And so the theory changes shape. Previously I had thought that there were multiple pieces on the gameboard but now I fear this is not so. Hermione Granger has been Legilimised into harm's way until destroyed and that has in turn destroyed Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres. He is no longer a game-piece but is the final stage of nothing more than an experiment, set into place by He Who Must Not Be Named (and indeed cannot be named, as his real name is so old it has no meaning to anyone or anything but his faintest memories).
He Who Cannot Be Named began life a long, long time ago (Harry has forgotten to read through the journal of Roger Bacon, and perhaps this is the most likely original identity for someone like Quirrellmort). He discovered the secret of immortality and released it into the public domain and was deeply saddened by the public reaction. He watched as politicians waxed and waned, watched as conflicts grew and broke. He pulled strings in minds to see just how awful a single human could become, if shunted in the right directions - and so Dumbledore and Grindelwald occurred. And then he began a new experiment, to see just how many wizards it would take to subdue the entire world (his focus has always been people, you see, rather than the sciences). He cut his way through Britain until it came time to butcher the Potters. And perhaps he knew beforehand, or found out simply by reading Lily Potter's mind through her terrified unblinking eyes, or realised how dramatically convenient it would be, and he created an equally powerful and nuanced waveform to his own in the only way he could - by irradiating the child with his undiluted unshaped magic, causing resonance. We have already seen that he has total mastery over magic even in the wrong body - so why not on the other end of a Legilimens or Imperio connection, as the disfigured creature that everybody had come to know as Voldemort?
And now, as his soul is pulled slowly further away from the Earth and his one remaining vessel spends more and more time in a brute instinctive state (this particular body does not really know how to function without the Quirrellmind steering it, you see), he gets to see the final situation play out. He has given the wizarding world a prodigious young man; an extinction event, cocked and primed; and now they have set him off and he will watch, first from his vessel on Earth and then from his position far away from the planet, as Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres tears the planet apart in an attempt to undo the damage that Humanity has wrought; and either Harry will unravel the universe by finding and destroying Atlantis*, or a level-headed Auror will be forced to kill the boy before he can do lasting damage to the world.
*I wonder what might happen if a young boy, made of rage and with a newly-fractured soul, called again upon that overwhelming desire to kill and pointed it at some very particular Atlantean source of magic - for example, a Time-Turner...
The following is wild 5am speculation.
And so the theory changes shape. Previously I had thought that there were multiple pieces on the gameboard but now I fear this is not so. Hermione Granger has been Legilimised into harm's way until destroyed and that has in turn destroyed Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres. He is no longer a game-piece but is the final stage of nothing more than an experiment, set into place by He Who Must Not Be Named (and indeed cannot be named, as his real name is so old it has no meaning to anyone or anything but his faintest memories).
He Who Cannot Be Named began life a long, long time ago (Harry has forgotten to read through the journal of Roger Bacon, and perhaps this is the most likely original identity for someone like Quirrellmort). He discovered the secret of immortality and released it into the public domain and was deeply saddened by the public reaction. He watched as politicians waxed and waned, watched as conflicts grew and broke. He pulled strings in minds to see just how awful a single human could become, if shunted in the right directions - and so Dumbledore and Grindelwald occurred. And then he began a new experiment, to see just how many wizards it would take to subdue the entire world (his focus has always been people, you see, rather than the sciences). He cut his way through Britain until it came time to butcher the Potters. And perhaps he knew beforehand, or found out simply by reading Lily Potter's mind through her terrified unblinking eyes, or realised how dramatically convenient it would be, and he created an equally powerful and nuanced waveform to his own in the only way he could - by irradiating the child with his undiluted unshaped magic, causing resonance. We have already seen that he has total mastery over magic even in the wrong body - so why not on the other end of a Legilimens or Imperio connection, as the disfigured creature that everybody had come to know as Voldemort?
And now, as his soul is pulled slowly further away from the Earth and his one remaining vessel spends more and more time in a brute instinctive state (this particular body does not really know how to function without the Quirrellmind steering it, you see), he gets to see the final situation play out. He has given the wizarding world a prodigious young man; an extinction event, cocked and primed; and now they have set him off and he will watch, first from his vessel on Earth and then from his position far away from the planet, as Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres tears the planet apart in an attempt to undo the damage that Humanity has wrought; and either Harry will unravel the universe by finding and destroying Atlantis*, or a level-headed Auror will be forced to kill the boy before he can do lasting damage to the world.
*I wonder what might happen if a young boy, made of rage and with a newly-fractured soul, called again upon that overwhelming desire to kill and pointed it at some very particular Atlantean source of magic - for example, a Time-Turner...