Time-Turning to Redeem Riddle/ Pucker Up, Buttercup/ Disney Endings

[Kirstini]

No: HPFGUIDX 70075

As I see it, the general gist of the "new interpretation of the 
prophecy" argument goes like this. As it hasn't been flagged very 
well, I have absolutely no idea who made the original comment:

> Harry will go back into the past and by making friends with Tom 
Riddle, he will prevent Riddle from turning into Lord Voldemort. The 
moment Harry turns the time-turner, Voldemort "dies at Harrys hand", 
respectively will never be born.> 

I know that Tracie said this, which was more or less the same thing:

> It may be different when he comes face to face with Voldemort for 
 the final battle between the two of them.  I rather like this 
alternate resolution or something like it.  Where Voldemort ceases 
to exist by not becoming Voldemort at all...but by remaining Tom 
Riddle thanks to Harry Potter> 

The thing *is*, though, what happens then? Where do all of Harry's 
memories go, at that instant? Where do all of his relationships go? 
Where does the entire content of seven books go? If you think about 
it, this interpretation is almost as bad as "And then I woke up and 
found it was all a dream (and I didn't have a scar)", because it 
voids the entire series. Harry would have to learn what his 
alternative self had been doing for the past seventeen years, in 
order to become him. But he can't become him, because he's already 
Harry version 1. So Harry version 2. couldn't technically exist.
Ouch. My head...
It's not possible, you see. I think JKR points this out in the Time-
Turner episode of PoA. Harry can only produce the Patronus becuase 
he knew it had already happened somewhere in the timeline. he can't, 
however, mess with time in any way. He can't go and grab Scabbers, 
not just because Hermione stops him, but because then his first self 
(about to go into the Shrieking Shack) will never reach the point 
where he and Hermione use the Time-Turner. His second self is still 
the furthest point in time Harry's character is allowed to progress 
to, therefore he becomes stranded in some sort of stasis (with a 
rat? I'm not sure where the rat goes).  Voldemort has already 
happened. You can't go back and change him, or the effects he had on 
people, because it denies an entire level of existence.

***
What I *do* like is this Dementor idea, which appeared in an earlier 
post some point on Sunday (Brit time) - that to eventually vanquish 
a Dark Lord, one has not just to kill him, but to suck out his soul -
 "There are worse things than death, Tom". Therefore a Dementor has 
to be called into play. The trouble is that only Harry/Neville/Un-
named Other can do the vanquishing, so unless there were any 
Dementors spawned by particularly defiant parents that July, I think 
we have to find a way by which (for brevity's sake, let's call him) 
Harry will learn to replicate this process. Harry is going to have 
to have the balls to entirely remove a person's consciousness one 
way or another.

 I was a bit disappointed with those people in the "new 
interpretation of the prophecy" thread who hoped for a "Disney 
ending", because I consider it utterly at odds with everything JKR 
has set out to do. She has never gone for the soft option: Harry has 
to fight alone. Harry has to kill a gigantic snake. Harry has to 
learn the painful and disturbing truth about his parents' death. 
Harry has to watch Cedric die and Voldemort re-birthed. In OoP, we 
were all predicting Lupin (fairly tragic death), Dumbledore (death 
of mentor) or Hagrid (death of childhood).. She gave us Sirius 
(death of last remaining "family", guardian and the person who Harry 
cared most about), a death which viability everyone had scorned pre-
OoP as being too hard on Harry. 

 What we see at the end of OoP is a teenage boy mentally preparing 
himself to either murder or be murdered. Those are the terms the 
narrative, focalising through Harry, uses. That's going to alienate 
him further from his peers, and should it turn out that he doesn't 
actually have to kill Voldemort, his life will still have been 
changed fundamentally and for the worse. I don't think this is 
something you can prettify by having Voldemort fall accidentally off 
a tower, maybe after Harry has been holding on to him ("Grab my 
hand, Dark Lord!" "Oh Harry. you are such a wonderful boy, and have 
taught me to value my life, and those of the people around me...oh 
no...I can't hold on...I always loved your 
mother...Harrrrrrrrryyyyyy!"). 

Harry isn't going to be able to talk Voldemort round, either as 
Riddle or in his current, red-eyed incarnation. Harry isn't very 
good at negotiations. He knows right and wrong, but acts on impulses 
of them. Becoming a negotiator requires logic, calm and skill, which 
is why Hermione is always on hand to do the talking for him. 
Voldemort, once we've ruled the Redeemed!Riddle argument out, isn't 
really the sort to sit down and have a chat about morality, is he? 
No, he fights. He throws every sort of evil spell possible at Harry, 
and Harry is learning to respond to them. There will be a fight, and 
there will be a murder or a destruction of some sort, and you are 
going to have to steel yourselves to it. I'm actually more disturbed 
by the thought of Harry learning to suck out someone's soul than I 
am at him using Crucio on Bellatrix (actually, I wasn't too 
disturbed by that, so probably not a good example). Voldemort goes 
beyond the body, and Harry is going to have to learn to. He'll be 
doing it for the good of the WW, and to save thousands of lives. 
Does that sweeten the pill at all?
Kirstini