Hmmm. What's your favorite *now*?

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 183027

> Mike:
 Was likewise bored with the giants, especially since it turns 
> out to be of no consequence. 

<massive snip>
And after the first few pensieve memories, I found that whole 
> motif was becoming tedious and of little value to either Harry or
the  story. 

Pippin:
It wasn't until my latest reading of DH that I realized why these two
bits of the story had to be there. This time I  paid close attention
to Voldemort in DH. Voldemort Mark II is  a very different person from
Voldemort Mark I, thanks to Lily's blood, but we  wouldn't know that
without the pensieve scenes. 

Mark II is in many ways more normal than Mark I -- he gets sentimental
about Hogwarts and about his family, and even about seeing his old
DE's again. He  starts to grow up a little -- he has the temper
tantrums that he never had as a child. He understands, as he did not
on his way to Godric's Hollow, that the emotion which drives him to
kill is fury. He has the capacity to to hate and the choice to love,
in a way that Mark I never had. His newly acquired (and thus immature)
emotions make  him seem  less a scary psychopath and more  a common
thug,  hardly more capable of establishing a viable empire than the
new Gurg of the Giants. And that might make Voldemort seem less dangerous.

But the giants show us otherwise. Voldie couldn't have won. But he
could very easily have destroyed the WW in the process of losing.

Pippin