[Sca-cooks] Nicholas Flamel

[Laura C. Minnick]

At 07:32 PM 8/24/2004, you wrote:
>On 8/24/04 6:37 PM, "Laura C. Minnick" <lcm at jeffnet.org> wrote:
>
> > My money for the HBP is Godric Gryffindor. And I think a great deal of book
> > 6 will be about the founders and the initial Gryffindor/Slytherin split. I
> > think some 1000-year-old ugliness is coming to the top again.
> >
> > 'Lainie
> > Gryffindor '83
>
>My theory, and it has not proven all that popular with the folks I talk
>Potterism with, is Hagrid.  [1] He is half Wizard - who said the other half
>had to be HUMAN?  [2] It would explain why Dumbledore kept this dropout
>ex-con on campus all these years.
>
>Selene, Ravenclaw '77

Erm, no, I don't think so. I think that Dumbledore A) wants to protect 
Hagrid- after all, a fair part of books 4 and 5 dealt with the 
discrimination Hagrid faced as half-giant. And I also think there's more to 
the Hagrid/Tom story too. And there's something about the way Dumbledore 
says that he would trust Hagrid "with my life" that bothers me. I do hope 
that it doesn't figure into an end for Dumbledore!

As to Godric, well, there's a lost of things that feed into my theory, so 
I'll try to tease them out.

Joanne said recently that the storyline for book 6 had tried to come out in 
book 2, but she couldn't let it because it would have messed up the main 
plot of CoS, basically by hijacking it. She said she pulled it back off and 
set it aside, but that there were thin remnants of it left. So I re-read 
CoS with an eye towards possible undeveloped plots. And what was the one 
that made the most sense to me (especially since I read that they'd kept 
the inner Chamber sets from film 2!) was the story of the four Founders- 
Godric Gryffindor, Rowena Ravenclaw, Helga Hufflepuff, and Salazar 
Slytherin. You may remember that Professor Binns (not dear Minerva, as in 
the movie)  explains that the rift began when Slytherin wanted to be more 
selective about admissions, and that it was an argument between Gryffindor 
and Slytherin that initiated Slytherin's departure. Slytherin of course 
left a nasty secret behind in the basement.

Harry has three encounters with the Sorting Hat in PS and CoS- a Hat which 
had been Godric's, that he enchanted and left to serve the school. Harry 
first meets the Hat at his Sorting, and the Hat offers the choice of 
Slytherin- but when Harry rejects that (was that a test?), the Hat puts him 
into Gryffindor.

Harry next meets the Hat when he is sent to Dumbledore's office, and Harry 
asks if he's been put into the wrong house. That Hat says that he _would_ 
have done well in Slytherin. Note that he did not say that Harry _should_ 
have been in Slytherin, or that it was wrong to be in Gryffindor. He 
_could_ have- if he'd _wanted to_. Which oddly reminds me of something in 
the movies that wasn't in the book (or at least not where it is), at the 
end, when Voldemort tells Harry that there is no right and wrong, only 
power, and those too weak to seek it. So there we are with an interesting 
balance, where it was an act of will for Harry to say no to Slytherin and 
what it represented, while Voldemort says that was weakness, not to seek 
it. (How very like the power-hungry, ambitious Slytherin!)

Then, when Harry is in the Chamber, and has defiantly told Tom off for 
dissing Dumbledore, Fawkes shows up, with the Hat. An odd thing for a bird 
to bring, and only when it is really needed does the sword appear.

Whose sword? Godric's.
Whose Hat? Godric's.
To fight what? The Basilisk.
Whose Basilisk? Salazar's.

Dumbledore/Fawkes could have brought any measure of things, objects, etc, 
to help Harry. But it came with that particular payload- Godric's Hat and 
sword. Godric, defender of mixed blood, again battles Salazar- in the form 
of Tom Riddle, Heir of Slytherin, and Harry Potter, apparently close kin if 
not the actual Heir of Gryffindor.

The Sorting Hat in book 5 gives dire warnings against internal divisions 
with a little more light on the initial quarrels, and I have given this a 
great deal of thought in the past few months. It occurred to me that if 
Slytherin's admission requirements had prevailed, Harry, and indeed Lily, 
would never have been admitted. Ironically, neither would Tom Riddle. :-/)

So here we are, Voldemort, Heir of Slytherin, who hates muggles and 
mudbloods and halfbloods alike, wants little more than to obliterate the 
half-blooded Harry (and he could have done it in the graveyard, too, had he 
not succumbed to the movie villain's need to show off in front of his 
cronies by gloating and telling his long, twisted tale instead of just 
killing swiftly. *sigh* Villains...). And Harry just wants to stay alive, 
yet to do the Right Thing (TM), whatever the cost to himself.

What is the titanic struggle between Voldemort and Harry is an extension of 
the tensions of the past? What if part of Slytherin's motivation to exclude 
mixed blood was a desire to exclude Gryffindor? What if Gyffindor was 
himself a half-blood? Seems that half-bloods of all types figure rather 
importantly in this story, yes?

As to the 'prince' part, that's easily enough accounted for (a sword like 
that, not to mention the money for the school, a 'hollow' named after you, 
and anyone ever wondered about all of Harry's gold?- points to something 
like gentle breeding, I'd think). The real question is, which parent was 
the frog?

Anyway, bit convoluted, but I think ya get my drift. And it's time fer me 
dinner now,

'Lainie
___________________________________________________________________________
The penalty good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be 
governed by men worse than themselves. -- Plato