Plot holes in GoF/Asking JKR One Question

[cindysphynx]

No: HPFGUIDX 32387

Hollydaze wrote (about JKR's plot glitch):

> She says she was halfway through the book, and that that bit then 
>became 1 third through the book. Doesn't that mean that most of 
>the "getting rid" of the plot hole would have had to have taken 
>place in the later stages of the book then (to be able to push it 
>towards the beginning), even if the problem was in the first half 
>(now the first third). >snip>
>Also, JK has said that the missing "Weasley Cousin" was part of the 
>plot hole as that was why she was scrapped so how does she fit in. 

Ack!  You're completely right, Hollydaze.  The "fix" for the plot 
hole has to be after the 1/3 point in the book, although we don't 
know how far after.

OK.  Try again.  How about this?  Suppose in the original plot there 
is no Crouch Jr. at all.  Instead, the evil DE who kidnaps Moody and 
impersonates him is going to be this Weasley cousin character.  A 
nice plot twist is in the making -- a loyal, trusted Weasley is going 
to turn out to be evil.  Bwahahahaha!  JKR is writing along happily.  
There's no Winky, no House Elf Liberation Front, no Crouch-Jr-In-The-
Pensieve, maybe even no Pensieve at all.  Instead, the evil Weasley 
is impersonating Moody and feeding stories to the Daily Prophet (the 
stories Rita Skeeter wrote in the final version of GoF).  GoF would 
have been a straightforward PoA-length book.

Then one day, JKR is writing "The Egg and the Eye."  Harry is 
sneaking around with the Marauder's Map, and it occurs to JKR that 
she has totally forgotten to account for the fact that the Marauder's 
Map will reveal that fake Moody will show up on the Map 
as "Weasley".  This is a huge blunder that blows the plot wide open.  

Now she has a problem.  She can't have fake Moody show up on the Map 
as "Moody" because that will mess up the whole polyjuice plot twist.  
She can't just pretend the Map doesn't exist, because Lupin expressly 
gives it back to Harry at the end of PoA.  Rather than try to finesse 
this by making up some new property of the Map (which might be 
difficult given what she told us about the Map in PoA and how she 
plans to use the Map in subsequent books), she figures she has to re-
write.  She scraps the Weasley cousin entirely, and instead gives 
Crouch Sr. an evil son who just happens to have the same name.  

This fixed the Map problem, but now she has a real mess on her 
hands.  She has to change the Dark Mark to put Crouch's son there, 
she has make up a whole history for him, she has to add in Winky, she 
has to add the Pensieve scene, and she has to add much discussion of 
Crouch Jr. in "Padfoot Returns."  She has to beef up Rita Skeeter to 
get her stories more directly, that is, she has to make Rita an 
unregistered animagus and put her in direct contact with Malfoy and 
the trio.

OK, does that work?  Will we ever know?  Have I just written my first 
fanfic?  :-)

Hollydaze again:

> Do you think she'll tell us once the series is over because that is 
>the kind of thing that would drive an obsessive HP fan made (it has 
>been driving me mad for ages!)

Obviously, I share your frustration at trying to figure this out.  In 
fact, if I could pose one and only one question to JKR, I would 
probably ask her to reveal this plot glitch she fixed in GoF, because 
I just have to find out.

That causes me to think of a mildly interesting discussion question:  
if listies could think of one and only one question for JKR, what 
would that question be?  (And don't try to sneak in a compound 
question, because she won't answer multi-part questions. <bg>)  Feel 
free to speculate about what the answer to the question might be.

Barkeep in Diagon Alley wrote:

> > Why is 
> > Fake Moody teaching the students about the Unforgivables? Doesn't 
> > that play against LV's plans for Harry? 

As Hollydaze mentioned, this is one of the very fun and very thorny 
issues we've discussed before, and there are lots of good theories 
out there.  I'll quickly repeat an old theory and toss out what I 
think is a new one.

My previous view (although I certainly don't claim to have invented 
this view) is that it wasn't a problem for Fake Moody to teach Harry 
to resist Imperius because it didn't make any difference whether 
Harry learned to resist Moody's Imperius or not.  

The theory is that the Imperius Curse is personal to the wizard 
casting it, and it is only as strong as the wizard casting it.  In 
GoF, when Moody places Harry under the Imperius Curse, Harry hears a 
voice telling him to jump onto the desk.  But it is not just any 
voice.  It is specifically Mad-Eye Moody's voice.   We're also told 
that Mulciber specialized in the Imperius curse, suggesting that the 
power/skill of the wizard casting it matters.  Also, we know that 
Crouch Sr. threw off Wormtail's Imperius Curse.  Perhaps Crouch Sr. 
was able to do this because Wormtail's Imperius Curse was rather weak 
(as Sirius tells us that Wormtail was a weak and talentless thing).

Anyway, if Moody only taught Harry how to throw off Moody's Imperius 
Curse, that would have no bearing on whether Harry could throw off 
Voldemort's much stronger Imperius Curse.  There would be no reason 
for Moody to tell Voldemort that Harry had learned to resist Moody's 
Imperius, as there would be no risk to Voldemort because Voldemort's 
curse is substantially stronger than Moody's.

The implications of having the Imperius Curse reflect the strength of 
the wizard casting it are rather interesting.  It could be that the 
voice that tells Harry to resist is Harry's voice:  "I will not, said 
a stronger voice, in the back of his head, I won't answer . . . " If 
so, then that means that Harry is stronger than Moody . . . and 
stronger than Voldemort.  

The other reason Fake Moody might have tested Harry's ability to 
resist Imperius (under the guise of teaching him to do so, of course) 
is that Fake Moody is going to have to help Harry through the various 
tasks throughout the school year.  Fake Moody hopes he can do this 
subtly, but he doesn't know.  In a pinch, he might have to put Harry 
under the Imperius Curse to guide Harry's performance in the tasks 
more directly.  Fake Moody needs to know if this is an option, so he 
tests Harry's ability to resist the Imperius Curse.  Fake Moody 
learns that Harry can throw off his Imperius Curse handily, so Fake 
Moody concludes that he is going to have to help Harry win more 
indirectly.  

Cindy (thinking that JKR might have been tempted to scrap GoF 
altogether and just call the series a trilogy)