The force in the room

[davewitley]

Summarising from memory, so apologies if I am misrepresenting.

I agree with the Goat that it's hard for it not to be love, 
especially if one takes into account JKR's claim that there is a 
Christian dimension to the series.  We do have signals to this in 
canon: for example Dumbledore's statement that Voldemort doesn't 
understand love.

I agree with Kneasy that 'love' as it stands is too vague without 
further elucidation. 

I also agree with Kneasy that Harry's record has some significant 
flaws, and I believe that this is Harry's, not JKR's, failure.  That 
is, by having Hermione say Harry has a 'saving people thing' she is 
hinting that there is more to love than good intentions.

As far as the vague *nature* of love is concerned, I doubt we will 
get an abstract definition, or , if we do, it will be problematic: 
perhaps a throwaway line by Dumbledore.  I think the way love will 
chiefly be defined is through examples, including a number that we 
already have throughout the series.  Lily and Sirius are the most 
obvious cases.

What we have not really considered in this debate is *whose* love 
Harry is full of, and, speaking more abstractly, what is the 
relationship between the force in the room and people.

I think that where JKR may be going with this is the role of faith 
in making love work.  Hermione and, implicitly, JKR criticise Harry 
for assuming that he has to be the one to get out there and 'save' 
people.  It works OK (though is perhaps unnecessary) in the lake in 
GOF.  It is disastrous at the end of OOP.

So I think it's worth going back and looking more carefully at the 
positive examples of love being powerful.  The first and most 
obvious is Lily.  The reason Harry, as a baby, is so effective 
against Voldemort is not that he is full of love for anyone - his 
mother, humanity, his enemies - but that he is protected by her love 
for him.  Similar reasoning applies in the case of Quirrell: Harry's 
initiative in going after the stone is commendable and could 
conceivably be interpreted as love in action, but it has nothing to 
do with why Quirrell can't touch him at the crucial moment.

When we come to the possession in OOP, Harry remembers Sirius, and 
there is an immediate effect on Voldemort.  There is more than one 
way to interpret this, even within the assumption that love is in 
some way involved.  The 'obvious' way is that Harry's affection for 
Sirius was what drove Voldemort out, but there is an alternative, 
that what counted was Sirius' death on Harry's behalf.

This is an intriguing parallel to Lily.  If this is the power that 
Harry has here, then it is not automatic in operation (from Harry's 
point of view), in the way that Lily's sacrifice seems to be. 
Voldemort is not affected until Harry remembers Sirius, and mentally 
embraces him.  That's faith, IMO.

With this in mind, we can go back and look at some of the other 
crucial incidents in the series.  In the Chamber, what works is 
Harry's expression of faith: "he's not as gone as you might think"; 
loyalty, Dumbledore calls it; keeping faith, we might say.

It's interesting to look at what eventually causes Harry to create a 
successful Patronus.  He has been repeatedly told to think of a 
happy thought, without much success.  In the event, what makes the 
difference is his *knowing* that he had suceeded, because he had 
seen it in the other timeline.  Faith. (Remember, too, that Sirius 
was able to resist the Dementors because of the knowledge of his 
innocence - 'not a happy thought'.)

So, the room.  It's tempting to suggest that what is in the room is 
faith, but I don't think so.  Faith is what gets you inside the 
room, what makes the contents - love - effective.  IMO.

What has been special about Harry is not that he loves but that he 
has been loved.  He now needs to learn to put that to use, instead 
of making it up as he goes along.  And I predict he will need to 
resist again the temptation to turn that love upon himself (which 
the Mirror was about) instead of outward.  I still think that will 
turn out to have been Voldemort's downfall in the beginning: that he 
was loved (and has a mother-love spell on himself) but could never 
believe in it.

David, wondering about a parallel between Snape and the prodigal 
son's elder brother