Grateful John, at your feet

I have felt for almost a year now that the Harry travelling through the Veil would play a prominent role in ridding the world of Voldemort. My guess hinges on my belief that Harry’s scar is a horcrux and that the only way to get rid of that bit of soul (the “evil within”) is for Harry to walk through the Veil. So if that scar’s not a horcrux, then I will be completely blown away in a couple of weeks (yea!). The potential hero’s journey elements beyond the veil you discuss never really crossed my mind, as I had pre-assigned those to the “hunt for the horcruxes” part of the story.

To me, the veil passage is reflective of Christ’s piercing the veil between the physical and spiritual world for us, and Harry will follow this example. If we choose to die to self and follow Christ, we will know the Truth, and we will be made free (John 8:31-32). John 3:21 – “But he who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God.” Harry, without a wand, is bathed in light from above and standing in between the veil over the cracked stone dias on the US book jacket of Deathly Hallows. Once I saw that book jacket, I really felt that this indeed was the way (or at least one of them) Ms. Rowling would be leaving no doubt about her own religious convictions upon the completion of Harry’s story.

I had not worked out for myself how they get rid of that last, 7th piece of Voldemort soul that’s left in his mangled physical body. I like someone’s suggestion that Voldemort follows Harry through the veil, perhaps doing so without knowing that all his other horcruxes have already been destroyed. If that is the case, and Harry dislodges the 1/7th behind his scar, then Voldemort will have physically traveled across the veil with only 1/7th of his original soul. Could this be the forever “cursed life” Firenze explains is the fate of one who drinks unicorn blood? An eternity spent as a wretched, rent soul?

While I’m not sure about an “underworld visit” hero’s journey behind the veil, I do think the trip will require an extreme sacrifice on Harry’s part – which is, of course part of the hero’s journey. I hope that he will be rewarded by coming into a full knowledge of Love and be allowed to return to a full physical life. But I think this journey and its outcome is going to be cause for “extreme hanky” time.

Another reason I am fascinated with the Veil is directly related to your discussion on Ms. Rowling’s PoMo-PoMo’ism. As you’ve pointed out, the problem with postmodernism is the extreme skeptical and deconstructionist tendencies of the mind. To accept the things unseen as the greater Reality, we’ve got to get our minds in the right place – namely, in balance with our body and souls.

I believe Hermione’s role as the mind of the trio (Ron = body, Harry = soul) is quite telling in Phoenix – she is afraid of the veil, tells Harry to get away from it, and calls it “dangerous.” Now, Hermione (the mind) has been a huge help to Harry (the soul) along the way, no doubt. In Stone, she calls his bravery much greater than her book smarts. In Chamber, she finds out what the monster is, but she’s petrified & doesn’t descend down with the others to slay it. In Prisoner, she’s the only one with whom time travel is shared at first, because she’s got the brains to understand its dynamics and dangers. In Goblet, she prods Harry on about his tasks and scolds him for being lazy in his pursuit. In Phoenix, she pushes Harry to claim his own knowledge of how to defeat the Dark Arts, be brave, and be a leader amongst his peers. In Prince we see her warning Harry of the dangers of his arrogance and blindly using the Prince’s spells. At the end of Prince, we see her commitment to uniting with Harry and going on his final journey with him.

I believe that Hermione’s fear of the veil in Phoenix will have to be overcome in Deathly Hallows. Hermione (the mind) will, in order to assist Harry (the soul) on his final step, have to allow him – to trust him – to go through the veil. I maintain, as you have many times, John, that Harry’s symbolic journey, will represent our “everyman’s” spiritual journey. He’s got to have a willing mind and a willing body in order to position himself, the soul, for a revelation of Love.

And, finally, Hermione’s willingness to participate in this larger quest of self-sacrificial Love will be hugely symbolic of the postmodern need to subjugate our minds run amok and bring them into proper alignment. If we stay unwilling to do that, we simply cannot move beyond the things that are only seen, and what we see these days ain’t pretty. In postmodern fashion, this is not about accepting religious “dogma,” but it is about seeking the Truth that is beyond our visual reality. And, as you have written, Ms. Rowling’s “postmodern realism” holds up “postmodern dogma” to intense scrutiny while consistently pointing to the true Absolute, Love.

Now that is a worthwhile quest. Almost requires its own saga, doesn’t it though? Maybe that can be a mission for Harry and Ginny’s children. Or the children of Ron and Hermione. If they survive to have children.

There are characters with the literary authority to kill Snape: Wormtail and Fenrir Greyback come to mind. And Voldemort could kill him casually – although I think he does have some trust invested in him and would love to kill him if he knew all that we suspect. If they do kill him, it will make for pathos and melodrama of the order of Dumbledore’s death in book 6. However, if they don’t do him in, I believe that Snape has more than enough fortitude to keep on living, brewing his potions and making life generally miserable for future Hogwarts students. He’s never had a soft or easy life or too many illusions, unlike Frodo. If, as we suspect, his heart was broken before, he turned his grief to determination. He will survive.

