HarrySavesHarry (was Adopted!Harry vs fanfic)

[m.steinberger]

No: HPFGUIDX 58278

This post is enormous. Be warned.
TAS

>    Date: Mon, 19 May 2003 13:42:25 -0000
>    From: "psychic_serpent" <psychic_serpent at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: Adopted!Harry vs fanfic
>
> The Admiring Skeptic wrote:
>
> 1. Harry, Dumbledore and all vanquish Voldemort
>
> Me(Barb):
>
> Do you mean when Harry does this at 18?  This is still a little
> unclear.
>

TAS round 2:
Yes. Before 18-yr-old Harry goes back in time, Voldemort has been vanquished
once and for all by 18-yr-old Harry, Dumbledore and crew.

> 2. Dumbledore tells Harry that when he was 1 yr old, his 18-yr-old
> self had appeared out of the future and saved his life, but died in
> the process.
>
> Me:
>
> You still haven't explained how Dumbledore knows this.  This was
> what I meant by fanfic writing forcing a person to flesh out
> everything; someone writing a fic that included this would be ripped
> apart by reviewers demanding to know how Dumbledore came by this
> information.
>

TAS round 2:
As I wrote in the post you are quoting, when 18-yr-old Harry goes back 17
years, he first stops in to visit Dumbledore, tells him all sorts of things
about the next 17 years, and then goes off to Godric's Hollow to save his
infant self.

Dumbledore in year 18 has the information in question both from what he
heard from 18YO Harry back in year 1, and from what he learned after the
Godric's Hollow episode. He may have gone there and confirmed Harry's death,
or he may have helped hide a not-dead 18YO Harry, if you prefer that route.
In any case, in year 18, he knew that Harry had gone back to year 1 because
back in year 1, 18YOHarry had said, "Hi! I'm here!."

As for Dumbledore knowing that 18YOHarry had died there at Godric's Hollow -
if you want to postulate with me that Harry did die there - then Year 18
Dumbledore would know because when 18YO Harry visited D in year 1, 18YO
Harry told D that he was going to Godric's Hollow to die, which Harry knew
because Year18 Dumbledore had told him so. This is perfectly circular
information, but time-turner-style time travel allows circular information.
Year1 Dumbledore hears from 18YO Harry that Year18 Dumbledore told Harry
that Harry would go back to Godric's Hollow and die. Harry goes to Godric's
Hollow and dies. If Dumbledore shows up and sees (and buries) the body, he
has his own confirmation. But if Dumbledore never sees the body, he can
still assume that Harry must have died and can still tell Harry in Year 18
that he is going to die after going back to Year1. You have Year1Dumbledore
thinking that Harry's going to die because Year18Dumbledore thought so,
because Year1Dumbledore thought so, because Year18Dumbledore thought so,
etc. With time travel, this is perfectly legitimate.

We can still have HarrySavingHarry without Harry dying, of course. If so,
Harry may or may not have believed he was going to die, which is to say that
Dumbledore may have told Harry that he was going back in time to his death,
or he may have told Harry that he was going back in time to suffer 17 years
in hiding. Either route would still allow Harry to save Harry.

If Dumbledore told Harry that Harry would die, and we presume that
Dumbledore believed it, then it would follow that 18YO Harry stopped in to
visit Year1Dumbledore, would have told him about his impending "death" and
then would not have gone back to correct the misinformation after he
survived Godric's Hollow. He would have gone into hiding and would not have
contacted Dumbledore for the next 17 years, so that in Year18, Dumbledore
would still think that Harry must have died. (How, with no body? Dumbledore
might have spent 17 years wondering where the body was, and would have
decided that Harry must have died because otherwise he'd have shown himself.
Meanwhile, Harry would be hiding from Dumbledore on the assumption that if
Year18 Dumbledore didn't know that Harry had survived, then Harry must have
remained hidden for 17 years, and the "don't be seen" rule would apply even
to Dumbledore.)

Of course, it is possible that 18YO Harry told Year1 Dumbledore that Year18
Dumbledore had told him that he was due to die at Godric's Hollow, and then
18YO Harry actually survived Godric's Hollow, went back to Dumbledore, and
said, "That's odd. I didn't die!" Then 18YO Harry goes into hiding for 17
years, and when Year 18 comes around, Year18 Dumbledore tells Year18
18YOHarry the untruth that Harry is going to die because Year18 Dumbledore
doesn't want to change the time-line which had Year1 Dumbledore learning
that Year18 Dumbledore had said Harry would die.

The only benefit of such a scenario is that Harry gets the moral dilemma of
whether he willing to die, and the fans get the happy ending of a live
Harry.

