Ok, this is absolutely not a new theory, I just want to start a thread that can be used a reference. This is a work in progress, BTW.
Harry is Kemmler reborn
The Life and Works of Heinrich Kemmler
"Because that Kemmler was a certifiable nightmare," Bob said. "I mean, wow. He was sick, Harry. Evil."
That got my attention. Bob the skull was an air spirit, a being that existed in a world of knowledge without morality. He was fairly fuzzy on the whole good-evil conflict, and as a result he had only vague ideas of where lines got drawn. If Bob thought someone was evil, well… Kemmler must have really pushed the envelope.
"What'd he do?" I asked. "What made him so evil?"
"He was best known for World War One," Bob said.
"The whole thing?" I demanded.
"Mostly, yeah," Bob said. "There were about a hundred and fifty years of engineering built into it, and he had his fingers into all kinds of pies. He vanished at the end of hostilities and didn't show up again until he started animating mass graves during World War Two. Went on rampages out in Eastern Europe, where things were pretty much a nightmare even without his help. Nobody is sure how many people he killed."
"Stars and stones," I said. "Why would he do something like that?"
"A wild guess? He was freaky insane. Plus evil."
"You say 'was,'" I said. "Past tense?"
"Very," Bob said. "After what the guy did, the White Council hunted him down and wiped his dusty ass out in 1961."
"You mean the Wardens?"
"I mean the White Council," Bob said. "The Merlin, the whole Senior Council, the brute squad out of Archangel, the Wardens, and every wizard and ally the wizards could get their hands on."
I blinked. "For one man?"
"See above, regarding nightmare," Bob said. "Kemmler was a necromancer, Harry. Power over the dead. He had truck with demons, too, was buddies with most of the vampire Courts, every nasty in Europe, and some of the uglier faeries, too. Plus he had his own little cadre of baby Kemmlers to help him out. Apprentices. And thugs of every description."
"Damn," I said.
"Doubtless he was," Bob said. "They killed him pretty good. A bunch of times. He'd shown up again after the Wardens had killed him early in the nineteenth century, so they were real careful the second time. And good riddance to the psychotic bastard."
I blinked. "You knew him?"
"Didn't I ever tell you?" Bob asked. "He was my owner for about forty years."
I stared. "You worked with this monster?"
"I do what I do," Bob said proudly.
"How did Justin get you, then?"
"Justin DuMorne was a Warden, Harry, back at Kemmler's last stand. He pulled me out of the smoldering ruins of Kemmler's lab. Sort of like when you pulled me out of the smoldering ruins of Justin's lab when you killed him. Circle of life, like that Elton John song."
"Maybe," Bob said. "Council records stated that Kemmler had written three books; The Blood of Kemmler, The Mind of Kemmler, and The Heart of Kemmler."
"That you have little time," Mab said. She turned to face me again. "I must do what I might to preserve your life. Know this, mortal: Should Kemmler's heirs acquire the knowledge bound within the Word, they will be in a position to gather up such power as the world has not seen in many thousands of years."
"What? How?"
"Kemmler was"—Mab's eyes grew distant, as if in memory— "a madman. A monster. But brilliant. He learned how to bind to his will not only dead flesh, but shades—to rend them asunder and devour them to feed his own power. It was the secret of the strength that allowed him to defy all the White Council together."
Harry and necromancy
She might have been as long as a city bus, but Sue, despite her weight, moved with power and grace. As I'd called forth energy-charged ectoplasm to clothe the ancient bones, they had become covered in sheets of muscle and a hide of heavy, surprisingly supple quasi-flesh. She was dark grey, and there was a ripple pattern of black along her head, back, and flanks, almost like that of a jaguar. And once I had shaped the vessel, I had reached out and found the ancient spirit of the predator that had animated it in life.
Animals might not have the potential power of human remains. But the older the remains, the more magic can be drawn to fill them—and Sue was sixty-five million years old.
She had power. She had power in spades.
