[HPforGrownups] Harry Does Not See Dumbledore in M. of Erised/ What does she mean by "vanquish"/ time turning

[Richelle Votaw]

No: HPFGUIDX 70194

"kristy8050usa" wrote:

> Not only does he see his parents, but he sees many other green eyes
> like his own and an old man with knobby knees. He doesn't see anyone
> that he recognizes (definitely would have recognized Dumbledore!),
> and he would probably remember later on if he recognized Sirius from
> that picture.

Hem, hem.  (sorry, couldn't help that)  As Dumbledore tells Harry, "The
mirror will give us neither knowledge or truth."  Best I can work it out the
mirror simply takes the images of James and Lily from Harry's subconscious
memory, then works out other people with similar features.  I very much
doubt any of the people Harry saw (other than James and Lily) ever existed
exactly as they did in the mirror.

Florentine wrote:

> I'd be really grateful you as a native speaker of English
> could give me your opinion on this usage of the word.

Well, the most basic meaning of "vanquish" is to defeat or conquer in
battle.  It can be argued that one can be vanquished and still live.  Though
that happened once already to Voldemort and he managed to come back.
However it all ends, it's got to be final.  No doubts about whether
Voldemort's really gone or not.  I don't really know where all the "prevent"
stuff is coming from, my dictionary doesn't give that as an option.  Nor
does my thesaurus.  The most common recurring definition (and the one I
personally think JKR was aiming for) is "to utterly defeat."

On a similar note, the time turning to save Riddle/prevent him from becoming
Voldemort thing.  Ugh.  No way.  First of all, time travel as JKR has laid
it out doesn't work that way.  For one thing, that's an awful lot of turns.
For another, it's already happened.  There are plenty of witnesses to all
the many things Voldemort has done.  The reason time turning worked in PoA
is because it never really happened in the first time line.  Harry was
already there to save them from the dementors.  They never really saw
Buckbeak killed.  It never really happened.  It wasn't so much a matter of
going back in time (though it was), as needing more time.  This is the
reason Dumbledore (provided he has access to a time turner) couldn't just go
back a couple of hours and prevent Cedric from dying.  He was already dead.
There were witnesses (Wormtail and Harry) who saw/heard him die, and
witnesses (all the DE's and the crowd at Hogwarts) who saw his body.  Can't
undo it.

Richelle