GH re-re-revisited

[arrowsmithbt]

No: HPFGUIDX 115191


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dungrollin" <spotthedungbeetle at h...> wrote:
 
> with snips> 
> Dumbledore says that Harry survived because Lily died to save him.  
> Now, if PuppetMaster!Dumbledore had the charm all worked out (with 
> or without Lily) beforehand, then I wouldn't doubt that he'd
> be right. He would know, after all.  But in PS he says `We may
> never know', doesn't he?  (At least, I think so...) 
> Why would he say that if *he'd* set the whole thing up? Surely he 
> would be more certain, and pleased with himself – he's not
> one for false modesty, is Albus.
> 
> Then again, if Dumbledore *didn't* set it all up before hand, how 
> *could* he know what saved Harry at GH?  How could he even know that 
> Lily sacrificed her life so that Harry would live? As far as we 
> know, he didn't witness the attack at GH.  To assume that he
> knows absolutely what he's talking about and is pretending not to be 
> sure about it in front of Harry for some other nefarious reason, 
> we'd have to assume that there's an eyewitness who told him how Lily 
> died.  The only evidence we have for Lily dying to save Harry, is 
> Harry's memories of her pleading with Voldy, 
> 
> But if it *wasn't* an AK, if the spell that backfired was Voldy 
> trying to suck Harry's brain out through his nose (so to speak), 
> then Voldy *could* have been vanquished because of `the power
> that the Dark Lord knows not'.  The power that he does not 
> understand, that power of which Harry is so full, of which Voldy has 
> none, the power that Voldy can't bear, that he hates and despises so 
> much it caused him to abort the possession in the MoM. If Voldy 
> tried to pinch *that* power specifically... 
> 
> Now, I can see that backfiring in a major way.
> 
> In this scenario, the power that Harry has and Voldy doesn't,
> does *not* get redistributed in Voldy's favour as the evil git
> intended, it works the other way around.  The powers that *Voldy* 
> has and *Harry* doesn't get given to Harry.  Thus Harry speaks
> Parseltongue (and possibly a number of other magical languages that 
> we have not yet been introduced to).
> 
> "But wait!" I hear you cry.  "Voldy can still speak
> Parseltongue too!  We heard him at the beginning of GoF!  If he was 
> *pinching* Harry's powers, he would have cut and pasted them from 
> Harry, not *copied* and pasted them! If that's the kind of spell 
> that rebounded, then he and Nagini should be left with a couple of 
> photo albums of fond memories, but no conversation..."
> 
> Dungrollin,
> (Who managed to get her right hand stuck down the back of the 
> radiator for five whole minutes this morning, and is sorry if this 
> post is incomprehensible, but she's been in the pub all evening.)


Courage, Camille;  this pain too must pass away.

It's this sort of thing (the logical contortions necessary when dealing
with JKR's little puzzles, not your dicing with death while struggling 
with domestic heating technology) that turned me into an HP fan and
keeps me active on the board. Let others get on with all that touchy-
feely emotional stuff, it's of little interest to me. I just don't see how it
gets us any further forward. So Snape is nasty - so what? It's a 'given'
in the story, important to the plot. Castigating him for it is expected,
well-drawn characters are bound to excite comment, but to keep 
banging on about it achieves little, except to maybe add a little lustre
to the posters moral rectitude. It's the equivalent of joining a reading 
group to dicuss "Moby Dick" and being harangued by Greenpeace activists
because Ahab doesn't have an enlightened attitude towards whaling.
All very true, but that isn't the point of being here.
 
So far as I can see all the words expended on Snape's vileness have 
not changed anyone's attitudes by the smallest smidgeon. It comes
under the heading of flogging a dead horse in this posters view.
Mind you, it does make it much easier to scan the posts - view the 
subject line, note which poster it is and I  can safely pass on to the 
next post, 'cos I can predict exactly what they're going to say. It
doesn't half save time when you can safely ignore half the posts 
because they'll have nothing new to offer on the subject. Gives me 
more time to develop unpopular and probably wildly inaccurate 
theories.

OK, having vented my spleen, let's delve into the morass that is GH.

Anyone who bothers to read my stuff is well aware that I've long
believed that DD predicted the probable course that events would
take at GH and took precautions accordingly. This meant that for
Harry to survive James and Lily couldn't. Some may see this as harsh
and contrary to the view of DD as caring and compassionate, but I
don't see it that way; DD believes that Harry is the person who can
defeat Voldy for good and unless that happens then there will be
other James's, other Lilys, uncounted numbers of them, that will
die because of Voldy. It's a question of doing what is necessary.

