The Golden Snitch: Losing Your Life but Gaining Your Soul (from Steve)

So, I was at dinner with my brother Steve and I had been describing some of the Alchemy stuff and how Rowling is so masterful in the way she works it all the way down through the story, even to things like Quidditch, and had just noted some of the stuff from John Granger's findings about drawings/etchings of a golden orb with wings (basically the snitch) in/on a number of alchemical texts. And then my brother just sort of un-pretensiously said, "well, yeah and it's obviously the most important thing in the game because you can't END the game without catching it, even if you LOSE the game by points when you do." And I just sort of paused and said, "that's going up on the blog site ... you'll get the credit but it's too good of an observation not to post it." And it is an amazing observation: you may lose the game but the event is not over till you catch the snitch. You may die, but the important thing is to gain your true soul, to become the golden soul - "what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his very soul?"