Merope (wasLily the popular girl)

[va32h]

No: HPFGUIDX 168051

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Magpie" <belviso at ...> wrote:

What Dumbledore says is that Merope "lacked 
Harry's mother's courage" which is just...obnoxious. Maybe you could 
say someone died from lack of courage if they were afraid to take a 
risk that would have saved their life, but judging Merope's death after 
having her baby as a lack of courage comes uncomfortably close to 
saying that a) dying is a character flaw and b) depression is a lack of 
courage.

I'm sure JKR believes neither of those things, but it's not one of 
Dumbledore's better moments.

va32h:

Well I would definitely agree that JKR does not feel that way about 
depression, since she has had her own bout with it. I wonder if 
Dumbledore meant that Merope did not have the courage to go on without 
the love of her life, as Lily apparently did. Lily did not let her 
grief over James' death stop her from thinking of her son and 
protecting him. Although to be fair, Lily didn't have much time to 
dwell on said grief. Still, the scene at Godric's Hollow could have 
played out differently if Lily put James before Harry - in other words, 
hearing/seeing James fall, run to him, instead of protecting Harry. 

Merope seems to have allowed her despair over the loss of Tom Sr. to 
overshadow her devotion to Tom Jr. Although again to be fair, had Tom 
Jr. already been born when Tom Sr. left, we might have had a very 
different story. Which is not to say that Merope did not love Tom in 
the womb, but I think it is...not easier...but - it's just different 
with a child that is already there, that you've been attached to for 
some time. Once, when I was pregnant with my third child, my then-2 
year old son wandered away from me in a store parking lot, and was 
nearly struck by a car. I jumped in front of him instinctively, 
although had I been hit I could have injured my unborn baby. 

But maybe that's just me. I don't know what Dumbledore was thinking - 
he's never been a mother, so in that sense, no matter how wise he may 
be, he doesn't know how a mother thinks. 

It would certainly be par for the course with Voldemort though - if he 
completely misunderstood his mother's love. If he assumed she did not 
love him enough because she died - perhaps she loved him enough to hang 
on to life just long enough to give birth. It's characteristic of 
Voldemort to not understand anything about love. 

va32h