Harry's dreams in GoF

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 165584

I'm re-re-re-re-reading GoF, and I'm curious about what other posters
think of the point of view in the two dream chapters. In OoP, when
Harry's dreaming or hallucinating, he always sees from Voldemort's pov
(or Nagini's, when LV is possessing her). It makes sense that the scar
link, which has always enabled him to sense Voldemort's presence or
emotions, and even, in OoP, to understand intuitively *why* LV is
angry or happy, would enable him to share Voldie's dreams and
experiences from inside Voldie's head--as if the thoughts and
sensations and even the pale, long-fingered hands were his own.

But in GoF, the first dream is from the pov of an unknown Muggle,
Frank Bryce, who dies at the end of the dream, not from Voldemort's
pov. Voldie certainly isn't possessing him, as he possesses Nagini in
OoP; he doesn't even know that Frank is there until Nagini tells him.
We know Frank's thoughts and sensations until he's killed, and we see
LV from the outside--at first, only the back of his chair and then the
undescribed fetal form that fills Frank with such horror.

In the second dream, Harry is riding on the back of the eagle owl that
Fake!Moody has sent to inform Voldemort that he's murdered his father,
Mr. Crouch. (We're not told this information, but it can be deduced
from the content of the message. We've seen this same eagle owl,
presumably sent by Voldemort to Fake!Moody to inform him of Mr.
Crouch's escape, circling the tower as Hagrid buries the Leprechaun
gold in his garden.) At any rate, the owl is not possessed--it's
merely delivering a message, which causes LV to grant Wormtail a
reprieve (merely Crucioing him rather than feeding him to Nagini)
because Wormtail's blunder (which we later learn is letting Crouch
escape) has been rectified by the murder (obviously Crouch's). The owl
drops the message into Voldemort's chair and then disappears from the
dream. Harry is no longer on its back but mysteriously standing in the
room, as himself, much as he does in the Pensieve memories, fearful of
being discovered. But this is a dream, not a memory, And Voldemort is
far away in Little Hangleton, as he was in the other dream. Again,
Harry sees him from the outside, or rather, sees his chair but not his
face. In neither case is he inside Voldemort's mind.

>From a plot standpoint, these two dreams work beautifully, giving
Harry and the reader pieces of information that will be useful later
(of course, Harry forgets the first dream, or he'd have been able to
tell DD what happened to Bertha Jorkins and DD might have figured out
who put Harry's name in the Goblet of Fire a bit sooner). But in terms
of narrative strategy, they make no sense. The opening chapter of GoF
uses a third-person dramatic narrator similar to the one who narrates
"Spinner's End," with no pov character (everyone is seen from the
outside), until the pov switches to Frank's and blends into the scene
which coincides with Harry's dream (probably starting when Frank wakes
with a pain in his leg).

Usually, there's a reason for a point of view other than Harry's. In
the first chapter of SS/PS Harry is absent and/or too young to
understand what's happening, as when Baby Harry is placed on the
Dursleys' porch, fast asleep. And he's also absent in "The Other
Minister" and "Spinner's End," one told from the Muggle Prime
Minister's pov and the other using a third-person dramatic narrator,
who conceals the characters' thoughts from the reader.

But the dreams are different. Harry experiences them, one as Frank
Bryce, a complete stranger who ends up getting killed, and one as
himself, riding the back of an eagle owl and then shifting to the
floor of the room where Voldemort is sitting with Wormtail and Nagini
(who also appear in the first dream). How can *Harry* as opposed to
the narrator, who can be any place JKR wants him to be, be inside
Frank Bryce's mind or on the back of that owl? Voldemort, to whom he's
mentally linked by the scar, is in neither place. He's not possessing
Frank or the owl.

Is JKR cheating just to provide information that Harry couldn't
otherwise know, or is there a logical explanation for Harry to see
from a point of view other than Voldemort's in his Voldie dreams?

Carol, who thinks that the eagle owl is Draco Malfoy's, FWIW