Dumbledore had just managed to put Fudge, Dawlish, Shacklebolt, and Umbridge on the ground, unconscious, so that he can make his escape from Hogwarts. Harry, McGonagall, and himself remain conscious in the headmaster’s office, and the following occurs:

“Listen to me, Harry,” [Dumbledore] said urgently, “you must study Occlumency as hard as you can, do you understand me? Do everything Professor Snape tells you and practice particularly every night before sleeping so that you can close your mind to bad dreams – you will understand why soon enough, but you must promise me – ”

The man called Dawlish was stirring. Dumbledore seized Harry’s wrist.

“Remember – close your mind – ”

But as Dumbledore’s fingers closed over Harry’s skin, a pain shot through the scar on his forehead, and he felt again that terrible, snake-like longing to strike Dumbledore, to bite him, to hurt him –

” – you will understand,” whispered Dumbledore.

Harry is a wreck at this point, and Dumbledore knows it. He blames himself for Dumbledore’s having to leave Hogwarts, he’s having awful dreams, he’s seeing into Voldemort’s mind and emotions, and he’s forced to take lessons with a Professor who hates him.

Dumbledore reassures him, not once but twice, the second with a gentle whisper, “You will understand.”

I bring this scene up because this is, for me, a strike against the scar being a horcrux. When I first wrote, “Is Harry a Horcrux” last year, I was inclined against the idea primarily because of the fact that Dumbledore never told Harry that it was possible, and Dumbledore has done a lot of research into horcruxes and knows plenty about the oddity of Harry’s scar. I’ve since considered the possibility with more of an open mind, but I’m coming full circle on it again.

Based on this passage, if Harry’s scar is a horcrux, we’d have to conclude that by the time Dumbledore died, he still had not fulfilled his promise to Harry, “you will understand.” We’d probably have to conclude that Dumbledore tried to comfort Harry with words that were ultimately empty.

Of course, there may be some brilliant way for Rowling to write it that would counter this objection. The jury’s still out for me on this issue, and we still have the problem of there being no magic explained or even hinted at thus far in the series that would explain a mind-link except for horcruxes…but this dialogue, based on what we already know of Dumbledore’s character, is a damaging blow to the scarcrux theory.

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Perhaps the most interesting issue raised by the afore-mentioned Red Hen article, Loyaulte Me Lie, is the apparently conflicting accounts we have of the night the fateful prophecy was delivered in a room above the Hog’s Head by Sybill Trelawney. I’ll state the problem, answer part of it, and leave the rest to you all in the comments. Have fun figuring this one out.

In Order, we are told by Dumbledore that the one who overheard the prophecy was apprehended only two lines into the prophecy and thrown from the building.

In Half-Blood Prince, Trelawney tells Harry that her interview with Dumbledore was “rudely interrupted by Severus Snape.” She goes on to explain that “there was a commotion outside the door and it flew open, and there was that rather uncouth barman standing with Snape….”

The problems with the two accounts are as follows:

• Trelawney is not aware of anything that is going on around her when she has a real prophecy.
• Snape was obviously still outside the door, then, at the end of the prophecy.

Or, as Joyce states the problem:

Question: if Snape was discovered halfway through the Prophecy and thrown from the building as Albus claims, how would Sybill have known that he was the person listening at the door?

Question: if Sybill — who is unaware of her surroundings while in the grip of a Prophecy — did not actually see or hear an eavesdropper, how could she even know that there was one?

Question: if the eavesdropper was discovered and ejected halfway through the Prophecy, how did Snape happen to still be standing outside the door after it was finished so Sybill could identify him?

Question: if Snape-the-Snoop was still at the door after the Prophecy was finished, how can Albus say so confidently that he only heard the first part of it?

I’ll admit it looks really suspicious, but I’m going to take a shot at answering it. We can fairly easily reconstruct the scene this way:

The prophecy begins, Snape is listening. Two lines in, Aberforth (the bartender), discovers Snape and pulls him from the door, so he can no longer hear the words being spoken. The prophecy ends, Trelawney comes to, and Snape is trying to get away from Aberforth, causing a commotion. The door swings open, revealing Snape, and he is ejected from the building having only heard the first part.

So we can at least harmonize that part of the account. What we still have trouble with is this: If Dumbledore knew it was Snape and saw Snape (which he must have when the door flew open), what could Snape have possibly said to Dumbledore to convince him he wasn’t snooping, especially when it is supposedly Albus’s own brother Aberforth who caught him? Even if Albus trusted Snape at the time, it is hard to imagine he would have not become exceedingly suspicious to find him listening at keyholes.

So the problem remains. The events of that night are a bit funny, and there’s some ’splainin’ to do. Ideas?

