Re: Hands up, who’s been possessed? (long)

[antoshachekhonte]

No: HPFGUIDX 116358


> Dungrollin:
> 
> (The following is highly speculative.)
> 
> Sorry, I was being too concise.  Yes, Ginny believes she was 
> possessed, however, her experience was nothing like Harry's, 
> in that she remembers nothing about it. (This is irritating. 
> We have no memories of pain, or of what it felt like in general, 
> for us to compare with Harry's experience). And the assumption 
> that she knows what it feels like is thus a red herring, IMO. 
> 
> If I'm right about Quirrell only being possessed some of the 
> time, and clearly remembering what happened, and Harry 
> remembering everything about his possession in the MoM 
> ...(actually, the only evidence we have of this is that when DD 
> mentions it Harry doesn't go `Huh?  What?  I was 
> *possessed*?!')... and if Ginny was *really* possessed, then 
> Diary!Tom must have had some hand in altering her memories.
> 
> Which means that Diary!Tom and Vapo!Mort are very different 
> creatures.  It's really annoying me. 
> 
<big snip> 

Antosha:

A couple of thoughts.

I take Ginny at her word--clearly she experienced possession. And yet you are right, her 
experience does not gybe with Harry's. Perhaps the spell used to possess her was actually 
a different spell than the one the grown LV uses to try to destroy Harry (very sneaky, that, 
trying to get DD to kill Harry, thereby ridding LV of his forespoken doom without 
triggering Lily's protective charms). Perhaps Diary!Tom's form of possession is less 
sophisticated, and therefore obliterates the target's memory.

Possession would seem to be a logical extension of Leglimency, a power that not many 
wizards are capable of mastering, so we are told. It seems reasonable that it combines the 
power of a Legilemens with a variation on the Imperio curse. It may not involve the casting 
wizard actually leaving his/her body. Just a thought. Though LV tries to bait DD into 
attacking Harry's body with the lure that killing Harry will kill LV's soul, which is assumed 
to be contained therein... Hmmmm.

Given the prominence of possession and life-after-death as themes in OotP, it seems 
certain that we'll be getting more talk of souls in the last two books.

The thing that troubles me here is that JKR would seem to be guilty either of carelessness, 
or of a literary bate-and-switch, setting it up that what Ginny describes IS possession, 
when, oops, Harry's experience is different. 

Hopefully, we will have some elaboration in HBP.