Genre WAS: That Bloody Man Again

[Jen Reese]

Nora:
> Actually, there's a question for the list as a whole: can you
> take the power of love and Harry's pure heart with a completely 
> straight face?  
 
Silmariel:
> I can't. Actually reading the power of love so clearly stated as an
> axiom  ended my suspension of disbelief, so I put it in the
> 'whatever'  list and  tried to ignore it anytime it surfaced 
(cheap 
> trick, but it ended working). That kind of things do not bother me 
> in books more clearly cutted into Good/Light/Order and 
> Bad/Darkness/Chaos, more unrealistic scenarios, or when  it is 
> stated from the beginning of the series.

Pippin:
> But if I had to hazard a guess now, it's not that Harry's never 
> been cruel or selfish, because he has. But he's never wanted to
> hurt anyone who he thought cared about him, or anyone he thought 
> was weaker than himself. He's been that way from the beginning. 
> He's also never intentionally misused his powers, though once or 
> twice he's attempted it.  Still, when  he failed with the
> cruciatus curse, he did not try to find somebody to teach it to
> him.

Jen: I buy it, because it's not about Harry's day-to-day activities 
and imperfections--we see he's pretty average and capable of all the 
usual human frailities.

Harry's pure soul and ability to love are important in magical 
terms, not Muggle ones. These concepts are vastly important to the 
connection between Harry and Voldemort. Dumbledore considers Harry 
remarkable because he shouldn't be who he *is*. He was cursed by the 
most evil wizard ever and marked by the experience like no wizard 
before him, then denied his true identity for 11 long years. 

At Hogwarts, Harry has been touched by evil hands, entered the 
Chamber of Secrets, been targeted and sucked by Dementors, forced to 
give up his blood for Voldemort's re-birthing and ultimately 
possessed by Voldemort. Yet he remains pure. To pass so closely to 
evil, to even be possessed by it, yet never be drawn to it, must 
signal something important in the terms Dumbledore speaks of 
as "magic at its deepest, its most inpentrable."

Harry does not have to be supremely magically powerful, or perfectly 
behaved, for his pure soul to cause the demise of Voldemort. 
Voldemort seems to be taking care of that part himself :). Each time 
he attempts to thwart or kill Harry by deeply evil means, the 
rejection seems to increase Harry's 'ability to love' in the sense 
that he grows more & more able to repel Voldemort. Harry also 
increases his ability to draw magical help to himself, and not 
always in the form of a more skilled wizard, either. He was 
completely alone in the graveyard and still managed to escape 
because both the Phoenix song and the mere *echos* of Voldemort's 
victims were drawn to help him. Contrast that with the ambiguously 
loyal DE's helping Voldemort that night. The power of love, indeed.

Jen