How To Stop a Dark Lord In His Tracks:
Why Harry is the only One with an Advantage
By Bob Rozak
I think that Jason's end theory is brilliant; the series of events that must take place for this to work are well defined and heavily supported. I have a few..er... minor adjustments you might consider, but mainly this is something I had assumed you would have included.
Final battle won't be a repeat of the DoM battle, with just spells flying everywhere. Impressive that is, but there will be something more, and there's got to be: Voldemort won't kill Harry and Harry isn't skilled enough to take on Voldemort in a normal duel.
The "spectacular" in the Spectacular End Sequence needs to be more... well, spectacular!
Spectacular: of or being related to:
spectacle:
1 a : something exhibited to view as unusual, notable, or entertaining; especially : an eye-catching or dramatic public display b : an object of curiosity or contempt
2 plural : GLASSES
3 : something (as natural markings on an animal) suggesting a pair of glasses
I had thought you'd get into why Harry's eyes are supposed to be such a big deal.
| Voldemort's Location During the Fight |
|---|
This theory depends on one thing: Voldemort will fail to save his Horcruxes, meaning that at some point, Harry will get past him.
JD: "Harry grabs the Horcrux(es), sprints for the Veil, and just manages the hurl them through as a Dementor seizes his wrist."
If there is one point in the end sequence that is lacking something, it is here. Voldemort's exact location is kind of up in the air here, but it should really be an important detail.
Does it make sense that Voldy will trust in a few Dementors to stand between the Veil and the famous "Patronus Potter?" Doubtful. Voldemort's main goal is to protect his Horcruxes, and no one- save for the late Dumbledore- has ever stood a chance in a duel against Voldemort. Therefore Voldemort will place himself in front of the veil (No, he's not going through the Veil), preventing anyone- or anything- from getting past.
It can only mean one thing when Harry manages to chuck the Horcruxes through the Veil: Voldemort is down.
He's been bested by Harry. After Harry throws the Horcruxes through, Voldemort is forced to use the dementors to take care of Harry, because he doesn't have the strength to fight!
How did Harry do it?
With Voldemort standing his ground in front of the Veil, the stabbing makes more sense. Harry calls for Ron and it becomes two on one, with Voldemort acting like a goalie in front of the Veil. It sort of becomes like soccer, or Quidditch. Harry begins firing spells at Voldy, hoping to pass the Horcruxes to Ron at the right moment, while the goalie is distracted to other way. With Voldemort blocking Harry's spells, he can't use his wand to fend off Ron.
But Voldemort doesn't play fair. *stab* (He stabs his other self, who is trying to intercept the Horcruxes. Ron and Future-mort go down.)
Now Voldemort's placement becomes key. It leaves the fight one on one, the way it's supposed to be. Harry's got to do something no one else has ever done, and defeat Voldemort in a duel.
This is where it becomes more spectacular, and where heaps and heaps of foreshadowing is fulfilled.
| A few things that still need to be answered |
|---|
Let's start with the prophecy. The notion that "at the hand" as compared to "by the hand" is highly significant: genius. However, it has caused me to question something else:
"...either must die at the hand of the other..."
Not "will die," but "must" die. This is more than a prediction of what will happen, it is a statement about what must happen. Either must die at the hand of the other .
They must be together for one of them to die? Why?
The answer:
"for neither can live while the other survives." It's simple, really. Once they begin the final battle, they both start dying. Horcruxes or not. What on earth could cause this?
It has to do, as the prophecy states, with their proximity. We'll get to that. First we need to ask the next question.
JD:
What Dumbledore is telling Harry -- over and over again -- is that the prophecy doesn't really predict the future. Harry is the one who can defeat Voldemort because Voldemort made Harry dangerous; because Voldemort handed him weapons; because Voldemort gave him tools.
These dangerous tools and weapons are, collectively, the soul fragment.
