Suicide / Blood Protection / Psychotherapy

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 184591

Carol earlier:
> <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/184540>:
> 
> << Suicide (which would probably split his soul) would not
> end the power of the [Elder] wand. >>

Catlady responded: 
> How do you figure that? Maybe the Elder Wand thinks 'my master was
killed, so whoever killed him is my new master. But the person who
killed him is my old master, who is no longer my master' until its
brain explodes.

Carol again:

I could be wrong, of course, but if suicide could end the power of the
Elder wand, Dumbledore would at least have considered that route
(setting aside his need to have Snape as Voldemort's right-hand man
and headmaster of Hogwarts) rather than choosing to have Snape kill
him, which, if the plan had worked correctly, would have ended the
power of the now masterless wand. As I see it, killing yourself is
still killing, in contrast to choosing to allow yourself to be killed
by someone who would not become the wand's master because he was
fulfilling your request. Having Snape kill him would end the wand's
power, just as leaving it unused and dying a natural death (Harry's
choice) would end it. And that's the goal--not only leaving the wand
masterless but making it incapable of ever taking a new master by
robbing it of its power altogether.

If Dumbledore, the master of the wand, killed himself, he would still
be the master of the wand, and all Voldemort would need to do to
become master would be to disarm him, to snatch the wand from his dead
hand, exactly as he did, ending any confusion in the wand's "brain."
Voldemort would then be master of the Elder Wand, which would still
have all its powers. (Put another way, the wand would recognize the
dead Dumbledore as its master until he was disarmed, at which point it
would accept his disarmer as its master.) IMO, Dumbledore wanted to
*end* the power of the Death Stick so that it not only could not take
a master, it could not even be used to perform magic. It would have no
more power than a Muggle pencil or conductor's baton.

Catlady wrote:
<snip>
> Rowling entangles the word 'blood' when explaining the blood
protection magic. She had DD say 'where your mother's blood dwells'
using 'blood' to mean kinfolk, Petunia and Dudley (and never explained
whether it would have still worked if one of the two sisters had been
adopted). And she had DD also say 'blood' to mean that red liquid that
leaks out of injuries. <snip>

Carol responds:

I think that JKR has deliberately conflated the terms "blood" meaning
the fluid in our veins and "blood" meaning "kindred" ("blood"
relatives). It's not just the Pure-blood/Half-Blood terminology or the
blood protection and the drop of Harry's blood in Voldemort's veins.
Hagrid in speaking of his need to take care of Grawp despite the
danger to himself says something like, "Whatever yer say, blood's
important." He seems to think that evil is in the Malfoys' blood. The
narrator notes that there's "not a drop of magical blood" in the
Dursleys. Forget genetics. (Slughorn is the only person to use the
word "genes," and that seems to me like a slip on JKR's part--how
would Slughorn know about that Muggle concept, which didn't even exist
until he was well into adulthood?) In the HP books, magic really is in
the blood, just as Muggles thought it was when they invented terms
like "royal blood" and "bloodline" and "pureblood racehorse."

Carol, who is quite sure that the blood protection would not have
worked if either Petunia or Lily had been adopted any more than it
would have worked if Sirius had adopted Harry