cozmeesah Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 While watching DH2 again last night I had this thought/question:Basilisk venom destroys horcruxes. Harry is/was a horcrux. Why wasn't the horcrux inside him destroyed when he was bitten by the basilisk in Chamber of Secrets?Is this because Fawkes saved him? But you'd think the horcrux would have been destroyed the moment the venom hit him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noctis Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 I remember thinking about this before. We'll just say Fawkes saved him in the nick of time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spizzer Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 It wasn't that easy to destroy some of the other Horcruxes. For example, the locket could not simply be stabbed, it had to be opened by the hiss of a snake first, which would then reveal the vulnerable soul trapped within. Perhaps something similar would be the case for a human horcrux?On the other hand, the diary in the film was stabbed on its cover, and this worked. I can't remember the exact details of the book right now (sad considering how many times I've read it) but maybe it was only stabbed in the pages and not the cover? I guess it could be a lack of consistency as well... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrestomanci Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 I think it's basically because Harry didn't die. There's a line somewhere in DH about having to totally destroy the host object beyond repair, or something to that effect. In the case of a living thing, that has to mean death. Fawkes saved Harry before he could die, so it didn't destroy the horcrux. In DH2, on the other hand, Harry effectively did die, but had the opportunity to come back because of (as I recall) the protection of Lily's blood in Voldemort's veins basically acting as a "good horcrux." Of course, that still seems pretty arbitrary to me, which is part of why I might have liked DH more if JKR had just gone for it and actually killed Harry off, letting someone else (preferably Snape -- there'd have been no need for the ridiculous Elder wand business if she didn't need Harry to survive, so no reason for Voldemort to kill Snape off -- but Neville would have been good too and even Ron could have worked) deliver the final, fatal blow to Voldemort. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BK007 Posted December 18, 2011 Share Posted December 18, 2011 As always, it started off as a kids book so it could never possibly kill of its lead.If you think about it, the good side continue to lose people throughout the series whilst the bad side lose expendable people until DH2, and even then, most were an afterthought. It'd be terribly depressing if at the end of it, Harry died as well, though the tale of Severus Snape is as good as any story, really and he did die. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrestomanci Posted December 19, 2011 Share Posted December 19, 2011 As always, it started off as a kids book so it could never possibly kill of its lead.If you think about it, the good side continue to lose people throughout the series whilst the bad side lose expendable people until DH2, and even then, most were an afterthought. It'd be terribly depressing if at the end of it, Harry died as well, though the tale of Severus Snape is as good as any story, really and he did die.I don't buy the first part of that at all. I can think of at least one kids series, which never got anywhere near as dark as HP did, which killed off basically every main character at the end. And it's a series that I'm pretty sure JKR has mentioned as being important to her, at least when she was younger. And I don't think it would necessarily had to have been depressing either -- you could still do something like the King's Cross scene, but have Harry actually moving on. (Which is basically a standard part of alot of fantasy series, including kids series, whether the characters who move on actually die or are just going on to some other place from which there is no return.)Setting that aside, it's not so much that I really want Harry to die as that I feel like JKR pretty much set things up so that he really ought to and then had to work very hard to make sure that there was a way for Harry to survive it all and the mechanics and effort are too visible in the story for it to work properly. If it were really just Lily's blood allowing Harry to come back, I'd still have had some issues -- again, it seems kind of arbitrary that he was dead enough for it to destroy the horcrux, but it didn't really destroy his body so badly that he couldn't go back to it -- but I could've lived with it, and at least it had been set up in GoF. So my real problem isn't exactly her unwillingness to kill Harry off as much as the combination of that and her insistence that Harry be the one to deliver (or, really, not deliver) the fatal blow to Voldemort, because that meant a second face off that she had to find yet another way for Harry to survive. And that's where the deus ex machina idiocy of the Elder wand comes in. The wand belongs to Harry, who had never even touched the stupid thing, because he grabbed a completely different wand from Draco who had also never touched the Elder wand but was its master because he had disarmed Dumbledore . . . it's just beyond ridiculous, IMO. And it could all have been avoided if once Voldemort "killed" Harry (whether or not he was able to come back), somebody else had killed off Voldemort during his moment of apparent triumph. (Again, Snape would've been the obvious candidate, especially since the scenario would require Voldemort being surprised in a way that would be harder to arrange if Harry wasn't apparently alone.