What was LV up to *before* that night in GH? (Long)

[Peggy]

No: HPFGUIDX 121546


I haven't been hanging out on the board much, so if I'm repeating 
other people's theories, or resurrecting something that's been 
discussed at length and discarded, my apologies.  I've had some peace 
and quiet, and time to free associate on some ideas (I gave up 
commuting for the New Year).  I give great credit to the authors of 
the essays I cite below for their hard work, and for sending me off 
into the world of folklore and myth.  I've had a great time.

To begin with, I wondered (with many others) what JKR 
meant when she said:

"(The first question that I have never been asked—it has probably 
been asked in a chatroom but no one has ever asked me—is,
"Why didn't 
Voldemort die?" Not, "Why did Harry live?" but, "Why
didn't Voldemort 
die?" The killing curse rebounded, so he should have died. Why
didn't 
he? At the end of Goblet of Fire he says that one or more of the 
steps that he took enabled him to survive. You should be wondering 
what he did to make sure that he did not die . . ." http://www.quick-
quote-quill.org/articles/2004/0804-ebf.htm

She has also said: 

"There is one thing that if anyone guessed I would be really annoyed 
as it is kind of the heart of it all.  I would be really annoyed as 
it is kind of the heart of it all. And it kind of explains everything 
and no-one's quite got there but a couple of people have skirted it." 
http://www.quick-quote-quill.org/articles/2003/0619-bbcnews-paxman.htm

While reading through some of the fansites, I came across the authors 
whom I think may be the "couple of people" that Jo was talking 
about.  

The first is an essay from Maline Freden on MuggleNet: 
http://www.mugglenet.com/editorials/thenorthtower/nt23.shtml (This is 
the first of a two-part essay).

The second is Maline's source, J. Odell:
http://www.redhen-publications.com/Changeling.html  This author 
describes LV's current state as an artificial construct, a turn of 
phrase that I love, by the way.

These authors offer the idea that Harry and LV may share a soul or 
LV's soul is accidentally lodged in next to Harry's.  I liked the 
idea, but it didn't seem quite "right" to me, somehow.

And I remembered something that Lupin said in PoA:

"You can live quite well without your soul, you know . . ." (PoA, 
American hardback edition, p. 247)

Lupin goes on to explain that, without a soul, you just exist, you're 
not really alive. Well, what if LV was trying to overcome this little 
difficulty?   He wanted to be able keep his faculties without having 
his inconveniently mortal soul hanging around.

LV's survival in GH was no accident--LV was trying to become 
invulnerable to death, and managed to do it partway.  His body was 
destroyed (something that doesn't seem to happen to every victim of 
AK--Cedric, for instance).

J. Odell's article mentioned a single tale of a giant whose soul is 
kept in an apparently unreachable location.  And I remembered that it 
was, in fact, part of a larger body of myth about separable souls, 
but couldn't quite remember where I'd seen it.

This all led me back to something I hadn't looked at for a long time: 
The Golden Bough by Sir James Frazer.  The whole thing is online, 
now, and I'll use that version for reference. (WARNING: If you read 
it for yourself, it is long, often tedious, and definitely *not* 
politically correct.  It was written in 1922.)  

Chapters 66 and 67 (beginning at: http://www.sacred-
texts.com/pag/frazer/gb06600.htm) deal with the idea of "The 
Separable Soul."  

There's a bit from Chapter 66 that particularly that caught my 
attention:

". . . the story of the external soul is told (. . .) in various 
forms . . . A very common form of it is this: A warlock, giant, or 
other fairyland being is invulnerable and immortal because he keeps 
his soul hidden far away in some secret place; but a fair princess, 
whom he holds enthralled in his enchanted castle, wiles his secret 
from him and reveals it to the hero, who seeks out the warlock's 
soul, heart, life, or death (as it is variously called), and by 
destroying it, simultaneously kills the warlock."

Freden and Odell believe that LV's soul is caught in Harry as a side 
effect of the AK.  But.  JKR clearly stated that LV survived because 
of something that he'd done *before* he ever tried to cast the AK 
against Harry at GH.  LV knows very well where his soul is, thank 
you, and doesn't seem to miss it in the least.

If that soul is lodged in a token, as I suspect, Harry's quest then 
becomes one to find the location of Voldemort's soul-token and free 
the trapped soul.  Harry doesn't lose his powers, doesn't have to 
die, doesn't have to kill Voldemort (LV has, in the sense of the 
Potterverse, committed suicide).  If the trapped soul is freed, it 
may, as J. Odell suggested, flee through the veil (Dobby wants to be 
free, sir).  I can't blame it.  I suspect that Godric Gryffindor's 
sword may come into play somewhere in the freeing of the soul.

The quote from The Golden Bough also suggests the presence of a 
female character who learns the location of the soul and reveals it 
to the hero.  (Hermione or Luna?  My bet is on Luna.)

Why, then, is Harry linked to LV?  I just don't know.  I've convinced 
myself that it isn't a connection at the level of the soul.  Since 
we're dealing with separable memories (Tom Riddle in the diary), and 
other oddities of the Potterverse, it's possible that the connection 
is a magical one--the link is as deep as the magical contract that 
binds the house elves to their families and required Harry to go 
through the Triwizard Tournament, even though he didn't enter of his 
own free will.

This isn't really a fleshed-out theory--it's more like an expression 
of an idea of a theory.  

Peg--Who has eaten so much red herring in these books that she holds 
no hope of coming within a whisker of the heart of the mystery, but 
has to get her oar in, anyway.