The Triwizard Portkey

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 40830

This is quite late, really, but I've had some computer troubles.

Pippin wrote:

> I admit that arrival via portkey is somewhat disorienting and that 
> it's not practical for all the DE's to show up at once. However...

> The DE's also have an agent on the scene who can create a 
> diversion to cover their arrival. In fact, he already has, by 
> disabling Krum and Fleur. He may have also put a confundus 
> curse on Fudge and Bagman so that they didn't immediately 
> notice what was happening in the maze--the residual effects of 
> this may account somewhat for Fudge's inability to grasp that 
> Voldemort has returned. 


Hmmmm.  I think that if Crouch had actually confounded Fudge and
Bagman, then he would almost certainly have bragged to Harry about
that in his "I want you to DIE, Mr. Potter...but first, let me 
provide some plot exposition for the folks watching at home" scene.

Also, if Crouch had really been that heavily involved in a plan 
involving use of the Portkey as a means of allowing the DEs to attack 
Hogwarts, then I would rather expect for him to be a bit more 
interested in learning from Harry why the plan didn't work.  Instead, 
he seems far more anxious to learn first if Voldemort has really 
returned, and second, how he then treated the other DEs.  He's just 
panting to hear that Voldemort punished them *severely* for their 
disloyalty.  He wants to hear that they've been made to suffer.  
In fact, I really don't get the impression that he would shed too 
many tears to hear that a good number of them had been killed.

I can't really imagine that he'd be expecting or hoping for such a 
thing if he knew that the DEs would then be called upon to aid 
Voldemort in an attack on Hogwarts.  They simply wouldn't be in any 
*condition* to do so if they'd been punished in quite the manner that 
Crouch seems to be so desperately hoping to hear about.

He does seem rather undismayed by the fact that Harry *escaped,* 
though, doesn't he?


Debbie wrote:

> Also, Crouch Jr., after explaining to Dumbledore how he turned the 
> cup into a Portkey, says "My master's plan worked. He is returned 
> to power . . . ."  This doesn't make it sound like the plan was to 
> attack Hogwarts. 

No.  It doesn't to me, either.  Or at least, if that *was* part of the
plan, then it doesn't sound to me as if anyone sent Barty a memo to
that effect.

I do agree with Debbie, though, that Crouch's relative lack of dismay 
over the appearance of Alive!Harry does strongly support Pip's idea 
that Voldemort might have always had the possibility that Harry might 
escape in mind as a "Plan B."


Pippin wrote:

> Dumbledore would have been notified by Snape as soon as possible 
> once the Dark Mark burned, at which point he would certainly 
> evacuate the students to their Houses, especially if he had 
> realized by that time that Harry was missing. So most of the 
> students would have been leaving the stands and the adults would be 
> guarding the students. This is why Harry saw people moving in the 
> stands when he returned. 

It's an interesting question, this.  Just what *was* going on when 
Harry first returned from the graveyard?  I've just gone and reread 
the passage, and it is somewhat ambiguous.  The sense of time passing 
is deliberately vague -- it's actually a rather nice bit of writing 
here, JKR's conveyance of the poor boy's state of shock -- but the 
impression that I receive is that Harry lies there in the grass for a 
few moments in silence ("waiting...waiting for someone to do 
something...something to happen...") before the "torrent of sound 
deafened and confused him" and the stampede begins.  I don't get the 
impression that there was already an evacuation of the stands 
underway at all.

Certainly if the students were being shepherded away, then they were 
not being very *competently* shepherded away.  Harry hears girls 
screaming and sobbing in the crowd thronging around him while he is 
still lying on the grass, right before Crouch drags him back to the 
school.  It looks like chaos to me.  I don't see any signs that 
anyone is trying to lead the students back to their dormitories
or that any adults are standing guard over them.


Pippin:

> However, I think the terrorist purpose would be served if Voldemort 
> was at Hogwarts long enough to drop off Harry's body, set off one 
> of those blast spells like the one Peter used to kill all those 
> people at once, laugh his unmistakeable laugh, and portkey out 
> again. 

This, however, I *can* accept as a possibility.  It strikes me as 
perfectly consistent with everything that we've seen of Voldemort so 
far.  He does generally seem to prefer to take care of matters 
personally, rather than delegating them to his followers while he 
himself remains hidden safely away.  He attacked the Potters in 
person.  He chose to reveal himself at the end of PS/SS.  And he 
tried (at first, at any rate) to convince the DEs in the graveyard 
not to interfere in his "duel" in the graveyard.

So all right.  I will accept the "Voldemort portkeys in with Harry's 
body, kills a bunch of people, laughs like a fiend, and then vanishes 
again" plan.  I can live quite happily with that.


