Why leave Harry/Snape and Lily

[dungrollin]

No: HPFGUIDX 148459

Jen: Gee, why have I never read this before? This is honestly my
first time to think the words of the first prophecy might be
connected to the events of getting Harry's blood at the graveyard.

Dung:
Voldy himself says something reminiscent of the prophecy Trelawney 
delivers to Harry (Gof, end of chapter 33):
"But I knew the one I must use, If I was to rise again, more 
powerful than I had been when I had fallen. I wanted Harry Potter's 
blood."
The relevant bit of prophecy is from PoA, Professor Trelawney's 
Prediction: "The Dark Lord will rise again with his servant's aid, 
greater and more terrible than ever before."

Jen:
Or alternatively, the mixture of unicorn blood and Nagini venom? The
prophecy also claimed the servant would 'aid' the master to rise
again and that could be read as the cauldron scene and/or obtaining
the fetal form which made the graveyard possible. 

Dung:
Could be, indeed. I just went back to check that I got the 
apostrophe in the right place in 'servant's aid', but it's 
definitely singular. Since all the way through the prophecy the 
servant referred to is Wormtail (the servant bound these twelve 
years who sets out tonight to return to him), but it was Crouch 
rather than Wormtail who was responsible for getting Harry to the 
graveyard, you could be right. If she had written '*servants'* aid,' 
greater and more terrible than ever before" it could be either baby!
mort or Harry's blood. 

Although it *was* Wormtail who took Harry's blood to make the potion 
so... um... 

JKR did say in the
TLC/MN interview there was something significant about the fetal
form Voldemort took prior to a full body:

"I feel that I could justify every single piece of morbid imagery in
those books. The one that I wondered whether I was going to be able
to get past the editors was the physical condition of Voldemort
before he went into the cauldron, do you remember? He was kind of
fetal. I felt an almost visceral distaste for what I had conjured
up, but there's a reason it was in there and you will see that."

Dung:
She did indeed. Bit stumped about that, to be honest. It has to be 
some kind of illustration of the state of Voldy's soul, doesn't it? 
Or an illustration of how debased the spells and unicorn 
blood/nagini venom that Wormtail used to produce baby!mort were. 
Short of having another character disembodied and forced to use the 
same method so we can see the difference between them, I can't think 
of how it will play into the story. (I did suggest ages ago that 
Harry might be forced to use the same potion at some point, but 
funnily enough, nobody else seemed to like the idea.) Though it 
could of course be an illustration of the lengths to which 
*Wormtail* will go, rather than an illustration of something about 
Voldy.

Dung:
> Characterising his attempts to kill Harry as an obsession with
> faulty wiring's a bit harsh... I suspect that his major problem is
> that he believes in fate (JKR doesn't, she believes in hard work),
> rather than in making choices. Being Slytherin's heir and all that
> will do that to a chap, though, won't it? I think DD is pretty
> clear that if Voldy hadn't acted on the prophecy, he would have
> been a lot better off. All his current obsessions come back to
> that, really, that he believes the prophecy.

Jen: Well....maybe it's harsh. I like your explanation of him
believing in fate, anyway. Besides the hard work, I think luck was
her other reason for her own success? Good news for Harry, then ;).

You know, this connects more to the comments above, but the reason
I'm unsure whether Voldemort is actually greater and more terrible
is because it's pretty hard to see past all the weaknesses
Dumbledore exposed in HBP. Besides the sad (to me) conditions of
Riddle's beginnings, there's the part about being scared of the dark
and dead bodies which is difficult not to connect to little child
fears, esp. of the dark.  So yes I do tend to see him as
having 'faulty wiring' both in nature *and* nuture and don't quite
understand where JKR is headed there.

Dung:
All those weaknesses that Dumbledore exposed in HBP were weaknesses 
that Voldy has always had, they're not psychoses he's developed 
since his sojourn in Albania, so I'm not convinced that they prevent 
him from being greater and more terrible than last time. 

I'm not saying that I don't see Voldemort as twisted and mad, I 
*do*, I'm just fairly certain that there are specific intellectuo-
emotional reasons that his quest to live forever with the world in 
thrall to him is going to fail. Believing in fate seems to be the 
biggie so far, and the love thing. Calling him mad and twisted and 
doomed to fail is – well, it's probably *right*, but I wouldn't 
complain if JKR was a little more specific, and the background we 
were given in HBP suggests that she's heading that way, giving 
explicit reasons why evil never wins.

Jen:
To be a bit repetitive 'cause I like the idea: I hope there's more
meaning than simply exposition for book 7 (or the horcrux search) in
the story of Riddle's evolution into Voldemort. It seems like so
*much* exposition for that. I'd like to think there's something in
Voldemort's story which, similar to whatever Harry learns about Lily
in Book 7, will have meaning for 'what Harry has to do in the end.'

Dung:
I'd certainly like to see Harry put in a difficult situation where 
he has to make a similar choice to one that Voldy's made in the 
past, which at least gives him some understanding of why Voldy chose 
the easy over right path.

***************************************
On to Snape Loved Lily

Jen (snipped): 
Hey, what happened to the Time magazine article
about 'subverting the genre' and all that? Someone needs to tell JKR
the whole point of her story is that she uses cliche's really well
and then step back and wait for her response. I'm not sure that's
*her* take on her work.
Jen R., knowing she is a Scrooge about this one but thinking if
Sydney plays her jolly trombone she might just have to stuff a sock
in it. <g>

Dung:
Ok, I'm with you on this one, Bah Humbug!
"Where do you think I would have been all these years, if I had not 
known how to act?"
Can someone please explain to me why on earth Snape is unable to 
fake a large bout of remorse and pretend to be in love with Lily? 
How does it provide a watertight reason for DD to trust him? Why 
couldn't a very clever DE fake this? 

Dungrollin