A correspondent (on Lj as beta_elf) and I have been tossing e-mails
back and forth for the past week or so and she has posted a couple of
iterations of an essay that she is working on for the hp_essays
community.

It knocked over a couple more dominoes and I’ve kicked off on another
tangent. Regarding that ruddy spirit quest which seems to be back on
the negotiating table.

This is exerpted from the just reposted ‘Endgame” essay, and you may
get some cross platform text gibberish since it has curly quotes and
m-dashes and what all.

There are a couple of typos in the posted version that I caught here.
In return, a number of statements here refer back to other points made
earlier in the essay (which is looong).

Don’t know whether AOL will let it all fit in here but I’ll try.
————————————————————————-
————-

****
I’ve also been thinking a bit more on the issue of that spirit quest.

We may end up getting one, after all.

After OotP I was absolutely convinced that we were going to. But I have
been a good deal less certain of that since HBP came out.

Well, it’s still a long way from certain. And if we do go there then I
honestly don’t think that Rowling has done as solid a job of setting it
up as she needed to. She’s left the matter far too late to suddenly be
introducing the whole concept now. At least with the Horcruxes, you can
see, in retrospect, that she had scattered legitimate clues pointing to
them all the way through the series. I don’t see a lot of indication
that wizards travel beyond the Veil and back in the series as it stands.

On the other hand, the Accio Quotes site has recently managed to
unearth and post an interview from 2000 in which Rowling made her
famous “dead is dead” statement, and further goes on to state that in
the 7th book we will find “just how close you can get to the dead”.

It does sound a lot as if she could be refering to a Veil scenario. If
your mind is geared for Veil scenarios, anyway. It certainly suggests
that at least one of the significant players in the issue is likely to
be someone who is already dead.

— which rather abruptly harks back to those hitherto unexplained
“echoes” from the Priori Incantatum sequence of GoF, doesn’t it?

None of whom had ever manifested as ghosts (and Frank Bryce, who, as a
Muggle wouldn’t have been able to).

Well we have any number of candidates there. But it is hard to believe
that she could be talking about anyone other than Albus. With a certain
strong secondary posibility of Lily.

****
Although I did draft out one possible scenareo for a spirit quest,
which now lives over in the 7th Son collection of exploded theories,
and a modified version of it is still over in the ‘The Premature
Prediction’ essay, I am still not prepared to bet the farm on the
likelyhood that we are going to get a spirit quest before we can wrap
up the problem of Tom Riddle.

But, neither am I going to find myself taken aback or even particularly
surprised in the event that we do.

But I do now tend to suspect that all four of our “cardinal characters”
are going to be present, in some form or other, at the final
confrontation.

And we may all just be barking up the wrong tree with our expectations
that any such spirit quest must be embarked upon through the Veil.

The Potterverse may have more than one gateway into the spirit world.

And which god is the Lord of openings? Of gateways? Who has stood as
gatekeeper through the *whole bloody series* to the reading that there
is *more going on* in this story than Harry ever realizes?

I think we need to explore yet another possibility.

****
Sirius Black did not redeem himself at the end of PoA. He did not need
to redeem himself. What he needed to do was to get to Harry and tell
him the truth of who they all were, and what had really happened. Harry
needed that truth. Without it, they would not have made it back to the
castle. Sirius gave him the key to connect with James and have that
epiphany by the lake. Until he had spoken to Sirius Black, James Potter
was just a story. Now he was a person.

Sirius gave him another key as well, the following year. One that
failed.

Harry lost that key trying to use it to pry open the Locked door in the
DoM. That door is not going to be pried open by any tricksy,
all-purpose, generic, peudo-key. And I don’t think that that door can
be opened by any “lone hero” either.

And I don’t think that Snape is going to “redeem” himself in DHs. I
don’t think that he is going to turn out to need to redeem himself any
more than Sirius Black did.

But I don’t think that Harry is going to get that Locked door in the
DoM open without him.

Even though he already has the proper key.

****
Oh yes. He does.

When you stop and think about it, it’s obvious. Just as obvious as that
the way to get Slytherin’s Locket open is to hiss at it in Parseltongue.

What, after all, is behind that door? And why will they need to get it
open?

Why, to release the power to vanquish the Dementors, of course. it is
fairly obvious that what is behind that door is something that
Dementors cannot touch, and cannot conquer.

What vanquishes Dementors?

It abruptly looks to me as though what it will take to get the door
open is the Patronus Charm.

And not just one of them, either. In fact that door may require that
the need be great enough that that least two enemies must work in
concert to get the damned door open.

Which would FINALLY make sense of why it has seemed to be so bloody
necessary for Harry to hate Snape!

Because although it was clearly necessary for Snape to act like he
hated Harry in Year 1 — given that he was being observed all year by
the Dark Lord — it hasn’t made all that much sense that Harry should
make a career of hating Snape who keeps on saving his sorry arse for 5
years after.

