Adopted!Harry is really... TTTR

[m.steinberger]

No: HPFGUIDX 57765

Answers to some questions:
To Cindy C (offlist): TTTR = Time Turned Tom Riddle. Sorry I forget to clarify that.

To Dan, who wrote: Interesting concept but it doesnt explain why Voldemort tried to 
kill Harry and did kill Harry's parents. If they are "one and the 
same" why would he do this. I am open to suggestions, it seems quite 
an interesting topic!

TAS: He tried to kill Harry and failed. He did kill Harry's (not his own) *adoptive* parents because they got in the way. As for why he was ready to spare Lily, any of the extant theories will do.

To Fauxwen, who wrote: But how do you explain the fact that Harry was able to pull 
Gryffindor's sword from the Sorting Hat?  Remember, "only a true 
Gryffindor ..." etc.?

TAS: A true Gryffindor is someone whose heart is truly Gryffindor, not whose blood is Gryffindor. As Dumbledore told Harry, he was only spared Slytherin house and put in Gryffindor because that is what he asked for, and yet, he is a true Gryffindor.

To Izaskun: Thank you for answering Linda's question.

To Kirstini, who wrote: I'm just not buying this "identical innate character" thing. As I 
read down your post, I found a lot of your argument convincing, but 
I thought to myself "how on earth is this going to get round the 
fact that Harry and LV have completely different characters?" 

TAS: Sorry, I meant "identical innate temperament" which is all infants have; character comes later. I grant 100% that this is problem, but this is why (I think) I don't have to solve it: Assuming that Harry and Voldemort are identical gene/womb products, the question is how their different lives from infancy on left them with such different characters. Now this is nothing but the eternal nature vs nurture debate, about which everyone has a different take, and about which most people have strong opinions. JKR certainly has a strong opinion about it, and is clearly strongly biased against nature and for nurture. We can't know whether her strong pro-nurture stance goes as far as creating both a Harry and a Voldemort out of one body, but it's possible she does believe such a thing possible. If those are her beliefs, she'll write how it happened in her story, and make her case. At that point, you might say, "Come on, JKR, that's pushing it too far," but your objection won't change the "facts" as she will have written them.

So the question I am posing is: Does the story so far support the possibility that JKR is so pro-nurture and anti-nature that she will present the divergent characters of Harry and Voldemort as coming from the same infant? I think so, and I'll leave it to her to present the how of it.

Kirstini: But also a bit reminiscent 
of that bit in the cave in The Empire Strikes Back where Luke takes 
off Vader's helmet to reveal..dahdahdah...himself! 

TAS: IIRC, Vader was Luke's father, and *that* is what HP fans want to avoid.

To hmvick, who wrote: If that’s true, why didn’t Voldemort just go back to 1927 and kill infant!Tom Riddle, instead of hauling his own ass through the space time continuum to 1980?

TAS: I suppose that becoming a god requires a whole complex magical ritual that he only learned and had set up at the age of 50+ in the 1980's and it was easier or necessary to do it in that time-period rather than to set the whole thing up in 1927.

To Lissa, who wrote: but why would a wise couple like James
and Lily rush to adopt a child almost immediately upon graduating from
Hogwarts?

TAS: I suppose Dumbledore told them that this homeless infant was critical to the future of the WW and asked if they could please keep him for a while. They fell in love with Harry and decided to keep him for good. Dumbledore may also have told them that the child needed disguising, and they did the charm work on his looks, expecting to adjust it when he got older, not knowing that they would be dead. Of course, it is possible that J&L knew exactly who Harry was, and how he got to the 1980's, and they may even have done the daring kidnapping of Harry from under Voldemort's sacrificial knife, in which case, "why" they adopted him and disguised him becomes even easier.

Lissa: And Sirius banks that Harry's behavior in the
Shrieking Shack scene will emulate James Potter's own.

TAS: This assumes Magic Dishwasher, which is possible but unnecessary with my theory.

Lissa: I think Rowling
likes Dumbledore too much to have him engaging in deceit unless it's
crucial at that moment in the story.  In my opinion, it isn't crucial
here [where Dumbledore keeps telling Harry how much he is like J&L].

TAS: I think Dumbledore was doing some short-run kindness, of the kind many of us do, especially with children. The Mirror of Erised showed how much Harry wanted family, and what would be the point of telling him that the wonderful parents he has to look back to are adoptive and not biological. They were parents, after all, even if adoptive. Harry's biological parents would not be a comfort for him to think of, in my theory. So here is Harry, dreaming of family, fantasizing James across the lake, etc, etc, and Dumbledore tells him as much as he honestly can. Harry *does* have Lily's eyes, even if he wasn't born with them. And he *does* have much of James' character, however he acquired it.

Lissa: For such a red
herring to be justifiable at *all* there would have to be some subtle
indication from the first book on that Harry is adopted.

TAS: Most of my "clues" were from PS/SS and CoS, and I expect that JKR will increase the clues and develop the old ones as the series moves on, so that at the end, we'll all say, "I can't believe it - the clues were all there!" same as we did with Quirrel, the Diary, Scabbers, etc.

Lissa: Are you suggesting concurrent alternate realities in one realm for the
single entity that is Harry Potter?

TAS: Yes, something normally impossible, and achieved by the evil genius Voldemort after decades of hard work, for the sole purpose of acheiving godhood.

Lissa: Out of curiousity, why does Dumbledore know [about the ritual]?

TAS: I suppose he's been tracking Riddle ever since school, and he's especially been spying on him since his rise to power. The year of the hypothesized kidnap of infant!Riddle was year 10 of Voldemort's rise to power - the year Harry was "born."

Lissa: And why put Harry with the
Dursleys--who wouldn't, in your theory, be blood relatives--instead of a
different, *reasonable* adoptive family?

TAS: Dumbledore tells McGonagall in PS ch. 1 why he's picked the Dursleys: he wants a muggle family with no connection to the WW. At the same time, he needs a muggle family he can give a letter to explaining Harry's wizard status and other yet-to-be-divulged things. And he needs a family willing to take Harry in, with no muggle beaurocracy. How many choices could there have been? It was a good thing the Dursleys didn't know Harry was adopted!

Lissa: A few other quibbles:

Your theory renders the Weasleys, who I personally believe are as much
at the heart of the Potter series as the Potters themselves,
unimportant.  It also makes everything--*everything*--all about Harry. 
That would be okay, I suppose, if the novels weren't doing some serious
exploration of the themes of family.  Why do you think the first novel
opens with an appalling day trip into the lives of the most wretched
family imagineable? Why do the Malfoys need to exist?  (That is to say,
how do they help fulfill the novels' theme?)  Why is purity of blood an
issue in the stories?  Is this all just window dressing for one man's
catastrophic battle with himself?

TAS: These are good points. I'll have to think about them.

I'm glad this theory hasn't spoiled anyone's day. It irked me when I first thought it up, because I'd like Harry to be just a great kid and nothing more, but the theory seemed to have too much potential to give up, or to keep to myself.

The Admiring Skeptic



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