Coherence II

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 39004

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "davewitley" <dfrankiswork at n...> 
wrote:

>>>> What I remain to be convinced of is that there are *clues* 
which make  no sense in terms of the book they are in, but do 
make sense in a  later book. <snip>
 So, a challenge for you all: find something in an early book 
which is  a puzzle that is resolved in a later one.  I repeat, I am 
*not* talking about mere foreshadowings, I am talking about 
mysteries, and  I am *not* talking about mysteries that have 
been clearly presented as such.  I mean clues that with some 
thought and luck might have  given the reader help in cracking 
the puzzle in the later book.<<<

How about the cabbage smell in Mrs. Figg's house? That's 
mentioned in Book One, and doesn't seem magical until we find 
out about the resemblance between Perkin's tent and Mrs. Figg's 
furnishings at the World Cup. Then an  "Arabella Figg" turns out 
to be one of the old crowd, and JKR awarded a "well-spotted" to 
the person who connected her with Harry's Mrs. Figg in a chat. 

I think that counts as a puzzle since Harry hasn't twigged to the 
fact as yet.

> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------------------------------------
> 
> The Voldemort mysteries.  There are three of these: how Harry 
> survived, how Voldemort lost his powers, and why he attacked 
Harry in the first place.
> 
> Mystery 1: how Harry survived.  At the end of PS, this is *not* 
> explained.  All Dumbledore says is that *Quirrell* could not 
touch  Harry safely because of Lily's love and/or sacrifice (I will 
say more  about the distinction later).  At the end of COS, Harry 
asserts that  it *was* because of Lilly's love.  This is a 
reasonable deduction,  but Dumbledore nowhere endorses it.  
Riddle does, of course, but we  may choose to believe he is 
deluded or lying.
> 
> Mystery 2: how Voldemort lost his powers. At the end of PS this 
is  not discussed.  At the end of COS, Harry says that nobody 
knows how  it happened.  Again, one wonders why he is so sure.  
Did he have an off-stage discussion with Dumbledore? That 
would seem deeply unfair  to the reader.  Did he just assume it, 
even though Dumbledore did not  discuss it, perhaps because it 
is plain that most of the WW is baffled by it?
> 
> However, at the end of GOF, Voldemort states fairly clearly that 
he  lost his powers because his curse (assumed AK, as 
Crouch/Moody assumed) 'rebounded' off Harry's protection, still 
assumed to be  Lily's love.  Again, we may consider that 
Voldemort is lying or  deluded, and there are attractions to the 
'deluded' theory, as it can  be linked with the gleam.
> 
> There are two basic possibilities, IMO.
> 
> A.  Voldemort is right (and truthful), and in fact Lily's love is 
> the 'solution' to mysteries 1 and 2.  If so, I feel slightly cheated 
> that there are no authorial fanfares that say 'here's the answer'.  
> Harry doesn't pause to say "Now I understand this mysery that 
nobody  in the whole WW knows".  In his debrief, there is no 
mention of  Sirius slapping his forehead and saying "Lily's love! 
How wonderful!  How simple! And yet how it explains everything! 
Now I understand why  Voldemort was crippled!"  As a purported 
explanation it may stack up,  but if so it is just not given the 
prominence it deserves.
> 
> B. Voldemort is wrong, and there is more to Voldemort's 
defeat, and  possibly Harry's survival, than Lily's love. (This has 
strong  emotional appeal to all who feel that it is a slight on all 
other  mothers who are presumed to have died protecting their 
offspring -  again, I discuss further below.)  From the detective 
story point of  view, this is also much better, and Harry's 
comments to Riddle, and  Voldemort's rebirthing speech are 
then misdirection.  It is a  commentary on Voldemort's dumb evil 
overlordness that he swallows  this twice, once as Riddle, again 
at rebirthing.  One would hope that a really consummate villain 
would at least say "Hang on, that can't quite be right... Never 
mind, let's get on with the Aveda Keadvra- ing, it's so much more 
fun than figuring out exactly what  happened..." and it would, IMO, 
give the reader a little bit more  chance to see that some 
misdirecting is going on. < Snip>
> 
> I think the problem with this is that, to be satisfactory, 
> misdirection should be of the kind that on re-reading makes us 
say  that we should have spotted the answer all along.  But there 
are no  puzzles in the Lily's love explanation *as an 
explanation*.<<<

What we have, I think, are Dumbledore, Harry and Voldemort 
exchanging working hypotheses, saying more or less what they 
believe to be true at the moment, but edited for psychological 
impact and possible disinformation to the other side.

Dumbledore puts the emphasis on Lily's love for Harry because 
this is what Harry needs most to understand, that his mother's 
love is still with him and will always protect him. It could be the 
explanation is true but incomplete because Dumbledore, who 
understands TMR pretty well, expects this information to get back 
to Voldemort somehow. Which it may have, via Pettigrew.

 When Harry is speaking to Riddle in CoS, he falls back on what 
Hagrid told him at the beginning of PS/SS "Vanished. That's the 
biggest myst'ry,see...he was gettin' more an more 
powerful--why'd he go?[...]Because somethin' about you finished 
'im, Harry. I dunno what it was, no one does..."  

Harry puts it more  forcefully in the Chamber, "No one knows why 
you lost your powers.." and leaves out that everyone thinks it has 
something to do with him. He *wants* Riddle to attack him at this 
point, so telling Riddle that it was something about him, apart 
from his mother, would not be a good idea.

Riddle has been wondering the same thing, but accepts it that it 
was all mother-love, "there is nothing special about you after all".

Adult Voldemort presumably *does* know why he wanted to kill 
baby Harry, and is (possibly)  being directed away from thinking 
that this had something to do with why the curse rebounded.

My thought is   that Voldemort is being misdirected, thus the 
gleam.  Harry does not know the entire truth about himself  
according Dumbledore's speech at the end of PS/SS. We have 
not been given enough clues to work out exactly what the answer 
is yet, but we have the puzzle entire: Why did Voldemort want to 
kill Harry, and is it in fact tied to the way the AK rebounded?

Pippin