Snakes and scars and stuff

[dungrollin]

No: HPFGUIDX 123762


Twice in OotP, before the MoM debacle, Harry has close contact with 
DD, and both times it does something very curious and powerful to 
Harry. It's clearly not a reaction from Harry, the feeling 
rose "unbidden, unwanted, but terrifyingly strong" – it's got to
be an effect of the link with You-Know-Who. But does it affect the 
bit of Voldy left in Harry, or does it affect Voldy through the link 
that Harry has with him? 

I've mentioned before that I find it suspicious that the only two 
times (each lasting a matter of seconds) in a period of nearly a 
year that they have contact (once when DD looks Harry in the eye, 
and once when he grabs hold of his wrist), this snakelike reaction 
occurs. If the reaction is caused by the link through the scar, 
Voldy would have had to have been concentrating very very carefully 
on the link with Harry in order to catch these two moments, so that 
he'd be ready and waiting. And if his intention was to make Harry 
attack DD, why wait until DD looks Harry in the eye, or touches 
him?  Being in the same room is surely enough.

When Harry has the urge to attack DD, it's the urge to bite him like 
a snake, not throttle him, or AK him, or poke his eyes out with his 
wand. *Bite* him. "...it was like something rose up inside me, like 
there's a *snake* inside me..." No matter how I twist it, I can't 
see how Harry biting DD would help You-Know-Who. Harry is not, as 
far as we know, poisonous. I therefore think it's more likely to be 
an effect on the bit of Voldy left in Harry, rather than something 
planned by Voldy to aid the bad guys.

When did this reaction start? Well DD avoids Harry's eyes right from 
the hearing at the beginning of OotP, though he had been happily 
looking at Harry right up to the toast at the leaving feast in GoF. 
The first time that Harry and DD look into each others' eyes after 
this, is in DD's office, just after the attack on Arthur. We don't, 
therefore, know whether the reaction dates from Voldy figuring out 
the connection, or from him regaining his body. 

Neither quite works – if it dates from Voldy regaining his body,
why was it fine for DD to look at Harry after the graveyard incident 
in GoF? And if it dates from Voldy knowing about the connection 
through the scar, why does DD avoid looking at him throughout the 
Autumn term of OotP? (Or was he pre-emptively ignoring Harry in the 
expectation that Voldy would figure it out?) And why oh why, after a 
year of avoiding looking at Harry is it suddenly unproblematic for 
DD to have a good long chat with him at the end of OotP?



Which brings me on to snakes.

Voldy has a flattened nose and an anguineous face. One supposes that 
his less-than-handsome appearance is due to the transformations he 
went through after leaving Hogwarts, "Consorting with the worst of 
our kind". There appears to be a snake-like element to the whole 
thing.

Voldy's a Parselmouth, as was Slytherin, and as is Harry. 

Nagini – Who wouldn't want a 12 foot long venomous chum you can 
really *talk* to? I came to the conclusion in post 115333 that
she's a bushmaster (Lachesis muta – which I now know for sure 
means "silent fate"). 

When Voldy possesses Harry in the MoM, Harry's wrapped in the coils 
of a creature that sounds very much like a snake, though it has red 
eyes like Voldy (unlike snakes) – well, I doubt that it's an 
earthworm. 

So, are all the snake references (and there are plenty more that I 
haven't mentioned) in connection with You-Know-Who there to make him 
a baddie-with-a-theme, or is there more to it? Snakes fit rather 
charmingly with Slytherin – far better than do Badgers with 
Hufflepuff or eagles with Ravenclaw. For loyalty and hard work I'd 
immediately think dogs or horses, and for wisdom and learning, owls
– but never mind, snakes are apt. They do have some lovely 
connotations, the major one being untrustworthiness (of biblical 
proportions), which is appropriate for a house associated with 
cunning and deviousness.

Trying to draw some of this together:

1. The bit of Voldy that is capable of possessing is very very 
snakelike. According to Hagrid there was not much human left in 
Voldy before GH – so if I had to bet what the non-human part of
him is, I'd bet snake.

2. The bit of Voldy inside Harry that wants to bite DD is also very 
very snakelike, and it is also this bit of Voldy in his head that 
makes Harry a parselmouth. 

To which I would like to add:

3. It must be significant that Harry's scar has no reaction to Diary!
Tom in CoS, but that it only reacts to present-day Voldy – 
significant in that at the age of 16 Tom had not yet conducted his 
experiments on immortality.

Which leads me to think that 

4. Whatever transformations Voldy went through to stop himself dying 
involved snakes, and it is some part of this anguineous!Riddle that 
was transferred to Harry when the AK rebounded.

However, this does not explain why

5. Although Harry has been a parselmouth since GH, the venomous 
reaction to DD only became active some time between the end of GoF 
and Christmas of OotP.

Moreover

There's one reference to snakes that has always puzzled me, and 
that's after the hearing in OotP, Lucius Malfoy says "Quite 
astonishing, the way you continue to wriggle out of very tight 
holes ... *snakelike*, in fact." (The Woes of Mrs. Weasley.) 

One assumes that he's referring to Harry's escape from the 
graveyard; but why call Harry *snakelike*?  It's clearly a reference 
to Slytherin/Voldy matters, but what, exactly?  Lucius knows that 
Harry's a parselmouth, it was all over the school in CoS, and from 
Rita Skeeter's articles they know that he gets attacks of pain in 
his scar. From the context it sounds like a veiled threat, or a 
reference to something that Harry should know about, but doesn't 
pick up on. Could it be that Lucius knows about the connection with 
Voldy? Even though Voldy himself apparently doesn't know about it 
until around four months later during snake vs Weasley.

I doubt that we've seen the last of snakes, and would be willing to 
bet a large bag of cockroach clusters that they're integral to some 
of the big questions we want answered. Although, personally I think 
it's a shame that Voldy's snakelike attributes don't extend to an 
amusing lisp: "Luthiuth, my thlippery friend..."

Dungrollin