The Sword of Gryffindor

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 182558

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Carol" <justcarol67 at ...> wrote:
>
> Carol earlier:
> > > 
> > > Yes, the answer is definitely magic of some sort. I think that the
> Sword must have had a spell on it that caused it to come to a
> Gryffindor "under conditions of need and valor," as DD tells Snape in
> "The Prince's Tale" (DH Am. ed. 689).
> > 
> > <snip>
> > 
> > >  It belongs to Gryffindor House, and just as it came to Harry when
> he was facing the Basilisk in CoS, brought by Fawkes, probably on
> instruction from Dumbledore, it came to Neville when he bravely faced
> Voldemort without a wand and under instructions from Harry to kill Nagini.
> > 
> > Geoff:
> > I read the COS incident differently. The sword was not inside the
> hat when Fawkes brought it. It appears that the Hat responded to a
> direct plea from Harry:
> > 
> > '"Help me... help me..." Harry thought, his eyes screwed tight under
> the Hat. "Please help me!"
> > 
> > There was no answering voice. Instead, the Hat contracted, as 
> though an invisible hand was squeezing it very tightly.
> > 
> > Something very hard and heavy thudded onto the top of Harry's head,
> almost knocking him out. Stars winking in front of his eyes, he
> grabbed the top of the Hat to pull it off and felt something long and
> hard beneath it.
> > 
> > A gleaming silver sword had appeared inside the Hat.....' (COS "The
> Heir of Slytherin" p.235 UK edition)
> > 
> > To me, this implies that a deep magic had been invoked, not by
> Dumbledore and whether it was from the Hat or the sword -or both -I'm
> not sure but it certainly seems that the sword possesses powers of its
> own to give assistance. It's one of those very magical objects, like
> the Room of Requirement and the Hat which are appear to be sentient
> and react to need.
> >
> Carol responds:
> 
> And yet Fawkes brought Harry the Sorting Hat. Wouldn't he have done so
> on Dumbledore's orders rather than on his own initiative? Yes, Fawkes
> himself seems to have come to Harry's aid when Harry expressed loyalty
> to Dumbledore, and Fawkes alone put out the Basilisk's eyes and
> provided Phoenix tears to heal the Basilisk's bite, but Harry needed
> the hat with the sword magically concealed inside (and I mean neither
> visible nor tangible but nevertheless still there) to kill the
> Basilisk. otherwise, what was the point of bring what Diary!Tom
> scathingly calls "an old hat"?
> 
> "This is what Dumbledore sends his defender! A songbird and an old
> hat?" (SS Am. ed. 316). Unless Diary!Tom is mistaken, and JKR provides
> no alternative explanation, Dumbledore arranged these protections.

Geoff:
I still do not believe that Fawkes brought the Hat with the sword "magically 
concealed" inside. The quote I gave from COS suggested that when Harry 
called for help, the sword then appeared inside the Hat - where it could 
not have been previously hidden. My suggestion is that the Hat, being like 
the RoR, a magical object of immense age and using advanced magic, was 
able, for want of a better phrase to perform "inanimate Apparition" on 
another object and produce it out of a hat <g>, in this case for Harry's 
benefit.

Carol:
> Earlier, Dumbledore had told Harry (who was hiding under the
> Invisibility Cloak) that help would come at Hogwarts to those who
> asked for it, and, as you point out, Harry quite literally called
> "Help!" before the sword actually appeared. So Dumbledore must either
> have known that the sword was sometimes concealed in the Sorting Hat
> and would come out when Harry called for it, or arranged for it to do
> so (as it does again with Neville in DH--when Voldemort, of all
> people, summons the Sorting Hat. Surely, the Sword of Gryffindor is
> again concealed in it, this time by some power in the Sword itself).

Geoff:
I think that I can see that Dumbledore could send Fawkes who has 
sensed Harry's loyalty and presumably conveyed this to him and, either 
Fawkes or Dumbledore knowing that the Hat possesses special powers, 
that gets sent along as well but Dumbledore can hardly know what 
problems Harry will face. 

Dumbledore, at this point, was not fully cogniscent of what or who 
Diary!Tom was.

'Dumbledore paused for a moment, marshalling his thoughts and 
then said, "Four years ago, I received what I considered certain proof
that Voldemort had split his soul."

"Where?" asked Harry. "How?"

"You handed it to me Harry," said Dumbledore. "The diary, Riddle's 
diary, the one giving instructions on how to reopen the Chamber of 
Secrets."

"I don't understand, sir," said Harry.

"Well, although I did not see the Riddle who came out of the diary, 
what you described to me was a phenomenon I had never witnessed.
A mere memory starting to act and think for itself? A mere memory, 
sapping the life out of the girl into whose hands it had fallen? No, 
something much more sinister had lived inside that book... a 
fragment of soul, I was almost sure of it. The diary had been a 
Horcrux...."'
(COS "Horcruxes" pp.467/68 UK edition)

This is Dumbledore, commenting in hindsight. He did not have all 
this information until after Harry had defeated Riddle and the basilisk 
and returned to the school.

 Carol:
> So even if Dumbledore (who, of course, was away from the school
> because Lucius Malfoy had bullied the Board of Governors) didn't
> arrange the spell that caused the sword to be concealed in--or come
> out of--the Sorting Hat, he seems to have known about it. Otherwise,
> it would have been pointless to tell Fawkes to take the Sorting Hat
> with him when he responded to Harry's defense of Dumbledore.

Geoff:
I read it that the Hat possessed enough sentience to be able to 
analyse Harry's need at that time and summon the Sword of Gryffindor 
to assist him when it became obvious that a weapon was needed - a 
weapon with great magic potential. I think that this was also the case in 
DH when Voldemort summons the Hat - possibly by a wordless 'Accio' 
and the Hat produces the sword for Neville as the most suitable piece 
of equipment for him at that point.

 Carol:
> Either way, it's magic. The Sword comes to Gryffindors in conditions
> of need and peril. 

Geoff:
Agreed. But I don't think that the Hat would be restricted just to 
producing it. Although it would not normally be called on to use its 
powers in an emergency and it had been pursuing a quiet existence 
of the odd song and a sophisticated eeny-meeny-miny-mo once 
a year for rather a long period, I believe that it could help in other 
ways than just acting as a scabbard; we just don't see this because 
the help that is needed in both instances is met by   the hat summoning 
the sword.