I have little doubt that the illustrious Editors on MuggleNet (not to mention everybody else) are rather sick of hearing furious, unsubstantiated rantings about what exactly is behind the door in the Ministry of Magic.

Good. This isn’t one of them.

Instead, I’d like to propose an alternative to the position that it’s love which Harry possesses more than any other. Not a simple argument that it isn’t love; an argument on why it can’t be and a substantiated hypothesis for what it could be. As with just about everything JKR does, it’s complicated. In fact, how exactly I managed to rule out love as a possibility originates in an entirely different theory: one postulating what would seal Book 7. My first goal is to rule out love; the second is to take you through the process I used to determine what else it could possibly be.

My conclusion is based primarily on analysis of dialogue. Most of what I rely on for evidence comes from Dumbledore. I know there are some readers who now feel he is not a reliable source of information, but I would disagree with that. JKR has said that the two characters she uses to give Harry information are Hermione and Dumbledore. Realize that he has never actually lied, only withheld information and certainly knows a great deal more about what’s going on than the majority of the characters in the series. For this reason, I put faith in Dumbledore’s trustworthiness as a narrator.

I’d also like to keep this (and myself) in perspective. As Firenze said:

“Trivial hurts, tiny human accidents...These are of no more significance than the scurrying of ants to the wide universe, and are unaffected by planetary movements.”

Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone

It all comes back to the very first book, the determiner of the inevitable conclusion. Harry, our Hero, gets that really nasty scar in a really nasty way and I won’t bother recapping. Voldemort doesn’t die when the Killing Curse rebounds; there isn’t enough human left in him to die at that moment. The point I noted then, which will have repercussions later, was the second half of the conversation Harry had with Dumbledore in the hospital wing:

“But why couldn’t Quirrell touch me?”
“He didn’t realize that love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark...It is in your very skin.”

We also learn our contenders have brother wands: holly representing life for Harry, yew representing death for Voldemort. Their cores are phoenix feathers from Fawkes. This is an indicator that we need to pay special attention to this bird’s cameos later in Books 2 and 4. Two sides of the same coin. Same at heart. Love and hate. Not that Fawkes doesn’t clearly have a favorite of the two. Love, love, love, love, love.

Chamber of Secrets

We’re chatting with Dumbledore again. This time, it’s about who Harry really is and why the Sorting Hat wanted to put him in Slytherin:

“Voldemort put a bit of himself in me?”
“It certainly seems so.”

Goblet of Fire

Jump ahead to the graveyard. Harry’s arm is sliced open (ouch), his blood taken (ew), and added to the potion that gives Voldemort new life (we know this can’t be good). Voldemort chooses to disregard the sensible advice of the "Evil Overlord’s Guide" and proceeds to reveal all on pg. 653 of the American Edition:

“His mother left upon him the traces of her sacrifice...This is old magic, I should have remembered it, I was foolish to overlook it...but no matter. I can touch him now.”

“...for the lingering protection his mother once gave him would then reside in my veins too...”

What the *expletive*, you must be asking yourself. Why, why, why? It can’t be love, Voldemort is the bad guy, the Evil Overlord, the Tormentor of Innocent Muggles, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named! He is not capable of love; he is to rise up more terrible than before!

It’s not a problem at all. I mean, Harry still manages to fulfill his Hero role with Voldemort coursing though his mind and body. Voldemort can certainly still function as Villain with such a trifling thing as love in him. Yet, exactly how this affects Voldemort -- and I mean in ways other than the ability to touch Harry -- has yet to reveal itself in this series. Harry is having a few doubts as to where he ends and Voldie begins in Book 5. Who’s to say Voldie isn’t having the same problems with Harry (or will in the future)? Aside from that, remember what happened when Voldie tried to kill Harry the first time. Hagrid reckons that he didn’t have enough human in him to die. Harry has just given Voldie his humanity back, and with that, the ability to bleed.

Back to the events occurring in the book. Harry relates the duel, stating that Voldemort could now touch his face to Dumbledore, and the latter's response is:

“For a fleeting instant, Harry thought he saw a gleam of something like triumph in Dumbledore’s eyes.”

Harry and Voldemort are now completely, irrevocably, even.

This is when I screamed in agony, threw my books across the room, fell to my knees and yelled: “Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!”

Poor Harry. Poor, poor Harry. If they are the same coin, if Voldemort is no longer all-powerful inhuman, and has settled for his old body back instead of immortality (pg. 656, GoF), reduced to functioning human (and this little love thing throws a wrench in that system) they’re both in for it. If Voldemort goes, Harry’s going. If Voldemort survives, Harry survives. I found it unlikely, if not impossible, for Voldie to make it through Book 7. It’s not a matter of only one individual surviving the other. I feel other editorials have explained away this interpretation.

