The Spying Game Part II and Lucius the Cowardly Lion

[elfundeb at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 40142

Let me just say upfront that there's a lot to like in The Spying Game Part 
II.  I especially like the suggestion that Voldemort is deliberately 
weakening Harry throughout the graveyard scene and that he forces Harry to 
duel with a weapon he doesn't fully know how to use. And kudos for resolving 
this week's debate about the purpose and effect of unicorn blood.
 
Most of my comments go to the suggestion that Voldemort is leaving Harry with 
the *misimpression*  that he "just can't get the staff these days."  I think 
that's a dead accurate statement.  The best of the best are now in Azkaban or 
dead or sucked by Dementors.  He's left with the cowardly sycophants, and the 
number one cowardly sycophant in the graveyard is Lucius Malfoy.  Think about 
it.  These are the supporters that sleazed their way out of Azkaban by 
claiming Imperius.  They're the ones who were out torturing Muggles at the 
QWC (Bill implies this in GoF, ch. 9.)  People known to be weak-willed are 
probably more likely to be able to put on a convincing Imperius defense 
(unless, like Lucius Malfoy, they have a lot of money to back up their 
claims).  Voldemort, of course, knows all too well what they are.  So he 
makes a great show of how easy it is for him to get all of them to do his 
will, with Pettigrew as Exhibit A.  I think what he's saying is "Look here, 
Harry Potter, my followers may be scum, but they will cut off their right 
arms for me.  This is what you're up against."   No, I think his objective is 
to convince Harry that he, Voldemort, has all the means at his disposal to 
win.  If Harry survives the graveyard, he is to go back discouraged and 
despondent.  And so he does.  Plan B accomplished.

***If all the Death Eaters are disloyal, why do only two get punished?
***
There is another clue that Harry is being fed misinformation here. 
Who gets punished during the speech? 

Pettigrew/Wormtail, who we *know* spent 12 years hiding as a rat 
rather than run back to Voldemort.  [snip]

Who else? Avery. [snip] Err... that's it, really. Still, I suppose torturing 
people can get a 
bit boring. :-)

Well, yes, it would get a bit boring.  Besides, Avery so kindly offered to 
serve as the example, to remind them of what the weak deserve.  Voldemort was 
able to use Avery to make half his point.  And Pettigrew makes the other 
point.  Only Harry saw the dismemberment and the head slam.  The others see 
that even faithless servants who are willing to sacrifice like Pettigrew did, 
(and they do see the bleeding stump)  will get their rewards.  It's just what 
a coward needs to get motivated.  The truth is, lying about the Imperius 
curse isn't truly disloyal.  After all, there should be nothing wrong with 
keeping yourself out of Azkaban as long as your freedom is used wisely.  But 
these guys won't lift a finger if Voldemort isn't breathing down their neck.  
They're not going to go looking for the defeated Evil Overlord.
 
***'Why did this band of wizards never come to the aid of their 
master...?'*** (p. 562)

 This is also implied in several internal contradictions within the 
speech. Voldemort, according to his speech, is deeply annoyed at the 
DE's not coming to find him. "Surely, one of my faithful Death Eaters 
would try and find me... " ( p.567)

but later: "I dared not go where other humans were plentiful, for I 
knew that the other Aurors were still abroad and searching for me." 
(p. 567)

Whether it would be hard to find Voldemort in Albania is an unanswered 
question.  But we know there are others who at least tried.  The Lestranges 
tried.  Barty Crouch tried.  The cowards in the graveyard, OTOH, did not.  
(Not even Avery; I stand by the proposition that Fourth Man was somebody 
else.)  And that's their crime.

 ***Lucius Malfoy, at least, is loyal***

Malfoy has planted the diary. Malfoy organised the DE march. There's 
a lot of argument about this, but my argument is that Malfoy did both 
these things under orders - The Diary as an attack on Hogwarts, the 
DE march to provide a distraction for the (failed) escape of Barty 
Crouch. This is why Malfoy gets lenient treatment - he's loyal. 

Absolutely.  Lucius Malfoy never abandons Voldemort's, er, principles.  
Important things, like Mudblood prejudice that remind him of how much better 
he is than the common folk.  But, like Pettigrew, he's too cowardly to risk 
anything to prove his loyalty unless the chips are down or he's on the 
winning side.  Yes, he planted the diary.  And he may have organized that bit 
of fun with the Robertses.  Both of which did demonstrate loyalty to 
Voldemort.  But they are acts of cowardice, and Voldemort knows it.

