Explain This Passage

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 180562

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "rlevatter" <rlevatter at ...> wrote:
>
> Wow!
> 
> For my first post, I'm amazed at the response. Much of it was
> very interesting, and of course I agree the key issue is the
> definition of half-blood, which may encompass more than just
> "one muggle parent".
> 
> But instead of analyzing the terms, let's step back a moment
> and think about what Dumbledore was trying to convey to Harry
> in the passage in OoP that I initially quoted. Explaining the
> prophesy to Harry, noting that it could have referred to either
> him or Neville, what is Dumbledore saying here? I now paraphrase
> the passage without using "blood" terms:
> 
> "And note, Harry, that Voldemort, with only one Muggle parent,
> chose not to go after Neville, with two magical parents and a
> long lineage of magic, despite his professed belief that those
> are the only wizards of value. Instead he went after you, whom
> he saw as just like him, even though you have two magical parents
> like Neville while he had only one."
> 
> My point has less to do with bloodline definitions and more
> with trying to understand the logic of what Dumbledore was
> trying to tell Harry, or what Voldemort's thinking was. When
> I rephrase it as I did above, is Voldemort's logic clear to
> you? In a strong sense, neither Harry nor Neville are like
> Voldemort in the circumstances of their birth. So why DID
> Voldemort choose Harry over Neville?
> 
> RL
>
Carol responds:

I don't think that Voldemort would have paraphrased DD's words as you
do because to him, it *is* all about "blood" and bloodlines. Twice,
once is CoS as Diary!Tom and once in GoF, he refers to Lily as "your
Muggle mother." As far as he was concerned, Harry's mother was no
different than his own father even though she could do magic. (He
might have thought differently if she'd fought back when he tried to
kill her son, but then there would have been no self-sacrifice, no
Love magic, and no story.)

Dumbledore is saying that Voldemort, a Half-Blood, identified with
another Half-Blood rather than with the Pure-Blood Longbottom child,
perhaps because he secretly felt discriminated against (cf. Severus
Snape calling himself "the Half-Blood Prince"). I'm quite sure that he
hated his own Muggle blood as well as his Muggle father, which fueled
his hatred of Muggle-borns and his youthful desire to "carry on
Salazar Slytherin's noble work" and "purge the school of all who were
unworthy to attend it."

Here he was, the greatest Dark wizard in a century, more powerful than
the pure-bloods he recruited as followers. It's no surprise to me
that, despite his seeming to spout pure-blood supremacy and
encouraging his followers to do so, he never targets Half-Bloods.
Snape, another Half-Blood, is a trusted lieutenant (big mistake, LV),
rising to the position formerly held by the pure-blood Lucius Malfoy.
Dumbledore, "the only one [Voldemort] ever feared, is also a
Half-Blood (his mother was a Muggle0born). After his takeover of the
MoM, Voldemort allows Half-Bloods to attend Hogwarts; it's only
Muggle-borns (and "Muggle lovers" like Charity Burbage) who are hunted
and imprisoned or killed. (He also deplores or pretends to deplore the
shedding of Wizard blood, including the many Half-Bloods attending
Hogwarts in that proclamation.)

As I said before, Muggle-borns have no Muggle "blood" because their
parents are Muggles.  Consequently, having one as a parent is no
different, from the perspective of Voldemort and his followers, than
having a Muggle as a parent. (Lucius Malfoy refers to Hermione in CoS
as "a girl of no wizard family," meaning that she has no Wizarding
"blood." And, of course, Lucius later plants Riddle's diary in Ginny's
cauldron, knowing that it's designed to rid the school of that
undesirable element, with the apparent certainty that those
Muggle-lovers, Albus Dumbledore and Arthur Weasley, would be disgraced
as further benefits of his plan.)

Carol, noting that it's necessary to think as Voldemort does, in terms
of "blood" rather than magical ability, in order to follow his thought
process (which, perhaps, does not qualify as logic)