DH: The silver doe as Lily's patronus?+Lilly's eyes

[vivamus42]

No: HPFGUIDX 172495

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "bridgetteakabiit"
<bridgetteakabiit at ...> wrote:
>
> Clio
> > In DH 'The prince's tale' we learn Snape's patronus is the doe. In 'A
> > flaw in the plan' Harry tells Voldemort that Snape has the same
> > patronus as Lily Potter.
> > Odd. How does Harry know? Am I overlooking something? I can't shake
> > the feeling that there was a conversation about this edited from the
> > book.
> 
> 
> When I first read the section about the doe, I immediately thought of
> Lily. Since James' was a Stag, it made sense to me that Lily's, his
> wife, would be the female equivalent. Maybe that's where the idea came
> from.

Vivamus:

I seem to remember something about that, too, but perhaps that is in a
conversation never recorded in the books.  Perhaps JKR mentioned it in
an interview.

> My pressing question is: what was so important about Lily's eyes? I
> thought there was supposed to be some big huge important thing about
> how Harry had Lily's eyes. Dumbledore points out Harry's eyes to
> Snape, but I couldn't get anything more out of it, except maybe that's
> what encouraged Snape to help protect Harry?

Vivamus:
I think it is that the "eyes are the windows of the soul", to quote
Proverbs.  His eyes show his true nature, which is, as DD points out,
much more like Lily than James, even though he looks more like James.

I think the very important thing about Harry's eyes being like Lily's
is that SS would not have been able to do what he did for Harry, if it
were not for Lily's eyes.

Remember, as SS lay dying, he wanted to look into those eyes one last
time.  Odd that he managed to hate Harry all through that, but he was
definitely a believably damaged person -- in JKR's words, a "deeply
horrible" person -- yet he kept his word to the very last breath in
his body.

> I was totally shocked that Harry was a Horcrux, even though it made
> sense. The whole "limbo" section where he was talking to Dumbledore
> completely threw me off, and I don't think it was really explained
> where they were, how they got there, or why Dumbledore was there too.

It shocked me, too, as I have a hard time making it fit with Harry's
character and behavior.  I was expecting the horcrux to be the scar. 
It was obvious that a soul-bit of LV was somehow attached to Harry;
else the dreams, visions, etc. would be much harder to explain, but I
thought his soul would be pure, not somehow mixed with LV.  

I think the King's Cross section was deliberately vague, because he
HAD really died, but wasn't going on into death.  So it was only a way
station created in Harry's mind, as whatever Harry wanted to imagine
it as being.  As DD said, it was Harry's party.

> I feel the book spent too much time describing them running and
> hiding, and should have spent more time explaining!

Yes, that was the one tedious bit.  One of the things I would have
liked explained a bit more in the King's Cross bit was that thing
under the seats.  Was that the bit of LV that was in Harry, which
Harry now left behind to die when he returned to his body?   Or, was
it the bit of LV that was in LV's body, that was semi-dead at the same
time?   Harry's comment to LV later about it seems to imply the
latter, but the scene and DD's comments seem to imply the former.

Vivamus