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

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182282

Magpie wrote:
> I think you're missing my point, which is that I'm completely off-
book here. As long as basilisks exist in the WW--which they do--they
offer a possibility for venom that a Wizard can use to destroy a 
Horcrux. As does the existance of other Horcrux defying things. It 
doesn't have to come down to this basilisk in this Chamber killed in 
this way because of the things done in this book. That's just the way
it happened here, where everything follows everything else and comes
back to Harry. But there's a big world out there of limitless 
possiblities. <snip>

Carol reponds:
Well, sure. Anything can happen. Superman can come in and defeat LV if
we're going out of the book. Or, if we stick to characters within the
book, Grindelwald could have defeated DD with the Elder Wand and
turned the upstart calling himself Voldemort to powder.

But my point is that *within the book* there's only one known
Basilisk, and Harry, as the unwitting possessor of a soul bit
belonging to the Heir of Slytherin, is the only one who can open the
CoS, destroy the Basilisk, and make the Sword of Gryffindor capable of
destroying Horcruxes.

Sure, there must be some Wizard with intelligence close to or matching
Dumbledore's out there somewhere, but we don't see him. And
Dumbledore, for all his intelligence, can't find and destroy all the
Horcruxes even though he suspects that they exist until the events at
Godric's Hollow make it possible.

Who, in your alternate scenario (in which Snape remains a DE and
doesn't set the chain of events that lead to the creation of a
Prophecy Boy with a soul bit in his head) will figure out where the
Ravenclaw Horcrux is? Who will discover that the diary is a Horcrux?
Who will open the CoS and kill the Basilisk that does exist instead of
hunting for (or hatching) another one? Isn't the hatching of a
basilisk Dark Magic and against the law?

We have Dumbledore, who figured out part of the mystery, but even if
he chooses a faithful Order member, who can't be Dark Arts expert
Snape because in this scenario, Snape remains a DE, to share the
Horcrux secret with, but how will two adult Order members retrieve the
fake Horcrux? The boat won't allow two adults to ride in it. And one
alone will die in the attempt (even if a Wizard other than DD could
find his way in). Who would save DD from the ring Horcrux? Without
Harry's vision of Mr. Weasley in the MoM, how would he have figured
out that Nagini was a Horcrux? Without Slughorn's true memory, how
would he have known how many Horcruxes there were?

Aside from the fact that without Godric's Hollow (and
eavesdropper!Snape), we'd have no story, with Harry if he survived as
just another Wizard kid suffering from Voldie's regime, who *in the WW
that we know* and among the characters that we know could have helped
Dumbledore? Slughorn? DD couldn't even get the memory from him without
Harry's Slytherinlike persuasion.

IOW, the Prophecy, thanks to Voldemort's to thwart it, comes true.
Harry and Harry alone is "the one with the power to defeat Voldemort."
He has "the power that Voldemort knows not" (sacrificial love) and
Voldemort has made him his "equal," not in power or ability but in the
ability to speak Parseltongue (a rare ability possessed by no other
known wizard except LV himself, his dead Gaunt relatives, the
long-dead Salazar Slytherin and the even longer dead Herpo the Foul,
mentioned in FB but only hinted at in the books as the maker of a
single Horcrux) and get into Voldie's mind via the soul bit, an
ability that no one else has (though perhaps DD did some undetectable
Legilimency when Tom was in his office applying for the DADA position).

I'm not even considering Snape's post-GH role, spying on LV and using
undetectable Occlumency on him, a job that no one else could have
performed (or his "murder" of DD and delivery of the self-sacrifice
message, none of which would have been necessary if the events of GoF
hadnt happened).

All I'm saying is that of all the Wizards in the book, including the
brilliant (if secretive and manipulative) DD and the clever Dark Arts
expert Snape, not one of them could have done what Harry did because
Voldemort himself chose him and (inadvertently) gave him the powers
that were needed to defeat him.

Not one of them can speak Parseltongue. Not one of them has access
into LV's mind.

Carol earlier:
> Exactly, Alla! No Chosen One--no one to find and destroy the 
Horcruxes or sacrifice himself (not knowing that he won't die) to 
save the WW. Just a long, dreary eternity of an indestructible 
Voldemort ruling the WW. 
> 
> Magpie:
> Or else something else, because Voldemort wasn't indestructible. He
was a powerful Wizard with six Horcruxes that weren't indestructible
either.

Carol responds:
I meant "to all intents and purposes indestructible." First, someone
has to figure out that what's keeping him "alive" is Horcruxes.
Dumbledore is the only one who did so. (Of course, removing the books
on Horcruxes from the library and making the concept of Horcruxes a
forbidden topic at Hogwarts meant that no one after Tom Riddle's
generation would even know that they existed unless they encountered
the unhelpful sentence that Hermione read about Horcruxes being the
Darkest kind of magic, about which the author refuses to write--which,
BTW, explains why Snape doesn't know about Horcruxes. How Regulus
found out about them I can only guess. Maybe his parents had books on
such topics in their family library.)

I suppose that Slughorn, who only felt guilty and finally released his
memory because he was drunk and Harry had Lily's eyes, could have come
forward earlier, giving Dumbledore the information that Tom intended
to make six Horcruxes, but DD would still have had to figure out what
they were (other than the ring, the cup, and the locket) and where
they were. And without Harry, he could not have figured out that one
of them was Nagini (who might not have become a Horcrux if not for the
events in GoF) and another was the Ravenclaw diadem, right under DD's
crooked nose all this time.

And then there's destroying the Horcruxes. The Sword of Gryffindor
wouldn't work and the only Basilisk available is inaccessible to DD
without Harry's help. As for those other methods, which JKR
unhelpfully doesn't specify, they're obviously not available to HRH or
Hermione would have figured out a way to obtain them. Chances are,
they're not available to DD, either, or he would not have needed the
venom-saturated Sword of Gryffindor to destroy the ring.

I can think of one other scenario, which still requires Harry and
Godric's Hollow. Dumbledore could have trusted Snape and Snape's
skills as an Occlumens and taken him along to find the ring Horcrux.
Snape would have warned him not to put it on before he examined it
for, and removed, any curses. Then, of course, we wouldn't have had
the Snape "murdering" DD subplot because he would never have agreed to
it if DD hadn't already been dying. But possibly, Snape could have
recovered the fake locket with the help of a House-Elf (doing
"anything" means drinking poison if you have to). If the other Order
members were let in on the secret of the Horcruxes (bad idea if one of
them is Mundungus) and knew of Snape's brave action in drinking the
poison, maybe they would let him know that the real locket had been
right there in 12 GP before Mundungus took it. Mr. Weasley could then
find a way to steal the locket from Umbridge. But they still need
Harry's previous efforts with the Sword of Gryffindor and the Basilisk
to destroy the locket and the ring.

That still leaves the cup (to be somehow stolen by Snape without the
goblins or Bellatrix or LV finding out) and Nagini (to be killed by
Snape when all the others were destroyed) and the Ravenclaw Horcrux,
which, alas, no one but Harry can find. Harry's scar link and
Parseltongue are still needed along the way, however, and Snape would
hardly be aiding Dumbledore if it hadn't been for Godric's Hollow.

Carol, who rather likes Severus Snape and the Seven Horcruxes
(counting the soulbit in the scar) but thinks that Harry as the Chosen
One is still needed for such a scenario to work