Kelly's Pensieve
These are my thoughts, musings, and speculations on the Harry Potter series. Some of it is predictions for the upcoming HP books; the rest is me putting together info we have already been given to come up with my own theories. Me trying to make sense of the series, as it were. I did skim through and clarify a few points that may have been a little vague to anyone but me, but keep in mind when reading this that I originally wrote these for my own use and not for publication, so they are rough. They're pretty much unedited and are my hurriedly written thoughts. Do I even need a disclaimer for this? Okay, the characters aren't mine, but J.K. Rowling's. Star Wars is not mine, but belongs to Lucasfilm, Ltd. There, that should cover everything. Do not repost anywhere without the permission of the author!
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This set of musings all stem from the end of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, where Hermione captures Rita Skeeter outside of the hospital wing at the end of the chapter entitled The Parting of the Ways. Keep in mind that Rita overheard quite a few things of importance.
Rita Skeeter is going to be big trouble. If she is working for the enemy, both Sirius and Severus are no longer a secret. Voldemort will know that Sirius is an Animagus that can turn into a dog and that Severus is still working for Dumbledore. She will also know that Sirius is supposed to be gathering up all the forces that opposed Voldemort before, specifically Remus, Arabella Figg, and Mundungus Fletcher, and that Arthur Weasley will be trying to gather together loyal supporters at the Ministry. Also, if Rita is working for Voldemort, I don't think the threats of a 14 year-old girl are going to frighten her, and she will publish some of this in the Daily Prophet.
Speaking of the Daily Prophet, it is now being heavily censored by the Ministry. They only said that Harry won the tournament and gave absolutely no news of there being a death at Hogwarts. Any government that feels the need to censor their news to this degree, when they know that the kids are going to go home and tell their parents about the death, has got a problem and/or is afraid.
Making me ask, what is up with Cornelius? Is he really in league with Voldemort? Is he really as foolish as he appears? Do the Death Eaters (Lucius is my guess) have something on him, like are they threatening the life of his wife? Is it the Imperius Curse? Or is it something else entirely?
What we know about Cornelius: he seemed to think Dumbledore was the only person who could deal with the tragedies and the problems at Hogwarts during Chamber of Secrets. He has been known to bow to pressure from his constituents (putting Hagrid in Azkaban so he, and the Ministry, would be seen to be doing something). He is also into the whole pureblood thing, or at least he was in Goblet of Fire. I didn't see this attitude as much in Chamber of Secrets, where Muggle-borns were the targets. And he is now steadfastly refusing to believe that Voldemort's back, and questioning Dumbledore's curriculum. Cornelius is reminding me too much of a character from the Star Wars novels, Borsk Fey'lya. His behavior in the New Jedi Order novels is very similar, so similar that it scares me sometimes.
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This long ramble began with pondering Snape at the end of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and somehow meandered off into thinking about the night Harry's parents died and what role Harry may play in the upcoming war. By the way, I do have thoughts about what Snape was doing, but I just haven't gotten around to writing it up yet.
What was Severus up to at the end of Goblet of Fire? Dumbledore sent him off to do something. Severus did not look thrilled to do it, but agreed to do it all the same. It appears that he was to make contact with Voldemort. Whatever he did, he was back in time to attend the Parting Feast or whatever it's called. At that feast, he looked at Harry not with hatred, but with an unreadable expression. So what was up with that?
And speaking of weird expressions on Snape's face, this calls to my mind the shrewd anc calculating look he gave Harry in Chamber of Secrets at the Duelling Club. Something is going on, but what? At this Duelling Club, Snape paired up Harry and Draco, then told Draco exactly which spell he should use on Harry. It was no accident that a snake appeared that night. It's almost as if Snape suspected that Harry was a Parseltongue, and wanted confirmation of his suspicions. The look he gave Harry afterwards seemed, to me, to almost be sizing him up, like he was trying to figure out how this could be used to his advantage. Let's not forget that, by having this ability of Harry's come out in front of the whole school, he creates hardship for Harry, something he wouldn't mind since he hates the boy.
