Voldie's Insecurities (was Chapter 33 - The Death Eaters)

[tmayor at mediaone.net]

No: HPFGUIDX 13700

Hi...I've been lurking on this list for a long time but couldn't 
resist adding one thought to the excellent summary of the DE chapter 
regarding Voldemort's state of mind. 

He starts off the chapter being happy with his new (weird) bod, but 
gets pretty tense during the few moments he has to wait to see which 
(if any) DE's will return to him. After all, he's spent the last 13 
years in various states of loathsome amorphousness while his once-
loyal henchmen have been lunching at the Malfoy's, collecting their 
MOM paychecks and generally getting off pretty easy. I think he's 
secretly worried *nobody's* going to show--and then where would he 
be? He makes it clear he thinks his best people are still in Azkaban, 
so (with the exception maybe of Lucius Malfoy) he's stuck having to 
make his comeback with the B team. 

And it's a team that's not even 100 percent behind him. They kiss his 
robes and are obviously frightened of him, but seem kind of repulsed 
at the same time. And really, isn't every one of them better off with 
him defeated? Now they've got to go back to work killing, etc. All of 
this spills into the next chapter, where he does something really 
impressive: torturing an injured teenaged boy. And then fails to kill 
him in front of the very people he's trying to reassert power over! 
So IMO, Voldemort isn't exactly home free yet with his former 
supporters. I wonder if, in the next book, we'll see Dumbledore & Co. 
recognizing and exploiting those weaknesses before Voldemort has a 
chance to overcome them. 

That's all! 
Rosemerta