I found those spirits, reached out and touched them, one by one.
“Memorium,” I whispered. “Memoratum. Memortius.”
Energy rushed out of me. I shoved it out as fast as it would go, and I gave it to them. To the lost ones. The seduced, the betrayed, the homeless, the helpless. All the people the vampires had preyed on, through the years, all the dead I could reach. I reached out into the turmoil Bianca and her allies had created, and I gave those wandering shades power.
The house began to shake.
I gripped the wooden grain of my staff, recalling the feelings that had surged through me when I had summoned and bound the Lecters. I called on my memories one more time. I called up the ache of sore muscles after a hard workout, and the sheer physical joy of my body in motion during a run, walking down the street, sinking into a hot bath, swimming through cool water, stroking over the softness of another body beside mine. I thought of my favorite old T-shirt, a plain, black cotton one with 98% CHIMPANZEE written on the chest in white typeset letters. I thought of the creak of my old leather cowboy boots, the comfort of a good pair of jeans. The scent of a wood-smoked grill drifting into my nose when I was hungry, the way my mouth would water and my stomach would growl. I thought of my old Mickey Mouse alarm clock going off too early in the morning, and groaning out of bed to go to work. I remembered the smell of a favorite old book’s pages when I opened them again, and the smell of smoldering motor oil, a staple feature of my old Blue Beetle. I remembered the softness of Susan’s lips against mine. I remembered my daughter’s slight, warm weight in my arms, her exhausted body as limp as a rag doll’s. I remembered the way tears felt, sliding free of my eyes, the annoying blockage of congestion when I had a cold, and a thousand other things—little things, minor things, desperately important things.
You know. Life.
Then I did something fairly nutty, as I gathered the memory for what I was to attempt. I just uttered the spell in plain, old English. The energy seared through my thoughts in a way that would have been damaging to a living wizard, maybe fatal. It seemed appropriate to use it here, and I released whatever power I had left, clothing it in garments of memory, as I murmured the most basic of ideas, the foundation of words and of reality.
“Be.”
Given the way my life has typically progressed, I probably should have guessed that What Came Next was pain.
A whole lot of pain.
I tried to take a breath, and a searing burst of agony radiated out from my chest. I held off on the next breath for as long as I could, but eventually I couldn’t put it off anymore, and again fire spread across my chest.
I repeated that cycle for several moments, my entire reality consumed by the simple struggle to breathe and to avoid the pain. I was on the losing side of things, and if the pain didn’t exactly lessen, it did, eventually, become more bearable.
“Good,” whispered a dry, rasping voice. “Very good.”
I felt the rest of my body next. I was lying on something cool and contoured. It wasn’t precisely comfortable, but it wasn’t a torment, either. I clenched my fingers, but something was wrong with them. They barely moved. It was as though someone had replaced my bones and flesh with lead weights, heavy and inert, and my tendons and muscles were too weak to break the inertia. But I felt cool, damp earth crumbling beneath my fingertips.
“Doesn’t seem to bode well,” I mumbled. My tongue didn’t work right. My lips didn’t, either. The words came out a slushy mumble.
“Excellent,” rasped the voice. “I told you he had strength enough.”
Strange WOJ
Nah, the very foundations of the story worlds--their magic--are fundamentally incompatible. Potterverse magic is based largely upon the dictates of story drama. It's irrational, capricious, finicky, and generally doesn't make a lot of sense from any rational perspective. (Flick your wand like THIS not like THAT and say the word like THIS and not like THAT and it works.) Magic is a force unto itself, a law unto itself, and while it /does/ operate with absolute fidelity and consistency within the story world, it's beholden to no one.
Dresden universe magic is modeled more closely upon physics. Magic still has to pay attention to fundamental universal laws--such as "matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only rearranged." The energy for all those magical effects has to come from somewhere. There ain't no free lunch.
