It was strange. Voldemort showed no…desire to actually believe Harry, and made his own downfall. If he hadn’t tried to still kill Harry after Harry said it wasn’t going to work, he wouldn’t be dead.

Thinking about Dumbledore’s famous quote: “It’s our choices, Harry…” I have always found it interesting that he uses the plural construction. It’s true that Dumbledore tends to use language that way a good bit (a dramatic use of the “royal we”!) but I still find it notable. He doesn’t say (and he could have said) “Harry, it’s your choices that make you who you are.” He says “our choices” and “us.”

I think Dumbledore understands at a very deep level just how interdependent we all are. It’s not as easy as debating nature versus nurture, because both are always involved. We’re encultured beings, and we’re born into stories that are already in progress. So of course choices made before us, especially huge, life-changing choices like the ones made by Lily and Merope, leave their mark (and I use that phrase intentionally) on their children. Does that dictate what their children will do, or enslave them to fate? Of course not. But I think choices from the previous generation can affect one’s deepest sense of self. Harry doesn’t know until he’s 11 that his mother sacrificed herself to try to save him, but her love has been an active, acting force in his life nonetheless. The story he entered mid-stream was a story that marked him as “a beloved son worth dying for.” Tom Riddle, on the other hand, was not marked by that kind of life. Because of choices made before him, some of them going back generations, his deepest, unconscious sense of self would be “I’m not worth living for. I’ve always been alone.” That is bound to affect his own choices, though again, doesn’t dictate them. For one thing, he is still (at least early on) fully human, which means grace and mercy can work upon him and draw him, whether or not he chooses to respond to them.

It strikes me again and again how the themes of sin, grace and mercy play out in these stories, even though those specific terms aren’t used.

But there has to be some significance to the fact that Voldemort now has something of Harry’s blood running through him. The psychic link they share in OotP just isn’t developed enough for me to buy that’s all there is to it.

And blood plays a role in a number of different epic heroic myths and salvation stories. It’s a symbol of a person’s self, the literal substance that contains a person, and sometimes his/her worth. The books put a lot of emphasis on the mudblood/pureblood divide, even if only to point out how ridiculous the distinction is.

Choosing Harry (again) to be one substance from which he rebirths himself has to come back to haunt Voldemort.

However, this doesn’t answer the puzzle of the blood thing. And somehow I don’t think it’s meaning is metaphorical. Magical, certainly, but not metaphorical.

How about this redemption scenario: Harry destroys the remaining Horcruxes. In the process one more person dies, someone who is very close to his heart, closer even than Sirius Black or DD (sorry Ron, I think the writing’s been on the wall ever since that game of wizard’s chess). When that person dies, Harry finally transcends his fear of death because he has as many people he loves on the other side of the veil as on this. Someone (my candidate is Snape but of course by that time they’ll be lining up to do the honours) AKs Voldemort. Voldemort tries to jump into Harry. And finds that he can’t. And disappears into a wisp of smoke, sort of like Saruman, which drifts past the veil, never to be seen again.

In writing this I realize that I’m sort of supporting the Harry as the last Horcrux theory, which I don’t believe in. I also don’t leave too much room for redemption. I also don’t account for the dragon flight. In fact, there are more gaps than answers in this theory.

These are the things I am certain of will happen. A beloved friend will die. Harry will transcend his mortal fear of death. Voldemort will be annihilated. Harry will live.

I think that Voldemort couldn’t exist in the presence of love. Like Dumbledore said, he couldn’t reside in a body that was so full of it. He can live on Harry’s blood, biologically, but he cannot bear his love. I suppose the meaning of blood in the series has to be understood in a metaphorical sense.

Voldemort would never see the world through Harry’s eyes, even if he was able to possess him, I believe. He couldn’t share his compassion and innocence, only love could do that.

One possibility, which Dave the Longwinded alludes to, is that the blood thing has intensified the bond between them, and that Voldemort may be redeemed by literally seeing the world through Harry’s eyes.

Well, my spin on the same possibility is that Voldemort would be annihilated by seeing the world through Harry’s eyes, especially if Harry were to cross the veil and in some sense, die.

However, I can’t quite go with that theory either. Voldemort spends a lot of time in Harry’s head in OotP. Then comes the moment when Harry thinks longingly of death because he can see his beloved godfather, and presto, Voldemort vanishes. And he never comes back. It almost looks to me like for some reason, Voldemort can’t possess Harry any more. My theory about this is that Voldemort can’t bear Harry’s lack of fear about death. But regardless of the cause, the connection just isn’t there in HBP.

It’s a bit of a paradox. He’s got Harry’s blood. But he can’t get into Harry’s mind.

I’m stumped.