GoF CH 27-29 Post DH look/ Snape and Harry redux

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182210

Alla:
> 
> Yeah, LOL, subsequent saving of one Severus Snape versus happy 
childhood for Harry is really no brainer for me.
> 
> And yes, of course DE would tell, so, two choices I can see, killing
Snape right here on the spot, yes, yes I know Dumbledore is too
**noble** for that, LOL, or at least obliviating him and making sure
that even alive he would never tell. ,snip>


Carol responds:
No Snape doesn't necessarily mean no eavesdropper. If someone else,
say Mulciber, had overheard part of the Prophecy and repeated it to
LV, that person would not have asked LV to spare Lily's life and set
in motion that events that would lead to the creation of the Chosen
One. (Lily's sacrifice would not have had the same effect if she had
not been offered a chance to live. and that chance could not have
happened without Snape.)

But if there was no eavesdropper at all (or DD had murdered Snape, as
you facetiously suggest) and LV had not acted to thwart the Prophecy,
the WW would have had no fourteen-year respite. Nothing and no one,
not even Dumbledore, would have kept him from gaining power and
murdering everyone (even his own DES!) who stood in his way.

Pippin pointed out that all of the surviving Order members are either
killed off after LV returns to his body (Sirius Black, Emmeline Vance)
or killed in the Seven Potters chase (Mad-Eye) or the battle of
Hogwarts (Lupin) or "taken" (I suppose that Sturgis Podmore's arrest
can count as being "taken"; it's Lucius Malfoy's fault that Sturgis is
arrested, anyway). Hagrid is kidnapped, ironically, by his beloved
Acromantulas, and would no doubt have been killed if Voldemort had won
the battle. Other powerful witches and wizards also disappear or are
murdered by LV or his henchmen, including Amanda Bones and Barty
Crouch Sr., not to mention that Voldemort is indirectly responsible
for Dumbledore's "murder." And, of course, the Longbottoms are
Crucio'd into insanity by LV's followers even before he returns. As
someone (I think it's Sirius Black) says, once Voldemort decided to
kill a person, they had no chance of survival, Harry being the only
known exception. (Lily is also a partial exception, but Black didn't
know that.)

If LV had not been vaporized, there would have been no happy WW for
Harry to live in. Hogwarts, if it existed, would have been run by the
DEs, a much worse regime than Snape's, I'm sure, with no House except
Slytherin and the students routinely taught Dark magic; Diagon Alley
would either resemble Knockturn Alley or would look as it does in DH,
not at all the happy, magical place that Harry encounters in SS/PS.
Muggle-borns would be murdered or persecuted. You seem to think that
because the Order members survived after Godric's Hollow that they
would have survived if Godric's Hollow had never happened. I don't
think so. The Voldie War would have continued, and conditions would
quickly have reached the point where we see them in DH. the only
person (other than Harry) with any power to oppose Voldemort was
Dumbledore, and he needed Harry (and Snape!) to help him.

> Alla:
> 
> Sure, but again, this is of course just a speculative ONE 
possibility. So, here we go. Snape does not tell Prophecy because he
is either dead or obliviated, take your pick. So Voldemort never 
attacks prophecy couple. 

Carol:
And there's no Chosen One, chosen by Voldie himself and inadvertently
given the very powers he needs to defeat LV by the back-firing AK.
Instead, LV is kept alive by his Horcruxes and continues his takeover
of the WW.

Alla:
Yes, Peter is betraying the order with whatever information, but he
is, I don't know caught in the act when he is meeting with the DE, OR
say they are planning the operation and it goes badly, and they
realize that Peter is the traitor, off to Azkaban with him.
> 
> There are casualties of course, but Lily and James already 
successfully defied Voldemort three times, so they are defying him 
again – once or twice and survive with Harry living with them and 
being just Harry.

Carol:
How can Harry just be Harry in a WW like the one that existed in VW1
and just kept getting worse? We saw what happened when LV returned.
The only person standing in his way was Dumbledore. Once Dumbledore
fell, the rest was easy. Or would have been if Harry hadn't destroyed
the Horcruxes and defeated Voldemort through the power of love and
self-sacrifice. If Voldemort hadn't been vaporized, those events would
have occurred much earlier. (And Snape would not have played his part
in helping Dumbledore. DD would have had no spy among the DEs and no
one to save him from the ring Horcrux. Harry, of course, would not
have needed specific protection. He would have been in the same
precarious position as any other Wizarding kid.)
>
Alla: 
> <snip> Correct me if I am wrong, but nowhere was it said that this
is the ONLY way to defeat Voldemort, so really for all I care somebody
else discovered and destroyed Horcruxes. Dumbledore did some of them,
I do not see how the fact that he did not speak Parseltongue means (
as Carol speculated) that the diary could not have been destroyed. <snip>

Carol responds:
The Prophecy says "The *One* with the power to defeat the Dark Lord
approaches." that sounds to me as if only one person has that power.
And certainly only Harry has powers given to him directly (if
inadvertently) by Voldemort: access to LV's thoughts and the ability
to speak Parseltongue.

The *only* way to defeat Voldemort is to destroy the Horcruxes, right?
And Dumbledore failed to do that. After all that time and all his
research, he managed to destroy *one* and was cursed by it. Had it not
been for "Professor Snape's timely action," he would have died. And it
takes two people, one with powers that don't register compared with
DD's, to ride in that boat, and two people to get at least one of them
out alive--all that to find a fake Horcrux. DD *needed* Harry. He
could not have done it alone, and he would not have thought to take
anyone else to the cave with him had he found it. (He also need Harry
to find the Ravenclaw Horcrux; I'm not sure whether DD alone could
have found and destroyed the HUfflepuff cup; if there hadn't been a
Harry, perhaps he could have. And he probably could have killed
Nagini. But without Slughorn's memory, which he needed Harry to obtain
for him, he wouldn't even have known how many Horcruxes he was looking
for.)

As for the Chamber of Secrets, DD knew who had opened it fifty years
earlier and knew that it had to be Voldemort who was doing it this
time around, but he didn't know about the diary (Ginny wasn't about to
tell him). If he could have discovered the Chamber of Secrets himself,
surely he would have done so long before rather than relying on a
twelve-year-old boy to find and open it. And he didn't even know that
a Horcrux was involved until after Harry had destroyed the diary. 

Carol, who thinks that the only way that Harry could have had a normal
wizarding childhood would be if Tom Riddle had never been born (or had
been sent to Azkaban as a boy for murdering his parents and had died
there without ever coming to power)