Jason goes on to uses this, quite correctly, as the reason Harry will not be de-Cruxed, but we still need to ask:
How can Harry use this against Voldemort?
This is a very necessary question because Dumbledore seems to feel that these tools are the very thing Harry can use to fight Voldemort. Therefore, we must see them used in the final battle. Add "tools" to the list of things to remember with "proximity." Next question.
If there's one snag in this end theory it's that according to the given scenario Harry doesn't have to be the one to defeat Voldemort. For instance, let's swap Harry out with someone who was willing to sacrifice him to defeat Voldemort, say, oh... Snape. Have him kill Harry, take the Horcruxes, and do everything Harry does in this theory. Calls for Ron, Ron appears to be stabbed, the dash toward the Veil, somehow manage to chuck the Horcruxes with luck... would this succeed?
If it all happens the way it happens with Harry... yes. Though he'd probably kill Snape instead of using dementors, Voldemort would still go back to save his Horcruxes and get stabbed, as a mortal. Dead Voldy, but... Snape wasn't the Chosen One.
That's because Snape can't actually do it. Voldemort would be guarding the Veil, and Snape, skilled as he is, isn't so good he can take on Voldemort- even if Voldemort wasn't guarding the veil and he managed to destroy the Horcruxes. Voldemort would still toast him. It has to be Harry, so something's missing. The question:
What does Harry have that Snape- or anyone else, for that matter, have that gives him the upper hand?
Love? Sure, he's loaded with it, but that alone isn't enough. Put Ginny or any other loving character in Harry's place and they're dead, too. You see? There's only one thing that Harry has that no one else has, save for Voldemort. You might say it's a place only the two of them can get to.
| Our Special Place |
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How can Harry use the connection to defeat Voldemort?
We need to know a bit about how it works, and a bit about Legilimency.
Quick review: With the soul fragment inside him, Harry can see and feel things that Voldemort sees and feels, or to put it more simply, read his mind. What Voldemort sees and feels can pass freely into the soul fragment in Harry (like an open line of Legilimency) unless Voldemort utilizes Occlumency against Harry.
Does the soul fragment allow Voldemort to see into Harry's mind? Nope. It's one way. While Voldemort can use this to trick Harry into seeing things, as he did in OotP, Harry can't send images to Voldemort, and Voldemort can't search Harry's mind (otherwise Dumbledore wouldn't have told Harry the prophecy).
Also, Snape's Occlumency lessons were not to block Voldemort from reading Harry's mind, but to prevent Harry from seeing into Voldemort's.
Without being able to send thoughts and such, how could Harry use this? Hold that thought again, but keep in mind that list: proximity, tools...
Let's look first at how the connection can be used against Harry.
| Stop, It Hurts! |
|---|
Why though? Why does the connection hurt Harry, but not Voldemort? Voldemort didn't even know about it until halfway through OotP. The answer is, of course, that the connection is one-way, but what is it that actually hurts Harry?
Consider this: Harry is never, never physically injured by the scar; that is to say there are no marks, no actual burns from the "burning sensation." The worst he's ever really left with is a throbbing headache. The pain also always centers itself in his head.
So it's not a physical injury, and it's in his head. And it happens when Voldemort feels hate...
It's hurting Harry's soul.
Just like love can hurt Voldemort, hate hurts Harry. Harry's soul is pure and full of love, as Dumbledore reminds him in this passage, which I consider to be the most important piece in the series:
"In spite of all the temptation you have endured, all the suffering, you remain pure of heart, just as pure as you were at the age of eleven, when you stared into a mirror that reflected your heart's desire, and it showed you the only way to thwart Lord Voldemort ...
...You have flitted into Voldemort's mind without damage to yourself, but he cannot possess you without enduring mortal agony ...
...he was in such a hurry to mutilate his own soul, he never paused to understand the incomparable power of a soul that is untarnished and whole."
(HPB Ch. 23)
In this passage lies the key to Harry's victory!
