Neville and the Prophecy - VERY LONG

[Cathy Drolet]

No: HPFGUIDX 108270

Siriusly Snapey Susan said:

>>DuffyPoo said:"There was nothing special about HP, there was 
something very special about Lily's sacrifice (whether or not it was 
simply her sacrificing herself for Harry or she had cast a counter 
spell.  It is still Lily that protected HP, not anything about HP 
himself that saved him)."  

It seems to me that this a BIG leap to make.  Just as we don't KNOW 
whether Neville has powers we haven't seen, how can you argue that 
there *is* nothing special about Harry? <<



DuffyPoo now:

First, let me say, I'm not holding this as my be-all-end-all theory.  It just came to me one day while trying to figure out something someone else posted on this list.  To me, as long as both kids are alive, there is absolutely no PROOF the one in the prophecy is HP, simply because LV never got to try to kill Neville.

Now for your answer. It happened in the CoS and came from Diary!Tom.  Now we have to remember all that Diary!Tom has to go on are the memories of his own 16 years of living and learning (which wouldn't include HP at all), what Ginny Weasley wrote in the diary (lots but we don't know all of it), what Harry wrote in it (precious little about himself), what Harry said to Diary!Tom in the Chamber and what Lucius Malfoy may have written in the diary (no cannon to support this).  This is the conversation:
"No one knows why you lost your powers when you attacked me,' said Harry abruptly. 'I don't know myself. But I know why you couldn't kill me. Because my mother died to save me. My common Muggle-born mother,' he added, shaking with suppressed rage. 'She stopped you killing me.'

'So. Your mother died to save you. Yes, that's a *powerful counter-charm.*  I can see now - *there is nothing special about you after all*. I wondered, you see. Because there are strange likenesses between us, Harry Potter. Even you must have noticed. Both half-bloods, orphans, raised by Muggles. Probably the only two Pareselmouths to come to Hogwarts since the great Slytherin himself. We even look something alike ... But after all, it was merely a lucky chance that saved you from me. That's all I wanted to know.'

Diary!Tom was trying to find out why Harry had lived when he knows, from what he has been told by Ginny, that HP has twice escaped his future LV self.  He now had all the information he needed right from Harry's mouth.  (Ginny couldn't have told him she most likely doesn't know all the details, just that HP is the "boy who lived" and the school was buzzing about him being a Parselmouth, and we, as yet, have no canon to prove LM wrote in the diary at all.)  Harry's mother's sacrifice saved him...a powerful counter-charm.  Riddle knows it is a powerful charm even at 16 years of age.  He hasn't quite become LV yet though he has taken the name.  He hasn't yet learned to underestimate the "ancient magic of which he knows, which he despises, and whe he has always, therefore underestimated -- to his cost." (OotP)  Diary!Tom knows it was the sacrifice that saved HP not anything special about HP himself, and says so "there is nothing special about you after all." ['Because there is certainly something special about me kid and don't you ever forget it' - I hear Riddle say this nearly every time I read the passage!]  Certainly Diary!Tom could be lying here but there is nothing to be gained from it.  Diary!Tom isn't telling HP anything he doesn't already know.  Harry doesn't believe he's special so being told he's not isn't going to affect his ability to fight back.  The knowledge Diary!Tom gains here isn't able to be shared with LV, this is a only a memory of Tom not the real Tom Riddle.  (May have been important if Ginny had died and Tom had come out of the Diary fully, but as it didn't happen, we don't know.)

Siriusly Snapey Susan

"Still, I think he is quite special and has powers other wizards his age [perhaps other 
wizards, period] do not possess, and I don't buy that *all* his 
powers were transferred to him by Voldy."

DuffyPoo again:

I don't buy that *all* his powers were transfered to him by LM, either.  He was a magical wizard child when he was born.  Hagrid says "Stop Lily an' James Potter's son goin' ter Hogwarts! Yer mad. His name's been down ever since he was born."  Not, ever since he was attacked by LV!

However, I think we believe, at least *I* believe HP "is quite special and has powers other wizards his age do not possess" only because that's what we've been led to believe through five books.  Because the WW, DD, etc., all believe HP is the one who vanqished - at least for a time - LV and therefore must have special powers.  How else could a baby have done it?  But reading between the lines, and reading what Diary!Tom deduced, it wasn't baby Harry that did it, it was Lily's sacrifice and that alone that saved him from LV's curse.

I'm really not trying to change your mind or anyone elses.  I'm not entirely sure I've made up my mind! ;)

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