I thus titled this my Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde Theory. I figured that they both would share the same fate, being as they clearly couldn’t occupy the same time and space together. It was just inevitable. It could only end by them destroying each other.

Looking for more support for my theory, (as one thread of evidence is never enough, people!) I re-read Prisoner of Azkaban, as I hadn’t collected support from that book yet. I ran into a sidelong comment I’d always paused over. It was made by Dumbledore about Trelawney:

“Who’d have thought it? That brings her total real predictions up to two. I should offer her a pay raise...”

But about that time JKR gave out her Order of the Phoenix clue through, who else, but Dumbledore:

“It is time...for me to tell you what I should have told you five years ago, Harry. Please sit down. I am going to tell you everything.”

“Voldemort said that he only killed my mother because she tried to stop him from killing me. But why would he want to kill me in the first place?”
“Alas, the first thing you ask me, I cannot tell you. Not today. Not now.”

Anyway, I ran around my house, throwing punches in the air. My twin is my witness. I had figured it out. Trelawney’s first prophecy was about Harry and Voldemort. Come on, this series is all about Harry Potter. If someone makes a sidelong comment about a missing prophecy, its content was about Harry. Voldemort had come that night to stop it from coming true. But what it was...I couldn’t be absolutely positive at that time. It must have had something to do with Harry destroying him, and that meant that my theory of them destroying each other was viable, as well as Harry surviving Voldie.

As shown in other essays (and I noticed immediately upon reading Book 5 as I was on the watch for it) the word “either” can mean “both” or "or." As JKR says that she was very careful about the way she worded the Prophecy, and hinting that the answer is the less obvious of the two, I’m thinking it’s "both." Sorry for thoroughly bursting your bubble.

Translating the Beyond

For Book 5, there are two topics that interested me. We’ll just follow this love issue for now. I couldn’t help myself, thinking I was so clever to figure out this prophecy thing before the next book came out. As it had prematurely led me to the answer I desired, I felt sure that my Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde Theory was the correct answer. Then, with Book 5, I became entranced by the possibility that Harry has something “in such quantities and which Voldemort has not at all” in the Department of Mysteries, behind a locked door.

First things first. Book 5 quotes to consider. The mother of all quotes is, of course, the Prophecy:

"EITHER MUST DIE AT THE HAND OF THE OTHER FOR NEITHER CAN LIVE WHILE THE OTHER SURVIVES."

"Let the pain stop," thought Harry. "Let him kill us...End it, Dumbledore...Death is nothing compared to this...And I’ll see Sirius again..." And as Harry’s heart filled with emotion, the creature’s coils loosened, the pain was gone.

"There is a room in the Department of Mysteries...that is kept locked at all times. It contains a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than forces of nature. It is also, perhaps, the most mysterious of the many subjects for study that reside there. It is the power held within that room that you possess in such quantities and which Voldemort has not at all. That power took you to save Sirius tonight. That power also saved you from possession by Voldemort, because he could not bear to reside in a body so full of the force he detests. In the end it mattered not that you could not close your mind. It was your heart that saved you."

“...you possess in such quantities and which Voldemort has not at all...”

Did I get it all wrong? Maybe it wasn’t love which protected Harry in Book 1. Maybe it was something else. Maybe Dumbledore and Voldie, the greatest wizards of their age, don’t know their stuff. Maybe Rowling didn't realize the contradiction she’d make by using love (*falls over giggling* Sometimes I crack myself up).

When has Rowling ever done anything simply? When has she ever done what’s obvious? She knows we’re catching on to how she works; we’re not too clever for our own good, but for her good. She said it herself.

So it’s unlikely it’s as simple as the contradictory love. Where do we find the answers? What clues has she left us?

It is at this time, I’d like everyone to go and read Severus Riddle, Harry Snape and Tom Potter and I’d like you to read up until the author assumes the dividing line is love, then STOP! I've just explained why I don’t believe this would work and so it doesn’t apply to where I’m going.

I’ll wait. Go, on, I’m not rehashing what already is so plainly and well written...Good.

It all ties into the question I must answer to discover the Secret Emotion. What separates Harry from Tom and Snape? An intriguing question. So many similarities, many which support my first theory that Harry will die along with Tom, circumstantial evidence as it may be. If we go along with the theory that everyone has something at their core, an inescapable truth, then Harry should be in Slytherin. The Sorting Hat wanted to put Harry in Slytherin. As Dumbledore stated once, Harry possesses:

"Parseltongue – resourcefulness – determination – a certain disregard for rules..."

"It is our choices, Harry, that show us for what we really are, far more than our abilities."

