That ugly baby thing.

[Sandra Collins]

No: HPFGUIDX 173671

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dwalker696" 
<dwalker696 at ...> wrote:
>
> 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.
> >  cariad.
> 
> Donna replies:
> ........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
>

Yes it does Donna, thank you - and so do all of the posts about 
this which is much better than I'd hoped! Although the horrible 
baby part will always be a part I skip over when ever I next read 
the DH book, at least I have a better idea of why it's there! I don't 
mind so much any more. In a way, I'd love to have seen what 
would have happened if Harry had gone to it, but that would have 
been far too Hollywood Hero stuff and undermined the 
significance and gravitas of Dumbledore being there. It struck 
me that by NOT going to the baby, Harry was passively accepting 
Dumbledore's words that there's much more to life and death 
then he'd understood even up to the point where he had faced 
LV, and I suppose that's why he chose to defy his own instinctive 
feelings by not tending to it.
Now let's all go round to Cariad's - she's got cakes!!!!

Sandra (laughing)