[Author's note: Thanks for the reviews! I love reading your comments. No, this will not be a story about child abuse. No slash, no squick, no vampires, no aliens. And yes, there will be a lot more about Snape, and about Draco, and of course Tom Riddle. SalonK, interesting observation about Dudley's parentage! One wonders about his dark curls…]
From the Files of Dr. Dumbledore
The Case of Harry P., Week 6
Dear me, I certainly hope that the events that take place in Harry's hallucinations are symbolic! First I lose my hand, and then I am finished off by the killing curse? What a week we are having, Harry!
Narcissa Malfoy and her sister Bellatrix visit Snape. Voldemort has asked Draco to carry out a terrible task. Narcissa pleads with Snape; he promises to fulfill the task himself is Draco fails.
How touching – a mother pleading for her child! Are the sisters Narcissa and Bellatrix aspects of the same person, I wonder? The good mother who wants to save her child, and the dark non-mother who says: Sacrifice him! Snape, the inscrutable Snape, always lingering betwixt and between, both good and evil, promises to help the mother save her son. But he will save him by committing some dreadful act. What is it Snape must do?
Are Narcissa and Bellatrix both aspects of Lily? If so, which part of Lily wants to save her son – and which part doesn't? And why does Snape make his dreadful promise? What motivates him? A desire to protect the boy? Love for the boy's beautiful mother? Or something else?
Dumbledore and Harry go to see Horace Slughorn. Dumbledore's hand is injured, but he will not say why. Initially, Slughorn does not want to return to Hogwarts as a teacher, but he promises to do so for Harry's sake, and because he remembers Harry's mother fondly.
Another character who makes a promise, for the sake of a mother and her son! Is Slughorn somehow Snape's double?
Horace. Named after the Greek poet perhaps, who wrote such stirring verse about lost love and the futility of pursuing married women? Are we seeing another long-lost admirer of Lily's here? Slughorn. Since slugs don't normally have horns, I can only conclude that Harry has been reading old books again. Browning, perhaps, and his tragic Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came? When the doomed Childe Roland finally arrives at the Dark Tower, he sees the ghosts of those who have died before him: "I saw them all, and I knew them all, and yet/Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set…" The slug-horn, the battle horn, the knell of death?
Harry, Ron, and Hermione secretly follow Draco to Borgin and Burkes, a shop that sells dark artifacts. Draco is up to something, but what? Harry begins to suspect that Malfoy is a death eater, branded with Voldemort's dark mark.
What do we make of the sinister merchants Borgin and Burkes? The shady Mr. Borgin's name evokes both the French borgne, "shady", and the murderous Borgia family. And wasn't Burke a famous Scottish serial killer? Not precisely the most wholesome company for the young Draco, are they?
Draco is marked by the Dark Lord. And so is Harry, of course, which confirms my idea that Draco and Harry are one. Both boys carry the dark wizard's mark, Draco on his arm, and Harry on his forehead. Is Harry's scar a dark mark, too, I wonder? Harry tells me that the Death Eaters can feel Voldemort's presence through their scars. Well, so can Harry, apparently; his delusions are full of references to his scar hurting as his mind fills with Voldemort's thoughts.
Strangely, the dual scars bring to mind a Biblical verse: And it shall be for a sign unto thee upon thine hand, and for a memorial between thine eyes… But no, Harry and Draco's scars are the signs of a darker lord… Or the mark of Cain?
I must find out how Harry got his scar!
Snape is no longer teaching potions; Slughorn is. Harry borrows an old potions book that belonged to someone who called himself "The Half-Blood Prince". He follows the Prince's instructions, handwritten in the margin, and succeeds in making a perfect potion, which earns him a bottle of Felix Felicis, a luck potion, as a reward.
Ah, there are two potions masters at Hogwarts now! Or are they one and the same? For even when Slughorn is teaching the class, it is The Half-Blood Prince who is Harry's true teacher. What Harry learns, he learns from the scribbles in the margins. As an analyst, I like the idea of a hidden subtext in the book, the text in the margin. Harry's own hallucinations also seem to be filled with secret margin notes and alternate meanings. Let's see what we can make of them, Harry!
Now, how are we to interpret the potion Felix Felicis? What an odd name! "The lucky of the lucky one?" "The blessed of the blessed?" I thought Harry's scar made him cursed. What makes him blessed, all of a sudden? And why does the potions master award him with this unexpected blessing?
Snape torments Harry as always and gives him detention. But Dumbledore trusts Snape and believes him to be good. Harry is taking private lessons with Dumbledore; they look into the Pensieve together and see Tom Riddle's past. The abusive wizard Morfin Gaunt is enraged to discover that his daughter Merope is in love with the handsome Muggle Tom Riddle. The desperate Merope gives Tom a love potion, and they have a child together: Tom Riddle Jr., who will become Lord Voldemort.
I do not know what to make of Snape. His very name is a riddle. (Or, perhaps, a Riddle? Now, there's a thought!) Snape sounds like "snake", but not quite. Snape, the man who is almost a serpent…
And now we have two Tom Riddles, a father and a son! His mother Merope recalls the Greek goddess who fell in love with a mortal and had to hide in shame, much like Merope Gaunt who loved a Muggle. But wasn't there another Merope as well? Merope, the foster mother of Oedipus… And just like Oedipus, the young Tom Riddle kills his father… We seem to come back to the theme of patricide yet again. How very interesting!
Ron and Hermione are falling for each other. Ginny is kissing Dean Thomas, which upsets both Harry and Ron. Eventually, Ron becomes involved with the clingy Lavender Brown, and Hemione is jealous.
