Harry Demented

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

“There was a rushing in his ears as though of water. He was being dragged downward, the rushing growing louder…

And then, from far away, he heard screaming, terrible, terrifying screaming. He wanted to help whoever it was, he tried to move his arms, but couldn’t… a thick white fog was swirling around him, inside him---

“Harry! Harry! Are you all right?” (PoA 5: The Dementor)

This was supposed to be a description of Harry reliving his worst memories? Really?

Danny-Sparks wrote in the “Harry’s Dead Parents” thread:

I think what bothers me more than Harry believing that he's suffered more than anyone else for losing his parents is that the story is written such that he actually has apparently suffered more than any of his peers. The text "proves" that Harry has suffered the most with the fact that no other student's boggart (that we see anyway) is especially scary and the fact that no other student has such a severe reaction to dementors.




Well. It’s not quite true that the text “proves” that Harry’s uniquely severe reaction to Dementors was due to Harry’s suffering worse horrors than anyone else ever in human history.

If you recall, that had been the explanation offered by Lupin, once he realized that Harry (like Draco, clearly!) subscribed to the theory that the fainting fits showed Harry to be a weakling.

Remus Lupin is notorious for, shall we say, shading the truth according to what he wishes his audience to believe.

“You react worse because you’ve suffered worse” was an undisguised attempt to make Harry feel better about his supposed weakness.

One can see why Harry would prefer that explanation to his own.

But there is no reason on earth why we readers have to buy it.

Think of the children on that train. There was Neville, regularly visiting his tortured-into-insanity parents, and with clear memories of his other relatives repeatedly trying to kill him if he couldn’t perform magic to their specifications. (His Snape-boggart I read as projecting his fear of being killed for magical incompetence onto a more emotionally-acceptable bogeyman than his loving Gran or proud Uncle Algie.) There was Luna, who’d witnessed her mother kill herself in a magical experiment gone wrong. There was Ginny, who’d been possessed by Voldemort, committed multiple assaults and barely, sheer accident, escaped becoming a murderess, and who then almost died herself to feed Voldemort’s return….

Not to mention that the oldest children on that train were five or six years old back when Voldemort was “vanquished”—easily old enough to remember close relatives who were killed either by, or as, Death Eaters.

Then there are the more commonplace horrors—surely among several hundred children and adolescents, a few at least have been raped, molested by relatives, beaten by their parents…. We have never been given cause to think the WW a Utopia, after all!

And not a single one reacts the way Harry does?

Nah, I just can’t buy that Harry reacted uniquely because he had worse memories than anyone else ever. Or even, worse than anyone else currently attending Hogwarts.

However, we do know of one way in which Harry was, at that time, unique. At least, so we most devoutly hope.

He was a human Horcrux, carrying a fragment of Tom Riddle’s soul. A fragment which had been split off by Tom’s bounced Avada Kedavra.

And surely inadvertently killing himself was Tom’s worst memory?

*

The memory of one’s own death must be horrible to revisit, and it is without a doubt unique. No one else on that train (or on any train) could boast of having endured the same!

Moreover, that specific memory of Tom’s was one that his host Harry had a reason to want to experience. It included his parents’ voices.

Which Harry did not, himself, recall.

Remember how ambivalent Harry was about succeeding at the Patronus Charm, because he kept wanting instead to revisit “his” only memory of his parents? The only way he could, by letting Dementors pull forth a nightmarish memory?

*

Hagrid told us that when he was in Azkaban, the Dementors over time forced Hagrid to relive ALL his worst memories—his father’s death, being expelled from Hogwarts, Harry’s taking Norberta away from him….

I hypothesize that when the Dementors pull memories and emotions it’s “worst first” (greedy things!) and that Tom’s experience of his ‘death’ was so much more terrible than anything Harry had endured that it was pulled first, before any of Harry’s. And that Harry at some level recognized what that memory must be and wanted to hear it, to hear his parents. But it wasn’t coming from his own mind, so Harry had to relinquish his own consciousness to allow the alien memory to play unhindered….

I.e., he passed out, listening to voices in a fog.