Whether or not people believe in this core doesn’t matter; the only system that matters to this study is what Rowling believes. She clearly doesn’t think there is an absolute core to us, determining who we are and what our actions will be. She sets up the conclusion that we are who we choose to be, not what we are by inescapable nature. Remember, Snape’s a Slytherin, but he’s working for the Order of the Phoenix. Whether he maintains his role as good guy or goes back to the other side is uncertain. So Snape can choose as well.

Harry’s Hero status exists because he chooses to be the Hero and that shows who he is. But this is not an emotion, so “choice” isn’t the answer for what Secret Emotion Harry possesses.

So as long as my original Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde Theory holds water, our current status regarding the door situation is thus: the thing behind the door isn’t love, is an emotion, something about the heart, something inexplicable like “choice,” something that causes both comfort and agony, and Voldie can’t understand it.

Once again, I found the most bloody obvious answer and was insanely furious with myself as to why I didn’t think of it before. What does every Hero in the great fantasy pieces have that everyone else around them lacks in sufficiency?

Not an easy thing to answer, by any means. I took out Lord of the Rings, a work which Rowling most certainly is familiar with. It has proven to have parallels to Harry Potter in various instances, and is probably a relatively safe text to use as a supplement to this series. The same could be said about Star Wars, although I’d certainly accept the argument that it has a good deal fewer similarities to HP as opposed to, say, LotR.

Once again, I pondered, and took about a day to come to a conclusion, so brilliantly simple, I wanted to tear my hair out.

"Estel."

A New Hope

“There was never much hope. Only a fool’s hope.”

“Your overconfidence is you weakness.”
“Your faith in your friends is yours.”
Luke has hope.

“It is pointless to resist, my son.”
His father doesn’t.

“Yet hope remains, while the company is true.”

“She said, even now there is hope!”

“There is still hope.”

“Estelio amen.”

And the kicker is, once I went back, the Harry Potter books are stuffed full of hints suggesting this.

Naught in Book 1, as this is all about setting up that love bit to be knocked down later.

On pg. 312 of Book 2, in the Chamber of Secrets Fawkes comes to the rescue:

Music was coming from somewhere. It was eerie, spine tingling, unearthly; it lifted the hair on Harry’s scalp and made his heart feel as though it was swelling to twice its normal size.

And then an unearthy and beautiful sound filled the air...It was coming from every thread of the light-spun web vibrating around Harry and Voldemort. It was a sound Harry recognized, though he had heard it only once before in his life: phoenix song.
It was the sound of hope to Harry...the most beautiful and welcome thing he’d heard in his life...He felt as though the song were inside him instead of just around him...It was the sound he connected with Dumbledore, and it was almost as though a friend were speaking in his ear...
"Don’t break the connection."

And doesn’t Dumbledore say that what’s behind the door is something Voldie can’t stand? What’s more irritating, frustrating, annoying than all these pesky Mudblood lovers who still think they can defeat you while you know you’re the most powerful being on earth? You’d never be able to understand it, you can’t see why they feel it, you hate it because it means they’re going to try to kill you and your Deathmunchers. Hope is useless. Hope is incomprehensible. Hope is not an emotion you feel.

But wait, there’s more!

In Book 3 we meet the dementors (*involuntary shiver*). As they take the form of what we fear most, it would make perfect sense that the form they assume for Harry would represent Harry’s weakness before the Dark Lord. That somehow, a dementor would be removing from Harry what he needs to be able to protect himself from Voldie or even defeat him. That dementors would somehow strip Harry from being the Hero into someone helpless against Voldie as nearly everyone else is in the books, would cause Harry paralyzing fear. The same fear all others have for the Dark Lord.

This all begs the asking: why are the dementors the things Harry fears most, rather than Voldie?

Rowling, in interviews, explains the dementors as a kind of a manifestation of depression. As true as this explanation must be, it never really satisfied me, and I felt like there was something more to it. What is depression really? It is despair from life, paralyzing an individual, taking away the will to live. The opposite of despair is hope. The horrors in Harry’s life have been numerable and drastic, but they don’t seem to overtly affect his character in day-to-day life. I mean, he hasn’t become depressed, a danger to himself and others, or run off with a bunch of Slytherins, now has he? What’s happened to him is enough to make anyone do that. Yet there’s something which keeps Harry from loosing it, and it’s probably more than just simple choice. I say, Harry has hope.

As Professor Lupin describes dementors:

"They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them." (pg. 187, PoA)

It makes even more sense that Harry would have such a violent reaction to the dementors and fears them more than Voldie. If the dementors take away hope (and I’d say Lupin probably knows what he’s talking about), and hope is the key to Harry’s protection, Harry would be stripped of any kind of defense or offence against Voldie. Without hope, he’s defenseless against his own despair, as many depressed teenagers can attest to. Despair, in nearly every fantasy tale, is the one thing that can destroy a Hero.

