That ugly baby thing.

[dwalker696]

No: HPFGUIDX 173640

Cariad wrote:  
> yes that scene disturbed me too Sandra. I don't get what the ugly 
> baby was all about either. Like you and Geoff I subscribe to the near-
> death experience theory, a moment in earth-bound time and space but 
> one in which Harry 'sees the light'. My take on the 'creature' was 
> that it was symbolic of evil, DD said that it was beyond help. 
> Despite that the 'creature' was pleading and seemed remorseful, it 
> was whining and totally disturbed. Maybe it wasn't vocalising it 
> well, but it made me feel very uncomfortable that it was being 
> ignored. I don't know what it is, good or bad? Voldemorts soul? the 
> Harry horcrux? it just leaves a bad taste.
>  
> Besides if I don't know how to understand this, how will I explain it 
> to my grandson? Children are much more literal and need the facts.
> 
> cariad.

Donna replies:
I just replied to Sandra's, but I wanted to address your post too. 
Without a doubt, that image leaves a bad taste, and if it did, then I 
believe JKR accomplished what she meant to with that image. I should 
hope no one would find the idea of exisiting like that anything but 
replusive and unsettling. And again, a testament to Harry's pure heart 
and character that he continues to be disturbed by it, he continues to 
ask if they can't help it in someway, even though Dumbledore tells him 
it is beyond any kind of hope or help, there is nothing that can be 
done to save Voldemort's self-damaged and ruined soul fragment.

I don't know how old your grandson is, but my daughter is nine, and if 
she needs help processing it, I will tell her something like this:
I believe one of the messages JKR wanted us to gain from the book is 
the idea that we continue to live, even after our bodies are dead. Some 
people call that heaven, but no matter what people call it, most people 
believe that our souls continue to live even after our bodies don't.  
We see that when Harry's parents, Sirius, and Lupin's souls come back 
to join him to walk into the forest. He heard Luna talking that she 
knows she will see her mother again one day. Well, unfortunately for 
Lord Voldemort, he broke his soul up into pieces. If I took a hammer 
and broke your little brother's toy robot up into pieces, would it 
still work and walk around and talk the way it is supposed to? No, 
because I broke it into pieces. And Voldemort did the same thing with 
his soul, he used evil to break it up. When those pieces don't have a 
living thing or a horcrux to protect them anymore, they can't go all 
back together and make a whole robot, a whole Voldemort again, those 
pieces have to go on to heaven just the way they are, broken. So if we 
got to read about Tom Riddle's soul in heaven, we wouldn't see him the 
way we see Harry's parents, who are just like the way they were when 
they were alive, we would see the broken pieces of his soul. And the 
way JKR imagined that those broken soul pieces would look like, and 
what they would be like, is that poor, helpless creature under the 
bench, who can't walk around and talk and work the way it is supposed 
to, because it is a broken piece, and not a whole soul anymore.

Hope this helps!
Donna