CHAPTER DISCUSSION: Chapter 36, The Only One He Ever Feared

[meriaugust]

No: HPFGUIDX 122490


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "a_rude_mechanical" 
<a_rude_mechanical at y...> wrote:
 
> Chapter 36, part two:
> 
> DD deflects a killing curse, and aims a spell that LV's deflects 
with 
> a shield.  They discuss DD's unwillingness to kill and LV's 
inability 
> to understand that there are things worse than death.  
> 
> ---In fact, DD calls that LV's greatest weakness.  In what way is 
> that LV's weakness?  In other words, have we seen any evidence 
that 
> wanton killing has harmed him?

Meri: Well, maybe this isn't considered wanton (because we don't 
know how well planned the original expedition was) but LV attacking 
Godric's Hollow sure didn't help him any. He killed Lilly, which 
directly led to his vaporization. But I think what DD was refering 
to as LV's weakness is his fear of death. And how many families did 
he rally to DD's cause by killing one of their members? To be so 
desperate to avoid dying that you would do anything including 
killing others, is a weakness: it shows you as selfish and fearful 
of life itself. 
 
snip
> DD tells Harry to take the portkey, and the two leave Fudge 
> blubbering in the MoM Atrium.
> 
> ---Why is DD so anxious to get Harry back to Hogwarts?  Is there 
> healing there?  Protection?  

Meri: Hogwarts is the one place that LV will not dare attack (at 
least not yet). Harry is safe there in the headmaster's office and, 
as DD explains later, he is too full of pain and emotion over Sirius 
for LV to try to posess his mind maybe ever again. Harry belongs at 
Hogwarts, and had he been made to stay at the DoM not only would we 
readers have been denied one of the greatest scenes ever committed 
to the page (DD and Harry's conversation/confrontation) but he would 
have been forced to answer questions publicly and to a still hostile 
Fudge and the existence of the prophecy would have had to have been 
revealed to many more people. DD knew he had to get Harry alone, the 
safest place was Hogwarts. 

> ---I think it's interesting that DD so calmly reinstates himself 
as 
> headmaster—it's almost as though he was humoring Fudge all along, 
but 
> now that things have become serious, it's time to stop fooling 
> around.  Who has control over Hogwarts, anyway??

Meri: The enemy is clear now, Fudge has finally been disproven and 
the WW will see that it was DD they should have been listening to 
all along. Like Harry, DD belongs at Hogwarts, and I think that DD 
is just stepping up into a leadership void (while Fudge is probably 
just hoping that he will be provided a nice pension when they throw 
him out of the MoM on his backside). 

Meri - who never cared much for the character of Peter Pan, because 
he feared dying (and living), too...