Why Fawkes Brought the Hat to Harry (WAS: The Hat/sword/chamber/Dumbledore)

[erisedstraeh2002 <erisedstraeh2002@yahoo.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 51554

David (dfrankiswork) wrote:

> Dumbledore's statement about 'only a true Gryffindor' as a 
> deduction from a choice made by the Hat gains force when we 
> consider the Hat's normal function.  It isn't just that when Harry 
> was in difficulty, he got a Gryffindor object: Dumbledore's point 
> is that the Hat, which was the source of Harry's doubt in the first 
> place, when given a free choice of its own, picked Gryffindor's 
> sword.  <snip> I think it is an interesting question to ask why 
> Fawkes brought the Hat.  

Now me:

I think there are a lot of clues in CoS to suggest that Fawkes was 
once Godric Gryffindor's phoenix.  Since the Sorting Hat was once 
Gryffindor's Hat, and the sword was once Gryffindor's sword, I saw 
the scene in the chamber as one where Gryffindor's phoenix comes to 
Harry's aid armed with Gryffindor's Hat and sword.  In this way, I 
never really thought that the Hat "chose" the sword, I saw the sword 
as an extension of the Hat, and the Hat and sword carried by Fawkes 
as symbolic of the spirit of Gryffindor coming to Harry's aid.  

By extension, one could conclude that the reason Gryffindor's 
phoenix, Hat and sword came to Harry's aid is that either Harry is 
seen as carrying on Gryffindor's fight against evil (since Gryffindor 
was one of the key forces in driving Slytherin from the school), or 
that Harry is actually related to Gryffindor (the "Heir of 
Gryffindor" theory).  In either case, Dumbledore's statement about 
Harry being a true Gryffindor would apply.

~Phyllis