death to capslock

Indestructible Intermezzo II – Etymological Excursus

While preparing the next post with our other set of miscellaneous cards and thinking further about Severus, I started playing around with an etymological dictionary to see what hidden meanings I might uncover for the terms of our discussion. To see what sort of a resonant background layer I could piece together, if you will.

I found some interesting things.

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Part IV - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Our first – and only overt – glimpse of an alchemist in canon came in the person of Nicholas Flamel, who flickered before our eyes together with his wife Perenelle in the first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. They gave Albus the stone that was meant as bait to entrap Voldemort and his slave Quirrell, that Harry in trying to preserve from him nearly unwittingly gave to him, and that Albus says he's destroyed with the Flamels’ consent.

This Stone we saw openly: hard, crystalline, blood-red. Its fruits – gold, the elixir of life, the cure-all panacea – we did not directly see and had to infer, though one of them – the promise of life – was desperately desired and sought at any cost by Voldemort. That is, by the hollow husk of the boy Tom Riddle, nurtured in error and inflicted on everyone by Albus Dumbledore.

During that quest, in his childlike attempts to understand and solve the mystery and save people, the boy Harry Potter saw, in the forest at night, Voldemort, through his slave, keeping himself alive – in a terrible half-life – by feeding on the silver blood of a murdered unicorn. This was our first image of what Voldemort was capable of and willing to do in pursuing his particular brand of evil.

Keep this image in mind.

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