The creature under the bench (again) (was: Of Sorting and Snape)

[Annemehr]

No: HPFGUIDX 175771


> Alla wrote:
>  
> > > I just wanted to ask for some canon for this creature being part
> of  Harry for sixteen years. I took it to be as what is to happen to
> whatever part of Voldemort's soul is left in him and that is what
> happened to him if he does not feel remorse.
> > > 
> > > That being part of Harry? 
> 

 
> lizzyben responded:
> > 
> > Well, it's all happening in Harry's head, right? DD confirms that.
> And what else is in Harry's head? The horcrux. IMO, that figure
> represented the horcrux that had been sharing Harry's head for the 
> past 16 years. But I realize that opinions might vary on that. When 
> Harry comes to, the horcrux has disappeared.
> >


> Carol:

> Can I get you to take a closer look at my arguments that the 
creature
> under the bench is Voldemort's mangled soul and *not* the destroyed
> soul bit? I've argued it about four times, most recently in 
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/175573 
> with links to the earlier posts. 
> 


Annemehr:

Well, you have persuaded me, because as you pointed out, DD said the 
soul-bit had been destroyed while he was right near the creature.  I 
don't think it makes sense that LV should have such a near-death 
experience while he still had the Nagini Hx, but that does really 
seem to be the meaning of the text.

However, I don't think that's fatal in the least to lizzyben's 
arguments.  The flayed creature is a bit of the same essensce, the 
*same soul,* as Harry carried with him for sixteen years.  With that 
understanding, I very much agree with her posts.

<snipping>

Carol:
 
> The fault, if any, with this scenario (aside from the confusion it
> creates in many readers) is not Harry's or Dumbledore's but in JKR's
> conception of a personal, self-created hell for the unredeemed and
> unrepentant. which, it appears, is repellant to many readers. <snip>


Annemehr:
Well, yes, that's it exactly.  Voldemort reads like a psychopath.   
Psychopathy happens to a person; they don't choose it.  We first meet 
Tom Riddle at age 11, and we see that his personality is already well 
established, so clearly he's been that way since early childhood.  
Whatever anyone claims that JKR is writing about free will, it is 
impossible to believe in the concept of a young child who has freely 
chosen to lack any feeling for anyone else (and everything that 
follows from that).

But it seems he *is* already damned.  DH seems to say that LV made 
his bed, and he can lie in it forever.  He apparently began creating 
his personal hell as a small boy in an orphanage.

In HBP, after Harry marvelled that Merope wouldn't stay alive for her 
son, DD asked Harry if he was feeling pity for Tom Riddle.  Well, *I* 
was, but it seems JKR wasn't.

It may be true that there's nothing Harry or DD could do for LV's 
mangled soul in Kings Cross, since love causes him pain.  But the 
part that's really bothering me is to think that LV's only chance -- 
ever -- was to feel remorse, i.e. to empathise with his victims, 
something that was never possible for him.


Carol:

> But,
> surely, Voldie's crimes differ in scope and substance from everyone
> else's in the books, even Bellatrix, sadistic as she is, not coming
> even close. (Grindelwald is another matter, but he seems to have
> repented before the end.) Should Voldie, for all his crimes, have 
been
> redeemed, in your view? Why should Snape or any other character 
bother
> to repent, then, if sins are so easily expiated or rather require no
> expiation and the unrepentant have the same afterlife as the 
repentant
> and there is no penalty for unnaturally dividing the soul from the
> body through the murder of another to prevent your own death?


Annemehr:

To me, psychopathy isn't something that needs to be expiated in the 
next world so much as to be healed.  For all we know, such a healing 
may be painful enough.  If in JKR's world, Voldemort's only chance is 
remorse, well then he has always been one of the Unelect, predestined 
to hell before he was truly self-aware.

I don't see what use it is to compare him to Snape or any of the 
others.  Everyone is born into a completely different set of 
circumstances with no choice in the matter.  If some characters find 
healing in the next great adventure (symbolised in Harry's perfect 
vision and scar-free hands at Kings Cross, and in Lupin's and 
Sirius's restored appearances in the walk into the Forest), why 
should it cause them any bitterness if even the seeming worst of them 
does so as well?

Annemehr