You see, the pain Harry feels through his scar because of Voldemort's hate is but a fraction of the pain Voldemort would feel if the connection were going the other way!
Harry's immense power of love has already bested Voldemort several times; the rebounding curse from his mother's love and the inability to touch Harry protected him physically from Voldemort, and though Voldemort found a way around that, Harry's untarnished, whole, pure, chock-full-o'-love soul can still pack a much bigger wallop.
While the physical part of the protection is gone, we can still use it as a comparison. Look at what the love in Harry's "very skin" did to Quirrell, physically. His hands "looked burned, raw, red, and shiny." And when Harry grabbed his face: "...his face blistering, too..." (PS/SS Ch.17)
Compare this to the pain Harry feels in his scar, a burning sensation.
"The old scar on his forehead, which was shaped like a bolt of lightning, was burning beneath his fingers like someone had just pressed a white-hot wire to his skin."
(GoF, Ch.2)
Harry often feels this burning sensation, because when Voldemort or Harry feels an emotion from the other, their soul actually begins to burn. Sound harsh? A bit too dark? Something you wouldn't want Harry to go through?
Well then, we can agree that it's just the type of thing Rowling would use in her story. But don't worry. Harry's soul, as Dumbledore reminded us, is much more powerful than Voldemort's.
Voldemort has only felt this sensation once since Quirrell-mort, as far as we've been shown, when he tried to possess Harry. At that time he had no idea Harry was a Horcrux, but he did know about the connection. We need to look at when he figured out the connection part for a moment.
Nagini attacked Arthur, Harry warned everybody and Voldemort realized there must be some kind of connection. So he did a little test, and that's where Dumbledore's "stared into a mirror ... the only way to defeat Lord Voldemort" clue comes in.
| A Little Test |
|---|
OotP, Chapter 26, appropriately titled Seen and Unforeseen, is when Voldemort runs his little test. The article in The Quibbler has just been published, Fred and George enlarged the magazine cover, and made it shout things like "Eat Dung, Umbridge!" Eventually the magic starts to wear off and the sporadic words become irritating. Harry gets a headache and attributes it to the annoying poster:
In fact it started to make his head ache and his scar began to prickle uncomfortably again.
Note that his scar is not burning, it just feels uncomfortable. This is because Voldemort is not feeling strong emotions, but he is opening his mind, trying to lure Harry in. (Just like during Harry's OWLs.)
Harry goes to bed and finds himself in Voldemort's mind. He watches a conversation between Voldemort and Rookwood, and after Rookwood leaves Voldemort does something odd: he goes to look at himself in the mirror:
A cracked, age-spotted mirror hung on the wall in the shadows. Harry moved toward it. His reflection grew larger and clearer in the darkness. ...A face whiter than a skull... red eyes with slits for pupils...
" NOOOOOOOOO!"
Note that now Harry's scar starts to burn: "...his scar searing with pain...
...forehead felt as though it were on fire again."
Voldemort has confirmed, by looking in the mirror, that Harry was there. He was angry. He used Legilimency and looked into his own eyes, and it's lucky Harry's mind was asleep and inactive. It had the potential to be disastrous for both of them.
So here's what we have so far:
Voldemort and Harry are polar opposites. When thoughts and emotions from the other invades their souls, their souls begin to burn.
The "tools" Harry has gotten from Voldemort will help him defeat Voldemort.
Harry and Voldemort must be in close proximity each other for this to work because of said tools.
The only "tool" that Harry has which no one else has is his connection with Voldemort's mind.
| How to make the connection go the other way |
|---|
As it stands, Harry can't force his own emotions on Voldemort. In order to do that, the connection needs to be reversed. Or does it?
Not exactly. Harry, without the soul fragment, most likely wouldn't be a skilled Legilimens, and as Rowling has explained, Harry is too open to be a successful Occlumens. He can't shut Voldemort out, but this isn't quite the weakness we may believe it is. Harry can use Legilimency as a weapon- Voldemort's own skillful Legilimency, at that.