Anakin is a wonderful example of someone who has given up any hope that resistance is possible. At the black gate, Aragorn (whose Elvin name, Estel, means ‘hope’) & Co. are presented with Frodo’s mithril shirt to induce them to despair, but in the Heroic tradition, he refuses to give in and fights anyway. Go hope!

Of course, all would be for naught unless hope fits into what’s happening and being said in Book 5. If it can’t, then the theory is bogus. Perhaps the sentences are like the word “either” in the Prophecy; trying to trick us into looking one way, while in fact, truth remains in another direction. Remember this?

“Let the pain stop," thought Harry. "Let him kill us...End it, Dumbledore...Death is nothing compared to this...And I’ll see Sirius again..." And as Harry’s heart filled with emotion, the creature’s coils loosened, the pain was gone.

But the next best thing to having them back with you (which any rational person knows is impossible) is to die as well, with the hope of being together again. Tom Riddle doesn’t have loved ones waiting for him on the other side. He murdered, never had a constant caretaker or role model or knew his mother. There is no welcoming breath of hope which comes with being reunited with deceased loved ones. This is where love and hope cross together; love lingers to protect, hope charges on. Harry doesn’t fear death for this reason. Tom fears it on the level that he can’t understand or appreciate it. He never loved anyone save himself. He can’t understand that there is anything worse than death. Loss of hope, despair, depression; all are the same and worse than death. Why do you think people commit suicide?

At that moment when Harry thinks of a reunion with Sirius, I’d say he is hopeful. He’s hoping Sirius hasn’t left him forever, that with death, he can be with him again. His mum and dad. After all, doesn’t Harry get all excited, hopefully running around, trying to find out if Sirius could come back from the dead? It’s the same feeling Harry gets when Sirius says Harry can come live with him when his name is cleared.

As soon as Harry feels this emotion, “the creature’s coils loosened, the pain was gone.” No matter what it is, whatever emotion that wells up in Harry at that exact moment, is what foils Voldie. This is later confirmed by Dumbledore.

Hope 1: Love 0

“There is no shame in what you are feeling Harry,” said Dumbledore’s voice. “On the contrary...the fact that you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength.”

It was his fault Sirius had died; it was all his fault. If he, Harry, had not been stupid enough to fall for Voldemort’s trick, if he had not been so convinced that what he had seen in his dream was real, etc, etc.

“You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.”

and

“Harry, suffering like this proves you are still a man! This pain is part of being human--"

“I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON’T CARE ANYMORE--" (pg. 824)

Harry is desperately trying to feel one thing: despair. The complete and utter loss of hope. He wants it to end, he doesn’t want to care, doesn’t want to be human. He wants to give up his life. Dumbledore, of course, knows Harry better than that. Harry does care, and can’t do a thing to stop it. He does have hope. Same goes for love. Harry may not want to love anymore because the loss of love is excruciating.

Hope 2 : Love 1

There is a room in the Department of Mysteries...that is kept locked at all times. It contains a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than forces of nature.

Hope 3 : Love 2

No one can quite explain why they are in love or have hope when there is no logical reason to.

Hope 4 : Love 3

It is also, perhaps, the most mysterious of the many subjects for study that reside there. It is the power held within that room that you possess in such quantities and which Voldemort has not at all.

For a fleeting instant, Harry thought he saw a gleam of something like triumph in Dumbledore’s eyes.

Hope 5: Love 3

"That power took you to save Sirius tonight. That power also saved you from possession by Voldemort, because he could not bear to reside in a body so full of the force he detests. In the end it mattered not that you could not close your mind. It was your heart that saved you."

"Ha ha! Yes, Mark Evans is back, suckers, and he’s the key to everything!"

So, final tally:

Hope 6 : Love 4

You do the math. You decide because this is, when it all comes down to it, just another pathetic attempt to get to the bottom of a very complicated issue. It could be that I’m making connections where there aren’t any. I mean, if people can see the Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich, then I’m perfectly capable of inventing signs for seeing evidence of Crumple-Horned Snorkacks in Harry Potter. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised to find that I was wrong. Nor would it surprise me if I was right, to be perfectly honest. But I do hold some misgivings about this perfect little conclusion I’ve drawn together so neatly.

The problem stems from Voldie’s dialogue in Book 4, pp. 654-655:

“And I had given up hope, now, that any of my Death Eaters cared what had become of me.”

“When I had almost abandoned all hope, it happened at last.”

“My last hope for regeneration.”

Thus, I have happily presented my alternative. A lovely, plausible alternative and explained my concerns regarding it. I still think it’s a proper theory, as what Tom says doesn’t completely negate my logic. It just throws a wrench in my perfectly logical system. If nothing else, I hope this gets others’ wheels turning. I hope others can dig deep to see if it’s love, hope, or something else I’ve missed entirely which is the Secret Emotion.

1/27/05

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