Update (7/02): Couldn’t sleep last night, and I did more thinking.  Here’s what I came up with:

But then we have to ask ourselves: What, exactly, could Albus have done?  Detain him?  Throw him in Azkaban for snooping?  An accomplished Occlumens like Snape could certainly pull off a lie.  “I heard a strange/threatening voice.  I thought someone was in danger.”

If we can harmonize both accounts (which I think we can), and both are truthful (even if not the whole story), I’m not really sure that Dumbledore could have prevented Snape from getting away and getting to Voldemort.

So, I think the problem can be answered, even if it still smells a little fishy overall.  There may be much more to it than my harmonization of the accounts.  But then, there may not.

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The next question kind of follows up on my previous thoughts about Harry’s Anger in Order of the Phoenix.

Question: Near the end of Book 5, Harry states that he doesn’t want to be human. What do you think he means by that? Why is it a significant comment in the context of his development?

Tom Riddle, Jr. and Harry Potter have a lot of striking similarities: “both half-bloods, orphans, raised by Muggles…Parselmouths…[they] even look something alike.” (Chamber 317) Dumbledore teaches Harry that it is their choices that make them different. (333)

When faced with the question of life and death, Voldemort chose an existence less than human rather than death. The further he proceeded along his path toward “immortality,” the less human he became.

In Dumbledore’s office at the end of Order, Harry is face-to-face with the grief of death in a more profound way than he has yet experienced. With the trauma of having no real family or significant connection to his parents, Sirius had provided that needed link. Now he’s dead, and Harry is quite convinced it was entirely his fault. It is in the context of this terrible pain that Harry makes the claim that he does not want to be human. (Order 824) It immediately follows Dumbledore’s statement that it is Harry’s ability to feel such pain that is his “greatest strength” and “part of being human.” (823-24)

Harry, then, is faced for the first time with a significant choice concerning what to do with the universal human pain of suffering permanent loss (the death of a loved one), as well as the pain of one’s own death. Voldemort chose to forsake even being human, in many respects, in order to avoid such pain. He also chose to not ever feel pain for the loss of anyone else, as evidenced by his willingness to kill anyone and everyone without remorse in order to stay alive himself.

Harry, on the other hand, feels this pain deeply, and though his initial reaction is to not even want to be human, he is able with Dumbledore’s gentle guidance, to learn how to grieve, and to learn that this kind of pain is normal and even healthy.

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Quick note before the next question: LaShawn Barber has kindly linked to this blog in a recent post and noted the questions I’m answering. She writes:

I really want to answer those questions…but I haven’t had much extra time to blog here at FFC. If you have the time, you may answer the questions here, at Travis’s blog, or both.

I second her statement – feel free to compose your own answers to these questions! My answers are nowhere near exhaustive (they’re intended to be somewhat brief) and are usually written in small moments I get throughout my days. Any further input would be much appreciated. That said, let’s get to the next question!

Question: Harry is very angry in Order of the Phoenix – do you think his anger is justified? Why or why not?

This is a rather complex question to answer. There are perhaps some good reasons for his being angry and some bad ones. He’s exceedingly frustrated that, though he was there the night Voldemort returned, no one seemed to think it important to give him any information about what was going on, as evidenced particularly by cryptic, “We’re not allowed to say anything” type letters from Ron and Hermione. (8) When he finally meets them at 12 Grimmauld Place, he is clearly enraged that though he has faced greater dangers than perhaps even some of the members of the Order, he’s kept out of hte loop. (65-66) His anger is certainly understandable and perhaps somewhat justified, though he is unable to see things from anything other than his own frustrated perspective.

He’s also quite angry at Dumbledore’s silence and unwillingness to look at him. (152, 468) We would think, initially, that his anger is unjustified concerning Dumbledore. Harry should trust that Dumbledore knows what he’s doing. But even this is complicated by Dumbledore’s assertion that what happened at the Ministry, as well as Harry’s anger, is largely Dumbledore’s fault for making the mistake of withholding information from Harry for so long. (825-26)

Whether or not his anger in this or that part of the book is justified, one thing can be said with certainty: his anger is normal. A lot of people didn’t like Order as much as the other books because Harry seemed so troubled and angry and even mean at times. I liked Order better than the books that preceded it, precisely because of that reason. I had been wondering at what point Harry would finally begin to deeply feel all of the trauma he had experienced and no doubt internalized. With the past that he had, it was about time we began to see some clear signs of trauma from this poor boy!

Dumbledore affirms this when he tells Harry that his ability to feel is his greatest strength, something that will be strongly echoed and furthered in Half-Blood Prince. (823-25; see Half-Blood Prince, ch. 23).

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