So what was it DD did, what did it protect against and how?
Here we're shuffling around in the dark grasping at what little
evidence Jo has seen fit to reveal. We're like the blind-folded
group confronted by an elephant - rope, tree, wall, fan, spear or
snake? Any hypothesis is made with limited information - which
adds to the fun IMO. You pays your money and you takes your
pick.

What we actually know and what we can surmise are poles apart.
Weaving a tapestry of fact, theory, surmise, hypothesis (reads
so much better than 'cobbling a few ideas together') helps
occupy time that otherwise would be spent thinking about boring
stuff like income tax or an in-growing toe-nail. Innocent fun; and
you never know, there might be a serendipitous outcome. You can't
win unless you play. Someone, sometime might get it right, the
'what it's all about' thingy that JKR was on about. And being wrong
doesn't matter anyway.

So, there was this Prophecy of which Voldy knows only a part. 
It's the first part too, since the eavesdropper was discovered and 
ejected before hearing it all. (Another niggle here - who did the 
throwing out? It'd hardly be DD, he's listening to Sybill and I don't 
think she's got a 'pause' button.)
How big a part of the Prophecy was reported to him we don't know,
and this could be important in Voldy deciding what his options were.
But it's a fair bet that  DD knows how much was overheard and him
being a cunning old bugger he'd be able to make a decent guess
at what Voldy would be most likely to do.

It can't have been just the first line otherwise he wouldn't have a
clue how to identify this usurper - he needs the thrice defying and 
seventh month bits. With just this, well, knowing Voldy it's Herod
time. Send out the gang for a bit of infanticide. No problem.
Delegate - that's what any decent manager does, isn't it? And
besides, you don't get to be Evil Overlord by taking un-necessary
risks. And if this predicted sprog does have enough power to be
dangerous, better for some relaceable minion to get it between the 
eyes than risk his own epidermis.

But if he gets to hear a little bit more - "...will have power the Dark 
Lord knows not..." then it gets a touch more problematical.
Power. Lovely stuff power. Get enough of it and you can do whatever
you like. And this is a power he knows not. How very fascinating.
That'd be enough to pique his interest, don't you think? It would
call for his personal attention, he'd want to know more about
that. On-going professional development, that sort of thing.

Let's not forget that DD has heard exactly the same words. There's
a power in Harry and power is what Voldy wants.  He'll come for
a closer look. It's possibly significant that in the explication at  the
end of OoP DD says that Harry can't be touched or harmed by Voldy.
No mention is made of anyone else; other evil-doers aren't barred -
Crouch!Moody can touch Harry and so  can Peter at the beginning
of the graveyard scene.

The protection then, is specific and has been placed to stop Voldy
getting at Harry. In one way the power in Harry  is almost  like bait
dangled before a shark. Voldy will want to know more about this
mysterious power and when he attempts this the protective trap is 
sprung.

Now DD does say "We may never know." 
Do you believe his protestation of ignorance? I don't.
If he doesn't know everything then he at least knows a hell of a lot
more than he's letting on, otherwise he wouldn't be so sure that
Voldy would come back, or that Harry would need on-going protection
or that the Prophecy had not already been fulfilled. Voldy has been
vanquished (he uses this exact word in the OoP explication), Harry
has been marked. Yippee! Put out more flags! It's all over, folks!
But no; not DD. It ain't finished and he knows it. 

How? Bloody good question.
Only one answer that I can see - he knows what happened.
Only two ways he could know what happened - either because
there was an eye-witness or because DD planned it that way. 
Or both. Personally I think it's both. 

Your point that the only evidence we have are Harry's visions is well
made; and it's all too easy to forget that these are inside his head
and who else knows about them in any detail? Anybody? Unless
DD has been rummaging around in Harry's memories he has to have
got his info from somewhere else -  and even then Harry (so far as we
know) hasn't a clue from his early memories of what happened to Voldy.
There's more DD could  tell us, I think.

Losing his powers by transfer - that's interesting. His protracted whinge
to the DEs in the graveyard seems to  infer that he was rendered weak
by not having a body. Seems reasonable - to a certain extent anyway,
though losing powers to Harry would be expected to contribute.
Then he says (referring to the outcome of the PS/SS debacle) that he
feared never regaining his powers, that he was as weak as he'd ever been
even though this time there hadn't been a transfer. A clue? And he says
he needed a wizard body. Well, AFAICS unless he still retained other of 
his powers then he'd only be as strong as the wizard he possessed, 
wouldn't he? So some, a lot, of his original power must still be with him. 
It'll be fascinating to see how JKR deals with this. Unless it's like loading
software and still retaining the master disk I don't see how it's done. 
Otherwise, kill Nagini while Voldy is in residence and he'd be in a load
of trouble. 

So  we're guessing again.
You know, I'm constantly gob-smacked by the fact that Jo has written
5 books and still told us hardly anything important.
Ah well.  Maybe in the next one.

Kneasy