In the beginning

[Barry Arrowsmith]

No: HPFGUIDX 91823

The recent Cedric/Pettigrew thread stirred things in the depths of my 
fevered mind.  Previously unsuspected devious doings revealed 
themselves to my questing imagination.

According to DD in CoS, the ability to speak Parceltongue was 'given' to
Harry by Voldy. You can give something besides rigor mortis in an AK?
That seems a bit odd. Hmm.
OK. Kneasy is off into the realms of the fantastic (that's nothing new, 
you cry).

Harry's earliest memories are vague scenes involving a green flash and 
Lily's voice and they  usually occur at times of great stress. It is 
generally  accepted that this flash is the AK that killed Lily. ("Get 
out of the way, girl.) But since AKs have to be
specifically aimed, there should have been *two* green flashes; the 
second
being the one that gave him the scar and rebounded to destroy Voldy. But
what if there were only one? What would that mean?

Many posters have commented on the fact that in the graveyard duel James
and Lily appear from Voldy's wand, but there is no sign of the spell 
that
marked Harry and crunched Voldy. Something that momentous would
surely register in the Ollivander wand (TM) memory banks.
During the graveyard scene Voldy gives us some interesting snippets of
information. Lily's love has long been a favourite theme on the site 
with
fans drawing the conclusion that 'love' is the reason for Harry's 
survival.
It may be a bit more subtle that that; Voldy tells us that it was her
'sacrifice' that gave him 'unwitting protection'.

I wonder if it  was all that unwitting.

Take that scar. It's turned  out to be a useful  early-warning device 
giving due notice that Voldy is up  to something in regard to Harry. 
Why is that? A sort of immunisation maybe? Harry's had one dose of 
Voldy and so he's immune? Not really likely -  if  that were the case 
Voldy wouldn't be able to influence his thoughts so easily.

What if the scar were the result of a 'protective'  spell cast by Lily? 
Sure, I know, lots of quotes in canon about "the scar that Voldy  gave 
you", but in cold fact, that's an assumption. Who saw it happen? The 
rarity of curse scars is canon, but there's never  any indication of 
how they are produced or what effect they have, though DD reckons this 
one could be very useful.
This, if correct, would explain the memory of only one green flash, 
because there was only one, the one that killed Lily, but if she gave 
Harry specific protection before she died, that her sacrifice was not 
to defend  herself but to protect Harry with a suitable spell 
instead.....
Hmm. Many of us have previously wondered why she didn't use her wand - 
maybe she did.

A couple of weeks back I was arguing that Voldemort was an amalgamation
of Tom Riddle and essence of Salazar with SS in control. In CoS Harry 
feels
that Diary!Tom is very familiar, that he almost recognises him. How 
could he?
We are told that Voldy comes back from his years of travel and study of 
the
Dark Arts "greatly changed". So the Voldy at Godrics Hollow would look 
very
different from dear old Tom. But has his captured personality changed 
since he was
absorbed into Sally? Is this what Harry senses he has encountered 
before?

Voldy's  motives seem to conflict at times. We have accepted that he 
wants
to wipe Harry off the face of the globe as his main priority, but this 
is not
necessarily always the case. There are occasions when he tries to use 
Harry,
as in OoP, firstly to strike at DD and then to obtain the Prophecy. In 
PS/SS
his concern is the Stone, not Harry - death threats only come when Harry
doesn't co-operate. So he's  ambivalent - sometimes Harry is  an 
obstruction to be removed, sometimes a potentially useful tool.

Voldy  knows just a bit of the Prophecy, and the first line is "The one 
with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches..." Power. How 
useful. Comes in a handy sized package, too.

What if Voldy didn't go to Godrics Hollow to kill Harry but to absorb 
him the way he did Tom. Good way to  get rid of a future problem before 
it happens. May up his power ratings too. Such an attack might open 
Voldy's mind to Harry as Voldy tries to slurp Harry's consciousness 
into the multiple personality -  and  in there Harry would see Tom.  
And if Lily's protective spell caused Voldy to be violently repulsed 
and to discorporate, leaving a scar to mark the attempt, then Harry may 
be left with a vague memory of this sixteen year old boy who seems very 
familiar somehow. Other things stuck too - bit like an unwelcome guest 
being thrown out but leaving his baggage behind. Parceltongue and what 
else? Have to wait and see, but as it's from Sally, it won't be very 
nice.

Kneasy