Dobby & the Chamber

[jodel at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 42734

Gretchen brings up a point that I've debated myself. How DID Dobby know that 
the Chamber was to be opened? Or perhaps the question is more accruately; 
Just what plots against Harry Potter had Dobby overheard? Because there is no 
certainly that Dobby knew about the Chamber. Only that there was a plot.

Which brings up the question of who was Lucius Malfoy plotting with? Because 
Elves aren't mind readers so far as we know. Lucius must have been discussing 
this with someone in order for Dobby to have overheard. 

Another issue is; Isn't it just a bit overly fortuitious that Dobby was given 
instructions to scare Harry Potter away from Hogwarts as well? There was no 
purpose to be served by warning Harry that there was a plot against him. 
Ergo, Dobby grossly exceeded his orders by passing on the warning. But in 
that case, it stands to reason that he must have had orders to exceed in 
contacting Harry at all. The twins thought that Dobby had been sent by Draco, 
and that is possible. Richelle poins out that Draco doesn't know as much as 
he *thinks* he does, and she's right. It would make a certain poetic justice 
that Draco managed to throughly screw up his father's plans, but somehow it 
doesn't quite convince me.

And besides; WOULD Dobby have gone flying to Harry Potter in a panic of 
warnings over a plot against *Ginny Weasley?* I don't thinkso. 

I think that a lot more about that alleged "plot" went awry than can be 
accounted for by Dobby's warning. And we watched it happen. That exercise was 
a cock-up from the beginning.

I suggest that HARRY was supposed to have been the one to be given the Riddle 
diary. 

It was Harry who was supposed to have been reeled in and taken over. It was 
Harry who was supposed to open the Chamber, set the basilisk on the other 
students, and it was harry who was supposed to exchange his life for that of 
16-year-old Tom Riddle.

And it might have gone off except that Muggle-loving Arthur Weasley, when 
goaded, rather than going for his wand like any self-respecting wizard threw 
a punch instead, dragged Lucius Malfoy into a fistfight in public (in a 
bookstore packed with Lockhart's fans for the book signing, just to add 
insult to injury) and so enraged Malfoy that he deliberately planted the 
diary on Arthur's daughter (quite possibly the apple of her father's eye) 
instead.

But this still doesn't answer the question of WHO Lucius was plotting with, 
or when he was doing it that the plan to deploy the Riddle diary came up in 
the first place. There can't have been many people, even among the DEs who 
knew the Riddle diary existed.

-JOdel