Dumbledore's Unspeakable Word.

[Barry Arrowsmith]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, GulPlum <hp at p...> wrote:
> 
> How do you fit "life" (or "life-force") into Dumbledore's explanation?:
> 
> "That power took you to save Sirius tonight. That power also saved you from 
> possession by Voldemort, because he could not bear to reside in a body so 
> full of the force he detests. In the end, it mattered not that you could 
> not close your mind. It was your heart that saved you.' (OotP, p. 743 UK 
> ed, last page of Ch. 37)
> 
> So either the force was an emotion (and I'd really like to see you define 
> "life" as an emotion...) :-) or (if you want to be particularly 
> disputatious, and consider the previous sentence to have been the effective 
> element) a willingness to die, which presumably means that *giving up* the 
> power (assuming, as you do, that it's "life") is what makes it powerful.
> 
> Either way, your rationale doesn't fit.
> 

Good oh. 
An opportunity for possibly specious arguments and irritating hair-splitting. 
How can I get sensible readers to expostulate "But!" - let us count the ways.
First consider Voldy.
He rapidly vacates Harry when Harry looks as if he is ready to accept death.
Understandable; Voldy's been avoiding it for years, actively trying to death-
proof himself in fact. The last thing he wants is for young Potter to pop his
clogs while Voldy still has his feet in 'em; that wouldn't do at all. Could
result in nasty and possibly terminal consequences. Best to avoid this
potential unpleasantness and leave. This despite his taunting of DD to
zap the conjoined duo and win the war. I have a sneaking suspicion that
this wouldn't have worked and that both Voldy and DD knew it. 'Cos let's
face it, DD would have done it otherwise - he has the whole WW to consider
and the chance of securing a home win at the cost of one body would have 
been an opportunity not to be missed. Harry willingly accepting death seems
to be something else entirely and Voldy wanted nothing to do with it.

Additionally - this love stuff. Now I don't claim to be an expert on the subject,
but - It's my understanding that it is a continuing emotion - by which I mean
that (assuming he did) Harry loved Sirius *before* going to the MoM, *during*
the Ministry fight and *after* his final curtain. It's unlikely that the emotion
suddenly blossomed after he had been possessed, he'd got more immediate 
things on his mind - like Voldy. True, he does consider that one serendipitous
consequence of this whole unfortunate affair will be a reunion with the old mutt,
but I contend that  this is some sort of confirmation that his Sirius emotion was 
not new. However, if Harry loved Sirius all along and love is anathema to Voldy, 
then Voldy shouldn't have been able to enter his mind at all because the love 
will be present even if not in the forefront of his mind.

As I pointed out in a recent post, DD regards death as an adjunct to life, it's
the next great adventure after you stop getting up in the morning and scratching
your bum. There is a continuity, one implies the other, one leads to the other.
Death is the end product of life. To a medieval churchman (and some a bit more
recent) life is merely a preparation for death, for the afterlife. To deny death is
to negate the purpose of life. To deny purpose to life is to deny life itself.
Conclusion: Voldy is anti-life and Harry is the expression of life.

Um. Life as an emotion. How about 'joie de vivre'?

I await your outrage.

Kneasy