Death, where is thy victory? With Bonus Material! (seekers, Umbridge)

[va32h]

No: HPFGUIDX 174763

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "justcarol67" <justcarol67 at ...> 
wrote:
(snippage)

>{Was no one but me moved to tears when he opened the Snitch with the 
words, "I am about to die"?)

va32h:

No, I was too. Despite my criticisms of the book and JKR, I love 
Harry, have always loved Harry, and I ached for him in this entire 
chapter. 

It was especially heartbreaking (and yet reassuring) because Harry 
did not want to die. He knew he had to, and was willing to - but he 
didn't want to. His thoughts on the way to the forest bear this out; 
his memories of his friends, and despair at the thought of leaving 
them. The very fact that he needs to summon forth his dead loved ones 
to give him the courage to keep going and not run away shows that he 
isn't doing this happily, just willingly. His very last thoughts were 
of Ginny - which represents a future he desperately wants. 

Before DH came out, there was a great deal of speculation that Harry 
would die - ought to die - because he would be with his parents and 
Sirius and Dumbledore, and thus would be happy. I argued vigorously 
against this idea. Harry would not be happy, IMO to be trapped in 
perpetual adolescence, with parents he may love dearly, but in truth 
he hardly knows. Dying would, in many ways, be much easier than 
living with the loss of his loved ones, and Harry never takes the 
easy route. And overall, I found it a deeply morbid and disturbing 
notion that *wanting* to die at the age of 17 would be portrayed in 
such a postive light.

Harry doesn't *want* to die, but he does it because he has to, and I 
am very satisified with this depiction. And even more satisified to 
see that given the chance to go back or go on - Harry chooses to go 
back to the land of the living, to the future (or at least the 
potential of a future) which is where he truly does belong.  


Carol:
(more snipping)

>The Deathly Hallows, whose lure DD could not resist, would
> have made Harry Master of Death, but being a better man than
> Dumbledore, he rejects them, tossing the broken resurrection stone 
to the ground. (It might have been better to destroy it, but I'll let
> that drop.)

va32h:

Well you used the right word - letting it drop. Letting go of the 
stone is a more symbolic gesture than destroying it. Harry 
literally "lets go" of the stone, metaphorically lets go of the 
longing to get back what is gone forever. 

When he's in King's Cross, whatever King's Cross is, it isn't Lily 
and James he calls forth, it's Dumbledore. And he wants Dumbledore to 
give him answers, not reminisce about old times. 

Harry's desperate longing for his parents didn't disappear with the 
Mirror of Erised. One thing that struck me back in HBP was Harry's 
musing on what his life would be like if Neville had been the Chosen 
One instead. And Harry's thought is that his own mother would be 
kissing him goodbye instead of Molly Weasley. But this is a very 
unrealistic dream - as Lily would surely have been among the 
persecuted in Voldemort's regime. Harry, in his longing to get his 
parents back, seems to have forgotten that it was the loss of his 
parents that enabled these 15-16 years of peace. Harry makes the same 
mistake in Deathly Hallows, imagining coming home to Godric's Hollow 
on school vacations, if only his parents had lived. And by Deathly 
Hallows, Harry knows what life for Muggleborns is like when Voldemort 
is in charge. But he still has that childlike longing for his 
parents. 

And although he does call them forth in his hour of greatest need (as 
he will surely always remember them) in the end he does let them go, 
as he lets go of the stone. I would guess that post-DH Harry does not 
dwell on what his life might have been like anymore, but concentrates 
on what it is in that moment. 

Now - in my desperate bid to keep within the 5 post limit, I will 
tack on some other subjects.

Carol said:
We might look at the other Seekers, too--Krum, who shows up in a cameo
to link Grindelwald with Xenophilius Lovegood (Now there's a pair for
you. Would Grindelwald have worn omelet yellow to a wedding? ;-) ).
Does his earlier act of winning the game on his own terms foreshadow
Harry, or does it have more to do with Dumbledore? And why has JKR
taken the trouble to show us a photo of young Regulus, the Voldie fan
turned hero, as a Seeker?

va32h:

I think it goes back to the Seeker being the one who ends the game. 
Regulus thought he was ending Voldemort's game by stealing what he 
believed was the only horcrux. Even Draco - who isn't a very talented 
Seeker, yet gets on the team through his family's intervention (which 
also describes his career as a DE) is a key figure in ending the game 
with Voldemort. 

Krum's gameplay in the QWC shows us that it isn't necessarily the 
Seeker who wins the game. At first glance, it seems that the player 
who can earn 150 points in one go is the most important player out 
there - but as we saw in the QWC, if the rest of the team is strong 
enough....

Harry didn't destroy a single horcrux in DH - I would say the 
horcruxes = goals, and of course the Seeker doesn't score goals. Krum 
decided to end the game on his own terms, because he knew that the 
other team's Chasers were just too good - his team would never catch 
up. 

Voldemort is Krum without the self-awareness (and of course *with( 
teh evil. Voldemort will never be able to catch up to Harry's team 
(although he doesn't realize it yet) and insists on playing on his 
own terms (continuing to use AK, even though it *never* works on 
Harry)

On a slightly related note, I do wish that Harry had talked a bit 
more about the highly shocking fact that he had, to all appearances 
been dead, and was now alive. Voldemort didn't seem sufficiently 
surprised at Harry's return. 

Now onto a whole different subject
Ceridwen wrote:

>We know the locket exacted a toll on the trio when each of them wore
> it. Tempers flared, spirits were depressed, and Ron's concerns 
seemed to have been magnified - shown in detail in the sequence where
> he 'kills' the horcrux.
>
> What was its effect on Umbridge? Did its influence weaken her
> Patronus? Did it make her even eviller than she was? Did it in any
> way influence her to retrieve Mad-Eye Moody's eye when he was 
killed?
>
> At which point in the book, or the last three books, did she get 
this Horcrux? How long has it been affecting her?


va32h:

My interpretation is that the horcrux is a negative influence on 
people who are essentially good. With Umbridge, the horcrux would 
have felt right at home - the soul bit would feel as comfortable next 
to Dolores' heart as it felt in Voldemort's own body. I don't think 
it affects her at all - Umbridge is already deeply in tune with it. 

I don't know if Umbridge could *get* any more evil than she was in 
OoTP, quite honestly! So I'm not inclined to cut her any slack 
because she was wearing the horcrux. Nothing she is shown to do in DH 
seems any more evil than the stuff she did (or tried to do) in OoTP. 

I would guess that she took it sometime during the course of events 
in HBP. If the DE have been steadily infiltrating the Ministry, she'd 
be able to see which way the wind was blowing, and know that it 
wouldn't hurt to bolster her pureblood credentials. 

I don't think Umbridge was a DE though - if she'd ever been in 
Voldemort's presence with that locket, she'd be dead. So I don't 
think *she* took Moody's eye. His body must have been found by the 
DEs that night, humiliated and stripped of any useful parts. Perhaps 
those parts were brought back to the Ministry by any of the 
Imperiused or infiltrating DEs. Umbridge would probably have known 
Moody - he did used to work for the Ministry after all, and he's a 
hard man to forget. She might have found it an amusing revenge (Moody 
being Dumbledore's friend and Dumbledore being her enemy) or she may 
just have seen the usefulness in having a magical spy-eye. 

va32h