【哈利波特】Sherbert Lemon对HP的解读之16

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SIXTEEN
Meet the Parents
Harry makes contact with fallacious (“false”) forms of his dead parents.

PS/SS – The Mirror of Erised



QUOTE
It looked like an unused classroom. The dark shapes of desks and chairs were piled against the walls, and there was an upturned wastepaper basket—but propped against the wall facing him was something that didn’t look as if it belonged there, something that looked as if someone had just put it there to keep it out of the way.

It was a magnificent mirror, as high as the ceiling, with an ornate gold frame, standing on two clawed feet. There was an inscription carved around the top: Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi.

His panic fading now that there was no sound of Filch and Snape, Harry moved nearer to the mirror, wanting to look at himself but see no reflection again. He stepped in front of it.

He had to clap his hands to his mouth to stop himself from screaming. He whirled around. His heart was pounding far more furiously than when the book had screamed—for he had seen not only himself in the mirror, but a whole crowd of people standing right behind him.

But the room was empty. Breathing very fast, he turned slowly back to the mirror.

There he was, reflected in it, white and scared looking, and there, reflected behind him, were at least ten others. Harry looked over his shoulder—but still, no one was there. Or were they all invisible too? Was he in fact in a room full of invisible people and this mirror’s trick was that it reflected them, invisible or not?

He looked at the mirror again. A woman standing right behind his reflection was smiling at him and waving. He reached out a hand and felt the air behind him. If she was really there, he’d touch her, their reflections were so close together, but he felt only air—she and the others existed only in the mirror.

She was a very pretty woman. She had dark red hair and her eyes—her eyes are just like mine, Harry thought, edging a little closer to the glass. Bright green—exactly the same shape, but then he noticed that she was crying; smiling, but crying at the same time. The tall, thin, black-haired man standing next to her put his arm around her. He wore glasses, and his hair was very untidy. It stuck up at the back, just as Harry’s did.

Harry was so close to the mirror now that his nose was nearly touching that of his reflection.

“Mom?” he whispered. “Dad?”

They just looked at him, smiling. And slowly, Harry looked into the faces of the other people in the mirror, and saw other pairs of green eyes like his, other noses like his, even a little old man who looked as though he had Harry’s knobbly knees—Harry was looking at his family, for the first time in his life.

The Potters smiled and waved at Harry and he stared hungrily back at them, his hands pressed flat against the glass as though he was hoping to fall right through it and reach them. He had a powerful kind of ache inside him, half joy, half terrible sadness.

How long he stood there, he didn’t know. The reflections did not fade and he looked and looked until a distant noise brought him back to his senses. He couldn’t stay here, he had to find his way back to bed. He tore his eyes away from his mother’s face, whispered, “I’ll come back,” and hurried from the room.
(CH 12: US – 207, UK - 152, FR - 206, GR - 226, ITL - 197, PL – 216, RM - 150, SP – 173)


He sees his parents as reflections in the mirror of Erised.

GoF – Priori Incantatem



QUOTE
And now another head was emerging from the tip of Voldemort’s wand…and Harry knew when he saw it who it would be…he knew, as though he had expected it from the moment when Cedric had appeared from the wand…knew, because the woman was the one he’d thought of more than any other tonight…

The smoky shadow of a young woman with long hair fell to the ground as Bertha had done, straightened up, and looked at him…and Harry, his arms shaking madly now, looked back into the ghostly face of his mother.

“Your father’s coming…” she said quietly. “Hold on for your father…it will be all right…hold on….”

And he came…first his head, then his body…tall and untidy-haired like Harry, the smoky, shadowy form of James Potter blossomed from the end of Voldemort’s wand, fell to the ground, and straightened like his wife. He walked close to Harry, looking down at him, and he spoke in the same distant, echoing voice as the others, but quietly, so that Voldemort, his face now livid with fear as his victims prowled around him, could not hear….

“When the connection is broken, we will linger for only moments…but we will give you time…you must get to the Portkey, it will return you to Hogwarts…do you understand, Harry?”

“Yes,” Harry gasped, fighting now to keep a hold on his wand, which was slipping and sliding beneath his fingers.
(CH 34: US – 667, UK - 579, FR - 697, GR - 697, ITL - 567, PL - 691, RM - 592, SP – 580)


He sees his parents as echoes during the Prior Incantatem spell.

DH – The Locked Room

PS/SS and GoF are the only books within the series where Harry confronts false forms of his parents, first as reflections in a mirror and then as echoes during a spell. In PoA, while under the influence of Dementors, Harry is taken back to his childhood memory of the night his parents died. In the memory, he was able to recount Lily and James’ voices. That was not a false form of Harry’s parents. Then in OotP Harry comes across one of Snape’s memories of Lily and James during their fifth year at Hogwarts. That was also not a false form of Harry’s parents. In both PoA and OotP, when Harry encountered the memories of his parents, he was experiencing the past and since it actually happened, it cannot be deemed as a false occurrence (the true ones fall under the category of two-step reflections).

Dumbledore is the one who explains to Harry that what he sees in both the mirror and during the Prior Incantatem spell is false. When Harry tells Dumbledore that he sees his parents in the mirror, Dumbledore says that the mirror can only show you what your heart truly desires—nothing more, nothing less. Meaning the images of his parents weren’t in any way really his parents. When Harry tells Dumbledore about the people who came out of Voldemort’s wand (Lily and James included) Dumbledore is firm in his speech and says that they were echoes and not spiritual forms of his parents or Cedric or anyone else; they were echoes nothing more and nothing less.

In DH, Harry will again be confronted by false forms of his parents through the means of the locked door in the Department of Mysteries (DoM). According to Dumbledore, the locked door contains the power Harry has but Voldemort does not know: love. Like the Mirror of Erised, I expect the locked room to show the visitor their heart’s desire; only this time the “objects of desire” are those whom they love. Two of the representations that Harry will see are his parents.

How will Harry be able to open the locked room if he was unable to open it in OotP? In OotP, only two people tried to open the door: Harry (Sirius’ knife) and Hermione (Alohamora spell). According to repetition (which I will discuss in great depth within the Repetition Essay), only Hermione will go with Harry to the DoM. The repetition being that the end of HBP paralleled PS/SS (before the trap door), and DH will parallel PS/SS (after the trap door). Harry and Hermione will have to work together instead of separately, in order to open the locked room. Why is Harry going to go back to the DoM? Harry will have to go back to the DoM due to the Horcruxes hunt because the veil is the means for Harry to separate himself from the Horcrux he carries—his scar.