Slytherins come back WAS: Re: My Most Annoying Character

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 180343

Alla wrote:
<snip>
> > Fast forward to Occlumency lessons - Harry feels pain, doesn't he?
> > 
> > Do we ever find out if Snape had anything to do whatsoever with 
that pain? Do we ever find out if Harry had pain from the lesson, if
he had pain at all or was it all in his mind?
> > 
> > I mean I vehemently argued in the past that Snape could be 
deliberately opening his mind to Voldemort, but in light of all the
information would he really do that?
> > 
> > How exactly was this information corrected?
> >
Lealess responded:
> I don't remember the information being corrected!  This is possibly
one of the things that JKR either felt was not important to the story
or dropped the ball on, depending on the importance of the question to
you.  To my mind, she dropped a lot of balls in the end, to focus 
exclusively on Harry's travels in DH.  There are a plethora of 
unanswered questions, things that will never be answered, until JKR
comes out with something else that will hopefully be well-thought-out
 and consistent with earlier canon.
> 
> I can think of even more reasons why the Occlumency lessons caused
pain to Harry, but most of these explanations would be pure
speculation with little foundation in the text, and imagining them 
does not make them canon.

Carol responds:
But Snape's opening Harry's mind to Voldemort isn't canon, either,
despite Harry's and Ron's canonically *believing* it to be true. JKR
provided sufficient information (the break-out from Azkaban revealed
in the next day's Prophet, Harry's sensing that something LV has been
looking forward to has just happened) to allow the perceptive reader
to *infer* an alternate interpretation to Harry's pain following the
first Occlumency lesson. (The pain was not caused not by the
Occlumency lesson but by Voldemort's emotions on discovering the
breakout from Azkaban; the timing is coincidental, like the pain in
Harry's scar when Snape looks at him in SS/PS and when *Umbridge*
touches him in OoP; the visions began after PP gave LV a rudimentary
body and intensified after his resurrection, and the dream of Mr.
Weasley, along with the dreams of the MoM, indicate that the scar link
was intensifying *before* the first Occlumency lesson, which is
supposed to provide a cure if Harry will only pay attention and apply
them.) But, as both Alla and Lealess note, the narrator does not come
right out and provide that alternate explanation, which we, as
readers, must piece together for ourselves, nor does Harry ever
concede that he was wrong in his view that the Occlumency lessons were
opening him up to Voldemort. (For that matter, we never know whether
Hermione's explanation of Sirius Black's behavior is accurate or not.
JKR provides no alternative explanation, but characters are free to
disagree with Hermione--and have done so rather vociferously.)

My explanation here is not speculation but interpretation, based on
putting the pieces together. Other readers, especially those who've
reread OoP more recently, may find additional pieces or put together
the pieces I've mentioned differently. Nevertheless, we have here a
clear example of Harry misinterpreting what he perceives through his
senses, which, unlike the pain in his scar in SS/PS or the "murder" of
Dumbledore in HBP, is not cleared up later (neither is "Snape was
going to Crucio him into insanity"; the reader has to pick up the
clues that Harry missed). I'm sure there are other examples, but Alla
has chosen a good one.

As for unanswered questions, which is a different matter from
uncorrected misperceptions by the pov character or false explanations
by other characters ("not a single wizard went bad who wasn't from
Slytherin," for example--the reader has to figure out that Hagrid is
wrong; the characters never point out his mistake), the one I hoped
would be answered was the two unidentified memories that Snape placed
in the Pensieve. Now *there's* an example of the reader being forced
to speculate. Were they among the memories that Harry saw in the
Pensieve in "The Prince's Tale"? If so, which two were they? It might
be fun to speculate on that question, with no one's speculation being
more probable than anyone else's (so long as they're in character for
DH Snape).

Carol, hoping that others will think of unanswered questions on which
we can still speculate