Dumbledore's Unspeakable Word (getting somewhat less OT, maybe?)

[joywitch_m_curmudgeon]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "davewitley" 
<dfrankiswork at n...> wrote:
 
> David, who can't imagine why Joywitch would fear teasing

I fear nothing!

Getting back to the Goat's question:  I don't really understand, 
either, why Dumbledore doesn't just say the word "love," but his 
failure to do so always reminds me of one of my other favorite 
children's fantasy books: "A Wrinkle in Time."  One of the witches 
tells Meg, as she is sent off to rescue Charles Wallace from 
It, "You have something that It does not have."  ("It" is a garden 
variety evil entity who has imprisioned her brother, Charles 
Wallace.)  Meg struggles, during the course of a chapter-long walk 
to whereever it was that It lives, to understand what she, a mere 
girl, could possibly have that the powerful It does not have, and at 
the last moment realizes that what she has is love, especially her 
love for Charles Wallace, which is what rescues him.  In that book 
(which I would bet my beloved new cobalt blue Kitchenaid stand mixer 
JKR has read), the fact that the word love is never mentioned until 
the very end makes the plot much more powerful and far less 
sentimental than it would have been if Meg had been perusing her 
capacity for love the entire while.

If you think of the scene at the MoM where Voldie has possessed 
Harry -- Harry is in pain, Voldie is crying out to Dumbledore to 
kill him, and Harry is thinking, yes, Dumbledore, kill us now and 
let this pain end.  Then, as he thinks about how he'll see Sirius 
again when he dies, his mind is filled with love for Sirius and 
Voldie is no longer able to possess him.  Love is the only thing 
that seems to be more powerful than either Voldie or It.

I guess what I'm arguing pretty much the same thing that Mike 
speculated -- that Dumbledore doesn't actually use the word love 
because use of the word somehow cheapens it by making it into 
sentimental smush, but that in doing so she is making a literary 
allusion to A Wrinkle In Time (or just stealing a plot device, 
depending on how you look at it).

--JZC