and now he's come back in time to fix the problem (I could only
imagine what kind of menace V would become in the future).

Or...what if we are getting glimpses of Harry's pensieve?

> I also wonder about Harry knowing Parseltongue.  I've not got a
> firm thought on how he came to know the language but your letter made me think
> that perhaps it was a "mistake" of V's spell.  What I mean is, that in trying
> to kill Harry by magic, that when 'the something' that went wrong, occurred,
> perhaps the energy that was lost from V, went INTO Harry along with
> specific knowledge of certain things.  We know that V lost his power and became
> a shell of his former self and that energy had to go somewhere.  I suspect a
> great deal of it acted as an atomic bomb-type blast and blew the house to bits
> but other parts of that energy may well have entered Harry in the form of repressed
> knowledge.  The Parseltongue could be part of that knowledge passed on unwittingly
> in the disaster.  It seems a little too obvious that the only injury to Harry
> is on his head (forehead) which houses a brain full of electrical activity.
>  As we know the book was originally intended for the enjoyment of children who
> may need a more concrete view of things, perhaps the scar is a concrete symbol
> of the transfer of energy and power.  It would have seemed rather silly if Harry
> had the scar on his bum or hand or something  ;o)  Obviously not his bum because
>  nobody would be able to  it, but it could have been elsewhere on him that 'is'
> exposed.

Dumbledore thinks that Harry gained his parselmouth from V during the
attack. Harry also has traits that Slytherin admired (resourcefulness,
determination, and a certain disregard for rules). I think that these
traits belong to Harry naturally, since his father had them as well. I'm
not sure about the parselmouth. I'm beginning to wonder if that is just
what Dumbledore thinks, and perhaps he's not sure (is it possible for D
to make a mistake?). Harry was so young when he was first attacked, that
we really have no idea if he could talk to snakes.

I'm also beginning to wonder if Harry is related to Slytherin, because
of Ron's statement in CoS. There's been discussion regarding Ron's
psychic ability, and a lot of the stuff he says off-hand turns out to be
true. When Hermione and Ron discover that Harry can talk to snakes, Ron
says, "And now that whole school's going to think you're his
great-great-great-great-grandson or something." I'm wondering if this
means more than we think. Hrmmm...I'm really tempted to go re-read the
books to follow Ron and his "messages". 

jklb66 wrote:
> 
> I was just reading the essay on wands in the HP Lexicon, and the
> author (sorry, forgot her name) pointed out that each wand is
> revealing of the character or abilities of the owners. (Unless of
> course, the wand is a hand-me-down like Ron's 1st wand!)  So, it
> struck me as ominous that Ron's new wand is "willow with a unicorn
> hair" when we already knew that Lily's wand was willow.  I'm just
> hoping this doesn't foreshadow that self-sacrifice won't be necessary
> to save Harry again.  Perhaps it simply reveals that Ron is noble
> enough to sacrifice himself for another.  After all, he
> does "sacrifice" himself in the Wizard's chess game so Harry can
> continue on to the sorceror's stone; and, he doesn't hesitate to go
> into the Chamber of Secrets in order to try and rescue Ginny.

I've thought about this too. The innocent are the first to die, and the
unicorn is the most innocent of all creatures. Does this tag Ron? I'm
not so sure. I think the unicorn hair identifies the Weasley, and not
particular Ron. His first wand was a hand-me down, so apparently unicorn
hair worked for the previous owners. But who was the previous owner?
What is Bill? Charlie? Percy? I would think that Ron got one of their
wands, so I think the "innocent" part actually tags the previous owner.
Now...Ron's new wand is also unicorn, so we still aren't sure if he's
tagged as well. 

The part that I found more interesting was the willow part of his wand.
Willow is good for "charm work" as Mr. Ollivander says. So I would think
that Lily had great strength in charms (especially to cast a spells to
save Harry), which causes me to believe that Ron has some latent powers
(divination? charms?) that haven't been introduced yet (or have and we
haven't noticed yet). I hope in future books he'll be making good use of
his 'willow' wand. 

Ron might try to sacrifice himself in future books, but he's already
done it once. I'm not sure if Rowling is the type of person to use the
same trick twice.

-Katze