[the_old_crowd] Re: Current FAQ Poll

[Susan Albrecht]

Talisman:
> > Hmmm.  What to do about the FAQ poll. 
> > 
> > Already-answered question number 3 is obviously a
test to see 
> > who is sleeping at the wheel. 

SSSusan:
I agree.  It's a little annoying that it's garnering
some votes, actually -- and not just a few, but 15%.


Talisman: 
> > Question 1 is currently in the lead: *What happens
to a 
> > secret when the Secret-Keeper dies?*
> > 
> > I'd have thought we had enough information from
Book 3....

Pippin:
> That might make things awkward for the Potters in
future, 
> though, even if the deceased SK leaves behind a
supply of those 
> handy scraps of paper with the secret on it. I want
to know 
> whether the spell allows for a successor.

SSSusan:
In what way might it be awkward, Pippin?  I'm afraid
I'm not following you.  

The notion of a successor is interesting... though I'd
be more interested, right now, in whether there can be
a successor for a Life Debt -- whether a person can
transfer an LD from one individual to another (as has
been proposed that DD did in transfering Snape's LD to
James to a LD to Harry).

 
Talisman: 
> > That leaves question 2.  Yes, I know we've seen
the Diary Hx 
> > destroyed, but, afterall, it was destroyed with
the venomous 
> > fang of a rare magical creature--by a boy
chock-full of the 
> > Hx-maker's essence--and while it's contents was
out for a 
> > stroll.
> >  
> > Chucking the Diary in the toilet--generally
destructive to 
> > books--wasn't sufficient.  It's not clear that the
Diary Hx--
> > along with it's malignant resident-- would have
been 
> > destroyed if, say, Ron, had simply tried to rip it
up.

SSSusan:
Do we know how long the diary was in said toilet?  Is
this (gasp) movie contamination, or did Myrtle "spit
it back out" of the toilet?  I do wonder what would've
happened if it'd gotten flushed and gone on down into
the sewer pipes.  Would it have lain there, still a
horsewhallop, awaiting discovery and still protecting
its owner?  Or would it have been destroyed by the
water and... erm... muck?


Talisman: 
> > Afterall, why didn't DD deploy a Special Ops team
of Order 
> > members to find and smash Hxes? Why is he so bent
on it being 
> > young Harry's solo mission?  

Pippin:
> Because Voldemort, besides protecting the diary
against fire 
> and water, would surely have rigged it to curse
anyone who 
> succeeded in harming it. Yet Harry did so unscathed.
Apparently 
> Harry has enough of Voldemort's magic in him that
the 
> enchantments on the Diary recognized him as a
'friendly' and 
> didn't go off. 

SSSusan:
Personally, it seems a fairly big leap to suggest that
the diary recognized Harry as "friendly."  It might
have been the protections in Harry, as opposed to the
diary recognizing anything about him and his
"friendliness" or familiarity (Essence of Voldy).

Couldn't it also be that the diary was fairly easy to
destroy because it was Voldy's first attempt at a
horslut?  Perhaps he hadn't quite figured out or
developed his super-duper,
I-kill-you-if-you-mess-with-me defenses just yet.

Or perhaps Voldy *designed* this Hx differently than
the others he created later, by virtue of the fact
that he *wanted* someone to pick it up and write in it
in order to bring him back.  That might mean he had to
leave it somehow more vulnerable to destruction
because he wanted it to have that dual purpose of
storing a soul bit *and* having the ability to bring
his earlier self back out?  

I'm inclined to think it was a combination of the
protection against Voldy that resides in Harry and the
perhaps relative weakness of the particular diary
howchop.  


Pippin:
> Harry also seemed drawn to the Diary far more than
Ron or 
> Hermione, so maybe Dumbledore was hoping that Harry
would be 
> able to recognize horcruxes by this affinity, an
ability that 
> remains untested since the locket horcrux was a
fake.

SSSusan:
That's an interesting possibility.  While I think
Harry was (and I know I as a reader was ) in awe of
DD's ability to FEEL and SENSE the presence of magic
-- of particular types, styles, varieties, even to
recognize "Voldy's kind of magic," perhaps that was a
very special gift of his.  And I remember thinking as
I read, "How the hell is HARRY going to be able to
learn to do that kind of thing?  He's still learning
TEXTBOOK spells and enchantments."  

IOW, I couldn't imagine his so quickly developing the
kind of sensitivity that DD displayed in the cave, in
terms of recognizing magic and Voldy's presence in it.

However, it could be that the connection between Harry
& Voldy, the Essence of Voldy within Harry, will help
him develop or will mean he automatically has an
"affinity" for recognizing Voldy's hoodoos in the
needs-to-be-short-term search.


ANYWAY, back to Talisman's point about which FAQ item
to vote for.  I know that one reason I favored #2 was
the possibility of finding out that, other than the
diary, one might typically need to DO something more
than destroy the encasing object in order to destroy
the hx within.  It has been suggested many places, for
instance, that Harry might need to gather the
horlopses and then toss them behind the Veil to truly
get them out of this world.  

*If* Jo could be trusted to answer the question fully,
the possibility of finding out whether it's a one-step
process (destroy the object and you destroy the hx
simultaneously) or a two-step process (destroy the
object, but you still gotta discard the hx somehow)
would be interesting.

Siriusly Snapey Susan