Other Chamber weirdness: Tom and Harry look somewhat alike. They have at least one mannerism that is the same (the way they answer a headmaster when they're hiding something). They are both Parselmouths. Tom even comments on how they have "strange likenesses" between them, and seemed to think that it was these likenesses that may have allowed Harry to defeat Voldemort. Although he now buys the whole "mother's sacrifice protected her son" bit, the question still remains. Does the whole "The curse failed because your mother died to protect you, and because it failed, you now have some of his powers, like being a Parselmouth" hold up? Dumbledore had a look of triumph on his face when Harry told him that Dumbledore could now touch him, that Voldemort now also had Lily's protection. There's something more to this that Dumbledore's not telling. This is the same guy who won't tell Harry why Voldemort wanted to kill him, a baby, in the first place.
Then there's the whole bit concerning what happened that fateful night at Godric's Hollow. Okay, the Potters find out that Voldemort's coming after them. They go into hiding, using the wrong person as their Secret Keeper. Of course, Peter goes and blabs to Voldemort their location. Voldemort heads right to the place like a moth to flame. He must go to their door and order them to let him in or something, because James has time enough to call to Lily to take Harry and go. Interestingly enough, Voldemort does not apparate right into the living room. Okay, so maybe he can't, since he's never seen it, but you think he'd just blow the door down without making a fuss outside of it first. Anyway, Voldemort comes in, and James dies. Since Lily is still in Harry's bedroom, I get the impression that Voldemort wasted no time with James, pausing just long enough to utter the Drop Dead Curse.
Anyway, he dispatches James in record time and finds Lily still there. I also get the impression that she hadn't even picked Harry up yet to take him anywhere, but was just standing in front of his crib. What are her words? Not "Don't kill us," not "Don't kill him, kill me," but first she says "Not Harry!" Then he tells her to stand aside, to which she replies, "Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead-"
I think there's more going on here than a mother simply trying to spare her child the fate that her husband and herself face. This, more than anything, convinces me that Voldemort was after Harry himself, and could've cared less about his parents. He told Lily to stand aside? Why? Because he wanted the kid, not her. Both parents knew that Voldemort was after their son, and their one thought was to get the kid as far away as they could. Protecting their kid is probably why they originally took such precautions when going into hiding in the first place. From what I've heard of James, he's not normally the one who would agree to lying low and hiding from the enemy. The threat to someone too little to defend himself, someone who may have the potential of defeating Voldemort someday, may have been the only thing to convince him of this.
Yes, I hint that Harry may have powers we have not seen yet. I think he is the key to the entire thing. Trelawney once made a true prediction. I would be extremely surprised if it weren't about Harry, most likely in connection with Voldemort. Voldemort found out about this, and sought the boy for himself. Possibly to take and raise as his own so his powers could be used to aid Voldemort, possibly to kill and eliminate the only threat to his power.
Of course, some, if not all, of his Death Eaters knew this as well. Severus and Peter are two that I'm positive know what's going on, although Peter may have learned of it from James and Sirius. Dumbledore found out about this prophecy as well and told James and Lily, who may or may not have had their child yet, but most likely did. They were also warned about the possibility of one of their close friends being a traitor. James chose to tell Sirius anyway. Don't know about Peter and Remus at this point.
Sometime during all of this, Severus defects and becomes a double agent. When Voldemort speaks of dealing with Harry once and for all, Severus makes sure the information gets back to Dumbledore. This is when Dumbledore and James decide it best if the Potters go into hiding. Sirius convinces James to choose Peter as the Secret Keeper. I'm guessing that Peter knows why he's chosen, even if he didn't hear it from Voldemort, because James and Sirius probably fill him in somewhat.
Peter tells Voldemort what has happened. I'm guessing Voldemort knows this time that someone leaked the plans, so tells no one this time that he's going to the Potters', meaning that Severus can't feed the plan back to anyone in time to do anything. Voldemort goes to the Potters', but is deterred by the parents. Maybe at this time, he is planning to just take Harry with him, but then Lily interferes and, whether it is because Dumbledore wasn't completely lying and Lily's love did protect her son, or whether it was something to do with Harry himself, maybe the equivalent of an allergic reaction or something, Voldemort is unable to touch the kid. Angered by this, he decides to just kill him and be done with it. Again, whether because of Lily's sacrifice or because of some power Harry was able to instinctually draw upon to protect himself, Voldemort was unable to kill him and was badly wounded himself.