Ron and Hermione, indeed? Are Harry's more intuitive self and his intellect finally coming to terms with one another? The red-haired Ginny kisses Dean… This must be an echo of the kiss between Reggie and Lily. So Harry knew about that? Interesting! Dean Thomas, who is he? Thomas. Tom. Tom Riddle? And then we have Lavender Brown, who kisses Ron so excessively, and whose name contains a flower and a color. Is she also a faint echo, a faded version, so to speak, of the kiss between Lily and Black? Lavender, another flower, and Brown, another Black?
Turning to the Pensieve again, Harry discovers that Merope, abandoned by her lover, gives birth to the young Tom and dies shortly thereafter. He is placed in a dreary orphanage, where he lives until Dumbledore brings him to Hogwarts. Tom is a solitary, friendless boy who likes to hurt other children. In the Pensieve, Harry observes Tom Riddle as a schoolboy, asking Slughorn about Horcruxes, mysterious dark magical objects. He does not get an answer, but the memory seems to have been tampered with; Harry must get Slughorn to reveal the true memory to him.
The poor abandoned Tom! No wonder he hates his father, and perhaps his mother as well. He is orphaned, like Harry believes himself to be. Tom is left in the orphanage, as Harry is left with the Dursleys. Tom and Harry – how very similar they are!
What do the horcruxes represent, I wonder? The name is suggestive: Horcrux. Horror. Horrible. And crux, cross, crucifixion, excruciating, the Cruciatus curse… Whatever these horcruxes are, they are associated with pain, with suffering, with horror…
Harry drinks Felix Felicis and goes with Slughorn to Hagrid's hut, where Hagrid is weeping over a dead monstrous spider, Aragog. They help him bury Aragog, and Harry extracts the memory he needs from the drunk Slughorn.
The poor Hagrid, weeping of the death of a monster! The Hagrid character appears to have the capacity to love even the deadliest of creatures; I wonder if that is a characteristic Harry shares?
Harry learns what Horcruxes are: When a person commits murder, the soul of the murderer is fractured, and a piece of fragmented soul can be embedded in a physical object. The murderer will never die as long as the objects housing his soul are still intact. Dumbledore suspects that Riddle made several Horcruxes: A ring that Dumbledore destroyed when hurting his hand, the diary Harry destroyed, a locket, a cup, and the serpent Nagini.
The horcruxes… Memories of murder. A fragmented soul, locked in the tangible reminders of a terrible act… I am, apparently, helping Harry open these terrifying memories, but at the cost of my hand. Why my hand? Why must I lose part of my body to see what is inside the memory?
A ring, a diary, a locket, a cup, a serpent. What are these things? And what secret does Harry believe they hold?
Harry is worried about the similarities between himself and Riddle, but Dumbledore assures him that they are very different indeed: Harry possesses love, the force that the Dark Lord does not know.
Well, that is reassuring. Harry is not Voldemort after all, or so he says…
Harry discovers that Snape is the Half-Blood Prince. Snape is the mistreated son of an abusive Muggle and a witch; his mother's maiden name was Eileen Prince.
Another abused half-blood, the son of a Muggle and a witch! This makes Snape sound very much like Tom Riddle. Eileen Prince… The name reminds me of the Arthurian legend of the noble Elaine, the Lady of Shalott, who dies of unrequited love for Lancelot, with a lily clutched in her hand. Another lily!
Harry and Dumbledore travel to a cave to destroy one of the horcruxes. Dumbledore must give some of his blood to gain entrance to the cave. There is a lake in the cave, and they find a boat to take them across to where the horcrux is. Dumbledore must drink a terrifying drink that causes excruciating pain in order to reach the locket at the bottom of the tank. He pleads with Harry to let him stop drinking, but Harry has to force him to go on. They get the locket, but Inferi, undead beings in the water, attack them.
Why are these terrible things happening to my Hogwarts counterpart all of a sudden? I must give of my own blood, drain the cup of pain… And Harry must force me to go in, in spite of the pain.
Ah, I get it! Our roles have become reversed! Perhaps the reversal makes this psychological journey easier on Harry. For I am the one who is forcing him to go on, to continue on this journey until the secret is uncovered, no matter how painful it is for him. Yes, you must continue, Harry, even if it causes you to face memories as chilling as those represented by the Inferi. Who are the Inferi, I wonder? Undead ghosts of the past, reaching for the living…
The return, but find that the Dark Mark has appeared in the sky above Hogwarts. At the top of the Astronomy Tower, Draco is attempting to kill Dumbledore, but finds that he cannot do it. Snape arrives with a group of Death Eaters; Draco has let them into Hogwarts through a pair of identical Vanishing Cabinets, one in Borgin and Burkes, and one inside Hogwarts. Snape kills Dumbledore, who falls from the tower.
I am murdered by Snape?
But I thought my Hogwarts self trusted him? Surely, I cannot be that wrong about a person, even in the hallucinations of a disturbed teenager? How perplexing!
I am completely baffled by the character of Snape. Snape vowed to protect Draco, Harry's double, and yet he is a murderer. How can that be?
And why am I the one Voldemort wants killed? Perhaps because I know too much, because I am getting closer to his secret?
Snape and the Death Eaters escape. Harry discovers that the locket is a fake Horcrux; it has been replaced by a copy. After Dumbledore's funeral, Harry decides to find the rest of the Horcruxes and destroy them.
Identical lockets, identical vanishing cabinets. These hallucinations are getting very confusing. Does the fake locket serve as a reminder that even evil is not precisely what it seems?
At the end of our last session for this week, I walked Harry out into the waiting room, where his mother was waiting for him. Lily greeted Harry with a warm smile and a kiss on the cheek. How unbelievably lovely she is! In spite of her simple green dress and the plain silver chain around her neck, she could be a princess from a fairy tale…
A silver chain... As Lily bent forward to kiss Harry, I saw that there was something attached to the end of the that chain, something half hidden under her dress.
It was a silver locket.