Proximity: be close enough to see the whites of Voldemort's eyes (if there are whites, that is), and let him do Legilimency the ol' fashion way. Harry attempting Legilimency on Voldemort is only going to replicate a connection he already has, and bring himself, not Voldemort, pain. So what happens is this:
Voldemort is guarding the Veil, and beginning to panic. The Chosen One is very close to destroying his Horcruxes, and Voldemort still doesn't know how he's supposed to destroy Harry according to the prophecy. The Horcrux-connection doesn't let him read Harry's thoughts, so... it should be easy enough to look into Harry's eyes and get a quick read on the prophecy. Harry is terrible at Occlumency and, during this battle, probably has the prophecy on his mind anyway.
So he'll look into Harry's soul and... Well, what happens when you hold a microphone up to its own speaker? A tremendous feedback loop that can kill both of them. And the worst part is, it can't be stopped. It can only get worse and worse until their souls burn up completely.
This is, I think, the reason it's important that Harry has Lily's eyes. The eyes are the windows to the soul, and Lily represents sacrificial love. Harry's eyes are a place Voldemort should never go if he wants to live.
Voldemort is looking into Harry's soul, which causes Voldemort more pain than Harry has ever experienced. He looks away immediately but it doesn't stop. By looking into Harry's soul, he's also looked into his own soul-fragment, which is connected to his own mind. He has created the situation the prophecy spoke of: if they choose to fight, one of them must die, or neither can live. Both their souls will burn up.
Here's the kicker: It's not just the soul fragment in Voldemort himself that will burn. Each soul fragment is still a part of the whole, still connected to Voldemort's just mind like Harry's piece- except there's a difference now. Harry's piece of soul does not feel pain from Harry's purity, because of the blood payment Jason described. Though it's still connected to Voldemort's mind, it's "good" now, but may still feel the same burning anyway if it reacts the same way as Harry's soul does to Voldemort's negative emotions.
The Horcruxes that Harry has, however, may grow hot, like Harry's forehead does. They may even catch fire or start to melt, who knows? Point is, it's waaaay cooler to throw burning Horcruxes through death's door than boring ol' normal Horcruxes.
How to get out of this? One has to die. Even though the soul fragments in the Horcruxes are burning, they're still keeping Voldemort immortal, meaning stabbing him or Avada-ing him would just turn him into a Vapor-mort with a burning soul. In order to off him before both of them die, Harry's still got to chuck the Horcruxes through the Veil (before they burn up, because by then it'll be too late for both of them). Which means he's still got to get past Voldemort, all while in tremendous pain from his burning soul.
This is where Harry has the upper hand. JKR has already played out this scene for us once before... metaphorically.
| The Brother Wands |
|---|
If you've read the Bubbles and Memory theory, you'll remember (pun intended) how the scene in the Prefect's bathroom (GoF Ch. 25) beautifully portrayed a pensieve and a broken memory, foreshadowing Harry's mission with Slughorn's fragmented memory. I see the Priori Incantatem scene (GoF Ch34) as a similarly designed scene. Except this scene depicts the final fight between Harry and Voldemort.
The wands themselves represent Harry and Voldemort, the human embodiment of brother wands, who share a core. When they try to fight, they get stuck in the connection. The effect creates a "place" where only the two of them can fight, represented by the "golden, dome-shaped web" (running bits for Horcrux and betrayal of Voldemort!). We've even got a friend of Harry's lying dead on the ground.
Note the "beads of light" sliding up and down the thread connecting the wands- the beads are similar to bubbles, representing memories, or thoughts. Then we even see the memories of a wand begin to spill out in ghost-like forms, much in the same way Myrtle, in the prefects bathroom, represented a memory of someone floating over the pensieve. We hear the phoenix song, which fills Harry with hope. Somehow, Harry is much better at this.