First, the diary.  The simple fact that Lucius had custody of Riddle's diary 
for twelve years suggests some level of loyalty.  Whether Voldemort gave it 
to him or he rounded up and hid theincriminating paraphernalia after 
Voldemort's fall, keeping the items under his own floorboards is an 
undeniable act of loyalty.  But look what prompts the planting of the diary - 
the whole thing happens only because Lucius got scared.  If you look at  the 
scene at Mr. Borgin's shop, Lucius tells Borgin that the MOM was conducting 
more raids at the time and that Lucius felt he could no longer rely on his 
position to avoid being raided.  He is careful to sell to Borgin only generic 
but suspicious poisons that cannot be traced, but Riddle's diary needed to be 
disposed of in some other fashion; its connection to Voldemort is too 
obvious.  So Lucius, in conjunction with Diary! Riddle (who IMO has no 
contact with Vapor! Voldemort),  hatched the scheme to send it to Hogwarts to 
unleash the basilisk.  And he tries to lay it off on somebody else, and who 
better than his enemy Arthur Weasley, whose feud with Lucius evidently goes 
far back, judging from their behavior when we first see them meet.  Sounds 
pretty cowardly to me.  

Next, in another act of loyalty, I believe Lucius is in fact the present 
owner of the Riddle house. GoF, ch. 1 states that "the wealthy man who owns 
the Riddle house these days neither lived there nor put the house to any 
other use."  Well, Lucius is definitely wealthy enough to hang onto an empty 
house.  And it's clear that the owner bought it from an intermediate owner 
who bought it after the Riddles died, because GoF ch. 1 states that "the new 
owners" (who seem to be different from the current owner) left after 
remarking that "there was a nasty feeling about the place."  Lucius might 
have purchased it at Voldemort's request while he was still in power, but GoF 
clearly states that the present owner is still paying Frank Bryce to maintain 
it. If so, he wouldn't dare get rid of it; it's very convenient that the 
locals consider it a tax dodge, and that nobody in Little Hangleton talks to 
Frank Bryce.  It's perfect - tax shelters are always impenetrable to the man 
on the street.  The fact that Voldemort was very comfortable in using it, 
even before the QWC, suggests that he was aware that the house was in 
friendly hands.  

Now,  that bit of DE "fun" at the QWC.  Though it's after the episode at the 
Riddle house, it's before Voldemort contacted Barty Jr. (based on the 
timeline given by Barty Jr. in his Veritaserum confession).  Voldemort would 
have had no knowledge that Barty Jr. was even there so it would not have made 
sense to order Malfoy to do it in order to create a distraction that would 
allow him to escape.  

Would Voldemort have used it as a sort of announcement, however?  Well, 
maybe.  But if he had a grand plan to kidnap Harry, the sight of emboldened 
DE's at the QWC might have put everyone on alert.  No, I think that what 
happened was one of two things:  (i) it had been a long time since Lucius had 
been hanging out with his old DE friends and the comfort of their numbers at 
the QWC, combined with some strengthening refreshment, emboldened him to act. 
 Or, (ii) Voldemort did use the fireplace to contact the owner of the Riddle 
house, and said owner Lucius became encouraged by it all to do something rash 
on his  own.  

It was rash, but it was also cowardly and sick (for the record, the 
suggestion of rape here comes through loud and clear to me).  I've said 
before (#37699), that I believe that actions against Muggles, though 
authorized by Voldemort as revenge against his rejection by his Muggle 
father, was something Voldemort pretty much left it up to the DE's to 
organize for themselves because it had no strategic value and gave the little 
guys the illusion of power.  Voldemort may get a sadistic satisfaction from 
Muggle-torture, but I suspect that even he has contempt for its main 
practitioners.  Voldemort's own comment that Lucius' energies might have been 
better directed toward finding him support this view.  Lucius, being the 
coward he is, really relishes picking on people who can't fight back.  But 
when he actually saw the Dark Mark, he got really scared and ran.  