Harry started exerting some control (over drifting into a voice-filled fog whenever he faced Dementors) only after he’d let the Dementors pull forth both his parent’s voices for storage in his own memory. At which point he no longer needed to abdicate consciousness to let the Dementors evoke that treasured/hated memory, because he could now remember it (at secondhand) for himself.

Eventually, once Harry had Cedric’s murder and his own near death to provide as Dementor-food to rival Tom’s memory of Godric’s Hollow, Harry stopped either hearing his parents or fainting in Dementors’ presence.

As in, now that the Dementors were pulling up Harry’s own emotions and memories to feast on, he stayed conscious for the process. Like everyone else always had, however horrific the emotions and memories being evoked.

Comments

Tom's memories vs Harry's subconscious memories

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Actually, we do have at least one indication that the soul-fragment might have some memories: Harry's reaction to Riddle's diary. "And while Harry was sure he had never heard the name T.M. Riddle before, it still seemed to mean something to him, almost as though Riddle was a friedn he'd had when he was very small, and had half-forgotten."

Also, we're told that Harry's reaction is unique, so we have to look for a reason for Harry and Harry only to faint like that.

I inferred above that some of the oldest children on that train would have had family tragedies they can consciously remember. But canon STATES that a number of other children have family tragedies they were probably, like Harry, too young to consciously remember. In fact, three of them are in the compartment with Harry when he first faints.

The Weasleys on that train would have ranged from infancy to about age five when Molly's two brothers were killed; Neville was something like 18 months old when he lost his parents and was sent to live with abusive relatives; Draco a little more than that when he lost his aunt and uncles-in-law; Susan about Harry's age when she lost her uncle, aunt, and cousins. Surely some of them would be candidates for fainting, if the Dementors always made people faint when they pulled painful memories from the subconscious?

In fact, were that the explanation, the phenomenon should be well known. Because the prisoners in Azkaban would be fainting left and right when the Dementors reached the subconscious memory level. We know that when you're around Dementors for long enough, they make you relive ALL your worst memories.

And EVERYONE, not just people who suffered being orphaned or abused as toddlers, has childhood experiences that were (at that time) painful enough to appeal to Dementors. The time my guppy died. When my best friend moved away. The time I turned around in the store and mummy wasn't there and I thought she was lost forever! The time I slipped under water in the bathtub and thought I was going to drown! Et cetera.

So if that were the case, it would be known that everyone, sooner or later, faints around even a single Dementor, and Lupin's explanation to Harry would have been, "The Dementors make you faint because they automatically evoke people's worst memories--and anytime they evoke a memory the victim doesn't consciously recall, the victim faints. Would I be correct in assuming, Harry, that you experienced a memory, perhaps, connected with your parents' deaths? Soemthing you hadn't remembered before?"

Re: Tom's memories vs Harry's subconscious memories

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

----Actually, we do have at least one indication that the soul-fragment might have some memories: Harry's reaction to Riddle's diary.

Yeah, I did think about that. I was thinking at the time that this line alone doesn't give us enough evidence that the fragment has its own memories, but maybe it does.


----In fact, were that the explanation, the phenomenon should be well known.

Oh. Good point! So that brings us back to the horcrux somehow causing the fainting....

I guess I just feel like a much simpler explanation would be that having an extra piece of alien soul attached to him makes Harry extra-sensitive to dementors, maybe because getting too close to dementors causes the fragment to start to "shake loose" from its binding to Harry.

Re: Tom's memories vs Harry's subconscious memories

[detritius.livejournal.com]

Which brings up yet another question: why didn't anyone ever consider getting rid of that bit of Voldie soul by having a dementor such it out? I mean, it would be one thing if they thought about it and decided it was too dangerous, but it's never even brought up.

Re: Tom's memories vs Harry's subconscious memories

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

Because the risk of losing Harry's own soul was too great, and if that happened Harry couldn't fully appreciate being dead and in the afterlife and stuff.... XP

Seriously, though, there is that. You would expect that the Dementors' ability to suck out souls would be somehow important, but all it's ever used for is as a threat for Sirius- oh, and they suck out the soul of fake!Moody, after which point he's never seen or heard-from again.