Whatever will become of the Marauder's Map?

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 43483

Jeff wrote:

> Remember, Dumbledore, who now, presumably, has the map, is the same 
> person who gave James' invisibility cloak to Harry. Dumbledore knew 
> how much trouble James and friends caused with that cloak. Why 
> would he give it to Harry? Now, why wouldn't he return the 
> Marauder's Map? :)

Olivia responded:

> Because the map is illegal and dangerous. 

Very much like the unauthorized use of a time-turner is both illegal 
and dangerous?  Yet Dumbledore encourages just that at the end of PoA.

> Because Harry gave the map to Barty Jr. and he used it to know when 
> his father arrived at Hogwarts and was able to kill him before he 
> got to Dumbledore. If the map fell into the wrong hands again 
> anything could happen. Like Dumbledore's death or an attack on 
> Hogwarts.

If the Philosopher's Stone had fallen into the wrong hands it would 
have been equally disastrous, if not even more so.  And yet 
Dumbledore has the Stone removed to Hogwarts and then guarded by a 
series of obstacles that even a heroic bunch of eleven year olds 
can manage to circumvent.  Harry himself suggests at the end of PS/SS 
that Dumbledore did this on purpose, and I think that as readers, we 
tend to believe him.

> I think the Map would be considered contraband like the various 
> practical jokes and gags of the Weasley twins. I think the Map will 
> show up again though, but I don't think anyone will return it to 
> Harry on the grounds that it was his father's. 

Oh, I don't know.  I think that Dumbledore might.

But I don't think that it will necessarily do Harry all that much 
good.

Harry is growing up, and I tend to read GoF, the middle book of the 
series, as his transition into adolescence.  In GoF, all of the 
legacy items left to Harry by his parents lose their power to protect 
him.  His father's Invisibility Cloak can no longer help him: his 
enemy, Crouch!Moody, can see right through it.  The Marauder's Map 
can no longer help him; in fact, it leads him astray: by causing him 
to believe that Crouch Sr is on the Hogwarts campus, it sends him 
chasing after a red herring, and as Olivia pointed out, it also lends 
aid to his hidden enemy.  And of course, by the end of the novel, 
even the physical protection of Lily's original sacrifice has 
been stripped from him.

Harry's parents' spirits may emerge from Voldemort's wand during the 
Priori Incantatem in the graveyard, but all they can really do for 
him is buy him time. There is no maternal love-shield to protect him, 
as there is in the endgame of PS/SS.  Father figure Dumbledore's 
Gryffindor relics do not drop from the sky to lend him aid.  His 
paternal patronus cannot appear to chase away the dementors.  In 
the endgame of GoF, during his mad dash for Cedric's body, Harry is 
alone as he has never been at the end of any of the preceding 
novels.  He is profoundly unprotected, and it is that fact that makes 
the diversion he chooses to take in order to run for Cedric's body, 
rather than for the Portkey, for me the most stunningly heroic moment 
in the entire series.

"'When the connection is broken, we will linger for only moments...'"

Harry may well get the Map back.  I hope that he will; I like the Map.

But I don't believe that it will help him all that much.  And I don't 
believe that we will be seeing many more ghost-like representations 
of Harry's parents in the future canon.  No more Mirrors of Erised.  
No more Dementor visions.  No more Priori Incantatem spirits.  

>From here on out, I think that Harry is going to have to deal with 
the *reality* of his parents, of who they actually were: the real 
people, rather than the shadows of fear and desire and longing and 
sorrow and legacy, the lingering protections of childhood.

And that is *my* prediction for Book Five.

Childhood is over.


-- Elkins