Rosie suggested the possibility of a "Voldemort portkeys in with 
Harry *alive,* kills a bunch of people, laughs like a fiend, and then 
vanishes again" plan.

Rosie:

> If they didn't zap Harry before appearing through the Portkey...who 
> would they have as a very convenient hostage?

Given that Voldemort *did* cast the Killing Curse at him, I can only 
imagine this as a variant on the Spying Game's Plan B.  According to 
this interpretation of events, Plan A was "kill Harry with the good 
old AK," while Plan B was: "And if that doesn't work, then Portkey to 
Hogwarts with Harry in tow as a hostage."

Sure.  That has possibilities.  


Debbie, however, objected:

> But a more practical objection. If the Portkey was rigged to take 
> Voldemort back out of Hogwarts after dropping off Harry's body (and 
> it would need to be to allow Voldemort to escape), why didn't the 
> person who picked it up after Harry let go of it get transported 
> back to the graveyard? 

Hey, for all we know, that's exactly what happened.  Do we ever see 
the Cup again after Harry gets dragged off by Moody?  He gets his 
sack full of Galleons eventually -- he tries to give it to the 
Diggories -- but whatever happened to the trophy itself? Unless 
there's some mention of it that I've missed (which there might well 
be, as I am not, I fear, at all competent at that LOON stuff), we 
never see the thing again.

Boy.  A nasty shock *that* must have been for some souvenir-seeker, 
eh?

Debbie also wrote:

> Also, this was a pretty risky plan, even if Crouch Jr. was on 
> patrol at the edge of the maze. If he dropped the Portkey and 
> someone else picked it up, he would be stuck at Hogwarts, not 
> exactly a glorious climax to a triumphant return. 

He could have just held onto it, though.  Simply letting go of it and 
then touching it again really wouldn't be all that difficult, I 
wouldn't think.  There's risk involved, but not tremendous risk.


Pippin:

> He wouldn't need all the Death Eaters for that. If the blast was 
> aimed at the Judge's Booth, he might very well succeed in killing 
> Fudge, which would be perfectly adequate as far as demoralizing 
> everybody and disrupting the WW.

Debbie:

> Kill Fudge? Whether he's Ever So Evil or just Ever So Incompetent, 
> Fudge is one of Voldemort's best allies. Kill him? What could 
> Voldemort be thinking of? 

The assassination of even a weak leader is exceptionally 
demoralizing, and political chaos is even easier to exploit than 
Cornelius Fudge himself is.  A leaderless wizarding world would be 
exceptionally vulnerable -- even more vulnerable than a wizarding 
world with a Fudge at its helm.

Also, say what you like about Fudge (certainly everyone else around 
here does), but he presumably really does have some genuine political 
skills.  He has held the office for quite some time, after all.  I 
imagine that he's got quite a knack for consensus-building and 
bipartisan compromise and other skills that prove useful in 
maintaining order during times of peace.  That the wizarding world is 
strongly politically divided is implied in Fudge's exchange with 
Dumbledore over the dementors:

"'Half of us only feel safe in our beds at night because we know the 
dementors are standing guard at Azkaban!'

'The rest of us sleep less soundly in our beds, Cornelius, knowing 
that you have put Lord Voldemort's most dangerous supporters in the 
care of creatures who will join him the instant he asks them!'"

They're speaking metaphorically, of course.  But still, the fact that 
even Fudge uses the word "half" is somewhat suggestive to my mind.  
Fudge is an appeaser, a compromiser.  That is both his particular 
flaw and his particular talent.  With him gone, the wizarding world 
might well find itself at a political impasse which would benefit no 
one so much as Voldemort and his followers.



Debbie put this entire of speculations into some doubt with this:

> Except for one problem: If the Cup was originally set to carry the 
> first person to touch it back to the edge of the maze, why did 
> Crouch Jr. tell Dumbledore later that when he carried the Cup into 
> the maze, he "Turned it into a Portkey." Voldemort uses almost 
> exactly the same phrase ("the cup which my Death Eater had turned 
> into a Portkey") (GoF, pp. 657, 691). If it had been a portkey all 
> along, Crouch would have had to say that he'd fixed the Portkey to 
> go to the graveyard first, right?

Aw, Debbie!

Did you *have* to?

<sigh>

Yeah, you're right.  That does make it all seem rather unlikely.  But 
if we don't imagine that the Triwizard Cup was always a Portkey, then 
we're left with that old question of how the contestants were 
supposed to get back out of the maze in the first place.  And of how 
the judges would know for sure which contestant really touched it 
first.  And of...of...well, and besides, it's ever so much more 
*interesting* this way, don't you think?

> But the detour in the portkey makes so much sense I'm willing to 
> write this off as a FLINT. 

That's the spirit!


-- Elkins