More insight into Snape/Snape's challenge

[evangelina839]

No: HPFGUIDX 68679

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Melinda Leydon
<melindaleo at m...> 
wrote:

<snip>
 In the final battle, Voldemort was
> unable to remain in Harry because of Harry's emotion.  It was his
emotional
> love for Sirius that made him too strong for Voldemort to possess. 
I know
> there has been talk about it being Harry's willingness to die, but I
> disagree:
> 
> (US edition, pg. 816)
> Blinded and dying, every part of him screaming for release, Harry
felt the
> creature use him again. . .
> "If death is nothing, Dumbledore, kill the boy. . ."
> Let the pain stop, thought Harry.  Let him kill us. . .End it,
Dumbledore. .
> .Death is nothing compared to this. . .
> 
> (This is not where Voldemort releases him, it's the next line)
> 
> And I'll see Sirius again. . .
> And as Harry's heart filled with emotion, the creature's coils
loosened, the
> pain was gone.
> 
> It is Harry's emotion, his "wearing his heart on his sleeve" that
makes
> Voldemort let him go.  I believe, in the end, it's this emotion
that will
> save Harry and defeat Voldemort.
> 
> Melinda

These are great points - I also remember the end of OoP, Dumbledore
talking to 
Harry about the room in the Department of Mysteries, "it contains a
force that is at 
once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human
intelligence, than the 
forces of nature. <snip> it is the power held within that room that
you possess in 
such quantities and which Voldemort has not at all. <snip> In the
end, it mattered 
not that you could not close your mind. It was your heart that saved
you." I was very 
happy to read those lines, cause I felt like many parts of the rest
of the book was 
trying to tell Harry the opposite (particularly Snape with the
Occlumency and 
Hermione when Harry wanted to rush out and save Sirius) - that he
should not act 
directly upon the wishes of his heart, but stop for a minute and let
his mind have a 
say. And surely that is not all bad (it might have helped to listen
to Hermione?), but I 
have always admired Harry for his big heart and "saving-people-thing"
(as Hermione 
so eloquently put it ;)) and I don't want him to change. Besides,
it's not like his 
intuitions aren't completely accurate most of the time - he's mostly
right suspecting 
something. Maybe Harry will be even more filled with self-doubt in
book 6, dwelling 
on the mistake he made with Sirius (I'm sure he can come to think of
it that way 
although I blame no one), and the most important thing he has left to
do before 
being able to strike out Voldemort is to (plenty of emphasis here)
trust himself and 
his abilities......

evangelina, who's certain self-reliance is the key to *everything*