And Snape has colluded in keping that particular pot boiling with
little nudges and jabs and snotty remarks along the way, and while
Albus has always — right up to the scene in his office before they left
on the Horcrux hunt — insisted that Harry show the proper forms of
respectful address toward Snape, he has never done zip to derail the
general hate-fest, only reserving the statement that HE trusts the man
— and never explains why.

Harry may need to hate Snape in order to be able to work, in concert,
with him, as two enemies to get that door open.

By the time the pair of them are standing before that locked door, if
my interpretation of the Book 7 = Book 3 pattern is on target, Harry
will have pursued Snape to whatever location is going to stand in for
the Shack, Snape will have revealed his great secret, and Harry will be
prepared to trust Snape, even if he still hates him. Or at least hasn’t
forgiven him

(Thank you beta_elf.)

****
Of course once he sees Snape’s Partonus and recognizes it — which I
agree, he probably will — and realizes just who has been helping him
all through the Horccrux hunt, he will have to do a major bit of
retrofitting of what he knows, and what he believes. But they’ll have
got it open by then, and will have to deal with what they’ve turned
loose.

I’m also now wondering if being caught in the Power That Is Not Named
as it escapes may not turn out to be the point of departure of that
spirit quest that has seemed so likely, on and off, since we first all
read OotP. The embarcation point for that quest may not be the Veil
after all. In the Potterverse, there may be more ways in and out of the
spirit realm than we’ve been shown yet.

The power to knock out who knows how many Dementors would certainly be
capable of knocking out a couple of wizards standing directly in its
path. At least for a few hours, and if it knocks them into the spirit
realm they would need to find their way out, and they would be likely
to meet people there who have further information that they need. And
perhaps one who may at least briefly acompany them outside of it.

After all, Albus comes out and tells us that those we love never really
leave us. And I am convinced that both Harry and Snape sincerely loved
the old man.

Given that in the end it has always come down to Harry facing Tom
alone, before any help arrives, they may get separated at some point,
each with their own tests and trials, and we will only be shown Harry’s.

They will probably only come face to face after returning to the
material world. And they may not necessarily do it at the same time.

Snape will probably reach the place of the final showdown at least in
time to see the end, and possibly to restore Harry when Tom is
vanquished.

And, at the very end, after Harry has passed all of his tests, Albus
will also reveal himself; returning if only briefly in whatever manner
he has chosen from a place outside the laws of Time.

Over the past week or so I have begun to wonder whether, in the end,
Tom will ever finally be forced to realize just what a fool he has
been, and what folly upon folly he has committed, and whether that, in
itself, may be what tilts the balance to the conclusion. For we know
that Rowling is never going to allow Tom to win. And it is very hard to
believe that she really intends for Harry to actually kill him.

I have even begun to wonder if, in the end, Albus will offer to
accompany Tom through the Veil. Either as a typical last act of
kindness, or possibly, just to make sure that he finally goes.

****
I do, at any rate, confidently expect Snape to survive VoldWar II.

I mean, face it, Harry may or may not be forced to kill Lord Voldemort
to get him settled, but he isn’t going to be murdering Severus Snape.
Even if he does manage to end up continuing to hate him. (Which I am
inclined to doubt.)

And if Harry doesn’t do it, I very much doubt that anyone else is going
to get the chance. After all, Snape is one of the four cardinal
characters of the series. He is not going to be taken out by a random
spear carrier.

No one other than Harry really has the literary authority to kill
Snape. No, not even Tom. Tom doesn’t care enough about Snape,
personally, to have the right to kill him.
No. I think that Snape will certainly see Tom out.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that he is going to stick around for
happily ever after. He may have dedicated himself so completely to the
“great work” to be able to see anything meaningful beyond it.

It could well be Snape who willingly follows Albus through that Veil.

Chris, I like the idea, too. And it would somehow echo the events of the first book, where one of Snape’s potions enabled Harry to pass through the fire in order to get to the Philosopher’s Stone. I can imagine that the tasks the trio needed to solve in PS were foreshadowing the final chapters.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/gallery/albums/userpics/ancient/Hengeset.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/gallery/displayimage.php%3Falbum%3Dtopn%26cat%3D-8%26pos%3D8&h=180&w=240&sz=12&hl=en&start=23&tbnid=FI2SdWt0tQBbjM:&tbnh=83&tbnw=110&prev=/images%3Fq%3Davebury%26start%3D20%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D20%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN

Wouldn’t it?

Depends. Harry-haters are Harry-haters, and if the Underworld descent contains no blatantly Christian content, it certainly will be the case that the Harry-haters will claim it’s just a pagan mythological Underworld journey and not specifically Christian at all.

And it will be sad, if they do.

I expressed skepticism about Grossman’s claim re:Rowling and The Last Battle, and an LJ reader from HP Essays found Rowling’s exact quote about not finishing The Last Battle, for the old Pullman reasons. I was quite disappointed to read that straight from Rowling, because it’s such a awful misreading of the reasons Susan is not included in the finale of the book, something I discussed way back in Hog’s Head PubCast #2.