Voldemort's mangled soul (Was: Of Sorting and Snape)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 175489

Jen wrote: 
> I wondered why Dumbledore discouraged Harry's natural empathy to 
pain and suffering there, one of his greatest strengths according to
Dumbledore. My preliminary answer while reading was they couldn't do
anything because of their location, somewhere between the physical 
world and behind the Veil, and a greater presence would have to offer
the healing if it was to happen.  Still, why not have Harry walk over
and try?  He was repulsed but that never stops him from acting. 
> 
> Now I'm musing whether DD didn't want to encourage empathy for the 
live LV at that point, knowing Harry would choose to go back and face
him in the flesh and empathy might cost Harry his life.  That doesn't
really fit with how Harry's heart saves him from LV, how his love 
protects him.  Plus there's the whole Elder wand thing (grr, not 
happy about the conclusion coming down to the Elder wand). So, I'm 
not sure what to think!  Confusing.

Carol responds:

I'm not sure what to think, either, except that I knew as I read the
description that the horrible child was Voldemort's mutilated soul
(not the soul bit in Harry's scar, which DD tells him has been
destroyed, DH Am. ed. 708)). I was (and am) sure that DD was
right--they really could do nothing to relieve the Voldie-creature's
self-inflicted misery.

Suppose that Harry had picked it up and tried to comfort it? What
would it have done? Would it have screamed in fury and hatred, feeling
even more agony from his touch? Voldemort can't endure love or
anything related to it (pity, compassion, mercy, etc.). Pity might
have increased rather than relieved its sufferings.

Or what if Harry had looked into its face and felt the hatred and
revulsion he had felt when Wormtail dropped Fetal!mort into the
cauldron? ("Let it drown! Please, let it drown!" GoF Am. ed. 641).
What would he have thought if he looked into the flayed child's face
and saw a "flat and snakelike face with gleaming red eyes" (GoF 640)
like those of both the adult Voldemort and the fetal form of GoF? 

The description of Voldemort's fetal form in GoF is virtually
identical to that of the "creature" under the bench:

"The thing that Wormtail had been carrying had the shape of a crouched
human child, except that Harry had never seen anything less like a
child. It was hairless and scaly-looking, a dark, raw, reddish black.
Its arms and legs were thin and feeble, and its face--no child alive
ever had a face like that [flat and snakelike with red eyes, as
above]" (640).

Compare: "It had the form of a small, naked child, curled on the
ground, its skin raw and rough, flayed-looking, and it lay shuddering
under a seat . . . struggling for breath. He was afraid of it. Small
and fragile and wounded though it was, he did not want to approach it.
. . . He ought to comfort it, but it repulsed him" (707).

I think that, after his willing self-sacrifice and with his cleansed
perception (no glasses), Harry was in the right frame of mind to deal
with the resurrected and murderous adult Voldemort and to point out to
him the fate that genuine remorse for his many crimes would save him
from. Perhaps, touching the flayed creature or looking into its face
would have destroyed that frame of mind, causing him to feel again the
terror and revulsion and hatred he had felt in the graveyard for the
thing that Wormtail dropped into the cauldron (another representation,
IMO, of what LV had become through the willful mutiliation of his own
soul, foreshadowing the "flayed child" under the bench at King's
Cross). To touch it or look at it closely would certainly have been
futils and might have been worse than futile.

In any case, what could Harry have done, really? I think that if he
had picked the thing up, he would have dropped it in horror if he
looked into its face. Even Wormtail could hardly stand to pick up
Fetal!mort (Harry sees the look of revulsion on Wormtail's "weak, pale
face" as he carries "the creature" to the cauldron, GoF 641), and this
flayed creature is even more helpless and revolting. It can only
whimper and thump around in helpless agony, not issue orders or wield
a wand. 

The creature under the bench is surely the embodiment of Voldemort's
mangled and mutilated soul, or a vision of that future embodiment,
perhaps existing at this point only in Harry's and Voldemort's minds,
and neither pity nor revulsion will affect it in any way. But it's
important for Harry to see it so that he can offer Voldemort a chance
to feel remorse, the only chance to same himself from an eternity of
helpless suffering, beyond mercy or comfort until, perhaps, the end of
time, even though it's a foregone conclusion that Voldemort will
reject the offer.

Carol, who thinks that the creature simultaneously represents the loss
of Voldemort's humanity, tied in with the self-imposed mangling of his
soul, and the eternal hell he has created for himself ("Myself am
hell," as Milton's Satan said)