This might even be the key. Harry is, in reality, the most powerful wizard that has ever been born, but he does not know it. Because they don't want the info to get out, very few people know this fact. This may be exactly what Trelawney predicted that one time. Those who most likely know/knew: Voldemort, Dumbledore, Severus, James, Lily, Sirius, and possibly Peter, Minerva, Barty Crouch Jr., and Lucius.
What has Harry done that may show this? He had deflected the Drop Dead Curse. He can fight off the Imperius Curse. When he needs to and works hard at it, he can learn any spell he tries to learn, including spells that even higher-level wizards have problems with, like the Patronus Charm. He figured out how to win the contest of the wands when his and Voldemort's were locked together. If he is not actually related to Voldemort/Salazar Slytherin, he is able to utilize the Parseltongue ability anyway. So he can't fight off the Cruciatus Curse. He's not infallible.
If this is true, chalk this up as another reason why Severus hates Harry. The son of the man he hates yet feels he owes a debt is the most powerful wizard who ever lived. He will do anything in his power to ensure that Harry lives, but he is probably jealous as well. Oh, yeah, Harry also seems to have a slight gift for Divination, but don't let Trelawney know this. 8)
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Hagrid was trained by Dumbledore on the sly to be a full-fledged wizard. We know he carries the "pieces" of his wand still in his umbrella, and that he can use them. Methinks that Dumbledore got Hagrid the gamekeeper job so he'd have a legitimate excuse to stay at Hogwarts, but Hagrid was trained in secret and told not to let anyone know. Dumbledore may have even been able to repair his wand, which is why he has them hidden in his umbrella and never takes them out.
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Draco will most likely go completely over to the Dark Side in the next book. At this point, despite all he's said and done, I still don't think he has made the final, irrevocable choice. He still somewhat has the air of a boy who worships the ground on which his father walks, and therefore somewhat blindly believes everything Daddy says and will do anything to be noticed by him. Yes, I believe that Draco is teetering on the line between good and evil, with one foot already in the Abyss, but for some reason, I can't write him off yet. I believe that in the next book, we will see him make his own decision, for good or for ill. Unfortunately, I think he will side with Daddy Dearest. Even so, I still keep seeing Draco, the decent-looking Aryan specimen that he is, at the end of the series, after everything's fallen down around his ears and Daddy's dead or in Azkaban, crying and saying how he didn't know any better, sounding exactly like the Germans who grew up during the 1930's and '40's who were part of the Hitler Youth. He might even be as genuinely sorry as those young adults were. Who knows?
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Rowling has said that book 5 will deal more with the ghosts and how they get to be ghosts. She has also said that it's not happy people who become ghosts. On first thought, this would seem to be obvious when we think about Moaning Myrtle, Nearly Headless Nick, and the Bloody Baron, but this does not explain everyone. At least, not at first appearance. I don't know about everyone, but the school rumor about Professor Binns is that he fell asleep one night in the staff room, got up the next morning, leaving his body behind, and taught class like nothing had happened. This does not sound like a guy that's unhappy, but just had no life. No pun intended. Unless there's more to this simple story than there appears to be on the surface. Since Rowling so far has never said how long Binns has been dead, this leaves me free to come up with a theory.
Binns fell asleep one night in the staff room, as the story goes. Then, a certain student, probably in his first or second year, goes/sneaks into the staff room for some reason, sees Binns, a boring teacher, lying there asleep, unaware and helpless, and decides to experiment. He pulls out his wand and performs the Drop Dead Curse. Binns, asleep, doesn't know what happened, but yet he comes back, implying he knows he didn't die by natural causes. Or maybe he heard the words and saw the green light as if it were a dream. Or maybe he is a ghost and has no idea why, but it's really because he was murdered. Who was the murderer? Tom Riddle, wanting to test the Drop Dead Curse out on a person. Binns may have been Voldemort's first victim.
What do you think of my theories? Feel free to email me and let me know what you think.
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