So onward to the next possibility: Maybe Year18 Dumbdore tells 18YO Harry
that if he goes back he will be forced to hide out for 17 years. Harry still
has a serious choice to make, and hopefully you can figure out without my
help how Dumbledore would have known this.

The reason I did not post all this originally is that I was under the
impression that this list is sick of circular, head-ache-producing
time-tracing. But whether or not the list enjoys reading this kind of
pedantry, JKR has already included circular time situations in her books, so
she might well do so again.

As for your plug for fanfic, you are welcome to enjoy the genre, but from
what I've seen, it doesn't "force" a person to think things through. People
who enjoy and are good at thinking thoroughly will do so even in dry
analytic research papers. And people who like to create illogical, missing
links will do so in fanfic too. The non-fanfic way of presenting
possibilities has the advantage that one can pursue a few related
possibilities at once, as I just have. The advantage to fanfic is that it's
more fun to read. But then, I did not intend to bore this list until you
pushed me to the wall.

So far, every issue you have raised is one I have already thought about and
evaluated, and even posted. But I apologise for having originally posted my
position so very tersely, and such obscure language, that you could not
follow what I meant. I assumed everyone was too sick of time turning to want
to hear any more.

> 3. Harry has to decide whether to go back "again."
>
> 4. What happened "the first time" on the night James and Lily died
> was this: 18-yr-old Harry showed up, went to Dumbeldore and told him
> quite a bit about the "future," then went to Godric's Hollow, but
> did not save his parents for some reason (any reason will do, like
> he was too late). Then he jumped between infant!Harry and Voldemort
> just as V was AKing infant!Harry, and also attacked Voldemort at the
> same time. The result of both spells was probably some more
> priori incatatum at first, but eventually, 18-yr-old Harry ended up
> dead, infant!Harry ended up scarred, and Voldemort ended up a wraith.
>
> Me:
>
> This still doesn't add up.  If infant!Harry was protected, he
> shouldn't have a scar of any sort.  According to Dumbledore it is a
> curse scar, and years later, it hurts when Voldemort is being
> particularly evil and also connects Harry to him so that he is
> essentially a witness to Frank Bryce's murder.  From GoF, we know
> that Harry and Voldemort attacking each other simultaneously results
> in their wands locking, not curses being delivered to either of
> them.  And why would the results be so different?  Why would Harry
> be dead-dead, but Voldemort end up as a wraith?  If Harry simply
> came between Voldemort and his infant self, assuming that Voldemort
> can kill the eighteen year old version of Harry, then Harry should
> simply be deadm nothing should happen to Voldemort, and infant!Harry
> should have no scar.  If Harry is attacking at the same time, their
> wands will lock and neither one's spell reaches the other.  This
> theory still throws everything we know in canon out the window.

TAS round 2:
Who says infant!Harry was protected from more than just being physically
touched by Voldemort? And who says Dumbledore really knows what happened at
Godric's Hollow? If 18YO Harry went off to save infant!Harry after saying
hello to Dumbledore, and Dumbledore showed up after it was all over, he
could only be guessing about what happened there. Dumbledore keeps saying "I
think," not "I know" when he tells Harry things. He may really be telling
his best guesses.

Let's agree that Harry's got a curse scar. Which curse? Maybe in the duel
between 18YO Harry and Voldemort some other curse went flying and hit
infant!Harry? And no canon says definitively that the main reason Harry's
psychically linked to Voldemort is because of the scar. That idea is clearly
written in canon as a best guess (sorry, books still lent out or I'd give
you chapter and verse). Personally, I believe the psychic link is because
Harry is really Adopted!Harry, who is really Tom Riddle following an
alternative development in the same time-line. (I'm not going to go into all
the details of that idea here, but I hope you believe from the prior piece
of this post that I could if you really insisted.) When Voldemort is
particularly intense, the link opens up, and V is always most intense when
he's most evil. Why does Harry feel pain in his scar when the link opens up?
I don't know, but you can't really think that the only possibility is an AK
direct from V to infant!Harry. A wee bit of imagination is enough to confirm
a dozen equally likely reasons for scar pain to coincide with psychic
linkage. Dumbledore's best guess based on limited information can still be
wrong. And Dumbledore might even know the real reason but be unwilling to
share it (Adopted!Harry would be a nice reason not to rush to tell).

