See, that's what I thought. Most of that information couldn't have come from Harry's subconscious.

 

Obviously I don't know for sure, but even the first time I read DH, I felt the limbo King's Cross scene was nothing more than Harry piecing together all the clues he'd gathered from (a) Rita's book, (b) Aberforth's spiel, (c) his memories of the Triwizard aftermath, (d) Snape's memories, and (e) his own interactions with Dumbledore. There's nothing explicitly unknown revealed as per usual with an end-of-book Dumbledore synopsis/debriefing.

For one thing, I like to think Harry came into his own by that point as being able to deduce things - remember he sussed out the Horcrux being in Bella's vault from just her behavior. For a second thing, I do not like the idea of Dumbledore being able to come back in any fashion, so I'm admittedly a small bit biased toward Harry making the connection.

Certainly, this isn't the majority view, but that's my stance. <shrugs>

 

I do agree that that could be a possible explanation, but some things that Dumbledore told Harry couldn't have come from Harrys new found ability to have a bit of intelligence. I reckon that The Hallows mean that you can go to the place where souls cross over, but have a choice whether to go over, or to go back. I could be wrong, but...

 

The Hallows (or at least the Stone) 'bent' the rules a bit, but they did not 'break' them; nothing can bring someone back from the dead to be as they were in life.

 

Beans. Ah well. I kinda wish that JK would say something about this, even if it's just something that she just thinks up on the spot, merely to make everything work. Methinks it would make a lot of people happier.

 

Supposedly she'll be releasing a HP encyclopedia in the future so maybe that'll have all the answers.

 

Score. Although, I can almost definitely say that a lot of it will basically be just to makes things work. Most probably will be disappointing.

 

I think the stone did something for him, what other effects would it of have? He talks to his parents, and then drops it on the ground. I don't think the Dumbledore in his mind was his subconcious, but I can see how people could come to that conclusion. I did at first too, but I reread the scene and think it was actually Dumbledore, through the use of the resurrection stone. Dumbledore says some things that only him or Grindlewald would have known, not to mention all of Dumbledore's theories about what happened when Voldemort took his blood, and why his wand won't work on him.

But I think the last line here is a good indicator.

“I feel great at the moment, though,” said Harry, looking down at his clean, unblemished hands. “Where are we, exactly?”
“Well, I was going to ask you that,” said Dumbledore, looking around. “Where would you say that we are?”
Until Dumbledore had asked, Harry had not known. Now, however, he found that he had an answer ready to give.
“It looks,” he said slowly, “like King’s Cross station. Except a lot cleaner and empty, and there are no trains as far as I can see.”
“King’s Cross station!” Dumbledore was chuckling immoderately. “Good gracious, really?”
“Well, where do you think we are?” asked Harry, a little defensively.
“My dear boy, I have no idea. This is, as they say, your party.”

And then there is the stuff Harry asks about the Hallows. He's asking because he doesn't know, it's not like the answers to those questions are locked inside of him somewhere.

