Last Judgement Love - Was (Re: No AKs )

[saraquel_omphale]

No: HPFGUIDX 137475

D wrote:
Really, 
>I can't see how JKR can pull this "love power" thing through the
>everyman Harry other than your cliche mushy 'all those who loves me 
>stand behind me to combine our collective super love power to 
>strike final blow to the lonely unlovable villain' way.
>And yeah some people do find that so moving, interesting and ?
>dramatic...
>
>Agape? Harry?...whatever....
>Would be great but just don't see it, totally OOC! Harry is not 
>that great and loving.

Saraquel:
Thank you D, reading your post has really confirmed for me what I 
suspected in my first post on this subject ( 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/messages/136797 ) that 
Harry (or anyone for that matter) doesn't have, cannot have, and 
therefore cannot express the awesome Last Judgement type Love needed 
to vanquish Voldemort. This is why we need the Room of Love in the 
DOMysteries.  

Let's face it, if anyone was going to be able to conquer Voldemort 
using their own love it would have to be DD – but DD is not the one 
to do it, and he knows it. (And if, according to JKR in one of her 
interviews, DD is not Jesus, then Harry certainly isn't!)  If 
either, getting Voldemort into the Room of Love, or channelling the 
love in that room, simply was enough to destroy him, then isn't that 
what DD would have been trying to do for all the years that 
Voldemort was around before, and for the past 2 book years.  

It has to be Harry, and the only reason that I can see that makes it 
Harry not DD are the things DD values as Harry's uniqueness – the 
blood that runs in his veins from Lily's sacrifice, which because of 
the end of GoF now runs in Voldemort's veins, and somehow Harry's 
ability to choose to love against all odds. (Although I still think 
he has a way to go before he actually fulfils that potential. See my 
last post http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/137386 
which provides a lot of background to this post, which might help 
you to follow where I'm going and why I'm going there.) As a small 
digression: it makes me wonder about DD accrediting this last thing 
to Harry, should he not also credit it to himself? 

I have always interpreted JKR's intentions with Harry's character to 
be that he is *ordinary* (yes, he has special features, but we all 
do). For me, the point of making him, most definitely not a super-
hero, is to show that if we make the right *choices*, all of us have 
the potential to reflect/connect-with the real and awesome power of 
love.

>D wrote:
>This sounds all beautiful and all, but somehow I just can't see 
>Harry being all that beautiful as a person, despite his 
>extraodinary power is supposed to be *love*. Yup I'm just not 
>convinced at all Harry is that great. So far in the book Harry has 
>shown extremely limited capacity of "love" for those who are 
>unlovable (or those who are not nice to him).

Saraquel:
This is such a good point. I'm wondering if the point here is, it is 
not *right* to have warm, fuzzy, gentle feelings for someone whose 
actions are evil.  Harry, IMO, should not and cannot have this 
simple sort of love for either Snape or Voldemort.  I think this is 
born out by the all important Horcrux chapter, when Harry 
contemplates whether he would want to go after Voldemort if he had 
never heard the prophecy. 

Uk ed HBP p478
"He thought of his mother, his father and Sirius.  He thought of 
Cedric Diggory.  He thought of all the terrible deeds he knew Lord 
Voldemort had done. A flame seemed to leap inside his chest, searing 
his throat. 
"I'd want him finished,' said Harry quietly. "And I'd want to do it."

It seems to me that this is motivated, not by the desire for 
revenge, but by notions of justice.  It is righteous anger and not 
vengeance that Harry is feeling. It comes out quietly and with 
determination, not with the anger of vengeance.  Harry wants 
Voldemort finished, not tortured and made to suffer eternal torment. 
Remember in the battle scene at the end of OotP, Bellatrix says to 
Harry after he has tried the cruciatus curse out on her – "Never 
used an Unforgiveable Curse before, have you boy' she yelled.  
<snip> `You need to *mean* them, Potter! You need to really want to 
cause pain – to enjoy it – righteous anger won't hurt me for long
"

Harry may have been using the cruciatus curse out of righteous anger 
at that point, but I suspect that when he tries to use it 3? Times 
on Snape at the end of HBP, he is out for revenge and motivated by 
hatred or more specifically p564 "Kill me then,' panted Harry, who 
felt no fear at all, but only rage and contempt". And as I 
speculated in my last post (link to this is above) He is going to 
have to conquer that one.

So now, I get to the relationship between our choices and the Last 
Judgement Love that I speculate is in the Room of Love at the 
Ministry. I don't know if I'm going to be able to provide cannon 
references for this – I do think it is very important to provide 
cannon to support my musings, and I hope that so far in this thread, 
I've put together enough cannon to support my arguments.  Anyway, 
let's see.

