Offline life (and other things) has a way of overwhelming you, doesn't it?

Let's return to my series on John Granger's article, Why Half Blood Prince is the Best Harry Potter Novel.

The first post in the series addressed Granger's and my ideas about Dumbledore and the cave. In the second post, I started on the first of 20 questions not answered in Half-Blood Prince. Question #1 dealt with the who, what, where, when, and how of horcruxes, and although I didn't do the subject justice, it was a start!

Review question #1:

1. How do you make a Horcrux, that is, what is the spellwork procedure, and what are the four remaining Horcruxes? We learn a lot about what a Horcrux is in Half-Blood Prince but not about how one is made or what the four Horcruxes remaining are. Until we know this, it is impossible to speculate meaningfully about what can and cannot be a Horcrux…

Today we'll look at question #2:

2. What is the nature of Harry’s scar? Harry’s scar in Half-Blood Prince went from constant reminder in the previous story of his psychic link with the Dark Lord to not a twinge in Half-Blood Prince (a change that allows for Harry-Dumbledore contact but with the thin excuse that the broken link was because Voldemort didn’t want Harry to know what he was thinking). We don’t know still if the wound is an echo of Frodo’s knife wound from the Dark Rider on Weathertop or a Horcrux or a “curse scar acting like an alarm bell” or what…

The first two questions (as well as #3) focus on horcruxes. I wrote in a previous post that I don't believe Harry's scar is a horcrux, but that leads us to the next question. What, then, is the nature of the scar?

When Harry was a baby, whatever curse Lord Voldemort tried to perform on Harry (not Avada Kedavra?) was unsuccessful. The curse rebounded on Voldemort, and he was physically weakened as a result. All the surviving baby Harry got from the failed curse was a lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead. Throughout the series we've read that Harry's scar burns and hurts to varying degrees whenever Lord Voldemort is angry. Clearly there's a connection between it and Voldemort, but what?

Let's look at Granger's #2. Since I've yet to read the Lord of the Rings Trilogy (Don't stone me!), I don't fully understand the Frodo reference, but I get the gist. Harry's scar is a cursed scar, but is it just a means to warn him and others of Voldemort's moods, physical proximity, etc., or does a part of V's soul lie in wait there?

I'm going to take the easy way out and say that Harry is obviously connected to Big V through the scar, and that connection is not meant to imply that the scar contains part of V's soul. Can I back it up? Not really.

If, according to my theory, the scar is not a horcrux, it's something approaching that kind of significance. Why does it hurt when V is angry? What does his anger have to do with a healed wound on Harry's forehead? I did a search in Yahoo! to find some helpful scar theories to link to, and guess what the #1 search result was. This blog! I'm just asking questions; I have no answers.

So…I'm afraid I won't be able to expound on the nature of Harry's scar beyond the usual, "It connects him to Voldemort."

The how and why will have to be answered by smarter theorists that moi or by Ms. Rowling herself.

(Warner Brothers image)