Please, don’t think I’m picking on you - yesterday I had a vague feeling that other curses caused structural damage when they missed, but I couldn’t remember specific examples. Reading this this morning it was on my mind, and I went, “hey!” Granted, it’s not as good as a quoted curse and subsequent mayhem, but generally if someone’s using Avada Kedavra, it’s a big deal and mentioned specifically, so I feel pretty confident assuming the blond wizard was doing other curses. Could be wrong, of course. If I find another specifically quoted curse breaking stone, I’ll let you know.
Add me to the SS+LE=GULA (greasy unrequited love always) team. Not only does this explain why Dumbledore trusted Snape, but also why Voldemort does. Think about it: Snape goes to LV and tells him what he knows of the prophecy, and when they decide it’s Harry, he says:
Snape: My Lord, I beg you to spare Lily and only kill the boy. You must spare Lily!
Voldemort aside: The hell?
Rookwood: Snape’s got it bad for Lily, V-Dawg.
Voldemort: Okay, really, I’m not going to tell you again. Don’t call me that. It’s disrespectful.
Rookwood Makes V with two fingers and hits self in chest, then turns his palms up and bows his head.
Well, anyway, Voldemort kills Lily anyway, and that turns out to be his downfall. If he’d only listened to Snape, Harry would have been dead and Voldemort would have ruled the Earth. It would make for a more dramatic and satisfying justification for his change of heart.
I think we can be sure Neville will have a much bigger part in the final one and I’d wondered about the gum wrappers also. Could they be something akin to a Marauders’ Map?
Who retrieved Harry when his parents were killed (i.e. picked him up from his crib in the house where he was murdered and delivered him to Dumbledore)? I assumed it was Hagrid, but does the book say that?
Also, were James and Lily living in a wizarding community or in a Muggle community? As memory serves Rowling did say that Harry’s visit to where his parents died will have a significant find.
Can anyone recommend the best/most detailed synopses of the series, incidentally? I want to freshen up but I don’t really want to take the time to re-read all 6 books before Hallows comes out. (Forgot to mention above, incidentally- I think that’s a really good call on the Halloween/Veil and if she’s not using it she should - Harry’s parents, Molly’s brothers, Dumbledore, Diggory, etc., great chance for them all to make cameos.)
One of those lightning strikes that hits you on the can or just before sleep misfired and hit me when I was going through the grocery store parking lot.
Rowling’s made a lot – or Dumble has, at least – about the importance of lifedebts, that showing mercy puts that person into your service.
James Potter saved Snape’s life. Snape turned around and, a few years later, got James killed. As much as I like the idea that he carried a torch for Lily, mightn’t it also be possible that when Voldemort chose Potter as his nemesis, Snape realized he was in some mystically deep doodoo? V wouldn’t have cared – who cares, thou good and faithful servant, if I’m about to win anyway?
Considering that the Potters were under a Fidelius, it’s possible even Dumbledore didn’t even know how to find them. Snape could have provided him that important bit of information, though considering Dumbledore doesn’t appear to have shown up at all in Godric’s Hollow, sending Hagrid instead and after the fact, indicates that he had no foreknowledge that the Potters were going to be attacked.
Except that Snape was a DeathEater before he became a “double secret agent”. I doubt that DeathEater’s put that much stock in lifedebts, so I can’t imagine that Dumbledore would take the existence of one between Snape and James as such absolute proof of Snape’s loyalty.
I think the important things to consider is that Fawkes isn’t immune to death — he reincarnates serially. He is reborn, or re-hatched from the egg or whatever, as a phoenix youngling.
If you’re going to pursue a Dumbledore-is-not-dead theory, this would be a profitable line of enquiry. Me, I think for reasons of dramatic narrative that Dumbledore can’t fight Harry’s fight for him. That doesn’t excluse the possibility that there is a baby Dumbledore out there somewhere, reborn as was Fawkes.
No, he couldn’t have, since Snape wasn’t the Secret-Keeper.
