The Iron Fist of Will - (more) additional thoughts

[Steve]

No: HPFGUIDX 142456

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "M.Clifford" <Aisbelmon at h...> wrote:
>
> I am starting this on a fresh page, because I think I might 
> have heaps of rambling to do as well as a bit of raving the
> listees that introduced this inspiring theory.
> 
> ...edited...
> 
> 
> ... we are, with this inspiration, able to speculate on what might
> happen if Harry walks Voldemort's body through he veil. And for 
> me, just glimpsing the possibility of a reunion with Sirius is 
> enough, I grasped it two-handed..
> 
> ...edited...
> 
> IMO the mystery is solved in a flash by a simple application of
> Steve's theory of the final battle. Voldemort possesses Harry and
> Harry possesses Voldemort right back. 
> 
> ...edited...
> 
> 
> There are a couple of directions this can go. ...
> 
> Once through the veil, in the land of the dead, it could be possible
> that one of them can escape with their lives. Only one body through
> the veil, only one death. ...
> 
> The first on is that on the other side of the veil Voldemort 
> and Harry can still be locked in battle for the one life left 
> between them. ... Harry has many friends in the underworld, 
> and Voldemort equally as many enemies. ... It stands to reason 
> that whether Voldie is given mercy or retribution, he has no 
> chance of leaving. If one of them is to go home then it will
> be Harry ...
> 
> The second one I like better because ... it gives Harry *time*
> with his family...! In this scenario Harry takes Voldemort 
> through the veil and Voldemort is instantly dead and gone 
> forever. But Harry is shocked to discover that he is not... 
> because he came in *inside* Voldemort. ... The thing I don't 
> like about this one is that there is NO action! It's a cool 
> sentimental moment, ...
> 

bboyminn:

First, I'm not so sure it's an either/or, I could see a combination of
both. 

At this point let me pause to make a note to Ceridwen on the nature of
possession. We have actually seen various forms of possession in the
books, but only one form, true possession, counts. We have seen Ginny
possessed by Tom Riddle, but that wasn't possession in its truest
form. Tom had no corporeal body at the time, so in a sense it was the
spirit of Tom as captured by the Diary that possessed Ginny. To some
extent we have seen mental 'possession' in the form of the Imperius
Curse and other 'mind links' but again that is not true possession.
The 'possessed' person is not fully possessed by the person in charge,
only by the /will/ of the person in charge.

The only true possession we have seen clearly is when Voldemort
possessed Harry in the Ministry of Magic battle in OotP. I'm not sure
how you view it, but the only logical way I can see it is that
Voldemort merged his body with Harry's. In the truest sense, two
bodies became one. That has to be how it was because if Voldemort had
only mentally possessed Harry, then Voldemort would have been very
vulnerable. While his mind was in Harry, his body would have been
outside Harry and very vulnerable to attack by Dumbledore. Voldemort
can't afford to leave his body unprotected, so the only thing that
makes reasonable sense is that Voldemort melded his own body into
Harry's. That's true possession. Now Voldemort can't be attacked
without attacking Harry. In a  sense, he was using Harry's body as a
sheild.

One small piece that is missing from this discussion that I hinted at
before and stated clearly in an off-line comment to Valky, is that
when the two bodies merge together, we see the body of the possessed.
That is, when Voldemort is in charge, we see Harry's body. But when
Harry turns the tables and is in charge possessing Voldemort, we see
Voldemort's body. The person 'in-charge' is hidden within the body of
the person being possessed. That is consistent with what we see in the
Ministry of Magic; Voldemort has hidden his own body and self inside
Harry's body, and that's why there is nothing for Dumbledore to attack.

> Valky continues:
> 
> Okay Just for good measure here's my third and favourite ... 
> version, ...
> 
> Harry takes Voldie through the veil and Voldie still has some
> kind of fight in him, Harry needs help to make it stick. He 
> remembers he is with Sirius and calls to Sirius for help, ...
> a magnificent final battle behind the veil.
> 
> When Voldemort is overcome and dead... This ... bittersweet 
> ...Harry finally reunited with his parents discovers that he
> will not be able to stay.. he is in a state of limbo..., and
> they also discover that Harry can't get back out without a body
> .... ... SO his only way out is to take Sirius with him.
> 
> Valky

bboyminn:

I like it! Again, we have a very unique case of /special
circumstances/ here. Harry's body is merged inside Voldemort's; in a
sense, he is a passenger in Voldemort's body. I'm not sure how JKR
will explain it, but I do feel the merging of two bodies will indeed
constitute special circumstances beyond the Veil. 

Perhaps as long as they are merged together /neither can die while the
other survives/, and by extention, that implies that neither can truly
live while the other survives. The only way for either of them to die
is for the possession to be terminated. When the bodies break apart,
one or both will die. Now Sirius came through the Veil under special
circumstances too. His spirit didn't pass through after he was dead;
he went through as a fully living being; body, mind, and spirit all
still merged together; fully alive and fully functional. Further more,
Sirius's body still remains behind the Veil. The way for Sirius to
have died properly would have been for his spirit to join the land of
the dead, while his body fell out of the other side of the Veil, back
into the physical world.

Perhaps, Sirius is trapped by his /special circumstances/ behind the
Veil. It's a stretch, but perhaps as a single body or a single spirit,
he can not cross the boundary between the living and the dead. That
is, he can't cross back over to the land of the living as a single
body/spirit. Admittedly I am reaching here for an explanation, and am
coming up with a relatively weak one, but I can't be expected to have
all the answers.

So, the solution is for Sirius to touch Voldemort. That leaves Harry a
path into another body without having to spend any time not sharing a
body. Once, we can speculate, Harry's body stands on its own, it is
vulnerable to death, or vulnerable to being trapped behind the Veil as
Sirius is. But by moving to Sirius's body with no 'in-between' time,
he remains safe. With Harry in control and his own body protected,
Harry marches Sirius's body out from behind the Veil. On the living
side of the Veil, Harry separates from Sirius and they are both very
much alive and safe. Although, it is possible to speculate that
Sirius's body will drop dead when Harry exists it, that's just a
detail and one I can live with. 

Now to the real problem. This is all a great potential ending for the
story. The question is will/has JKR thought of it? I think one of the
disappointments of HBP was that we spend years inventing our own,
sometimes very exciting and far out, scenarios, so that when the book
appeared, it couldn't live up to our wildest speculations. Personally,
I still say that a Harry/Draco struggle for the Black Estate, and a
continuation of the D.A. Club as a means for the 'Good Slytherins' to
appear would have been a better story. But, I'm not the author, and my
wild speculations, interesting as they may be, don't count for
anything. I worry that once again we will speculate so many wild and
exciting possibilities that the books can never live up to two years
of our wild speculation.

Wow! Only two or (groan) three more years to go before we have the
final answer. 

At any rate, I think we have come up with a reasonably sound and very
interesting ending to the story.

Just a thought.

Steve/bboyminn