He got better.
Appearance-changing spells tend to wear off after a while. Like Polyjuice Potion, which alters one’s looks for about an hour, then one changes back to normal.
Finished it two weeks ago, and I only have one burning question left: why does Harry still have his scar after the Waiting Room scene? If it represented the horcrux embedded within him, it should have gone when the horcrux did.
I thought it just represented the site of the horcrux. The scar is because the skin is scarred.
It wears off naturally. He worries at one point about the curse fading and exposing him.
I saw it differently. He saw her fall to the bottom of her cage, but he couldn’t be sure she was dead. Yet now she was plummeting to the ground, where she would most likely die, but again, what if she was suffering? What if she ended up mangled and bleeding but not quite dead? I think he was sort of making sure she didn’t suffer, as well as making sure the sidecar didn’t land on any innocent muggles.
[Apologies if this is mentioned, I’m only up to page 10 in the thread, but figured if I waited til I finished it I would never remember to post it. I’ve been reading this thread for about a week already.]
Wasn’t she hit by the killing curse? Sorry I don’t have my book with me right now to check.
I am pretty sure she was already dead when Harry blew up the sidecar.
I assumed Harry blew up the sidecar to keep the Death Eaters/Voldemort from using Hedwig’s body in some way, either to torment or trick Harry.
I disagree. The killing curse worked just fine, but because Harry was willing to die, it was the part of Riddle’s soul in Harry that was killed, not Harry’s soul.
This question hit me in the shower this morning.
In CoS, Harry used a basilisk fang and venom to destroy the diary, which unknown to him at the time was a horcrux. Harry was also a horcrux, and was bitten by the basilisk in the big fight. He was healed of the bite by Fawke’s tears.
Other than the obvious need to continue the story for 5 more epi$ode$, why didn’t the basilisk venom kill off the bit of Voldemort that was in Harry, too?
Maybe it didn’t have time to reach that area (ie the brain) before Fawkes did the healing thing? Doesn’t snake poison move gradually through the blood stream? It would take some time (minutes)–or maybe that’s just basiliks: they have the killer eyes, so their poison is slower acting?
Harry’s scar remains, just like the other horcruxes. The diary becomes a bit of paper, the cup a cup, the ring a ring etc. Nothing is transmogrified or metamorphed.
I read the book again and have a sense of disappointment I didn’t have the first time round. I keep thinking: that’s it? That’s all? I am more dissatisfied with the epilogue than the rest of the book. It clunks-it seems very much like an add on–to prevent JKR from being hounded by questions (as if she wouldn’t be anyway). Not a graceful ending to a great character.
You’d have to wonder why a basilisk needed any venom at all, really.
I thought about this too and here is what I reasoned. The venom would’ve killed off the bit of Voldemort had Fawke’s tears not healed the wound, erasing the venom. Luckily for Harry, the venom wasn’t in him long enough for the horcrux to be destroyed. If this had happened, I think Harry would most assuredly have died in the Goblet of Fire. I think that Voldemort would have won in the end in this alternative story line.
Yes I’m pretty sure she was dead, and Harry was probably pretty sure she was, but he wasn’t able to check to be absolutely sure. I thought she got grazed by something (for example, George lost an ear, but didn’t die when he was grazed by a spell) and so there was a question as to whether or not she might not be totally dead yet, and he wouldn’t want her to be suffering.
she was unfortunatly totally dead. jkr comfirmed in interview.
i was floored that she killed off hedwig and so very quickly. you would think that harry would have sent hedwig off earlier to the barrow or somewhere before he left his aunt’s house.
I’ve been following this thread and I think I’ve read all the posts, but it’s been spread out, so I don’t remember if this was mentioned.
I liked how when Voldemort gave Wormtail his shiny new hand in Book Four, he says “May your loyalty never waver again, Wormtail.”
When it does, for that split second in Book Seven, the hand kills him.
