World's Greatest Predictions
| Killing Voldemort: The "Carefully Worded" Prophecy |
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And either must die at the hand of the other....Harry interprets this to mean either he or Voldemort must kill the other. But that's not quite right. That'd be "either must die by the hand of the other". Harry doesn't need to cause Voldemort's death, he just has to have Voldemort "at hand". The ideal hand to do the actual killing is Voldemort's own. Remember the spiders? Symbol of Voldemort's betrayal? This is the first description of Voldemort resurrected: Voldemort looked away from Harry and began examining his own body. His hands were like large, pale spidersVoldemort is destined to die at the hand of Harry, but by his own hand. The only tricky part now is getting Voldemort to be in two places at once. Fortunately, we've already been shown exactly how that's done. We the readers were gently "reminded" of the existence of Time-Turners in Half-blood Prince: "I always knew yeh'd find it hard ter squeeze me inter yer timetables," [Hagrid] said... "Even if yeh applied fer Time-Turners--"Rowling uses little reminders like this all the time. Late in OotP, for example, she allowed the Weasley Twins to stuff Montague into the Vanishing Cabinet. That's so we'd remember the existence of the cabinet when it played its major role in book six. (And forget Hermione's insistence that the "entire stock of Ministry Time-Turners" was destroyed last summer. The Daily Prophet can lie, there can be other Time-Turners, the "smashed" Time-Turners could be employed in their current self-repairing state, etc.) It should be no surprise that Voldemort's arrogance leads to his downfall (again). Here is the seed of his destruction: "...awful things have happened when wizards have meddled with time....Loads of them ended up killing their past or future selves by mistake!"Why would Voldemort take such a risk? We already know what's going to be at stake for him in book seven: his Horcruxes. To keep the stakes high, Harry will still have at least one object Horcrux to destroy when he goes to the final encounter. Harry will succeed, and Voldemort will seek to undo it. |
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Ron has so many clues.... Various aquatic and kingly references all point to him being "The Fisher King", as does his wounded leg (end of PoA) and his own image in the Mirror of Erised (holding two cups). He's also loaded with death omens and a mulititude of asphyxiation references, everything from mouthing "like a goldfish out of water" (GoF 23), to being nearly strangled with purple robes (OotP 6), to "You seem to be drowning twice." (GoF 14). We can tie these bits together with one more all-important pattern: Ron and the number fourteen.
The fourteenth major arcana in a tarot deck is called "Temperance." It depicts an individual with one foot in the water and one foot out (perfect for Ron) holding a pair of cups (perfect again). The pouring represents the dilution of wine with water. When you put all of it together, it means that Ron will drink a potion that's got "something else" in it. That "something else" won't be water (as per the Tarot card), but something that looks exactly like water: According to the book, he had to stir counterclockwise until the potion turned clear as water.Harry was mixing a Draught of Living Death. Count the number of times he stirred counterclockwise: Harry shrugged and continued what he was doing. Seven stirs counterclockwise, one clockwise, pause... seven stirs counterclockwise, one stir clockwise...Fourteen stirs. We've gone full circle. Pun intended. So Ron will drink the Draught but we won't know it. Shortly after, he'll be nearly "at the hand of" Harry, helping out in some part of the battle, when the Draught kicks in. At that moment, Voldemort will -- to all appearances -- kill Ron. But in reality, Voldemort will have just killed his own future self who was positioned "at the hand of" Harry (trying to intercept an object Horcrux, most likely). Rule #1 for Time-Travel: "You must not be seen." Voldemort-from-the-future is invisible, so Voldemort-from-the-present doesn't realize what he's doing (and has no warning). One tiny problem remains. The Voldemort who went back in time still had a Horcrux named Harry Potter. |
| Blood of the Enemy: A Payment |
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"He said my blood would make him stronger than if he'd used someone else's," Harry told Dumbledore....Dumbledore understands the price of blood. Readers were even given a tutorial at the entrance to the cave: "I rather think," said Dumbledore... drawing out a short silver knife... "that we are required to make payment to pass."Harry's blood, taken in the Little Hangleton graveyard, was a payment for Voldemort's soul fragment. Voldemort probably understands blood payment, but at that time he didn't know Harry was a Horcrux. Among the powers/abilities/phenomena that Harry gets from Voldemort, one thing has a personality of its own: The "little voice" in Harry's head. This voice gives us evidence of Harry's blood payment. After Little Hangleton, it undergoes a radical shift in behavior. In CoS 11, it is a "nasty little voice" that thinks Harry belongs in Slytherin. In PoA 17, when Harry is thinking about killing Sirius Black, the voice gives this Voldemortish advice: "Do it now!" But by the fifth book, the voice has adapted itself to Harry's values. It speaks "fairly" and gives mature advice: But maybe, said the small voice fairly, maybe Dumbledore doesn't choose prefects because they've got themselves into a load of dangerous situations.... Sirius didn't have his mirror on him when he went through the archway, said a small voice in Harry's head. That's why it's not