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CloneWars Posted December 19, 2011 Share Posted December 19, 2011 Snape killing Voldemort would have been an epic ending. I agree with you. I felt DH, the book was rushed. That, or JKR didn't know how to end the series. Probably both. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pinocchio Posted March 8, 2012 Share Posted March 8, 2012 I guess their main problem was indeed she believed to know the ending of the series long ago because she had a plan.And unfortunately she didn't change her plan after it was obvious the initial plan wouldn't work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noctis Posted March 8, 2012 Share Posted March 8, 2012 I guess their main problem was indeed she believed to know the ending of the series long ago because she had a plan.And unfortunately she didn't change her plan after it was obvious the initial plan wouldn't work.I thought it worked perfectly (as do the vast majority). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prime Mover and Shaker Posted March 8, 2012 Share Posted March 8, 2012 Hmm.. never thought of that (referring to the OP).... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pinocchio Posted March 9, 2012 Share Posted March 9, 2012 I thought it worked perfectly (as do the vast majority). Interesting. I didn't know they made a poll regarding that issue... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJohn Posted March 11, 2012 Share Posted March 11, 2012 Never thought about this before until today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cedarpoint1111 Posted March 12, 2012 Share Posted March 12, 2012 Deathly Hallows is my favorite in the whole series for a reason. The ending was perfect. The only thing missing was Harry breaking the elder wand which he did do in the film, so all's well that ends well. The epilogue could have been a tad longer as well but that is like a penny in a slot machine compared to how bad she could have wrote it.At least she didn't do a happily ever after, nobody died ending ala Breaking Dawn...... That was the biggest cop out ending in the history of cop outs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJohn Posted March 12, 2012 Share Posted March 12, 2012 Deathly Hallows is my favorite in the whole series for a reason. The ending was perfect. The only thing missing was Harry breaking the elder wand which he did do in the film, so all's well that ends well. The epilogue could have been a tad longer as well but that is like a penny in a slot machine compared to how bad she could have wrote it.At least she didn't do a happily ever after, nobody died ending ala Breaking Dawn...... That was the biggest cop out ending in the history of cop outs. One does not simply talks about Breaking Dawn ending in the same sentence as Deatlhy Hallows or in the same thread as The Hunger Games... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phillip Posted March 16, 2012 Share Posted March 16, 2012 although i loved the end of DH i thought that harry should have died as well as voldermort 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BoxOfficeFangrl Posted June 20, 2013 Share Posted June 20, 2013 (edited) Harry die for good? No chance. They announced the deal for the theme park like a month before DH was published! I never thought JKR would kill Harry anyway (as HBP proved to me once and for all she was ultimately always going to play it safe narratively) but you would figure she would want them to hold off on the announcement until after the book was out. Sure, I guess they could have done the Wizarding World of Harry Potter anyway and just thrown in a memorial statue and mock grave between the recreation of the candy shop and the Great Hall, as much as a mood-killer as it would have been for all the tourist children... Edited June 20, 2013 by BoxOfficeChica Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChD Posted June 20, 2013 Share Posted June 20, 2013 He didn't die because the horcrux was his scar, not his entire body, and the venom from the basilisk didn't have time to spread to the scar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cozmeesah Posted July 12, 2013 Author Share Posted July 12, 2013 Couldn't have just been his scar. 1) He still has the scar in the epilogue 2) Voldy's AK curse didn't hit him in the forehead as it would have had to in order to destroy the horcrux if it were only in the scar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...