Some speculations on the night at GH

[Lyn J. Mangiameli]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "joywitch_m_curmudgeon" <joym999 at a...> 
wrote:
> 
> --- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "Lyn J. Mangiameli" 
> <kumayama at e...> wrote:
> 
>  a real lot of very interesting speculations, many of which I'd bet 
> are correct.
> 
> One thing sticks out, though.  It's really hard for me to believe 
> that Dumbledore devised a plan to capture Voldemort that involved 
> the death of an infant, or even the great likelihood of that death, 
> and even harder for me to believe that he got that infant's parents 
> to go along with it.
> 
> --Joywitch M. Curmudgeon

Hello Joywitch,
I'm old enough to be one of those who watched the last television episode of MASH with 
rapt attention. It begins with many of the medical staff on a bus that also contained 
multiple Korean civilians. They somehow were hiding as a North Korean military patrol 
passed very close by. In the bus a mother was holding her baby, and it began crying. The 
cries would have revealed all the people on the bus to certain capture, and likely death, at 
the hands of the enemy patrol. The protagonist surgeon  (Hawkeye for those who are 
familiar with MASH) spoke quietly but forcefully to the mother to keep the baby quiet or 
they all would be killed. The baby was quieted, and the enemy passed by. When things 
were safe for them to move on again, Hawkeye made contact with the mother and was 
horrified to find the mother suffocated the baby to keep it from jeapordizing the lives of 
all the many others on the bus. 

It was a heartwrenching and devestating scene, both for the characters, and for most who 
watched that final episode. While the parallel is not exact, I think the analogy is close 
enough to the situation that DD and the Potters faced. The entire WW is in jeapordy. Terror 
abounds, friends are being killed with anticipated regularity, the good guys are losing. The 
prophecy indicates that Harry may be the mechanism that will revive a whole world and 
way of life. 

Note that DD in OOTP describes the  singular caring for Harry he developd AS HARRY 
GREW OLDER, as the "flaw in my brilliant plan....I cared about you too much...I cared more 
for your happiness that your knowing the truth, more for your peace of mind than my 
plan, more for your life than the lives that might be lost if the plan failed....What did I care 
if numbers of nameless and faceless people and creatures were slaughtered in the vague 
future, if in the here and now your were alive, and well, and happy? I never dreamed that I 
would have such a person on my hands." [Scholastic HB edition, 838-839]

So DD did indeed devise a plan that might well result in the death of Harry, and I would 
submit even as an infant, in order to save others. He openly admits to this, and only over 
time with Harry did he find his feelings were undoing his plan, and in so doing, risking 
countless others in the WW (Frankly, I think this admission is very ominous for DD having 
to correct this flaw in the future). So yes, I think DD was willing to sacrifice the infant for 
the benefit of the good of the entire WW world. 

Now I suspect DD might have tried to lay safeguards to avoid Harry's death if possible, but 
he called upon Harry's parents to make the ultimate sacrifice, of not only themselves, but 
their son. James had to give his life in a futile fight with LV not because he believed he 
might win or might succeed in protecting his family, but to convince LV that he was not 
entering the trap that had been set for him. Lilly, in the end, calls for mercy, not so much 
to just avoid Harry's death and or possession, but to avoid her having to be complicit in it. 
The power of Lilly's sacrifice is so great because she not only was she willing to sacrifice 
herself, but also her only son to save the WW. [I'm not religious, but the parallels here are 
striking]. She almost surely died in the hope that the protections might work and Harry 
would be survive, but also with the awareness that Harry might well die for to save the 
WW. 

I think that LV finally gained awareness of this during OOTP. At one level, he was right, it 
was not Harry that was so special as it was his parents' complete sacrifice. Why do I think 
LV knew? because of the possession in the MOM. Note how DD explains it back in his 
office at Hogworts. "Voldemort's aim in possessing you, as he demonstrated tonight, 
would not have been my destruction. It would have been yours. He hoped, when he 
possessed you briefly a short while ago, that I would sacrifice you in the hope of killing 
him." Now why did LV come to that conclusion? I would suggest it is because LV has finally 
figured out that this was DD's initial plan. A plan that failed before, but one that DD might 
follow again. 

So am I right, who knows but JKR. But is it plausible and consistent with the canon I recall?, 
I think so.

Lyn