Will Harry Die? Or just "defeat" Voldemort?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 157028

Lady Lawyer wrote:
>
> I can't for the life of me figure out how Harry could "defeat"
Voldemort without killing him.  And by the way I don't think that
killing someone in pitched equal battle is the kind of "murder" that
will split your soul.  I think the soul splitting murder has to  be
with extreme cruelty.  Else every soldier would have a split soul.
>  
> Logically, "defeat" would be that state of being 180 degrees from
Voldemort's present state, pure evil, i.e., pure good.  So Harry would
have to do something to Voldemort that makes him "good"?  What about
Harry vanquishes him in battle and spares his life?  Then Voldemort is
beholden to Harry and bound by allegiance to protect Harry (or
whatever happens when one wizard saves another wizard's life) so he
can't be bad any more or else he would, what, die or something?  What
do people think of this?
>  
> This is why I think he will vanquish him by taking him alive through
the veil.  It must be weird to be in the afterlife and not be actually
dead, although you appear dead to those left behind in th Potterverse.
>  

>

Carol responds:
I agree with your first and third paragraphs, more or less. I don't
think that Harry will use Avada Kedavra, the weapon of his enemy that
killed his parents and is universally regarded in the WW as
Unforgiveable. It's inconsistent with the Love that DD insists is
Harry's greatest strength. I don't however, think it's possible to
make Voldemort "good," nor do I think that even returning him to his
pre-murder state as eleven-year-old Tom Riddle, if that were somehow
possible, could accomplish that miracle. But sparing Voldemort's life
would be even more wrong than AKing him since it would relaease him
into the world again to do evil. Azkaban wouldn't hold him. (As an
aside, I hope we'll see something of that sort from *Neville,* showing
mercy to the merciless Bellatrix, but by no means letting her go
unpunished. She'd be sent to Azkaban where she belongs. I don't think
that any of the main kid characters will perform an AK. Draco
couldn't, and he's the closest thing to an evil kid character that we
have.) So we're left with killing/permanently destroying him without
using an Unforgiveable Curse or other Dark weapon, such as poison (to
which he's probably immune anyway, even without the Horcruxes).

I think, and have argued at length elsewhere, that Harry will possess
Voldemort, who will be as unable to endure the Love in Harry just as
he was when he tried to possess Harry in OoP (foreshadowing, anyone?)
and will force him to go through the Veil to escape the agony. I also
think that Harry will come out again using Sirius Black's body, so
that Black will be truly dead and can at last have a funeral that will
enable his few close friends to say good-bye and move on, and that
Harry will return to his own body. (None of this can happen, IMO,
until Harry gets over his desire for revenge against Snape and plays
to his strength, the Love that Lily's death created in him.) 

Carol, wondering if being trapped behind the Veil with only a
fragmentary soul could be the fate worse than death (dead in the sense
of never being able to come back to the world) that DD mentioned to LV
when he fought him in the DoM