The Eagle Owl/Re: Harry's dreams in GoF

sistermagpie belviso at attglobal.net
Thu Mar 1 21:21:28 UTC 2007


No: HPFGUIDX 165585

Carol:
> 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

Magpie:
I feel very guilty snipping all of this because I think it's a really 
good question--one that I also wondered about in GoF. Is it just the 
JKR thought it was a neat way to segue into Harry after that opening 
chapter? Not exactly, since Harry wakes up knowing something is wrong 
and remembering part of the dream. But why is he dreaming about Frank 
and not Voldemort? And why does he later dream of those events also 
not from Voldemort's pov? 

It feels like these dreams are almost more...what's the word? They're 
more like prophesies, almost, in that it's like Harry's almost having 
a vision of something important to him, or important to his story. One 
could say that JKR just couldn't figure out a good way to get those 
scenes in and she wanted to, but it's a bit much to give Harry some 
kind of psychic power just for that, especially since it's not 
something that continues. It's not like the mind link they have in 
OotP that's explained and part of the plot. Could it be sort of a 
precursor to it? Doesn't seem so, because again, it goes back to the 
problem of it not being Voldemort's pov. 

Could JKR have almost been experimenting with a device that she 
evenentually moved away from, an almost mythological one where 
something "beyond" Harry gave him visions?

The main reason I felt guilty about snipping, btw, is that I was 
completely distracted by your sig. I had made that connection too, I 
think, perhaps only because we hear about Malfoy's eagle owl, and then 
this is the only other eagle owl I remember hearing about. It could be 
just the same breed, of course, but it sort of seems to stand out as 
meaning something since usually owls aren't identified by breed. 
(Hedwig, of course, is special.)

It mostly interests me because, of course, I wonder about the 
significance of it. Is Barty knowingly using the Malfoy's owl as the 
sign of some private obsession? Is there something about the Malfoy's 
owl that would make it a better choice? I had always vaguely wondered 
if it were Draco's owl or the Malfoy family owl (which didn't actually 
live at Hogwarts), but checking back to PS I see the owl is described 
as Draco's own. I could certainly imagine Crouch wanting to use that 
one with thoughts of getting Lucius punished once Voldemort returned, 
taking a risk by using a specific students' owl.

I don't know why I've always found that interesting, but I do. I think 
I've filed it away as something that might be subtly symbolic at the 
end of the series, if nothing else. Or perhaps something that could be 
used later as an animal Harry would recognize.

-m





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