Substituted!Harry/variant (was; Adopted!Harry)

[jodel at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 57928

This debate *is* exciting. 

The original premise (that the Harry we know is in fact the same entity who 
formerly lived as one Tom Marvolo Riddle) is a good one, and I agree that as 
far as the series has gone -- so far -- there is ample suggestion that JKR is 
indeed building up to some form of this revelation. OTOH, there are ample 
niggling details which make the basic premis less than fully convincing.

So. I propose that we examine some possible variations on the original theory 
and see whether they fly any better. We've already had Alex Cukier's "Riddle 
Twins" variant.

Now, I want to propose what I will dub the "Trelawny Prophecy" variant.

According to this variant, there was no Dark Ritual requiring the dislocation 
of the infant Riddle from his native timeline. (One of the major stumbling 
blocks to the original proposal.) Instead this variant throws the burden of 
origin onto the moldy old fig of Trelawny's first prophecy. I'll admit that I 
would just as soon not do this, since it is SUCH a cliche, but this element 
is sprawling all over the issue of what Voldemort's motivation in killing the 
Potters was and we ignore it at our peril. And to be honest, it is the 
discussion of the fans rather than attention to it in canon which has built 
it up to the monolith it is today.

In this variant it was the Trelawny prophecy which set Voldemort on the 
Potter's trail. And, in accordance with tradition, every action he has taken 
to avert this fate has only served to bind him more firmly to it.

The big difference in this variant is that the Potters really did have a son 
named Harry, and that the substitution took place on the night of their 
death. 

How do we *know* that the Avada Kedavra curse did not affect Harry, apart 
from giving him his scar?

Obviously, it DID affect Harry. He has the trace memory of the name Tom 
Riddle. He is a Parselmouth -- despite there being no history of it in the 
Potter family tree, and his mother is Muggle-born. What *else* did it do to 
him? 

Is he even the *same* Harry Potter?

Who, after all, got a good look at that infant after the attack, before he 
was given to the Dursleys to raise? And how well did they know the Potter's 
child in the first place? 

Sirius got a quick glimpse, in the dark of night, in the ruins of the Potter 
house when he turned up and tried to get Hagrid to let him take the child. 
Pettigrew had snatched Voldemort's wand and was off making plans to hide 
himself to his best advantage. He probably only knew that the infant had 
apparantly survived the attak and was howling.
Lupin was out of the loop. If Lily had close friends of her own we do not 
know who they were. The Dursleys had never seen the child. We do not know how 
closely Dumbledore kept in touch with the Potters. Or Hagrid, for that 
matter. They saw a dark harired child with Lily's eyes and may have inquired 
no further.

Various points (direct and indirect) to consider;

1. Voldemort had undergone a great deal of change since his human origins, 
and by the time he showed up at the Potter's. His "state" at that point was 
already largely that of an artificial construction. 

2. It was established in PS/SS that VaporMort was capable of existing in the 
stolen bodies of other creatures for limited amounts of time.

3. It was established in CoS that human wizards are capable of producing 
concsious and potentially functional reproductions of their own "selves" [in 
fact, semi-embodied memories] which are capable of existing independently 
under the correct circumstances. 

4. Rowling has rubbed everybody's noses in the existence of a poltergeist 
which is an entity believed to be produced by the psychic projection of 
turbulent human emotions -- without ever having been an actual human being, 
and consequently, while a "spirit" is not actually a "ghost". 

5. Voldemort's attempt to murder Harry Potter established a connection 
between them. To all apearances, the result of that attempt was that the 
"vicitm" lived while the "murderer" did not.

Okay; I propose that Lily's willing sacrifice was the triggering *last* step 
of a powerful protection spell which had already been set to ensure the 
child's survival. Very much as Ginny's death would have been the last step of 
a spell to release the Diary revenant from the book. It was not the single 
factor, it was the final, and triggering factor. 

The AK then served as a connection between Tom and Harry, and through the 
energy conducted by it *both* of them were *changed*. 

Harry, an imature human entity, is left with no concsious memory of the 
actual process, and Voldemort, a composite entity, seems to have been left 
with only a memory of pain. I believe that the pain was due in part to the 
stripping away of the non-human qualities which he had been at such pains to 
acquire. It was these non-human, non-mortal qualities which survived in 
disembodied form, controled and directed by Riddle's consious memories and 
sense of "self". These adult memories retain a tenuous connection to the 
original magical and tempramental qualities of the human Tom Riddle. 

The original [human] Tom Riddle with all the fundamental magical and 
tempramental qualities that he was born with was ripped from the no longer 
fully human body and using the connection established through the AK curse, 
was combined with those of the original Harry Potter, who was a *highly* 
compatible tempramental and magical type (which probably has something to do 
with the existence of the prophecy. No other child might have been able to 
fully combine with Riddle) both contained within the same physical body. The 
Harry Potter we know is a fully human, but composite, entity. Dumbledore, who 
may by now suspect what happened remains somewhat flummoxed that there is no 
clear physical trace of Riddle in Harry's appearance. 

The composite entity which we know as Harry Potter, however, unlike Riddle, 
retains a subconsious memory of 15 months as a loved, wanted child which by 
the time of the combination/substitution had established a very different 
sense of "self" from that which the young Riddle developed in the care of the 
orphanage. Consequently the overlay of the original Riddle's very similar 
temprament (which had not yet developed the disfunctional sense of self) and 
magical qualities had served to enhance rather than to divide or undermine 
the Potter child's original qualities. 

The actual process might be comparable to the grafting of a specific hybrid 
onto a related but more hardy root stock.

This explains Harry's residual connection to Voldemort's emotional state. He 
shares not only a similar, but literally the *same* temprament as Voldemort's 
original source. It explains his resistence to Voldemort's magic, since he is 
using Voldemort's own power to resist him. The tug of way with the brother 
wands went harry's way because it was essentially two (the original Harry and 
the original Tom)'s wills against one. This "double-will" also explains his 
resistance to Imperius-style controls. The additional magical transfusion 
also explains the number and severity of Harry's early magical 
"breakthroughs".

And it also explains something of the 2-dimentional cartoon character of the 
current Lord Voldemort. For all that he has managed to create a replica of 
his previous body, his previous self has not returned to it. The original 
human being is not there. What we have is an embodied memory without a human 
heart. It's emotions are memories of emotions, distorted and erratic. 

But powerful. 

And still exceedingly dangerous.

And much trickier to finally get rid of than an enemy that one could simply 
kill.

-JOdel