Harry’s Memory of his Parents’ Death
Nov. 16th, 2011 03:06 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
terri-testing.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
deathtocapslockHow Harry maybe wasn’t a sociopathic infant
I think it was Mary_j_59 who pointed out that Riddle’s memories of Godric’s Hollow, if accurate, paint a remarkably disturbing picture of infant Harry. We’re told that when Tom approached the crib after killing a screaming Lily in front of her son, the boy looked up at him with “bright interest,” only starting to cry when he identified that Tom was a (scary-looking) stranger.
Yet any normal child, hearing his father shout in fear and then his mother start screaming, would have started screaming his lungs out too, in empathy with them. What sort of monstrous baby would not get even slightly upset at hearing his mother screaming and begging for mercy, followed by her falling down?
Well, one who didn’t hear it.
Once we accept the possibility that Harry’s eventual memories of high-pitched laughter and screaming might have come from Riddle’s soul-fragment, not Harry’s own subconscious, a very simple piece of magical technology might make sense of Harry’s reaction.
Consider how often parents of infants spend a sleepless night because something accidentally wakes the baby, and then they can’t get hir to settle again.
We know at least one muffling charm in the WW. It’s even one-way; the persons inside can hear perfectly what those outside are saying, just not vice-versa. If someone invented a crib with a one-way muffling charm on it, so the parents could hear if the baby cried but the baby wouldn’t be disturbed by noises from outside the crib…. Well, wouldn’t you buy it? Never again having to worry that every time you had a fight, or a loud bout of lovemaking, or a raucous party, or just knocked over something, you might wake the baby?
And such a charm would have to be set on the crib itself, not on, say, the baby’s whole bedroom, because if there were an emergency, a fire, or as it might be, a death eater attack, while one or both parents were in the bedroom with the baby, the parents would want to hear the alarm.
If that were the case… then if Lily had already put Harry in his crib when Tom broke down the door, Harry would have heard nothing. The crash of the door, his father’s shouts, his mother’s screams, her frantic scrabbling to barricade the door when she realizes she doesn’t have her wand—none of it. If he had shut his eyes after mummy’s nighty-night kiss or was playing with something, he might not have registered anything at all until Lily heard Voldemort at the nursery door and rushed over to the crib to pick Harry up. At which point he’d have had, perhaps, a bare moment to register the distress and fear on her face and in her body before she realized there was no way to flee and dropped him back “into the crib behind her and threw her arms wide.” In other words, she has her back to Harry, who promptly pulls himself up on the bars of the crib to watch. He can’t see her face, and he can’t hear her voice.
And then there’s a flash of pretty light and Mummy falls down. And then the man in the cloak comes over, and Harry sees it’s not Daddy who’s pointing his wand at him, or Unca Siri, or anyone he knows —and finally starts to cry in fear.
And then there’s another flash of light, and his head hurts, and the building falls down.
And that would make sense of why, when Harry lay in bed at 4 Privet straining his memory trying to remember the car crash that killed his parents, nothing would come but a soundless flash of green light and the pain. He hadn’t registered anything significant happening until that moment.
I think it was Mary_j_59 who pointed out that Riddle’s memories of Godric’s Hollow, if accurate, paint a remarkably disturbing picture of infant Harry. We’re told that when Tom approached the crib after killing a screaming Lily in front of her son, the boy looked up at him with “bright interest,” only starting to cry when he identified that Tom was a (scary-looking) stranger.
Yet any normal child, hearing his father shout in fear and then his mother start screaming, would have started screaming his lungs out too, in empathy with them. What sort of monstrous baby would not get even slightly upset at hearing his mother screaming and begging for mercy, followed by her falling down?
Well, one who didn’t hear it.
Once we accept the possibility that Harry’s eventual memories of high-pitched laughter and screaming might have come from Riddle’s soul-fragment, not Harry’s own subconscious, a very simple piece of magical technology might make sense of Harry’s reaction.
Consider how often parents of infants spend a sleepless night because something accidentally wakes the baby, and then they can’t get hir to settle again.
We know at least one muffling charm in the WW. It’s even one-way; the persons inside can hear perfectly what those outside are saying, just not vice-versa. If someone invented a crib with a one-way muffling charm on it, so the parents could hear if the baby cried but the baby wouldn’t be disturbed by noises from outside the crib…. Well, wouldn’t you buy it? Never again having to worry that every time you had a fight, or a loud bout of lovemaking, or a raucous party, or just knocked over something, you might wake the baby?
And such a charm would have to be set on the crib itself, not on, say, the baby’s whole bedroom, because if there were an emergency, a fire, or as it might be, a death eater attack, while one or both parents were in the bedroom with the baby, the parents would want to hear the alarm.
