Harry's protection

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 113092

> SSSusan (quoting):
> 
> "There is a room in the Department of Mysteries that is kept locked 
> at all times.  It contains a force that is at once more wonderful 
> and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than forces 
> of nature.  It is also, perhaps the most mysterious of the many 
> subjects for study that reside there.  It is the power held within 
> that room that you possess in such quantitites and which Voldemort 
> has not at all.  That power took you to save Sirius tonight.  That 
> power also saved you from possession by Voldemort, because he could 
> not bear to reside in a body so full of the force he detests.  In 
> the end, it mattered not that you could not close your mind.  It was 
> your heart that saved you."  [US hardback, pp. 843-844]
> 
>SSS commenting:
> I would argue that, while sacrificial love certainly isn't the ONLY 
> thing which would fit this bill, it *is* a good match for it.  
> 
> The references here to both to something "more wonderful *and* more 
> terrible than death" and to Harry's *heart* having saved him make me 
> believe this, because in those words are references to love and to 
> death, that is, the two things which combined could definitely equal 
> Sacrificial Love.

Carol asks:
I wonder if "wonderful" means what we American usually use it to mean,
something really, really good ("absolutely fabulous" as opposed to
"wondrous"?). There's an older sense of the word that used to be
common in British English, "causing wonder" (just as "awful" and
"awesome," two thoroughly ruined words, meant "awe-inspiring").

Can any British readers tell me whether "wonderful" is still used in
that older sense, or at least carries that connotation along with the
usual meaning? If so, then maybe we're slightly mistaking the meaning
of the quoted passage.

Carol, who doesn't want the trait to be ordinary love but is afraid
she's wrong