Pettigrew's bond with Harry

[anakinbester]

No: HPFGUIDX 45229

CMC Wrote

>I interpret this to signify that Wormtail is so 
ashamed of his treason, his betrayal of James and Lily, that he 
>wishes to avoid any real personal interaction with Harry 
>whatsoever.  

I interpreted that scene in that manner as well. I think it was an 
extremely important bit of interaction also. It shows that Peter does 
feel guilty about what he's doing and that he is ashamed. I try and 
point that out when I argue that he's not your standard run of the 
mill sniveling disneyesque sycophant. 
It seems very clear that he'd rather be doing anything else than what 
he's doing, and yet, for whatever psychological reasons, can not 
bring himself not to do them. 

His actions in that scene are also something that I'm using. I'm 
writing a small thiny abut the possibility of him being tortured 
physically and psychology, and how that would explain a heck of a lot 
of his behavior and even some of what he says in the shrieking shack. 
(yes, I got to the library and check out books on the psychological 
effects of torture so I can write that essay, but ask me if I've even 
gone to library to look up what books I might need for my modern art 
essay)

The most interesting thing I've come across yet was this: 
"In some extreme cases [torture can] transform the victim into a 
collaborator, which is the maximum expression of the identification 
of the victim with the aggressor"

Ok, pulling myself a little bit more on topic again: 


>We know as surely as anything in the JKR saga that Wormtail will 
>once more become Pettigrew and will turn on Voldemort. Yet the cost 
>is certain to be as immense as when another triple-traitor Caius 
>Marcius Coriolanus abandoned his vengeful schemes against his native 
>Rome, thus betraying his newfound Volscian allies......

well it's nice to see that someone else at least thinks that's going 
to happen, whether or not you think he deserves it. How that life 
debt will play out is one of my big questions right now.

I wonder though, many people think that it will be some kind of 
magical compulsion, in which Peter must help Harry (in which case, it 
will be far less redeeming) but I sometimes wonder if it's even 
magical in that sense at all. 

Perhaps it's simply the only way Peter can put things right, and 
Peter has enough of a conscience to eventually act on it. Anything 
that can draw Peter out of the cowardly, masochistic, servile shell 
he's pulled himself into would seem to be a kind of magic to me. 

I say this because Snape seems to have had a similar debt with James, 
and so he saved Harry to clear it. however, don't  you think Snape 
would have saved Harry no matter what? I think Snape is simply 
honorable in that way, and the debt merely acts as a rationalization 
for something Snape my not have particularly wanted to do, but had to 
do because in the end that's the kind of person he is. 

Does that make any kind of sense at all? 

My finale pondering is, ok, it's important that Voldemort has a bit 
of Harry in him. Is it important that he has a bit of Peter in him 
too? (was it here that it was brought up that Voldemort now has the 
flesh of a person in debt to Harry in him? I'm on so many forums 
about Peter that I get confused)

-Ani