They don’t have to put stock in it; it’s there whether they acknowledge it or not. Remember, we first heard of life-debts in the context of Wormtail owing Harry one.
And remember, Rowling has pretty definitively stated that there’s no communication from the Next World to this one. There are those who haven’t actually left this world yet (like ghosts and Voldemort), and of course those who have died can leave behind portraits, memories, and other traces of their time here, but from that undiscovered country none return. So don’t put too much stock in the crossing-over-at-Halloween ideas.
WhyNot, there’s another reference, after the battle, when (I think) Hermione is telling Harry what happened. I’ll look it up when I get home.
But Peter Pettigrew is a Death Eater also, or at least a flunky. Harry saved his life and Dumbledore seemed to think this was significant. I think it has the same deep mysticism as sacrificing yourself out of love.
In preview, as Chronos said. And Chronos:
No, but Pettigrew was. He obviously told Voldemort, or at least led him there.
I dunno, though; that bit seems to wind into nothing.
[hijack] And that phrase always gives me chills. [/hijack]
There are some other things. In PS, Voldemort straight-out says that Lily needn’t have died, and in PoA we learn that Voldemort repeatedly told her to stand aside while he was trying to kill Harry, and only killed her when she refused.
There’s also the “Harry looks exactly like his father, but with his mother’s eyes” thing. So every time Snape sees Harry, he sees a reminder that Lily chose James, or so the theory goes.
But whatever the deep mysticism is, it doesn’t seem to be of the type to make someone loyal to the person they owe the debt to. Pettigrew certainly doesn’t seem loyal in anyway to Harry during their next meeting, lifedebt or no.
Maybe, but them living in a completely Muggle community called Godric’s Hollow strikes me as carrying coincidence a bit far…
Speaking of Godric’s Hollow and the Fidelius Charm, how is it that Professor McGonnagal knew that that was where Voldemort showed up on Hallowe’en? And if the Fidelius Charm makes it so that only the Secret Keeper can utter the name of the place out loud, how was Minerva able to do it?
He’s the genuine article. He has the Dark Mark brand, doesn’t he?
Hey, I’m a Muggle, and I use gravity all the time!
Presumably, she already knew the secret. Given that Harry, Hermione and Ron can discuss Number Four, Grimmauld Place amongst themselves, I think we can take it as a given that people who know the secret are allowed to talk about it with other people who know the secret.
It’s also possible that when the secret was betrayed to Voldemort, the charm was dispelled.
Perhaps. Seems to me like an awful lot of folks knew about the Potters’ security plans, though. Also, I don’t see why revealing the location of their hideout to Voldemort in particular would break the spell for everyone else. As with a Dumbledore-penned note letting Harry in on the secret of Sirius’s address, Pettigrew telling Voldy strikes me as being a matter that the Secret Keeper has sole discretion over. Moody was just more reliable about showing the note only to Harry, then destroying it.
Curious thing, though. Why did it take Hagrid nearly twenty-four hours to find the baby and get him to Sussex? Hasn’t Dumbledore ever heard of Side-along Apparition?
Hey, I wonder if Harry’s going to chivvy a memory out of a wood-nymph in Godric’s Hollow, then explore it in the Pensieve with Ron and Hermione?
And it’s Number 12 Grimmauld Place. Number 4 is Privet Drive.
My craziest theory has always been that Voldemort and Harry are somehow the same person. My theory as to how this happened is too strained to go into for something so inaccurate.
Think the giants will play a role in Hallows? They seem to be non-verbal monsters, but if not then Hagrid and his baby bro was a big waste of time for a red herring side tale.
Certainly not, but it could be like a rather lesser form of that oath-I-can’t-remember-the-name-of from the latest book.
I seem to remember an interview with Rowling where she admitted that Snape HAD loved someone, which in a way made him more dangerous than Voldemort. Cannot find.
- Harry’s parents, Molly’s brothers, Dumbledore, Diggory, etc., great chance for them all to make cameos.)
[/hijack]
