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

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 182257

 
> Montavilla47:
> 
> A minor quibble, Magpie.  It's logical to think that the Horcruxes
> acted like the lives of a cat, so that if Voldemort had made six
> of them, you simply had to kill him seven times.  But it doesn't
> actually seem to work like that.  When Voldemort was killed
> the first time (by the rebounding AK), it didn't seem to affect
> the Horcruxes then in existence.  None of them became less 
> evil or powerful or... went dead like a broken lightbulb.  
> 
> So, I don't think it just a matter of killing him. As long as he
> had any Horcruxes working, he'd come back. 

Magpie:
Right--I didn't mean that the Horcruxes went dead. They weren't dead 
in DH, but they were still taken out. You just needed to have the 
right weapon. What you're describing is exactly what we have in DH--
Voldemort himself is alive in his body, and then he's got six 
powerful Horcruxes lying around that have to be destroyed and are 
destroyed by regular Wizards. 

Montavilla: 
> Also, both time Voldemort died, it was his own AK that did it.  I 
> wonder, although there's absolutely no canon to back it up, 
> whether an AK fired by just anybody, James Potter say, would 
> have been able to stop Voldemort.  Maybe it would have just
> bounced off, and it was only the self-inflicted AK that could
> get through the protection of the Horcruxes.

Magpie:
I can't see why it wouldn't have worked if the Horcruxes were 
destroyed too. It was the Horcruxes that kept him alive the first 
time, but I don't see any reason he'd have to kill himself with an 
AK to die. I think that just happened because JKR didn't want Harry 
to actually cast the AK at him, and because of the specific 
situation there Voldemort's curse would rebound. 

Philip:
Dumbledore here reveals that the great power of Harry is to resist 
the power of Voldemort. In DH we see Ron attempting to kill a 
Hocrux. Without Harry, who has no trouble facing one on his own in 
CoS, I doubt he would have managed to stab it. We aren't 
discussing `Gryff-ness', more purity and selflessness.

Magpie:
Yes, but first all the stuff about Harry being so incredibly full of 
love or more pure or selfless than everybody else is frankly just 
bs. He's a great kid at 11, but so are other kids, who could also be 
more selfless. (I'm not sure what "pure" means in this context, but 
I'm sure they could be that too). I would say Neville Longbottom, 
for instance, has him beat in all those areas.

The locket, as far as we know, is the only Horcrux that pulled 
anything like what happened with Ron, and it still wasn't something 
that no other teenager would have been able to withstand. Ron's 
particulary insecure in himself and was vulnerable to it, but could 
do it with a little encouragement from someone else. I think plenty 
of other kids would have been able to do it as well. 

Philip:
It's for this reason that I don't think you can automatically assume 
that the Order could have done the task that Harry was set to do. 
Also you gloss over the fact that it was Harry, through his unique 
connection and understanding of Riddle, which allowed him to work 
out where the Horcuxes were.

Magpie:
It's true we can't assume anything, but given the situation as it 
was I see no reason to think the Order--or others--couldn't have 
done what Harry did. Harry was certainly lucky to have Voldemort-
vision to tell him where the Horcruxes were, but Harry was also 
particularly unsuited to do the task any other way. He's mostly 
sitting around waiting for it to come to him.The main time Harry 
actually comes up with a logical deduction is when he looks in the 
LeStrange vault--which is good thinking, but also thinking that 
another person might have done. Harry's main strength was that he 
was written in such a way that he had to find them all, which often 
came down to luck and authorial manipulation. That's why Harry is 
sometimes far behind the average reader in figuring out where the 
Horcruxes are, even when he's using similar deductive reasoning. 
("Where have I seen a locket/tiara before...?")

-m

-m