Questions regarding the Harrycrux

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

“While the magical container is still intact, the bit of soul inside it can flit in and out of someone if they get too close to the object. I don’t mean holding it for too long…. I mean close emotionally…. You’re in trouble if you get too fond of or dependent on the Horcrux.”

(Hermione regurgitating Dumbledore’s books, DH p. 103)

So why were Hermione, and Ron, and Hagrid, and Mrs. Weasley, never “in trouble”?

Why was the Harrycrux not subject to that particular effect?

And how did Dumbledore know it wouldn’t be?


In theory, anyone close to Harry emotionally ought to have been vulnerable to possession by Tom Riddle.

But in canon this didn’t ever happen.

And, presumably, the Twinkly One expected this not to happen.

Otherwise, letting Harry wander among Hogwarts students making friends was the utter height of irresponsibility. (Okay, comparable to the headmaster’s other heights of irresponsibility, but still….)

I tried to float a theory on my own lj that Dumbles HAD expected that people who loved Harry might be possessed by his Horcrux, had therefore arranged magically to reinforce Harry’s canon early (pre-Hogwarts) friendlessness, and had further arranged that Harry’s first friends in the WW be disposable Dumbles-followers (Hagrid, the youngest Weasley scion). I’d even suggested that the events of CoS seemed at first to Dumbles as indications that the soul-fragment inside Harry had flitted out to possess one of the Weasleys, after Harry spent much of the summer there.

But that theory was shot down.

So why was the Harrycrux different from every other Horcrux known in this particular crucial respect (non-flittiness of the soul-fragment), and how did Dumbles know it was?

Or did our omniscient headmaster overlook that danger, and just luck out that the Harrycrux happened to be different?

Ol’ “Power of Love,” after all, is himself so lacking in normal emotional affect that it’s credible that it might simply not occur to him that normal people do become fond of each other, and that this emotional state (when Harry is the object) is precisely the condition which, in theory, should allow Tom’s soul-fragment to possess the fond third party.

Comments

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

For shame, TV Tropes! And I love that site too...

And the worst part is that if you are critical a lot of the time they will bring up the "But she was a single mom on welfare when she started the series and so you should cut her some slack, etc". To me, this means that she ought to have been LESS of an elitist about her world, not more. SO much for trials developing one's sympathy, we're still just all icky, inferior muggles.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

And fat. I forgot fat. I wonder if she has some weird unresolved issues with overweight people or something.

[ladyhadhafang.livejournal.com]

Probably. :/

And ugly people as well. *Cough* The Gaunts. *Cough* Jesus Christ, was it really necessary to make Voldemort's maternal side inbreds? I mean...not all ugly people are evil. I'm definitely guessing she has vinegar and water in her veins. *Shrugs*

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Well, we can't have heroic ugly people, can we? Except Snape, whom everyone turns into a pretty emo bishonen anyways.

Seriously, the more I think about these things, the more I think that JKR must have some serious, serious issues.

[ladyhadhafang.livejournal.com]

"Well, we can't have heroic ugly people, can we? Except Snape, whom everyone turns into a pretty emo bishonen anyways."

*Sighs*

I'm really guessing that Rowling never learned the lesson "True beauty comes from within." Or something.

That, or she's really, *really* f-ked up inside...

[ladyhadhafang.livejournal.com]

I love TV Tropes with all my heart, but there's no denying that they can be really, *really* weird sometimes. :/

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I once stumbled on the "Fetish Fuel" page and felt dirty for the rest of the day.

[ladyhadhafang.livejournal.com]

Same here, except even reading the Dethroning Moment of Suck page makes me feel depressed for the rest of the day. :(

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Of course, sometimes they do have a point, but sometimes I think it's just spite or something.

Dare I look at their page for HP? I fear the CMoA page is a lot longer than it should be...

[ladyhadhafang.livejournal.com]

I'll definitely take a looksie at it. ;-)

(Although just out of curiosity, what do you mean by "longer than it should be"? :) *Asks too many questions* XD)

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

I meant that a lot of the things people think are CMoA's really aren't. ;-)

[snapes-witch.livejournal.com]

Oh yes the myth of the single mum on dole living in a hovel. Except in the TV JKR bio docu it turns out the hovel is just a quite decent lower income flat.

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

Oh yes the myth of the single mum on dole living in a hovel. Except in the TV JKR bio docu it turns out the hovel is just a quite decent lower income flat.

A few weeks ago I was actually doing a web search on Rowling, specifically because of a discussion I was having with someone regarding Rowling's relationship with her father.

First off, it is very, very hard to find anything objective that has been written about Rowling. In fact, it's downright creepy how many sites say THE EXACT SAME THING, as if they all were written from the same press release, they all repeat the myth of Rowling's life, and most of them do it with the exact sentences and phraseology as the other sites.

