How It All Ends and Other Blather

[Barry Arrowsmith]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "Lyn J. Mangiameli" <kumayama at e...> wrote:
>
> Ah, Kneasy, I again follow in your footsteps. Reading Talisman's 
> most enjoyable essay, I had much the same reaction: Possession 
> Theory is the cosmology which underpines all events, and 
> Talisman just reported some of the specific workings. 
> 
> Of course, as you know, I think the evil force preceeds Sally. The 
> striking think, to me, is that Sally didn't appear to start out bad. 
> He was the special friend of Griffyndor and started out (and to a 
> great extent remains) a respected school founder. Sally changed, 
> he almost surely made a Faustian bargain, perhaps in his desire
> to protect and strengthen the hand of his magical bretheren. 

Oh, for sure old Sal wasn't the origin of evil,  but he may have been
the first really powerful wizard in the HP WW historical timeline to
become corrupted.

> 
> Tom may have started out largely bad, but I suspect he too was 
> offered a Faustian deal. He took it, to strengthen himself, but 
> perhaps the superficial explanation was again to strengthen those 
> of magical blood. 
> 

Um. I'm not convinced that Tom gave a toss about anybody besides
Tom, especially once his misconceptions about his antecedents were
straightened out. That he did a deal is a good working hypothesis,
though I'm less sure that Sally did.

Sal was tempted, IMO -  by the possibility of immortality. There're
ennough references to it throughout the books to make it a
reasonable motivation. He only partly succeeded - his spirit, persona
or whatever you want to call it did become effectively immortal, not
so his body. He became a disembodied entity, as exemplified by 
Vapour!Mort - the potential for irresistible power is there, but it
can't work properly until it gets a body. Better still, an immortal body,
then he'd really have the world by the tail. 

Sal disappears, nobody knows what happened to him, or if they do
they ain't saying. But there's his very own secret Chamber, reputed
to house a monster. Well, the Basilisk qualifies as a monster, but so
in a different way would  the  Sally!Entity, which hangs around,
twiddling its non-existent thumbs, waiting for someone to come
along and *finish Slytherin's noble work*. Not, I contend, crunching
Muggles and half-bloods, but achieving immortality.

Enter Tom. A deal is struck; Tom's body houses Sally's powers and
off they go - to what? To search for immortality for the body. He/they
still haven't quite managed it, there'll be an Achilles heel somewhere,
and Voldy's dentition will chatter in the dust. The essence-of-evil spirit 
will survive and there'll be lots of moralising about no-one being born
evil, temptation, making choices, etc. Or maybe they'll find a way of
imprisioning it, a la the Genie in the Bottle. 

Those of a religious bent generally concentrate on the New Testament 
for their parallels; me, I see no problem in going back to the Old - 
The Fall. It's what started all the trouble in the first place, if you believe
that sort of thing. Seem to recall a serpent played a major role in that
one too.