Re: So why *did* Sirius have to die?

Richard Eney wrote:
In article <fgbqaa$3ct$1@xxxxxxxx>, santosh <santosh.k83@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Richard Eney wrote:
Drusilla <gammanormidsERASETHIS@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

<snip>
[about Sirius]

I think that he only _really_ understood this after the King's Cross
chapter, certainly not at the end of the OotP. In HBP, during the
Pensieve sessions, Dumbledore goes to some lengths to emphasise that
Love was Harry's advantage over Voldemort and even then Harry
appears to be disbelieving.
I don't think that was the only reason Sirius had to die. It seems more likely to me that he had to die because
Harry had to own Kreacher, for plot and character reasons. Sirius would not have learned to treat Kreacher kindly, and
it would have taken more time and kindness to overcome
all those years of bad treatment. Kreacher's testimony was
what told us how R.A.B. got the locket out of the cave.
I see your point, but the cooperation of a wretched House Elf is a
pretty weak reason for a major character to die.

Yes, very weak.

Because Sirius had to be a removable character, JKR created him as a
fairly standard romance-novel black sheep who would have been a bad
influence on our hero in the long run, so he dies in a duel because
he is too busy taunting his opponent.
Yes. Rowling seems to enjoy creating intriguing characters and then
proceed to rip them apart and dilute them down.

I speculate that in the original process of creation, JKR liked the image of the big hairy biker carrying the baby, so she wrote in Hagrid
on the motorcycle; then the motorcycle needed to come from somewhere,
but she wanted Hagrid to have to take the boat later on, so she had him
have borrowed it - from whom? Enter Sirius, the biker. Then when she
worked out the rest of the story, Sirius was handy to use for someone
threatening: the escaped convict biker who turned out to be okay after
all, but a bit of a madman anyway. Then the cliche characteristics
were right there and easy to use: handsome but ravaged by a hard life
and a tendency to recklessness, ending with a pointless death in a duel
so the hero can inherit the house. Sirius was probably fun to imagine.
He's the Han Solo character.

(Although Love didn't result to be a major plot at the end, either
way, but I suppose that was the plan)
Yes, funny how Rowling herself let down one of the chief themes of
the series in the ending, isn't it?
Mmm...
Love was the key to the whole story. All kinds of love:

Dumbledore's infatuation with Grindelwald which led to the loss of
his own family.
Merope's obsessive love for Riddle Senior, which created Voldemort.
Are you sure about this? What has Riddle Sr. to do with this. Seems to
me that a "Voldemort" would have been created no matter who Merope had
wedded. I'm pretty sure that she would have had to use a Love Potion to
get _anyone_ to marry her, wizard or not, and that they would've left
her the minute they found out, just like Riddle Sr. did.

That's true. It just happened to be Riddle Sr that she had the obsessive
love for. But Riddle Sr did reject her. Some men might have at least
bothered to find out she was pregnant and try to provide for the child.
There certainly were enough stories that involved the unwanted child
being raised in a workhouse (like Oliver Twist) or in a foreign boarding school (a common enough idea for it to show up in a Lord Peter Wimsey
novel as an excuse for his temporary alter ego's mysterious existence).

From Rowling's portrayal it seems to me that the chief factor that led
to Riddle Jr.'s sociopathism was the genetic tendency for it among the
Gaunts. In fact Marvolo and Morfin seem worse than Riddle Jr., who if
not for the influx of "normalising" genes from his Muggle father, would
probably have spent his days in an asylum for idiots.

Possibly. ;-)

There was a Gaunt family tendency to outbursts of anger, possibly a
hint of bipolar disorder, but sociopathy is not genetic. Marvolo and Morfin are depicted as degenerate, but they don't seem to be
sociopaths. Their very unpleasantness is evidence: sociopaths will
behave in a pleasant way because it gets them things they want.
Voldemort did have the outbursts of anger, so in that he shows his
Gaunt family heritage.

Lily's love for Harry, which led her to sacrifice herself for him.
Snape's obsessive love for Lily, which caused him to become loyal to DD.
DD's love for Harry, which slowed Harry's training but let him have
a happier childhood than he might otherwise have had. It also may
have prevented Harry from being too focused on revenge from his
earliest school years; he needed to develop real friendships in order
to have the capacity for sacrifice.
The love of his friends - especially Hermione, Ron, and Neville -
which caused them to help him when it would have been much easier to try to hide.
Harry's love for all his lost friends, and their love for him, which
led him to be able to imitate his mother's sacrifice and walk to his
death so that Voldemort's death could be possible (by destroying the
accidental horcrux within Harry) and also to protect everyone at
Hogwarts from direct attack by Voldemort. (Too bad it didn't defend
against the other attackers.)
No. Harry went to his death because Dumbledore said, through Snape's
memory, that that was the _only_ way to defeat Voldemort, not because
he loved his friends, (not that I'm saying he didn't).