I finally ran across a site that seemed to have been written objectively, and while not a hatchet piece, it definitely wasn't the fawning adulation that 99 percent of the websites are when it comes to Rowling info.

Unfortunately I had a splitting migraine the night I found the site and neglected to bookmark it, and I haven't been able to find it since...

But a couple of things I remember are:

1. The eatery that Rowling claims to have visited every day to spend hours at writing the first book is up an extremely steep hill from the flat she rented; while not impossible, it would be very difficult to push a pram up this hill, and to control it coming down.

2. That eatery was owned by a relative of Rowling's, so that explains why she was able to buy one cup of tea/coffee and take up valuable customer space all day.

3. Her flat was not unheated, at least according to various waffling statements Rowling has made.

3. Her mother and father were still married when her mother died; Dad married his secretary 3 months after his wife died, which seems to be the source of the estrangement between him and his daughter.

4. Rowling's antics in Portugal in regards to the guy she eventually married sound severely neurotic, bordering on psychotic.

5. She apparently felt that since she'd been a teacher in Portugal with only a college degree and no teacher's certificate, that she'd be able to get a job teaching when she came back to Great Britain. It was her decision not to continue to pursue getting a teacher's certificate, which was her excuse for "being on the dole". The fact was, with a college degree she had been getting decent temp jobs, and both her sister and a cousin offered to have her live with them to help her out financially, but for whatever reason Jo refused.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Um - in general, I think it's best to avoid personal attacks on authors. There's plenty to criticize in the books without that. But I must confess, I'd be interested if you did find the website again.

And - this is just an observation, not an attack - it strikes me as downright odd that Rowling gave Harry her own birthday. I can state with confidence that I would never do that. Yes, I know one of my fictional characters is also a Cancer! But they don't have my birthday. Why would they? There are 365 days in the year!

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

There's a teaser to some of that in this article. (http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/08/27/1030053057866.html)

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

There's a teaser to some of that in this article.

I don't give a damn how Rowling spends her money; she earned it, she can wallow in a swimming pool filled with Euros, Pound Sterlings, and American greenbacks if that gives her joy, for all I care.

Your article doesn't go into the details of Rowling's antics in Portugal that the site I found did. And the site I found described the thing with her father as him marrying his secretary 3 months after his wife died.

IOW, Rowling's parents were married at the time of her mother's death, but Rowling has so completely eliminated her father from her life that the myth presented a scenario of it just being Jo and her mother (sometimes mentioning Jo's sister) when the mother died. I thought that her parents had divorced when Jo was young, or her father had died, I was flabbergasted to find that he was in the picture at the time of his wife's death.

And no one has been able to prove her father was having an affair; the remarriage was perhaps rather sudden after the death of his wife, but then again his first wife had been sick for many years, he would have been going thru a grieving process for some time before her actual death, and may have felt that death was a blessed release for his wife.

No one except Jo seemed to be surprised, let alone get emotional, over the idea of Mr. Rowling marrying his secretary a few months after the death of his wife. Only Jo seems to have concluded that her father didn't display an adequate quantity, quality, or time of grief.

Somewhat hypocritical for someone who claims to have had only "two good cries" in her life, which she describes as crying for 20 minutes or more, and that one of those times was when her mother died. I guess that she feels that one of the two good cries she allows others should have also been expended on her mother's death.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

I don't really care about how anyone, Rowling included, spends their money, either. Most of that article did go on about peripheral stuff. But, it does mention a couple of things (cafe owned by the bro-in-law, so which relation answered, could help w/further search), name of ex-husband (also aid in searching), had college degree but no teaching certificate, names school. Also tells how this site and others, probably the site you found included, sussed all of this out (random mentions during interviews) so, it's possible for someone to comb through old interviews to try and discover the info for themselves.

I wasn't able to find a comprehensive site such as the one you're talking about. Being the very fluid internet, it's possible the page got pulled since the HP phenomenon is winding down, the subscription to the hosting site ran out or the author graduated and no longer had an account on such-and-so .edu server, or the information was reformatted and given a new name.

That's why I said the article I did find was a "teaser." It gives some hints but it doesn't deliver the whole enchilada. If someone has more time or interest, they can use the info on the teaser page to try and hunt down the article you mentioned.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

>IOW, Rowling's parents were married at the time of her mother's death, but Rowling has so completely eliminated her father from her life that the myth presented a scenario of it just being Jo and her mother (sometimes mentioning Jo's sister) when the mother died. I thought that her parents had divorced when Jo was young, or her father had died, I was flabbergasted to find that he was in the picture at the time of his wife's death.<

Well, something that I've seen in Real Life, is the tendency for the first child of a family to be pretty much deeded over to the parent of the same sex at birth, and to be "mama's girl" or "daddy's boy" from that time forward. A 2nd child, of either sex, often becomes the other parent's child, inside the family dynamic. It might be enlightening to know whether Rowling's younger sister has a similarly "difficult" relationship with their father. I have never heard as much. But then I wasn't particularly interested, either.