To summarise:
1)WE all seem to agree that warm fuzzy human love won't hack the 
defeat of Voldemort.
2)DD has repeatedly stressed the importance of choice.
3)DD has told us that the love in the Room at the MOM is awesome in 
its power.
4)Harry is not an overtly special wizard, and definitely not as 
powerful as DD.
5) Both Harry and Voldemort have traces of Lily's very special 
sacrifice in their blood.
6)DD thinks that Harry's ability to love despite the wrongs he has 
endured at the hands of other, extremely unique and special.

I think all these things are key to the final defeat of Voldemort,
(except perhaps 4) which I believe will happen at the end of book 7.

The key bit which needs more thought as far as I'm concerned, is the 
exact nature of Lily's sacrifice and the special significance of 
this in terms of what Harry and Voldemort are carrying in their 
blood. With the evidence we have at the moment, I'm quite prepared 
to accept that it will probably not be possible to work that one 
out, and therefore this essential ingredient is missing from the 
mix. As I said above, it is the only thing which Harry has that DD 
doesn't, (I think DD has the ability to love despite everything) and 
it is this which must make Harry able to conquer Voldemort, where 
DD, the much more powerful wizard, cannot.

Having said that, I'm going to speculate anyway :-) Well, what's a 
list like this for, if not the chance for a good speculation!

I've just picked up Jen's latest post – love it.

>Jen wrote:
>Each time he attempts to thwart or kill Harry by deeply evil means, 
>the rejection seems to increase Harry's 'ability to love' in the 
>sense that he grows more & more able to repel Voldemort.
><snip>
>Harry also seems to increases in his ability to draw magical help to
>himself, and not always in the form of a more skilled wizard,
>either.

Saraquel:
Yes, this would be a good road to go down, that Voldemort's repeated 
attempts to defeat Harry increase the power that Harry can draw from 
Lily's sacrifice, and presumably, through Voldemort taking Harry's 
blood, have the opposite effect on Voldemort. Yet another instance 
of Voldemort empowering his enemy! Love it.

I was just about to speculate on whether, as Harry grows more 
*right* in his choices, so he increases his ability to draw Love 
from the Room of Love – (or perhaps, the Love in the Room of Love is 
more able to work through him) and there you go, Jen's just posted 
something very akin to that!

For me the important thing is that the Awesome Power of our 
speculative Last Judgement Love is kept locked up in a room at all 
times.  It is separate.  I don't think that we are going to open 
that door and find a little old witch/wizard sitting in a chair with 
a cup of tea in her/his hand. I think that it is not something which 
the likes of us mortals can embody.  So Harry is never going to 
become the equivalent of god and wield almighty judgement over 
Voldemort.  But I do think that Harry will be an instrument in that 
love judging Voldemort and destroying the evil within him.  The jury 
is out for me as to whether Voldemort will survive this encounter in 
a physical body – I suspect not and the prophecy, twisted knots 
though it is does say that one of them must *die* at the hand of the 
other.

That Lily's sacrifice and what's in Harry's blood will play the 
deciding part I have absolutely no doubt.  I'm still with the 
theory, or something close to it that I posted at the start of this 
thread http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/136797 

If the final defeat of Voldemort does not happen actually in the 
room of love, with Harry being able to survive, then it will happen 
in a way that the Love in the Room uses Harry to complete its 
purifying purpose because either Harry or indirectly Lily through 
her sacrifice can connect to that Love without fear.  

Valky's comments in her great post about Snape and the Marauders, 
>"first though, he has to face the kind of love that will bear these 
>consequences out on him and allow him to see what he truly is. The 
>kind of Love that Harry will need to bring to Voldemort."
Make it so clear, to me anyway, that the ability to face the truth 
about oneself is the key to whether you welcome or fear Last 
Judgement Love and probably whether you survive it or it destroys 
you.

I think that Harry's ability to love despite everything, may in fact 
be the gift from Lily's sacrifice.  That she chose to die for him, 
despite being offered the opportunity not to, and in doing so put 
her love above every other emotion or opportunity that life can 
offer.

I suspect that Harry will win out in the end, but I also suspect 
that in Harry's mind (if not necessarily in the minds of those 
around him) he will maintain the same attitude that he has always 
had after his encounters with Voldemort – it wasn't anything special 
about him that did it.  He had help, luck etc on his side.  In my 
interpretation of the book, Harry needs to remain ordinary right 
through to the end.  Harry will realise that he only survived 
because when faced with a choice, he did what DD told him to do, and 
chose what was right over what was easy and this is a capacity we 
all have – we all have free will. And because he did that, he was 
able to channel/harness the awesome power of love.

Well I really think I should stop here, and thank you for bearing 
with me, if you're still reading this.
Saraquel