Lupin's bitees, torn page, Sirius gambit, ambush flavoured LOLLIPOPS

[Tabouli]

No: HPFGUIDX 34932

Porphyria:
> Yeah, imagine coming back into human form and realizing you've eaten one 
of your classmates. Then what would have happened to him? Off to the 
werewolf pound.<

Hmmm... I wonder if Lupin actually *has* bitten anyone in his lifelong werewolf career?  You'd think he must have gotten (un)lucky at least a couple of times.  Future plot twist?  Wonder how his parents coped when he was a wee child/cub?

AJD:
> I believe the page torn out was the one with the information about 
the Basilisk.  I was also a bit shocked she had done so and had
written a note on it to boot! :)<

Yeah, it did seem out of character for the usually stringently law-abiding teacher-respecting book-revering Hermione.  I file this under "slightly dubious plot devices", because after all, Harry *needed* to find that page in her hand, didn't he?  Couldn't Hermione have taken notes on a separate piece of paper to be found instead?

Ffi:
> In resposne to Sirius being the 'difficult death to write' - do you 
really think JKR would be that cruel to Harry?  <

I don't think "being kind to Harry" is a major motivator for JKR, to be honest.  Look at what she's put him through so far, and the carnage she plans to wreak in the last three books!  In her own way, JKR is just as bloodthirsty as Cindy!  All the same, I don't think Sirius is on Death Row at this stage (or at least, certainly not near the top of the list), for *literary* reasons... we haven't seen that much of him yet, there's a lot more room for Sirius and his relationships with Snape and Harry to develop yet.  It would be wasteful to slaughter him at this stage.

On the subject of the bloodthirsty Cindy...

Cindy:
> Oh, my.  This is just making me feel all squishy inside.  Finally, 
*someone* else (besides George, who I still don't fully trust) buys 
on to the Ambush idea.  ::dabs at eyes::  Elkins, can I offer you a 
few cheap trinkets that probably won't give you a bad skin rash if 
you remember to take them off at night?<

WHAT?  (Tabouli sits up indignantly).  HUH!!  This is a gross libel!  Just yesterday in my message "Filch/Mrs Norris (FLIRTIAC) & still more LOLLIPOPS" I specifically sang a soothing sea shanty at you (Cindy) and wrote a Personalised LOLLIPOPS-friendly Ambush Scenario!  I even covered a lot of things which cropped up in digests over the last couple of days in it, such as why Lily need not have been a "war trophy" and why V need not have known about Snape's crush.

Grrrr.

Though I did note it came in an unusually short 2 post digest - didn't it reach anyone?

Judy:
> We need a reason why Voldy tells Snape about 
the threat to the Potters in the first place.  If Voldy knew that 
Snape wanted Lily, I can just see the following scene.  Voldy calls 
Snape in, and tells him, "Snape, my slippery friend, I promised you'd 
be rewarded for supporting me. And so you shall!  I have decided to 
kill James Potter! Lily will soon be yours!  Bwaa-ha-haa-ha-haa!"<
>
>All right, I admit it, another possibility is that Voldy told Snape 
(or whoever warned Dumbledore) of his plan to kill the Potters because 
Voldy is a compulsive braggart.<

As I said in my (sadly unread?) ambush-by-LOLLIPOPS theory, there's no need for V to know about Snape's undying love for Lily (though the fact that he was willing to let her live when his usual attitude to someone in the way is "Kill the spare" *is* a bit suspicious...).  It's a bit of a stretch for me to imagine Snape (Snape!) confessing such un-Death-Eater-like feelings to Voldemort, let alone Voldemort sympathising with them. My crew are welcome to their own personal takes on LOLLIPOPS, but having mused a bit on Snape's Slytherin gang, I have some new musings, which I detailed last post (gone astray?).  Let me fill in a few more details, so I don't repeat too much.

Somehow, V found that the Potters were, in some way, a serious threat.  Either he found this out himself, or one of his followers told him.  Perhaps Trelawney went into a trance in public and announced "Behold, wizards of England, the loins of lad of messy sable locks have spawned the babe who shall slay the Dark Lord" on Harry's birthday, and followers of V and D immediately rushed off to tell their leaders.

V then concocted a *plot* to kill the Potters.  Sounds like a reasonably complex operation, doesn't it?  Obviously he knew it wasn't just going to be a matter of wham bam dead as spam, because D's followers would now be rushing to protect the Potters at all costs.  He therefore decided to put together a Potterkill Task Force with the cream of his followers.  Snape and perhaps a couple of other ex-Slytherin gang members would be an obvious choice, as they knew James and Lily at school and would have a better idea of how they might act, who they trusted and so on.  Snape, with his talents and brains, could well have have been a pretty effective Death Eater, perhaps even the leader of the Force.  Their first step was to plant a spy in the enemy ranks.   The ex Slytherin Gang tipped off V that Peter was The Weakest Link in the trusted circle, and V made short work of his recruitment to the Task Force ("So what's it to be, Peter, DE or AK?").  The second step was for them to use Peter's information to find and kill the Potters.

All in all, V would have expected his trusty Snape to have polished off the Potters in a week or so.  Mysteriously, however, they seemed to slip through the net time and time again.  This is because, unbeknownst to V, being elected to kill the Potters triggered Snape's final crisis of conscience (see previous email for depiction of Snape's horrible dilemma - kill James and Harry and leave Lily free or play heroic spy to protect her happiness?) and is passing all of Peter's information to D as fast as it comes in to the Unit.  For a while, everyone is prepared to believe that this failure to deliver is because Potterkill is a particularly difficult assignment, as D himself is hiding and protecting the Potters, but as the months go by, Snape's ex-classmates are starting to get suspicious.  Why isn't Snape doing his usual efficient job?  Why is he sometimes a bit evasive and inconsistent about where he's been and what he's been doing?  They know full well that Snape had a crush on an enemy Gryffindor.  Surely those unwarlike, traitorous sentiments are behind him now... aren't they?  Could Snape be deliberately stalling and misdirecting the Task Force to protect Lily??  As time goes by, the suspicions grow and grow, Snape's spying gets more and more dangerous, until finally he has no choice other than to trap them and flee, by setting up a special Task Force meeting with a decoy Snape!Polyjuiced Auror who keeps them talking until Longbottom, Moody and the rest of the Aurors arrive to ambush them in a blaze of glory.

There!  Simple.  LOLLIPOPS with bonus George and ambush, with side serve of no need for Lily as War Trophy.

Tabouli.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]