Obsession

[Jen Reese]

No: HPFGUIDX 138914

> SSSusan:
> I agree with you that this obsession with Draco DID distract
> Harry. <snip> OTOH, I have to wonder about this particular part of
> the obsession "message."  You're right that it distracted Harry,
> slowed down the process DD was working on with Harry, but for once
> it turned out Harry was RIGHT.  So was it bad to have obsessed
> about Draco?

Betsy Hp:
> This raises an interesting question (at least, IMO). Yes, Harry was
> right about Draco, but did his interest or obsession help anything
> at all? IOW, would anything have gone down differently if Harry
> *had not* been so obsessed with Draco? <snipping>
> The only things that would not have occured, at least as far as I
> can tell, would have been the times Harry confronted Draco: the
> train incident, the Apparation lesson, and the fight in the
> bathroom. Which leads to another question: Was there any benefit
> (or will there be any benefit) from those three confrontations?

JenR: You know, both of you are right <g>. Like Susan said, Harry 
was *right* in the end, which doesn't happen often for the poor guy. 
This storyline was a continuation of OOTP with no one trusting his 
story. Maybe the lesson for Harry was he can trust his instincts 
again after being so wrong about Sirius.

Betsy's point is true, too--Harry's obsession and being right didn't 
matter in the context of HBP. I tend to think something will be 
important in Book 7, but maybe it will be some piece of information 
Harry learned while tailing Draco. Or more foreboding, something 
Kreacher overheard. Kreacher could have seen or heard something 
Dobby dismissed as unimportant (seeing as Dobby was mired in his own 
obsession at the time and not sleeping <g>).

Will it be important we saw Snape healing Draco after Sectumsempra? 
Or was that useful only to show why DD wanted Severus after 
destroying the ring and drinking the potion?

SSSusan:
> Could it also be that DD was so focused/obsessed because he KNEW
> time was short?  We still can't agree around here on whether the
> green goo was killing DD anyway, I know, but there are also
> members who think that the ring hx damage was also slowly 
> weakening & perhaps killing DD.  Did DD know that, green goo or
> not, his days were numbered? Is that why he was so single-mindedly
> focused on the horcruxes?

Betsy Hp:
> That's what I think. I think Dumbledore spent the entire book dying
> and preparing for his death. It explains the feeling of hurry,
> hurry, hurry, Dumbledore consistently expressed. It explains why he
> put his most trusted spy in a position guaranteed to take him from
> his side (which in turn explains why it was so important Slughorn
> come back to Hogwarts). It explains why he had his "final words"
> with the Dursleys, setting Harry up for his final stay and getting
> a few things off his chest. And it also explains why Dumbledore
> felt the need to go after the horcrux in the cave that night,
> despite Harry's warning about Draco having succeeded at something
> dangerous.

Jen: DD also told the Dursleys, 'until we meet again'. There was a 
sense of finality until he made that comment. My thought was the 
destruction of his hand made him realize how deadly and risky 
hunting Horcruxes was. Even if he wasn't actually dying throughout 
the book, the threat of death was hovering over him as long as he 
pursued the Horcruxes. 

Another thought, though. If Valky is right and destroying a Horcrux 
requires a life sacrifice, then Snape did only delay DD's death. 
That would tie in nicely with Sirius taking the locket through the 
veil with him. After all, Dumbledore said he didn't know which 
Horcrux was hidden in the cave. He wouldn't expect it to be the 
locket if he knew Sirius took care of that one. There are holes in 
this idea though, like who died for the diary--Memory!Tom? And if 
JKR spends a bunch of pages on the locket that still leaves quite a 
few Horcruxes to deal with. Pffft. Too confusing to figure out 
tonight.

Another thought on Dumbledore's obsessive focus: Maybe he learned 
Voldemort was checking on his Horcruxes or thinking about moving 
them after he discovered his diary was destroyed. The way Dumbledore 
tells the story in the Horcrux chapter, it sounds like Voldemort may 
have let on to Lucius (and thus Snape) why he was so furious about 
the loss of the diary. Page 508 of the Scholastic version.


> >>Jen:
> > You know, I just realized something--we didn't get our
> > Dumbledore explanation at the end of HBP. Wah.

> >>SSSusan:
> Wah, indeed! :-( And we won't get one in Book 7 either. The most
> we can hope for, I suppose, are bottled memories for the pensieve
> or for portrait-talk, but it's not the same, is it?

Betsy Hp:
> Maybe that will be the final sign of Harry's adulthood. He'll wrap
> it all up for us at the end of book 7, and then offer us a lemon
>drop. :)

Jen: Awww, I like that Betsy! Then I won't miss DD so much. :)

Jen R., since we have a new Jen on the board