MAGIC DISHWASHER (Was: Re: Wandless!Harry - A Fatal Flaw?)

[grey_wolf_c]

No: HPFGUIDX 43138

Greg wrote:
> I have a lot of problems w/ the whole, "Voldemort let Harry escape 
> on purpose" theory, but basically it comes down to this:
> 
> --- In HPforGrownups at y..., "grey_wolf_c" <greywolf1 at j...> wrote:
> > Phyllis wrote:
> > Voldemort can hope he'll kill the brat, but he's not going to 
> suffer if 
> > he escapes again. It doesn't loom to big. After all, his real eney 
> is 
> > Dumbledore, and last time, it was easy to beat him. If Harry grows 
> to 
> > be another Dumbledore, it still won't be enough to stop him from 
> taking 
> > over the WW once again.
> 
> Yes, we all know, because we're following Harry's life, that he's 
> not even the best wizard in his class when it comes to that sort of 
> thing. But that's not what Harry Potter means to the WW. Harry 
> Potter is a symbol. He, when he was a little over 1 year old, 
> defeated the worst dark lord in over 100 years. A dark lord so 
> terrible that nearly 15 years later people are still afraid to say 
> his name. 
> 
> So what does that mean?  These people are absolutely terrified.  
> Harry Potter is the reason many of them are going to fight. If 
> Harry's dead body had been sent to the Daily Prophet, w/ a little 
> note on it from Lord Voldemort, I think a ton of them just would've 
> given up. But now that he's escaped, he's Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-
> Lived, the Tri-Wizard champion, and one of the few people who has 
> ever escaped the Dark Lord's wrath & he's now done it 3 times.  But 
> most important of all, he's the Boy-Who's-Living.

Do you really believe they will fight? Even with Harry Potter on their 
side? I am not one of the Fudge Is Evil defenders. To me, he's the 
perfect example of the typical WW wizard, and he's not willing to fight 
against Voldemort. Nor are many of the wizard and witches, which is why 
Dumbledore has that group of people he *knows* he can trust. Notice 
that, so far, the only people who don't call Voldemort "you know who" 
have happened to be part of the "old gang", and the only ones willing 
to fight him. Don't think that the wizard world are willing to fight 
becuse of Harry: they're still very much afraid of Voldemort, and the 
fact that one boy is protected from him doen't put *them* in any better 
situation. Their families are still easy objectives and their powers 
are not strong enough to fight him. Like last time, Voldemort will be 
able to put the entire WW on its knees by a few careful comited 
attrocities.

> Voldemort can't take over the WW until Harry & Dumbledore are both 
> dead. Until then, he can be a royal pain, but he can't rule. Once 
> they're both dead, he's the Minister of Magic until he dies. He 
> knows that. He knows that as long as Harry is alive, there are 
> always going to be people who oppose him.  Why bother to send a tiny 
> little bit of disinformation via Harry, when there are so many other 
> ways to do it. Snape for instance, is almost certain to at least 
> try & take up his spying post again. It'd take a few weeks to send 
> everything via Snape, at most, and then the deed would be done, but 
> Harry would be dead.  

But he *can* rule the WW with both Dumbledore and Harry still alive. 
Let's take this to the limit: Voldemort kills everyone that oposes him 
except H&D: He gets to rule the WW, even if they still exist. Truth is, 
Dumbledore is not in a position of political authority, and he has 
never wanted to be. It's comendable, and a strong defensive position, 
but it means that Voldemort can take over the MoM, put someone he trust 
at the top, and reduce Dumbledore's side to a resistance movement. And 
if that happens, Voldemort will have won the war, because no war can   
*ever* be won from a hit-and-run position.