working....Although Harry's made payment, the fragment is still part of Voldemort's soul. Nothing on Earth can change that. Even so, the payment will give Harry some huge advantages. He will be thwarted. If there had been no blood payment, Voldemort could use his Horcrux-making spell to remove the soul fragment from Harry (The Horcrux-making spell must be able to move a fragment, because that's how a Horcrux gets made). With Harry's payment, such a removal is prevented. Sure, being a Horcrux will complicate things eventually... but in the meantime, Harry has a perfect life insurance policy. Count on Voldemort to look for an alternative. A good plot for recovering the fragment would be to induce Harry into killing someone. Because "killing rips the soul apart," Voldemort could use this damage to his advantage and snatch back the soul fragment. Voldemort's sacrificial lamb for this procedure has already been established: Snape, the man he now hated as much as he hated Voldemort himself. "...I'm the one who's going to kill him. And if I meet Severus Snape along the way... so much the worse for him."You can count on Voldemort to make it "easy" for Harry by disarming Snape, tying him up, putting him under the Imperius Curse, etc. But Voldemort's a fool. The more helpless the victim, the less malice Harry will feel. There will be no cold-blooded killing on Harry's part. So Voldemort will turn to his last, desperate plan. |
| Ginny + Dementors = Ginnymented (De-Cruxing Harry) |
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If Voldemort doesn't want to kill Harry and he cannot take that soul fragment back, he is left with one option:
Don't kill Harry. Leave the soul fragment where it is. Instead, call on a Dementor to suck out Harry's soul. And, just as Ron seemed to get killed, Harry will -- to all appearances -- get Demented. One of the vile creatures will pin him to the ground, start to suck out his soul, get interrupted by a Patronus (probably Hermione's), then return and finish the job. The story point-of-view will change to another character (again, probably Hermione) and we will see that Harry has been Demented. No doubt about it. As the reader gasps in horror, Voldemort will switch to his time travel plan to recover some object Horcrux (and get himself killed in the process). Ginny Weasley will follow him back. We have been shown the "rules" of time travel, by which a person cannot change what appeared to happen but she can change what actually happened: There was... the unmistakable swish and thud of an axe. There was a swishing noise, and the thud of an axe. The excecutioner seemed to have swung it into the fence in anger.By the rules, Ginny has only one chance: When the Dementor is temporarily driven away, she has to sneak in and suck out Harry's soul. From there, everything else falls into place. The Dementor returns to Harry and tries to finish the job, but all that's left is Voldemort's soul fragment. The Dementor takes that instead, hence the Voldemort who went back in time (and got killed) was out of Horcruxes and perfectly mortal. Handily enough, if a squad of Dementors remains on the scene after the time travel loop has come full circle, they will be easy to banish. Dumbledore had this to say about Patronus production: "Your father is alive in you, Harry.... How else could you produce that particular Patronus?Harry will be alive in Ginny, communing as two people have never communed before. A monster of a Patronus will be laughably easy. Once that's done, Ginny will find a way to regurgitate Harry's soul. Why else do you think we were given this little lesson?: "You can exist without your soul, you know, as long as your brain and heart are still working."Mission accomplished! Even though Harry will be in a partially-Demented state, with his soul hovering at the edge of his lips, it won't be easy for him to "give up the ghost." (By the way, this halfway state was inadvertently foreshadowed in the film version of Prisoner of Azkaban.) Not only is Ginny Harry's first choice for a kiss, they have a "perfect understanding" that will allow Harry to go along without even thinking about it: A much smaller and warmer hand [Ginny's] had enclosed his [Harry's] and was pulling him upward. He obeyed its pressure without really thinking about it. We get more clues by looking at certain death omens, like maggots: "Harry, you've got a maggot in your hair," said Ginny cheerfully, leaning across the table to pick it out; Harry felt goose bumps erupt up his neck that had nothing to do with the maggot.Symbolically, Ginny is plucking death away from Harry. Also note the "goose bumps" which match Harry's reaction to Dementors (OotP 1). In the first book, the Twins offered to send Ginny a toilet seat (PS/SS 6) and later tried to send one to Harry (PS/SS 17). In the second book, we had this clever exchange: "I'd just been thinking...if you had died, you'd have been welcome to share my toilet," said Myrtle, blushing silver.We can see the implications quite apart from the established symbol: Myrtle is offering to share the vessel which houses her spirit. Ron unwittingly foreshadows the future by describing the offer as competing with Ginny. Even the denouement where Ginny regurgitates Harry's soul has been foreshadowed. First, look at this foretelling from Minister Fudge: "Willy Widdershins was lying, was he? Or was it Potter's identical twin in the Hog's Head that day? Or is there the usual simple explanation involving a reversal of time, a dead man coming back to life, and a couple of invisible dementors?"That's the entire end-sequence in a nutshell. The name widdershins means "counterclockwise", a sure-fire reference to time travel. And Willy Widdershins, in case you've forgotten, is most famous for regurgitating toilets. |
