The Mysterious Eagle Owl (was Beastly Li'l Snape)

[carrie1138]

No: HPFGUIDX 37874

Cindy wrote: (I think it was Cindy, anyway, difficult to tell among 
so many quotes!)

> >So. What was that darn eagle owl doing that night?
<snip all the excellent discussion so far - too much to quote!>

Voldemort is clearly associated with an eagle owl in chapter  29, 
p500 UK hb ed:

'[Harry] was riding on the back of an eagle owl...' In his dream, 
which I think we all agree is a clairvoyant episode, he flies into 
Voldemort's room and Voldemort receives news of Crouch Sr's death 
from the owl. I at first (once I noticed Harry noticing the owl, 
which took me four readings of GoF, by the way) assumed the owl Harry 
saw was taking the news of Crouch's death to Voldemort. But as Amy in 
her excellent post pointed out, the owl at that time left the owlery 
far too early to be the same owl on the same journey. So I looked 
again at these passages, and I think <*drumroll*> I think I've got it!

The owl was taking a message from Crouch Jr to his father's office to 
the Ministry! Chapter 28, page 477, Percy's letter:

'As I am constantly telling the Daily Prophet, Mr Crouch is taking a 
well-deserved break. He is sending in regular owls with 
instructions.... I think I can be trusted to know my own superior's 
handwriting.'

This only eight pages after Harry sees the owl. Okay, it's at least a 
month later in chronology, but the messages to the office would be an 
ongoing thing, and the owls are close enough together in the text for 
us to be meant to associate them, I think. It would be easy enough 
for Crouch Jr to forge his father's handwriting.

But then, uh oh... on p598, Crouch Jr says that Voldemort 'forced 
[Crouch Sr] to send letters to the Ministry', so that proves the 
letters are coming from Crouch Sr himself. So that shoots down my 
theory. See - this is why I don't post much, I keep disproving my own 
theories!

So in that case, I'll go back to almost my original idea, that the 
owl *was* taking a message from Crouch Jr to Voldemort. Surely, as 
his most trusted servant, Crouch was sending regular updates to 
Voldemort, maybe once a week, so that he would know everything was 
going according to plan (or not). The fact that it is mentioned 
specifically as being an eagle owl to me means that we are meant to 
associate it with the owl that later visits Voldemort, and the fact 
that we already know Draco Malfoy also owns an eagle owl is just a 
nice piece of red herring, IMO.

Carrie1138