Hi hello hi! I was linked to your blog via the TLT podcast for a discussion of the use of quotation marks in the John chapters of Nona the Ninth with regard to homestuck. Could you link to the post? Thank you 😊
Bunch of decapitation in this book, from the Blacks' house elves to the destroyed statue. Most notably, Fred and George are selling Headless Hats on the night Harry comes back from his first "empty your mind" Occlumency lesson.
"There is a room in the Department of Mysteries," interrupted Dumbledore, "that is kept locked at all times. It contains a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than forces of nature. […] It is the power held within that room that you possess in such quantities and which Voldemort has not at all. […] That power also saved you from possession by Voldemort, because he could not bear to reside in a body so full of the force he detests. In the end, it mattered not that you could not close your mind. It was your heart that saved you."
After book one, I suggested that the ancient-magic mother-love protection on Harry was, in Marcy's schema, a fantasy of impenetrability, of being unrapable. I think this extends to the "purity of heart" stuff in general (note that Andrias and the Core both lack biological hearts).
Crucially, it is just a fantasy: Marcy is Hermione, not Harry, and their heart is a site of violence. So decapitation becomes an absolute necessity? Marcy's only real way of avoiding/mitigating harm?
Left alone in the dark room, Harry turned toward the wall. A cracked, age-spotted mirror hung on the wall in the shadows. Harry moved toward it. His reflection grew larger and clearer in the darkness. . . . A Face whiter than a skull . . . red eyes with slits for pupils …
"NOOOOOOOOO!"
And/or:
His breath misted the surface of the glass. He held the mirror even closer, excitement flooding through him, but the eyes blinking back at him through the fog were definitely his own.
Esired stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi—I show not your face but your heart's desire.
He felt dirty, contaminated, as though he were carrying some deadly germ, unworthy to sit on the underground train back from the hospital with innocent, clean people whose minds and bodies were free of the taint of Voldemort. . . . He had not merely seen the snake, he had been the snake, he knew it now. . . .