[HPforGrownups] Re: A theory about Harry (kind of long, sorry!)

[AD]

No: HPFGUIDX 49416

>--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Tyler Hewitt <tahewitt at y...> 
>wrote:
> 
>> What if Harry was concieved specifically to fight
>> Voldemort?>
>>Dumbledore could have been the one who cast the spell, or gathered 
>>ingredients, or otherwise helped Lily and James `pollinate' their
>> special creation.>
>
>and At 09:33 PM 1/7/03 -0000, jenny_ravenclaw <meboriqua at aol.com> wrote:
>
> It is an interesting 
>theory, but I can't agree with it for two reasons: one is that I'd 
>hate to think that all of the nice things we've heard about James and 
>Lily as parents aren't so nice after all; that they decided to have 
>Harry not as a child, but almost as an experiment.  That Dumbledore 
>might have been involved in such a plan makes it all the more... 
>sinister.  
>
>The other reason is that it was Lily's love that protected baby Harry 
>from Voldemort to begin with.  How much real love would be there if 
>Lily and James had a baby for the sole reason of defeating an evil 
>wizard and not because they loved each other and wanted to start a 
>family?

Why can't it be both?

As far as I can remember, it's fairly firmly established in canon that Lily
and James were an item throughout a substantial portion of their school
years, which makes it far more likely that their marriage was one of love
rather than based on any sort of pragmatism.  Perhaps they were planning to
start a family anyway -- or at least, once the War had been won -- and then
the suggestion was made to cast this spell to make their child 'special'
somehow.  Certainly, it would have been a difficult decision for any
parents to make, knowingly placing their child in jeopardy before it was
even conceived -- but then, at that point, ALL children, and everyone else,
was in jeopardy from Voldemort anyway; and Lily and James' child all the
more so, if they were specifically fighting Voldemort on their own.  The
decision to start a family would itself have been a difficult one, at that
time in history -- and in that context, the decision to 'experiment' with
Harry becomes a question of, "Are we going to give our child a fighting
chance to survive, and perhaps save us all?" rather than one as callous as,
"Oh, let's mess around with this embryo for the heck of it and see what
happens."

It's also possible that the nature of the spell had as one of its
components the love that the would-be parents felt for each other -- which
would tie in neatly with the whole motherly-love-saving-Harry thing.

Personally, I don't see the concepts of 'Harry-as-beloved-child' and
'Harry-as-product-of-spell' as being mutually exclusive at all, though your
mileage may vary.

-AD, late for work and rushing to make this post beforehand regardless.