>From GoF we know about wands locking. But we know the lock can be broken
because in the graveyard Harry got away. I suppose that in Godric's Hollow
the wands locked, then Harry or V broke loose, and then they went at each
other again, not simultaneously, with curses that left Harry dead and V a
wraith. How do you do non-simultaneous spells? First V hits 18YO Harry with
a blood-letting spell (or he just stabs him with a sword), which takes a few
seconds, and in those seconds 18YO Harry hits V with a Vapormortifying
spell. Why didn't V just AK Harry? Pick the reason of your choice. Maybe
18YO Harry had already dispossessed V of his wand and without a wand, V
couldn't do AK. Truth is, none of this requires the wands to lock at all.
18YO Harry and V could have done non-simultaneous spells from the beginning
and acheived the results we know about.

On the other hand, perhaps Harry was not killed, and he Vapormortified V and
then went into 17 yrs of hiding. My HarrySavesHarry theory is much more
about 18YO Harry saving infant!Harry than about Harry dying at the end. As
I've mentioned dozens of times by now, it can work either way.

Either way, infant!Harry would have already gotten his scar from some other
curse than an AK from V. As for the green light, maybe an AK from 18YO Harry
to V was what Vapormortified V, since V "didn't have enough human left in
him to die" from an AK. So infant!Harry's memories of an AK would have been
18YO Harry's AK to V. As for the high laugh, there's been plenty of debate
on this list over whether Harry really remembers those voices he hears in
PoA, or whether he's projecting them from what he's been told. One thing's
for sure, V was the only person left from that battle to tell the tale, and
we don't have to trust his account at all. He would have plenty of reason to
hide the fact that 18YO Harry had been there.


>
> TAS:
>
> How to Time-Turn 18 years? I'll let JKR decide that. She has no
> constraints at all.  As for the rest of your complaints, Harry did
> not live till 35, and he blocked the AK exactly the way canon has
> already shown us he can.
>
> Me:
>
> No, he doesn't.  Canon does not have him 'blocking' AK.  It has him
> acquiring a scar because of it and bouncing it back at Voldemort.
> This theory bears no resemblance whatsoever to canon.
>

TAS round 2:

Canon has Harry blocking an AK in the graveyard by the wands locking. That's
the blocking I meant in the post you quoted above. But in my *theory*, I am
not committed to any one way of blocking V's AK. The simplest block would be
for 18YO Harry to physically get in the way and get killed. He might have
hit V with a slow-acting Vapormortifiying spell first, and infant!Harry
might have been hit by some other spell to get his scar. Another form of
"blocking" would be the one I suggested in the prior section of this post:
18YO Harry distracts V so that V never tries to AK infant!Harry at all. All
V does is fight 18YO Harry, and in the duel, 18YO Harry ends up dead or not,
infant!Harry gets a scar from some misdirected curse, and V gets
Vapormortified. A third form of blocking would be the locked wands kind,
which would allow V to actually try to AK infant!Harry, but 18YO Harry would
get in the way so the AK was really at him, and 18YO Harry would aim a
coutercurse which would lock the wands, giving 18YO Harry time to gain the
upper hand before breaking the link between the wands and sending V to
Vaporland. I'm sure a few more blocking scenarios could be devised.

> TAS:
>
> As for Lily's sacrifice - Dumbledore did not say that her sacrifice
> saved Harry's life.
>
> Me:
>
> Well, technically he does say that.  He says, "Your mother died to
> save you."  But I understand that you are saying that there isn't an
> explicit statement to the effect that her sacrifice caused the AK to
> rebound onto Voldemort.  It is, however IMPLICIT, especially in
> combination with the above statment from Dumbledore.
>

TAS round 2:
It is not implied in the slightest. Lily died *in order* to save
infant!Harry. It doesn't say *at all* that Lily's sacrifice actually saved
Harry. Her intention was for his life to be saved. But what happened after
that? Who knows? Truth is, she might not even has expected Harry to survive,
but like all mothers, she couldn't "step aside" to save herself and watch
him die. She probably died just to give him those few extra seconds.

Lily's willingness to die was what gave Harry's skin it's painful quality
for V. That's all we know. NOTHING MORE!