And the fact is that the situation is ripe for Voldemort's plans: the 
MoM is in the hands of a bunch of incompetent paper-shufflers who are 
so scared of Voldemort that they refuse to admit his existance. Fudge 
is going to make an ass of himself when he publicly declares that 
Voldemort has not made a comeback (after Voldemort starts those 
constructive attrocities I mentioned before). Of course, evidence will 
just pile up, and when Cornelius is shown to be an absolute 
incompetent, the masses will ask for a new minister. At this point, I'd 
say that there would be three candidates: Dumbledore, who won't want 
to, Arthur, who's not powerful enough, and Lucius Malfoy, a very 
powerful and influential man, an authentic political machine. And if 
(when) Lucius wins the election*, Voldemort will have gotten his hands 
in the WW through the use of a puppet ruler. I'm not saying that this 
is Voldemort's plans, but it *could* be: deposing the current authority 
and putting your prefered one is the easiest and fastest way to rise to 
power, and in this case is, as I've said, ripe for such sort of plan.

> The other thing, "After all, his real eney is Dumbledore, and last 
> time, it was easy to beat him."  I don't think that's true at all.  
> If it was, why didn't he?  I think the best that either could do 
> would be hurt each other enough that they'd both die.  The fact that 
> Dumbledore is probably the only wizard alive who would have a chance 
> at killing him is enough to keep Voldemort away until he's sure of 
> his immortality.  At the same time, Dumbledore is aware of his 
> importance to the good guys, and isn't willing to get into a fight 
> that may lead to his death, but not Voldemort's and the good guys 
> would lose the war.  
> 
> Greg

But he *did* beat him. By all acounts, at the time of his sudden 
downfall, Voldemort had managed to almost take over the WW. About the 
only thing that was stopping him was the measures that Crouch Sr. took: 
making the Aurors as bad as the DEs, which allowed for a brutal 
repression of civil rights. This, of course, is *not* a long lasting 
way of beating Voldemort, since they were playing right into his hands 
by increasing the paranoia and sense of insecurity, but these sort of 
things have been used before in RL because they *do* have resuls at 
short span. Voldemort was, at that point, about to win by letting the 
social structure fall around the MoM's ruins. Social breakdown is 
another great way of grasping power (check the French revoultion or the 
Russian revolution, and how they both ended twith a supreme ruler of 
dictatorial qualities, which is what Voldemort really wants).

I don't know what Dumbledore's plans were at that time, but whatever 
they were, they weren't being effective. They were probably long-range 
plans, though. I think that the Potters were involved in a big part of 
that plan, and it must have been a good plan, since Voldemort risked a 
lot by going himself to eliminate Harry and James (even more, since we 
know he was almost destroyed).

And finally, I repeat the basic of Voldemort's reasoning to let Harry 
leave: While it is true that he probably needs to kill the boy, he has 
still got three years more before Harry finishes his training (and from 
Voldemort's PoV, probably even a few years more. If I was Voldemort, 
I'd hardly expect Dumbledore to send Harry against me at the immediate 
end of his training). In the graveyard, he has just been resurrected. 
Voldemort has won that battle. The enemy flees, and takes a lot of 
misinformation with him. He has won *that* battle too. The victory 
could've been more complete, surely, but you cannot expect to win *all* 
the battles in a war. And, as I've said, even if Harry is killed, 
Dumbledore is still alive, so things wouldn't have changed that much, 
from Voldemort's PoV. I don't think he realizes that Harry will be his 
ultimate destruction. Harry's a problem that he'll have to take care 
off, but the Graveyard is a good victory for his side. Not all battles 
finish with the anihilation of the enemy. In fact, most of them 
finishes with the enemy running in fear. And Voldemort managed just 
that.

>From a historical poerspective, in fact, Voldemort's record is getting 
better: The first time, he was nearly destroyed and was laid low for 
ten years. The second time, his vessel was destroyed, but he managed to 
find out a lot of information while being undercover in his enemies 
camp for a year, and only lies low for a couple of years. This third 
time, is Harry the one who is nearly destroyed and the one who runs 
away with a lot of misinformation, while Voldemort has once again been 
able to leech out a considerable amount of information (which of course 
might just be misinformation) by having a loyal servant camped in 
Hogwarts for a year, and one that looks like an auror, so would have 
every reason to ask abvout Dumbledore's plans, too.

Hope that helps,

Grey Wolf

*There is a theory based on foreshadowing in the list that says that 
Lucius (Malfoy) will follow Cornelius (Fudge) because the Pope 
Cornelius was substituted by the Pope Lucius. I don't really like it, 
but it fits my theory well.