The Core of the Elder Wand and other new JKR explanations

[Mike]

No: HPFGUIDX 179753


> Mus:
> And when you talk about LV's soul being a stunted, maimed baby, 
> can't you see that you're creating an image that's likely to 
> trigger pity? "Unwanted, stuffed out of sight, struggling for 
> breath" - that's what he always was, from the beginning, and 
> that's how you chose to end him. Sauron was at least a grown-up.

Mike:
That's not my impression of the "creature" at King's Cross. I felt 
myself being obviously drawn to equate to the Baby!Mort creature in 
GoF. That creature wasn't a child in anything other than stature. 
That GoF creature is what I pictured when JKR brought us into King's 
Cross. Needless to say, I had *no* pity for the GoF baby-sized 
creature and that didn't change when I saw what to me was the same 
creature in King's Cross.

Since it is the soul that "moves on" (I suppose that's what I'm to 
understand) the remaining VoldySoul is depicted as small in stature 
as a metaphor for it's deranged and incomplete condition. I did not 
see the KC creature as child-like at all, merely child sized.



> Mus:
> 
> The most evil wizard in a hundred years never grew beyond flayed
> babyhood.  He was a child, and so he cannot be judged as an adult.

Mike:
As I said above, the VoldySoul was not child-like. It was the 
summation of a wicked and evil life, laid bare to stand (whimper) in 
judgement for the crimes committed in life. I'm not a religious 
person, but don't most religions ascribe to some sort of judgement 
day, where one goes before his/her creator and is made to answer for 
the decisions and acts committed during life?



> Mus:
> 
> For this reader, the returned LV in the graveyard was deeply 
> scary, for the reasons that Elkins laid out here ages ago. He was 
> grown up. He was clever. He was numinous. He was transgressive.  
> He was the worthy opponent of the boy who would save the world.  
> The last two books, for me, undermine him to the extent that I 
> really didn't care much in the Great Hall at the end.

Mike:
Here I totally agree. I had hopes that Chapter One of DH would set 
the tone for the kind of LV we'd get from that point forward. I was 
disappointed in HBP on many fronts, not the least was that I was 
finding LV less scary, more of an organizational problem to solve 
than a quest to overcome scary evil. I was much more scared of the 
showdown with the Shade in Eragon than I was for Harry vs Riddle in 
the Great Hall at Hogwarts.



> Mus, who's about to embark on some more bread making.

Mike, wondering how you could make that wonderful bread smell 
permeate your posts, so we could share :)