If you were Voldemort, would you really want to rely on losers like this to 
do something outside your presence?  If I were Voldemort, I wouldn't even 
rely on Lucius to remember his lines.  No wonder he has to use Cruciatus and 
dismemberment to scare the rest of them into submission.  No, I don't think 
Voldemort would tell Lucius his plans.  He can rely on Pettigrew only because 
Pettigrew has no place else to go.

Pip again:

 Lucius isn't too bothered about the serious 'why didn't you find 
me' accusation - but shuts up immediately Voldemort mentions the much 
less serious accusation that he made himself scarce on seeing the 
Dark Mark.

Why would he be more worried about the less serious accusation? Well, 
if it happens to be the only one that's true..

Me:

Lucius is more worried about the second accusation because it directly 
contradicts the long-prepared excuse he is trying to make in response to the 
first question, "why didn't you look for me?"   He's been rehearsing his 
answer to that one for years.  Because he didn't look for him, no matter how 
"loyal" he was.   He says,

"Had there been any sign from you, any whisper of your whereabouts, I would 
have been at your side immediately, nothing could have prevented me -"  

Whereupon Voldemort interrupts him to point out "lazily" that he ran from the 
Dark Mark instead of toward the loyal servant who cast it "and Mr Malfoy 
stopped talking abruptly.'"

Yes, Lucius was a disgusting coward, as are too many of Voldemort's 
followers.  They're in the graveyard because they didn't dare not come, but 
they showed their true colors at the QWC.   No wonder Voldemort has to show 
Harry what they'll do for him when pressed.

And finally, on the lessons of military history, Alexander said:

  I refuse to accept the idea that climax of the story is in
Book 7. From my (military history fan) point of view, climax
of the series is the Graveyard Scene. Harry demonstrated
that Voldemort *already* cannot kill him. Even though Harry
was weakened and softened and handled the most inappropriate
weapon.

  With every day passing, situation will only become worse
for Voldemort. There is no way of reversing that. *Never*
again he will have the chances he had at the graveyard.

[snip] In military history there's no example of a country that
won a war after losing the decisive battle, no matter how
minor (or major) that battle would seem.

  Japan lost the Battle at Midway. Japanese admirals refused
to send remaining battleships to win or die. All battleships
that survived at Midway were destroyed in the following
years - with no positive result *at all*.

I'm not quite sure I agree that the Battle of the Graveyard is the Midway of 
Harry Potter.  For one thing, the light and dark sides have been in a long 
interregnum, and are not actively at war (aside from some skirmishes such as 
theQuidemort episode).  Instead, I would analogize the Graveyard to Pearl 
Harbor -- a meticulously planned sneak attack right into Hogwarts.  While the 
seeds of ultimate defeat have already been sown via Harry's escape, Voldemort 
certainly would not view it as a defeat, as Midway was humiliating to the 
Japanese fleet, who had every advantage going in. 

Voldemort's achieved his greatest objective, which was to regain his body and 
his power with the aid of Harry Potter.  Similarly, the Japanese were able to 
destroy or disable the battleships anchored at Pearl, and certainly deemed 
the attack a success.  However, in both cases the attacker's objectives were 
not fully realized.  At Pearl Harbor, the aircraft carriers (which would 
prove to be the decisive weapons at Midway, not the battleships that were 
destroyed) were out to sea and escaped damage entirely.  Likewise, Voldemort 
failed to kill Harry and Harry, not Dumbledore, will of course prove to be 
Voldemort's greatest enemy (though I'm not convinced it's been established 
that Voldemort cannot kill Harry).  He'll never have the advantages he had in 
GoF; for one thing, he'll never have the same advantage of surprise.  

OoP will be very dark indeed, because right now the Light side is feeling 
very vulnerable That's a lot like the US after Pearl Harbor; its defenses 
were in disarray and it desperately needed to boost morale. Likewise, the Old 
Crowd doesn't have the support of the Ministry, it's desperately sending out 
feelers to potential allies, and the tone of the last chapter of GoF very 
much reflects this mood.  There's going to be a Midway.  It may not look like 
the climax, but it will be.  But it's not going to look like the Graveyard, 
because everyone knows what they're up against now.

And there will be a final climax in book 7, but it won't look anything like 
the Graveyard either, just as Hiroshima didn't resemble Pearl Harbor.  

Debbie, who looked up "schnook" in the dictionary and found that it means the 
same as "schmuck" which fits Lucius much better than our Competent! Snape



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