Speaking of portraits, how are they made in the first place? I mean, how are they made to be like the people who once lived? Some kind of soul imprinting magic? Or just merely memory imprinting?

 

Nothing said about it in canon. But let's assume that they can't provide useful information.

 

That answers the question as to why grief helped, but not the other problem. Harry is seeing Riddle's thoughts, not the other way around, and that has to do with the Horcrux connection, does it not?

Harry was seeing his thoughts even when Riddle tried to obscure them. Or was it because Riddle's occlumency was slipping as he got angrier with the situation, and grew increasingly unstable?

 

If anyone cares about what Pottermore says regarding portraits, it's here.

 

Hmm, I kind of hoped for a bit more detail, but that will have to do, I suppose. Thank you.

 

There's nothing mentioned in canon about it, iirc, but that's my personal opinion on the matter as well. Harry could freely enter Voldemort's mind because he wasn't allergic to hatred.

 

Ah, and Riddle couldn't enter Harry's because of the grief, which also solved Harry's unwanted clairvoyancy by working as a deterrent to entering Riddle's when he needed it to.

That makes sense, because it wasn't like Harry was choosing when he saw what Riddle was thinking. Riddle's thoughts would just overwhelm him from time to time, so Occlumency for Harry was learning how to use grief to keep Voldemort's thoughts at bay, in the same way he used it to keep Voldemort out of his mind in OotP, when the latter attempted to possess him.

On that note, there are a lot of mentions of Voldemort's unparalleled skill with Legilimency. He was also the only wizard we ever saw capable of possession.

Can we then conclude that possession is the pinnacle of Legilimency, or was it just another thing Riddle could do thanks to his Horcruxes? Both?

 

Probably a bit of both.

 

Legilimens (A), Horcruxes (B), Possession (C).

Does A eventually allow for C, or is it A + B = C?

Sorry for any confusion.

 

That could always be arranged.

lol. Good call. I'd forgotten about that quote.

 

Well, Legilimency is the practice of breaking into someone's mind and 'reading' anything from their surface thoughts and emotions to (judging by Snape's sessions with Harry) their deepest character-forming memories. It also has the potential to cause an incredible amount of pain as whoever it is riffles through your memories like they're trying to pull homework out of their backpack thirty seconds before class starts.

This ability to sort of . . . control the mental processes of someone else, most often through the direct perception and manipulation of their thoughts and memories, sounds not at all unlike possession as we saw it first with Ginny, and then in more detail with Harry.

Moreover, when Harry accidentally performs Legilimency in Snape's office, he completely inhabits the memory he's seeing. He has no physical sense or presence as he observes the memory, he just exists as a disembodied consciousness within the setting of Snape's memory. It's the same when his memories are being viewed. Where he is at the time dissolves completely, leaving him to relive the memory as though he's in it once again.

In this sense, possession would be like an advanced form, taking Legilimency a step further by exerting influence over the body by way of the mind, as opposed to only perceiving the mind. After all, movement and consciousness are just functions of the mind already being dominated.

I was thinking that if Voldemort is the best Legilimens, perhaps the reason he can possess others when no one else can, to our knowledge, is that he has simply mastered Legilimency to the extent that he can exert so much influence on a mind that he takes possession of it.

Ginny was using a Horcrux, and he tells us that he was able to take possession of her because she 'poured her soul out' to the diary. Harry was a Horcrux, so Riddle might have attempted to possess him by latching on to that. But Voldemort never knew Harry was a Horcrux, and he still assumed that he could possess Harry.

Likewise, Ginny had no prior spiritual connection to Voldemort, but he was able to possess her once he had become familiar with her mind.

Hence, the similarity of Possession and Legilimency as described arts, in addition to the instances we see of either one, led me to wonder if Voldemort is able to possess others because he has a special gift with Legilimency, or if it has more to do with the weird magic of the Horcruxes. Or if it's a bit of both.

So it would be more like: Voldemort is the world's leading physicist. He also developed the theory of relativity. Are they related?

EDIT: A fragmented soul might also make it easier to act as an entity of pure consciousness. The Horcrux might have been able to possess Ginny because it was a being of pure spirit, and my ideas for Voldemort's mastery of unaided flight could also be applied to his attempted possession of Harry, when his body vanishes as he tries it. As a being so repeatedly diluted by experimentation with his soul and physical being, he may have an easier time acting as a wraith-like entity that can alter his form into something more along the lines of a vaporous magical or purely intellectual essence.

I think Rowling also mentions that an intellectual affinity with or sympathy for Riddle is what allowed him to possess Quirrell as a wraith before PS, when he had been struggling even to possess snakes.

Which is interesting because it links snakes with Riddle's earliest attempts at possession. And what does Riddle have with snakes? The ability to speak and empathize. He can understand and relate to them as entities, so he can possess them.

Sorry for all the edits. I'm adding on to the post as other thoughts surface.

 

lol was the theory that bad? No comments?

Sorry for the double-post, seemed like it'd been long enough.

 

No, it makes perfect sense, I was going to add the bit about the instability of his soul being the extra factor giving him the ability to possess people/animals but you covered it. Mastery of Legilimency and a horcrux-destabilized soul would each be necessary but not sufficient to accomplish it, in other words.

Presumably in order to be possessed, the person must either be mentally/emotionally weak/terrible at Occlumency, or willing to offer themselves. I'm thinking Voldemort started manifesting as an actual physical growth on Quirrell after the connection had a few months to deepen (I think it was mentioned as being Voldemort's keeping a eye on Quirrell more directly, but he probably couldn't have done this immediately if he wanted to), and the unicorn blood kept Quirrell from dropping dead due to the strain. The Elixir of Life was probably the only means of keeping Quirrell alive long enough for the connection to progress to the point that Quirrell could be totally consumed in the process of Voldemort's body "growing" to its relatively normal state. I don't think he'd need Elixir beyond that point.

 

That makes me a bit curious though. If Voldemort had completely overtaken Quirrell's body, would he have his old magical strength, before the Halloween of '81, or just Quirrell's?

What I'm asking about this is how does one actually gauge magical strength in general? I'm not talking about nailing it down to an actual measuring system with precise numbers/percentage, but rather what determines that one wizard/witch is powerful and another isn't?

 

Magical Power, in as much as canon actually defines it, seems mostly to be a function of certainty: understanding of what's possible and strength of will to impose it.

The body as a carrier of the soul is either magical or not. Whether the personality driving that body can accomplish something is up to the knowledge and skill it possesses.

 

In other words...

"There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it" - Voldemort :twisted:

"There is no 'magical power,' only those with the knowledge, talent, and force of will to embody it." - Generalized DLP view of how 'magical strength' functions in the Harry Potter series.

 

@above posts

...and now I miss Taure.