I finished the book about a week after it came out due to work and school not leaving me much time. (On a side note, I ordered it through Amazon using the free shipping method and somehow got it the day of release anyway. Apparently Amazon shipped out all copies, regardless of shipping method, a few days before and they were sitting in warehouses until the official release.) I then went on vacation and after coming back totally forgot about this thread. I’ve finally slogged through the whole thing and figured I’d address a few points that haven’t been addressed yet.
As mentioned in the interview with Rowling that was linked to in this thread, but not before either of you posted, Snape abdicated his position, so he doesn’t get a portrait.
Someone mentioned in the thread how if you go back far enough, all pureblood families are related. However, Gaunt was not an ancestor to Slytherin, he was a descendant of him. He also was not descended from Ignotus Peverell, but from Cadmus Peverell, Ignotus’s brother. (Whether there is any direct descent between Peverell and Slytherin I don’t think is mentioned. Gaunt could be descended from one of them on his father’s side and the other on his mother’s side.)
When I first read that in the book it struck me as odd as well. However, I figured it was a case of two different things mistakenly being referenced in the same way. Since the memory charms mentioned in previous books are the type along the lines of the neuralizer from Men In Black, i.e. they permanently change the memory, I imagine the charm she did was a temporary thing where her parents older memories are still there but short cirucited to the new memory. That way it’s easily reversible without any permanent changes. Rowling later says as much in the interview linked earlier. But you are right that it is a mis-edit since they should have distinguished the two in the terminology, which they didn’t.
Rowling has said she finds socks funny. It is also why a sock was the article of clothing used to free Dobby. Dumbledore no doubt saw something else, as has been speculated in this thread.
For the first question, she may have been referring to Trelawny, who I don’t believe had performed any actual spells up to that point. Otherwise, it was probably something she mentioned and then changed her mind about (wouldn’t be the first time).
For the second, it was easy. The secret keeper is simply the only one allowed to share a secret, but many people can be in on the secret. In fact, it is impossible for anyone else in on the secret to tell anyone. That’s the nature of the charm. And anyone the secret keeper tells, is effected by the charm as well. So everyone in the old OoTP no doubt knew where the Potters were hiding out. However, only Wormtail had the power to tell others. So Dumbledore and the rest knew where to find Harry.
Granted, as Marlitharn mentions, this doesn’t explain how Ron was able to tell Dobby where Bill’s house was, since Bill was secret keeper of that little tidbit.
Yes. Yes. For a few months (I believe the thinking is she died not too long after she did the interview with Skeeter). Yes.
Nope. (See aforementioned interview.) But I bet he can still say “open” in parseltongue.
The impression I got was that she wasn’t out to kill Bellatrix. It doesn’t mention any use of the Avada Kedavra on Molly’s part. Just that she aimed a curse which happened to strike right at Bellatrix’s heart. The Sectasempra curse that Snape used to (accidentally) remove George’s (Fred’s?) ear, and the curse that Umbridge used to scar Harry’s hand through the magic quill were both serious curses that weren’t among the “Unforgiveables”. I think Molly just got lucky with a shot.
But speaking of curses, I agree that Harry’s use of the cruciatus surprised me. Especially since McGonagall didn’t even react. While use of the Imperius curse could be justified by the good guys in certain circumstances, this scene flies in the face of the whole “we are defined by the choices we make theme” prevalent in the books.
NB, this was deliberate. Snape allowed George to escape, while still giving a convincing display of loyalty to Voldemort. Nice shooting, in fact.
No, it was accidental:
I read somewhere that Rowling had Harry do the Cruciatus curse because Harry is human and as frail as any of us are–who wouldn’t want to at least try it once, in the heat of anger? I don’t think he got off on it, like Bellatrix seemed to (scary witch, that one).
ah, you are correct. I missed that bit, somehow. :smack: I only saw the bit a few lines earlier “… be sure to act your part convincingly…” and thought that is what he was doing.