The Fourteenth

Something less than a hundred pages of Chamber of Secrets left. It'll be done tonight, I'm sure, and then onto Prisoner of Azkaban... Which I brought upstairs with me, just to be sure I'd get into it.

Funny things I've been noticing in the reread, stuff that didn't pop out so much last time; there are more hints that Harry is evil than I would have thought. I've had this idea that perhaps, after defeating Voldemort that maybe Harry becomes the next Dark Lord; maybe all his friends are killed, or Voldemort offers him a future with his parents through some dark spell only Voldemort can cast, or (this idea I really liked) the Wizard world has always seen Harry as a tool to the end of Voldemort, and he's learned a lot of spells for that particular facet of life (to be good as Dark Arts Defense you have to have a very solid grounding in Dark Arts). Perhaps after Voldemort is dead, the Wizarding world sees Harry as a new threat, a new Dark Lord on the horizon. To protect himself, perhaps that's the only path...

I donno. ^_^ Hrm. See, the characters do a lot of assuming, more than I recalled; in hindsight it's fairly obvious that the hex on Harry's broom failed when Hermione shoved Quirrel, not when she set Snape on fire, but the kids always believe it's Snape who's up to evil. The same in the second book, with the Heir of Slytherin- it *has* to be a Slytherin who opens the Chamber of Secrets, not a certain someone else who acts suspicious all book.

Maybe we're all assuming he's good. Or better than he is.

For instance, Slytherin House is mostly Legacy members (Slytherin students usually come from Slytherin Parents), and the sorting hat wanted to put Harry in Slytherin. Harry is a Parselmouth (read: can talk to snakes), a trait shared with Voldemort and Salazar Slytherin (founder of the house, a thousand years ago). Harry has green eyes. His mother's house is unknown, but his father was Gryffindor, and his mother defended Severus Snape when he was a student with them from Harry's father; something a non-slyetherin is not likely to do.

Most people refute all of that by saying, oh, well, he got all those slytherin things when Voldermort attacked him as a baby and couldn't kill him. Bah. Assuming!

The other thing that's sticking in my brain is the Prophecy that foretells Harry's slaying of the Dark Lord (and I haven't gotten to that part in my reread, so I might recall this wrong) doesn't say what happens next. Maybe, it's like the whole "bring balance to the force" thing. Voldermort wants Harry out of the way so he won't rise up and slay him, like the Titans.