> TAS:
>
> Canon still has not told us what saved his life. All we have been
> told is that her sacrifice protected Harry at age 11 from being
> physically touched by Voldemort. We have no canon whatsoever that
> Harry can't be AKed, even by Voldemort, just the fact that Voldemort
> attempted one AK against Harry that failed. Why is still a mystery.
>
> Me:
>
> The rest of Dumbledore's speech is the implicit statement of
> protection:
>
> "He didn't realise that love as powerful as your mother's for you
> leaves its own mark.  Not a scar, no visible sign...to have been
> loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will
> give us some protection for ever.  It is in your very skin.
> Quirrell, full of hatred, greed and ambition, sharing his soul with
> Voldemort, could not touch you for this reason.  It was agony to
> touch a person marked by something so good."
>
> This strongly implies that this protection was present when
> Voldemort attempted to AK Harry, meaning that he could not be
> touched by Voldemort neither by his hand or a spell, especially a
> spell designed to kill Harry.
>

TAS round 2:

This strongly states that Lily's "love" will give Harry ***some***
protection forever, and that "Quirrel... couldn't *touch* you." It doesn't
even say that her sacrifice did it. It certainly doesn't say that Harry is
immune to AKs.

> TAS:
>
> I think that this sort of forum can deal with numerous speculative
> details in a much briefer format than fanfic, which I am not leery
> of, but generally have no patience for. Another nice feature of this
> kind of post rather than fanfic is that one can be honest about
> which details could go more than one way, and explore various
> options, whereas fanfic, to maintain a plot, must pick one route and
> ignore the rest.
>
> Me:
>
> While it is true that you have to pick one route and go with it in
> fanfic, you also have to fully flesh out things like how Dumbledore
> would know that Harry had traveled back in time, saved himself in
> infancy, caused Voldemort to become a wraith and died in the
> execution of all of this.
>

TAS round 2: Fanfic cannot present the dozens of valid routes that I have,
nor can it be as boring as I have been. Non-fanfic is a blessing when it is
brief, and when the readers understand that details left undeveloped are
left alone because they are not important. It doesn't matter how 18YO Harry
Vapormortified V at Godric's Hollow, if there are a dozen valid ways for him
to do so. As soon as we agree that there are plenty of valid ways for
something to happen, we can accept the premise as valid without going into
every one of those many valid routes.

> TAS:
>
> For example, there is nothing in my theory that precludes Harry
> living till 35.
>
> Me:
>
> Um, yeah, there is.  The part about him dying at 18 sort of
> precludes his living until 35.
>

TAS round 2: No, the theory is HarrySavesHarry, and I prefer the version of
it that has Harry dying in the process, but Harry can save Harry and
survive.

> Kelly Grosskreutz wrote:
>
> The one problem with that is that Hagrid (and whoever else came to
> the house) would have found the body. I believe that DD would have
> checked it out as well. I can see it now. "So who was the third guy?
> Funny, he looks a lot like James, only slightly younger." "What I
> find strange is that he has a scar on his forehead in the exact same
> place and in the exact same shape as baby Harry here. Most peculiar."
>
> Me:
>
> Good point, Kelly!  (Although I still think that there would be no
> reason for Harry to have a scar if he was protected in this way.)
> What would happen to the body?  If the older Harry had died at
> Godric's Hollow, there'd be some trace of him.  Even if Dumbledore
> had gone to Godric's Hollow first and disposed of it, which canon
> also does not suggest (it doesn't seem that he's been to GH at all),
> it's still unclear how he would know that it was 18-year-old Harry
> who'd traveled back through time (when dead it would probably be
> hard to pinpoint his age except to say that he would probably look
> like he was somewhere between 16 and 21) not to mention it would be
> impossible for Dumbledore to know that the reason he'd died was that
> he was protecting his younger self.  The level of omniscience
> necessary for Dumbledore to know all of these things borders on the
> god-like.  I like the guy, but I'm not yet ready to elevate him to
> this level. <g>
>

TAS round 2:
I think I've already dealt with this. If Harry died, after visiting
Dumbledore, then Dumbledore would know exactly who the body belonged to. And
if Dumbledore knew 18YO Harry was going to Godric's Hollow, he probably
would have gone too and would certainly have dealt with the body. Why
wouldn't he have saved 18YO Harry? Here's where my plea for "skip the exact
valid route" comes in. Maybe he tripped on a pothole and was unconscious for
the critical 2 minutes. Maybe he was fighting alongside 18YO Harry and
failed anyway. Maybe Malfoy Sr. showed up and dueled him for a few minutes.
I don't care. As long as there are plenty of valid ways for Dumbledore to
have known 18YO Harry was off to Godric's Hollow and yet not save him, it's
enough to say that 18YO Harry *could have* gone to Godric's Hollow and died
there with Dumbldore's knowlege. The rest can be left to JKR.

Of course, as I've said before, Harry could have saved Harry without dying
at all. And then he'd scoot before Hagrid showed up because "you must not be
seen."

> --Barb

The Admiring Skeptic

P.S. Apologies to everyone who can't stand this stuff. I tried a few tamer
posts on this subject before Barb's barbs drove me to it.