If that were the case… then if Lily had already put Harry in his crib when Tom broke down the door, Harry would have heard nothing. The crash of the door, his father’s shouts, his mother’s screams, her frantic scrabbling to barricade the door when she realizes she doesn’t have her wand—none of it. If he had shut his eyes after mummy’s nighty-night kiss or was playing with something, he might not have registered anything at all until Lily heard Voldemort at the nursery door and rushed over to the crib to pick Harry up. At which point he’d have had, perhaps, a bare moment to register the distress and fear on her face and in her body before she realized there was no way to flee and dropped him back “into the crib behind her and threw her arms wide.” In other words, she has her back to Harry, who promptly pulls himself up on the bars of the crib to watch. He can’t see her face, and he can’t hear her voice.
And then there’s a flash of pretty light and Mummy falls down. And then the man in the cloak comes over, and Harry sees it’s not Daddy who’s pointing his wand at him, or Unca Siri, or anyone he knows —and finally starts to cry in fear.
And then there’s another flash of light, and his head hurts, and the building falls down.
And that would make sense of why, when Harry lay in bed at 4 Privet straining his memory trying to remember the car crash that killed his parents, nothing would come but a soundless flash of green light and the pain. He hadn’t registered anything significant happening until that moment.
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Re: A RL Similar Situation
Date: 2011-11-18 07:09 pm (UTC)My larger point, which I really should have made clearer, was that Harry didn't have to understand that his mother was dead, or even the concept of 'death' in order to understand from her obvious, and loud, display of distress that Something Bad was happening. And at that age, infants really don't have a concept of 'other people,' so Harry really should have reacted to anything upsetting his mother that badly as something that was directly upsetting to him. Unless he had reason to think that such a display of stress and fear was 'normal' or some kind of fun game and not actually something to be upset about. So yes, I agree completely that his non-plussed reaction to Lily going into a complete meltdown strongly supports the events of Liberacorpus! or worse as a common occurrence.
...which I thought I put in my reply above but now realized I didn't. I really shouldn't post when I'm that tired. Anyway, the idea that Harry didn't react because as far as he knew, from his limited experience, this was normal was the reason I kept bringing up the fact that in the anecdotes offered as counterexamples there was evidence that the initial events really didn't present any obvious stimuli indicating something was Wrong to an infant that looks at the surface without actually reasoning out what they're seeing. An older child would understand that their mother had died, but if an infant only feels their mother slump slightly before another caretaker picks them up? Why wouldn't this be part of the normal 'Mommy fell asleep so Daddy/Grandpa/Auntie is playing with me now' routine? And in both cases presented, the infants *did* freak out when it became clear that this *wasn't* part of the established routine.
As for excusing the scene because Rowling's a bad writer... if we don't give her a pass for the rest of the series, why should we here?
I apologize to everyone if it feels that I'm beating a dead horse over this scene, but Harry's behavior here freaked me out more than anything else written into these books, which have already been established as nightmare inducing in their own right.
Re: A RL Similar Situation
Date: 2011-11-18 08:03 pm (UTC)Fair enough! and I do see where you're coming from. I guess I'm wrong below, but 11-year-old Harry doesn't seem that bad to me. If he were this disengaged as a baby, he'd surely be Tom Riddle redux by the time he was 11, don't you think?
OTOH, if we posit Harry as a fairly normal child, the only two excuses for his behavior which work are:
1. He's seem mummy and daddy doing things like this before, so he's not freaked out.
2. Or, as Terri suggests, there's a silencing charm on his crib, so he can't actually hear what's happening.
Otherwise, it's just sloppy writing, and I can understand you not giving her a pass for that!
Re: A RL Similar Situation
Date: 2011-11-19 01:01 am (UTC)In addition to the above, I'd add
3. What Voldemort presented as a flashback isn't an accurate representation of what happened.
Which opens the possibility that Rowling was right in her interview statement that Harry didn't see Lily die, but I think that statement can be taken or left as is without actually affecting anything.
Assuming the scene was a straight-forward 'this is exactly what happened and Lily'n'James really truly awesomely were a loving-n-sweet couple, we promise!' I'd assume a child behaving like Harry was even *worse* than Riddle- maybe closer to Damien from the The Omen. On the hand, if I ever decide to write a horror story about demonic infants, I'll know where to look for inspiration :P (/is still SERIOUSLY creeped out by that scene...)
Still, this conversation has me wondering: if we do assume option one is correct, and Harry was simply desensitized to his mother's distress signals, how terrible must the conditions in that household have been that even with a lack of self/other distinction Harry has no response to his mother's tears, though she's the one he should be most attuned to?
Maybe James put some kind of 'happy/calm baby charm' on Harry to keep him quiet and content? Maybe even James and Lily together, if they truly had no idea about how to deal with a baby other than magic. This would (possibly) absolve James of being abusive to his wife, but it also opens up a whole 'nother can of worms...
Re: A RL Similar Situation
Date: 2011-11-19 01:20 am (UTC)Re: A RL Similar Situation
Date: 2011-11-26 11:41 am (UTC)