It is in this kind of situation that Harry is at his best. He's not afraid to die to save everyone else, and just as thoughts of Sirius came to him in the MoM, he'll no doubt have similar thoughts during this struggle. Just as he can conjure a happy thought in the presence of a dementor, Harry is entirely able to think a loving thought in the presence of Voldemort's hate. He knows what he's fighting for; the love of those he's lost and those he's trying to save. These emotions are going to bring Voldemort to his knees; he's got it much worse than Harry.
Voldemort's soul is already diminished from being split up, Harry's soul is still whole and pure, and love is more powerful than hate.
Voldemort falls, giving Harry a chance to chuck the Horcruxes through the Veil. Voldemort lacks the strength to even pull off a spell, and calls the dementors.
Here's where I see variables that I can't be too sure of. When Harry gets Ginnymented, the connection problem could stop, with Harry separated from the soul fragment. Then again, it is his soul fragment now, will there still be a connection? I hope so, because for a moment, then, Voldemort will have to deal with the overpowering love of a pair of soul mates, quite literally. I think that could nearly finish him off, and leave him in greater need to use a Time Turner and get his Horcruxes back.
But if the connection should be broken upon Ginnymentation, it doesn't matter. Voldemort will be weakened enough that he can't fight- at all. He may even guess that the dementor has taken the soul-fragment from Harry. If not, he will surely realize that anyone in the room could come along and kill both Harry's body and Voldemort, weakened as he is. In any case, he's never been more vulnerable to dying and no doubt desperate to live. Onward to five minutes ago!...
One more thing I'd like to discuss is Hermione trading wands with Harry. Going by just those two clues, I'm not sure about this. PS/SS Chapter 9 might certainly be foreshadowing the borrowing of wands, but I'm not sure about trading wands.
"Excuse me, Professor Flitwick, could I borrow Wood for a moment?"
"Oh, move over," Hermione snarled. She grabbed Harry's wand, tapped the lock, and whispered, "Alohomora!"
In both cases, it is the borrowing of a wand, not an exchange, meaning there isn't a trade. It's nit-picking, I know, but the difference might be important. I've had a thought on this for some time now.
Why would Harry bother to trade wands with anyone when he's already going into this battle with a spare?
That is, if the Horcruxes are what we suspect, he'll have Ravenclaw's wand. No Priori Incantatem, and Voldemort will have to be careful not to destroy it.
As for Hermione, casting Patronuses to protect Harry would be better done with her own wand, as it is a very advanced piece of magic that's especially hard to do with dementors around. And as Ollivander says, "...of course, you will never get such good results with another wizard's wand."
That's from PS/SS Chapter 5, which I'd like to discuss. Many have suspected Ravenclaw's wand is the wand in Ollivander's window, and several clues make me suspect it is too:
The last shop was narrow and shabby. Peeling gold letters over the door read Ollivanders: Makers of fine wands since 382 B.C. A single wand lay on a faded purple cushion in the dusty window...
...For some reason, the back of his neck prickled. The very dust and silence in here seemed to tingle with some secret magic.
Doesn't this seem like something special to you? Note how long Ollivander's has been around; long enough to have made Ravenclaw's wand. And the wand in the window appears to have been there for some time, according to the faded pillow.
Not hundreds of years, but perhaps a few decades... long enough for a certain employee of Borgin and Burkes to have sold it back to him, right after this certain someone had located it, performed some "secret magic" on it, and wanted to make sure it would be well taken care of.
A certain "secret magic" that would make another certain someone's neck prickle because he's also a certain something. Note the connecting word "dust," tying the window and the "secret magic" in the shop together.
Now the "borrow Wood" clue, I think, leads not to Hermione, but back to this shop. McGonagall is speaking about Oliver Wood. There is a definite connection between the names Oliver Wood and the wand maker Ollivander, don't you think?
The spectacle continues
with an examination of Harry's green-eyed trap in
Lily's Irresistible Eyes
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