For instance, you could fly someone on a broom in the Dresden universe, but you'd have to be providing the same kind of kinetic energy you'd see from one of those James Bond rocket packs that they fly into the Superbowl from time to time--IE, a buttload. (Those packs are good for about twenty or twenty five seconds of flight, if I remember correctly, and that's it.) In the Potter universe, dozens of children who know next to nothing about magic can gad about on brooms in the afternoon for fun and recreation, and no one thinks anything of it. There's a foundational difference in the approach to how magic interacts with reality.
And yeah, Voldemort wouldn't have graduated high school in the Dresden universe. Once Tom Riddle started playing with the evil juju, someone in a grey cloak would have shown up to whack off his head and nipped him in the bud.
Unless, of course, someone more highly placed in the Council intervened on Riddle's behalf, and maybe gave the kid a little more guidance and maybe even a chance to choose a different path. Then, who knows.
Old Tom might up and do something else entirely with all that potentially-dark talent. >
Jim
Harry and the Kemmelrites
“I will make this offer exactly once, Dresden,” Evil Bob said quite calmly. He put his other hand on the staff, mirroring me, and I suddenly realized that if he wanted to, he could fling me considerably farther than he had Sir Stuart—assuming he didn’t just ram the staff straight back into my chest and out of my back.
I was suddenly unsure whether the spook squad could take Evil Bob even if they were all right there, Lecters, guardians, and all.
“What offer?” I asked him.
“A relationship,” he replied. “With me.”
Yeah. He actually said it like that.
“Um,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “Maybe you could clarify what you mean by a relationship. Because I’ve got to tell you, Bob, I’ve, uh . . . I’ve been hurt.”
The joke missed him completely. I was apparently snarking on the wrong frequency. “In the nature of an apprenticeship,” he said. “You have sound fundamental skills. You are practical. Your ambition is tempered by an understanding of your limits. You have the potential to be an excellent partner.”
“And I’m not flipping insane like the Corpsetaker,” I said.
“Hardly. But your insanities are more manageable,” Evil Bob said, “and you have few self-delusions.” He sniffed. “The Master never favored that creature, in any case. But he would have been interested in you.”
“You were able to manifest after all? Intriguing. You’ve a natural gift for darker magic, I think. My master would have snapped you up in an instant.”
Trivia
- Harry was born on Halloween, the day of the deads.
- most people who see Harry's soul are terrified, some of them even faint
- Harry and some of his allies (Uriel, Mab) have a proclivity for mass-murder
- Harry is a wizard of tremendous power (top thirty in raw strength in the whole world at minimum)
- Harry is one of the few wizards ever to come back from the deads
- Harry has mastered the
Word of Kemmler in a few moments
- Justin knew Kemmler, at least as an ennemy (he stole Bob)
- Cowl, proficient in Kemmler's magic, may be Simon Petrovitch, Justin's master
- the Council is terrified of Harry, 'what he was meant to be'
- Demonreach accepted Harry as a Warden when he recieved a piece of Harry's soul. (semi-speculation based on WOJ). A position which had been vacant for some time...
- Harry is a natural leader
- Harry is Law-breaker
- Harry has a talent for dark magic
- Harry is a rebel
- Harry has started a world war
- It was implied in GS that Harry's soul would go to Hell
The Theory
Uriel’s smile blossomed again. “You’ve got it backward, Harry,” he said. “You are a soul. You have a body.”
Kemmler is well known for his multiple resurrections. If he followed Corpsetaker's playbook, it seems that necromancers simply move their souls between bodies, kicking out the soul that was there previously. There is no reason that it couldn't work on a single cell. As there is no brain, the memories are not transfered, but as Lea said, all memories are still in the soul.
Then we have to find a motivation. I see at least two:
Firstly, each time Kemmler came back he was crushed by the WC. With a new identity and a new life he would be at last free from council interference.
Secondly, he wanted to be an Outsiderbane. The power of outsiderbane is linked to the date of birth. So with this new birth he finally gained this rare and dangerous ability.