“Hallows,” murmured Dumbledore, “not Horcruxes. Precisely.”
There was a pause. The creature behind them whimpered, but Harry no longer looked around.
“Grindelwald was looking for them too?” he asked.
Dumbledore closed his eyes for a moment and nodded.
“It was the thing, above all, that drew us together,” he said quietly. “Two clever, arrogant boys with a shared obsession. He wanted to come to Godric’s Hollow, as I am sure you have guessed, because of the grave of Ignotus Peverell. He wanted to explore the place the third brother had died.”
“So it’s true?” asked Harry. “All of it? The Peverell brothers –”
“—were the three brothers of the tale,” said Dumbledore, nodding. “Oh yes, I think so. Whether they met Death on a lonely road . . . I think it more likely that the Peverell brothers were simply gifted, dangerous wizards who succeeded in creating those powerful objects. The story of them being Death’s own Hallows seems to me the sort of legend that might have sprung up around such creations.
“The Cloak, as you know now, traveled down through the ages, father to son, mother to daughter, right down to Ignotus’s last living descendant, who was born, as Ignotus was, in the village of Godric’s Hollow.”
Dumbledore smiled at Harry.
“Me?”
“You. You have guessed,, I know, why the Cloak was in my possession on the night your parents died. James had showed it to me just a few days previously. It explained much of his undetected wrongdoing at school! I could hardly believe what I was seeing. I asked to borrow it, to examine it. I had long since given up my dream of uniting the Hallows, but I could not resist, could not help taking a closer look. . . . It was a Cloak the likes of which I had never seen, immensely old, perfect in every respect . . . and then your father died, and I had two Hallows at last, all to myself!”
His tone was unbearably bitter.
“The Cloak wouldn’t have helped them survive, though,” Harry said quickly. “Voldemort knew where my mum and dad were. The Cloak couldn’t have made them curse-proof.”
“true,” sighed Dumbledore. “True.”
Harry waited, but Dumbledore did not speak, so he prompted him.
“So you’d given up looking for the Hallows when you saw the Cloak?”
“Oh yes,” said Dumbledore faintly. It seemed that he forced himself to meet Harry’s eyes. “You know what happened. You know. You cannot despise me more than I despise myself.”
“But I don’t despise you –”
“Then you should,” said Dumbledore. He drew a deep breath. “You know the secret of my sister’s ill health, what those Muggles did, what she became. You know how my poor father sought revenge, and paid the price, died In Azkaban. You know how my mother gave up her own life to care for Ariana.
“I resented it, Harry.”
Dumbledore stated it baldly, coldly. He was looking now over the top of Harry’s head, into the distance.
“I was gifted, I was brilliant. I wanted to escape. I wanted to shine. I wanted glory.
“Do not misunderstand me,” he said, and pain crossed the face so that he looked ancient again. “I loved them, I loved my parents, I loved my brother and my sister, but I was selfish, Harry, more selfish than you, who are a remarkably selfless person, could possibly imagine.
“So that, when my mother died, and I was left the responsibility of a damaged sister and a wayward brother, I returned to my village in anger and bitterness. Trapped and wasted, I thought! And then of course, he came. . . .”
Dumbledore looked directly into Harry’s eyes again.
“Grindelwald. You cannot imagine how his ideas caught me, Harry, inflamed me. Muggles forced into subservience. We wizards triumphant. Grindelwald and I, the glorious young leaders of the revolution.
“Oh, I had a few scruples. I assuaged my conscience with empty words. It would all be for the greater good, and any harm done would be repaid a hundredfold in benefits for wizards. Did I know, in my heart of hearts, what Gellert Grindelwald was? I think I did, but I closed my eyes. If the plans we were making came to fruition, all my dreams would come true.
“And at the heart of our schemes, the Deathly Hallows! How they fascinated him, how they fascinated both of us! The unbeatable wand, the weapon that would lead us to power! The Resurrection Stone – to him, though I pretended not to know it, it meant an army of Inferi! To me, I confess, it meant the return of my parents, and the lifting of all responsibility from my shoulders.
“And the Cloak . . . somehow, we never discussed the Cloak much, Harry. Both of us could conceal ourselves well enough without the Cloak, the true magic of which, of course, is that it can be used to protect and shield others as well as its owner. I thought that, if we ever found it, it might be useful in hiding Ariana, but our interest in the Cloak was mainly that it completed the trio, for the legend said that the man who had united all three objects would then be truly master of death, which we took to mean ‘invincible.’
“Invincible masters of death, Grindelwald and Dumbledore! Two months of insanity, of cruel dreams, and neglect of the only two members of my family left to me.
“And then . . . you know what happened. Reality returned in the form of my rough, unlettered, and infinitely more admirable brother. I did not want to hear the truths he shouted at me. I did not want to hear that I could not set forth and seek Hallows with a fragile and unstable sister in tow.
“The argument became a fight. Grindelwald lost control. That which I had always sensed in him, though I pretended not to, now sprang into terrible being. And Ariana . . . after all my mother’s care and caution . . . lay dead upon the floor.”
Dumbledore gave a little gasp and began to cry in earnest. Harry reached out and was glad to find that he could touch him: He gripped his arm tightly and Dumbledore gradually regained control.
“Well, Grindelwald fled, as anyone but I could have predicted. He vanished, with his plans for seizing power, and his schemes for Muggle torture, and his dreams of the Deathly Hallows, dreams in which I had encouraged him and helped him. He ran, while I was left to bury my sister, and learn to live with my guilt and my terrible grief, the price of my shame.
“Years passed. There were rumors about him. They said he had procured a wand of immense power. I, meanwhile, was offered the post of Minister of Magic, not once, but several times. Naturally, I refused. I had learned that I was not to be trusted with power.”

