TBAY: Eagle owl redux

[dicentra63]

No: HPFGUIDX 43081

Dicentra lounges on the deck of the GARBAGE SCOW (Gibberish,
Altogether Redundant Blather And Gobbledegook Everywhere! Superfluous
Can(n)on Obtains Welcome), reading GoF and trying to find more
can(n)ons for her barge.  Suddenly, she sits bolt upright.  

"Wait a minute..." she says.  "Wait. A. Minute."

She Apparates off the SCOW into the TBAY Museum and runs into the
dimly lit archive room.  The room is empty except for long rows of
filing cabinets--43 of which are labeled--and a whiteboard.  She pulls
out her wand and taps the cabinets. 

"Show me 'eagle owl,'" she commands.

One drawer opens, labelled 42000-42999.  Five files pop up.  She looks
at them, perplexed. 

"No, that's too recent," she mutters.  "Show me *all* the instances of
'eagle owl' in the whole archive," she repeats.

The same drawer opens and the same files pop up.

"Curse that Yahoomort," she says, teeth clenched. "I'm going to have
to do this by hand."  She pulls open 36000-36999, but the files are
from March 2002.

"April, April, I'm thinking," she mumbles as she flips through the
folders in 37000-37999.  "Aha! 37811!" She opens the folder and finds
the first entry by LizGiz, with entries from Grey Wolf, Porphyria, and
Cindy attached.

She reads through them quickly.  "They just about had it," she thinks.
"Either we've got ourselves a FLINT, or I've got me a new little
can(n)on."

Dicentra goes to the white board and begins to write down the key
facts.  Liz Giz quotes Pippin who mentioned that Draco has an eagle owl. 

"DRACO owns the eagle owl???" LizGiz writes.  "I have been trying to
figure out whose eagle owl was mentioned in GoF.

"Page 540 (American) 'An eagle owl flew through the coil of smoke from
Hagrid's chimney; it soared toward the castle, around the Owlery, and
out of sight.'

"At first glance, you think it's just a peaceful aside -- a
description of the scenery. But in his Dream later in the story, Harry
rides an eagle owl to Voldemort's lair.

"I had assumed that the eagle owl belonged to Crouch/Moody. I never
dreamed it was Draco's.

"Is this evidence that Draco himself is in contact with Voldemort? Or
do you suppose that all Death Eaters have eagle owls?"

Dicentra scribbles "Owl Flies Through Coil" at the top of the board,
the begins to list the facts:

"Malfoys have an eagle owl"
"Harry rides an eagle owl in his dream to Riddle Manor"

She reads Grey Wolf's response:

"There is no canon to back up the eagle owl theory. We do know that
Draco gets food from his parents via an eagle owl (Harry mentions it
in PS at the very beginning, when he's explaining us how the mornings
go at Hogwarts). The stretch of asuming that it is the same eagle owl
that Harry 'flies' is one I'm not willing to do, but it is possible
from a theorical point of view."

Oh, but why not, Wolfie? Dicentra thinks.  She grabs GoF and reviews
what the owl does in Harry's dream:

"[description of the owl flying into Riddle mansion] Harry had left
the owl's back ... he was watching, now, as it fluttered across the
room, into a chair with its back to him.... There were two dark shapes
on the floor beside the chair ... both of them were stirring....

[description of Nagini and Wormtail] "You are in luck, Wormtail," said
a cold, high-pitched voice from the depths of the chair where the owl
had landed.  "You are very fortunate indeed.  Your blunder has not
ruined everything. He is dead." 

After more sniveling from Wormtail, Voldemort hits him with a Crucio,
and Harry awakens to find his scar burning.  He goes to Dumbledore's
office, going over in his mind what he saw.  

"He had heard Voldemort accusing Wormtail of making a blunder ... but
the owl had brought good news, the blunder had been repaired, somebody
was dead..." (578)

Dicentra adds to the list: 

"The owl delivers the message to Voldemort telling him Crouch Sr. is dead"

But is this the same owl that flew through the coil?  Was it
delivering the message to Crouch!Moody that his father had escaped? 
Porphyria things it's possible:

"We do know that Crouch Jr. was communicating with LV during his time
at Hogwarts. Under polyjuice he says: 'My father escaped. My master
guessed that he was heading for Hogwarts. My father was going to tell
Dumbledore everything, to confess. He was going to admit that he had
smuggled me from Azkaban. My master sent me word of my father's
escape. He told me to stop him at all costs.'

