Priori Incantatem

[sophierom]

No: HPFGUIDX 91772

Pippin writes:

"Usually JKR admits her Flints with cheerful chagrin. She's
acknowledged that she once thought boa constrictors were
poisonous, that ancestor/descendant was a muddle, that good
ole Marcus spent an extra year at Hogwarts. But the wand order
correction was made stealthily, and many people felt that the
original passage was stronger. So why not just apologize openly
or else write the mistake into the story somehow?

"The consensus on the list was that priori incantatem will be
referred to again, and it will be important for it to operate as
originally described. And of course JKR said there was a huge
clue on that page. It wasn't the James Lily swap. So what was it?"

Sophierom:

Being relatively new to this list, I've never heard this before. Can 
you tell me where JKR talks about this "huge clue?" 

What I found interesting about the scene where Harry's wand forces 
priori incantatem on LV's wand is how all the echoes/ghosts "hissed" 
at LV and how "livid with fear" LV was. (GOF Am. ed., paperback, 
667) The only other times I remember LV's fear being discussed is 
whenever characters say that Dumbledore is the only one LV fears. I 
wonder if Dumbledore will purposely let himself be killed by LV so 
that in the final confrontation, when Harry and LV's wands meet 
again, Dumbledore can emerge as part of the priori incantatem. 
According to the prophecy, only Harry (if he is the "one") can 
vanquish LV. If Harry forces priori incantatem, then aren't the 
ghost-like figures part of his spell work? Whatever they do to LV 
would be part of Harry's destruction of him. 

I don't know what the ghost-like figures were hissing, but perhaps 
Dumbledore, along with LV's many other victims, could actually do 
something more than just scare LV. Again, in the GOF graveyard 
scene, JKR writes that the echoes were "closing in" on Voldemort 
(668). In that scene, the echoes are only strong and numerous enough 
to provide Harry with the time to escape. If Harry had been healthy 
and more confident, could the echoes have done something more? If 
not, why was LV so afraid of them? Could echoes serve a similar role 
to dementors? Could they actually suck LV's soul out of him? Or, 
perhaps being less "demon like" these echoes could instead simply 
suck the magic out of LV and leave him, as many others have 
suggested, to become what he hates most, a muggle? 

Okay, enough incoherent rambling from me. 

Sophierom, who, having just reread GOF and OotP, is dying for Book 
6, even though it's probably still at least a year away!