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

Um - in general, I think it's best to avoid personal attacks on authors.

I believe that I did mention that the site isn't a hatchet-job site...the info presented seems to have been researched and had at least one, if not more, sources for the info who had personal knowledge of it.

But I must confess, I'd be interested if you did find the website again.

I'll try to find it. What I liked about the site -- if "like" is the proper term -- was how much I think it explained troublesome points in Rowling's books, especially the info on what really went on in Portugal, and Rowling's dysfunctional relationship with her father, because it suggests a quite troubled psyche.

And - this is just an observation, not an attack - it strikes me as downright odd that Rowling gave Harry her own birthday. I can state with confidence that I would never do that. Yes, I know one of my fictional characters is also a Cancer! But they don't have my birthday. Why would they? There are 365 days in the year!

Hey, I'm a Cancer too!

And I have to admit that I did give a character in my own fanfic my birthday, but the character is not one of the main, first tier characters (altho they do play a big part in the first volume)...but my excuse is that I have a LOT of characters in the fic for which birthdays are somewhat important, and by the time I was coming up with birth dates for 2nd tier characters it was basically a matter of "Let's just plug in a date for this character who I want to be a Cancer"...

But it's not like it's going to be a major point in the story, I'm not sure if it will even ever come up in the story.

So yeah, when I first found out that Rowling's birthday was the same as the hero of her story, a story for which the birth date comes to play a significant role, that it perhaps indicated the stereotypical Leo ego in play, which we Cancerians do tend to find "odd"...

;-)

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

Having a troubled psyche doesn't necessarily mean anything when it comes to writing. A lot of artists are a little crazy, so it really wouldn't be all that surprising if JKR were a bit unstable.

However, the interactions of her characters do lead me to wonder if she doesn't quite understand what healthy relationships look like. It's like, while she does know that abuse is bad, she doesn't really know how people can relate to each other in ways that aren't abusive.

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

Having a troubled psyche doesn't necessarily mean anything when it comes to writing. A lot of artists are a little crazy, so it really wouldn't be all that surprising if JKR were a bit unstable.

I think there's a problem tho when it comes to Rowling, because based on interviews she's given she seems to have an obsessive disdain for people who show emotion, especially negative emotion. Her antics in Portugal (where she very publicly displayed negative emotion) to me gives quite an insight into how she presents love, especially what she deems "true love", in the books...

However, the interactions of her characters do lead me to wonder if she doesn't quite understand what healthy relationships look like. It's like, while she does know that abuse is bad, she doesn't really know how people can relate to each other in ways that aren't abusive.

What I said. ;-)

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

And - this is just an observation, not an attack - it strikes me as downright odd that Rowling gave Harry her own birthday. I can state with confidence that I would never do that. Yes, I know one of my fictional characters is also a Cancer! But they don't have my birthday. Why would they? There are 365 days in the year!

Perhaps because he's some sort of author avatar? I'm with you- it would be weird for one of my characters to have the same birthday as I do.

[xerox78.livejournal.com]

4. Rowling's antics in Portugal in regards to the guy she eventually married sound severely neurotic, bordering on psychotic.

Did they happen to include an account of her crying and throwing things from a 2nd+ story window or balcony down at her ex, who was standing on the ground? If so, then I read an article about that a few years back and that incident is the only thing I remember about it.

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

Did they happen to include an account of her crying and throwing things from a 2nd+ story window or balcony down at her ex, who was standing on the ground? If so, then I read an article about that a few years back and that incident is the only thing I remember about it.

What I read was pretty similar.

Basically what I read were quotes from coworkers who witnessed the melodrama between Jo and Jorge, very often right at the school in front of students, or at the cafe immediately across the street from the school where Jo taught, again often in view of students.

I can't remember anything about Jo throwing things out a window, but everyone remembered one incident where Jorge started beating Jo up at the cafe, her coworkers separated them, some dragging Jo across the street to the school while others restrained Jorge. Police arrived, and as Jorge was being hauled off, Jo had to be pulled back from an upperstory window of the school as she leaned out a perilous distance, hysterically crying out "Jorge! I love you, Jorge!" as the police dragged him off to the pokey...

[xerox78.livejournal.com]

I don't know if this is the article you read, but this (http://news.scotsman.com/jkrowlingharrypotter/The-JK-Rowling-story.2436228.jp) is the one I read, which has a similar account of the incident you described.