"And we see the eagle owl fly away sometime before Crouch Sr. shows up
raving. So it's possible it's in the process of carrying Crouch Jr.'s
communication with LV."

But Cindy points out that it can't be that particular message from
Voldemort:

"In GoF 35, Crouch Jr. says, 'My master sent me word of my father's
escape .... For a week I waited for my father to arrive at Hogwarts.
At last, one evening, the map showed my father entering the grounds,'
and it was that evening that he killed him. So, about a week between
the letter (or however he received word) and the murder.

"But here's the chronology in GoF 27 and 28, with copious evidence
that there is well over a month between the eagle owl Harry sees from
the Owlery and the death of Crouch Sr." 

Cindy provides a timeline showing when events occured. Dicentra writes
down the salient points:

"Crouch Jr. says he waited a week after getting word from Voldemort
until his father showed"
"The owl flies through the coil before Easter"
"Crouch Sr. shows up in late May"

Cindy concludes that the owl in the coil is NOT delivering word to
Crouch!Moody that his father escaped because the timeline does not
bear it out.

Dicentra scratches her head.  "But if it isn't delivering that
message, what is it doing?  Why mention it?  Either it's SCOW fodder
or it's a FLINT. And as much as I like collecting can(n)ons for my
little barge, I'm going to bet that this one is a FLINT."  

Dicentra writes again (using another color ink and starting at the
top): "It's entirely possible that Owl Flies Through Coil used to
occupy a different position in the book, in an earlier draft.  It
could have been mid-May when Harry stood in the Owlery, but in the
course of rewriting, JKR moved it to an earlier position but forgot to
correct Crouch Jr.'s speech.  Conversely, Crouch Sr. could have shown
up before Easter, and that event got moved.  Considering how big the
book is and how crunched she was for time (which she's now making up
for, mind you), and how hard it is to notice those types of
discrepancies when you've spent the past year eating, drinking, and
sleeping a single manuscript, it could easily be a FLINT."

Dicentra changes to another marker color and writes over the top of
the other writing. "Furthermore, inserting the detail of Owl Flies
Through Coil into that scene is just the kind of thing JKR likes to
do.  She points out that it's an eagle owl (she names the species of
all owls, I've noticed) and makes sure Harry rides an eagle owl in his
dream to Riddle Manor.  I'm fairly sure she doesn't use eagle owls for
any but this task and in conjunction with the Malfoys.  It only makes
sense that Crouch!Moody should use the same owl Voldemort sent him to
send the return message.  He can't very well be seen going up to the
school owlery to send a message.  So her plan was to slip this clue
right under our noses: the owl Harry rides to Riddle Manor came from
Hogwarts.  The notice that someone was dead came from Hogwarts. 
Notice that *Crouch Sr.* was dead. But she messed up with the timeline
in the rewrites.  Otherwise, there's no reason to include Owl Flies
Through Coil." 

Dicentra switches to another color and writes in the margins: "But is
it the Malfoys' owl? Very possibly. But that would mean Voldemort is
in touch with Lucius even at that early date, meaning that Lucius *is*
fumbling with his lines at the graveyard.  MAGIC DISHWASHER, Pip?"

When she's done, Dicentra puts the cap on the marker and stands back
to look at her handiwork.  It's a veritable palimpsest of colored
lines, mostly illegible except for a few letters that managed to
remain uncovered.  She picks out the letters and is surprised to find
that they form words:

"All your base are belong to us*."

"Hmmm," she muses. "Like that makes any sense."  She adds her entry to
the folder 37811, stuffs it back into the filing cabinet, and
Apparates back to the SCOW.

--Dicentra, who doesn't mind passing up the occasional can(n)on

*Put this phrase into Google, including the quotation marks, to see
what the phrase means.