It just seems like most of that stuff there is stuff that Harry couldn't possibly know. I just can't see that Harry's subconsciousness would be explaining their fight over Ariana to him like that. And then there are a few things said like this, which could be his subconscious speaking, but that would just be weird, and over-the-top in trying to convince himself.

“Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and above all, those who live without love. By returning, you may ensure that fewer souls are maimed, fewer families are torn apart. If that seems to you a worthy goal, then we say good-bye for the present.”

The very last line of the chapter is neat, but I think it is actually the confirmation that it was not a dream, and that he was actually talking to Dumbledore.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?”

 

You think your subconscious doesn't "know" things that you can't consciously recall?

 

Of course it can. But if it was Harry's subconcious trying to tell him relevant things, I don't understand why it would tell him a story about Dumbledore's sister (which he had no way of knowing the details of). Though, his subconscious could have fabricated the story, I suppose...

 

I doubt it. I have a theory, albeit a probably bad one, that the only person that could work The Hallows would be Harry, because he could die, but not be dead at the same time. I reckon that The Hallows would become obsolete after that, as no one could be alive and dead at the same time. Although, this could mean that people with Horcruxes could use them, but I think JK will, if she does say something about them, say that only those who are inherently good can use them, making it so that no one else has the power to use them.

 

Umm... no... the Hallows aren't good.

Ever heard the saying that "Only the strongest can rule?" well, that is sort of applyed to the Elder Wand, it dosen't matter if it's owner is good, or evil, just strong...

Hallows being made for Harry? They were made by Death, for the three brothers- apparently as a way for him to kill them to make up for the fact that they escaped him once, although the other theory is the three brothers just created the objects... but made for Harry? I don't think so.

 

Yeah, yeah. I know that, what I mean, is that JK probably will put some bullshit answer in where The Hallows can only be used by Harry to be 'master' of death, and only for that one time where he met Dumbledore, because he was dead, but because of Voldemort, he was alive. That probably doesn't make sense, but yeah...

 

How do people still not understand what the Hallows are?

Three very powerful but limited magical items that are far less potent than myth describes.

You've a very powerful, but very beatable wand. (It's owners are regularly skull-fucked.)
You've a better, but still flawed cloak. (Homenum Revelio and Moody's magical eye for a start)
And you've a stone that brings back the slightest intangible spectre of a person which are less than ghosts.

The combination of all three grants you nothing but that what the three individual items provide. The 'Master of Death' is nothing more than the notional title given to he who unites them and then accepts Death willingly. They were not created by Death, nor possess any other inherent potent properties.

Not in canon at least.

 

From the first book we know of ghosts and spirits that live past their mortal bodies. From the third book we know that there is a soul within a body that can be taken out of it without killing the victim. Why then would he have met anything but the real Dumbledore, if not in his real flesh, when he was hit the second time with the killing curse? It doesn't seem a stretch at all after knowing you can pull a soul back from death with the ring.

 

I realize this won't be popular, but I don't think the Stone actually brings back the dead, even to the extent implied in DH. Even moreso than the conversation with D'dore, Harry's talk with his parents, Sirius and Remus contains no new or even revelatory info.

What's Harry get from them? "It'll be over soon, it won't hurt, we're proud of you, you're so brave..." Nothing but what he *wanted* and *needed* to hear.

It's my opinion that you only get an echo from your own subconscious. Not unlike the way the Mirror of Erised shows you what you want.

Again, my own opinion, and not likely to be held by many.

 

Actually, I agree with this theory, though I've never heard it before. You've already said everything I would have done, so I'll leave it there.

 

But we do know that magic is capable of creating echoes of the dead, from the priori effect in book 4.

And that effect is mentioned in the King's Cross scene, when the echo of Dumbledore is talking about unique/unknown effects of brother wands. It doesn't seem like a coincidence.

 

There's no evidence either way. I hold the view that you are, in a limited way, reviving the dead with the stone, if only because J.K. Rowling explicitly lays out that there is an afterlife in her books. So it fits, I guess. But we're not going to resolve the issue of what you revive with the stone either way. In fanfiction, I've liked the portrayal of the Hallows in Perspipacity's story the best, as he really explores them in a very AU way.

 

But, if Lily was a representation or an echo from Harry's subconscious, why would "she" 'look at his face hungrily', like a reunited mother would do realistically, and so on?

JKRowling is very particular with words when writing. The only exception to this that I can think of right now and which would contradict this post is the 'bat' likeness with Snape; nothing with Snape and bats was established in canon.