You are correct, Harry didn't go to his death because of his love for his friends. I meant that it was his love for his friends who had already fought and some of whom had died for the same cause that strengthened him to be able to go through with it. That was why he
had to call them with the ring and have them walk with him through
the woods on the way to meet Voldemort. He needed their support.

The love that defeated Voldemort at the end was real, it just wasn't
romantic love. It was _Agape_, selfless love.
Having been "silver bullet" against Voldemort for 17 years, Harry had
little choice but to go through with it to the bitter end, selfless or
not.

It was still a selfless act.

Besides even if he had run away, he knew Voldemort would never
rest until he had tracked him down.

IIRC DD said that if Harry decided to, he could probably have lived
elsewhere in the world for quite a long time before Voldemort would
have bothered to hunt him down. Voldy would have taken over the UK
first, then Europe, only then trying for the rest of the world.

Of the few times that Harry was very close to what he believed was his
death, (the possession by Voldemort at the MoM, at the Little Hangleton
Graveyard, and in the Forbidden Forest in DH), he seemed to welcome
death, not for any "selfless" reasons but because he believed he would
be with his parents and Sirius again.

That strengthened him, but he still was the one who made the choice.
Lots of people believe they will be with their loved ones again after
death, but that doesn't lead them to sacrifice themselves when they
have the chance to get out of it.

It would be more accurate to say that Love facilitated many events in
the story, but the thing that eventually took Voldemort down, i.e., the Elder Wand and its possession has nothing to do with Love.

It was simply a fluke that Draco disarmed Dumbledore and an even greater fluke that Harry disarmed Draco.

Yes, that was a fluke. DD's original plan would have failed if Harry had not disarmed Draco. In fact, DD's original plan had already failed, because he was supposed to lock up the Death Wand by dying willingly
so it could never have another owner, and thus Voldemort could never
get the best out of it. His decision to freeze Harry was what let
Draco disarm him, and DD was trying very hard to get Draco to surrender
to him, which I believe would have given him back the ownership of the death wand (defeat by words should qualify just as much as defeat by
stealth or battle).

OTOH if Harry had not disarmed Draco and yet had gone through with the rest of it, he still would have been de-horcruxed, would have come back, Neville would have killed Nagini, and Harry could have fought Voldemort with whatever wand was around. He might even have had a chance to win, or someone else could have killed Voldy, because
Harry had done the hard part: he had completed the destruction of the horcruxes, which could qualify as "vanquishing".

But it was Love that got Harry into the position of being able to use either the death wand or any other wand against Voldemort
with some hope of success: the Agape-Love that made it possible
for him to sacrifice himself to destroy that horcrux. Without
that preliminary step, the death wand would not have been enough
to destroy Voldemort. It could only have killed his current
body, and he would have been VaporMort again, searching for
another dupe to do the body-making potion again. So the real
key to Voldemort's destruction was Harry's sacrifice.

=Tamar

I am sorry but I do not agree with you.

The key to Voldemort's destruction was his use of Harry's blood to come back. Somehow - I don't believe that Voldemort did it out of LOVE - nor do I believe there is any rational argument for it being love.

Once again - just as In his Mother's death - the word LOVE is being used based on information the person DID NOT HAVE. When Lily died, she had no reasonable reason to believe that it would invoke ancient magic and protect Harry. Her death would only be a speed bump on the way to Harry's death. So - her "sacrifice" was a moot point as far as SHE knew.

Same with Harry. Harry had no reason to believe that he would be able to return from his "death". So - since the Prophecy clearly said that he was the ONE who had the power to vanquish the Dark Lord - by allowing himself to die - the only knowledge HE had was that Voldemort would WIN and take over.

IT was only after he re-met Dumbledore that he found out that he could return - and it wasn't even a half/life horcrux type return - it was complete. There had been NO INFORMATION in the books prior to this happening indicating that it was even possible to happen.

That being the case -

1 - Lily did not die to protect Harry as far as she Knew.
2 - Harry did not die to eventually destroy Voldemort as far as HE knew.
.

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